BURNING STAR CORE The Very Heart Of The World (Thin Wrist) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For a band that's been around for a while now, Burning Star Core has kept a pretty low profile. Plenty of vinyl only and limited cd-r releases and loads of shows, but still they've remained pretty well under the radar. That all seems about to change with the release of three, count 'em, THREE new compact discs!! The first of those three to reach our ears, The Very Heart Of The World, was recorded between 2002 and 2004 and is everything we've come to expect from these guys (or this guy, as BSC is mostly the work of one C. Spencer Yeh), a gorgeously expansive soundfield of ruptured drones, skittering scraped violin and gurgling electronics, very gritty and crunchy, but still completely dreamy and soothing. Employing the unlikely instrumentation of violin, guitar, electronics, clarinet, organ, percussion, drums, trumpet, piano and voice, BSC conjure up a weird washed out cinematic soundscape, equal parts the Dead C, Wolf Eyes, and Birchville Cat Motel, where drone is obviously the order of the day, but with brief excursions into weird dada-ist voice experiments, blissed out post rock rhythms, skronky free space-jazz, soaring and epic spectacle and even a little full on noise. Haunting and harrowing, brooding and beautiful, this sounds like a seriously Dead C'd Godspeed You Black Emperor, but a GSYBBE with less Canada and more midwest, less Fellini and more Romero, less Constellation and more RRR. Awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Benjamin"
MPEG Stream: "Catapults"

BURNING TREE Stinger (The Tapeworm) cassette 8.98
Three new tapes this week from aQ beloved tape label The Tapeworm (out of four new releases, we'll list #4 next time, it's a doozy!), running the gamut from solo piano to opera to bedroom recorded tape experiments to this. A wild skronked out blast of Norwegian free jazz from his drum/sax duo, described by the label as "harsh free jazz" which this most certainly is, the drumming relentless and intricate and wildly chaotic, the sax bleating and squealing and spitting out insane atonal melodic runs, the two instruments sparring constantly, like dueling solos, the method to their madness surfacing here and there, but for the most part a head spinning barrage of sound, that will probably hit the spot for folks into the wildest free jazz, think Borbetomagus meets the Jooklo Duo and you'll be in the ball park.
Dizzyingly intense and wildly relentless, file under the Borbetomagus coined descriptor: 'snuff jazz'.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.

BURNT HILLS Cloud Nine (Tape Drift) 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.
Another glorious blast of blown out bong smoke free rock dope jams the way only these Burnt Hills cats can do it. We won't bother going into too much detail as this puppy is limited to 50 COPIES, we got a bunch, but they won't last long.
Burnt Hills, on this particular evening in May of 2007 consisted of NINE members, seven guitars, five drummers, one bass, folks obviously swapping back and forth, and it sounds like it. A super fluid, chaotic confluence of sound. Like some lost subterranean Crash Worship Drum jam wrapped in thick sheets of Haino-like guitar skree, everything enveloped in thick clouds of smoky FX, like some musical opium den. The bass and the guitars are thick and slippery, swooping amidst the relentless percussion, and the wild squalls of psychedelic freakout. At times it almost sounds like some DJ rocking multiple turntables, playing several different No Neck and Sunburned Hand records as the same time, a blurry, drugged out free folk tribal mash up... Awesome.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Each disc hand numbered. Full color artwork in a mini cd sized dvd-style clamshell case, inside a sticker and printed vellum insert.
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Nine 1"
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Nine 2"

BURNT HILLS Herb Saint (Flipped Out) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest blast of skull caving psychedelia from this constantly shifting collective, on this 2 track lp shifting from 5 members to 9, from two guitarists to FOUR guitarists and two drummers, not to mention a xylophonist!!! But none of that is as important as the monstrous sounds these guys and gals conjure up, and it is MONSTROUS.
The A side is a riffy sprawl of blown out bong smoke psych sludge crush, chaotic, relentless rehearsal space drumming, churning, chugging riffage, wild tangled chaotic leads, totally burnt out (of course) and endlessly hypnotic, definitely sounds like this was a 20 minute chunk extracted from an all day, all night drug fueled orgy of psychedelic excess, which of course means FUCK YEAH, and WE WANT MORE.
All you have to do is flip it over, and voila, more. WAY more. The flipside is slower and dirgier, almost doomy, a swirly mass of garbled psych-drone freakout, crashing speaker punishing drum damage, total free for all pound and skree, like the A side, epic and endless, and no doubt part of a massive whole that had Burnt Hills' entire neighborhood, stuffing cotton in their ears and pushing furniture against the doors and windows.
This is about as heavy and druggy and noisy as improv space rock gets these days, and we LOVE it.
LIMITED TO ONLY 99 COPIES! Each one hand numbered, in cool paste on sleeves, got very few of these, so be warned.

BURNT HILLS live 06-11-07 (Holy Room) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BURNT HILLS Live 06-11-07 (Holy Room) cd-r 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Found a small stash of these in the back room, long gone and long out of print, we have 6 or 7 up for grabs...
We've sung the praises of Burnt Hills before. Their epic basement jams are the stuff of legend, sprawling lysergic blowouts that shift from droney and krauty to full on Japanese style psych freakouts, multiple guitarists, sometimes as many as 4 or 5, even a xylophonist (although we have a hard time picking the xylo out of the din), the recordings all start out suddenly, and end the same way, as if someone reached over midjam to push record, and then the tape just runs out, and it's not til the next day, when some hungover dude shuffles down to the basement to collect the tape. Fucking awesome. And this live set from 2007 is no different, a nearly hour long jam, the drums all lo-fi and practice space, the air filled with wailing howling guitars, scrabbling leads, gnarled riffs, long buzzing feedback drenched drones, all stretched waaaaaay waaaaaay out, the band unfurling a glorious sprawl of lysergic, blown out, in-the-red drunk and druggy psychedelic space rock bliss. RAD!
This was LIMITED TO 99 COPIES when we first got it in, each one hand numbered. Again, this is WAY out of print, so these are most definitely the last copies we'll ever get!
MPEG Stream: "Live 06-11-07 (excerpt)"

BURNT HILLS Over The Rainbow (Noiseville) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another in Noiseville's awesome new Outer Bounds Of Sound lp series (Gary Mundy's Kleistwahr is reviewed elsewhere on this list), each release hand assembled, with custom paste on artwork, each one limited to only 300 copies!
Everyone went nuts for the most recent Burnt Hills full length, Tonite We Ride, reviewed here a while back, and rightfully so, a heavy dose of druggy improvised spaced out psych rock, recorded live in the basement of their house / jampad, as is everything they release, we think, all the product of a long running weekly jam, with an ever shifting lineup, but with a pretty consistent sound. In fact, it wouldn't be all that far fetched to posit that Burnt Hills NEVER stopped jamming, holed up in that basement wreathed in bong smoke, soaked in alcohol, playing on and on and on and on, every day, on through every night, and each release we get, is just a snapshot, a snippet of sound snatched from the frenzied endless riffing and the infinitized drone-space-kraut rocking. It does sound like that, these are not songs as much as movements, and they don't start and develop like a normal piece of music, it's the recorded equivalent of walking down the stairs, pushing the door open, and finding yourself immediately immersed mid-jam, and said jam continues until the record ends, or you get up off that ratty sofa in the corner, the one under the Christmas lights, and head to the stairway, the song only REALLY ending when you get up to the kitchen and finally slam the door.
Raw and lo-fi, chaotic and free, with brief stretches of lucidity, an extended free jam, wrapped in sheets of feedback and tangled riffing, the drums mostly locked into a simple motorik rhythm, but just as often splintering into flurries of free jazz splatter, the tracks themselves, two sidelong ones, veer from locked in distorted druggy groove, to total outsider abstract freeforall, drifting more toward Sunroof! or Skullflower than Acid Mothers Temple. It's a strange brew, equal parts heady experimental noisemaking, and classic garage rock riffing, blown out dronemusic, and tripped out space rock, those two disparate sonic sides get mashed together and the result is, well... THIS. A gloriously cacophonous effects drenched, outsider, heavy riffed, acid soaked, garage kraut space rock freakout. Which obviously means that this is WAY recommended.
Cool handmade covers, pasted on front and back, and again, LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!!

