V/A Nova Feedback (God Mountain) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Possibly the most non-sensical compilation ever, this Japanese import features tracks from Costes (French vulgar vaudeville), Gastr del Sol, several Japanese hardcore/funk/metal units (including Gaji, who sound very similar to Melt-Banana), and improv music by Ikue Mori and others. Truly a bizarre item.

V/A Oacis (Raster-NotonNoton) cd + book 27.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Oacis" -- an acronym for "Optics Acoustics Calculated In Seconds" -- documents the progress of the German collective Raster / Noton, which has been busily constructing works of utopian minimalism over the past five years. Raster / Noton rigorously applies the motto "less is more" to not only their post-techno productions, but also their intrinsically simple design aesthetic. This was exemplified by 1999's "20 to 2000 series," in which simple magnets connected a series of 12 clam shell cd cases to form what could be a model for a nanotechnist coil of energy distribution. This spindly construction perfectly housed the series's electronic minimalism, constructed out of the all mighty trio of digital synthesis -- the click, the ping, and the boom.
"Oacis" is a 100 page book with lots of articles expounding on the label's digital purity (including a rather poetic piece by The Wire's Rob Young), lots of live 'action' shots of Carsten Nicolai and Frank Bretschneider staring intently at their laptops, and of course an ultra-clean design. And in addition to all this lovely stuff to look at and to read, the accompanying cd is one of the best things to yet emerge from Raster.

V/A Oasis: Music From Mills 2001 (Mills Music Department) cd 14.98
With its self-explanatory subtitle, "Oasis" compiles some of the recent work from the Mills College faculty, including Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, John Bischoff, and Alvin Curran. What, no Willie Winant? As a whole, the Mills faculty promotes a conceptual approach to composition that often applies the spirit of free improvisation to an electronic media.

V/A Off Site (A Bruit Secret) 2cd 23.00
Last year, AQ-fave Japanese guitar experimentalist Taku Sugimoto put together a series of "Composed Music" concerts at a Tokyo venue called Off Site, featuring pieces written and performed by a who's who of the current Japanese underground jazz/noise/experimental/electronic scene. This disc collects some live recordings from those shows.
Disc one opens with Otomo Yoshihide's sixteen-piece "Portable Orchestra". It's the "home electronics equipment version" and that means the musicians, among them Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Utah Kawasaki, Masahiro Uemura, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Otomo himself, are improvising with "instruments" like food mixers, electric drills, shavers, cel phones, gameboys, cameras! Avant-improv music for a [insert dept. store name].
Intriguing as presented here (unless you just can't stand that dentist drill sound!), but probably even better in person, watching these folks fool around with these gadgets and tools.
Moving on, the next three tracks are for a more traditional ensemble: an acoustic guitar trio, albeit one with so few notes being played (or even sounds being made) that the involvement of more than one guitarist seems almost superfluous. The rest of the disc, with pieces by Toshimaru Nakamura and Taku Sugimoto for solo saxophone and turntable/sinewaves, respectively, also feature quite a lot of silence, a hallmark of the oh-so-quiet and abstract "onkyo" style attributed to these musicians. The subtle drones and delicate (and not-so-delicate) noises of that final 30-minute turntable/sinewave track should be found to be especially beautiful and interesting by listeners with patience and the right mindset.
Disc two starts with Annette Krebs, Sachiko M, and Taku Sugimoto performing a piece for paper and contact mic, ripping and tearing. Other pieces involve radios, accordions, electric and acoustic guitars -- all very abstract and sparse, sometimes self-evidently pretty, mostly just mystifying. The idea here seems to be for there to be some odd juxtapostions of composer/performer/instrument -- there's even a track wherein Otomo Yoshihide plays a Sachiko M compostion on an acoustic guitar! (We'll assume, if you've read this far, you're familiar enough with these musicians to think that a bit unusual.)
RealAudio clip: YOSHIHIDE OTOMO'S PORTABLE ORCHESTRA "Portable Orchestra"

V/A OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music: 1948-1980 (Ellipsis Arts) 3cd 34.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Following hot on the heels of the Early Modulations compilation from a while back, the Ohm box, takes the same general idea; a brief and cursory overview of the whole of experimental electronic music, and attempts to give it a little more depth. And it does, to a certain degree. But such a massive undertaking could fill 10 cds, or 20. So what we have here, is 3 cds, 42 tracks, from a who's who of electronic muisic in the last 32 years: Clara Rockmore, Oliver Messien, John Cage, Edgard Varese, Stockhausen, La Monte Young, Xenakis, Luc Ferrari, Terry Riley, David Tudor, Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Raymond Scott, Brian Eno, Robert Ashley, Bernard Parmegiani and a bunch more. A pretty great assortment, for sure, and definitely the best 20th century/avant electronica primer to come along. The only frustration is that a great number of the pieces are edits, often 5 or 6 minutes from a 20 or 30 minute piece, rendering some slow building gradual shifting works a bit limp. But other than that, the Ohm compilation is pretty excellent, packaged impeccably in a triple digipak, housed in a cool silkscreened transparent slipcase, with a fairly well researched book and some spot on musical choices. Definitely a great place to start.

V/A Old Tyme Lemonade (Hospital Productions) cd 7.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
We're super picky when it comes to noise, and noise rock, okay so maybe we're just really picky, but like techno, it takes something special to really win us over. We were a little wary at first of this comp, which collects a bunch of music and bands "From Providence And Olneyville Rhode Island". Sure there are tons of those bands who totally rule, but there are also a whole bunch of one off costume rock joke bands. Thankfully this comp is pretty fucking solid all the way through, splitting the difference between aggro noise rock, and weird damaged metal, and pretty much every stop in between. All the usual suspects are here, Landed, Necronomitron, Mindflayer, Prurient, Drop Dead, Lightning Bolt, White Mice, Kites.... But there are also plenty of noisy newbies, Knights Of Timbre, Em Dath Rir, Football Rabbit, Suffering Bastard, Bloodthrone, Knifestorm, Smashed Femur Dance Party, Patootie Lobe and more...
Standout tracks include the technical metal mayhem of Necronomitron, the Lightning Bolt-ish psychdamaged drum/synth freakout of Mindflayer, the cartoon cutup buzz and glitch of Knights Of Timbre, the 20 second hyperspeed blast of female voiced brutality from Bloodthrone, the electro sludge of Football Rabbit, the damaged turntable manipulation of Mahi Mahi and so much more.
Never thought we'd say it, but pretty much every single track on this noise comp kicked our ass, and at least a few had us wanting to hear LOTS more!
MPEG Stream: NECRONOMITRON "Bloodclotguts"
MPEG Stream: MINDFLAYER "Dust Often"
MPEG Stream: KNIGHTS OF TIMBRE "Speed Racer Remix"
MPEG Stream: THRONE OF BLOOD "Death Future"

V/A On Isolation (Room 40) cd 19.98
Lawrence English has been one of the champions of Australian sound art, in both bringing international artists to Australia and in exposing the world to the finer recordings from his countrymen and women. In 2006, English had co-curated a conference / exhibition at the University of Tasmania on the subject of isolation in any number of political, aesthetic, and philosophical guises. In addition to the theoretical investigations of the event, English assembled an all-star cast of international sound artists to offer their own take on the subject of isolation. According to English, this CD "was provided to delegates attending a conference in Hobart in 2006 at the University of Tasmania to help awaken a deep imagination and engagement with these matters." The highlights from the compilation include the Borhen & Der Club Of Gore -like doomy vibes and atmospheres from Dale Lloyd, Stephen Vitiello's emphatic crack of electric noise that gently fades into driftwork / dronescape, the very special nothing music of Richard Chartier with the smallest of sonic ruptures located upon a vast plane of undulating bass rumbles, Jeph Jerman's quiet ritual with found objects set against the constant din of a nearby ocean, and Richard Francis & Nest's bleak soundfield of shortwave radio static and mournful guitar distortion. Lovely stuff.
MPEG Stream: STEPHEN VITIELLO "Something On My Back"
MPEG Stream: DALE LLOYD "Among The Many"
MPEG Stream: RICHARD FRANCIS & NEST "The Wine Cellar"

V/A One Man Drone (Mayo) 12" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Exactly what you might expect from a compilations called One Man Drone, 4 'groups', each made up of one member, each exploring their own idea of the drone. And that's where it stops being exactly what you might expect. As all four of these groups (three French and one Swiss) have dramatically different ideas of what constitutes drone music. And of course all of them are right...
Up first is the misleadingly monickered Shit, who sound anything but, a super minimal ghostly glow, distant whirs wreathed in low end crumble, like slowly sinking in some sort of sonic quicksand. Imagine listening to Fennesz at ONE RPM, an impossibly slow, murky, glacial dirge, rife with melted melodies, an abstract crawl through a world of low end mystery, realized on a battery of homemade instruments. Up next is Oldine, whose sound is as different from Shit's as you could possibly imagine. A loping, lazy, dreamlike post rock, the drone is not so obvious, but it is definitely there, riffs cycle and repeat, lilting and hypnotic, stripped down, blissed out, laid back, melancholy, and yeah, droney in a very subtle pretty way.
Side two starts off with Tamagawa, who return to a much more orthodox exploration of the drone, a heavily layered guitarscape, sounding quite a bit like the opening riff off Sabbath's "Iron Man" pulled apart and slowed waaaaaay down, a dirgey sludgey metallic riff that just repeats and repeats, allowing the buzz to drift and crumble each time before the riff kicks in again, taken on its own, this stuff would definitely hit the spot for SUNNO))) freaks and Earth nerds...
The hands down winner though of this 4 way tag team match has to be B Tong (it's actually B, then the little degrees symbol, then Tong, but for some reason that won't show up right on our website) who have managed some truly bizarre, gorgeously freaky cinematic dronemusic. Opening with a burst of playful Peter & The Wolf flutes and strings, the track quickly becomes a roiling soundscape of environmental recordings, demonic dark ambience, bits of classical music, and all manner of distorted and processed sounds and samples.
Snippets of playful classical music are swallowed up by thick swirls of grinding sludge, slowed down strings vibrate and pulse, FX swirl and obfuscate everything, mumbled vocals, processed blasts of industrial clatter and streaks of pealing bells, all get tangled up into the dark and heady mix. Almost like a Philip Jeck mix of Goblin and Wolf Eyes!!
Pressed on clear vinyl, with wispy colored streaks, packaged alongside a thick piece of hand painted cardboard, with two thick printed inserts. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!!

