CHILD READERS Memory and Fantasy (Mallard Lake) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"It's not magic, it's music". The Child Readers are the duo of Jewelled Antler mainstay Loren Chasse and vocalist Jason Honea of The Knit Separates. This, their third album (the two earlier ones were cd-rs on JA, now out of print) is something like an audio postcard from their own far-off fantasyland... They give free reign to their creativity, with tracks here ranging from textural noise/drone of near Merzbowian dimensions to the folky acoustic song-fragments seemingly recorded on a picnic in the woods...We hear child and adult voices mingling, alongside tape spooling and twinkling tinkling toy piano or chiming music box sounds...Honea's sensitive, melodic vocals might be accompanied equally by sparsely strummed guitar and the burble of a brook. Lyrically, he could be taking inspiration from children's stories -- that is, stories BY children. Such as the weirdness of "The Shark Airplane". Other tracks, like "Sexual Anguish (including The Psychic Castle)" can only be the work of grown up children. Full of interesting textures and real emotion, this is yet another excellent Jewelled Antler-related release, something like Honea's inner child being babysat by the Blithe Sons. Euro import, limited.
MPEG Stream: "Voyaging (The Reds, Pinks And Purples)"
MPEG Stream: "The Shark Airplane"

CHILD, ANTHONY The Space Between People And Things (NNA Tapes) lp 19.98
Certainly one of the best thing we've heard to date from the hip electronica label NNA Tapes, and it comes from Anthony Child, better known under his techno moniker Surgeon, as well as for his brutalist British Murder Boys collaboration with Karl O'Connor. Sadly, we've not carried much in the way of the Surgeon catalog, but his variation on techno structuralism is informed by an industrial tension that balances force, control, and rhythm without much melody to get in the way of his graceful yet claustrophobic trax, many of which are on par with the likes of Plastikman and Wolfgang Voigt's first album as Gas. On very rare occasions, Child records under his own name, under the auspices of eschewing the techno underpinnings in favor of tonal abstractions. That's what we've got here on The Space Between People And Things, which opens with a Spartan, if highly squelchy step sequence that rotates between white hot slabs of accelerated white noise. He follows this with an elegant oceanic piece that alternates between several shortwave radioteletype frequencies, which produce the skittering electronic patterns in the delivery of encoded data from radio-linked terminals. It's an outmoded means of communication for sure, but one that you still hear on shortwave today mostly from the US Coast Guard and some governmental organizations. It's still a very eerie sound, with plenty of paranoid X-files overtones, all of which Child happily mines on this album. The second side of the album could actually be something that he might have produced for Surgeon, but with the heavy beats entirely removed. Here's an arpeggiated ambient swath of analog electronics that have all of the deep-space cosmology you'd get from Tangerine Dream's Alpha Centauri or those Eno & Cluster records. There is a bit more of a cybernetic sheen to Child's production than the prog-synth smoothness of his predecessors; and he pushes this toward the end of side two with some sharply rendered swells of sinewave oscillations which follow a similar oceanic patterning from the shortwave work on side one. This would be one for fans of Daphne Oram, Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith, and BJ Nilsen. Recommended for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Side A (extract)"
MPEG Stream: "Side B (extract)"

CHION, MICHEL Requiem (Sub Rosa) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

CHOP SHOP Oxide (23five) cd 14.98
LAST COPIES AVAILABLE!!! When we heard that one of our favorite noise albums was nearly out of print, we grabbed a bunch. If you've not gotten a hold of this album, this is probably your last chance! Here's what we said about it a while back...
Akita. Menche. Blankenship. Dilloway. These are the men of noise with discographies the size of small town phone books, proving their might in the international noise community by the sheer audaciousness of their output. But then again, you might really only need a single testament to stake your claim as one of the greatest noise musicians. Chop Shop has chosen the latter tactic, with Oxide being that sole document, after a relatively tiny back catalogue of cassette only releases, a couple of cd-rs, and two infamous 10"s. Both released through RRR, the first was the Steel Plate 2x10" that was literally bound to a steel plate; and the second was a split 10" with Small Cruel Party that was literally cut in half, making playback a dangerous proposition for the needle on your record player. Both of those releases have long been out of print; and despite the hushed respect that those 10"s demand, Chop Shop has kept a low profile. A very low profile. Hence, after a career that has spanned nearly two decades, Oxide is his first proper cd. And it's stunning.
The sole proprietor of Chop Shop is New York based noise technician Scott Konzelmann, whose audio demolition revolves around speaker constructions forged out of hammered plate metal and disfigured commercial grade pipes, which focus particular frequencies and resonant overtones into swarming orchestras of rust, noise, drone, and static. Tape has long been Konzelmann's medium of choice for recording; and like William Basinski before him, Konzelmann endures the self-disintegration of the medium whilst transcribing the sounds of Oxide digitally. Where Basinski's vocabulary of decay is all romance and melancholy, Konzelmann's is muscular and urgently present. Oxide offers a metallurgist's din where compressed air strikes hard steel and machine vibrations generate noxious resonant frequencies in neighboring vents. Konzelmann composes the old school way, with a razor blade and pieces of tape, generating jump cut edits alongside the self-generated debris from the magnetic literally falling apart. These grey, dead-tech drones thus rupture and explode along the faultlines of those edits, and Oxide emerges as a forceful, dynamic album without resorting to puerile shock tactics. This is a seriously great noise album for anybody with a passing interest in Broken Flag, Hansen Records, or early Hafler Trio.
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 1) "
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 2)"
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 3)"

CHORA(S)SAN TIME-COURT MIRAGE (CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX) Live At The Grimm Museum Volume One (Sonic Acts / Important Records) cd 17.98
A beautifully extensive live piece of long form minimalism from one of its most beguiling practitioners, Catherine Christer Hennix (remember The Electric Harpsichord?). Recorded at The Grimm Museum in Berlin in 2011, "Blues Dhikr Al-Salam (Blues Al Maqam)" is a 49 minute piece for voice, brass, computer and live electronics performed by Hennix and the newly formed electronic ensemble, Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, which includes aQ favorite dronologist Michael Northam on "time-mirage delay" and as the sound engineer. Originally commissioned for La Monte Young's 70th Birthday in 2005 as an 'infinitary' computer sound/animation environment, this is the first live recording of this piece. Modulating raga drones shift in an array of harmonic frequencies aided by layers of deep plaintive horns and processed vocals. There is a deep Tibetan Buddhist philosophy that flows throughout all of Hennix's work and in which she details in rather high-minded language inside this package, which would be difficult to paraphrase here, but the writing's closing line may sum up this piece nicely: "One of the Thousand sounds of Om."
MPEG Stream: "Blues Dhikr Al-Salam (Blues Al Maqam) 1"
MPEG Stream: "Blues Dhikr Al-Salam (Blues Al Maqam) 2"

CHORD Flora (Neurot) cd 14.98
Avid readers of our blog probably already got a taste of Chord, a high concept super group, who craft longform compositions, each one the sonic realization of a single chord. Some folks might remember the group Physics from San Diego, a group who did something similar, with a revolving lineup, at one time or another featuring most famous or semi famous San Diego rockers among their ranks, and who typically featured multiple guitarists, all playing a single chord, quite often a C chord.
The group Chord, featuring one member of Pelican along with several other Chicago area musicians, are bit more highbrow with their 'Chords'. This record displaying four of them: Am, Am7, E9 and Gmaj(flat 13). As we mentioned in our blog post too, for an April Fool's Day a while back we imagined the ultimate doomdrone record where Earth, Boris and SUNNO))) would each play one not of a chord, and that chord would be the release. Well, how prescient were we?
Here the players are each assigned a note but are allowed to do whatever they like with that note, octave, timbre, playing style, effects, the various players letting their notes drift and intertwine with the other notes, the resulting chord a lush, cloud of sound, constantly shifting and transforming, changing shape, slipping from hushed shimmer to corrosive buzz and back again, sometimes building to a Sunroof!-like wall of sound, other times, so minimal it seems to be just particles and fragments floating in an expanse of soft focus whirs and whispers. Some parts are simple and strummed and sound like a proper song, but those parts soon blossom into something much more layered and abstract. A Minor is our favorite chord, and the Am track here just completely fries the chord, a cacophonous chaotic wall of crumbling churning super distorted buzz and skree, blurred into an almost hypnotic slab of corrosive pulsing noise. It's all quite dramatic and epic, quite beautiful, stately at certain moments, almost chaotic and crumbling at others, anyone into Conrad, Cale, Maclise, Flynt and especially Branca and Chatham will definitely dig this. As well as guitardrone freaks who count Fear Falls Burning, RST, Seconds In Formaldehyde, Elm, Continuum and the like among their favorites.
MPEG Stream: "Gmaj (flat13)"
MPEG Stream: "Am"

CHORD Gmaj7 (MIE) lp 23.00
These high concept instrumentalists are most definitely not the first group to explore the subtleties of single chords; twentieth century classical music is rife with extended chord performances, and more recently San Diego rock minimalists Physics based their entire career on performing a C chord - it's just that Chord the group are the first to present their single chord process so overtly. They're called Chord to begin with, and each track is titled the specific chord that is being played/explored. And sure, there's some seriously academic stuff going on, the liner notes of their records reveal a deep understanding of music theory, but it's all in the application of the theory, after all we didn't pick this record up to LEARN anything!! Regardless, for whatever academic underpinnings are present, the music of Chord is in fact quite lovely, dark billowing swirls of deep drones and lush chordal whir, this particular chord was already explored on the group's Flora record, but here the group revisit it, and offer two sidelong explorations/reinterpretations/improvisations. The first, subtitled "Stasis", is not in fact as static as the title might lead one to believe. It's a slowly unfurling sprawl of layered low end drones, of subtly shifting overtones, lush textures, rumbling buzz, deep swirling shimmer, super hypnotic for sure, with the sound slowly building to a heavy buzzing SUNNO))) like dirge, but with headphones this wall of crumbling super distorted sound is revealed to be rife with ever shifting sonic colorations, the titular chord being pulled apart, making the inner workings audible, a blackened buzz transformed into a dense swirl of prismatic tonal thrum writ epic and majestic and surprisingly heavy.
The flipside, subtitled "Kinesis", doesn't seem to offer up as much movement as the subtitle suggests, although we're now beginning to understand the subtleties of Chord's process, the kinesis here due mostly to the introduction of drums (courtesy of US Maple's Pat Sampson!), the guitars offering up a looped Reich like backdrop to some heavy drum pound, blustery and bombastic, with moments that shift toward more abstract and jazzy, the drums and guitars seemingly at odds, occasionally coming together in stretches of Necks like minimal groove, but more often than not, sparring wildly, before finally blossoming into a heavy blown out blissy psychedelic raga like outro, all soaring sunburnt guitar buzz and loping tripped out rhythmic pummel. Nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Comes packaged in a silkscreened fold over sleeve, and includes TWO download coupons, one for the record proper, and another for a 2010 live set at the Empty Bottle in Chicago.
MPEG Stream: "Gmaj7 (Stasis)"
MPEG Stream: "Gmaj7 (Kinesis)"