BURQA BOYZ Miami Arab Emirates (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
BACK IN STOCK ONE LAST TIME!!!
Our pal Jason's Ormolycka label is home to all sorts of warped electronic music, from Southern hip hop, to lo-fi synth pop, to total summer jam radio pop, to woozy witch house to THIS, a glorious blast of super distorted blown out, boomin' system, big beat bumping Miami Bass music, but constructed entirely from samples of Middle Eastern music!! It's so nuts, but so amazing, Middle Eastern folk music, Bollywood loops, chants and prayers and all sorts of unlikely sounds wedded to booty shaking beats, nasty rapping, female call and response vox, it's like 2 Live Crew if they did a record for Sublime Frequencies, total what the fuck GENIUS. This is most definitely what we'll be blasting next time we're driving down the coast with the top down and the bass BOOMIN'!!

BURR, ANTHONY & SKULI SVERRISON A Thousand Incidents Arise (The Worker's Insititute) cd 14.98

BURROUGHS, WILLIAM S. Break Through In Grey Room (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98

BURROUGHS, WILLIAM S. Break Through In Grey Room (Sub Rosa) lp 16.98

BURST Conquest: Writhe (Prank) cd 11.98
Super heavy, surprisingly melodic metallic hardcore from Sweden, mixing the thrash and roar of Coalesce and Converge with the anthemic melodies of fellow countrymen the Refused. Moody and intense, heavy but totally catchy. Swirling guitar melodies and chugging riffs and howled emotive vocals. The record starts off pretty great, but just keeps getting stronger and stronger. By about six songs in, Allan's discerning ears perked up and he asked me what we were listening to. Really, really great. And the final track is an amazing and completely demented MERZBOW remix! Features the bassist from Swedish grind masters Nasum.
RealAudio clip: "Promised Faith"
RealAudio clip: "The World Denied"
RealAudio clip: "A New Beginning"

BURT, WARREN The Animation Of Lists and the Archytan Transpositions (XI) 2cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track One"
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track Two"

BUSBY, STUART North/South (Pseudo Arcana) 2x3"cd-r 8.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
One of the things we like to do with records (especially cd-r's) from all these new freenoise forest folk abstract tribal space whateveryoucallit folks is to list the vast array of instruments utilized in the making of their records. Sometimes it's an impossible long list of everything and the kitchen sink and we have to wonder why it took a bathtub and an umbrella and an electric toothbrush and 17 different kinds of guitars and at least a few things like a boot or a lamp that don't really make any useful noise at all to make a soft barely audible drone. Or we marvel at how the heck a spatula and six pairs of unwashed socks could produce one of the most gorgeous ambient records ever (we just made that up so don't get all excited). One instrument though that we rarely see is the trumpet. We're sure someone has used a trumpet at one time or another, but probably never to as great affect as Stuart Busby, who some of you might remember from the Gold Leaf Branches compilation we reviewed a while back. This latest release from Mr. Busby is a double 3" cd-r and features two twenty minute suites for trumpet, the equally underutilized glockenspiel, ukulele (ditto!) and voice.
Disc one, North, is the softer and more abstract of the two, warm woozy streaks of muted tonal color, like staring at the sky moments after the sun sets, everything blue and purple, stars barely visible through the soft haze of the dusky not yet night sky. The trumpet is transformed into something entirely un-trumpet like, a soft billowy bed of drone and drift above which the glockenspiel tinkles soft serene melodies.
Disc two, South, is much more active, the trumpet becoming the focal point, warm weary melodies are repeated and layered into dense but still airy washes of sound, sometimes sounding almost Western, like some long lost super abstract Morricone score, other times sounding ominous and haunting, like the music that would accompany a character's flashback in a grainy black and white film from the fifties. So gorgeous.
Packaged in a cool mini-gatefold designed by Mr. Busby himself.
MPEG Stream: "Drought Breaks"
MPEG Stream: "Orbit"

BUTCHER, JOHN Trace (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We had never been that interested in the music of John Butcher, an accomplished improviser and saxophonist, a master of skronk and squeal, whose electronically treated sax is capable of whipping up a serious sonic storm, and who has played with a ton of other incredible musicians, Derek Bailey, Phil Durrant, Eddie Prevost, etc. Not sure why, but for whatever reason, lots of the Butcher stuff we've heard just didn't do it for us. But doing a bit of research after getting this tape in the mail, we're thinking maybe we just weren't hearing the right stuff, seeing as Butcher is much more than your run of the mill avant improv jazz guy, treating his saxes, processing them into strange buzzing drones, and haunted layered pulses, exploring space and timbre, recording in caverns and caves, metal containers and abandoned railway stations and we should know by now that UK cassette label The Tapeworm would not lead us astray.
Two side long live improvisations, the first a three part epic for tenor and soprano saxophones, that takes the sound of the saxes and adds all sorts of grit and buzz and crackle, it almost sounds like an old crackly record of a sax solo being played in a big empty hall, multiple saxes are layered and the overtones throb and undulate, the sounds crumbling and moaning, ringing out, wreathed in a super spacious natural reverb, totally mesmerizingly intense and beautiful. It does get a bit more traditionally jazzy part way through, but even then, the sound shifts from blown out drone, to wild chaotic skronk, to spaced out fluttery dreaminess, to incredibly high pitched symphonies of tangled whistle, that at times almost sounds like guitar feedback. Intense!
And speaking of feedback, the flipside is in fact a sprawling 20 minute piece for 'saxophone controlled feedback' and piano, and consists of deep swirling tones, lustrous fields of muted shimmer, the piano not so much being played as offering up sympathetic vibrations, the whole thing delicate and crystalline, long stretches of hushed distant keening, slipping into warm bell like swells, deep low end rumbles, all laid atop one another, creating a sort of ethereal sonic field of abstract melody, until finally (or perhaps for the first time audibly) the piano enters, offering up isolated plinks, allowed to ring out, as the feedback swirls around each note sympathetically, creating something truly mysterious and otherworldly. So nice.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!

BUTCHER, JOHN AND PHIL DURRANT Requests and Anti-Songs (Erstwhile Records) cd 14.98
Phil Durrant's "live electronic manipulation and modular feedback" explode alongside the skronk sax of John Butcher.

