BASINSKI, WILLIAM A Red Score In Tile (Streamline) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The tape loop that William Basinski sources on A Red Score In Tile, dates back to 1979 during that manic period in Basinski's life when he was cataloguing shortwave radio noises, bittersweet sounding moments in muzak's mood engineering, and various piano extracts - all of which ending up on tape loops in the way that a lot of people build photo collections of the events, people, and places around them. But beginning around 1998, Basinski began to transcribe those tape loops digitally, finding an immense source for his future compositions that all heavily incorporate the slow-motion, sleepwalking murkiness of those original tape loops to their fullest advantage within his elliptical hypnosis of emotive tone and drone.
He actualized A Red Score In Tile first in 2003 for a piece of vinyl issued by the Chalk / Heemann label Three Poplars; of course, it quickly went out of print. This new cd version is a slightly different mix (only in that the piece isn't split over two sides, tracking instead about 45 minutes or so).
But for that tape loop, we're told the sole source is a piano, but it could have easily come from some of the bleak incidental music that Lalo Schifrin composed on the Rhodes for Dirty Harry. It's also incredibly prescient of the blackened 'horror jazz' from Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. This loop might only be cycling through an endless repetition, but it really doesn't sound that way. An atmosphere of urban decay hangs upon these broken notes, amplified by the vaporous reverb that oozes in, through, above, and below Basinski's sound. Of course, Basinski's music has long spoken of the elegant corrosion of sound, spoken most concisely through his epic Disintegration Loops series. But where the physical act of disintegration mirrors that of the sound itself, the sonic decay of A Red Score In Tile is spellbindingly subtle, and might actually be a grand illusion sparked by Basinksi's part works and deft ability to make a simple tape loop sublime. As a result, A Red Score In Tile is a stunning disc, one that ranks very highly within Basinski's always impressive catalog of recordings. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "A Red Score In Tile"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Disintegration Loop 1.1 (Vector) dvd 29.00
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Lots of folks feel lots of different things about 9/11. Some want to forget all about it. Some feel compelled to explore the emotions and feeling in their art. Some find the resulting art precious and annoying. And some are truly moved. So how you feel about this DVD really depends on where you fall in the above parameters. Disintegration Loop 1.1 is one hour long static shot of the New York skyline as it billows with smoke from the fallen twin towers. Accompanied by Basinksi's now famous / infamous disintegration loop, a found recording that had been slowly decaying, creating wonderful sonic effects. It -is- quite beautiful, and mesmerising, and the music perfectly captures the mood of despair and the emotional fragility of watching life as we know it literally crumble. Separate from the emotional and political overtones, Disintegration Loop 1.1 is a beautiful piece of (sound) art. But with the added resonance of the source material, it is a truly intense and disturbing thing to see and hear.