CHORD Progression (Important) cd 14.98
The return of high concept ambient dronescapers Chord, a sort-of side project of post metal heavies Pelican. Chord, as their name implies, only ever play a single chord, each track a different one, this time around it's EbMaj9, Gm11 and D6. Sounds boring, but it really isn't, in fact probably most drone outfits play one chord their whole career, but this, this is something more, with each member contributing a note, the notes forming a chord, and all of them playing different instruments, different tempos and timbres, the guitars shimmer warmly, the piano (?), swirls and drifts in a sea of hazy reverb, there seems to be some burbling bass too, it's all woven into something lush and dreamy, hypnotic and mesmerizing.
When we reviewed the first Chord album, we pointed out that we had come up with the idea of a 'chord' band on our April Fool's list way back when, with SUNNO))), Earth and Boris each tackling one of the notes, to make a mighty E chord. We still like to think that's where they got the idea. We also mentioned the late great Physics, a San Diego supergroup who always played a C, long spaced out jams, with multiple guitar players, always C. But as we mentioned before, Chord is a much more thoughtful project, definitely on the nerdy side of the spectrum, I mean, they made a song called "EbMaj9", and the group is as much about concept for the players as it is about the sound, but whatever the inspiration, the resulting soundscapes play out like our favorite guitardrone records. Smoldering slow burning expanses of deep layered thrum, hazy, washed out drifts of abstract choral blur. Whereas the other record occasionally built into Sunroof!-worthy squalls, Progression seems to be much more minimal, hushed and restrained, the only deviation is near the end of the epic 40 minute "Gm11", where things get full on heavy, a crushing avalanche of crumbling, superdistorted, blur and buzz, before slipping into the final track, a surprising bit of twang flecked folkiness, wreathed in a hazy buzz, and underpinned by some FX shimmer, but otherwise, sun dappled and dreamy, and for the record, all in the chord of D6.
And speaking of single chords, the most recent Austerity Program, besides being an awesome record, did something similar, in that they only ever used one chord, for the whole record, the band was appalled that no one noticed, but it just goes to show you what someone can do with a single chord, making more with less, a concept that Chord also embody, especially considering their sound has most definitely blossomed into something much more than just a quirky concept. Really great. And WAY recommended for fans of Fear Falls Burning, Final, R.Y.N., Elm, RST, Vulture Club and other practitioners of guitardronedrift.
And just to make things totally confusing, the cd and the lp are TOTALLY different. Progressions is a single collection of songs spread out over both formats, so the record starts on the cd, and continues on the lp, the music on each exclusive to that format. So if you do want ALL of Progression, you have to buy both, although most folks would probably be fine with one or the other.
MPEG Stream: "EbMaj9 (Descent)"
MPEG Stream: "Gm11 (Pelagic)"

CHORD Progression (Important) 2lp 22.00
The return of high concept ambient dronescapers Chord, a sort-of side project of post metal heavies Pelican. Chord, as their name implies, only ever play a single chord, each track a different one, this time around it's EbMaj9, Gm11 and D6. Sounds boring, but it really isn't, in fact probably most drone outfits play one chord their whole career, but this, this is something more, with each member contributing a note, the notes forming a chord, and all of them playing different instruments, different tempos and timbres, the guitars shimmer warmly, the piano (?), swirls and drifts in a sea of hazy reverb, there seems to be some burbling bass too, it's all woven into something lush and dreamy, hypnotic and mesmerizing.
When we reviewed the first Chord album, we pointed out that we had come up with the idea of a 'chord' band on our April Fool's list way back when, with SUNNO))), Earth and Boris each tackling one of the notes, to make a mighty E chord. We still like to think that's where they got the idea. We also mentioned the late great Physics, a San Diego supergroup who always played a C, long spaced out jams, with multiple guitar players, always C. But as we mentioned before, Chord is a much more thoughtful project, definitely on the nerdy side of the spectrum, I mean, they made a song called "EbMaj9", and the group is as much about concept for the players as it is about the sound, but whatever the inspiration, the resulting soundscapes play out like our favorite guitardrone records. Smoldering slow burning expanses of deep layered thrum, hazy, washed out drifts of abstract choral blur. Whereas the other record occasionally built into Sunroof!-worthy squalls, Progression seems to be much more minimal, hushed and restrained, the only deviation is near the end of the epic 40 minute "Gm11", where things get full on heavy, a crushing avalanche of crumbling, superdistorted, blur and buzz, before slipping into the final track, a surprising bit of twang flecked folkiness, wreathed in a hazy buzz, and underpinned by some FX shimmer, but otherwise, sun dappled and dreamy, and for the record, all in the chord of D6.
And speaking of single chords, the most recent Austerity Program, besides being an awesome record, did something similar, in that they only ever used one chord, for the whole record, the band was appalled that no one noticed, but it just goes to show you what someone can do with a single chord, making more with less, a concept that Chord also embody, especially considering their sound has most definitely blossomed into something much more than just a quirky concept. Really great. And WAY recommended for fans of Fear Falls Burning, Final, R.Y.N., Elm, RST, Vulture Club and other practitioners of guitardronedrift.
And just to make things totally confusing, the cd and the lp are TOTALLY different. Progressions is a single collection of songs spread out over both formats, so the record starts on the cd, and continues on the lp, the music on each exclusive to that format. So if you do want ALL of Progression, you have to buy both, although most folks would probably be fine with one or the other.
MPEG Stream: "EbMaj9 (Descent)"
MPEG Stream: "Gm11 (Pelagic)"

CHORD FORT, THE Smile Louder / Regions Of Memory (3 Acre Floor / Paha Porvari) cd ep 5.98
You can just imagine a bunch of rambunctious childlike outsider artists and freak folk musicians deciding to get all their old sofa cushions and broken instruments and stuffed animals to build a big old Chord Fort in the corner of their practice space / crash pad. And this is sort of the musical equivalent. Jason Honea (who you might remember from Jewelled Antler outfits The Child Readers, the Franciscan Hobbies, as well as the Knit Separates and Teenage Panzercorps) teams up with a couple of other musical miscreants to build their very own Chord Fort, a super lo-fi Steve Reich-ish meditation, a slowly shifting keyboard figure, swathed in tape hiss and fuzzy sonic detritus. Totally mesmerizing, the melody only barely wavering, the fuzz and hiss becoming more and more agitated in the background. The track is titled "Smile Louder" and you can almost imagine hear a face trying to sustain a huge smile for the whole 8 minutes, his muscles twitching, the strain showing on his face, beads of sweat dripping into his eyes, the genuine toothy smile slowly becoming more of a sneer as the corners of his mouth begin to droop. It's a gorgeously tense minimalist exploration. "Smile Louder" is followed up by an ultra brief, one minute long, dreamy ambient coda, a warm whir beneath simple chimes, children's voices and a creepy music box melody.
Another gorgeously packaged cd-r -- full color cover, an amazing painting, printed inside as well, a folded over, textured paper insert, and the disc is professionally printed and quite striking.
Only 9 minutes long, but also only six bucks!
MPEG Stream: "Smile Louder"

CHRIS & COSEY Heartbeat (CTI) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Throbbing Gristle ceased to exist (for the first time) in 1981, shortly after the transgressive industrialists performed in San Francisco in May of that year. TG were deft in their manipulation of media, ominously stating that "The Mission is terminated," with the 'mission' referring to their numerous stark proclamations against society at large conjoined with their adventurous manglings of noise, rhythm, and atonality. But there's another rather self-evident historical fact: that TG's Genesis P-Orridge broke up with fellow bandmate & long-term partner Cosey Fanny Tutti. Shortly thereafter, Cosey and fellow TG member Chris Carter struck out on their own (with a romantic partnership not far behind), and later on in 1981, Chris & Cosey released their first solo project, the minimal wave / synthpunk masterpiece Heartbeat. In TG, Carter's propensity for beguiling electronic melodies and disco rhythms could be heard on such classic tracks as "United" and "Hot On The Heels Of Love." Both of these were signature tracks for Carter's aesthetic, which espoused an economic proto-techno approach to drum machine rhythms and heavily sequenced electro pulse melodies. Such has been the template for Chris & Cosey's sound since.
"Put Yourself In Los Angeles" opens the album with a dizzying percolation of flanged electronics which snaps into a militant march of Cosey's gnashed guitars locked against barked samples of a lunatic radio host and insistent rhythms. At least on this track, it's easy to hear the influence that Chris & Cosey would have on the likes of Front 242, Ministry, and Nine Inch Nails. Other tracks such as the metronomic spiralling of "Voodoo" and the downright pastoral birdsounds of "Moorby" looked back to the Krautrock electronic meanderings of Cluster. "Just Like You" is one of Chris & Cosey's finest tracks, oozing with paranoia and dread throughout the slashed noises and found dialogue haunting the minimalist techno-horror sequencing and sustained minor-key melodies. The title track completes the album brilliantly by looking forward to any number of Detroit-inspired techno trax with double timed rhythms emerging out of maudlin, if cybernetic melodies and electronic-pop propulsive sequencing that really does act as a bridge between the realm of Kraftwerk and the British new wave that was bubbling up around Chris & Cosey back in the day. An absolute classic!
MPEG Stream: "Put Yourself In Los Angeles"
MPEG Stream: "Just Like You"
MPEG Stream: "Heartbeat"

CHRISTA PFANGEN Watch Me Getting Back The End (Die Schachtel) cd 17.98
The Die Schachtel label's "Zeit" series devoted to current acts from the Italian avant-garde/indie-rock underground has a couple new releases out now -- discs by Christa Pfangen (reviewed here) and Angelo Petronella (which we'll try to get to next time). The Zeit series started off with the fabulous self-titled album by a band simply named A, hopefully you've checked that one out already (we highlighted it on list 248). This cd is almost just as good. Their fragmented, abstract electro-acoustics, and use of silence as well as sound, definitely puts Christa Pfangen in the same experimental ballpark as A, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, Giuseppe Ielasi, Stefano Pilia, Renato Rinaldi, Larsen, Sinistri/Starfuckers, and other artists from this happenin' scene. Playing "guitars, drums, voices, objects, electroacoustic devices", Christa Pfangen is in fact a duo, comprised of Andrea Belfi (who also has a new solo album out on Hapna by the way) and Mattia Coletti. These ladies have named their band Christa PFANGEN in some sort of odd tribute to Nico, whose real name was Christa PAFFGEN...but beyond that we don't think this has much to do with Nico or her music, though maybe there's some harmonium on here somewhere!
A tangle of nervous drumming and ambient drones, all staticky and stuttery, Watch Me Getting Back The End is both challenging and pretty... they've got a moody melodiousness to 'em not unlike 3/4hadbeeneliminated, or Jewelled Antler projects such as Thuja and the Blithe Sons. Certainly there's a lot here for even the not-so-experimental indie pop fan to mellow out to. String-born notes fall like leaves from a tree, melodies blow away in a gentle wind of drone, whispering voices caress the ear... so nice!
As with all Die Schachtel stuff, the packaging is super spiffy -- a digipak with embossed cover art.
MPEG Stream: "I'm Leaving"
MPEG Stream: "The Nail, The Eye"

CHRISTIAN COSMOS Enthronement By God As The First-Born Of The Dead (Hospital Productions) lp 23.00
Originally released as a super limited quadruple cassette, this fantastic slab of rhythmic gothic industrial weirdness gets reissued on vinyl. Christian Cosmos is Hospital Records / Prurient head honcho and part time Cold Cave-er Dominick Fernow, teamed up with Kris Lapke from Furisubi and something called Alberch, and while we don't know much else about Lapke, we do know these two make a glorious din together here, combining churning industrial rhythms with blown out power electronics, wrapping everything in dense drones and ethereal synth shimmer, a murky washed out miasma driven by looped chunks of machinelike crunch, the sound veering into serious old school eighties industrial, but slowed down and made more caustic and abject, but that bleak rhythmic sprawl perpetually underpinned by haunting melodies, courtesy of Fernow we presume.
The sound slips from rhythmic and industrial to murky lopped mesmer, sounding at times like a Philip Jeck conducted symphony of rusted out old turntables spinning early Ministry 12"s at 16rpm, gauzy and hazy and atmospheric, laced with ornamental skitter, that blossoms into full of crunch and churn. The sound throughout epic and majestic, borderline orchestral at time, the final track a gorgeous bit of vocal driven choral industrial, with looped female vox woven into the black buzz and blurred swirl, tangled up in the roiling rhythms, making for something gorgeously cinematic.