BUTCHER, NICK Guitar Machine (West Main Development) cd-r 9.98
We're a sucker for folks who make their own instruments, for musicians who customize machines and noisemakers, who use instruments in exactly the way they were never meant to be used, extra turntable arms on a record player, loudspeakers made from car radiators, all sorts of stuff used for percussion, guitars made from steel strings and tin cans, vacuum cleaners, dental tools, if it sounds good, we're all for it.
Amongst those instrument builders and sonic experimentalists, we're partial to those who gravitate toward the discarded, toward junk, old broken records, busted up guitars, malfunctioning electronics, tape players with dying batteries, one string guitars, NO string guitars, so we were pretty sure that this Nick Butcher guy would be right up our alley.
He only uses broken and found things to make sounds, not even instruments necessarily, old busted up keyboards, crappy tape players, old guitars missing strings, and coolest of all, cassette tapes that have been taken apart, cut up, looped, reassembled and played again on said crappy tape players. He also does a sort of primitive real time multitracking, playing one tape and recording it on another, making a loop, then re-records those to make another loop and so on, and so on, using the various loops, room sound, broken instruments and whatever else, to create gorgeous haunting mysterious soundscapes.
These 4 tracks were recorded live, in a big room, you can tell from the echo, the footsteps, the bits of shuffling, every little creak or scrape, magnified and wreathed in natural reverb, but even knowing what we know about the process, just listening, it's hard to imagine how he makes these sounds. Dark minimal gorgeous drone-y drifts, hushed and melodic, like Basinski or something, looped, but subtly so, the tones overlapping into subtle harmonies, the sound of the room and much of a presence as the music itself, gauzy and hazy and so so divine. The second track begins similarly, but almost sounds like some sort of modern microdub, Pole or something, the loop stuttering and allowing small bits of empty space in sort of like anti-beats, a softly propulsive ultra minimal minor key krautdrone, like the hushed shadowy, whispery side of a group like Expo 70, except made with busted tapes and broken tape recorders!
The third track is the first with guitar, a couple strums a few plucks, it seems like maybe he was recording them, cuz fragments of those first guitar scrabbles return in fuzzy, fractured loop form, and again are assembled into a warm woozy series of soft swells, that are eventually overwhelmed by another soft loop, this one swirly and softly psychedelic, finishing off with a brief bit of, yep, warm, weary, dreamy, softly looped washed out drone-y ambient bliss. So so so so so nice.
MPEG Stream: "Pewter Image"
MPEG Stream: "Motorsport Park"

BUTLER, KEN Voices Of Anxious Objects (Tzadik) cd 15.98
In Tzadik's "Lunatic Fringe" series, hybrid instrument creator and composer Ken Butler! Strangely klezmery. (Mr. Butler was featured in the Gravikords... unusual invented instruments book and cd.)

BUTTIGIEG, KURT Zoetrope (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We at AQ have long been fans of Campbell Kneale and his project Birchville Cat Motel who along with the Dead C, Omit, Gate and a handful of others have helped to define one of the richest free-rock-noise-drone scenes in the world. For years Kneale has been releasing cds, lps and cassettes (most of them quite limited) of noisy electronic soundscapes and gorgeous organic drones. So when we discovered Kneale also ran a label, we figured it was definitely worth checking out. And how right we were. Not only is all of the music on Celebrate Psi Phenomena amazing, but the packaging is perfectly and stunningly designed as well (quite nice considering this is a cd-r label. See our crappy cd-r packaging rants in the last three or four lists) with each cd in a plastic sleeve nestled between two sheets of old fashioned textured wallpaper, printed, and sealed with a gold star.
We're willing to bet that Kurt Buttkrieg is the only musician you can think of that calls Malta home. This is gorgeous otherworldly musiqe concrete. Far away drones, swoops of modulated electronics, keening feedback and speaker rattling low end rumble. Sparse and dynamic, but space-y with tons of reverb. Ethereal melodies are slowly introduced, creating a chillingly intense soundscape that could be the perfect horror movie soundtrack.
RealAudio clip: "Zoetrope"

BYETONE 20' To 2000 : May (Noton/Raster) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Olaf Bender - founder of the Rastermusic label and member of Signal - provides us with Volume 5 of the 20 to 2000 series. As this series has been progressing, one gets the impression that each artist (or the curator of the series) is attempting to link these bursts of minimalist electronica into a cogent whole pieced together of disparate fragments. From the rhythmic shards of Ilpo Vaisainen & Komet violated by Ryoji Ikeda's blistering sine waves, the series took a pleasant shift into the minimalism of Coh and now Byetone, who has expanded the spaces of silence to wrap around warm hypnotic pulses which erraticly appear.

BYETONE Death Of A Typographer (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
We haven't heard too much from Pan Sonic lately, with only last year's Katodivaihe / Cathodephase surfacing since their 2004 4cd boxset of crunched post-techno and electro-shock minimalism. And it's actually been even longer since we've heard anything from Raster-Noton's Byetone. That said, we didn't recall Byetone sounding so much like Pan Sonic. With the lack of Pan Sonic releases anywhere in sight, a Pan Sonic clone is as good as the real thing at this point. On Death Of A Typographer, Byetone lays down plenty of low-slung breakbeats for his caustic hiss of electricity coaxed into arpeggiated melodies (think Coh, also from the Raster-Noton camp) and disciplined basslines (again think Pan Sonic). All of the digital clicks, distortions, abrasions, and pixel-points which comprise the Raster-Noton glitch aesthetic are present, but Byetone (aka Olaf Bender) does not seem to force any of these tracks into one of the conceptual frameworks which may have hamstrung some of Alva Noto's concept-then-execution albums. As a result, Death Of A Typographer is an immediately compelling electronica record, and who the hell cares that it sounds so much like Pan Sonic?
MPEG Stream: "Plastic Star (Session)"
MPEG Stream: "Grand Style"

BYETONE Plastic Star (Raster-Noton) 12" 15.98

BYETONE Symeta (Raster-Norton) cd 17.98
It doesn't happen very often, but occasionally, TWO aQ staffers accidentally review the same record, and usually, we try to just cram them together into one (sort of) cohesive single review, but this time we figured, screw it, here's two different aQ-er's takes on the latest from Byetone, a record we liked so much we reviewed it twice! See if you can guess who wrote which!!
Review one:
It's weird to say, but it seems like the most compellingly funky electronic music is coming from a camp that pretty much perfected the ultimate cold clinical electronic sound. Raster-Noton for years has been home to icy cold collections of bleep and click, him and hiss, taking music and seemingly reducing it to it's most elemental form, and arranging it into machine like rhythms. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE that stuff, and hearing pristine arrangements of ultra low, rib cage rattling lows, and dog whistle highs, rhythms created from clipped static and 1 bit bursts, total mad scientist genius. But all along, it seemed like something lurked just below the surface. A funkiness that the artists seemed to be combating, as if the whole thing was an elaborate sonic ploy to keep the funk at bay. And then suddenly, one of the brave ones, decided to let a little of the funk seep into his audio experiments, and it was good. Too good. Too good to not let more in. And soon, it was too late, and then against all odds, and in an ironic twist of sonic fate, people like Alva Noto were crafting some of THEE funkiest sounds we'd ever heard, all assembled from the same elements, beeps and clicks, 1 bit bursts and sine waves, culminating in the recently reviewed Univrs record.
But then along comes Byetone, not to be outdone, takes those same elements, and decides to not just let the funk seep into his sounds, but to go all out, and craft lush expansive soundscapes, epic and cinematic, proving that those same ingredients could be twisted up into all new shapes, which brings us to Symeta, a gorgeously lush collection of electronica, that slips easily from super clinical click and buzz, to warm lush chordal swells, often in the same song, the various elements arranged into killer grooves and funky beats, with some of the tracks sounding almost Pop Ambient, that lush and lovely, while others stayed more clinical, and still others found a middle ground, which strangely enough sounds like a weird take on the whole Goblin/Carpenter sci-fi future-retro synthscape thing, but somehow cooler, and more -actually- sci-fi sounding, and more hauntingly futuristic, with Byetone coaxing some seriously gristly buzz and tripped out psychedelia from his strange sonic laboratory.
Awesome!
Review two:
Olaf Bender's Byetone project is hardly prolific, but he has proven to be strongly consistent in his clinical electronica, which nudges the signature Raster-Noton sound of glitch 'n' tone on a trajectory that might not be all that averse to the dancefloor. Symeta comes three years after the much acclaimed Death Of A Typographer; and like that earlier record, this one also owes quite a bit to the formative work of Pan Sonic and Mika Vainio's solo album Metri. The hypnotic, adrenaline-pulsed piece of minimalist techno on "Opal" is right out of the Vainio playbook, slowly ramping a militant drum-roll from Bender's drum machine out of a throbbing basspulse radiating ominous hisses and x-ray frequencies. "Helix" and "Black Peace" nod toward the latter Pan Sonic works of gnarled, distorted electronica through an excellent track of grimy blocks of electronic riffage, caustic blasts of noise, and dubstepping electro backbeats, in the construction of some exceptional, high-pressure chamber electronica. Lest you think that it's all Vainio all the time, the first three blips from the album opening "Topas" are devilishly close to the robotic sequencing that Kraftwerk used to build their onomatopoeic "Boing Boom Tschak." Another great record from Raster-Noton.
MPEG Stream: "Topas"
MPEG Stream: "T-E-L-E-G-R-A-M-M"
MPEG Stream: "Neuschnee"