BASINSKI, WILLIAM El Camino Real (2062) cd 14.98
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BASINSKI, WILLIAM Melancholia (2062) cd 14.98
William Basinski's Melancholia is a transcendent disc of gorgeous ambience featuring a delightful series of 14 vignettes for tape loops, flickering minimalism, and repeating piano figures. Like the Water Music series, the aptly named Melancholia is a reissue of an album that briefly appeared as a tiny edition cd-r and is now getting the proper cd release it deserves. Erik Satie, Brian Eno (e.g. Music For Films), and Aphex Twin (e.g. Selected Ambient Works II) haunt Basinski's echo-laden space and lilting romantic gestures, restructured from Basinski's seemingly endless archive of tape loops from the early eighties. Those of you who fell under Basinski's spell upon hearing his sprawling Disintegration Loops and Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive will have another reason to embrace his nocturnal driftscapes. Recommended!
Unfortunately, packaged in a cheap plastic clam shell with no additional artwork and no information about the recording.
MPEG Stream: "Melancholia 01"
MPEG Stream: "Melancholia 12"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM ShortwaveMusic (2062) cd 14.98
Here's another archival release from William Basinski, whose still mining that hyperprolific period of his life in the early '80s when the ambient composer produced the work that would later appear on Variations, The River, and of course the seminal Disintegration Loops. That said, ShortwaveMusic has the distinction of being the first set of recordings that Basinski had released in the mid-90s on the Raster-Noton label. Back then, Raster had captured the imagination of many fans of electronic music with their sterile manifestations of digital errata into pristine structures; so when Basinski had this comparatively rough composition of manipulated shortwave and analogue synth released on Raster, it piqued a lot of folks' curiosity and everyone began to wonder just who this Basinski character was. Needless to say, ShortwaveMusic holds up in the musical context that is 2007 as a strong body of work, with prolonged passages of electrical glistenings smeared with the uneasy, deadened grey static that makes shortwave such a compelling medium to work with (e.g. John Duncan, Tod Dockstader, etc.). Basinksi swaddles all of his sounds in the echo chambers of multiple delay units set to infinity, making it seem that Basinski might have been heavily influenced by the likes of electronic pioneers Maurizio Bianchi or Conrad Schnitzler, whose sounds are reflected in the kaleidoscopic monochrome music of current experimental darling Grouper.
MPEG Stream: "Evening Scars"
MPEG Stream: "Cobalt Pools"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Silent Night (2062) cd 14.98
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Yet another new release from the now (after 20 years of relative inactivity, release-wise) quite prolific William Basinski, and once again it's absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. Unlike the majority of his releases, which are assembled from loops, Silent Night was composed and played on a synthesizer and the are sublime. A glacially chiming ambient sounresultsdscape of soft reverberant shimmers and hissing textural ambience. Shards of melodies drift in somnambulant streams of keening high end and fragmentary tranquility. Dreamy and meditational and pretty much perfect.
MPEG Stream: "Silent Night"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops III (2062) cd 14.98
Finally, parts two through four of composer William Basinski's personal musical response to the tragedies of 9/11. Most musical 'tributes' to that fateful day wallow in schmaltz and treacle, but having witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center from his house in Brooklyn, Basinski was maybe more personally affected than most of us. And somehow, that personal grief comes through in these reworked 20 year old recordings. Basinski had discovered a handful of old tape loops that were oxidizing and essentially disintegrating, and transferred them digitally, capturing the strangely decaying melodies, making for an expansive suite (almost three hundred minutes) of haunting otherworldy looping drones. Muzak like melodies crumble into barely melodic throbbing pulses, swathed in reverb, allowing the already obscured snatches of music, to fade into wispy smears of sound. So beautiful.
We also have Disintegration Loops I back in! All four volumes are definitely essential listening.
MPEG Stream: "Disintegration Loops 3"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops I (2062) cd 14.98
Teetering between a touching personal vision about the gravest of existential themes and sentimental pathos, William Basinksi has overloaded the context of "Disintegration Loops" with plenty of cultural references dealing in grandiose melancholia, including 9/11, the World Trade Center, the death of English poet Thomas Chatterton, the prosaic dreaminess of early 20th century American composers, the death of antiquated technologies, etc. This overload of metaphoric sadness and loss which is clearly stated well before a single note of music emanates from the CD doesn't leave much room for personal interpretation. Simply put you must feel sad when listening to this album.
To be fair, the effect of witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center has been traumatic to us all, and observing that horrific spectacle from the roof of his Brooklyn apartment undoubtably scarred Basinksi. For better or for worse, Basinski used "Disintegration Loops" as his personal soundtrack for the WTC collapse, playing this composition throughout the night as the fires burned and ash spewed into the air. The piece itself intrinsically deals with decay, as it came about because Basinski had discovered an old tape loop, a rendering of a subtle arpeggiated countermelody from lush orchestral deep horns and strings, that he made some two decades ago and decided to archive the piece digitally -- during that process, Basinki found that the oxide of the tape loop was gradually flaking off, leaving unreadable gaps on the loop itself. Hence, "Disintegration Loops". Over this 63 minute recycling of sound, the orchestration is eventually all but lost amidst the terse pops and a ubiquitous wash of reverb.
Oh yes, this album is gorgeous; but I can't shake the feeling that I've been manipulated Steven Spielberg-style into granting an emotional weight to a piece of art more through a tautological argument rather than through aesthetic merit.
MPEG Stream: "dp 1.1 (excerpt one)"
MPEG Stream: "dp 1.1 (excerpt two)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops II (2062) cd 14.98
Finally, parts two through four of composer William Basinski's personal musical response to the tragedies of 9/11. Most musical 'tributes' to that fateful day wallow in schmaltz and treacle, but having witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center from his house in Brooklyn, Basinski was maybe more personally affected than most of us. And somehow, that personal grief comes through in these reworked 20 year old recordings. Basinski had discovered a handful of old tape loops that were oxidizing and essentially disintegrating, and transferred them digitally, capturing the strangely decaying melodies, making for an expansive suite (almost three hundred minutes) of haunting otherworldy looping drones. Muzak like melodies crumble into barely melodic throbbing pulses, swathed in reverb, allowing the already obscured snatches of music, to fade into wispy smears of sound. So beautiful.
We also have Disintegration Loops I back in! All four volumes are definitely essential listening.
MPEG Stream: "Disintegration Loops 2"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops IV (2062) cd 14.98
Finally, parts two through four of composer William Basinski's personal musical response to the tragedies of 9/11. Most musical 'tributes' to that fateful day wallow in schmaltz and treacle, but having witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center from his house in Brooklyn, Basinski was maybe more personally affected than most of us. And somehow, that personal grief comes through in these reworked 20 year old recordings. Basinski had discovered a handful of old tape loops that were oxidizing and essentially disintegrating, and transferred them digitally, capturing the strangely decaying melodies, making for an expansive suite (almost three hundred minutes) of haunting otherworldy looping drones. Muzak like melodies crumble into barely melodic throbbing pulses, swathed in reverb, allowing the already obscured snatches of music, to fade into wispy smears of sound. So beautiful.
We also have Disintegration Loops I back in! All four volumes are definitely essential listening.
MPEG Stream: "Disintegration Loops 4"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Garden Of Brokeness (2062) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Where the heck has Basinski been for the last 20 years? And what the heck has he been doing? And why has he suddenly resurfaced NOW with a ridiculous amount of lost music? It has all the makings of a fantastic musical mystery. Could be that Basinski is just a young guy, no older than you or me, and this whole reissue campaign is just a post modern art project, an invented persona, that most definitely mystifies and makes the music that much cooler? Or better yet, imagine someone just discovered this old box of tapes in an abandoned house, all labeled with the name Basinski, all dusty and mildewy, and has secretly been reissuing them as if he himself was this long lost Basinski. Those scenarios are almost more believable than the supposed -actual- story, that Basinski recorded tons and tons of loops, pieces for piano and tape, decades ago, and only recently, after 20 years of near silence decides to start releasing the tapes, many of them decayed and damaged. But ultimately, who really cares, the important thing is the music, and once again, Basinski's latest batch of unearthed sounds, long lost fragments, are dark and delicate and completely mesmerizing.
Gentle lush piano chords, simple and spare, hover ominously in dense fields of background noise, a slow, ominous churn of rumbling whirs and shimmering grey noise. The piano wanders alone through vast expanses of near silence, before the background noise begins to build bit by bit, like a brooding storm on the horizon, slowly enveloping the reverbed piano, the whole thing becoming a thick cloud of overtones and background noise, before the piano wanders from beneath the smears of grey and black, into yet another near-quiet expanse, and then the whole cycle begins again. Like a series of loops where each loop is 15 minutes long. So disorientingly hypnotic and utterly beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "The Garden Of Brokeness (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The River (Raster-Noton) 2cd 16.98
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This is another in the recent spate of releases chronicling William Basinski's experiments with short wave radio. This 2 disc set, 90 minutes in length to reflect two sides of a cassette tape, is a 2 part piece recorded in 1983 using shortwave radio and primitive tape loops. Fans of Phillip Jeck should pick this up immediately. It's got that sepia toned, gorgeous, hazy old victrola sound, with lots of rough edges, staticky fuzz and warm hum. The tape loops are mostly Muzak, slowed down and stretched out into creepy and hypnotic melodies, under and over shifiting shortwave. Supposedly this was Basinski's attempt to emulate the warm dreamy sounds of the Mellotron, a vintage synthesiser that utilises short loops of tape. And in some ways he has succeeded, creating a weirdly lush, gauze-y, droney soundscape all culled from random shortwave transmissions. So nice!
RealAudio clip: "The River Part 1 (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The River (Musex International) 2cd 25.00
BACK IN PRINT! Now available again via Basinski's own imprint after the 2002 Raster-Noton version lapsed into unavailability. One of our favorite Basinskis for sure...
This is another release chronicling William Basinski's experiments with short wave radio. This 2 disc set, 90 minutes in length to reflect two sides of a cassette tape, is a 2 part piece recorded in 1983 using shortwave radio and primitive tape loops. Fans of Phillip Jeck should pick this up immediately. It's got that sepia toned, gorgeous, hazy old Victrola sound, with lots of rough edges, staticky fuzz and warm hum. The tape loops are mostly Muzak, slowed down and stretched out into creepy and hypnotic melodies, under and over shifting shortwave. Supposedly this was Basinski's attempt to emulate the warm dreamy sounds of the Mellotron, a vintage synthesizer that utilizes short loops of tape. And yeah, he has succeeded in creating a weirdly lush, gauze-y, droney soundscape all culled from random shortwave transmissions. So nice!
MPEG Stream: "The River"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Variations For Piano And Tape (2062) cd 14.98
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One of our absolute favorite minimalist composers pulls another lovely work from his bag of tricks. That bag of tricks being his seemingly endless collection of moldering tape loops initially recorded a couple of decades ago. This time around it's from a deceptively simple piano loop titled "Variation #9: Pantelleria". Pantelleria is a tiny volcanic island southwest of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea whose long and ancient history is steeped in bloodshed, due to its once strategic proximity to warring Christian and Muslim nations. The patina of time on Basinski's key material, coupled with a happy accident of the tape loop slipping off of the tape head, creates a beautifully decaying and lyrically submerged counterpoint effect. What at first seems like five simple notes repeated ends up sounding like Nature cleansing herself of mankind's bloody history. Gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "Variation #9: Pantelleria"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive (Die Stadt) 2cd 28.00
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William Basinski is a weird one. Almost everything we've heard from him has been absolutely breathtaking, but everything we have heard from him was also recorded twenty years ago. So twenty years ago he was making all sorts of drones and loops and sound experiments, all of which came out in the last two years. Weird. Wonder what was going on for the last couple of decades. Who really cares when we're treated to music this delicate and beautiful and timeless. Basinski seems to specialize in the loop, constructing droning and repetitive soundscapes out of brief snippets of sound, often letting nature affect the source (as on his earlier Disintegration Loops where old tapes had begun to disintegrate lending his record loops a strange haunting decay) but just as often affecting them himself by mixing, splicing, slowing down, speeding up or layering loops atop one another. Variations was recorded in 1981 and consists of various piano tape loops, played randomly then "bred". The vibe here is similar to the Disintegration Loops, delicate crystalline figures repeated until they start to blur into a slowly shifting river of sound. But where the Disintegration Loops were dark and brooding, rumbling almost-drones constructed from snatches of pastoral soundscapes, the loops on Variations are sparkling and effervescent, sounding like some strange hybrid of Kompakt's pop ambience and Oval's classic Diskont album. Absolutely beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Variation 1"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Vivian & Ondine (2062) cd 14.98
By now, if you're a regular reader of the aQ list, you no doubt know all about William Basinski, and the Disintegration Loops that introduced us to his music. And if you're anything like us, you were immediately smitten by his gorgeous slowly decaying dronescapes. The power of a simple loop, played over and over, in various states of decay, hearing the sounds literally crumble before your very ears, like getting a glimpse inside music, behind the notes, within the chords, observing the magnetic particles as they drop like flakes of soot after a fire, music transformed into inert object, and the glorious sound of that transition, from light to dark, life to death, sound to silence.
Basinski's music is rife with meaning, representational for sure, but can easily be appreciated from a purely sonic standpoint, the sounds, his loops, are blurred and indistinct and so lovely, washed out, hazy, sepia toned, they sound like they were snatched from another time, lifted from an audial scrapbook, the sounds curled up at the edges, lightly blackened, the images contained within smeared and unclear, beneath a patina of age, the chemicals reacting over time, changing the color, the texture, the emotion even, of each of those sounds.
Vivian & Ondine is a more recent work, but sounds like it could have come from the same treasure trove that produced the Disintegration Loops, dreamlike and otherworldly, hushed, intimate, and so beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Vivian & Ondine (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Water Music I (2062) cd 14.98
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Back in 2003, Basinski released the Water Music series on his own 2062 imprint on cd-r curiously in editions of 500. Unlike his much acclaimed Disintegration Loops series, the Water Music series is an exercise in minimalism exclusively for the Voyestra synthesizer. Basinksi offers an incredibly simple composition with steady humming drones burying an quietly repeating, muted electric lullaby. Basinski returns to the same ideas that Eno mastered on his early ambient releases and executes them with a similar panache for soothing tranquility.
PACKAGING NOTE:
No. No. No. When will these very talented musicians learn that it's a terrible idea to house their splendid music in blank jewel cases, clam shells, or prest-o-matic cases? David Jackman, Jonathan Coleclough, and now William Basinski should be ashamed of themselves for presenting their work in such poor packaging! Of course, we all have Raster-Noton to blame as they instigated that design principle with their uber-clean aesthetic, but Mr. Basinski would be much better served in providing a visual accompaniment to his work rather than following the barely-there aesthetic of Raster-Noton, et. al.
MPEG Stream: "Water Music I (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Water Music II (2062) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Back in 2003, Basinski released the Water Music series on his own 2062 imprint on cd-r curiously in editions of 500 also in a clam shell case. Unlike his much acclaimed Disintegration Loops series, the Water Music series is an exercise in minimalism exclusively for the Voyestra synthesizer. Basinksi offers an incredibly simple composition with a steady humming drones burying an quietly repeating, muted electric lullaby. Basinski returns to the same ideas that Eno mastered on his early ambient releases and executes them with a similar panache for soothing tranquility. The composition of Water Music is as good as the packaging is stupid.
PACKAGING NOTE:
No. No. No. When will these very talented musicians learn that it's a terrible idea to house their splendid music in blank jewel cases, clam shells, or prest-o-matic cases? David Jackman, Jonathan Coleclough, and now William Basinski should be ashamed of themselves for presenting their work in such poor packaging! Of course, we all have Raster-Noton to blame as they instigated that design principle with their uber-clean aesthetic, but Mr. Basinski would be much better served in providing a visual accompaniment to his work rather than following the barely-there aesthetic of Raster-Noton, et. al.
MPEG Stream: "Water Music II (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM + RICHARD CHARTIER 1-3 (Line ) cd 14.98
Originally, this collaborative album from William Basinski and Richard Chartier came out on the Japanese label Spekk in 2004. It quickly disappeared, but now it's back in print with two extra tracks (more on those down below) thanks to 12K imprint Line. Here's what we had to say about the album back then:
Things are not always as they seem. If you were to put on this album, a collaboration between experimental musicians William Basinksi and Richard Chartier, you might have the same reaction that we did. It appears that the album begins, drones quite beautifully for a brief period of time, and then ends, leaving us with the thought, "Hey, that was really short! What the hell?" Ah, but not so fast, for the album's running time is actually a full 73 minutes, and the perceived shortness of duration is a result of these two composers' mesmeric abilities!
William Basinski, of course, has explored temporal phenomenology before, most notably through his breathtaking documentation of tape decay on the Disintegration Loops series. While Chartier's ultra-minimalism tend towards stasis, his under appreciated Archival 1991 album imparts a similar slow-motion effect upon the listener. Working together, Basinksi and Chartier add a considerable amount to each other's work; and hopefully, they will be working together again as Basinksi provides an emotional center to Chartier's rationalism, and Chartier offers a reductivist edginess to Basinski's ghostly romanticism. For this album, Basinksi and Chartier present glacially slow shifts between extended passages of synthetic drones, occasionally haunted by shadowy whisps and windswept details. There's very little drama and very little activity, just an incredible piece of minimalism that has the ability to stop time.
The repress also features two bonus tracks that enjoy a similar time-stopping quality, centered upon the sounds that Chartier employed for his installation at the 2006 Bleeding Edge festival, and Basinski's work with the antique Voyetra 8 synthesizer. Each produced a different mix of this source material. Still just as recommended as before.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM + RICHARD CHARTIER s/t (Spekk) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Things are not always as they seem. If you were to put on this album, a collaboration between experimental musicans William Basinksi and Richard Chartier, you might have the same reaction that we did. It appears that the album begins, drones quite beautifully for a brief period of time, and then ends, leaving us with the thought, "Hey, that was really short! What the hell?" Ah, but not so fast, for the album's running time is actually a full 57 minutes, and the perceived shortness of duration is a result of these two composers' mesmeric abilities!
William Basinski, of course, has explored temporal phenomonology before, most notably through his breathtaking documentation of tape decay on the Disintegration Loops series. While Chartier's ultra-minimalism tend towards stasis, his underappreciated Archival 1991 album imparts a similar slow-motion effect upon the listener. Working together, Basinksi and Chartier add a considerable amount to each other's work; and hopefully, they will be working together again as Basinksi provides an emotional center to Chartier's rationalism, and Chartier offers a reductivist edginess to Basinski's ghostly romanticism. For this album, Basinksi and Chartier present glacially slow shifts between extended passages of synthetic drones, occasionally haunted by shadowy whisps and windswept details. There's very little drama and very little activity, just an incredible piece of minimalism that has the ability to stop time. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"