CHRISTIAN COSMOS The Sharp Lines That Delineate His Robes (Bed Of Nails) 12" 17.98
Record number two from Christian Cosmos, just one of the latest projects from Dominick Fernow (Cold Cave, Prurient, Vatican Shadow, Vegas Martyrs, Ash Pool, etc.), who in CC is teamed up with Furisubi's Kris Lapke, and like on their first 12", which we flipped for, CC continue to mine a mutant industrial electro / techno, the sound gritty and grimey, and a little bit blackened, murky, woozy, the vibe subterranean and sinister, swaths of power electronics and swells of kosmische synthscapery underpin churning skeletal rhythms, and mutant house music, laced with haunting cinematic melodies. The sound on this latest 12" is even more dramatic than the first, sounding like the soundtrack to some obscure art film, moody and murky, brooding and ominous, but slipping as easily into something much more eighties sounding, like some stripped down minimal electro pop, as it does into dense, grinding industrial techno-noise, but it's all woven together by a haunting atmosphere, and blurred into a constantly shifting sonic whole, the tracks unfolding like some sonic travelogue of faded melancholy. We mentioned Philip Jeck in our review of the first record, and while this one doesn't feel so overtly looped and Jeck-like, it does ooze the same sort of atmosphere as many of Jeck's pieces, abject expanses of washed out melancholia, the mood dark and dolorous, the rhythms not so much driving, as trance inducing and mesmerizingly motorik. A gorgeous bit of gristly grey electronic mesmerism for sure.

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS Communal Rust (Community Library) cd 16.98
Ok, so this has been passed around the store for a little while with a rotation of different people assigned to review it. Why the hesitation? It seems the folks around here who had no idea who Christmas Decorations are, took a look at the cover and thought it was perhaps another Christian psych-folk reissue from the seventies or some twee homey Americana and kept putting it below their priority list. And the folks around here who DID know who Christmas Decorations are, from their Kranky debut a few years ago, didn't like that album very much at all, mainly due to its atonal vocalizing over quirky electronica. Well, when we finally put this on, we were pleasantly surprised, if not out and out AMAZED at what we heard. First of all, there are thankfully no vocals, and while this is not the Christian folk or Americana record some of us thought it to be, there is a strain of, er rustic folkiness through the presence of slide guitar as it barely permeates through the murky minimal ambience of shifting electronics. It seems that Christmas Decorations have cleaned house since their debut, removing all the unnecessary elements of song-forms from their compositions, and reducing their sound to layers of decayed and drifting abstractions barely hinting at the melodies beneath them. Think the winter equivalent to Fennesz's Endless Summer. Like the sounds of oxidation on old and rotting wood, subtle and melancholy with the textures of wet dirt and leaves burbling under slowly melting ice. So beautiful! We think fans of Jasper TX and Machinefabriek and similar outfits of dreamy drift would dig this a lot. What a surprise!!
MPEG Stream: "Closer To the Carpet"
MPEG Stream: "Twig Harpoon"
MPEG Stream: "Aphid Text"

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS Far Flung Hum (Wodger) lp 17.98
Christmas Decorations are a tough band to pin down. Which just might be why we like them so much. In fact more and more with every record. Their latest, the vinyl only Far Flung Hum, might be the most confusing, the most difficult to describe, and consequently, very likely their best yet.
On their last record, they began to introduce a sort of folky twang into their soundscapes, nothing dramatic, but enough to give the proceedings a rustic vibe, to temper their electronics, helping to create a sound both modern and timeless, alien yet warm and familiar. FFH begins with a sort of disembodied alien folk, strings creak, instruments buzz and rumble, melodies are seemingly digitized and released to drift like pixilated clouds, in some places it sounds like a field recording of a hoedown on some ranch, frozen, then played back incredibly slow, allowing the listener to wander science fiction style amidst all these peoples and happenings that seem to be moving a hundred times slower than us. Drones buzz softly, bits of abstract percussion tinkle and chime, organs (or accordions?) wheeze and warble, there's a Finnish folk vibe for sure but with more twang, and somehow filtered through a much more modern, if slightly cracked approach. Some tracks have a distinct No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand Of The Man feel, very tribal and jammy, but with the sounds of machines, and what sounds like folks laboring in the field, digging, water being bailed, it could all be manufactured, but it does sound like processed field recordings rendered musically. Deep resonant drones, insect like chitter, tons of ambient sound, almost as if all the recording had taken place on farms and in people's homes or on street corners, allowing all the various sounds of every day life to subtly blend into the music being made. And where the electronic aspect in the past sounded more, well, electronic, now the Decorations have mastered it so the bits of electronics and glitchery, sound less like some electronic band making weird sounds, and more like electronics are in fact some living thing, that just happens to occasionally flit by, its natural sounds and calls a part of the every day soundscape, which again helps make FFH sound so organic and alive.
Elsewhere the sounds dip back into tribal rumble, sounds are processed and released back into the wild to interact with natural sounds, there are long stretches of Morricone-ish cinematic ambience, deep growling swells, little flurries of electronics and fractured melodies, but all arranged into one constantly evolving soundworld, an ever shifting space the listener is forced to navigate, and is left to wander in freely, enjoying the sounds, returning to familiar areas, or better yet, getting completely and utterly lost.
Incredible packaging, and oversized gatefold matchbook style fold over sleeve, letter pressed on thick textured cardstock, with the inner sleeve sealed to the inside of the outer sleeve. Can't remember exactly HOW, but as you might well imagine, probably pretty dang limited.

CHRISTOPHE HEEMANN Magnetic Tape Splicing lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Rumours have it that Christophe was clocked at over 500 splices per second for this record. Regardless of the truth to this, his brilliant cut-up collage done entirely on an old reel-to-reel sounds very similar to recent digital collages of Stock, Hausen, and Walkman!

CHRYST PhantasmaChronica (Omniversal) cd 14.98
Way back in the nineties, when we were first getting into black metal, we discovered an Austrian horde called Korova, that were pretty much everything we wanted in a weirdo black metal band, blasting riffage, soaring baroque keyboards, over the top male/female vox, their sound constantly mutating and getting weirder and weirder, the band eventually introducing electronica and other non-metal weirdness into their sound, and transforming into what was essentially an experimental blackened pop band. Sort of. The band eventually transformed into Korovakill and released a sort-of concept record called Waterhells, which continued the band's descent into sonic madness and progression towards a grim/kvlt-metalhead-alienating whattthefuckness that we of course LOVED. That record came out nearly a decade ago, so we just assumed that Korova/Korovakill were no more. That is until a few weeks ago, when we got an email from a band with the odd moniker of Chryst, who it turns out were the latest incarnation of Korova. We got a copy of the record, and were a bit confused by the bizarre and surreal cover art, the front of which features a plastic model of christ crucified on one of those wind turbines, a silhouette of which forms the 'Y' in the Chryst logo. Flip over the record and there's a strange man with a head of hair, a beard and mustache made from photoshopped clouds, oh and alongside his head is a fish floating in the air. Pretty ridiculous for sure, but once we threw the record on, it all made sense. Sonically, the record sort of sounds exactly how the artwork looks, surreal and over the top, twisted and confusional, and pretty geniusly baffling.
Our first impression was that Chryst sounded like a crazy mash up of Hammers Of Misfortune, Uz Jsme Doma, Hollenthon, Judson Fountain doing that witch voice, Cradle Of Filth, and Orff's Carmina Burana (which they do an a cappela version of at one point!!), look those up on the aQ site and see if it doesn't make perfect sense. And it's really not that far off the mark, the sound is super theatrical, and totally twisted, and not a little bit ridiculous, and in lesser hands it could have been a total clusterfuck, but there does seem to be a method to their madness, moving well beyond the weird metal dabbling of their previous incarnations, and leaving other weird metal contemporaries of theirs like Dodheimsgard, Borknagar, Arcturus in the dust. And creating a sort of modern avant black metal cabaret.
There's really too much going on, and the songs change direction and sound it would take forever to describe the whole record, but let's go through the first few songs and you should definitely get a feel for how fantastically freaky and totally ruling this really is.
The opener "The Awakening" starts off like some traditional black metal, some killer buzzing riffage, pounding drums, howled demonic vokills, then it switches gears, into a furious blast, still pretty straight ahead except for the weird insectoid theremin melody, and then the deep dramatic crooned vox, but still well within the realms of black metal for sure, that is until the background vocals come in, a weird falsetto choir, and the strange extra percussion, the productions seeming to shift, until everything stops, leaving just a haunting stretch of chimes and harmony vocals, only to lurch right back into that blasting metal, only to have the track start changing speed, slooooowing waaaaaay down, then speeding back up super fast, then slooooooowing doooooown again, and finally finishing off in a blaze of hyperspeed buzz, which leads directly into the super dramatic synth/vocal opening of "I Are You", which is where those croaky shrieky Judson Fountain witch-like vox surface for the first time, then some orchestral percussion, some strange pseudo operatic vocals, and then the band launches into some furious blackness, with some insanely fast drumming, and those operatic vocals continue within the buzzing and blasting, a strange mix, but it definitely works in some weird way.
Then there's "Leaving The Ashes" with its buzzing cold wave synthy opening, which leads to some seriously ruling keyboard/vocal heavy epic power metal replete with horns, which abruptly shifts into "Storming Outside", a furious blast of punky heaviness, rife with slippery atonal guitars and more moody vox, all wreathed in swirling maniacal synths.
And so it goes, not necessarily getting stranger and stranger, merely keeping the already off the charts level of weirdness throughout. Most of the tracks are quite short, more like movements, all woven together into a single flowing epic, the sound shifting constantly and relentlessly, lots of black buzz, and the black metal parts are definitely black enough for the true grim hordes, but even those parts are twisted all up into new freaky fantastical shapes, but as should be obvious by now, for every bit of black blast, there's plenty of other stranger sounds, that range from carnivalesque cabaret to strange almost sun shiney Beach Boys vocal flecked freakfolk/Appalachia, but ultimately the key to this fractured fucked up schizophrenic avant metal opus, is that every part, be it straight ahead (relatively) or twisted beyond recognition, is impossibly catchy, so the ADD arrangements become an embarrassment of sonic riches, with your initial disappointment when a part ends, mitigated by the beginning of a new, equally kick ass part, which is most definitely a rarity in most music, metal especially.
Absolutely recommended for all the aQ-ers out there who love their metal demented and damaged and totally ridiculously over the top, and for the metal shy, this might just be the sort of gateway record that could very well lure you over to the dark (weird) sideÉ Here's hoping!
MPEG Stream: "The Awakening"
MPEG Stream: "I Are You"
MPEG Stream: "Leaving The Ashes"
MPEG Stream: "Storming Outside"
MPEG Stream: "The Surge Lands"

CHRYSTAL BELLE SCRODD Belle de Jour (Klang Galerie) cd 17.98
While this is the reissue of the second Chrystal Belle Scrodd record which was originally released in 1986, Belle De Jour features some of the earliest recordings that Diana Rogerson produced with her husband Steven Stapleton (aka Nurse With Wound). Belle De Jour opens with three short pieces of bowed cymbal scrapes and metallic screeches bathed in variable layers of reverb sounding not too far off from the early Nurse With Wound album Homotopie For Marie. However, things get really going later on in the disc when Rogerson and Stapleton present "Deadroads / A Gothic Western," which gets off to a groovy start with an infinitely looped '60s go-go rock riff twisted into something that Brainticket would have been proud to have birthed, complete with hallucinogenic guitar freak-outs and Diana ranting in a cavalcade of voices through an impossible to follow stream of consciousness narrative. The thunderous "Riding The Red Rag" follows this piece with Diana's cold-stare vocals haunting above a thick atmosphere of drones and heavily reverbed cracks from a kick drum. Unfortunately, this reissue confuses some of the names of the tracks, as "Riding The Red Rag" is misnamed as "The Demon Flower," and the equally impressive creepfest "Black Mother Mountain" is listed as "Riding The Red Rag." This may probably only upset the die-hard NWW completists; but it certainly does not distract from this amazing reissue of damaged art-rock / post-industrial mantras. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Deadroads / A Gothic Western"
MPEG Stream: "Riding The Red Rag"
MPEG Stream: "Immanence"