BYODEATH Snowy Eyes (Bridgetown) cassette 5.98

BYODEATH Snowy Eyes (Bridgetown) cassette 5.98

BYRD, ROB / KRIS THOMPSON / WISTERIAX Easter Invocation (lildiscs) 3" 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.
Third (but first we've had) in a new series of ULTRA LIMITED hand made drone / ambient cd-r's (we'll try to list the other two soon) from this new boutique label specializing in short form 3" cd-r's of dark drone drenched ambience.
This disc, Easter Invocation, features guitar, theremin (courtesy of Kris Thompson of The Lothars), and processed cello, all stretched and twisted, tangled and warped into a single 21 minute soundscape of gauzy creep and haunting shimmer. Simple, heavily reverbed martial percussion, muted and murky, more of a pulse or a throb than a pound, underpinning a landscape of distant low-end swells, slow building waves of creak and moan, soft swirls of hiss and fuzz, languorous stretches of slow motion rumble. Dreamy but also quite dark and ominous.
ULTRA LIMITED and painstakingly hand assembled. Tiny 3" black fold over sleeves, with a glossy full color image affixed to the front, sealed at the bottom with two rivets, tied with a ribbon, with a little circular badge. Inside the disc nestles between two sheets of gorgeously textured paper, hand printed and so lovely.
VERY RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Easter Invocation (excerpt)"

C-SCHULZ & HAJSCH s/t (Sonig) cd 14.98
I've not heard much from C-Schulz in a long time, recalling his name popping up a bunch about ten years ago along side hyper-prolific sound artists like Asmus Teitchens. At the time, it seemed that C-Schulz released a bunch of records that nobody cared about and then vanished. With the release of this album, I might have missed out on something pretty spectacular. His collaboration with fellow Cologne resident Hajsch is more of a history lesson into what the 'sound of Cologne' was long before the forest-disco of Wolfgang Voigt or the disjointed electronica pop of Mouse of Mars. C-Schulz & Hajsch's interest lies in a mesmerizing analysis of sound, discovering the mysteries that lie dormant in a textural field recording or a melancholic drone from a Harmonium. This is a beautiful album that certainly fits alongside the esoteric dronology of Andrew Chalk, Zoviet France, and even Fennesz. Oh yeah, this was released on Mouse On Mars' label.

C-UTTER / DEAD PENI split (Blossoming Noise) lp 19.98

C.D. Un Piano En La Garganta (Drone Records) 7" 7.50
Drone Records has a pretty good track record introducing unknown artists in their ongoing series of 7" singles that sonically embody the label's name. C.D. is the work of Christian Dergarabedian, who had spent some time working with the conceptually invigorating omni-Dada rock ensemble Reynols when he lived in Buenos Aires. Now residing in Barcelona, Dergarabendian reflects the drone facets of Reynols with six interwoven tracks of lovely distorto-feedback waves that decompose into irridescent digital twitches. The noisier stuff by Drone Records hosts Troum is clearly a reference. A very nice entry from the ever exceptional Drone Records series. Limited to 300 copies, with the first editions pressed on red vinyl. We have VERY FEW of these! Don't dawdle.

C.O.C.ASPAR Grand Mal 2 (Epileptic Recordings) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
C.O.C.aspar is a Geman conceptual / sound artist who seems to have been quietly making interesting and puzzling work over the past three decades. "Grand Mal 2" is based around a series of live-recordings made inside a partially submerged fuel tank left over from the German occupation of a Norwegian harbor. C.O.C.aspar treats the metallic clangs and deep resonant vibrations with an excess of flanging electronics to sound like some fictional remix project between Leif Elggren and Maeror Tri.

C41 Copernacre (Staalplaat) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
C41 is a collaboration between Joe Banks (Disinformation), Ashley Davies (Project D.A.R.K.) and John Everall (Sentrax Records). Based on N.J. McCamley's psycho-history "Secret Underground Cities," C41's first album reflects the "X-Files" claustrophobia of abandoned missile silos, subterranean research labortories, and forgotten labyrinthian warehouses filled with out-of-date weapons systems. It's a bleak album with distant metallic clangs, static electricity bursts, and shattered glass.

CAACRINOLAS A Thousand Cries Has The Night cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Members of German avant-jazz outfit Bretzel Killing Machine take their interest in horror films/music a step further by forming this two-man experimental BLACK METAL band! Yes, B.K.M. leader (and solo electronics artist) Bjoern Eichstaedt has finally delivered his his long-promised (threatened?) Caacrinolas project. Keyboardist/vocalist Bjoern, together with guitarist/bassist Larry Luer, and a drum machine, have made a very cult sounding 24-minute cd-r demo ep, numbered and limited to 100 copies. It's just one track (the title song "A Thousand Cries Has The Night") and the truth is, if this is a representative twenty-four minutes of that night, then it has a lot MORE than a 1000 cries, 'cause the screaming on here is voluminous and disturbing. Starting off with Goblin-style horror keyboards and drony atmospherics and then moving into Burzum style riffery and throat-shredding screaming backed by drum machine mayhem, this is pretty scary from the get-go. Then we move into doomy broken-guitar explorations, almost like Esoteric scoring a horror flick. The song continues to take many twists and turns, all dark and droney ones of course.
It's definitely something for fans of Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Abruptum, Nokturnal Mortum, Potentiam, and similar avant-ambient-black-metal trips. Excellent! We look forward to their next recording, which we're told is already underway, entitled "Satan et les lŽgions fantastiques tourmentant le CrucifiŽ"...
RealAudio clip: "A Thousand Cries Has The Night (excerpt 1)"
RealAudio clip: "A Thousand Cries Has The Night (excerpt 2)"