BASS COMMUNION Chiaroscuro (Headphone Dust) cd 14.98
Brand new record from dronelord / guitar deconstructionist Bass Communion, aka Steven Wilson, whose day job is playing with prog superstars Porcupine Tree, but who spends the rest of his time, crafting gorgeous sprawling guitardrones and minimal psychedelic landscapes. The latest of which is captured here, Chiaroscuro is a document of the very first live Bass Communion performance, which took place at the Frenzy Of The Absolute festival curated by Fear Falls Burning. And we're happy to report that BC live is something to behold, a buzzing shimmering cloud of washed out psyche guitar drift, dense blackened billows, floating heavenward, while deep downtuned tones keep the proceedings grounded, amidst the swirl and drift, little shards of melody, and high end fragments surface now and again, only to sink back into the glorious druggy haze. The track shifts gears a few times, an acid fried slow burn blow out gives way to soft focus chiming ambience which slips slowly into a deep meditative rumble, finally drifting off in a hushed whir.
The second track was originally released on a split 7" with Fear Falls Burning, available exclusively to attendees of the concert, and finds Wilson with his guitar plugged into his laptop, and again conjuring up some haunting otherworldly minimalism, delicate and abstract, before exploding into a wall of crumbling blown out droneblissdoom heaviness, a wild squall of frenzied psych guitar practically melts the speakers. Wow. Would have liked to hear him do that live.
Once again, gorgeous stuff, dark and droney and blissed out and occasionally heavy as all get out, essential listening for the guitardoomdronedirge obsessed among you...
Packaged in a super fancy, full color mini gatefold lp style cd sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Fusilier"
MPEG Stream: "Chiaroscuro"

BASS COMMUNION Ghosts On Magnetic Tape (Headphone Dust) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
There have been far too many great projects cursed with terrible names. Terminal Cheesecake has to be at the top of the list, with contemporary punsters like Corn on Macabre and Cream Abdul Babar close behind. Bass Communion is another one of those projects that I (Jim) would typically shy away from, just because the name immediately brings associations to the day-glo, baby-pacifier factions of rave culture. Perhaps at one time, Steven Wilson started the Bass Communion project with that demographic in mind; but with the last couple of records Wilson has released as Bass Communion, he has dispelled whatever lame associations his moniker may invokes. Wilson, who also does time in the neo-psych / prog ensemble Porcupine Tree (and produces Opeth albums), continues down the darkly droning path found on his collaborative record with Jonathan Coleclough and Colin Potter. Inspired by the parapsychological investigations of Konstanin Raudive who claimed to have captured the voices of the dead on tape, Wilson manages an exceptional album of spectral dark ambience laced with the haunted crackle of old '78s struggling to gain a foothold amidst the billowing clouds of brooding drones. A perfect tide-me-over til the next Thomas Koner record.
MPEG Stream: "Ghosts On Magnetic Tape I"
MPEG Stream: "Ghosts On Magnetic Tape IV"

BASS COMMUNION Ghosts On Magnetic Tape (Headphone Dust) 2cd 21.00
We listed this a while back, a gorgeous record of dark dronemusick from Steven Wilson, whose day job is as a member of modern prog combo Porcupine Tree. No prog to be found here though,. just deep mysterious haunting ambience of the highest order. Now it's been re-issued / re-released with a whole extra disc, featuring the entire album reconstructed / re-imagined by sometime Wounded Nurse Andrew Liles.
Here's what we had to say about the original disc when we first reviewed it:
With the last couple of Bass Communion, Steven Wilson continues down the darkly droning path found on his collaborative record with Jonathan Coleclough and Colin Potter. Inspired by the parapsychological investigations of Konstanin Raudive who claimed to have captured the voices of the dead on tape, Wilson manages an exceptional album of spectral dark ambience laced with the haunted crackle of old '78s struggling to gain a foothold amidst the billowing clouds of brooding drones. A perfect tide-us-over 'til the next Thomas Koner record.
And as if that weren't enough, Liles' disc is just as good, a lot more minimal and abstract, but retaining much of the original's dark spirit. The opening turns Bass Communion's slow drift into something much closer to the pastoral chorale of Arvo Part. The rest of the disc rumbles ominously, shimmers dreamily, occasionally interrupted by electronic glitches, blurred fields of crackle, burnished streaks of glistening sparkle, mysterious voices, intercepted radio broadcast, deep cavernous whirs and long stretches of near silence. The perfect compliment to the original's almost nearly perfect dark dreamy drift.
Packaged in super deluxe, very striking, mini-gatefold style full color sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Ghosts On Magnetic Tape I"
MPEG Stream: "Ghosts On Magnetic Tape IV"

BASS COMMUNION II/III (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2cd 19.98
This double disc set from Steve Wilson's Bass Communion project reissues the second and third albums, both unavailable for some time now. II was originally released on Hidden Art back in 1998, and III had been an on-demand cd-r which Wilson offered through his website back in 2001.
On II, an elegiac violin spirals into a chorale loop with itself and sympathetic melodies, as a soft crackle of what could be icy rain or maybe even downtuned surface noise on a piece of vinyl. In many ways, this fits neatly next to the orchestrations that Godspeed! You Black Emperor were creating at the time, with a slow building crescendo hitting a dark majesty before the bittersweet comedown into subterranean drones and dappled ambience. There's a lot more going on here in terms of melodic interludes and discreet flourishes of sampled horns, strings, and post-IDM electronic rhythms, especially when compared to the bleak arctic environments of such Bass Communion masterpieces as Ghosts On Magnetic Tape or Loss. But it's still gorgeous and arresting ambience.
III is a collection of ephemera, most of which had predated II, including some pieces of television that Wilson had been commissioned to compose. Given the disparate sources, III doesn't flow as nicely as the other disc; but the opening track "Amphead" is clearly one of Wilson's best pieces. It's just filtered white noise transformed into a desolate piece of sweeping dronemusik on par with anything that Thomas Koner or Keith Berry has released. Some of the other tracks hit on the Biosphere tip with synthetic strings pocked with simple electronic underpinnings; but there's also some head-rattling digi-dub harkening back to the illbient aesthetic of Scorn or DJ Spooky many moons ago.
MPEG Stream: "16 Second Swarm"
MPEG Stream: "Dwarf Artillery"
MPEG Stream: "Amphead"