CHRYSTAL BELLE SCRODD The Inevitable Chrystal Belle Scrodd Record (Klang Galerie) cd 17.98
Diana Rogerson began her art career in the early '80s collaborating with Jill Westwood in Fistfuck, which has long been referred to as the "female Whitehouse" because of their infamously humilitating performances, intense sonic actions, and degrading films. Some of soundtracks to those films were actually not scored by Fistfuck but by Chrystal Belle Scrodd, the moniker of Rogerson and her future husband Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound. Throughout the early Nurse With Wound recordings, Rogerson made her presence known, thanks mostly to her eeriely zombified vocal delivery which blended perfectly within NWW's surrealist collages of decontextualized sounds and darkly lysergic atmospheres. By 1985, the two conspired to release the first Chrystal Belle Scrodd record as a separate entity from Nurse With Wound. While Stapleton's fingerprints are all over the Chrystal Belle Scrodd recordings, the direction and peculiarties of the debut recording speak much more of Diana Rogerson's sensibility, that's only slightly more indebted to psych-art-rock structuralism than Nurse With Wound. The Inevitable Chrystal Belle Scrodd Record opens with an oblique rhythmic tumble of Egyptian reeds, cat-scratch guitar feedback, and all-thumbs bass fumbling that dissolves into a quiet rumble on top of which Rogerson offers one of her trademark, emotionally detached mantras with plenty of double entendres and overt sexual declarations. Later on, Rogerson and Stapleton get a bit more abstract with nightmarishly kaleidoscopic twists of children's voices, twinkling bells, throbbing ritual drums, and discordant horns soaked in a metallic reverb and haunted drones.
MPEG Stream: "Cradle Your Snatch"
MPEG Stream: "Relax"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown"

CHUGGA Memphistophelis (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.
Latest slab of sonic wonder and weirdness from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one from a duo called Chugga, a name that probably doesn't ring a bell, but most folks will probably know their partner in retro-sonic crime, musician/sound artist Terre Thaemlitz, the three have cobbled together this fuzzy, buzzy, old school assemblage of seventies disco groove, synthfunk, drug dub exotica, and while it most definitely sounds dated (it was recorded in the nineties after all), it's MEANT to, but real dated, as in seventies, not nineties, and it sounds pretty good alongside other contemporary retro groovers like Zomby, Martyn, etc.
Thick rumbling subsonic bass, woozy porno wah guitar, liquid basslines, simple stripped down drums, spaced out sci fi synths, cheesy electronic percussion, all woven into super rad instrumental grooves, some new wave-y and propulsive, others laid back and sexy and sultry, still others ethereal and skeletal, clouds of tangled melodies drift over warm low end rumbles, Latin percussion wrapped around lazy unfurling melodies, orchestral disco stabs, strings, organs, the songs slipping from lush and over the top, big production, to spaced out and sinister, spare midnight grooves. Killer old school dancefloor destruction for sure.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!

CIANI, SUSAN (SUZANNE) Voices Of Packaged Souls (Dead-Cert) lp 27.00
One listen to this and you can see why the likes of Andy Votel and Demdike Stare would rush to release this radiophonic electronic gem on a newly created subsidiary label, Dead-Cert, (a subsidiary of an already subsidiary label Pre-Cert which released lps by Slant Azymuth, Apple Head, and Anworth Kirk). Dead-Cert's mission statement, we've been told, is to reissue albums that virtually no one has heard before and this by all means is one of the rarest of that ilk. Recorded in 1970 for an art installation by Harold Paris in Brussels, there were only 50 copies of Voices of Packaged Souls made, and were given away at the opening. Unlike the material on the recent Suzanne Ciani archive reissue, Lixiviations, Voices of Packaged Souls is 13 experimental sound pieces made on the modular Buchla synthesizer, each one introduced by a male narrator in both English and French, with mystically ominous titles: "First Voice: Sound of Hair Bleeding" "Eight Voice: Sound of Bones Growing", "Seventh Voice: Sound of an Eye Tearing", "Fourth Voice: Sound of Wetness", "Tenth Voice: Sound of A Lighted Window", that suggest a clinical litany of library sounds and actions, similar to the remote feel of a Demdike Stare recording. But what separates this from just a standard bloop-bleep electronic record is the impeccable sound design, with high relief-textural dynamics that jump around the audio spectrum, sometimes sounding right against your ear and other times receding away from you. Would have been neat to see this sound / sculptural installation in person.
Beautifully spooky! And beautifully packaged, too.

CICADASHRINE Crumpled Multiple Agonies (Battlecruiser / Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) 3" 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.
Battlecruiser is a new label from AQ pal Campbell Kneale who runs the impeccable NZ cdr label Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Battlecruiser is basically an outlet for a bunch of New Zealand noise guys to fufill their secret desire to be metal gods! Who can argue with that? Cool band names, distorted guitars, demonic vocals and all that good stuff! Metalheads might have to stretch their definition of 'metal' to really get into this stuff, but the rest of us, metal and unmetal alike will find lots of beautiful crushing far out noisy weirdness on these evil lil' 3" cd-r's!
Cicadashrine's sonic world slowly reveals an epic ambience, with distant crushing chords over a rumbling bed of throbs and pulses. Eventually the ROCK kicks in, not so much metal as industrial sludge grind. Reminds us of Flipper or Prong or OLD or even the Melvins. Super slow motion riffs, downtuned so that the riffs themselves feel like they might crumble into pieces, inhuman vocals buried so far down in the mix that they just sound like another downtuned guitar, bass strings so loose they're slapping against the bass, adding even more rumble and sludge to the mix. Sheets of caustic feedback separate the riffs, but just barely. The whole thing is like a metallic bulldozer driving through a tarpit! One twenty minute pit of despair.
MPEG Stream: "Crumpled Multiple Agonies"

CICCIOLINA HOLOCAUST / SERMONIZER Albeit Albeit / Sibelius Spiders (Forced Nostalgia) lp 21.00
Enter Forced Nostalgia - a label mining the post-punk underground of dark electronics. Judging from this release and their upcoming programming for "a wayward selection of often unreleased, mostly unheard and overlooked material from tape music to industrial, from bossa-pop to proto-techno, and from drone to out and out analogue experimentation," Forced Nostalgia looks to be something wholly different from Vinyl-On-Demand, Minimal Wave, and Dark Entries. The bands here are two terminally obscure Italian industrial outfits who made these recordings in the early '80s with a clear aesthetic framework set forward by the Industrial Records model of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Clock DVA, and Cabaret Voltaire. Cicciolina Holocaust's woozy cornet buried in the mix of murky rhythms and electronic arpeggiations certainly draw their inspiration from the early productions of Chris & Cosey (think Heartbeat and the collaborative single with John Duncan) and of course there's plenty of TG to be heard in the mix. There are a couple of exceptional minimal wave numbers with clockwork nocturnal techno modulations and super creepy windswept dronings, all of which have been expertly remastered and sound really amazing on this piece of vinyl. Sermonizer harkens from the same realm of spooky electronics, with weirdly plucked guitars working through tape-delay splutter which is more Illitch than TG. Cold radio detunings, dark meanderings of synth warble, and highly sexualized moans and groans flush out Sermonizer's contribution to the split. All of these tracks seem to have come from private cassettes handed out back in the day. This is an amazing find and whets our appetite for what else Forced Nostalgia will be offering in the years to come.

CILIO, LUCIANO Dell'Universo Assente (Die Schachtel) cd 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yes! We're glad to have this back in stock. 'Twas originally limited to just 500 copies when it came out last year and thus quickly went out of print, but now due to demand the label has pressed more. So if you missed out, get it now. Highly recommended. Our review from the first time around on list #199:
We'd never heard of Luciano Cilio before, but of course Jim O'Rourke has. The ubiquitious O'Rourke (Wilco/Sonic Youth/you name it) contributes liner notes to this beautifully presented deluxe digipack cd reissue of what amounts to the collected works of Cilio, an Italian avantgarde composer from the '70s whose music is indeed experimental but less academic than you might expect. But even without O'Rourke's endorsement, a listen to the cd should reveal to you that Cilio was exquisitely talented, and maybe something of a genius. This disc is a simply fantastic document of what we might consider a hybrid of 20th century classical, minimalist psych-prog, and folk music, not entirely of this world. The all-white cover perfectly echoes Cilio's lovely, quietly haunting compositions for acoustic guitar, cello, piano and flute, sometimes visited by wordless female vocals. Achingly melancholic, immensely deep, truly beautiful. Limited to 500 copies [again], this cd consists of Cilio's sole album, Dialoghi del Presente, originally released on EMI in 1977, along with several previously unreleased tracks. Apparently he more or less abandoned music after the album's release, and sadly committed suicide in 1983. Allan's favorite new long-lost reissue after the Flamen Dialis disc reviewed on list #194...
MPEG Stream: "Primo Quadro..."
MPEG Stream: "Interludio..."

CINDYTALK Hold Everything Dear (Editions Mego) cd 16.98
Prior to Hold Everything Dear, the resurrected Cindytalk had been the work of Gordon Sharp sitting down at his computer by himself to experiment with digital glitches and abstracted electronic drones. The Crackle Of My Soul from 2009 felt more like the first fruits of Sharp wrangling with his ideas in a digital environment with a few too many compositional rough edges that were in need of refinement. Up Here In The Clouds was a marked improvement through the glassine drones and fizzing noise; but Hold Everything Dear is the first Cindytalk album that truly feels like it has a connection to those brilliant post-punk records from the early '80s. While Sharp hasn't returned to the noise-rock abjection of Camoflage Heart and he has yet to sing on any of these recent albums, the fragmented smears from bowed metals, haunted clanging bells, watery field recordings, and impressionist piano of Hold Everything Dear harken to those post-noise ambient constructions found on the Eno-esque album Wind Is Strong and which concluded In This World. Many of the cavernous sounds on the album are probably sourced from the late Matt Kinnison, who had been Cindytalk's bassist since 1982 and who died in 2008. Sharp has cast a bleary atmosphere throughout the album through subterranean passages of sodden drones, cobwebbed dark elegance, and decayed textures. Sharp pocks this album with plenty of piano interludes whose somber half melodies and shadowy ambience are pulled from the same mold as those earlier piano works. They were beautiful then, and they are still beautiful now.
MPEG Stream: "In Dust To Delight"
MPEG Stream: "Fly Away Over Here"
MPEG Stream: "From Rokko-San"
MPEG Stream: "I See You Uncovered"

CINDYTALK Hold Everything Dear (Editions Mego) 2lp 29.00
Prior to Hold Everything Dear, the resurrected Cindytalk had been the work of Gordon Sharp sitting down at his computer by himself to experiment with digital glitches and abstracted electronic drones. The Crackle Of My Soul from 2009 felt more like the first fruits of Sharp wrangling with his ideas in a digital environment with a few too many compositional rough edges that were in need of refinement. Up Here In The Clouds was a marked improvement through the glassine drones and fizzing noise; but Hold Everything Dear is the first Cindytalk album that truly feels like it has a connection to those brilliant post-punk records from the early '80s. While Sharp hasn't returned to the noise-rock abjection of Camoflage Heart and he has yet to sing on any of these recent albums, the fragmented smears from bowed metals, haunted clanging bells, watery field recordings, and impressionist piano of Hold Everything Dear harken to those post-noise ambient constructions found on the Eno-esque album Wind Is Strong and which concluded In This World. Many of the cavernous sounds on the album are probably sourced from the late Matt Kinnison, who had been Cindytalk's bassist since 1982 and who died in 2008. Sharp has cast a bleary atmosphere throughout the album through subterranean passages of sodden drones, cobwebbed dark elegance, and decayed textures. Sharp pocks this album with plenty of piano interludes whose somber half melodies and shadowy ambience are pulled from the same mold as those earlier piano works. They were beautiful then, and they are still beautiful now.
MPEG Stream: "In Dust To Delight"
MPEG Stream: "Fly Away Over Here"
MPEG Stream: "From Rokko-San"
MPEG Stream: "I See You Uncovered"