V/A One Word One Sound (Intermedium) cd 14.98
Right from the beginning, this compilation starts off on the wrong foot. The foundation of the record is a shaky one, attempting to find semiotic connections between electronic music as a form of alchemy and the transmutation of language within the context of literary modernism. The curators provided the artists with a 'one word poem' and a sound involving a piece of paper. The artists were given permission to "create the maximum scope for the individual creation of the pieces by using minimal set elements." Yup, that's true, but that doesn't amount to an interesting listening experience. Pretty much this is only for completists / fetishists of Sparks (doing easily the worst track of their once glorious career), Alexander Hacke, Merzbow, FX Randomiz, Loopspool, Chrislo, Kid 606, Zentralflughafen, Pita, and Lesser... or for those masochists who really really really like reading grant applications.

V/A One2Two (Intermedium) 2cd 14.98
"One2Two" is a double CD compilation of material from the first 12 Intermedium releases, plus a couple of unreleased tracks, featuring Hans Platzgumer, Samuel Beckett, Console and Thomas Meinecke, Philip Jeck, Guenther Koch, Ammer and Console, Walter Ruttmann (DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid Remix), Daniel Kluge and Edouard Stork, Thomas Harlan, Move D and Thomas Meinecke, Loopspool, Chrislo, and more. If you love German spoken text liberally sprinkled amidst abstract electronica, boy have we got a compilation for you.

V/A Or Some Computer Music 2 (Or) cd 15.98
Or Records' second compilation of computer music finds its definition of computer music in the late '60s and early '70s, when huge mainframe computers were neccessary to calculate not quite random but sequentially diffuse algorithms for the making of computer music. Thus, this compilation reflects an anachronistic view of what futuristic music is supposed to sound like, conjuring numerous references to Subotnik, Parmegiani, and even Xenakis. Yet strangely enough, as some of the tracks begin in this mindset, the artists (in particular Phoenecia and Atau Tanaka) snap back into the contemporary discourse of technotic rhythms and abstract breakbeats forming structures around the originally formless sound. As one of the slight variations from the norm, Alberto de Campo - director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art and Technology - offers a Thomas Koner like construction of bells and cymbals and digitized drone, but with plenty of whirls and whistles hailing from the academic, rather than empathic camps of drone music. Jim O'Rourke's digression from his academic squiggle is a strange acoustic strum with a breathy woman singing a bit too high for her range. Farmer's Manual splutters granular synthetic chunks of sound amongst layered pure tones, with the rhythmic elements presenting themselves as a grittier permutation of the Raster/Noton glitch.

V/A Orang-utan (Goppa) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of the guys in the Jimmy Cake (see past lists for gushing reviews of both their full lengths) hooked us up with a few copies of this compilation that one of his bandmates released and it's really pretty great. Features a live track from the Jimmy Cake, a droning buzzing ambient minimalist epic, as well as a new Nurse With Wound track that is a gorgeous burbling, slowly modulating low end rumble. Also features the Tycho Brahe (Cocktails meets Arab Strap with female vocals), Daniel Figgis (glitchy Oval-esque soundscape), Artificial Memory Trace (barren and cinematic, minimal and haunting), King Camera Meets Volcano The Bear (quirky, rhythmic electronic weirdness, with horns!), Aranos (jaunty, creepy gypsy folk) and more!
MPEG Stream: THE JIMMY CAKE "Pefect Smoke (live)"
MPEG Stream: NURSE WITH WOUND "Die, Flip Or Go To India (The Slightly Green Librarian Mix)"

V/A Orbitones: Spoon Harps & Bellowphones: Experimental Musical Instruments (Ellipsis Art) cd+book 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A follow-up to "Gravikords Whirligigs and Pyrophones", this book (written again by Bart Hopkin with an introduction by Robert Moog) and cd compilation (with Aphex Twin, Tom Waits, John Cage, Stomp, Lou Harrison...) is another celebration of the creative spirit of instrument invention.

V/A Oregone (Oregone.org) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's always kind of exciting to tackle a compilation where you haven't heard of most of the bands. Could be awesome, could be terrible, one of the tracks might be from your new favorite band, one of the tracks might just be the worst song you've ever heard. You don't often get a chance to hear compilations like this (and there are millions of 'em) because why would anyone order a record filled with bands no one knew of or cared about? So we got sent this comp of underground outsider local bands from Oregon, and gave it a listen, and dang if it wasn't pretty great all the way through. The only band we had heard of was the Portland Bicycle Ensemble, who perform on contact miked bicycles, creating spacious and percussive soundscapes. Their track here is awesome, clattery and abstract, spare and spacey. But from then on out we were in unchartered territory...
Tonehenge open up the disc with a weird sound collage, beginning with a woman telling a story, she begins to sing, and suddenly, the track is a dense droning waltz, a swirl of strings and pianos, the main melody whistled, and beneath it all, crunchy looped and processed voices and glitching sound FX. Up next are Lindsay Kaplan and Andrew Wilshusen, whose track is delicate minor key piano, sweet female vocals, surrounded by all sorts of random percussive clatter and found sounds, another pretty and haunting number. JP Jenkins does some solo guitar, detuned and angular, with lots of shimmering overtones, string buzz and slippery slide, really nice, like Jack Rose meets Loren Connors. Another track from Tonehenge, a dizzying Tape Beatles like sonic collage rife with sixties horns, spoken word and lots and lots of record crackle. Next up, Doug Theriault, with a glitchy slab of freaked out, psychedelic music concrete. Followed by Shalloboi, who deliver a murky lo-fi dirge, with creepy piano (does every band in Portland have a piano player?) haunting monotone vocals, and lots of ambient grit and grime. We expected a lot from the band Metal, who were as we expected not metal at all, instead, their track is a drifting soundscape of distant melodies, soft shimmery drones, recordings of birds, and, you guessed it, piano! Next up, the strangely named Biathalon, who craft a sweet, melancholy dreamy abstract pop, soft focused and darkly dreamy, but with something ominous lurking just below the surface, a gurgling , glitchy rumbling drone. Owl Dudes give us a brief, burst of mumbly murk and stuttering electronic skitter, flecked with bits of crunch and sonic detritus. Cup Na Cup, who organized the comp, stretches bells and chimes and shimmering metallic reverberations, into a swoonsome high end drone, with subtle little skips and glitches adding some barely there rhythmic flutter. Every Drum A Star does their thing with swirling synth sounds, burbling water sound, and all sorts of squiggly whoomps and shhhhzts and bleeping bloops. Last but not least, Bryan Eubanks, with a lengthy drone piece, simple stretched out tones, slowly beating against each other, very reminiscent of Conrad, Cale Or Niblock.
So there you have it. Pretty dang nice. A brief glimpse into the underground experimental music scene in Portland. And what we learned was, we'd pretty much by a full length record from any of these bands, but more importantly, if you play the piano, get your ass to Portland, there are several bands who don't yet have a piano player!!!
Black cd-r, packaged with nice full color artwork in a slim, clear dvd case.
MPEG Stream: LINDSAY KAPLAN + ANDREW WILSHUSEN "Two Houses"
MPEG Stream: TONEHENGE "Mt Pleasant"
MPEG Stream: PORTLAND BICYCLE ENSEMBLE "Concerto 6"

V/A Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love: Motowns Mowest Story 1971-1973 (Light In The Attic / Mowest) cd 16.98
Out of all of Motown's small subsidiary labels, Mowest may have been the most stylistically diverse. Created as an outlet for Motown's West Coast based artists, its brief existence between 1971-1973 before Motown set up shop in Los Angeles full time, covered a fertile period of music-making that was freed from pre-defined genre constraints. Where else could the soulful exuberance of the Commodores, the slow proto-disco groove of Odyssey and The Sisters Love, the late-period vocal pop of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and the stoner hippie vibes of Lodi commingle together? As usual, Light In The Attic does a stellar job of highlighting the amazing aspects of this brief label, re-introducing to the world some of its lesser known artists such as The Nu Page, Suzee Ikeda, and G.C. Cameron, while showing the early career promise of Syreeta and Thelma Houston. This is a side of Motown at its most adventurous yet relaxed, letting the sunny soulful vibes wash over us like warm ocean waves. Super Recommended!
MPEG Stream: ODYSSEY "Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love"
MPEG Stream: THE SISTERS LOVE "Give MeYour Love"
MPEG Stream: FRANKIE VALLI &THE FOUR SEASONS "The Night"
MPEG Stream: LODI "I Hope I See It In My Lifetime"
MPEG Stream: THE NU PAGE "A Heart Is A House"

V/A Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love: Motowns Mowest Story 1971-1973 (Light In The Attic / Mowest) 2lp 26.00
Now also here on vinyl!!
Out of all of Motown's small subsidiary labels, Mowest may have been the most stylistically diverse. Created as an outlet for Motown's West Coast based artists, its brief existence between 1971-1973 before Motown set up shop in Los Angeles full time, covered a fertile period of music-making that was freed from pre-defined genre constraints. Where else could the soulful exuberance of the Commodores, the slow proto-disco groove of Odyssey and The Sisters Love, the late-period vocal pop of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and the stoner hippie vibes of Lodi commingle together? As usual, Light In The Attic does a stellar job of highlighting the amazing aspects of this brief label, re-introducing to the world some of its lesser known artists such as The Nu Page, Suzee Ikeda, and G.C. Cameron, while showing the early career promise of Syreeta and Thelma Houston. This is a side of Motown at its most adventurous yet relaxed, letting the sunny soulful vibes wash over us like warm ocean waves. Super Recommended!
MPEG Stream: ODYSSEY "Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love"
MPEG Stream: THE SISTERS LOVE "Give MeYour Love"
MPEG Stream: FRANKIE VALLI &THE FOUR SEASONS "The Night"
MPEG Stream: LODI "I Hope I See It In My Lifetime"
MPEG Stream: THE NU PAGE "A Heart Is A House"