CAACRINOLAS Vargtimmen (self-released) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's been over FIVE years since we last heard from German duo Caacrinolas and their strange brand of constantly changing black metal weirdness. The two were fixtures in the avant garde jazz / experimental electronic German underground, fronting the group Bretzel Killing Machine, but the two became fixated on black metal, and horror movies and decided to do something about it. Their debut, A Thousand Cries Has The Night, was a brief black assault, with buzzing riffage, sweeping black ambience, and some of the most intense wailing vocals we'd ever heard. We compared the music on the disc to groups like Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Abruptum, Nokturnal Mortum, Potentiam, bands who took black metal and shaped it into something more unique, and often more disturbing. The duo returned soon after, with a second salvo, the ominously titled Valley of the Dead, another lengthy single track, but the black buzz was pulled back to reveal a haunting Goblinesque soundworld of lugubrious dark crawls, and Bohren like blackjazz slowcore. Granted, the record was like a haunted house, with creeps and starts lurking around every corner, but the focus was a long droning black drift (btw, both of those were SUPER limited so don't try to order 'em...)
Now here we are 5 years later (although most of this was recorded in 2003 and '04), and Caacrinolas take up just where they left off, creating a gorgeous epic creepscape of drifting pointillist pianos, long drawn out minor key chords, whispery ghost like voices, dark cavernous drones, and streaks of fuzzed out ambience, all smeared into ominous, yet strangely lovely stretches of cinematic tension. Hard not to hear Bohren, and again Goblin, but also Stars Of The Lid, and even bits of Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker, and other subtle sound sculptors... Most AQ drone-heads are already in love with this kind of sound and it only takes a minute or two before those folks are ready to close their eyes and drift off... but not so fast....
About halfway through the opening track, some keening distorted high end guitar, begins to repeat, over and over, like some lonely distant minor key siren, until they're joined by some downtuned low slung slow motion riffage, that buzzes and crawls, over a warm warbly bed of synths... it never explodes into black action though, instead, it slowly twists and turns, the various layers of keyboard and synthesizer, getting all tangled up and drifting darkly above a swirling sea of subtle black drone.
The second track follows a similar pattern, a slow building horror movie ambient epic. Keyboards drone and shimmer, muted melodies drift right beneath the surface, bits of percussion pepper the Niblockian blur, the tension builds, the production crackles and hisses, a strange textured underlayer to the near static drone, until a mournful strummed guitar surfaces, and the track transforms into some strange lonely lament, drifting, drifting, drifting, until the band suddenly launches into full on rock mode, crunchy riffage, eighties synths, simple propulsive drumming, and the band is squarely in Goblin (or Zombi) territory, weaving a tense soundscape, dramatic and a little over the top, eventually, becoming -slightly- black metal with some super brittle high end insectoid buzz and some blasting double kick buried in the mix, like a black metal Goblin scoring one of those scenes where the terrified girl in her nightgown is running through the midnight forest, being chased by a mysterious maniac. Eventually, the band settles back down into a haunting slithering creep, but now with mysterious female voices mumbled beneath the buzzing synth, the sizzling cymbal swells, the spidery sad guitar melodies, and the slow motion downtuned riffing, until it all fades to black. Awesome!
Like the other discs, this one is also limited to only 100 copies, so we're not sure how long we'll be able to keep these in stock. If people freak out over this one the way they did over the first two, probably not long. But UNLIKE the other ones, which were packaged in slimline jewel cases, 3 is super elaborate, housed in a gold metallic hinged box (like those old Chain Reaction releases), with the artwork silkscreened directly onto the metal, the cd affixed to a metallic nub on the inside, and a printed black on black insert with all the liner notes tucked inside.
MPEG Stream: "Vargtimmen"
MPEG Stream: "En Un Espacio"

CABOLADIES Renewable Destination (Students Of Decay) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest analog onslaught from this Midwestern duo who add a distinctly kitchen sink aesthetic to their brand of guitar/synth/effects soundscapery. After a brief bit of simulated field recording, cricket like electronic chitter and deep low end thrum, the record slips right into a swirling soft cacophony of warm whirring tones, wild electronics careening every which way, fragmented rhythms, clatter and crunch and bloop and bleep, spidery guitar melodies, on the surface it's a big old swirling mess, but there does seem to be a method to their madness as the various and disparate sounds seem to coalesce into something that does in fact have design, and ends up somehow listenable and not a little bit dreamy. The record continues on, shifting into something a bit more blissed out, a hazy smoldery shimmer peppered with tinkling chiming melodies, and a blurred gauzy drift, before finishing off the side with a weird bit of cartoony sonic chaos.
The B side begins with what sound like it could have been a prime slab of heroin house or minimal dub, but here it's gone totally haywire, all robotic glitch and sputter, everything reverby and echoey, clicks and pulses swooping to and fro, simultaneously dizzyingly disorienting and mesmerizingly hypnotic. The rest of the side plays out as a hazy, druggy, blurred soft psych drift, everything woozy and washed out, before finishing off with another brief bit of twisted electronic faux field recording.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Already sold out from the label, these could very well be the last copies we're able to getÉ
Includes a download coupon as well.
MPEG Stream: "Counterfeit Reflection"
MPEG Stream: "Collector"
MPEG Stream: "Woodn"

CABOLADIES s/t (DNT Records) lp 12.98
Caboladies specialize in ecstatic electrical jams that have been making the rounds of the various psychedelic-post-noise-zonked tape and cd-r labels (Arbor, Gneiss, Peasant Magik, Digitalis, etc.). And at one time, these two Kentucky ex-pats (now living in Chicago) shared a tape release with Oneohtrix Point Never. They've always been a bit loopier and more shambolic than Oneohtrix, elevating their work to the druggiest plateau of spiralling bloop and eyes-dilated sparkle that you might expect from an Astral Social Club reworking of J.D. Emmanuel. Many of those tape and cd-r releases had disappeared from physical distribution, although some less than stunning sounding mp3s are making their way around the blogosphere. So, it's really great to hear Caboladies on wax, which is certainly the best medium for these celestial crystallizations blossoming from piles of analogue gear. Taken separately, each piece of electronic gear is dialed to a twitchy spasmodic set of bleeps and swoops, that would be ungainly had Caboladies not playfully situated five, six, eight, ten complementary sets of tones that smear together into an ambient shimmer that's anything but static. These irregular vibrations and delirious patterns are alive with psychedelic energy, that you could almost see fitting into some freak-folk nature jam session... but then again, everything needs to be plugged rather heavily into the grid. Great stuff!

CABOLADIES / ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER split (NNA Tapes) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Missed out on this the first time around, but the label pressed up a second batch, just as small as the first so don't dawdle...
Caboladies are a duo from Chicago, who traffic in the same sort of rhythmic lysergic antipop as the current crop of hyped lo-fi 4-trackers. Heaping on layers and layers of woozy warble, and stumbly clatter, warped guitar FX, super lo-fi but weirdly lush as well. Reminds us a bit of James Ferraro and his 'hypnogogic pop' but a bit more spaced out, louder and druggier like it could have been played live by a proper band instead of assembled by dudes sitting on the floor in front of their gear. Trippy and dreamy and washed out and just the sort of thing we've been digging like crazy lately. And definitely a good match for...
Oneohtrix Point Never, aka Daniel Lapotin, whose presence on this tape will no doubt ensure that these are gone in a flash. But that sort of obsession is well deserved, we definitely find ourselves a little bit Oneohtrix obsessed these days, and Lapotin's contribution to this split certainly does nothing to dull that obsession. A hazy, spacey retro-future sprawl of Tangerine Dream synths, ominous John Carpenter like eighties soundtrackery, a little Goblin, beginning with a Technicolor explosion of prismatic synths, only to give way to something much more creepy and subterranean, slithery and somber, only to shift gears again into a blissed out 8-bit drift, like the interlude music from some lost Commodore 64 game, albeit layered into a strangely symphonic bit of lo-fi melancholia.
Gorgeous as always. And crazy limited, we got a bunch of these, but odds are these will indeed be the last copies we can get our hands on, so snag one quick!