CINDYTALK The Crackle Of My Soul (Editions Mego) cd 17.98
Cindytalk on Mego? It was a shock to see that pairing. Cindytalk has been the sporadic project of Gordon Sharp with a shifting ensemble over the past two and half decades. At first, Sharp's abject post-punk took a gritty, almost industrial growling to the ethereally dark tunes of the Cocteau Twins. Sharp's voice in many ways is the masculine equivalent to Liz Fraser's, just as beautiful and haunting; and the two had paired up on a few tracks through This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins. Cindytalk's two releases in the '80s - Camoflage Heart and In This World - have been secret gems to all those who had uncovered that work, with Cindytalk only emerging a few times since. There was the impressionist Ambient piano record The Wind Is Strong and 1994's underwhelming Wappinschaw. Then, a decade of silence followed by a limited edition single from 2003 and a brilliant one-sided 10" of drone-rock beauty in 2008. So, it was hard to know what to expect with a 2009 full album from Cindytalk, especially from the digi-centric label Mego.
Here, Cindytalk is just the work of Gordon Sharp; and The Crackle Of My Soul certainly sounds like a Mego record on par with the likes of Pita, Kevin Drumm, and BJ Nilsen, as shards of digital noise are looped and phased into building compositions that glow with a very intense high-end piercing. Not quite Whitehouse territory, it's actually far more glacial and icy in tone. Nevertheless, Sharp's electronics have a way of drilling into your skull. Voice and piano occasionally creep into the mix, but not to the extent that you would hear on any of the earlier records, even the aforementioned album The Wind Is Strong. We have to admit that we didn't love this record as much as Camoflage Heart and In This World; but it's sort of a different beast, and there's a lot of very strong electro-acoustic renderings to be found here...
MPEG Stream: "Feathers Burn"
MPEG Stream: "One Hundred Years Tomorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Debris Of A Smile"

CINDYTALK The Poetry Of Decay (Editions Mego) 2lp+7" 32.00
This is a vinyl collection of Cindytalk's two previous cds on Editions Mego - The Crackle Of My Soul (2009) and Up Here In The Clouds (2010), spread over two pieces of vinyl and a 7".
It was hard to imagine what to expect with a 2009 full album from Cindytalk, especially from the digi-centric label Mego. On The Crackle Of My Soul, Cindytalk is just the work of Gordon Sharp; and it certainly sounds like a Mego record on par with the likes of Pita, Kevin Drumm, and BJ Nilsen, as shards of digital noise are looped and phased into building compositions that glow with a very intense high-end piercing. Not quite Whitehouse territory, it's actually far more glacial and icy in tone. Nevertheless, Sharp's electronics have a way of drilling into your skull. Voice and piano occasionally creep into the mix, but not to the extent that you would hear on any of the earlier records, even The Wind Is Strong. We have to admit that we didn't love this record as much as their '80s efforts Camoflage Heart and In This World, but it's sort of a different beast, and there's a lot of very strong electro-acoustic renderings to be found here.
As with The Crackle Of My Soul, Up Here In The Clouds is well suited to Editions Mego, a long time bastion of glitch-born abstraction, volatile noise, and electro-acoustic consternation. After those initial cycles of tidal lapping, Sharp introduces the first of many lush, elongated drones built upon tensely vibrating noises that are equal parts John Duncan sound dilation and Tim Hecker fuzzed digitalia. Elsewhere, his ring-modulations transform the source material into glassine textures that hang above faux-shepard tone constructions and blustery oscillations spun upon radio interference, almost like a digital recapitulation of Loren Chasse or Small Cruel Party. At times, there are glimpses shot into the past reconnecting with the overdriven-noise-turned-into-ambience that graced some of the 1986 Cindytalk album In This World, but for the most-part the digital modulation and transformation that Sharp elicits in 2010 is a newer model in pursuit of those same ideals of abjection becoming beautiful but through digital means.
MPEG Stream: "Feathers Burn"
MPEG Stream: "One Hundred Years Tomorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Debris Of A Smile"
MPEG Stream: "The Eighth Sea"
MPEG Stream: "I Walk Until I Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Multiple Landings"

CINDYTALK Up Here In The Clouds (Editions Mego) cd 17.98
Up Here In The Clouds, you'll hear the ocean. Or at least, those are the first sounds that Cindytalk issues forth on his second album of digitally shorn impressionism for Editions Mego. For both of the Mego discs, Cindytalk has been a solo project for Gordon Sharp; but the earlier incarnations that date back to 1982 were post-punk ensembles erupting with a violent beauty through slabs of guitar noise, dirge-paced rhythmic backbeats, and Sharp's angelic vocals. After the band's 1994 album Wappinschaw, Cindytalk as a project became all but dormant, until Sharp began working digitally a couple years back, and it seems that Sharp has been energized through this process, producing these two records over the course of a year, with rumors that he'll be cobbling another band together to work under the Cindytalk banner.
As with the 2009 The Crackle Of My Soul, Up Here In The Clouds is well suited to Editions Mego, a long time bastion of glitch-born abstraction, volatile noise, and electro-acoustic consternation. After those initial cycles of tidal lapping, Sharp introduces the first of many lush, elongated drones built upon tensely vibrating noises that are equal parts John Duncan sound dilation and Tim Hecker fuzzed digitalia. Elsewhere, his ring-modulations transform the source material into glassine textures that hang above faux-shepard tone constructions and blustery oscillations spun upon radio interference, almost like a digital recapitulation of Loren Chasse or Small Cruel Party. At times, there are glimpses shot into the past reconnecting with the overdriven-noise-turned-into-ambience that graced some of the 1986 Cindytalk album In This World, but for the most-part the digital modulation and transformation that Sharp elicits in 2010 is a newer model in pursuit of those same ideals of abjection becoming beautiful but through digital means.
MPEG Stream: "The Eighth Sea"
MPEG Stream: "I Walk Until I Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Multiple Landings"

CINDYTALK / ROBERT HAMPSON Five Mountains Of Fire / Antarctica Ends Here (Editions Mego) 10" 16.98
Sure, Cindytalk's The Crackle Of My Soul for Mego was an interesting diversion into laptop electricity; but that album would have been way better off had Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp steered the album toward the direction of this split 10" with Robert Hampson. Cindytalk gravitates towards the dissonant drones of bowed cymbals, foggy electronics, skittered percussion, and growling guitars, which all enjoy much more of a recorded-in-a-concrete-bunker vibe with all of the sounds dripping with heavy reverb, giving the pieces the feel of Organum, Thuja, or RV Paintings. Pretty amazing stuff, in fact. The Robert Hampson piece seemed to have Cindytalk in mind when he composed it (even though it's dedicated to John Cale), as it's very reminiscent of the Cindytalk piano / ambient pieces from In This World. Hampson also doesn't rely upon the concrete juxtapositions of his Touch output, instead settling upon a drone from a harmonium to buttress a lilting series of repeating piano clusters that spiral around deep ringing bell tones and washes of hiss and static. Again, we think Hampson should be producing more music like this, which is probably the best piece he's done since the Main album Motion Pool.

CIRCLE Arkades (Fourth Dimension) 2cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK! At last... not sure if this actually got repressed, or if our supplier just found a few in a misplaced box or something, but we've got about a dozen of these now, and may or may not be able to get more. Probably not, actually. So if you missed it before, don't sleep on it now. Here's our review from back last summer....
Finland's mighty masters of metallic hypno drone rock, Circle, have slowly transformed into a sort of musical Jeckyll and Hyde. Beginning life with a twisted take on motorik murk, hypnotic riffing, relentless rhythms, and circular song structures, the band gradually became obsessed with metal, and thus Circle records got heavier and riffier, with more wild vocals and metallic bombast, resulting recently in a wildly productive explosion of Circle releases and Circle related side projects, the sludgey rifflords Pharaoh Overlord, the forthcoming Steel Mammoth records, and the most recent Circle release, Panic, perfectly reflecting their split personality split evenly between ambient whoooosh and grinding old skool punk rock. Confusing sure, but also wild and glorious and completely and totally kick ass.
But as Circle records generally got heavier and riffier, they were balanced by a series of lp only releases, all of which seemed to be meditative and droney and dreamy. But for listeners sans turntables, a whole side of Circle must have seemed like it was simply fading way. Well, now one of our favorite vinyl only releases from Circle has gotten re-released on cd, and with a bonus disc to boot (3 tracks, 40+ minutes). So those of you who were wondering what was going on over in Circle lp land, now's your chance to get a glimpse, and obviously all you Circle obsessives who have the lp already, will probably have to pick it up for the extra disc, essentially an entire new (live!) Circle record!
Here's a retooled version of our review of the lp when it first came out (folks who already own the lp, skip down to the end to read about the bonus disc):
Finland's mighty masters of metallic hypno drone rock return, with yes, another brand new record (previously lp only, now on cd), and their obsession (one of their many strange obsessions) with Southern Rock has finally reached critical mass. Not so much musically, although there are subtle hints here and there, as visually and conceptually. This set, recorded live on Brian Turner's radio show on WFMU when Circle were in the states a year or two back is a monster. Two epic and massively long tracks, combining the metallic leanings of their later records (albeit subtly), with the murky propulsiveness of their earlier records, as well as their droney improvised abstract side (most noticeable on the lp only Mountain). It's kind of remarkable how all of Circle's disparate musical personalities fit so well together. But before we get to the music, let's talk about the sleeve. And the Southern Rock. The cover features a knotty pine background, riddled with bullet holes, two crossed pistols above the band name. Very Sergio Leone... The tray card features a band photo seemingly branded into the wood, with Circle donning cowboy hats and sombreros, whooping it up like that last freeze frame in an episode of Bonanza (maybe it was CHiPs, but Bonanza makes more sense here). Then there's Brian Turner's eyewitness account of the musical showdown that occurred when Circle showed up at WFMU to record their set printed like an old weathered Western town wanted poster. Woe was the pasty British garage band that felt Circle's wrath. Broken glass and tobacco spit figure prominently. And let's not forget the Confederate flag on one cd, and the crossed bandoleers on the other (the discs are labeled Rebel Platter and Bullet Platter after all).
Thankfully (or maybe not, some might be thinking) this Southern Rock doesn't filter all the way down to the music. Instead we've got more of that Circular genius we just can't get enough of.
The first track, "The Greatest Kingdom", begins as an abstract soundscape of spacey effected riffs, sort of blurry and drifty, above strange mumbled mutterings and what sounds like alien scat singing. The vibe is strangely dubby and Middle Eastern sounding. Eventually a warm wash of woozy distorted guitars builds into a monstrous swell of sound, warm and thick and sort of heavy, while buried beneath is a burbling cauldron of electronic squiggles and gurgling vocal sputters. Out of nowhere, like a beam of sunlight with a small flock of faeiries flitting about, comes a strange dreamy drift of almost renaissance faire sounding festive folk, which dissipates quickly into a swirl of speaking-in-tongues vocals and insect like electronics before drifting off.
Track two, "The Ghost Of The Highway", is a bit darker, with faux throat singing over ominous psych sludge riffing like classic Circle but slowed way down. Groovy and dark, peppered with subtle tribal percussion. Weirdly enough, that weird dreamy stretch of faerie flecked folk sunniness that surfaced briefly on side A, shows up again here in a slightly different form, and disappears just as quickly, returning to a VERY Circular propulsive groove. Drums skitter instead of pound, while a guitar drifts and stutters, sounding a bit like the guitar line from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" but way more druggy and psychedelic!
This double disc reissue tacks on a whole 'nother record, three more loooong tracks, the shortest ten minutes, the longest sixteen plus, and starts off sounding as Western as the artwork would have led us to believe. Lots of random shuffling, crowd noise, recorded live, a murky haze, like smoke in an old West barroom, then the riff kicks in, somewhere between classic spacey krautrock and Morricone spaghetti Western twang, the drums simple and propulsive, the riff slowly drifting and changing shape, while the vocals growl over the top, things like "Sixxxxxx, sixxxx, sixxxx" or "Kaaaaaaay, kaaaaaaay, kaaaaaay" and assorted other mumblings and guttural whispers. Very ominous and evocative. Right smack in the middle, the riff gives way to a strange chaotic interlude of sustained chords, simple rhythmic pulses, swooping synths, and wild nearly operatic vocals, before giving way to a simple drums only coda.
The second track begins with some strange rave-y synthesizers, wrapped around the same growled vocalizations, building and building, but never completely rocking out, instead, lingering in some endlessly repeating world of tension and no release, the synths looping, the drums mirroring the synths, and a wild array of vocals, some breathy and earnest, some wild and over the top, and of course plenty of mysterious grunting and growling.
And they close out the record with one of the highlights from their live sets, not the song necessarily, but the RIFF, a super kick ass, super rocking MEGA-riff, can't remember what record it's from, but what a riff, live it's the sort of riff that induces immediate headbanging, with a killer dynamic stop start "DAH DAH.... DAH DAH.... DAAAAAAHHHH", it's the kind of part in a song, you NEVER want to end, but leave it to Circle to confound, and after a few run throughs, the band pulls back and blisses out, into some strange, super extended FX drenched free floating jam, guitars hover and swirl, the drums a distant shuffle and skitter, the keyboards tinkling abstractly, vocals crooning dramatically throughout, like some theater production gone well off the rails, all culminating in a dense cloud of drum splatter, FX chaos, super affected vocals, and thick swooshes of instrumental buzz and blur. But just as you think it's over, in true Circle fashion, they explode back into action, and finish off with a blistering blast of THAT riff. Awesome.
So it seems that maybe we'll all have to keep waiting for the inevitable, that record they keep threatening us with, when Circle finally become a bizarre krautrock psychrock dronemetal version of the Marshall Tucker Band, but for now, just crack open that Jack Daniels, throw those boots up on the desk (careful with those spurs!), pull the brim of your ten gallon down over your eyes, put a little pinch between your teeth and gums, turn it up and drift off...
MPEG Stream: "The Greatest Kingdom"
MPEG Stream: "The Ghost Of The Highway"