V/A Overland (Naturestrip) cd 16.98

V/A Painted Black (tUMULt) cd 11.98
The Painted Black project was begun forever ago, originally to be released on AQ staffer Jim's now defunct Petrol label, then bequeathed years later to Andee to release on his tUMULt label where the lineup and concept went through many changes (possibly because what was begun as an homage to a song Jim really liked, became a deconstruction of a song Andee really hates) and then an endless procession of waits, mastering, pressing, re-recording, battles with other labels over 'rights', as well as 4 different cover concepts that all had to be scrapped because they were seemingly too difficult for any printers to confidently take on. -sigh-
So then it finally emerged... Was it worth the wait? Obviously we think so. Look at the lineup, a veritable who's who of AQ favorites: Acid Mothers Temple, Circle, Hrvatski, James Plotkin, Kit Clayton, Loren Chasse, Troum, the Tape-beatles, Mieskuoro Huutajaat, Fennesz, and Stilluppsteypa. And that's just the cream. Lots of tracks were left off, according to Andee in order to avoid the spotty/uneven flow of most compilation/tribute/cover records. He even opted to leave off the Melt Banana track, which was a tough, but important choice, since the spazzy grind of their track disrupted the droning meditative, hypnotic flow of what is now less just a compilation of random tracks, more an epic and gorgeous hour of dreamy droney creepy blackness.
So what does it sound like? Well, while it does flow, and could perhaps pass itself off as a record by a single (quite eclectic) group, each track offers something unique, while still culling the sinister spirit and nihilistic 'rock' from the original (the inspiration for this comp). Finnish shouting choir Mieskuoro Huutajaat start things off with a brief, and shouted, acapaella version, in Finnish, and delivered with gusto! James Plotkin's Joy Of Disease turns it into a burbling, stuttering, electronic soundscape with hiccupping beats and backwards vocals. Somewhere between Boards Of Canada and Coil. Stilluppsteyppa took back their original track, a wash of glitchy yet melodic, musique concrete, and re-recorded/re-mixed it, removing most of the melody and adding even more space, resulting in a dark abyss of gorgeously perplexing minimalism. The Kit Clayton track is an ultra catchy, beat heavy SF glitch core workout, that obliterates the original melody but manages to keep the minor key tension and dark ambience. Ultra prolific Japanese space rockers Acid Mothers Temple turn the original into a wild pagan ritual, starting out with several minutes of Tsuyama's throaty chants, skipping nervously around that oh-so-familiar melody before the band stumbles in to join him for the remaining 10 minutes, with splattery percussion, freaked out reverb/retard guitar and squealing feedback. Hrvatski (aka Keith Whitman) claims that this Painted Black contribution is his favorite track that he's ever recorded and it's easy to see why: he actually sings, plays guitar, and weaves a thick wash of warm, langorous tones before it all crumbles beneath a speaker shredding cascade of sputtering drill and bass. Iowa's masters of plunderphonia, the Tape-Beatles use found sounds and actual(?) chunks of the original to create a tense and unnerving, noirish dreamscape, with disebodied screams, curious snippets of overheard conversations, and THAT meoldy sliced and diced, which all end up adding to the creepy vibe. German drone-sters Troum incorporate 'that' melody into a totally overpowering and molasses-thick drone, assembled from multiple tracks of guitar and accordion. The Fennesz track was previously released on an ep via Jim O'Rourke's Moikai label, and to us seems like Fennesz at his very best. Melodies and textures are spit out, stuttering and hiccupping from the cold, digital craw of the laptop, but somehow come out all warm and thick and coil around you like stuffed snakes and deliciously fragrant pipesmoke. Amazing. AQ faves Circle, do what they do best, taking the skeletal remains of the original, holding on to the barebones melody, and constructing a motorik, unwavering rhythm, that sounds like Tony Conrad and Faust's Outside The Dream Syndicate with just a little more melody and umph. And the record is finished off perfectly, spiralling slowly into 'black'ness, by AQ pal Loren Chasse (who as you probably already know is a pillar of the Jewelled Antler Collective, as well as a member of Thuja, the Blithe Suns, etc). He uses snippets of the original, slowed down hundreds and hundreds of times until it is a lugubrious almost-melody, and contact mic-ed strobe lights to create a static-y, humming, nighttime dronescape, like an otherworldy forest, complete with clattery insect buzz and moaning winds in the ancient trees. An almost perfect compilation and an amazing gathering of some of our favorite artists doing some of their best work. Essential.
MPEG Stream: JOY OF DISEASE "2"
MPEG Stream: TROUM "8"
MPEG Stream: L. CHASSE "11"
MPEG Stream: HRVATSKI "6"

V/A Paper & Plastic (Suitcase) 2cd 19.98
Here's to persistence! Eric Blevins of Suitcase Records began curating Paper & Plastic, a compilation from the global experimental-noise-collage-drone-n-destroy underground back in 1991, and thought that he was coming to a conclusion by 1998 when he had organized an installation / happening / performance thing in Atlanta with Achim Wollscheid, Yeast Culture, TAC, and Blevins' own a4 project that was to coincide with the release of this 2cd set. Unfortunately, the mastering was done at the wrong speed (remember DATs?) and the project was shelved for well over a decade. Whatever the reason Blevins had for the long delay, it remains unstated. Surely the artwork that Abo of Yeast Culture provided must have caused some of that delay, which is pretty ridiculous / stupid / awesome with its numerous hand-painted, silkscreened, and hand-stamped inserts and envelopes stuffed in the oversized DVD clamshell (which is also screened and painted); but would it be realistic to say this would take a whole decade? Is this why Abo started up the Incubator press once again (remember those Yeast Culture and Small Cruel Party cassette reissues from early in 2010)? Who knows? Ultimately, this is just another long-winded introduction to inform you that the contents within are fucking great.
So, there's Small Cruel Party, Yeast Culture, Sudden Infant, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Emil Beaulieau, Native X (supposedly featuring the Hafler Trio's Andrew McKenzie), Inzekt, TAC, a4, Kapotte Muziek, Chop Shop, Agog, Ios Smolders, and what noise compilation wouldn't be complete without Merzbow.
The material is split between the relatively droned-out, more spatialized Paper disc and the volatile, jump-cut frenzy of the Plastic disc. Los Angeles home-taper Agog offers a NWW-styled collage of cut-ups from found object manipulation that slides nicely into the damp field recording of subterranean drips from Ios Smolders. Blevins' a4 track is a minor-masterpiece with a sustained drone of hazardous environmental rumbling girding a patient scrabbling of various objects. Very simple, but very compelling. Such a strategy had been perfected by Small Cruel Party, who turns in a recording of crunched textures that sounds like a macro-recording of and army of ants crawling over a pile of safety glass, while deep echoing booms within some huge concrete structure resonate underneath. The Yeast Culture meditation on industrial wastelands settles upon crusty flutes occasionally popping above a mechanical grind and accreting dinscapes. Chop Shop's corroded drones of noxious low-end bursting into ferric noise completes the first disc in exemplary fashion.
On the Plastic disc, Achim Wollscheid offers 10 miniature "brakes" most being just a couple seconds long. These shortened bursts of rasping noises, serve to further slice and decentralize the listening experience of the already abraded, punctured, infernal noises that come by way of numerous tape-cut ups, turntable abuse, Dada sound poetry, vocal screaming, electrical ruptures, shortwave static, distortion pedals, and generalized noise-junk from Emil Beaulieu, Merzbow, the Schimpfluch members, Kapotte Muziek, and the like. Blevins should be commended for curating such a fine noise album out of so many different artists, as it's virtually impossible to discern when the tracks begin and end. Seamlessly cut-up noise is definitely a contradiction, but definitely a compliment!
MPEG Stream: A4 "Rustle"
MPEG Stream: SMALL CRUEL PARTY "Lrpsti Ipp Pauaeeteq"
MPEG Stream: CHOP SHOP "30 Degrees Reamur"
MPEG Stream: NATIVE X "Cognition"
MPEG Stream: MERZBOW "Habeus Corpus"

V/A Passions Of Laja Aijala (Bad Vugum) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
WEIRD FINNISH MUSIC ALERT!!!! HEADS UP FINNOPHILES!!! We're relisting this, cuz it seemed like lots of folks who would freak out about this amazing disc, somehow missed seeing it on the list a month or so back. Which is a shame, cuz this is where it all started, the ROOT of all the modern Finnish weirdness you know and love and spend your hard earned allowance on. Seriously, ask anyone in Circle or Avarus how much they love Death Trip or Terveet Kadet!!! C'mon, check it out:
An amazing archival collection focusing on the work of legendary Finnish alternative underground punk rock legend Laja Aijala, who was a crucial figure in the early days of Finland's thriving musical underground. This disc collects some of the best moments from all of his various musical pursuits. The Throbbing industrial clamor of Aavikon Kone Ja Moottori, Finland's FIRST industrial band, his damaged garage rockabilly combo the Billy Boys, the D-beat Discharge worship of Terveet Kadet, the punk rock doom splatter of Death Trip, the brilliantly demented Casio-tiki lounge music of the Leo Bugariloves, the primitive murky electronic krautrock synth experimentation of the Kolmas and much more.
It's easy to see how the rest of our Finnish faves were influenced by Aijala, and they all seem to have taken his omnivorous love of music and incorporated it into their own modus operandi, seemingly flitting from genre to genre, often in the same band, sometimes even in the same song. And pretty much every Finnish musician we know has multiple projects, from metal to drone to krautrock to new wave and on and on and on.
Some of the highlights here:
The Kolmas, who wove grinding murky lo fi synthscapes out of primitive keyboards, simple looped drum machine percussion, dense dark drones and thick washes of crumbling distorted synthesizers.
Death Trip: grimy grungy low slung filthy garagey punk rock, with scowled distorted vocals, simple riffing, pounding drums, fuzzed out guitars, sort of Motorhead meets Smack.
Aavikon Kone Ja Moottori: bleak, oppressive industrial soundscapes, hypnotic looped synths, primitive electronic experimentation, processed chanted vocals, all very dark and drearily ominous.
And actually it's all pretty damn good. The Leo Bugariloves will definitely appeal to the legion of Aavikko fanatics, the Billy Boys, Aijala's rockabilly combo, who we figured we wouldn't like at all, is recorded so hot and raw and in the red, that it almost sounds like Fushitsusha playing Hasil Adkins. Wild and unhinged and so good.
A completely fascinating glimpse into the history of the underground music scene that birthed so much of our favorite music. Essential!!!
MPEG Stream: AAVIKON KONE JA MOOTTORI "Karavaani"
MPEG Stream: TERVEET KADET "Mina HaluanPaljan Rahaa"
MPEG Stream: TERVEET KADET "Joutukaa Sielut"
MPEG Stream: DEATH TRIP "Death Trip"
MPEG Stream: DEATH TRIP "Chainsaw Goddess"