CADAVER IN DRAG Raw Child (Animal Disguise Recordings) cd 12.98
Ok, let's start adding 'em up. This band gets point for their name, first off. 'Cadaver In Drag' is both disturbing and humorous enough to be worth a nervous chuckle (it's even funnier if you imagine that they know something about the Swedish death metal band Cadaver that we don't know). And their knack for names extends to album and song titles too, especially that of track two, "Fuck This Place". Could be an anthem for folks sick of living in, say, Kentucky (from whence Cadaver In Drag hail). Plus, they get points for this being released on the Animal Disguise label, run by one of the guys from Mammal, whose recent album was an Aquarius Record Of The Week, last week. That certainly piques our interest. And also then there's more points for this being picked, before it was even released, as an Album Of The Month (October 2007) by pagan pope Julian Cope on his Head Heritage website, which puts 'em in league with such past heavy AQ faves as Harvey Milk, Orthodox, Om, Death Comes Along, Vincent Black Shadow, The Heads, SUNNO))), and others. As always, we recommend reading his reviews.
So, before we even heard this, Cadaver In Drag had already run up the score pretty high in their favor. And now that it's here, and blasting on our stereo, the verdict is: hella more points!! For being a totally fucked, mesmeric mash of doooomic sludge metal and shrill psychedelic noise rock... part Khanate, part Wolf Eyes (or Mammal), and, as Julian Cope sez, part Les Rallizes Denudes. Nasty, noisy, nauseous. Early on in both the first two of this disc's three tracks, some angsty, wretched screams carry on about something or other, but those are quickly forgotten as Cadaver In Drag concentrate on their plodding, powerful instrumental raison d'etre: monomaniacal repetitive riff-bashing, each track an extended, distorted, metallic, trebly throb, crashing and clanging, staying more or less the same for up to 19 minutes in the case of the first and longest cut, the aptly titled "Walking Through The Gates Of Hell". However, subtle, simple shifts in sound do occur, almost as if they're playing their own destroyed dub versions of these compositions. It's like Skullflower covering Super Roots 3 (or 5) by the Boredoms, if you can imagine that sort of sickeningly hypnotic hybrid. Or Eyehategod and Hair Police (a member of whom contributes synths here) locked in a minimal march to death, freaking out with as few chords as possible, but plenty of FX. Or Cavity vs. Harry Pussy... Yowza. And it must be said that Cadaver In Drag does mellow the fuck out for the almost melodic, calm-in-comparison album closer "Secession '61". Nice. Points for that too.
MPEG Stream: "Walking Through The Gates Of Hell"
MPEG Stream: "Secession '61"

CADAVER IN DRAG Raw Child (Animal Disguise Recordings) lp 14.98
Ok, let's start adding 'em up. This band gets point for their name, first off. 'Cadaver In Drag' is both disturbing and humorous enough to be worth a nervous chuckle (it's even funnier if you imagine that they know something about the Swedish death metal band Cadaver that we don't know). And their knack for names extends to album and song titles too, especially that of track two, "Fuck This Place". Could be an anthem for folks sick of living in, say, Kentucky (from whence Cadaver In Drag hail). Plus, they get points for this being released on the Animal Disguise label, run by one of the guys from Mammal, whose recent album was an Aquarius Record Of The Week, last week. That certainly piques our interest. And also then there's more points for this being picked, before it was even released, as an Album Of The Month (October 2007) by pagan pope Julian Cope on his Head Heritage website, which puts 'em in league with such past heavy AQ faves as Harvey Milk, Orthodox, Om, Death Comes Along, Vincent Black Shadow, The Heads, SUNNO))), and others. As always, we recommend reading his reviews.
So, before we even heard this, Cadaver In Drag had already run up the score pretty high in their favor. And now that it's here, and blasting on our stereo, the verdict is: hella more points!! For being a totally fucked, mesmeric mash of doooomic sludge metal and shrill psychedelic noise rock... part Khanate, part Wolf Eyes (or Mammal), and, as Julian Cope sez, part Les Rallizes Denudes. Nasty, noisy, nauseous. Early on in both the first two of this disc's three tracks, some angsty, wretched screams carry on about something or other, but those are quickly forgotten as Cadaver In Drag concentrate on their plodding, powerful instrumental raison d'etre: monomaniacal repetitive riff-bashing, each track an extended, distorted, metallic, trebly throb, crashing and clanging, staying more or less the same for up to 19 minutes in the case of the first and longest cut, the aptly titled "Walking Through The Gates Of Hell". However, subtle, simple shifts in sound do occur, almost as if they're playing their own destroyed dub versions of these compositions. It's like Skullflower covering Super Roots 3 (or 5) by the Boredoms, if you can imagine that sort of sickeningly hypnotic hybrid. Or Eyehategod and Hair Police (a member of whom contributes synths here) locked in a minimal march to death, freaking out with as few chords as possible, but plenty of FX. Or Cavity vs. Harry Pussy... Yowza. And it must be said that Cadaver In Drag does mellow the fuck out for the almost melodic, calm-in-comparison album closer "Secession '61". Nice. Points for that too.
MPEG Stream: "Walking Through The Gates Of Hell"
MPEG Stream: "Secession '61"

CADAVER YELLETH AT AMBER TOWER Code: Algeria (Res Adversae Productions) cd ep 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the same mysterious Russian otherworld that brought us the blackened genius of Ithdabquth Qliphoth comes the amazingly monickered Cadaver Yelleth At Amber Tower, which as far as we can tell is one of the many side projects that IQ mainman AL-LA-ShT-ORR employs to explore some seriously twisted and esoteric sounds.
And it doesn't get much more esoteric than this. Falling somewhere between the mysterious shortwave broadcasts of the Conet Project, and the disembodied ghostly blacknoise of Prurient, Code:Algeria is a strange sonic artifact, a manufactured lost transmission from the abyss, voices from some recovered black box recorder, broadcast from some other dimension, travelling through the atmosphere, gathering strange distortions and interference as it goes, a dizzying assemblage of beeps and hiss and warm buzzing textures, the voices speaking French? Arabic? Russian? Hard to tell, distorted as they are, 3 voices, 4 voices, the cadence and interplay almost musical, interrupted by bursts of hiss and sonar like pings, by the second track, some woozy warbly organ has joined the mix, the hiss sounds more scuplted, stuttering and skittering almost rhythmically, still wound around those strange voices, and the hiss taking on an almost Sunroof! like melodiousness, but those voices, continue to haunt and perplex, is it a military exercise? Is it something more sinister? Definitely sounds like it. Whatever it is, it's fantastic, and enthralling, and like the Conet Project, transcends its parts to become melodic and musical and surprisingly listenable. For field recording freeks too, especially ones into EVP and the Ghost Orchid and the like...
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

CALABI-YAU Compactified (Faria) cd 18.98
This Russian dark-ambient duo have named themselves after two mathematicians (Eugenio Calabi and Shing-Tung Yau) who specialized in differential geometry and collaborated on defining a hypertechnical thesis which was later expanded through string theory. It's unclear whether these electronic cosmonauts have a background in high-level mathematics, although they do give a rudimentary explanation (in English) as to the metaphors that they are seeking through their music towards their namesake's research: as string theory describes poly-dimensional spacetime as coiled up and unobservable amidst those dimensions which are able to be seen. A clinical distance is duly noted in the sounds grafted onto this CD, as billowing clouds of synthetic mist and slow-motion shadow streaked across the refined surface of this album. But at the same time, Compactified isn't a completely detached piece of inhuman computer music trapped by the restraints of pure mimicry. There is a sense of the sublime which hovers throughout the album, the mystery of what we do not know about our own universe even as science makes great advances as to its origins, and the cosmological beauty which parallels the subatomic and the galactic. At times, Calabi-Yau recalls some of Lustmord's investigations of sound minus the death obsession; at times, Aidan Baker's softly modelled ambience is not far from earshot.
MPEG Stream: "Voie Lactee"
MPEG Stream: "Ocean Heliomorfique"

CALDERA LAKES Arranged (Ecstatic Peace) cassette 9.98
Kevin Shields! There's a name that garners a lot of attention; and it's pretty obvious why Eva Aguila uses that moniker for her scalding noise ventures which she has broadcast up and down the West Coast. We're sure that a few must have stumbled into grimy warehouse noise shows expecting The Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine to be slumming it, instead to find a woman behind a table of pedals and some weird typewriter looking thing, all of which sizzle and shriek with a blaring electricity. So, if the ruse has ever drawn anybody in, were they pissed? Bemused? Hard to guess, but in addition to her activities as Kevin Shields, Aguila also records and performs in the duo Caldera Lakes with Brittany Gould. Here, they swing between deconstructed dream-time, avant-folk meanderings and full-on noise mode. Everything on this tape is swimming in a suitably lo-fi soup that could be the shittiness of this cassette (ostensibly a 'professional' duplication job) or the antique haze purposefully grafted onto the production. Detached folksongs strummed in monotone on guitar, with spluttered events, eerie tones, and haunted voices that drone-on creating a vibe that's not too far from those of Christina Carter or Grouper; but as these tracks proceed, convulsive noises ramp their activity from minor overloads on a four-track into concussion bomb explosions muffled through the constant gauze of tape hiss. Elsewhere, percussive scrabblings trickle through a multitude of delay pedals, forming stoned / hypnogogic patterns in keeping with some of the early experiments by Zoviet France (e.g. Eostre, Signal Gesture Threat, etc.). Static electricity cracks the ether around these phasing delays gradually building into another swelling cloud of ominous charged particles. Limited to 100 copies!