BASS COMMUNION Loss (Soleilmoon Recordings) picture disc 19.98
Now available on Picture Disc Vinyl!
Loss is an apt title in describing a sensibility that we find super compelling in music, each list tends to have at least one example of a record that taps into the ideas behind the nostalgic loss of memory and the triggers that cause those memories to flood back into consciousness. For an example, have a gander at the introductory paragraph of the review of Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet. Bass Communion's Loss, while not exactly aesthetically sympathetic to Mr. Hecker's pixel smear masterpiece, shares the sensorial drama of residual sounds evoking things past. Steven Wilson, the sole proprietor of Bass Communion, has commented that Loss is an extension of the ideas he previously investigated on Ghosts On Magnetic Tape, which related to the parapsychological research into the Electronic Voice Phenomena, whereby voices (presumably from beyond the grave) break through mediated sound in order to communicate with the living. Of course, that record complete with its spectral droning clouds of sound went over quite well here at Aquarius; and its follow-up does not disappoint. Sourced from reverb saturated piano, old 78 RPM records, and supposedly a vibraphone, Wilson offers yet another compelling perspective upon the nature of memory and loss through a Spartan and occasionally grim unveiling of drones and low-end piano notes.
MPEG Stream: "Part One"
MPEG Stream: "Part Two"

BASS COMMUNION Molotov and Haze (Important) cd 14.98
While most folks probably know Steven Wilson as a member of modern prog rockers Porcupine Tree, or as the producer of several Opeth albums, around these parts, Wilson is best known as the man behind Bass Communion, an ever evolving drone project, whose last few records have definitely hit the spot for the aQ drone faithful. Treading similar sonic ground as Thomas Koner, Jonathan Coleclough, Andrew Chalk, and the like, he crafts expansive and delicate crystalline soundscapes, minimal and hushed, deep and resonant, deep tones, layered low end, all deftly assembled into a mysterious otherworldly droneworld.
This latest disc finds Wilson dabbling in something a bit harder and heavier. Still using processed recordings of actual instruments as well as field recordings and apparently a laptop for the first time, two of the four tracks here are more in line with the more corrosive elements of the modern drone/dirge/doom movement. Instead of hushed and whispery, the opener here is caustic and crumbling, a field of ragged, distorted, blown out tones, a layered expanse of grinding buzz, but beneath it, angelic melodies shimmer and hum, transforming the track into something subtly beautiful, a sprawling prickly sonic squall wrapped around a dreamlike core. The other heavy track here is actually titled "Corrosive", and is again, well, corrosive, beginning with supercharged guitars, spewing fiery fields of freaked out high end, over a weird billowy bassline, which begins to define the track, as it becomes more propulsive and present, and that opening field of skree seems to move into the background, smoothing out into something weirdly more melodic.
The other two tracks, while more in line with the mood of past BC discs, also sound a bit more song-y. More composed and arranged, as opposed to more abstract and improvised. The sound is ethereal and ephemeral. Soft string-like swells define a mournful melody, traces of high end fill the sky above with streaks and melodic fragments, smoothed into clouds of chordal color, the whole thing very delicate, and subtly filmic, darkly moody and dramatic. The closer, appropriately titled "Haze", is indeed a hazy somnambulant drift, at least in the beginning, floating dreamily through a soft black expanse, a tranquil barely there ambience, supported by a deep pulsing low end. Part way through, a strange electronic buzz is introduced. It offers up a strange textural contrast, almost like someone is subtly shifting the dial on the radio, soft interference, buoyed by the music's sudden dramatic swells. The track gradually becomes more choral, the sounds resembling voices, woven into the softly swaying swell of the musical backdrop, culminating in an effulgent field of sun dappled high end, before fading softly into the background, as that unrelenting low end foghorn tone, leads us slowly and funereally to the finish.
MPEG Stream: "Molotov 1502"
MPEG Stream: "Glacial 1602"

BASS COMMUNION Pacific Codex (Equation) cd+dvd 30.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As much as we tried, and we have, we could just never get that into Porcupine Tree. And before you flood us with emails, we tried, we really did. And it's not that it's bad or anything, just not our cup of tea. Steven Wilson's other project though, Bass Communion is a whole 'nother story. Bass Communion as a project explores worlds of deep deep low end, a literal bass communion, how could it not appeal to the aQ drone obsessed?
This release was outrageously limited, and thus we ended up getting only a fraction of the copies we ordered (as in 17 copies is all we have) so we won't go into too much detail, just know that if you want one, best act fast.
Originally Pacific Codex was intended to be released on vinyl, but apparently the notes were so low and the bass so heavy and intense, that they could not be fully realized on vinyl, so the project was reimagined as a cd / dvd release as those digital formats could in fact handle the deep tones. And deep they are. This is some seriously deep, low end sound. At low volumes, much of it is barely audible, at high volumes, the room literally shakes, and the woofers vibrate so intensely the papers on the desk next to the speakers flutter and are blown across the table top. Woah.
And we love bass. We know you do too, so this is like the ultimate low end document, huge billowing metallic shimmers, deep rib cage rattling rumbles, melodies rendered in slow motion, transformed into glacial smears, the feeling is that of being underwater, but WAY underwater, maybe several miles below the surface, everything inky black, save for a few glowing fish, and stray bits of light that somehow made it down from the surface.
What else to say, drone obsessives will lose their mind over this. Imagine cranking your favorite most minimal Lustmord record with the bass cranked to 10 and the treble down to zero. This is the sort of record you don't hear as much as you feel. And yeah, it's minimal sure, but the low end is maximal, threatening to split your stereo right down the middle like some beautiful seismic serenade.
The accompanying dvd is dvd-AUDIO (5.1 surround), so don't try watching it, it's just a black screen, but it is sort of the perfect visual representation of the music within.
Two discs, one cd, one dvd, both housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with a full color perfect bound cd sized book filled with gorgeous textural photos of the sea and sky, a printed insert card on super thick textured paper each one hand numbered, all housed in a heavy gauge box / slipcase.
Again, we only have a handful, so when these are gone we will NOT be able to get more as it's already out of print at the label.
MPEG Stream: "Pacific Codex 1 (excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "Pacific Codex 2 (excerpt)"

BASS COMMUNION VS MUSLIMGAUZE s/t (Soleilmoon) cd 16.98
Steven Wilson may be known best from Porcupine Tree, although he has also been quite prolific as Bass Communion producing a whole slew of darkly tinged ambient records for the past decade or so. Back in 1996, Wilson began corresponding with Bryn Jones of Muslimgauze, at first merely to share his enthusiasm over the Muslimgauze album Blue Mosque. Without expecting anything, Wilson sent a set of recordings to Jones whose urge to improve upon the recordings was too great for him to deny; hence, a few days later, Wilson received several hours of recordings with his musics radically transformed into the fiery Arabic electronica that had been the signature for Muslimgauze for countless records. Thus began a collaborative process, whereby Wilson would mould the Muslimgauze sounds into something to his liking, only to have Jones reject those mixes in favor of his own. The Muslimgauze ethos is still the dominant force here, with a ghostly dark ambient lingering in the distance the only remnants of Wilson's contributions. The recordings that comprise this CD had been released previously as a long CD EP / short album (depending on who you ask) and a CD single; both of those discs had been out of print for sometime now, so it's nice to be able to hear this stuff again!
MPEG Stream: "Three"
MPEG Stream: "Six"

BASSDBLER Slow Blade Penetrates The Shield (Thistle Recording Laboratories) cassette 5.98
Super limited cassette of "retro futuristic dunestep" from aQ pal JD Short, aka Bassdblr, who made these tapes exclusive for aQuarius, limited to just 100 copies, and if you're not a sucker for experimental dubstep, and/or a sucker for DUNE themed electronica, there must be something really wrong with you. A bass player by trade, Short infuses his particular brand of dubbed out beat heavy stutter with REAL bass, so the sound is thick, and buzzy, a little proggy, and in its own way sort of heavy. The sound looped and hypnotic, cyclical and a bit tranced out. But then it's hard to pin down cuz the sound is all over the place.
Opener "Atrocity Arms The Future" is some seriously bass heavy dubstep electro prog ambience, sounding like a dubbed out soundtrack to some creepy eighties sci-fi epic, all looped beats, woozy distorted bass, and electronic pulses that give the sound a teensy bit of a Carpenter vibe. And that live bass also give it a sort of post rock feel too, but the beat is most definitely dubsteppy. "IX" is almost like Pinback crossed with Squarepusher scoring some zombie flick, all dark and tense and low slung and ominous, warm fluid basslines wrapped around a pulsing electronic rhythm, while "Long Live The Fighters" sounds like it could have come out on Not Not Fun, a fuzzy, percolating bit of retro electronica that is like a more progged out caffeinated version of the current crop of Goblin/Carpenter worship. "The Scattering" takes thick sludgey bass and wreathes it in fluttery flute like melodies, and crunchy electronic glitch for something swirly and almost psychedelic sounding, Bassdblr's dirgey basslines lending it some un-electronica sounding heft.
And so it goes, from stripped down, loping-bass-lined cinematic creep, to gristly, super distorted electro-buzz, from blissed out skittery / prismatic kosmische electronica, to old school VHS synth-funk, to grinding glitchy dirge dub stutter, to super melodic lilting electronic buzzpop, and from proggy, glitchy retro-futuristic electro ambience, to finally, a a last blast, a more distorted take on the opening dubsteppy jam, all anchored by Short's heavy cyclical dark-prog Dune-driven bass. Super rad stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Available only at aQ, includes a download coupon as well!!
MPEG Stream: "Atrocity Arms The Future"
MPEG Stream: "IX"
MPEG Stream: "Long Live The Fighters"
MPEG Stream: "The Scattering"