V/A Patty Duke Fanzine #6: Love To Patty (Top Quality Rock & Roll) 2cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The king of the Patty Duke fan club has just gotta be Mike Dereniewski of Detroit, MI. He's the man behind this musical mammoth ode to Ms Duke. His Patty Duke Fanzine has evolved over the last decade from a traditional cut'n'paste paper zine to one that included a 7" compilation with bands covering Patty songs to its current and final state, this double cd compilation. Talk about goin' out with a bang! Likewise, Mike D's musical periscope has stretched out beyond his early ultra pop focus, discovering and sharing sounds of all shapes and sizes from around the globe. Mind you, a big part of his record collection is still clearly reserved for the sweet sounds of girl groups.
These two cds collect together tunes from past Patty Duke Fanzine releases and a whole lot more. You get an astounding fifty four tracks of music and almost as many dialogue snippits of Patty Duke from her tv shows and movies! Allow us to give you a mere sampling of the artists included: Asobi Seksu, Gore Gore Girls, His Name Is Alive, Jessica Bailiff, Kevin Blechdom, Mark Robinson, Rose Melberg, Slumber Party, Stereo Total, V/VM, and Windy & Carl. Wow!
MPEG Stream: ASOBI SEKSU "All Through The Day"
MPEG Stream: MELBERG, ROSE "I Love How You Love Me"

V/A Phoning It In (West Main Development) cd 7.00
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**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Before we get going with this review, we figured we oughta just get your attention with the words NEW 30 MINUTE DANIEL HIGGS TRACK!!! That's right, we'll get to that in a minute though...
Phoning It In is a radio show in Boston, where musicians call in and perform songs over the phone, which makes for super intimate performances, but which also give the recordings a cool, alien, lo-fi vibe (remember the vocals-recorded-from-jail on Bad Brains' I Against I record?!). This disc collects three recent guests on Phoning It In, The Caribbean, Don Zientara and Mr. Daniel Higgs. The first three tracks are solo acoustic numbers from the frontman of The Caribbean, and are quite nice, falling somewhere between the Mountain Goats and some more traditionally indie. The vocals lilting and sadboy, the guitar minor key, the tracks simple but quite lovely. Don Zientara, a legendary producer (whose name has graced almost every DC punk record you've ever owned) as well as performer, and here offers up two haunting acoustic numbers, long drawn out steel string tangles, simple strumming and angular fingerpicking, a sort of Appalachia / indie jangle hybrid, with a high croon that is actually quite reminiscent of Charles Manson or Captain Beefheart. The whole thing sounding like some unearthed demo tape from Laurel Canyon in the late sixties / early seventies.
Most folks are probably gonna buy this for the Higgs track, and it's well worth it, a massive sprawling buzzing distorted raga epic, 25 minutes, total blown out super distorted lo-fi trance inducing beauty. It sounds like a pump organ (and at times like a guitar, and at others a Jew's harp...), wheezing out thick dense chords, with notes overlapping and beating against each other, pulsing and buzzing, some ancient primitive ritual, timeless and divine, completely mesmerizing, like alien bagpipe music, a keening high end drone that twists and changes shape, various notes peeling off in little curlicues of feedback, or flurries of jagged scrape, but always being reabsorbed into this surprisingly lush organic rumbling buzzing divine drone. Absolutely amazing of course.
Packaged in a cool hand printed cardstock sleeve, with a mini printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Daniel Higgs"

V/A Physical, Absent, Tangible (Contour Editions) cd-r 11.98
Contour Editions is a new label curated by New York based sound artist Richard Garet, whose tense grey drones had marked his very impressive Four Malleable 2cd set on And/OAR as well as an exceptional collaboration with Brendan Murray released back in 2009. The same technical rigor that Garet employs in his own compositions extends to this compilation of various artists working around the globe, including i8u (Canada), Christopher DeLaurenti (Seattle), Gil Sanson (Venezuela), and Brian Mackern & Gabriel Galli (Uruguay). Aside from DeLaurenti, whose phonography collection of orchestral intermissions has long been a favorite of ours, this compilation is an introduction to all of the artists present. Not a bad thing at all, considering how strong each contribution is.
Garet had charged these sound artists to consider the "evocation of the in-between immaterial spaces" - not quite the existential pursuit into nothingness, silence, or the void; but rather, the faintest of sounds brought close to the event horizon, the ghosts that tickle at the edge of perception, etc. Fortunately, none of the artists employ the clicks and cuts techniques which emerged from the Max/MSP crowd from the nascent days of the millennium. Sure, things are quiet and undoubtedly processed and/or produced by digital means.
i8u is the work of Canadian composer France Jobim, who's actually been around quite a while, producing all sorts of electronica-laced computer-driven compositions. Her track eschews all of the mid-range frequencies, instead splitting her attention between a deep rumbling low-end of a slightest pierced tones at the high-end. Despite the extremes of tonality, there's something rather lulling and enveloping about this piece almost achieving the same generative stasis that Thomas Koner produces. Christopher DeLaurenti presents two tracks of stone-faced slabs of grey noises looped and snapped into a darkened ambience. Gil Sanson's eight vignettes are open ended by design, with the composer encouraging the listener to hit shuffle on the cd player. These buzzes, drones, and smeared field recordings connect through a muted aesthetic of dreamy discomfort. The Mackern & Galli piece bristles with electrical static cracked upon a shortwave radio with Morse code blips streaming into the foreground and peculiar gestures of feedback sneaking throughout. Bits of radio transmission break through these disembodied elements, giving the piece the detached aesthetic which was endemic to The Conet Project and The Ghost Orchid, despite the very-hands on approach to this piece. All together, the album seamlessly flows from one track to the other, almost making it difficult to discern where one composition begins and another ends.
Hopefully, one of many good things to come from Mr. Garet's label. Oh yes, it's limited to 150 copies, too!
MPEG Stream: I8U "Rarefaction"
MPEG Stream: CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI "Sigil"
MPEG Stream: GIL SANSON "La Montana Se Ha Ido 4"
MPEG Stream: BRIAN MACKERN & GABRIEL GALLI "Temporal De Santa Rosa"

V/A Poesia Sonora (Zona) lp 24.00
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Deluxe gatefold and 180 gram clear vinyl reissue of the definitive collection of sound poetry. Originally released back in 1975 by CBS Italy, features Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin, Paul de Vree, Ernst Jandl, Maurizio Nannucci, Franz Mon, Sten Hanson, Bob Cobbing and more.

V/A Pop Ambient 2012 (Kompakt) cd 16.98
It's that time again, Kompakt's yearly installment in their Pop Ambient series, a release we ALWAYS look forward to and one that typically immediately becomes out new favorite sleeping / chillout / late night listen, and this one looks to be no different. In that respect at least. One way it IS different this time around is the opening track. More on that in a second. For folks new to Pop Ambience, it's basically like minimal electronica with the beats stripped way, leaving just lush expanses of whoosh and shimmer, blurred melodies and abstract ambience. It's also become a sort of go to descriptor for that sound we love so much, the sort of hazy, gauzy, washed out soundscaping of folks like Tim Hecker and the Caretaker and the like, with these comps offering up new tracks by old faves, and every time at least one or two new discoveries. The big discovery this time around for us, and the one responsible for the above mentioned opening track, goes by the name of Mohn, and delivers what might be the darkest, heaviest Pop Ambient track yet, a thick hazy landscape of blurred, crumbling greys and blacks, lots of space, abstractly rhythmic, almost doomy, dense gristly swells, that remain warmly melodic, but still hauntingly ominous. It's a gorgeous cinematic creep, super dynamic, and darkly moody, growing more spare and skeletal near the end, we've been listening to just this track over and over, and while it's the first we've really heard from Mohn, we're definitely dying to hear more.
The comp returns to more familiar ground with some more familiar names after that, Superpitcher, Wolfgang Voigt, Triola, Marsen Jules, Simon Scott, and while the rest of the tracks here are much prettier, and way less dark, and more traditionally pop ambient, they still retain a bit of that ominous undercurrent, usually in the form of more melancholic melodies, with lush shimmers drifting amidst sonic shadows, repeated motifs adding just a teeny bit of cinematic tension. Superpitcher's lush and lovely "Jackson" might be one of the most gorgeous things we've heard from him, all processed voices and looped pianos, repetitive and cyclical and totally mesmerizing. Another new name Morek offers up a bit of dark and gristly buzz, wreathed of course in lustrous swirls of haze and shimmer, while Triola weaves a dreamlike expanse of swoonsome drift, and almost post rock sounding brood. Voigt's track here sounds like a lost soundtrack for some acid drenched Tim Burton film, like the tape is warping and undulating before your very ears, transforming beauty into something a bit darker and shadowy, while Jules adds what might be the only actual beats here, but in the form of reverbed and blurred skitters, the whole thing super dense, dubbed out and dreamy. Simon Scott weaves a sprawling bit of string laden soundtracky drift, evoking images of rainswept streets and dark mysterious cities, until the new-to-us Loops Of Your Heart finishes things off with a wistful bit of gauzy guitarscaping, all sweetly tangled melodies, and subtly processed atmospheres, everything wreathed in a streaks of sonic gristle and some soft focus cosmic swirl. So lovely.
MPEG Stream: MOHN "Manifesto"
MPEG Stream: SUPERPITCHER "Jackson"
MPEG Stream: TRIOLA "Richmodis"
MPEG Stream: MARSEN JULES "Swans Reflecting Elephants"