CALE, JOHN Dream Interpretation: Inside The Dream Syndicate Volume II (Table Of The Elements) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Second in a three-disc series of recordings culled from John Cale's personal archive of material from the late '60s. Upon listening to these visceral documents, one realizes that Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, was more likely than not the one responsible for the wailing screech and howl that makes such Velvets songs as "Sister Ray" so stunning, and that it was the push and pull of his drone-leanings balanced with Lou Reed's more conventional songwriting that made the band great. Here, the Welshman Cale bestows upon us two pieces recorded with kindred spirit Tony Conrad on violin, with Cale on viola -- their twenty minute "Dream Interpretation" is a wonderful shimmering drone that is at once warm and organic yet also metallic and grating. "Ex-Cathedra", our favorite track here, is from 1967/68 and features Cale simply pumping on Vox organ, conjuring up yet another tense yet melodic, trebly drone that's macabre (isn't the sound of an organ often delightfully macabre?) and strangely lulling. Other tracks include Cale making solo electronic sounds, and a 'duet' with Angus Maclise (another founding member of the Velvet Underground) on cimbalon, an Eastern European hammered dulcimer. The only dud features Cale "playing" piano, innards and all, a rather been-there-done-that idea even in the late '60s.
If you're a fan of the noise-loving modern heirs to the Cale droneologist throne, bands such as Skullflower, Pelt, and Sunroof!, you've got to hear this. Recommended.
RealAudio clip: "Ex-Cathedra"

CALE, JOHN New York in the 1960's (Table Of The Elements) 5lp 64.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Totally gorgeous vinyl reissue of the three archival cds released by Table Of The Elements a few years back, that documented Cale's early sixties minimal explorations. This new version comes housed in a black lacquered 12" box, beautifully silkscreened, with a hand screened oversized booklet (including extensive liner notes and a libretto) inside as well. In addition to the material from the three cds, there are two bonus tracks also previously released, that appeared originally on the Jack Smith compilations also on Table Of The Elements. Here's what we had to say about the three volumes originally.
John Cale's "Sun Blindness Music" is the first in a trilogy of archival recordings from this founder of the Velvet Underground. Much has been made already about Cale's contribution to both the history of rock and the history of minimalism, so we'll cut to the chase and get to the contents of this album, which features three of Cale's earliest compositions from the mid to late '60s. The title track spans almost 45 minutes, with Cale sustaining clusters of notes on a Vox Continental Organ, before indeterminately hammering down Phillip Glass-esque arpeggiations and then returning to the open ended drone. The two following tracks are quite good representations of '60s minimalism - with the proto-Amon Duul guitar strum of "Summer Heat" and the eerie electronic modulations on "Second Fortress."
Second in this trilogy of recordings culled from John Cale's personal archive of material from the late '60s. Upon listening to these visceral documents, one realizes that Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, was more likely than not the one responsible for the wailing screech and howl that makes such Velvets songs as "Sister Ray" so stunning, and that it was the push and pull of his drone-leanings balanced with Lou Reed's more conventional songwriting that made the band great. Here, the Welshman Cale bestows upon us two pieces recorded with kindred spirit Tony Conrad on violin, and Cale on viola -- their twenty minute "Dream Interpretation" is a wonderful shimmering drone that is at once warm and organic yet also metallic and grating. "Ex-Cathedra", our favorite track here, is from 1967/68 and features Cale simply pumping on Vox organ, conjuring up yet another tense yet melodic, trebly drone that's macabre (isn't the sound of an organ often delightfully macabre?) and strangely lulling. Other tracks include Cale making solo electronic sounds, and a 'duet' with Angus Maclise (another founding member of the Velvet Underground) on cimbalon, an Eastern European hammered dulcimer. The only dud features Cale "playing" piano, innards and all, a rather been-there-done-that idea even in the late '60s.
As with volume II of this series, there are a few great tracks on volume III that make the price of ths disc worth it, and some throwaways that are of limited interest. The 10-minute "Stainless Steel Gamelan" track is the highlight here, and it's excellent even though it has nothing to do with gamelan per se. It features the Velvet's Sterling Morrison and Cale both "playing" the same guitar at the same time, an experiment which resulted in shimmering atmospherics and metallic percussive pulses, sounds that're as usefully evocative for today's DJ Shadow or Aphex Twin as they are here, maybe 30 years earlier. Also included on this disc is a funny hoedown of a piece wherein Cale plays with tape delay, Angus Maclise pounds various hand drums, and Terry Jennings -- a free saxophonist and crony of Lamonte Young -- sings on soprano sax. There's also a tremendous piece with Tony Conrad on a Vox reverb unit and Cale on electric piano -- it sounds like the soundtrack to a nightmare that won't end.
If you're a fan of the noise-loving modern heirs to the Cale droneologist throne, bands such as Skullflower, Pelt, and Sunroof!, you've got to hear this. Recommended.

CALE, JOHN Stainless Gamelan: Inside The Dream Syndicate Volume III (Table Of The Elements) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Third in a three-disc series of recordings culled from John Cale's personal archive of material from the late '60s. Upon listening to these visceral documents, one realizes that Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, was more likely than not the one responsible for the wailing screech and howl that makes such Velvets songs as "Sister Ray" so stunning, and that it was the push and pull of his drone-leanings balanced with Lou Reed's more conventional songwriting that made the band great.
As with volume II of this series, there are a few great tracks here that make the price of ths disc worth it, and some throwaways that're of limited interest. The 10-minute "Stainless Steel Gamelan" track is the highlight here, and it's excellent even thought it has nothing to do with gamelan per se. It features the Velvet's Sterling Morrison and Cale both "playing" the same guitar at the same time, an experiment which resulted in shimmering atmospherics and metallic percussive pulses, sounds that're as usefully evocative for today's DJ Shadow or Aphex Twin as they are here, maybe 30 years earlier. Also included on this disc is a funny hoedown of a piece wherein Cale plays with tape delay, Angus Maclise pounds various hand drums, and Terry Jennings -- a free saxophonist and crony of Lamonte Young -- sings on soprano sax. There's also a tremendous piece with Tony Conrad on a Vox reverb unit and Cale on electric piano -- it sounds like the soundtrack to a nightmare that won't end.
If you're a fan of the noise-loving modern heirs to the Cale droneologist throne, bands such as Skullflower, Pelt, and Sunroof!, you've got to hear this. Recommended.
RealAudio clip: "Stainless Steel Gamelan"
RealAudio clip: "Terry's Cha-Cha"

CALE, JOHN Sun Blindness Music (Table Of The Elements) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
John Cale's "Sun Blindness Music" is the first release in a planned trilogy of archival recordings from this founder of the Velvet Underground. Much has been made already about Cale's contribution to both the history of rock and the history of minimalism, so we'll cut to the chase and get to the contents of this album, which features three of Cale's earliest compositions from the mid to late '60s. The title track spans almost 45 minutes, with Cale sustaining clusters of notes on a Vox Continental Organ, before indeterminately hammering down Phillip Glass-esque arpeggiations and then returning to the open ended drone. The two following tracks are quite good representations of '60s minimalism - with the proto-Amon Duul guitar strum of "Summer Heat" and the eerie electronic modulations on "Second Fortress."
An essential artifact!
RealAudio clip: "Second Fortress"
RealAudio clip: "Summer Heat"