BASSETT, M. & J. GRAF Peradam (Utech) cd 14.98
Another new one from the always intriguing Utech label. This disc is a collaboration betwixt Marcia Bassett (of Hotogisu and Zaimph fame) and Jenny Graf of Metalux, two somewhat noisy gals who together construct a strangely compelling soundworld here, part frightened folk, part disturbing drone... The harrowing journey begins with "Zero As Sky", seventeen minutes that start with a dawning drone, eventually revealing gently layered and looped vocals... a girl's voice, singing something that sounds ancient and folky, but buried amidst a static-y keening buzz, and sudden reverberating sound effects. With severe bursts of distortion in conjunction with what sounds like Wicker Man chant and warble, this whole whispery wind tunnel of a track would be a shivery late night listen. Could be the electric moaning of malevolent spirits. Even the part in the middle that makes us think of a haunted video arcade enhances the weird mood! Just a bit spooky, yeah. And at its heaviest, competition for Urthona and Harvestman.
If that lengthy piece was akin to Bassett and Graf taking us for scary walk in the dark woods (with arcade detour), then the next is more like they're singing to us 'round the campfire. "Black Waters Glow" is a short(er) interlude, only six and half minutes, wherein the drones die down and the vocals rise up, quietly still, with gentle guitar slowly stalking along. The track is this disc's most melodic, sounding like a witchier Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, maybe. Or old timey Brit folk filtered through floorcore FX. Or even some strange Devendra Banhart/Richard Youngs hybrid.
That's followed by the disc's third and final track, the 15 minutes of "Phantasmagorical Mapping", another miasma of distorted drones and disembodied drifting vocals, with the addition, upon occasion, of some mechanical rhythms, gone a bit haywire... Again, messily mesmeric. Bassett and Graf have done unique good work here, and despite doubts about whether or not our sanity can stand it, we hope they continue to collaborate!
LIMITED TO 500 copies! Nice, slim, oversized Utech-style sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Zero As Sky"
MPEG Stream: "Black Waters Glow"

BASSHATERS Harsh Lovers Sick Zoo (Yik Yak) cassette 5.00

BASSHATERS Harsh Lovers Sick Zoo (Yik Yak) cassette 5.00

BASTARD NOISE A Culture Of Monsters (Deep Six) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We first got a glimpse of the newly invigorated, and newly METAL-ized Bastard Noise on the recent split with The Endless Blockade, with BN sounding like the second coming of Man Is The Bastard, all heavy and noisy and bassy, but still rife with noise and electronics, incorporating our favorite elements of Bastard Noise offshoot Geronimo into a dizzying hybrid, that hit the spot like crazy. So with this new full length, Bastard Noise have pushed that sound even further. Opening with a brief spoken word monologue, the band explode in an electronic flecked bass heavy crush, the bass and drums locked tight, a lumbering lurching dirge, proggy and intricate, and weirdly melodic, with some of the SICKEST vocals ever, alternating death metal growls and throat shredding shrieks, and all over the place, thick shards of damaged electronics and fractured effects, careening wildly until finally locking into a groove that just won't quit, chaotic drumming, low slung bass buzz, the heaviest, most bad ass thing we've heard in ages. "Me And Hitler" is another blast of Man Is The Bastard style bass driven powerviolence, but with the addition of those shrieked almost black metal vocals, and still more caveman electronics... and when the band again get all proggy and intricate and heavy and groovy, they almost sound like Nomeansno, if NmN were WAY meaner and brutal and caustic, which is in NO way a bad thing.
The whole record is a crushing downtuned post-punk avant prog powerviolence electronic kraut-dirge motherfucker, the songs lurch and swing and grind and blast and pound and pummel, bursts of double kick underpin shards of crackling electronic glitchery and analog skree, there are some really strange stretches of almost jazzy drift, crooned reverbed ambience, operatic abstraction, spaced out dronemusic and moody instrumental skitter, but those brief moments only serve to balance the otherwise insanely and genius-ly brutal heaviness. Fuck, this totally rules!
MPEG Stream: "Pincers' Movement"
MPEG Stream: "Me And Hitler"
MPEG Stream: "Interior War"

BASTARD NOISE A Culture Of Monsters (Deep Six) lp 12.98
We first got a glimpse of the newly invigorated, and newly METAL-ized Bastard Noise on the recent split with The Endless Blockade, with BN sounding like the second coming of Man Is The Bastard, all heavy and noisy and bassy, but still rife with noise and electronics, incorporating our favorite elements of Bastard Noise offshoot Geronimo into a dizzying hybrid, that hit the spot like crazy. So with this new full length, Bastard Noise have pushed that sound even further. Opening with a brief spoken word monologue, the band explode in an electronic flecked bass heavy crush, the bass and drums locked tight, a lumbering lurching dirge, proggy and intricate, and weirdly melodic, with some of the SICKEST vocals ever, alternating death metal growls and throat shredding shrieks, and all over the place, thick shards of damaged electronics and fractured effects, careening wildly until finally locking into a groove that just won't quit, chaotic drumming, low slung bass buzz, the heaviest, most bad ass thing we've heard in ages. "Me And Hitler" is another blast of Man Is The Bastard style bass driven powerviolence, but with the addition of those shrieked almost black metal vocals, and still more caveman electronics... and when the band again get all proggy and intricate and heavy and groovy, they almost sound like Nomeansno, if NmN were WAY meaner and brutal and caustic, which is in NO way a bad thing.
The whole record is a crushing downtuned post-punk avant prog powerviolence electronic kraut-dirge motherfucker, the songs lurch and swing and grind and blast and pound and pummel, bursts of double kick underpin shards of crackling electronic glitchery and analog skree, there are some really strange stretches of almost jazzy drift, crooned reverbed ambience, operatic abstraction, spaced out dronemusic and moody instrumental skitter, but those brief moments only serve to balance the otherwise insanely and genius-ly brutal heaviness. Fuck, this totally rules!
MPEG Stream: "Pincers' Movement"
MPEG Stream: "Me And Hitler"
MPEG Stream: "Interior War"

BASTARD NOISE Descent To Mimas (Ground Fault) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Take an hour-long sci-fi noise journey with John Wiese's and Eric Wood's latest Ground Fault release. These ex-Man Is The Bastard noiseniks provide all the squelching rumbling grinding hissing droning distorted sounds you love, but structure it like program music -- unlike the often monolithic sonic assaults of Japanese competition (Incapacitants, Hijokaidan, and Merzbow for instance), Bastard Noise's "Descent To Mimas" has (perhaps) a narrative concept: some sort of story about outer space exploration/adventure/disaster on some far off frozen asteroid or something (Saturn's icy moon Mimas, probably). At least, the titles to this four-part journey seem to indicate as much ("Lunar Nest Guard" , "Beneath Ice Skin", "Space Coffin") and the electronics are of course harsh (like space) and suitably alien. You can imagine everything from plasma bursts to malfunctioning HAL-like computers. Or maybe that's just me. Imagination is the key. All that aside, this is a damn fine noise album, quite listenable as these things go, with dynamics and a variety of textures.
RealAudio clip: "Descent To Mimas"
RealAudio clip: "Beneath Ice Skin"

BASTARD NOISE Skulldozer (Deep Six) cd 8.98
The return of long running Man Is The Bastard offshoot Bastard Noise, who now have a body of work that dwarfs their previous group's comparatively tiny catalog, but who took a long time to win us over. Not sure if it was the disappointment of no more MITB or that suddenly Bastard Noise seemed to release a million records, or that our heart belonged to Amps For Christ. Whatever the reason, it took a few years, but we learned to love BN, even more so lately as they've seemed to have become a real band, a real HEAVY band. Gone are the days of harsh noisescapes and power electronics, the band are now a serious sonic forces to be reckoned with, in BAND form, and on their latest, they continue on the path set forth on A Culture Of Monsters, melding tripped out psychedelic ambience, to lurching lumbering doom, the rhythm section as tight as MITB ever was, the shrieked vox seriously harrowing, a good foil for the monstrous guttural growls, and as we mentioned in our Record Of The Week review of A Culture Of Monsters, the bass tone, and the overall bass driven heaviness, had us not only thinking of the legendary Nomeansno, but also another MITB offshoot, former Record Of The Week-ers Geronimo, whose krautrock like rhythmic mesmer seems to have found its way into BN's new sound.
The opening title track might be the most epic thing BN has ever recorded, a creeping ambient drone/dirge, that finds the band churning and chugging, howling and pounding over a hazy shimmery smear, their metallic crush augmented by some hushed ethereal flutter, the sound almost Native American, it's a strange combo, but it works, weirdly, the track easing up partway through its 13+ minutes, the band unfurling a kosmische sci-fi shimmerscape, before lurching and lumbering back into action, and pounding out the last couple minutes.
Much of Skulldozer actually seems to have the band channeling their former group, with short bursts of jagged punkish power violence, but then the band slip right into their other incarnation, the other side of the band we love, their abstract psychedelic space drift ambience, last heard in full bloom on their awesome Rogue Astronaut record, and so goes the rest of Skulldozer, lurching from churning powerviolence crush, to glitched out abstract sci-fi drift, to experimental ambience, to blackened metallic pound and back again. Totally ruling, and most definitely a new favorite!
MPEG Stream: "Skulldozer"
MPEG Stream: "50 Million Light Years From..."
MPEG Stream: "Demise By Radiation"