V/A Pop Ambient 2012 (Kompakt) lp 19.98
It's that time again, Kompakt's yearly installment in their Pop Ambient series, a release we ALWAYS look forward to and one that typically immediately becomes out new favorite sleeping / chillout / late night listen, and this one looks to be no different. In that respect at least. One way it IS different this time around is the opening track. More on that in a second. For folks new to Pop Ambience, it's basically like minimal electronica with the beats stripped way, leaving just lush expanses of whoosh and shimmer, blurred melodies and abstract ambience. It's also become a sort of go to descriptor for that sound we love so much, the sort of hazy, gauzy, washed out soundscaping of folks like Tim Hecker and the Caretaker and the like, with these comps offering up new tracks by old faves, and every time at least one or two new discoveries. The big discovery this time around for us, and the one responsible for the above mentioned opening track, goes by the name of Mohn, and delivers what might be the darkest, heaviest Pop Ambient track yet, a thick hazy landscape of blurred, crumbling greys and blacks, lots of space, abstractly rhythmic, almost doomy, dense gristly swells, that remain warmly melodic, but still hauntingly ominous. It's a gorgeous cinematic creep, super dynamic, and darkly moody, growing more spare and skeletal near the end, we've been listening to just this track over and over, and while it's the first we've really heard from Mohn, we're definitely dying to hear more.
The comp returns to more familiar ground with some more familiar names after that, Superpitcher, Wolfgang Voigt, Triola, Marsen Jules, Simon Scott, and while the rest of the tracks here are much prettier, and way less dark, and more traditionally pop ambient, they still retain a bit of that ominous undercurrent, usually in the form of more melancholic melodies, with lush shimmers drifting amidst sonic shadows, repeated motifs adding just a teeny bit of cinematic tension. Superpitcher's lush and lovely "Jackson" might be one of the most gorgeous things we've heard from him, all processed voices and looped pianos, repetitive and cyclical and totally mesmerizing. Another new name Morek offers up a bit of dark and gristly buzz, wreathed of course in lustrous swirls of haze and shimmer, while Triola weaves a dreamlike expanse of swoonsome drift, and almost post rock sounding brood. Voigt's track here sounds like a lost soundtrack for some acid drenched Tim Burton film, like the tape is warping and undulating before your very ears, transforming beauty into something a bit darker and shadowy, while Jules adds what might be the only actual beats here, but in the form of reverbed and blurred skitters, the whole thing super dense, dubbed out and dreamy. Simon Scott weaves a sprawling bit of string laden soundtracky drift, evoking images of rainswept streets and dark mysterious cities, until the new-to-us Loops Of Your Heart finishes things off with a wistful bit of gauzy guitarscaping, all sweetly tangled melodies, and subtly processed atmospheres, everything wreathed in a streaks of sonic gristle and some soft focus cosmic swirl. So lovely.
MPEG Stream: MOHN "Manifesto"
MPEG Stream: SUPERPITCHER "Jackson"
MPEG Stream: TRIOLA "Richmodis"
MPEG Stream: MARSEN JULES "Swans Reflecting Elephants"

V/A Pop Ambient 2013 (Kompakt) cd 16.98
Of the now thirteen (!) volumes of Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, we've only ever made two of them Records Of The Week, at about three year intervals, which is a bit surprising considering how much we've dug them all, and the fact that the term itself, Pop Ambient, has become a frequent bit of aQ review shorthand we use all the time to describe the numerous variations of blissed out shimmer and dreamy washed out drift we can't seem to get enough of. And as with each past installment, this latest is another stunning collection of experimental ambient music, lush atmospheric electronica stripped of beats, the backgrounds pushed to the fore, abstract and hauntingly atmospheric, the lineup featuring a handful of familiar names, but some new faces as well. And another reason for making this latest Pop Ambient collection a ROTW, is that there seems to be a growing darkness in the sounds of these comps, a grim musical undercurrent that infuses these tracks with a brooding quality that most ambient music lacks, the artists pushing well past a sound that initially was simply a beatless Kompakt style techno, toward something that over the years morphed into fully fleshed out modern minimalism, expansive sprawls of cinematic soundscapery and gorgeous snippets of avant chamber music, but all retaining that sort of Pop Ambient haze, a soft focus murk that makes the music sound like it's being transmitted from some other world, or some other time.
Leandro Fresco starts things off with a gauzy bit of hushed shimmer, laced with what sound like alien field recordings, and pocked with haunting little sonar like pings, and wreathed in soft chordal swells. The vibe is very much like the soundtrack to some slow panning shot across a fog shrouded landscape, lit by the moon, and a sky full of flickering stars. Kompakt mainstay Michael Mayer follows up with a dark thrumming sprawl (remixed by another Kompakt regular Wolfgang Voigt), wedding a deep rumbling low end to a woozy looped susurrus, whispery and wispy, but shot through with a strangely sinister drone element, that lurks in the background, but gives the track some serious sonic malevolence. Jens-Uwe Beyer dials back the darkness, and unfurls a bit of slowly blossoming soft focus glimmer, the sound reminding us of Machinefabriek or Jasper TX, a slo-mo, melodic drift, all softly shifting overtones, and undulating layers, gauzy and darkly dreamlike. Triola delivers a strangely circus-like track, that conjures up images of a brightly lit carousel, viewed through a thick fog, a very Something Wicked This Way Comes vibe that is deftly molded into something much more playful and pretty.
Marsen Jules returns to the dark side, with a lush, layered landscape of long tones, of minimal percussion, and blurred melody, woven into a tense, slow building brood, before the sound bursts into a dense, percussive, almost doomlike lumber, almost like a fuzzy, soft focus, dreamdrift SUNNO))), crashing percussive bursts of swirling sound, surrounded by streaks of bleary hum and thrum, a darkly churning, hauntingly cinematic epic that is WAY to short. Mikkel Metal keeps it dark, introducing his track with a distorted churning rumble, laced with swirly psychedelic backwards swoops, and a clipped hissing pulse, the noise sculpted into majestic swells, the vibe blackened and industrial, building to a thick, caustic, but still woozy and washed out, climax of dense black swirl. Anton Kubikov brings things back into the light, but a grey, dying sun sort of light, wrapping reverbed piano in thick swaths of gauzey swirl and crumbling textures, sounding a bit like a lost Caretaker track, weathered and worn, melancholic and otherworldly. Wolfgang Voigt returns, this time with his own track, which plays like a collage of orchestras tuning up, simultaneously symphonic and cacophonous, a dizzying collage of tangled loops, of fuzzy textures, murky ambience, warbly melodies, flutes surface at one point, as do strings, not to mention some epic orchestral swells, but they all seem to be sinking into a gorgeous, whirring black sonic morass. Leandro Fresco lightens things up with his second track, sounding more traditionally Pop Ambient, all hazy, lush textures, slowly shifting, glimmering melodies, and softly pulsing overtones, again super cinematic, dreamily epic, gorgeously melodic, a sun dappled dreamdronedrift that definitely plays like the sonic denouement, the musical light at the end of this hauntingly dark tunnel. Which is followed up by the finale, another field recording flecked stretch of swirling electronics, and dark droning swells, adding shadow to the previous track's light, and then surprising us all but coalescing into an actual pop song, all strummed acoustic guitar, and echo drenched dreamy sad boy vox, all wreathed in softly swirling clouds of woozy thrum, and all manner of forest sounds and bird calls, pastoral but again, just slightly sinister. So good.
MPEG Stream: LEANDRO FRESCO "Cuando El Sol Grita La Manana"
MPEG Stream: MICHAEL MAYER "Sully (Wolfgang Voigt Mix)"
MPEG Stream: MARSEN JULES "Point Of No Return"
MPEG Stream: WOLFGANG VOIGT "Ruckverzauberung"
MPEG Stream: TERRAPIN "Cirrus Minor"

V/A Popular (Game Boy) cd 9.98

V/A Popular Electronics (Basta) 4cd box 59.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What could be better than a cd of kitschy but cool early "popular and applied" electronic music, from back in the '50s? Four cds? Yep, that's right. This sumptuously-packaged Basta box set brings together four cds worth of music originally recorded in Holland at the Phillips Research Laboratories circa 1956-1963, some of it from collectable LPs with space-age titles like Fantasy in Orbit and Song of the Second Moon, and some of it recently discovered and previously unreleased. Historical as heck and fun to listen to, too! In addition to the four discs, this box contains *seven* colorfully illustrated and info-crammed booklets along with posters/fold-outs of musical scores, schematics, and a timeline. In total, more than 180 pages of liner notes, photos, etc. Wow. Super deluxe indeed. These composers -- Henk Badings, Kid Baltan, and Tom Dissevelt -- are legends to some in the electronic music community today, and on the strength of these recordings ought to be as well-known as Pierre Henry, Tod Dockstader, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Gershon Kingsley, Raymond Scott and other AQ-faves in the 'pioneers of electronica' genre. It's a veritable cornucopia of treats here, too much to digest (or review) in a few listens...but well worth investigating! The superb graphics and mucho reading pleasure are but bonuses to go with the alternately clever, evocative, innovative, intriguing, absurd, etc. music found on the discs.
MPEG Stream: HENK BADINGS "Conflict, Reprise (Arioso)"
MPEG Stream: TOM DISSEVELT "Spearhead"