CALE, JOHN Sun Blindness Music (Table Of The Elements) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
John Cale's "Sun Blindness Music" is the first release in a planned trilogy of archival recordings from this founder of the Velvet Underground. Much has been made already about Cale's contribution to both the history of rock and the history of minimalism, so we'll cut to the chase and get to the contents of this album, which features three of Cale's earliest compositions from the mid to late '60s. The title track spans almost 45 minutes, with Cale sustaining clusters of notes on a Vox Continental Organ, before indeterminately hammering down Phillip Glass-esque arpeggiations and then returning to the open ended drone. The two following tracks are quite good representations of '60s minimalism - with the proto-Amon Duul guitar strum of "Summer Heat" and the eerie electronic modulations on "Second Fortress."
An essential artifact!
RealAudio clip: "Second Fortress"
RealAudio clip: "Summer Heat"

CAMINITI, EVAN Digging The Void (Students Of Decay) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've been trying to get these in stock for a while now, solo record number two from Evan Caminiti, one half of psychedelic doom drone duo Barn Owl. The other Caminiti solo record, Psychic Mud Shrine, introduced us to a world not all that far removed from Barn Owl, or Elm, the solo project from Caminiti's partner in Barn Owl Jon Porras (who just so happens to work at aQ!), and Digging The Void does indeed delve even further into that same blissy druggy void.
Long, low, slow tones, throb, and pulse, layered tones emit subtle overtones, melodies are spidery and barely there, visible through the gauzy whir of the droning guitars, a series of spaced out otherworldly ragas, super minimal and intimate, but at the same time, sweeping and epic. Unlike Elm's, and to a lesser extent, Barn Owl's tendency to get HEAVY, and to dabble in some SUNNO)))-like density, Caminiti keeps it hushed and scaled back, these sonic rituals are not meant to conjure up the same sort of blackened mystery, instead they drift through soft clouds of hum and whir, fragments of Appalachian folk hover over deep rumbles, the sounds are ghostly, the arrangements spectral and ethereal, laced with twang, but just as likely to smooth all the notes and melodies into softened streaks of monochrome blur, and on at least one track, the drone is jettisoned, and an acoustic guitar unfurls long tendrils of steel string buzz and classic folky melody, a darkly mysterious coda, to an already haunting and murky songsuite. So gorgeous.
And of course, ULTRA LIMITED! These are probably the last copies we can get our hands on, you have been warned...
MPEG Stream: "Weaving The Great Smoke Loom"
MPEG Stream: "Glowing Corpse"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Naked Swim"

CAMINITI, EVAN Distant Lights (Trensmat) 7" 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Barn Owl are turning into a regular cottage industry, with a record just out, a new one on the way, and a seemingly never ending procession of solo records from both Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti. Not that were complaining. We love this stuff and can't get enough. And seems like most folks out there feel the same. Which brings us to this, one of two new 7"s on Irish label Trensmat (the other is from Astral Social Club and is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), the latest missive from Caminiti, and it's a good one, the A side is a thick billowing cloud of soft guitar noise, of swirling guitar whir, shot through with streaks of minor key melody, shards of buzz, the vibe is hazy and thick, and almost caustic in places, before giving way to a super serene bit of shimmery drift, all minimal thrum and slow motion melody, the whole track sounding like it could have come from the same sessions that produced Caminiti's most recent full length.
The flipside is another bit of hazy guitar sprawl, this one way more reminiscent of Caminiti's duo Barn Owl, with plenty of Earth-y twang, the sound deserty and desolate sounding, drifting and dusty, sun dapped and hauntingly cinematic, again finishing off with a more muted and minimal, darkly tranquil outro.
SUPER LIMITED, the label doesn't say how many exactly, but there's a good chance that these are the only copies we'll be able to get since we had to pre-order these, and the label only made as many as were ordered...

CAMINITI, EVAN Dreamless Sleep (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
Dreamless Sleep is the latest from Caminiti, whose day job is as one half of twang flecked drone duo Barn Owl, and like his partner in Barn Owl, Jon Porras, Caminiti's solo records don't always deviate too much from the Barn Owl M.O., offering up variations of the duo's distinctive dusky sound, with the various individual solo records often easily mistaken for proper Barn Owl record, which is not a bad thing at all, Caminiti and Porras have undeniable musical chemistry, and both have proven to be perfectly capable on their own, both experimenting more with keyboards and synthesizers lately, which of course ironically seems to have been influencing their work as a duo as well.
All of that said, Dreamless Sleep definitely finds Caminiti pushing his sounds into uncharted territories, ditching much of the twang, and the droned out mesmer for something way more kosmische and downright new age-y at times. In fact, if it weren't for the fierce guitar tones and muted buzz, the sounds here could easily slip into full on new age bliss out. Thankfully, Caminiti takes that new age drift, and weds it to his dense guitarscapery, letting neither overshadow the other, resulting in tracks that manage to be both dreamy and ethereal, dark and cinematic, wrapping washed out shimmering synths in spidery sinister melodies, and wreathing hushed ethereal ambience in clouds of ominous thrum, the recordings adding even more texture and density, gristly and on the verge of slipping into the red, the sounds blown out and occasionally corrosive, with some of the tracks slipping into near SUNNO)))-like heft, only you have the shimmery swirl hold it back, and conversely, some of the tracks are so airy and ethereal, it's often just a single slab of crumbling, rumbling blackened thrum, that keeps things safely on the darkside. It's like the perfect music for some seriously psychedelic planetarium show, the music evoking massive sprawls of space, and the ever shifting cosmos, dying stars and black holes, planets being born and epic swaths of glimmering starfields.
MPEG Stream: "Leaving The Island"
MPEG Stream: "Bright Midnight"
MPEG Stream: "Symmetry"

CAMINITI, EVAN Dreamless Sleep (Thrill Jockey) lp 16.98
Dreamless Sleep is the latest from Caminiti, whose day job is as one half of twang flecked drone duo Barn Owl, and like his partner in Barn Owl, Jon Porras, Caminiti's solo records don't always deviate too much from the Barn Owl M.O., offering up variations of the duo's distinctive dusky sound, with the various individual solo records often easily mistaken for proper Barn Owl record, which is not a bad thing at all, Caminiti and Porras have undeniable musical chemistry, and both have proven to be perfectly capable on their own, both experimenting more with keyboards and synthesizers lately, which of course ironically seems to have been influencing their work as a duo as well.
All of that said, Dreamless Sleep definitely finds Caminiti pushing his sounds into uncharted territories, ditching much of the twang, and the droned out mesmer for something way more kosmische and downright new age-y at times. In fact, if it weren't for the fierce guitar tones and muted buzz, the sounds here could easily slip into full on new age bliss out. Thankfully, Caminiti takes that new age drift, and weds it to his dense guitarscapery, letting neither overshadow the other, resulting in tracks that manage to be both dreamy and ethereal, dark and cinematic, wrapping washed out shimmering synths in spidery sinister melodies, and wreathing hushed ethereal ambience in clouds of ominous thrum, the recordings adding even more texture and density, gristly and on the verge of slipping into the red, the sounds blown out and occasionally corrosive, with some of the tracks slipping into near SUNNO)))-like heft, only you have the shimmery swirl hold it back, and conversely, some of the tracks are so airy and ethereal, it's often just a single slab of crumbling, rumbling blackened thrum, that keeps things safely on the darkside. It's like the perfect music for some seriously psychedelic planetarium show, the music evoking massive sprawls of space, and the ever shifting cosmos, dying stars and black holes, planets being born and epic swaths of glimmering starfields.
MPEG Stream: "Leaving The Island"
MPEG Stream: "Bright Midnight"
MPEG Stream: "Symmetry"