BASTARD NOISE Skulldozer (Deep Six) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The return of long running Man Is The Bastard offshoot Bastard Noise, who now have a body of work that dwarfs their previous group's comparatively tiny catalog, but who took a long time to win us over. Not sure if it was the disappointment of no more MITB or that suddenly Bastard Noise seemed to release a million records, or that our heart belonged to Amps For Christ. Whatever the reason, it took a few years, but we learned to love BN, even more so lately as they've seemed to have become a real band, a real HEAVY band. Gone are the days of harsh noisescapes and power electronics, the band are now a serious sonic forces to be reckoned with, in BAND form, and on their latest, they continue on the path set forth on A Culture Of Monsters, melding tripped out psychedelic ambience, to lurching lumbering doom, the rhythm section as tight as MITB ever was, the shrieked vox seriously harrowing, a good foil for the monstrous guttural growls, and as we mentioned in our Record Of The Week review of A Culture Of Monsters, the bass tone, and the overall bass driven heaviness, had us not only thinking of the legendary Nomeansno, but also another MITB offshoot, former Record Of The Week-ers Geronimo, whose krautrock like rhythmic mesmer seems to have found its way into BN's new sound.
The opening title track might be the most epic thing BN has ever recorded, a creeping ambient drone/dirge, that finds the band churning and chugging, howling and pounding over a hazy shimmery smear, their metallic crush augmented by some hushed ethereal flutter, the sound almost Native American, it's a strange combo, but it works, weirdly, the track easing up partway through its 13+ minutes, the band unfurling a kosmische sci-fi shimmerscape, before lurching and lumbering back into action, and pounding out the last couple minutes.
Much of Skulldozer actually seems to have the band channeling their former group, with short bursts of jagged punkish power violence, but then the band slip right into their other incarnation, the other side of the band we love, their abstract psychedelic space drift ambience, last heard in full bloom on their awesome Rogue Astronaut record, and so goes the rest of Skulldozer, lurching from churning powerviolence crush, to glitched out abstract sci-fi drift, to experimental ambience, to blackened metallic pound and back again. Totally ruling, and most definitely a new favorite!
MPEG Stream: "Skulldozer"
MPEG Stream: "50 Million Light Years From..."
MPEG Stream: "Demise By Radiation"

BASTARD NOISE The Analysis of Self-Destruction (Alien8 Recordings) cd 13.98

BASTARD NOISE Throne Is Melting (Helicopter) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Sixty-two more minutes of wonderfully harsh, grinding noise from John Wiese and Eric Wood of Man Is The Bastard. Features two long ass tracks previously available, one on a really limited Japanese tour 3" cd-r, the other on a one sided 12" that we've had before. And it says Man Is The Bastard as well as Bastard Noise on the cover, which is confusing 'cause while there's members of MITB on here, it's really a Bastard Noise album, not a split release or anything like that... Those jokers Byram and Jeff say they are going to open a bakery in Berkeley called "Man Is The Batard". Food Not Bombs! Ha ha.
RealAudio clip: "Denied Psychotic Human Pt. 2"

BASTARD NOISE, THE Rogue Astronaut (Gravity) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We love Man Is The Bastard. Always have. So we wanted to love Bastard Noise as well. And we did, once in a while, but we might as well fess up, the thing that kept us from truly embracing Bastard Noise, was in fact, the NOISE. Allan may be into his speaker shredding Japanoise, and Jim definitely loves his minimal grind and glitch, but for the most part, noise music has generally left us a bit cold. That's not to say there haven't been exceptions, there most definitely have, and those exceptions tend to be when the noise is less 'noisy' and more drone-y or textural or dynamic or all three. Our favorite Merzbow records tend to be the ones where Masami Akita isn't just spewing a face full of hot white noise. Our favorite noise records to tend toward the dronier more ambient side of the noise spectrum. So there have definitely been some Bastard Noise jams that have totally hit the spot, Descent To Mimas was one, released on Ground Fault, and Rogue Astronaut is definitely another, just out on Gravity. Rogue Astronaut seems to be sonically and thematically a sort of continuation of Descent To Mimas. Another noise opera of sorts, a tale of post apocalyptic space travel, of dead satellites and a withered Earth, of floating alone through space, of the endless expanse and the soul shearing loneliness of the Rogue Astronaut.
Much like Mimas, and our favorite noise records, the sounds on Rogue Astronaut are less harsh and heavy, and more atmospheric and textural, the ten minute opener, even features haunting falsetto vocals set amidst an expansive drift of analog buzz and electronic squelch, layered drone, and a symphony of upper register tones, the sounds are noticeably Bastard like, raw and corrosive and analog and lo-fi, but deftly arranged into epic sweeping dronescapes and noisescapes, slipping from minimal buzz and glitch to full on fuzzed out malfunctioning electronic roar.
Track two, "Ryobi Party" sounds a bit like another post Bastard project, Geronimo, only with the drums stripped away, and the addition of gurgling demonic vokills. The twenty minute title track is gorgeous and space-y, the tones and sounds and textures allowed to sprawl and spread out, set amidst a lush backdrop of reverbed black shimmer, and deep ominous drones, the squelches and glitches like lost radio broadcasts, drifting aimlessly through the inky blackness of space. Sheets of feedback are muted into layered high end whirs, the 'noise' is allowed to hover and float and change shapes and transform, the track is almost like some strange beast made out of sound, captured so we can observe it in captivity, watching as it morphs before our very eyes, a sonic representation of what lies beyond. The track is less about noise, and more about ambience, and mood, and it does create an intense and ominous and super evocative cinematic soundworld.
The last three tracks cycle through the various shades of noise and space, highlighted by the darkly delicate "Moonpool Team", which begins as a hushed ultra minimal drift, before it transforms into a groovy, moody, reverby almost Eastern sounding bit of abstract soundtrack music, like it could have come from some crazy lost sixties space epic, gorgeous soaring vocals, the grinding electronics muted and smeared into almost melodies, peppered with the occasional violent squall, but for the most part, a gorgeous languid landscape of deep bell like tones and swirling space-y noise flecked shimmer.
Gorgeous packaging too. Metal foil stamped booklet that folds out into a poster, with full color inserts/cards as well as a sticker.
MPEG Stream: "Tyranny Beyond Earth"
MPEG Stream: "Ryobi Party"
MPEG Stream: "Radioactive Sunrise"

BASTARD WING, THE Crystal Thicket (Free Porcupine Society) cd 14.98
Bastard Wing is the duo of Christina Carter from Charalambides and Andrew MacGregor who records as Gown. A while back we reviewed a cd-r collaboration between MacGregor and Carter, which was a strange and creepy affair, but also a fairly caustic and atonal one, with plenty of anguished Jandekian wailing and Keiji Haino like frenzied howling, cacophonous and bizarre, but beautiful in it's own damaged way. The Bastard Wing finds the two in a much more contemplative mood, spreading out warm thick blankets of psychedelic strum, swirling fuzzy ambience, over which breathy ethereal vocals drift and shimmer, gorgeous foggy soundscapes of distant blown out psych guitar, haunting disembodied vocals, crackling crunchy distortion, swooping vocals that seem to creep up right to the microphone before fading into the murky background, everything bathed in thick reverb, tons of delay and clouds of swirling outer space FX. Some tracks sound like deconstructed Mazzy Star, with any semblance of 'rock' taken out, so the ghostly remnants are allowed to drift incorporeally heavenward, while others are frenzied otherworldly rituals, dense with thick vocal swirl and damaged guitar histrionics, although even at their most manic, everything is muted and smeared into an indistinct haze. Creepy and lovely. Definitely for fans of Grouper, Lichens and of course Charalambides.
Like all Free Porcupine Society releases, nicely packaged, this time in a cool simple white cardstock folder, printed with metallic silver ink, spare and striking.
MPEG Stream: "Watch The Sun Rise"
MPEG Stream: "Reaching, Reaching"

BASTIEN, PIERRE Les Premieres Machines: 1968-1988 (Gazul Records) cd 21.00
So cool. We've been wanting to list this for a while, finally got a bunch of copies so we can. It's a disc collecting early pieces by one of our favorite idiosyncratic music makers and sonic visionaries, Pierre Bastien. For those who have yet to discover the joys of Bastien, imagine strange haunting lullabies, played BY ROBOTS. Real Robots! Well sort of. Bastien would take apart old turntables, use bits of random electronics, stuff laying around the garage, sometimes adding multiple tone arms to record players, sometimes using bits of metal and electronics to create little machines that would pluck strings, or make little rhythms, and he would play along usually on trumpet. It sounds strange, but the music he created was magical, mysterious, childlike, but strangely mechanical (obviously) and haunting. Like a super DIY bedroom Philip Jeck but with a band of homemade robots! Sold? We figured you'd have to be. We've been pretty obsessed with Bastien and his music ever since we first heard his Musiques Paralloidres album almost 10 years ago.
This compilation collects a bunch of early tracks, a handful never before released, all from well before his first proper album, mostly culled from the eighties although one track is from WAY back in 1968, an untitled track for prepared guitar and Metronome!
Soon, rather than utilizing a mundane metronome, he was indeed building his own mechanical music-making helpers, the "Meccano". Each one custom-designed to accompany Bastien on plucked strings, skipping record, scraped metal, automated percussion, whatever Bastien imagined as accompaniment for a specific song. The results are divine, tick-tocking, clicking and clacking, wavering and warbling, dark plucked melodies, dizzying fragmented loops, squiggle and scrapes, alternatingly mesmeric and gentle, chaotic and clattery, a sound like a ramshackle music box, gives way to a sweet child-like melody, the sound of a toybox coming to life once the children are asleep, a mini toy orchestra performed in the still of night, with only the moon and the stars looking on. Many of the tracks feature much more actual playing than later Bastien discs, but the robots are still out in full force, playing along, his own little mechanical band.
All of Bastien's records are fabulous, super creative, innovative, baffling, fun and funny, playful and sometimes silly, but just as often dark and beautifully brooding. Mecanoid, Pop, the recently reviewed Visions Of Doing, all of them deserve to be in the collection of any adventurous music lover, and Les Premieres Machines 1968-1988 most certainly does too!
The booklet features a few photos, liner notes in French only (unfortunately), and an extensive discography!
MPEG Stream: "Orphean Veranda"
MPEG Stream: "Talou VII"
MPEG Stream: "Alpinic Railway"
MPEG Stream: "Caravan"