CIRCLE Empire (Riot Season) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This went out of print not long after we first listed it in October of '04. And it's still out of print. But one of our suppliers somehow found 15 copies. Which we promptly snatched up. So... our previous review gets a one-time-only-rerun:
Vinyl Only. Limited. 750 copies. Circle. Did you get that? Circle. Vinyl Only. Limited. 750 copies. And we only have 15. That said, here follows a possibly superfluous review... Anyone who liked the last cd we listed by our Finnish friends Circle, Forest, ought to also like this live recording. It's all new material -- two side-long cuts, "Dragon" and "Empire" -- but they are definitely in the hippified, semi-acoustic jamming vein of Forest, all dark and psychedelic and Can-like. Both tracks are epics, with peaks and valleys, the second side eventually building up into a guitar riff-repetition thing that's classic Circle indeed. Frickin' gorgeous and hypnotic.
MPEG Stream: "Dragon"

CIRCLE Fraten (Ektro) cd 14.98
Another blast (two blasts, actually) from the past, from our favorite Finns. It's been a long time since we've had copies of these, Hissi and Fraten, the 3rd and 4th albums respectively by the now-near-legendary hypno-rock outfit Circle. Originally released on the Metamorphos label, they've been out of print for ages. Ektro Records has finally arranged to put out remastered reissues, for those that missed 'em the first time around. It's interesting to have 'em back, considering them now in context of Circle's subsequent, prolific career in the years since they first appeared. When Hissi came out in 1996, we saw it as a major stylistic shift, but that's before we learned that Circle would amazingly morph through so many unexpected styles as they progressed over album after album - all the while keeping it quite "Circular" though. At the time, we stated that if their first full-length (Meronia) could be described as AmRep grunge meets Gregorian chants, and if the second (Zopalki) entered into a kraut-rocky chamber music realm with strings, etc., then Hissi was Circle's stab at post-rock electronica... The vocals are gone on all but one or two tracks, and Circle's trademark repetitive sound is less about riffs on this record than beats. And it's true, Hissi was mostly instrumental, there's no "Meronian" chanting (and certainly none of the faux-metallic operatics of latter-day Circle vocalist Mika Ratto, as found on many more recent albums). The whole "NWOFHM" thing that Circle & friends later invented is also far from evident, this isn't Circle in any of their bombastic, heavy modes at all. It's not truly electronica either, really, but there are a lot of keys, and effects. Synth sounds insinuate everywhere amidst the nervous percolations of the drums and percussion. It's low-key and motorik, moody and atmospheric, quite creepy even (in keeping with the cover and interior photos of a grotesque, grimacing old man marionette). '70s avant or krautrock bands like This Heat and Faust are assuredly influences, and the darkly suspenseful, slightly jazzy results align somewhat with the likes of '90s post rock contemporaries Tortoise and the Kammerflimmer Kollektief. But, as we also said, about Hissi's original release: still like nothing else, exactly. And quite recommended. This new, remastered edition features additional graphics, and a brief 2012 note from sole constant Circle member Jussi Lehthisalo, looking back, saying "this album was the starting point for calmer and lighter days that lasted until the end of the decade", also letting us know that Hissi was indeed written as instrumental puppet theater music!
Then there's Fraten, from 1997. What at the time we referred to as another album of "beautiful repetition" from Circle that was "not quite so heavy or dark as previous releases" but that nonetheless "explores (somewhat) mellower territory with equally hypnotic results as before". Indeed it does. While Hissi had its frightening moments, on the effects laden build up of "Kuukaarme" for instance, Fraten is a sunnier proposition to an extent, bright and playful, though it definitely has some dark undercurrents too (with the doleful double bass and plodding beats of "Kentta = Areend" for instance). But the gentle, lazy groove of something like "Hytti = Ser Ozm" is hardly sinister at all. Circle are clearly keeping powerful forces in reserve, operating with care and restraint. The glitchy electronics and dubby FX explosions that infiltrate these rhythmically propulsive tracks are mysterious, perhaps, but not threatening. Lovely, lovely. We certainly can't decide which album, Hissi or Fraten, we like better, and why should we? Both are great, and definitely (despite some slight lineup differences) belong to the same crucial creative era of Circle output, when the mesmeric art rock ideas of their landmark 2nd album Zopalki were being developed in various new musical directions.
The booklet for the remastered reissue of Fraten includes various graphics (show fliers, set lists, photos) not seen in the original. Also there's brand new liner notes, written by the bass player on the album, Tomi Harrivaara, who was with Circle from 1996-1998. He provides an interesting glimpse into Circle's past, from his perspective. In his essay, the likes of Bernard Hermann, Witold Lutoslawski, Arnold Schoenberg, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich are cited as compositional influences on the songs of Fraten, not such a surprise really.
MPEG Stream: "Korko = Klague"
MPEG Stream: "Puntari = Gnosem"
MPEG Stream: "Hissi = Festum"
MPEG Stream: "Paneeli = Krimen"

CIRCLE Hissi (Ektro) cd 14.98
Another blast (two blasts, actually) from the past, from our favorite Finns. It's been a long time since we've had copies of these, Hissi and Fraten, the 3rd and 4th albums respectively by the now-near-legendary hypno-rock outfit Circle. Originally released on the Metamorphos label, they've been out of print for ages. Ektro Records has finally arranged to put out remastered reissues, for those that missed 'em the first time around. It's interesting to have 'em back, considering them now in context of Circle's subsequent, prolific career in the years since they first appeared. When Hissi came out in 1996, we saw it as a major stylistic shift, but that's before we learned that Circle would amazingly morph through so many unexpected styles as they progressed over album after album - all the while keeping it quite "Circular" though. At the time, we stated that if their first full-length (Meronia) could be described as AmRep grunge meets Gregorian chants, and if the second (Zopalki) entered into a kraut-rocky chamber music realm with strings, etc., then Hissi was Circle's stab at post-rock electronica... The vocals are gone on all but one or two tracks, and Circle's trademark repetitive sound is less about riffs on this record than beats. And it's true, Hissi was mostly instrumental, there's no "Meronian" chanting (and certainly none of the faux-metallic operatics of latter-day Circle vocalist Mika Ratto, as found on many more recent albums). The whole "NWOFHM" thing that Circle & friends later invented is also far from evident, this isn't Circle in any of their bombastic, heavy modes at all. It's not truly electronica either, really, but there are a lot of keys, and effects. Synth sounds insinuate everywhere amidst the nervous percolations of the drums and percussion. It's low-key and motorik, moody and atmospheric, quite creepy even (in keeping with the cover and interior photos of a grotesque, grimacing old man marionette). '70s avant or krautrock bands like This Heat and Faust are assuredly influences, and the darkly suspenseful, slightly jazzy results align somewhat with the likes of '90s post rock contemporaries Tortoise and the Kammerflimmer Kollektief. But, as we also said, about Hissi's original release: still like nothing else, exactly. And quite recommended. This new, remastered edition features additional graphics, and a brief 2012 note from sole constant Circle member Jussi Lehthisalo, looking back, saying "this album was the starting point for calmer and lighter days that lasted until the end of the decade", also letting us know that Hissi was indeed written as instrumental puppet theater music!
Then there's Fraten, from 1997. What at the time we referred to as another album of "beautiful repetition" from Circle that was "not quite so heavy or dark as previous releases" but that nonetheless "explores (somewhat) mellower territory with equally hypnotic results as before". Indeed it does. While Hissi had its frightening moments, on the effects laden build up of "Kuukaarme" for instance, Fraten is a sunnier proposition to an extent, bright and playful, though it definitely has some dark undercurrents too (with the doleful double bass and plodding beats of "Kentta = Areend" for instance). But the gentle, lazy groove of something like "Hytti = Ser Ozm" is hardly sinister at all. Circle are clearly keeping powerful forces in reserve, operating with care and restraint. The glitchy electronics and dubby FX explosions that infiltrate these rhythmically propulsive tracks are mysterious, perhaps, but not threatening. Lovely, lovely. We certainly can't decide which album, Hissi or Fraten, we like better, and why should we? Both are great, and definitely (despite some slight lineup differences) belong to the same crucial creative era of Circle output, when the mesmeric art rock ideas of their landmark 2nd album Zopalki were being developed in various new musical directions.
The booklet for the remastered reissue of Fraten includes various graphics (show fliers, set lists, photos) not seen in the original. Also there's brand new liner notes, written by the bass player on the album, Tomi Harrivaara, who was with Circle from 1996-1998. He provides an interesting glimpse into Circle's past, from his perspective. In his essay, the likes of Bernard Hermann, Witold Lutoslawski, Arnold Schoenberg, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich are cited as compositional influences on the songs of Fraten, not such a surprise really.
MPEG Stream: "Kuivaamo"
MPEG Stream: "Kalat"
MPEG Stream: "Strand-Jatkumo"
MPEG Stream: "Saksi"

CIRCLE Meronia (Ektro) cd 14.98
Ok, you could be forgiven one of these days for saying, "Hey Aquarius, if you love Circle so much, why don't you marry them?" (We'd consider it, would be get Finnish citizenship?) It's true, we love love love this astonishing prog/space/psych/metal/wtf? band from Finland, and aren't afraid to say it. Our love affair got even more heated if possible these past few weeks when not only did we have a great new album (their collaboration with Sunburned Hand Of The Man) to list last time, and another great new album (Katapult) to list the time before that, but also as you probably know, they were just in town on tour, blowing minds at the Bottom Of The Hill this past week. And we also hosted a Circle in-store performance and helped arrange a secret show for them inside our friend John's bus!! Andee even flew up to Portland to see them (and help drive their van down to SF so they would get here in time for all these events). Totally worth it, they certainly put on a show to see...
They're back in Finland now, but they left us with a whole bunch of copies of this at-long-last reissue of their debut album, originally released on the Bad Vugum label in 1994. It's been out of print for years but now Circle has just regained the rights and put it out again on their own Ektro label. Yay! (FYI, if you already have Meronia, don't worry, there's no extra tracks or anything, the artwork somewhat revised but otherwise no significant changes from the original so you don't have to buy it again.) We probably don't need to say too much about it, basically if you love Circle and never had a chance to get this before, get it now, it's essential. This IS the stuff that made us fans of Circle in the first place.
Actually, we could be all snobby and be like, so, you think you like Circle, eh? ha you haven't even HEARD Circle. But of course we're not like that. However it's true, if you're a Circle fan unfamiliar with Meronia, you're gonna both be instantly satisfied -and- in for a surprise (isn't that always the case with these guys?). Back in '94, they had a rather different lineup to the one that just played here (or on many of their other albums... bassist/bandleader Jussi has been the sole constant in Circle over the years). But their trademark "circular" repetitive pulse was of course fully formed, and some other things haven't changed either (it would seem that their favorite keyboard patch has remained the same for a loooong time, that synth strings sound is just like what they used on the tour that brought them here last week). What is different is the emphasis on angular heavy guitar rock riffs, washes of symphnonic magnificence, and the choral vocals -- which sound like monks chanting! Like Magma, Circle created their own "language" in which to sing, called Meronian. Pretty incredible.
This album links Circle to so such late '80s/early '90s alt-metal influences as Gore and Helmet, even Voivod. Turns out, Circle's metal leanings go way back, though of course this weirdness isn't really metal itself. It's some kind of monk-prog that oddly creates a mood that reminds us a bit of Swedish goth/doom metallers Katatonia, if they were a no wave Magmoid motorik space rock ensemble, perhaps.
Meronia is one of those albums that while we were listening to it, revisiting it while writing the review, ALL other thoughts and worries and everything was washed away. The head starts uncontrollably nodding, feet tapping in time, and ... huh, what, where were we? Yep, hypnotic Circle to the core.
Obviously, recommended. And we're also happy to report that several other long-gone Circle titles are also soon to be reissued by Ektro, including this album's similar but krautrockier successor, and arguably our favorite Circle album ever, Zopalki. So keep it tuned.
MPEG Stream: "Ed-visio"
MPEG Stream: "DNA"
MPEG Stream: "Hypto"