V/A Post-Asiatic: Lost War Dream Music (Urck) 2cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've been meaning to start stocking stuff from the Urck label for a while now. They had sent us a bunch of discs by a band with the strange name of Hop-Frog's Drum Jester Devotional, and to be honest at first we were fearing the worst, yeah we know, don't judge a book by its cover or a band by it's name, but we often judge band's by their names and it usually works out pretty well for us, Bathtub Shitter, Fuck I'm Dead, Pocohaunted, we could go on, but to be totally honest we were sort of expecting some sort of hippy jam band, you know hackey sacks and dayglo jester hats, but thankfully, we couldn't have been more wrong. The sound was devotional for sure, and the focal point was certainly drums, but the sound was more tribal and ethnic, spiritual and dark, more along the lines of Muslimgauze, lots of samples and voices, intricate rhythms, hypnotic and trancey.
So we will eventually review a record proper from Hop-Frog's Drum Jester Devotional, but we figured an even better place to start would be this brand new double disc compilation, featuring lots of bands on the Urck label, as well as a whole bunch of bands we already dig.
The comp is called Post-Asiatic Lost War Dream Music and is subtitled A Compilation Of Eastern Influenced Experimental Music, which pretty much nails it, but within that fairly broad descriptor, the bands veer into all sorts of varied sonic territory.
Right off the bat, there's a handful of bands who would have made owning this comp worthwhile all on their own, Amps For Christ, who offer up a gorgeous sprawling nearly 11 minute long jam, folky and lilting, guitars and sitars woven into drifting dreamlike harmonies, the melodies sunny and wistful, all very free and abstract, but gorgeous and we would have been happy to hear this track stretched out to fill an entire record. Muslimgauze does a stripped down, pure rhythm track, shuffling skittering drums, looped and cyclical, very hypnotic, and very very abstract. Neung Phak deliver a blissy slab of laid back psychpop, whirring organ, simple subtle drumming, twangy guitar, all wrapped around a super catchy Eastern melody. Experimental guitarist Bill Horist delivers some super spare squeak and scrape, chime and clatter, shimmer and swell, eventually that minimal guitar is joined by some sort of fiddle, wailing out a lonesome tune. Z'ev joins up with someone called Ramona Ponzini, for a haunting metallic scrapescape peppered with tribal drumming and with creepy disembodied vocals. There's also several tracks from that amazing Indian Soundscapes record we reviewed a while back, as well as tracks from Soriah, Metal Rouge, Moe! Staiano and F-Space. But the bands we hadn't heard of are just as exciting as those we were already familiar with.
The aforementioned Hop-Frog's Drum Jester Devotional unfurls a drum heavy ceremony, all pounding tribalism, and buzzing steel strings, sounding very East Asian, another track that we would have loved to hear stretched out to fill up the whole disc. Venerable Showers Of Beauty Gamelan, is just that, a DIY gamelan, chiming and resonant, the melodies definitely Asian influenced, but also a bit Western, with many of the tones allowed to drone on and on, giving the track a slightly ominous buzz. C.O.T.A. weave a dark slab of tribal dark ambience, lots of rumble and buzz, a thick bassy pulse and shimmering sitar like strings. We definitely need to hear more from these guys. And we could go on and on and on. This is after all two discs packed with all sorts of amazing music, and a whole clutch of new bands to discover and probably knowing us (and you we'd imagine) decide we need to hear more of. Recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands obviously, or anyone looking for into dark, dreamy, buzzy, blissful, tribal sounds. Everytime we play this in the store, someone comes up to ask what it is. Obviously, way recommended.
Packaged in a super thick mini gatefold lp-style sleeve, with liner notes and credits inside.
MPEG Stream: AMPS FOR CHRIST "Happy New Year, Sibanjar"
MPEG Stream: NEUNG PHAK "Sadchatri 06"
MPEG Stream: MUSLIMGAUZE "Zahal End"

V/A Power & Responsibility (Leonardo Music Journal) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This enchanced CD from the Leonardo Music Journal is playable as a normal audio CD and as CD-Rom with additional music, multimedia documents, and software from a number of academically inclined artists such as Phill Niblock, Elisabeth Schimana, Chris Brown, Terre Thaemlitz, Kim Cascone, Anne Wellmer, Audiorom, Sensorband, and many more.

V/A Proibidao C.V.: Forbidden Gang Funk from Rio de Janeiro (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The second of two new releases in Sublime Frequencies' ever expanding catalogue of 'world music'. The first, reviewed elsewhere on this list, is the wild Latin American psych rock vinyl sampler Latinamericarpet, one of the weirdest and wildest in the series so far. But this one is pretty weird and wild as well, but in a completely different way, though it's also Latin American.
Remember those Rio Baile Funk comps we reviewed a while back, killer mashups of Miami Bass, new wave, techno, top 40, all wrapped up into super dense and wild sexy dancefloor freakouts? Well this is similar in that this too is the music of the favelas, and features some of the same elements, but unlike the jubilant party vibe of the Rio Baile Funk stuff, this is much more stripped down, much more intense, and aggressive, and is closely linked to criminals, drugs, gangs, murder and mayhem.
Proibidao is the name given to an electronic funk which grew in popularity alongside the blossoming drug gangs in the nineties. The music is basically a stripped down Miami bass style rhythm, mesmerizing and tribal, there are not really any parts, just the drums looped over and over, while MC's and vocalists improvise over the top, toasting, howling, crooning, shouting, singing. Gang leaders set up big parties, hire DJ's and MC's do their thing, the tracks are often recorded and distributed as cd-r's or MP3's...
On first listen, we actually weren't all that into this, it just sounds like super simple stripped down electronic music with way too intense vocals over the top, but the closer you listen, the more you can hear traditional Brazilian musics incorporated into the jams, the sound becomes more and more musical, more powerful, on some tracks you can hear massive crowds responding with call and response vocals, there are lots of sirens, machine gun sounds, the rhythms are WAY down in the mix, offering up the simplest of frameworks for the sweatsoaked distorted vocals. And it IS all about the vocals, strident and urgent, intense and passionate, so much so that a lot of the time it ends up sounding almost like a Rio Baile Funk Fugazi!
Repetitive, hypnotic, stripped down and funky, but at the same time, dark and dangerous, mysterious and really intense and aggressive. Not necessarily recommended for your next dance party (unless there's something we don't know about your dance parties), but recommended nonetheless.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled Proibidao CV# 02"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled Proibidao CV# 03"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled Proibidao CV# 04"

V/A Project>Soundwave: An Exploration Into The Nature Of Sound (Special Music) cd 12.98

V/A Puistokiitajainen (Carabus Hortensis) (Bem Bole Cassettes) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
FINNISH WEIRD MUSIC OBSESSIVES will not want to pass this up. The strangely named Puistokiitajainen compilation collects haunting and lovely, mostly acoustic tracks from another circle of the Finnish music underground that we have seemingly barely scratched the surface of. Not a single band name we recognize: Adolf Hiller, Amigo Result, Krax Orchestra, Parta & Viikset, Esko Mrk, Tomi, Pulkkinen, Monuments In The Horizon, Jump P.A. And The Guitar That Wasn't Mine, Kanttoripoika, Stories, Jan-Erik & His Band Of Banjos, Neljakakkonen, but we're willing to wager at least a few name we know might be involved. But it hardly matters, every track here is a gem. Dark and folky, detuned and deconstructed, dreamy and drifting. acoustic guitars crumble and drift, wrapped in dense swaths of tape hiss, harmoniums and accordions wheeze out old timey ambience, metallic percussion and random clinks and clatters shimmer way down in the mix, whirring stretches of tinkling ambience butt up against birdlike FX and looped angular guitar, field recordings, and tiny tangles of warm dreamlike strum, each track totally unique, but somehow sonically linked to each other, like a strange sampling of the long lost works of some recently unearthed alien Appalachia, all muted twang and abstract ambience. So nice.

V/A Qbico V Unite: 11.5.2006, Dynamo Klubi (Qbico) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another document of Finnish music weirdness featuring a handful of aQ favorites, CIRCLE, in the form of their more sinister side project Rakhim, as well as Finnish cd-r darlings KuuPuu and LauNau. We won't go into too much detail as these are super expensive and we only got 15 or so...
Circle team up with Hans Joachim Irmler from Krautrock legends Faust, for a sidelong heavy percussion jam. The track begins with someone on the kit, busting out some wild fills that eventually coalesce into rhythms, while beneath the drumming is a constant low level clatter of tinkling chimes, muted hand drums, bits of percussive thump and rattle, sometimes whipped up into little flurries of subtle tribalism, but just as often allowed to just shuffle and drift. Part way through washes of muted looped guitar strum surface, accompanied by strange, heavily effected cookie monster vocals, all beneath thick swaths of droning chordal whir. The vocals continue to grunt and growl over an increasingly frenetic percussive backdrop, until everything stumbles to a halt.
The B side features Lau Nau and KuuPuu teamed up with someone called Lauhkeat Lampaat for a double boy/girl free jam, the results are as percussive as the other side, just more abstract, and less propulsive. The vibe is very NNCK or Sunburned Hand, Jew's harp, swirls of video game FX, strange chirping vocals, scraped steel strings, clattery percussion, fragmented melodies, peppered with brief bursts of frenzied drumming, wheezing kazoos, lots of woodblock, disembodied ghostlike vocals, all wound up into a chaotic finale, a wild forest faerie drum circle.
SUPER LIMITED, housed in a gorgeous blue tinted reindeer-and-snow sleeve, pressed on thick marbled blue vinyl...