BASTIEN, PIERRE Machinations (Rephlex) cd+dvd 21.00
We've long been fans of French composer / sculptor / musician Pierre Bastien, whose sound is a fantastically mysterious world of warbly rhythms, of woozy melodies, looped and mesmerizing and hypnotic, which would already be enough, but the fact that Bastien doesn't actually PLAY this music, instead he builds super elaborate robotic machines, customizes turntables and re-engineers household objects, creating impossibly complex mousetrap like contraptions, which actually play the music. Sounding a bit like a warped hybrid of Philip Jeck's abstract turntablism and Strotter Inst's customized turntable rhythmscapes, Bastien weaves looped, woozy soundworlds of muted murky rhythms, of constantly shifting textures, a sound warm and lush, but at the same time, sort of alien.
This album is a collection of sorts, gathering up a handful of tracks from soundtracks, and installations, and while being disparately sourced, works quite well as a record proper, and besides being a new collection of Bastien tracks, which is always cause for celebration, this disc also includes a dvd, containing a handful of short films, featuring Bastien's machines in action, and for some folks, it will be the first time seeing Bastien's music come to life, having only heard the records and seen pictures of his musical inventions. More on the dvd in a second. First the album.
The record opens with the murky "Pull Up", which for folks new to Bastien, is a perfect introduction. Besides building these machines, and composing the music, Bastien, a trumpet player by trade, would often accompany his machines, his trumpet providing the melody. So here, the melody, which could be a trumpet, sounds as if it's being played underwater, a burbly, bubbling woozy melody, melancholic and wistful (and underwater!), set over a deep low slung thrum, muted percussion, looped low end thrum, it's fantastically dreamy, and sort of sounds like Bastien's take on Portishead, a dreamy, nocturnal vibe. "Nip In" opens with some Morricone-esque rubber band twang, which is quickly joined by a backdrop of mechanized pluck and thrum, which in turn is soon joined by fluttery flute like melodies, and eventually chimes and bells, and finally Bastien's muted trumpet. Bluesy and woozy and divine.
"Now On" takes the aforementioned comparisons (Jeck, Strotter) and now adds Kid Koala to the mix, Bastien doing something similar to Kid Koala's recent blues record, where the backdrop is still all warped rubber band basslines, wheezing bellows basslines, but here a female blues singer's record spins lazily (or maybe it's sampled?), the vocals draped over Bastien's alien robot blues, there's also what sounds like a kazoo solo. The whole record is a stunning sprawl of meticulously arranged and impossibly choreographed robotic symphonies, from the gorgeously melodic dream like shimmer of "Never Even", a soft cacophony tempered by the songs melody and emotion, to the field recording flecked "Spare Spanish Sin Apse Raps" which includes recordings from the city which commissioned the work, Bastien's trumpet front and center, over another mechanoid framework, accompanied by the sounds of running water, distant conversations, the sounds of sidewalks being swept, tolling bells, all woven into a dreamy sonic cityscape.
The rest of the record unwinds equally mysteriously, the muddy creep of "Trope Report", which drags and oozes, and is flecked with wheezing ominous moans, and creaking melodies, "Yale Relay", which warps warbly opera singing over a strangely cinematic stretch of machine-looped percussion, Spanish guitar sounding twang, and the ever present low end robotic thrum, "Peep" with its super spare tangle of layered high end tones, and exotic percussion, and finally, "Dogs' God", which is a brief bit of wheezing drone and skitter, underpinning a return of that burbling underwater melody that opened the proceedings. So fantastic. And odds are, if you not already Bastien obsessed, this will do it, and have you obsessively tracking down everything you can find. And heck, if the record itself doesn't do it, the dvd definitely will!
The accompanying dvd is as fantastic as the record, maybe even more so, as it gives us a much more fully realized glimpse into Bastien's fantastical mechanized sound world. Seeing his inventions in action, brings the music to life in a way that the recordings sometimes struggle to do. Just check out the first video for "Mecanoid", which begins with a paperclip attached to a strip of plastic, vibrating against another piece of plastic. In front of it is a keyboard, with a strange music box stylus, seemingly made from an old rolling pin, with nubs attached, it's set revolving, and plays a woozy melody on the keyboard, while in the background, a tinker toy like assembly, spins like a bicycle creating more abstract percussion elements, while in the foreground, a customized record, lifts and sets down the needle, creating little lopped vocal snippets, all the while, Bastien's hands come into frame, adjusting, changing speeds, altering implements, its a strange mechanical ballet, that just so happens to sound as beautiful as it looks. And all the films are equally fascinating, the kinetic sculptures and robotic music making machines are stunning even just to look out, and the mysterious mechanoid symphonies they create seem impossibly beautiful to come from these robots and machines, a stylus is dropped onto a spinning record to make a percussive squelch, a primitive bellows becomes a homemade harmonium, flaps of paper and a fan, create something visually stunning, but at the same time provide a subtle bit of percussive skitter, a bow (as in a bow and arrow) is attached to a series of gears, and is flung about, creating strange rhythms, strings and rubber bands are stretched everywhere, with various robotic implements tasked with plucking and strumming, even a pair of scissors and a comb and other bits of every day household ephemera become impossibly beautiful sound makers. Stunning, both visually, and sonically.
MPEG Stream: "Pull Up"
MPEG Stream: "Nip In"
MPEG Stream: "Never Even"
MPEG Stream: "Spare Spanish Sin Apse Raps"

BASTIEN, PIERRE Mecanoid (Rephlex) cd 17.98
We loved the last Pierre Bastien record, which consisted of broken down old children's turntables rigged to play simple loops while Bastien played along on a muted trumpet. Those rigged turntables have given way to even greater flights of mechanical fancy, that's right...ROBOTS. For 'Mecanoid' Bastien has constructed various robots that play different instruments, again constructing simple loops which he then accompanies. The 'robots' play castanets, marimba, tamborine, steel drum, casiotone, piano, plus tons more and of course turntables. While Bastien accompanies the loops on bass, organ, prepared trumpet, cornet, electric piano, buzz-trumpet and more. But the sound doesn't necessarily give away its robotic roots. 'Mecanoid' sounds like simple stripped down electronica with a sort of late-night-rainy-dark-alley-Tom-Waits kind of vibe. Sort of Boards of Canada with less equipment, or Boards Of Canada if they were 8 years old instead of 30. Makes me think of electonica made from scratch, with no drum machines, no samplers, just a bunch of crap in the garage, a tool box and a four track. Dark and melancholic and loping and hypnotic. With simple minor key melodies played over slowly fluctuating loops, creating completely alien soundtrack music. Would be perfect for some David Lynch film. Creepy but not depressing, just sort of sad and dreamy. One of my new favorite late night records.
RealAudio clip: "Damn Mad"
RealAudio clip: "Revolt Lover"
RealAudio clip: "No Eon"

BASTIEN, PIERRE Mecanoid (Rephlex) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We loved the last Pierre Bastien record, which consisted of broken down old children's turntables rigged to play simple loops while Bastien played along on a muted trumpet. Those rigged turntables have given way to even greater flights of mechanical fancy, that's right...ROBOTS. For 'Mecanoid' Bastien has constructed various robots that play different instruments, again constructing simple loops which he then accompanies. The 'robots' play castanets, marimba, tamborine, steel drum, casiotone, piano, plus tons more and of course turntables. While Bastien accompanies the loops on bass, organ, prepared trumpet, cornet, electric piano, buzz-trumpet and more. But the sound doesn't necessarily give away its robotic roots. 'Mecanoid' sounds like simple stripped down electronica with a sort of late-night-rainy-dark-alley-Tom-Waits kind of vibe. Sort of Boards of Canada with less equipment, or Boards Of Canada if they were 8 years old instead of 30. Makes me think of electonica made from scratch, with no drum machines, no samplers, just a bunch of crap in the garage, a tool box and a four track. Dark and melancholic and loping and hypnotic. With simple minor key melodies played over slowly fluctuating loops, creating completely alien soundtrack music. Would be perfect for some David Lynch film. Creepy but not depressing, just sort of sad and dreamy. One of my new favorite late night records.

BASTIEN, PIERRE Musiques Paralloidres (Lowlands) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Multiple turntables and trumpet, very interesting. Bastien takes portable turntables and attaches pieces of metal below, and directly to, the tone arm, causing the record to skip and forming simple and hypnotic loops. He then plays trumpet melodies over the looped records turning these disparate ingredients into sleepy, hiccuping lullabyes.