CIRCLE Soundcheck (Full Contact) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Circle are getting to be like a Finnish hypnorock version of the Grateful Dead, a comparison which would no doubt thrill Circle mainman Jussi Lehtisalo, who is very upfront about his obsession with the Dead. In so much as between albums, Circle, like the Dead, crank out killer live record after killer liver record, often with some of the same songs, always including a few live staples, familiar enough to hit the spot, but different enough that a Circle fan could be forgiven for needing them ALL!
This vinyl-only latest from these fantastic Finns, is indeed yet another live set, and not only features a super striking crystal skull cover, but also finds the band bolstered by some extra axe power in the form of members of fellow NWOFHM combo Pharaoh Overlord. Recorded last year, in Finland, Soundcheck, as the label puts it, "offers the most contemporary document possible of a Circle soundcheck / concert experience". Indeed!
The Aside offers two new tracks, beginning with the brief "Kukkakaalia Kapteenit!", a wispy swirl of shimmery synths, laid back tribal drumming and some dramatic, emotional crooning, very cinematic sounding, almost like it could be some lost 4AD single, dreamy and ethereal, giving way to the way more rocking and intense "Tuhatsata", which takes up most of the side, a slow burning, blackened bit of Finnish krautrock, super epic, with dueling vocals, crooning versus grunted and growled, fusiony keys, still more tribal drumming, spidery guitars, the track pulsing and pounding, building to multiple crescendos, frenzied freakouts that always lip right back into more looped mesmer.
The flipside features two instantly recognizable live set staples, first up, "Virsi", dramatically progtastic, with that super soaring epic intro, all dynamic shifts and huge bursts of instrumental crunch, with vocals howling and wailing almost operatically, before lurching into some rad atonal krauty, fusiony, jazzy, hypno groove skitter. The second track, another Circle classic, and live staple, "Nopeuskuningas", explodes right out of the gate, with its chugging almost surfy, ZZ Top-ish boogie riff, locked in groove, the whole thing stretched out over the remainder of the side, the band solid, and hypnotic, and intense, and rocking and tight as fuck. Their showstopper for sure, and it clearly did the job at this show as well.
Heavy vinyl, super swank skull jacket, and most definitely LIMITED.

CIRCLE Sunrise (No Quarter) cd 15.98
YAY! The No Quarter label, fresh from releasing Circle's latest album Katapult, have now done a domestic reissue of another Circle cd, the long-time-fave, and long-out-of-print, Ektro release Sunrise. If you saw 'em play on their recent US tour, chances are you rocked out to a tune or two from this record.
Here's our review from when we first freaked out about this back on list 143, which still applies (the new version is the same but for slightly altered, snazzed up graphics), except that we'd no longer say it's such a departure for them:
Brilliant, shockingly brilliant! Herewith we present to you what we can only say is the headbangingest record yet from our Finnish friends Circle (containing also, paradoxically, a couple of their most gentle numbers). The Circle concept is one of repetition, and while ALL their records are in fact great, one can find some of them to be a lot like another. So it's nice that this new Circle really goes out on a limb, with so much success, while totally managing to remain Circle to the core. How do they do it?
The album opens with "Nopeuskuningas", seemingly Circle's answer to Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law"! Down and dirty hard rock riffing (cyclic and repetitive in the trademark Circle way, of course) with keyboardist/vocalist Mika Ratto -- a relatively recent, and significant, addition to Circle's lineup on their past three or four discs -- simultaneously channeling screechy metal gods Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Klaus Meine (Scorpions), and Brian Johnson (AC/DC), but in an indecipherable, or Finnish at least, babble. It stretches to nearly eight minutes after the space-rock effects and swirly keys kick in. But then, when you think this is going to be The Heavy Metal Circle album, track two gets all mellow and pretty and folked-out, even MORE unlike any previous Circle we've ever heard. Acoustic guitar, and lots of la la la's from Mika. Unbelievable -- and lovely. But then the next song triggers the dormant motorik Circle drum pulse, overlaid with heavy guitars and vocal histrionics akin to the opening track. Plus new wavey/Axel F keyboards. Hit material here! Following that, track four, "Vaanen Valtiatar", heads back to the forest glade where Circle do that hippy jamming again a la track two, but more plugged-in, turning into a spacey jam session. And then, as you might now expect, it's back to the mosh pit for the monstrous rifferama of the next song, "Kylan Suurin Miekka". Evil stuff. This is True Circular Metal indeed. From then on the album maintains the heaviness, getting spacier and spacier though, culminating in the droning fifteen-minute "Lokki".
Wow. An amazing album, making effective use of Mika's unusual/unique vocals -- he's developed some sort of exotic (Middle Eastern? American Indian?) meets metal style, delivered in a manner as over-the-top as the most insane Italian prog of the '70s. Throw in some violin and Moog and of course all the heavy metal moves, and you've got a bizarre blend of, uh, Yoko Ono, Hawkwind, Judas Priest, and of course Circle's krautrock forerunners Neu! and Can.
While Sunrise is in many ways a departure for Circle, it can also be seen as an album harking back to their hard-rockin' roots (they've nodded that way on the guitar-heavy Prospekt and Jussi's Kyuss-ish Pharaoh Overlord side project, but you've got to also remember that the very first Circle album, Meronia, drew quite a few comparisons to Helmet at the time). Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Nopeuskuningas"
MPEG Stream: "Vaanen Valtiatar"
MPEG Stream: "Kylan Suurin Miekka"

CIRCLE Triumph (Adverse-Effect) 2cd 22.00
This killer sprawling epic live set, recorded on WFMU back in 2007 and previously available as a super limited double lp (though amazingly we still have a handful), now available as a less limited, but equally swank double cd!! Here's what we said about the vinyl version earlier this year:
Certain bands around these parts don't really need much more than a "NEW RECORD OUT NOW" style announcement to get their fans all in a tizzy. Those groups engender a certain sort of slavish worship and maniacal obsession, that used to be reserved for top 40 bands and their teenage minions. But heck, what's wrong with loving a band enough to want it all?! Everything they do, every cd, ep, lp, 7", whatever. A list of those bands will probably look mighty familiar to most of you, and will quite possibly elicit that record nerd Pavlovian response that even we can never quite seem to shake. SUNNO))), Boris, Corrupted, Earth, and yes of course Circle. Longtime readers of the aQ New Arrivals list are well aware of our obsession with Circle, odds are most of them share it, as well as a certain obsession with Finnish music in general, but Circle are for sure our favorite group of musical Finns. And for good reason.
Going on two decades, Circle have managed to take a simple sound, and twist it all up, keeping it fresh and exciting and surprising, a sort of hypnotic and yes CIRCULAR sound, simple arrangements, repetitive riffing, motorik drumming, a little kraut rock, a little space rock, but Circle have taken those sounds and run them through the wringer, transforming them into murky mantra like hypno rock for one record, bombastic eighties style metal for another, long brooding dronescapes for one disc, majestic triumphant over the top prog for another, and never hesitating to mix and blur and blend their various sounds and personas to suit their whim and whimsy.
For those folks who have seen Circle live, they understand the magic of this band, the improvisation, the incredible stage presence, the killer riffing, we never would have thought a weirdo space-kraut-prog rock band from Finland could get US audience losing their shit, but we've seen it. Heck at one show, bass player Jussi Lehtisalo ripped his shirt off midsong, and we were nearly deafened by a gaggle of shrieking girls right in front of us.
But we digress, Circle rule. You know it. We know it. Live especially, which is why there are so many live records in their discography, because those songs that you've listened to a million times, sound totally different live. Thus we have Triumph, a vinyl only double lp documenting Circle's second time performing live on WFMU (the first was released as Arkades back in 2006).
Triumph was recorded in New Jersey, in 2007, on Brian Turner's show on WFMU, and finds the band tackling a couple live Circle classics, and offering up a bunch of new stuff to boot. The record begins with "Virsi", which some of you may remember from Rakennus, another live album, a total live set staple, "Virsi" finds Circle at their bombastic prog rock epic best, totally dynamic and majestic, Mika Ratto's vocals even more unhinged than usual, slipping into an almost black metal shriek, when not crooning dramatically, such a killer part, you kind of want it to go on forever, but the band slip smoothly into a super minimal circular groove, with atonal piano, and the bass and drums locked tight, sounding like some cocktail jazz combo gone krautrock, before returning to the opening bombast to finish it off.
The shorter second track is so awesome, and is either a new song, or a dramatically reworked version of an old one, but finds the band unfurling lush strings and shimmering effects, simple drumming, very proggy and dramatic but understated and smokey, very Scott Walker or Serge Gainsbourg, like some lost sixties ballad, albeit slightly tweaked.
The next song is all spidery guitars and skittery jazzy percussion, with wild speaking-in-tongues vocals, a massive tripped out psychedelic drift, super spare and minimal, but with a relentless groove hovering right below the surface.
The second disc begins with a gorgeous deep resonant shimmery drone, laced with delicate melodies, whispered vocals, spacey FX, the vocals eventually getting deeper and more dramatic, the whole thing building to an abstract almost free jazz sounding climax, a bit like a space rock torch song gradually going haywire.
Which is followed by what might be our new favorite Circle song, a looped music box melody (or maybe a toy piano), all tangled up with soft flurries of real piano, a strange push and pull between the fluid melodies of the piano, and the mechanical loop of the toy piano, the end result sounds a bit like some strange hybrid of Lubomyr Melnyk and Pierre Bastien. Machinelike, meditative, repetitive and hypnotic, the various notes and tones building into a gorgeous swirl of melodic fragments and splintering sonic overtones. So awesome.
And finally, the band finish off with another live staple, "Murheenkryyni", also found on Rakennus, but again, it's a whole 'nother beast here, the heaviest of the bunch, a total classic rock prog rock dirge, with crunchy distorted guitars, bombastic drums, and Mika's operatic howl. Yowza!
Packaged in a beautifully designed gatefold mini lp style cd jacket (a smaller version of the original's wicked packaging), with all the liner notes printed on the full color inside cd sleeves, including a brief missive from Jussi of Circle about how he's worried that Brian Turner might just be losing his mind haha....
MPEG Stream: "Virsi"
MPEG Stream: "Rykmentti"
MPEG Stream: "Dungeon"