V/A Radio Scenic Glow Volume 1 (Upstairs) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK! But not for long, managed to get a very few of these back in, so grab one while you can...
Upstairs is the cd-r imprint for nostalgic electrons and warped lo-fi esoterica run by Daniel Lapotin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), and what's a better way to kick-start things than with a comp of the accomplices, malcontents, and hangers-on? There's a handful of artists we're familiar with (Julian Lynch, Pulse Emitter, Africa Germany, Caboladies, and of course Oneohtrix who's covering a Grouper song which sounds as weird and fucking awesome as you could imagine!) but a ton we've not got a clue about. For example, take Autre Ne Veut's '80s pop simulacrum filtered through disposable recording techniques; or the anti-aesthetics, bleepity techno of cheap synthesizers from No Fun Acid; or the suitably kosmiche zone tripping from Stellar Om Source; or the wild and woolly oscillations from Nackt Insecten. Pulse Emitter's jagged electronica maps out lunar rhythms for those smooth surfaces of synthetic melodies he's mastered in recent years. Julian Lynch wistfully taps out softened melodies sort of like an idiot savant rendition of Erik Satie with some squiggly ring modulation tossed in for good measure. Gatekeeper brings the compilation to a conclusion with murky recapitulation of early Chris & Cosey smears of shadowy electronica. There's plenty more between all of these points of interest, making for a pretty great album. It's a shame that there's only 75 copies, and Upstairs has already sold out of all of their copies...
MPEG Stream: ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER "Heavy Water"
MPEG Stream: AUTRE NE VEUT "Artimis"
MPEG Stream: GATEKEEPER "Origins"

V/A Rangarang: Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Pop (Vampisoul ) 2cd 24.00
Over the last few years, thanks to the enthusiastic efforts of a bunch of excellent globally-focused "research & reissue" labels, the typical AQ customer, as a dedicated sonic adventurer in the pursuit of cool music, has likely amassed quite a collection of vintage international pop, often on the psychedelic side of things, lots of great stuff previously obscure to Western ears. We've been introduced to surf rock from Thailand, funk from India, fuzz rock from Africa, film music from Pakistan, etc., etc. One of our faves has to be B-Music's Pomegranates comp of Persian grooves from the pre-revolutionary era, the '60s and '70s. Now here's a double cd/triple lp collection on Vampisoul deeply mining the same territory. And chances are, you'll recognize some of the names on here, like Googoosh and Kourosh Yaghmaei, from various other reissues/anthologies that have come out recently.
There's 28 tracks/treats dusted off from a scene that "flourished during the 1960s and 1970s before vanishing into exile or oblivion." Sadly, it was the same story elsewhere in the world too - political repression clamping down (with varying degrees of terminal harshness) on the era's vibrant pop music scenes in such far flung locales as Cambodia, Ethiopia, Brazil, and, under consideration here, Iran.
The Shah might have sucked, but as the liner notes here put it, after the Ayatollah took over, "'having fun' was banned entirely"! And what fun this is, the songs selected here chock full of impassioned crooning, lush swirling orchestration, bombastic dance beats, slinky grooves, some doleful acoustic balladry, and of course much in the way of ornate ethnic Eastern motifs... It's like an infectious Iranian blend of 50's exotica, '60s easy listening, '70s disco... with some strong hints of freakier, more psychedelic youth sounds like funk and rock. And most of it would make a great soundtrack if the Love Boat ever took Persian Gulf cruise.
Artists include: Abbas Mehrpouya, Fereidoon Farrokhzad, Neli, Habib, Hamid Shabkhiz, Simin Ghanem, Dariush, Ahmad Zahir (who is from Afghanistan, but presumably had his records released in Iran), Aref, Leila Forouhar, Giti, Hassan Khayatbashi, Googoosh, Shohreh, Afshin Maghaddam, and Kourosh Yaghmaei. The thick cd booklet (or lp sleeve) contains plenty of interesting notes on each of 'em, each artist/track boasting an informative blurb, lyric translations, and full-color photo. There's a comedian with an operatic voice (and unfortunate Hitler mustache), an openly gay poet/TV host/political scientist (assassinated in exile, presumably by agents of the Revolutionary regime), and many attractive songbirds with celebrated hairstyles....
MPEG Stream: MEHRPOUYA "Dokhtar Shab"
MPEG Stream: LEILA FOROUHAR "Moama"
MPEG Stream: POORAN "Shahre Paiz"
MPEG Stream: HABIB "Bi To Man"

V/A Rare Youth (Rare Youth) 2cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've all been huge fans of Geoff Mullen's for a while now, and were appropriately freaked out by his recent mindblowing Armory Radio double lp reviewed a few lists back.
But in addition to crafting gorgeous and epic buzzing stringscapes, he also started up a label called Rare Youth, to not only release some of his own records, but to help document the vibrant Providence underground rock scene. As if that scene needed ANY more documenting?! Well, in fact if this comp is anything to go by, it most certainly does!
A super bargain priced double cd (not cd-r), collecting nearly 40 tracks from a bevy of random Providence noisemakers. Some you probably know, Furisubi, Area C, Kites, Black Forest / Black Sea, Workdeath, Black Pus (Lightning Bolt sideproject), but most you probably don't: Unicorn Hard-On, Haunted House, Russian Tsarcasm, Teenage Waistband, Petal Boat, Pedestrian Deposit, Feral Children, I Would Eat That Pizza, Siren Cult, Lucky Dragons, God Willing, Total Gym, Red Delicious and tons more!
The record opens with Black Pus' buzzing blown out noisejam freakout, and from there on out, the sound careens wildly from washed out murky dronemusic, to crushing crumbling white noise skree, to super lo-fi drum jams, to murky punk rock pound, to gorgeous rainy day piano, to gentle tangles of fluttery folk, to super dense blackbuzz noiserock, lo-fi, damaged casio electro-core, creepy 8-bit Goblin style soundtrackery, to gorgeous warbly droned out dreamscapes, touching on a million other sounds and styles, most that don't even have names yet, and require super hyphenated and tongue twisty descriptors.
Needless to say, while very few folks will love EVERY single thing here, most of the tracks and the bands offer up some awesomely twisted, noisy, dreamy, damaged, freaked out sonic weirdness, that in most cases definitely left us wanting more. Dying to hear more music from Haunted House and Summer City just to name a couple.
Super deluxe handmade packaging. A thick cardstock gatefold sleeve, with paste on bright orange artwork and tracklistings, inside a fold out Xeroxed mini-poster with band info and cool art.
MPEG Stream: BLACK PUS "Ghrost"
MPEG Stream: FURISUBI "Sentinels"
MPEG Stream: KITES "Riding The Glass Geyser"
MPEG Stream: AREA C "Circadia"

V/A Re: Martin Arnold (Apestaartje) cd 14.98
Seven tracks by seven different audio artists all using source material taken from the soundtrack to Martin Arnold's film "Alone, Life Wastes Andy Hardy." Using laptops and lots of software processing, most of the artists here disguise the source material well enough, bringing the film's soundtrack into their own realm and making of it what one might expect from a laptop. There are moments when the audio imitates the grainy texture of film and the digital sounds succomb to analog saturation. The artists featured here are: Fennesz, Anderegg, Akira Rabelais, N/A, A Silent Partner, Pimmon and Steve Roden.

V/A Record Of Shadows Infinite (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
If you were going to teach a class on Dronology (someone must, otherwise where do all the dronologists come from that we cite in our reviews?) you couldn't come up with a much better primer than this compilation put together by the Crucial Blast label. Hit shuffle and close your eyes, imagine sleeping bodies dragged through a meadow of broken reeds and thistles. Rocks crumbling with imperceptable grace. Field recordings from ancient oceans found in a sealed cave. The artists on here are a diverse bunch -- from the Earth/SUNNO))) styled metal-drone of Unearthly Trance to the academic studies in silence of Francisco Lopez to the cloud-formations of Troum. And Jewelled Antler fanatics take note: there's a great, organic epic from Thuja on here. All exclusive tracks as far as we know, also from Ruhr Hunter, Scot Jenerik, Beneath The Lake, Amon, Chaos As Shelter, and House Of Low Culture. Quite a line-up of folks devoted to making the most of drone and crackle! Somehow it really fits that we got a portion of our stock of these from Crucial Blast in trade for a copy of the Conet Project! With gorgeous red/orange/yellow packaging by Aaron Turner (House Of Low Culture, Isis, Hydra Head etc.). Recommended.
MPEG Stream: UNEARTHLY TRANCE "Scarlet"
MPEG Stream: HOUSE OF LOW CULTURE "A.T. Drone Home"

V/A Record Store Record (RRR) 2lp 42.00

V/A Release Your Mind Volume 2 (Release) 3cd 18.98
Here's 32 exclusive tracks of the nastiest noise and experimental ambience from around the world, by the likes of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Tactile, Bastard Noise, Tribes of Neurot, Amber Asylum, Masonna, Illusion of Safety, etc. etc. etc.

V/A Reportage: Spela Sjalv (Expo Norr) lp 17.98
Reissue of this long lost seventies Swedish release, originally purported to be a Trad Gras Och Stenar album, when in fact, it's something much more interesting. Bo Anders Persson, a member of Trad Gras Och Stenar, as well as Harvester, International Harvester and Parson Sound, traveled around Sweden, collecting field recordings of amateur musicians performing (the title roughly translates to 'Play Yourself'). So this is essentially like a Swedish drone rock, gypsy hippy folk version of Smithsonian Folkways (or Sublime Frequencies).
Wild fluttery flutes, chimes and rattles, whistles and tribal drumming, much of this definitely reminds us of modern soundmakers like Avarus and Sunburned Hand.
Simple hypnotic drumming over acoustic guitars and hand claps, whoops and hollers, still more flutes, violins, strings, hand drums, simple skeletal guitar melodies, lots of jaw harp, will percussion freakouts, occasional stretches of groovy spaced out kraut psych jamming, the whole time, the surrounding sounds become a part of the music, people talking, crowds in the distance, tinkling bottles, birds singing, total idyllic outsider psychedelic hippy jam.
A couple tracks on the B side stand out, one that sounds almost African, gorgeous and moody, percussive, but super melodic, like some sort of marimba, looped and loping and rhythmic and so mesmerizing, and another sprawling rhythmscape, cool, and acoustic, all deep lo thrum, big strings buzzing, a warm whirring sound peppered with all manner of jaw harp buzz, and some almost throat singing, really haunting and mysterious and so gorgeous.
Definitely recommended for anyone into the above mentioned Swedish outfits, but also anyone into field recordings and abstract psychedelia.
Exact reproduction of the original 1970 lp release, and of course, LIMITED!