BASTIEN, PIERRE Pop (Rephlex) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We sure are suckers for unconventional music making. Be it accidental (ice melting, applause, junkyards, metal rusting, fire burning) or environmental (elephants, sled dogs, cats purring, FROGS!, bats) and most especially the mysterious or unexplained (the sounds of the dead, breaking through the radio waves, haunting shortwave spy transmissions). Then there is a whole other realm of unconventional music making: the mad scientist. Why form a band, when you can construct robots and machines to play all the instruments? Why actually play the piano, or the guitar, or the drums, when you can construct an elaborate set of pulleys and levers and gears and axles that will play them for you? Why be happy with a turntable that plays records with only one stylus when you can make music with a turntable equipped with multiple needles? We can only assume Pierre Bastien asked these same questions, and the answer he came up with is Pop. Forty five minutes of simple, repetitive, hypnotic and mesmerizing machine driven minimal krautrock. That's right, krautrock is what this sounds like.
In lesser hands a room full of self playing instruments would most likely result in a sterile series of sound events, but Bastien has a deft hand and a keen ear, and breathes life into his automatons, delicate contraptions that each contribute a unique element to a song, not just spitting out sounds -- strange gadgets that play simple chords on a keyboard, an apparatus to beat out simple insistent rhythms, all manner of haunting minor key plinkety plonk, crisp windup toy clickety clacks and disgruntled grinding large machinery groans and whines, some strange warped turntablizations, wearily wheezing woodwinds, all woven into spare stretches of minimally propulsive ambience. Sounds a bit like an army of tiny wind up toys assembled in an automated sonic ballet, an inhuman menagerie making music more human that it seems possible. The vibe is very fuzzy and washed out, droney and dolorous, smeary and sepia-toned, definite shades of Philip Jeck and Tim Hecker, with plenty of creak and crackle surrounding the minimal melodies and subtle rhythmic pulses within each song. It's easy to become obsessed with the method behind the music, and the amount of obviously painstaking preparation that went into creating these machines. And why not?! It's absolutely mind boggling to be sure, but even beyond the mere construction of these music making mechanisms, imagine figuring out how to get these 'things' to make these sounds, and THEN somehow to compose music this lovely and captivating. Seems impossible. Surely, Pop is too perfect to be accidental, too beautiful to be pure luck, too musical to be anything other than the work of a brilliant mad sonic scientist. Or better yet, and possibly more likely, imagine Bastien is nothing if not lucky, a man who somehow stumbled upon a secret world of machines, in some mysterious forgotten warehouse, in some dark overlooked part of town, an insulated little world populated by these devices, not a living breathing creature in sight, just shelves full of strange little contraptions, all running endlessly and self controlled, creating this beautiful music as if that's what they were designed to do, and he was just the first to stumble upon this place, these things, and was able to capture these mysterious sounds before one night, that building and those things were nowhere to be found. Sounds farfetched, maybe a little silly, but it's the sort of romantic story that befits music this warm and beautiful and mysterious, whether it was ultimately the work of a man, or the just the serendipitous sounds of a room full of machines.
MPEG Stream: "Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Noon"
MPEG Stream: "Deed"

BASTIEN, PIERRE Pop (Rephlex) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!!
We sure are suckers for unconventional music making. Be it accidental (ice melting, applause, junkyards, metal rusting, fire burning) or environmental (elephants, sled dogs, cats purring, FROGS!, bats) and most especially the mysterious or unexplained (the sounds of the dead, breaking through the radio waves, haunting shortwave spy transmissions). Then there is a whole other realm of unconventional music making: the mad scientist. Why form a band, when you can construct robots and machines to play all the instruments? Why actually play the piano, or the guitar, or the drums, when you can construct an elaborate set of pulleys and levers and gears and axles that will play them for you? Why be happy with a turntable that plays records with only one stylus when you can make music with a turntable equipped with multiple needles? We can only assume Pierre Bastien asked these same questions, and the answer he came up with is Pop. Forty five minutes of simple, repetitive, hypnotic and mesmerizing machine driven minimal krautrock. That's right, krautrock is what this sounds like.
In lesser hands a room full of self playing instruments would most likely result in a sterile series of sound events, but Bastien has a deft hand and a keen ear, and breathes life into his automatons, delicate contraptions that each contribute a unique element to a song, not just spitting out sounds -- strange gadgets that play simple chords on a keyboard, an apparatus to beat out simple insistent rhythms, all manner of haunting minor key plinkety plonk, crisp windup toy clickety clacks and disgruntled grinding large machinery groans and whines, some strange warped turntablizations, wearily wheezing woodwinds, all woven into spare stretches of minimally propulsive ambience. Sounds a bit like an army of tiny wind up toys assembled in an automated sonic ballet, an inhuman menagerie making music more human that it seems possible. The vibe is very fuzzy and washed out, droney and dolorous, smeary and sepia-toned, definite shades of Philip Jeck and Tim Hecker, with plenty of creak and crackle surrounding the minimal melodies and subtle rhythmic pulses within each song. It's easy to become obsessed with the method behind the music, and the amount of obviously painstaking preparation that went into creating these machines. And why not?! It's absolutely mind boggling to be sure, but even beyond the mere construction of these music making mechanisms, imagine figuring out how to get these 'things' to make these sounds, and THEN somehow to compose music this lovely and captivating. Seems impossible. Surely, Pop is too perfect to be accidental, too beautiful to be pure luck, too musical to be anything other than the work of a brilliant mad sonic scientist. Or better yet, and possibly more likely, imagine Bastien is nothing if not lucky, a man who somehow stumbled upon a secret world of machines, in some mysterious forgotten warehouse, in some dark overlooked part of town, an insulated little world populated by these devices, not a living breathing creature in sight, just shelves full of strange little contraptions, all running endlessly and self controlled, creating this beautiful music as if that's what they were designed to do, and he was just the first to stumble upon this place, these things, and was able to capture these mysterious sounds before one night, that building and those things were nowhere to be found. Sounds farfetched, maybe a little silly, but it's the sort of romantic story that befits music this warm and beautiful and mysterious, whether it was ultimately the work of a man, or the just the serendipitous sounds of a room full of machines.
MPEG Stream: "Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Noon"
MPEG Stream: "Deed"

BASTIEN, PIERRE Visions Of Doing (Western Vinyl) cd 14.98
Oooh. We're always excited about any new releases from French automated-instrument builder and trumpeter Pierre Bastien. How often do we get records featuring music made (in part) by robots? Not often enough. And such lovely music too. All these tracks were originally composed as soundtracks to projects by a Dutch experimental filmmaker by the name of Karel Doing (hence the title). But Bastien's music so readily stokes the imagination than Doing's cinematic visions are not necessary accompaniment.
We said 'automated-instrument builder', those instruments being what Bastien calls his 'Meccano', simple sound-making robots or kinetic sound sculptures, that make looping music box melodies and provide a backing of slow, steady mechanical clank for Bastien's own wheezing, muted trumpet. Bastien plays in a smokey jazz mode, breathy, beautiful, oh so melancholic, that in the this context reminds us of Chet Baker in some sort of Tom Waits-ish instrumental junkyard. The gamelan or thumb piano like plinkings of Bastien's Meccano - exotica for scrappy homebuilt robots - are rendered somehow more human by the sweet sighs of Bastien's trumpet. He also makes use of field recordings, unidentified underwater warblings, and other mysterious textures in constructing these tracks. Wonderful stuff, so languid and relaxed and full of life, animated indeed by Bastien's Visions Of Doing. Bastien's previous discs for Rephlex, and others, have all been 'late night faves' here at AQ, and this latest gentle gem from Bastien joins them for sure.
MPEG Stream: "The American On The Highway"
MPEG Stream: "Visions Of Shanghai"
MPEG Stream: "The Thermodynamic Orchestra"

BATAGOV, ANTON Bodhicharyavatara (Tummo) cd 14.98
Another gorgeous collection of Buddhist based modern minimalist compositions from one of our favorite contemporary 'classical' composers/performers. We recently made another Batagov release our Record Of The Week (Music For The 35 Buddhas), and we sold tons of Batagov's sprawling three disc minimalist masterpiece The Wheel Of The Law, which had we been able to get more, would also have been a Record Of The Week. And for some of us, ranks as one of our all time favorites, classical or otherwise!
Bodhicharyavatara is breathtakingly beautiful, and once again demonstrates Batagov's ability to fuse his Buddhist practice, with his unique compositional style, informed by so much of what came before (Glass, Feldman, etc.) but definitely something wholly original, especially here, where the sound takes on something more akin to post rock, incorporating warm smoldering guitars, even some actual drumming, into his already achingly lush palette of piano, bells and percussion.
All of the tracks here are tranced out and hypnotic, delicate slow building swirls of sound, constructed from lush resonant piano, warm wistful woodwinds, chiming bells, the guitars more like swirls of smokey shimmer, the tones stretched out into warm, chordal streaks, with Telo Tulka Rinpoche, the Supreme Lama of Kalmykia, reciting ancient Buddhist texts over the top. It's very reminiscent Of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, especially in the way Godspeed used to employ samples of spoken word, but here, that same effect becomes something much more spiritual, haunting and heady. While it's definitely more droney and dirgey than other Batagov recordings we've listed, it's still quite meditative, the lush backdrop of sound, broods and pulses, tones moan and soar, the piano alternates between low end flurries and pointillist crystalline melodies, and then part way through the second track, in come the drums, and the song blossoms into full on post rock, pounding drums, wailing guitars, all over that darkly swirling bed of bells and piano. Super intense, and the sort of thing Godspeed freaks will flip over.
The third and fourth 'movements' return to a sound much more restrained, but like the first few tracks, continue to explore a brooding, post rock flecked modern minimalism, the sung/spoken texts truly mesmerizing, woodwinds drifting in, bleating horns, blurred into softly churning backdrop, all of this adding a haunting melancholy to the already moody minor key sound, and while the drums are still present, their presence is much more abstract, their rhythmic colorations more spare, skittery for the most part, but with brief moments of bombast. Batagov has always professed a love of collaborating with rock musicians, and many of his records display the fruit of these collaborations (there's even been talk of a drum / piano record, with our very own Andee!), but few reveal his mysterious musical mastery, better than this one. Stunning.
MPEG Stream: "The Excellence Of Bodhichitta (1st Chapter)"
MPEG Stream: "Adopting The Spirit of Awakening"
MPEG Stream: "Dedication"