V/A Resonance volume 5 number 2 magazine+cd 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

V/A Resonant Embers (Edition Sonoro / Twenty Hertz) cd 16.98
Edition Sonoro is the parallel label to Twenty Hertz, both of which are run by the British drone artist Paul Bradley. Resonant Embers is collection of artists who have crossed paths with Mr. Bradley over the years and may be delivering work for Edition Sonoro in the future. There's irr. app. (ext.), jgrzinich, Ueboet, Colin Potter, Bradley himself, Maile Colbert with Tellemake, and Andrew Liles. AQ's beloved bewilderer of sound Matthew Waldron returns to his irr. app. (ext.) moniker with a disorienting chorus for vibrating objects, chiming strings, and distant moans phasing in a tripped out sonic equivalent to a funhouse mirror. Another favorite comes by the way of jgrzinich, who layers together windswept clatter from multiple recordings from high tension wires and the post-Soviet crumbled landscape of his current home in Estonia. A cold, sodden atmosphere oozes from these turnbuckle creaks and (literally) post-industrial ambience. Ubeboet is a newcomer to us, offering a majestic track of dark ambience haunted with distant strings and underwater operatic vocals. Colin Potter propagates a liquid drone from a series of harmonic belltones, which have all of the sublime power and angelic beauty of a Ligetti chorale. Paul Bradley constructs a series of interwoven guitar loops of midrange timbers that reflect similar ideas found in Aidan Baker's solo work. Maile Colbert flickers her voice through a series of looping devices and VLF recordings, recalling the early albums of Grouper but with Jarboe's vocal style instead. And finally, the comp is completed with a track from Andrew Liles, whose deeply minor chord piano keys and lilting gypsy violin have a noirish, horror film quality, perhaps in homage to Coil's lost soundtrack to Hellraiser?
MPEG Stream: IRR. APP. (EXT.) "Whickering mechanical parapropalaehoplophorous"
MPEG Stream: JGRZINICH "Animate structures No.1"
MPEG Stream: COLIN POTTER "Bella (direct current)"

V/A Ringtones (Touch) cd 15.98
Well, it's an intriguing gimmick that piqued our interest when we first heard about it -- 99 ringtones for cel phones, contributed by a panoply of musicians and sound artists (many of whom AQ holds near and dear), compiled by the virtually always trustworthy Touch label. When the day comes that mobile phone ringtones can easily be recorded onto ones phone, and don't depend on the annoyingly limited spectrum of metallic notes currently available, then this comp will actually be useful. But, until then, it's my understanding that you can't really load these onto your phone yet, so unfortunately, for now Touch Ringtones is more of an art object than good listening.
The list of participants is certainly exciting -- everyone from naturalist soundcollectors Douglas Quin, S.E.T.I., and Chris Watson; to glitchsters Fennesz, Mika Vainio, and Pita; to soundwave conjurers Ryoji Ikeda, Carl Michael von Hausswolff; to pranksters People Like Us, Gilbert and George; to radio transmissions, a Conet Project snippet, New Order, Wire's Bruce Gilbert, and ever so much more.
But honestly, even though all of the above have made full length records we've enjoyed, listening to more or less 10-second snippets from these artists' signature sounds is frustrating, you keep wanting to hear more from a particular contributor, to figure out where in the lineup you are, having to constantly check the cd player to see which track you're on, then ruin your eyes referring to the *tiny tiny* track listing on the cd digipak. It's a headscratching, sort of frustrating exercise. As one big listen straight thru (or even on shuffle) without caring who is doing which track, the experience is schizo but not unpleasant. But collage without any sort of sonic theme besides "short" and "wouldn't it be funny if this was a cel phone ringtone" falls squarely, for me, into the cool-concept-but-bad-listening-experience category.
RealAudio clip: MIKA VAINIO "Polar / Tele / Whale / Sounder"
RealAudio clip: DOUGLAS QUIN "Arrowfrog / Baboon / Emperor Penguins / Hippopotamus / Hyrax / Oropendola"
RealAudio clip: RADIO BULGARIA "(excerpt)"
RealAudio clip: SCALA "Naked"
RealAudio clip: LEIF ELGGREN "Help! / MansLaughter"
RealAudio clip: NEW ORDER "Video 5-8-6"

V/A ROCK IS HELL - 7" Club Box Set (Rock Is Hell) 8 x 7" / box / 2 buttons 64.00
Just 3 copies left!
We reviewed this a while back, a mind blowing, ear destroying, super limited collection of strange sounds, noisy weirndess and fractured heaviness, all gorgeously packaged in a silk screened box with inserts and buttons and all kinds of stuff.
We discovered a small handful of these tucked away, and figured some of you may have missed out the first time around. Maybe your last chance to snag one of these....
Everyone around here is a huge fan of weirdo music label Rock Is Hell, as are most of you judging from how fast we sell out of their stuff and how quickly it all goes out of print. Pretty much everything on Rock Is Hell has blown us away, the Dig That Body Up It's Alive lp, the crazy Nate Denver's Neck etched one sided lp box set thing, the super limited Octis lathe cuts, the XbXrX / Total Shutdown double 5", all gorgeously packaged and jam packed with mind melting sounds. With that in mind we worked out a special deal with Rock Is Hell, which will give AQ customers first (and maybe only) crack at this ULTRA limited 7" box set!!!
The set is limited to only 400 copies, it was almost completely sold out on preorders, minus the 8 or 9 we just got, so this will be your last and only chance to get one of these, if you didn't already preorder one. All the records are on white vinyl with white labels, and the records are housed in a silkscreened cardboard box with an inlay and 2 buttons designed by BONGOUT (http://frre.fr.freee.frfr.e.free.fr/). And all the copies we got have the secret bonus 7"!!! Only 50 or so of those! The singles included are:
Foot Village (USA)
Z's (USA)
Sasqrotch (USA)
Child Abuse (USA)
Death Sentence: Panda! (USA) / Fugu & The Cosmic Mumu (AUT)
Bulbul (AUT)
Bug (AUT) / Reflector (AUT)
Rokko Anal (AUT)
So if you want to be one of the lucky few to own this crazy chunk of sonic and visual weirdness, click the buy button and you'll be all set! So there you go, don't blow it!!!
And remember, ROCK IS HELL!!!!!

V/A RRR 500 (RRR) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
That's right, 500 lock grooves (250 per side!) from the likes of Sonic Youth, Terry Riley, Derek Bailey, Aube, Bruce Gilbert, Zoviet France, Otomo Yoshihide, 2000 Dying Rats, Jan St. Werner, Marcus Schmickler, His Name is Alive, Mortician, Exit-13, Today is the Day, Brighter Death Now, Soilent Green, Masonna, Id Battery, and 482 more! Hilarious and very very cool listening. Some are 2 seconds long, some run up to 10 or so. Adventurous DJs should buy this, most of us did...

V/A RRR-1000 (RRR Records) lp 26.00
Lock grooves are so cool. There are records that unwind into that perfect final moment, and then that moment is so seamlessly looped and locked, that you end up listening to it for ages before you realize that it would in fact go on for EVER. Then there's the lock grooves in the middle of songs, placed there by sonic terrorists looking to subvert the listening experience, turning their songs into sonic minefields, or obstacle courses (Billy Bao, being the most recent culprit). But there is an art to the lock groove, that brief couple seconds as the ultimate micro-composition. The musical version of Flash Fiction. Just enough time to whip up a tiny fragment, not enough to be called a song, just a SOUND, and then crafting it just so, so it plays over and over, seamlessly, sometimes blasting endlessly, sometimes locking into a stuttering rhythm. But there's the problem of what kind of person pulls out a record of lock grooves and sits back, and listens to the same 2 seconds over and over and over. Records like that either require some sort of zen bliss out, or they require active listening, constantly lifting the needle and placing it in the different grooves, sampling all the various micro-tracks. As you might imagine, we're pretty into records like this, and while it's true, they're not easy listening by any stretch of the imagination, they do offer up a strange window into sound, and music making, and in the case of this the second RRR lock groove disc, into the various permutations of NOISE.
Whereas RRR-500, now out of print, had 500 artists each offering up on groove each, RRR-1000, takes 20 artists, and let's each one deliver FIFTY grooves each. THAT'S ONE THOUSAND LOCK GROOVES ON ONE LP!! The one benefit here, is that the grooves are gathered in little bunches, which makes it easier to hear the specific artist you're looking for, although good luck finding the same track in less than 10 or 20 tries. Needless to say, this is a killer record, for folks into weird sound, and fucked up musical objects. It almost doesn't matter who's on here, but a quick glance at the artists will give you a rough idea of what you're in for: Otomo Yoshihide, Keith Fullerton Whitman, C. Spence Yeh, Prurient, Kevin Drumm, Incapacitants, Francisco Lopez, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Sudden Infant, Damion Romero, RLW, Jerome Noetinger, The New Blockaders, Lasse Marhaug, Jason Lescalleet, GZ Jupitter-Larsen, Carlos Giffoni, AMK, Thomas Dimuzio and Aaron Dilloway.
And sonically, while it does tend toward the noisy, there are some amazing bits of minimal drone, lurching rhythmic stutter, garbled vocal weirdness, grinding noxious buzz, warm whirring crunch and about every variation in between. And in our hop scotching across these 1000 tracks, we found ourselves lingering happily on a whole bunch of em.
Cool hand made covers, photocopies, found images, bits from magazines, and lots of duct tape!

V/A Runeology 3 (Rune Grammofon) cd 9.98