CIRCLE Tulikoira (2009 Edition) (Ektro) cd 14.98
This 2005 Circle album, out of print for a bit, is now newly reissued on cd, this time its jewel case wrapped in a spiffy slipcase, featuring some cool new artwork (and a "no posers" symbol)!
NWOFHM. That's what it says on the inside of the cd booklet, in big bold letters. NWOFHM? WTF? If you don't get the joke, explaining it won't help, but here goes: New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. Our Finnish friends Circle are apparently referencing the famed NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) that took the rock world by storm circa 1979, giving us Saxon, Angel Witch, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Venom, Samson, and many many many more. What's that got to do with the Can and Neu! pulsed space/prog/post-rock normally practiced by Circle?? Well Circle fans know that these guys have indeed established their very own trademark "circular" sound (repetitive, rhythmic, looping, hypnotic rock) that, whirlpool-like, pulls in all sorts of influences, from the aforementioned Krautrock forefathers to jazz and dub and lo-fi drone improv and, yes, metal. When you get a new Circle album, you kinda both know what to expect *and* never know what to expect. Well we'll tell you about Circle's latest studio effort, Tulikoria. In part, it's Circle donning the leather and spikes (metaphorically, perhaps, though they threatened to do so for real live on stage at their show in San Francisco that was happening the night we originally posted this review). Circle's love of metal, specifically the true, traditional heavy metal of the '80s, has borne fruit before, on several of the songs from their amazing Sunrise album released in 2002. So, the heavy metal component present on Tulikoira is precedented in the Circle discog. But, like Sunrise, this isn't just Circle "doing metal". It's a lot of other things besides! Nobody will confuse it for an "actual" metal album. But heavy metal is definitely, proudly an element here, amongst others. And graphically, too, it's an inspiration, as you'll see from Circle's new fangled, tough-looking symmetrical logo, which even incorporates a lightning bolt!
There's four tracks here, starting with "Rautakaarme", an atmospheric seven-minute cut featuring monkish chant, eerie drone, and energetic bursts of rock action. Second track "Tulilintu" is *entirely* active and energetic, really bringing in the headbanging, fist-pumping metal, complete with guitar leads and soaring screams in the manner of Rob Halford. Seriously. The lyrics are in Finnish (presumably) so we don't know how tongue-in-cheek-or-not they are. Track three, "Berserk", is kinda weird, another atmospheric exercise with some lines in English like "I'm a scorpion" and "I'm a crocodile" spoken over rather spooky, bass-heavy grooves. A lot of tension in this one. Could almost be a noirish film soundtrack from the '70s, but with additional "circular" electric guitar riffing. Then the final track "Puutiikeri" arrives, pretty much taking over the album since it's an epic 24 minute affair, beginning and ending with authentic heavy metal riffing, but journeying far and wide in-between. Creaky improv splatter, lush keyboards, gently whispering vocals, spacey electronic effects, chugging, pulsating rhythms (of course!), and even some quasi-techno beats (!) are stirred into this weird mix. Ranging in mood from calm tranquility to flat out rockin', this is a real trip, as is all of Tulikoira. If you've been following Circle's output in recent years, and rolling with all their eccentricities, from Sunrise to Guillotine to Forest to Empire, you'll be happy to add Tulikoria to your collection too!
MPEG Stream: "Rautakaarme"
MPEG Stream: "Tulilintu"
MPEG Stream: "Berserk"

CIRCLE Vaahto (Trensmat) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
ATTENTION FINNISH MUSIC FREEKS AND CIRCLE OBSESSIVES!!! ULTRA LIMITED CIRCLE 7" ALERT!!! Fans of these freaky Finns best act fast as this is a super limited, already out of print, brand new seven inch single featuring two preciously unreleased songs. In Trensmat's series of ultra limited 7", usually limited to 100 copies or less, we convinced the label to double their pressing, half of which came to aQuarius, but needless to say, like all things Circle, these will not last long, and once they are gone, they are gone forever...
So here you go, two new tracks, of that instantly recognizable motorik Circular hypnorock. No metal, or ambience, this is the classic Circle sound, the A side is Circle at their most stripped down, the drums and guitars locked into a constant loop, the bass following right along, so mesmerizing and seemingly endless, the vocals a barely there whisper, while off in the distance lurk all manner of random clatter and mysterious percussive events. Right in the middle there's an awesome stumbling atonal guitar 'solo' before the band slips right back into that same groove. Goes on and on and if we had our say it would have kept right on going and filled up both sides of a 12".
The flip side is another single riffed hypnojam, a bit less languorous and a little more propulsive, very krautrocky, with lots of harmonica (!) and the vocals much more of a focal point, higher in the mix and leading the groove behind them. Throughout the song are cool tripped out new wave-y synth washes, lazily draped over that impossible catchy Circle rhythm. The end though holds a bit of a surprise with a super bizarre harmonized low vocal coda, a bit like a chorus of Orcs, creepy and kind of what-the-fuck, cool to, and it's Circle, so you should be prepared for them to toss in an Orc chorus now and then.
Cool packaging, a very metal Circle logo, designed by Krypt (who we can only assume is Krypt Axeripper aka Jussi of Circle) sinking into a Finnish seaside, while on the flip is a strange pencil drawing of four guys who look nothing like Circle. Pressed on red vinyl, and as we mentioned above, SUPER SUPER LIMITED AND ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL!!!

CIRCLE OF EYES s/t (The Flenser) cassette 5.98
Ultra limited release from local label Flenser, of the debut from this mysterious Bay Area trio, featuring members of Sutekh Hexen, Necrite and Swampwitch, and while that pedigree might have you imagining some sort of blacknoise blackbuzz blowout, this is actually something else altogether. Three long tracks of creeping, ambient ritualism, if you had to classify it as some sort of metal, it would definitely be doom, but only barely, there are thick, coruscating guitars, crumbling distortion, but they're not riffs so much as atmospheric smears of black sound. It's more a sort of blackdrone creep. The vocals a demonic bellow, the sound creeping and oozing over a backdrop of distant shimmer and muted rumble, the result like some sort of demonic ritual, performed by firelight in some mysterious cavern. The guitar erupting occasionally into wild tangles of noisy skree, but quickly settling back down into a more haunting tranquil drift. In fact the two tracks on the B side pretty much forego the downtuned slo-mo riffage entirely, instead, weaving spidery guitars, and hushed ambient shimmer, growled and mewled vox (sounding like more demonic Eugene from Oxbow), the sound much more spare and sparse, cinematic and soundtracky, the whole tape like some oozing black mass (both meaning intended), a gorgeously tripped out blackened sonic mystery that will probably appeal to the ambient doom set and weird drone fans more than metalheads, even though at it's core, this is some sort of super abstract atmospheric ethereal metal. Regardless, we dig big time.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Penumbra (Awoken)"
MPEG Stream: "Woe Betide The Worms (Dirge For Eternity)"

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS Eleven Fingers (Handmade Birds) cd 14.98
NOW ON CD!! Here's our (slightly altered) review from when we listed the lp version (and made it a Record Of The Week) back in 2011...
The latest limited release from the the Handmade Birds label, a new and already insanely prolific sonic imprint run by Pyramids' R. Loren, comes from long time aQ faves, Finnish outsider black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. And a new record from CoO means it's time again to wonder why we even still consider these guys black metal, since it's been several years and many records since they were a proper black metal band (if they ever were at all). We are constantly baffled by groups like CoO, who are so beloved by so much of the black metal world, and we're talking the true grim hordes, yet they continue to create music that we imagine would not be pleasing AT ALL to such folk. Maybe we're selling black metallers short. Or it means the appeal is more than purely sonic. It speaks to the spirit of the sound, the black energy put into the music, which eventually must come out, even if it does as some sort of twisted Jandekian fractured folk or some minimal synth wave weirdness, at its core, the sound is dark, black, evil.
All of this talk in some ways is moot, as this latest record finds the band doing what they do, which is sort of black metal, sort of post rock, sort of whatthefuck, but it's all objective, and this music's 'blackness', or even its 'metalness', by most typically metal measures would be found wanting, but as far as we're concerned, this is exactly the sort of metallic blackness we love, murky, muddy, washed out and woozy, warped and stumbling, equal parts dark pop, fragmented folk, otherworldly creep, oh yeah and a little black buzz.
It only takes a few seconds to realize this is not at all like any black metal you've heard (unless of course you've heard lots of Circle Of Ouroborus!), the band launch into what almost sounds like Ariel Pink playing black metal, or some murky chunk of mysterious James Ferraro style lysergic pop, which just so happens to be laced with some evil vox, the riffs are blurry streaks of melody, that almost sound more like horns or keyboards (which they could be), warbly synths wheeze and sputter, the vocals alternate between gruff growl and dramatic croon, the drums distorted and stumbly, everything wreathed in a druggy haze, the sound like some alternate universe pop, or some strange mutant strain of new waves, especially when the drums switch to an almost disco beat, the blackness really only represented by the vokills, otherwise this is some gloriously warped melodic doom pop weirdness.
The B side brings things down even further, unfurling a haunting mournful bit of balladic dirgery, the sound bleary and blurry and drowsily depressive, the vocals doused in echo, those weird keyboard/horn guitars continuing to undulate and oscillate, surge an swell, creating strange ethereal melodies, which remind us of synth guitar weirdos Xynfonica / Shevalreq, the same sort of medieval majesty, but here buried in sonic murk and mire, the vocals so expressive, and strangely plaintive, the drums slipping from lazy plod to urgent pound and back again. In fact, the B side seems pretty evenly split between druggy propulsive post pop warble, and downright dreamy drift, all ephemeral and gauzy, the whole thing laced with chiming harmonics, warped melodic tangles and weirdly fluctuating production, the sound occasionally slipping into near perfect (albeit extremely damaged) pop, but more often then not, oozing and billowing, the sound seeming to melt before our ears into a warm whirling, almost liquid sound. A strangely soporific and somnolent sprawl of blurred blackness and murky melodicism, that truly is some of the weirdest, most beautifully baffling shit you will ever hear.
Super swank packaging for the cd too, in an ovesized sleeve with super striking artwork, with a booklet featuring the lyrics as well as hand inked artwork, black and white, with gold and silver metallic detail. Gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "Warpath"
MPEG Stream: "Staining The Paper To Create"

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS Eleven Fingers (Handmade Birds) lp 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. CD VERSION UPCOMING, HOWEVER!
The latest limited release from the the Handmade Birds label, a new and already insanely prolific sonic imprint run by Pyramids' R. Loren, comes from long time aQ faves, Finnish outsider black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. And a new record from CoO means it's time again to wonder why we even still consider these guys black metal, since it's been several years and many records since they were a proper black metal band (if they ever were at all). We are constantly baffled by groups like CoO, who are so beloved by so much of the black metal world, and we're talking the true grim hordes, yet they continue to create music that we imagine would not be pleasing AT ALL to such folk. Maybe we're selling black metallers short. Or it means the appeal is more than purely sonic. It speaks to the spirit of the sound, the black energy put into the music, which eventually must come out, even if it does as some sort of twisted Jandekian fractured folk or some minimal synth wave weirdness, at its core, the sound is dark, black, evil.
All of this talk in some ways is moot, as this latest record finds the band doing what they do, which is sort of black metal, sort of post rock, sort of whatthefuck, but it's all objective, and this music's 'blackness', or even its 'metalness', by most typically metal measures would be found wanting, but as far as we're concerned, this is exactly the sort of metallic blackness we love, murky, muddy, washed out and woozy, warped and stumbling, equal parts dark pop, fragmented folk, otherworldly creep, oh yeah and a little black buzz.
It only takes a few seconds to realize this is not at all like any black metal you've heard (unless of course you've heard lots of Circle Of Ouroborus!), the band launch into what almost sounds like Ariel Pink playing black metal, or some murky chunk of mysterious James Ferraro style lysergic pop, which just so happens to be laced with some evil vox, the riffs are blurry streaks of melody, that almost sound more like horns or keyboards (which they could be), warbly synths wheeze and sputter, the vocals alternate between gruff growl and dramatic croon, the drums distorted and stumbly, everything wreathed in a druggy haze, the sound like some alternate universe pop, or some strange mutant strain of new waves, especially when the drums switch to an almost disco beat, the blackness really only represented by the vokills, otherwise this is some gloriously warped melodic doom pop weirdness.
The B side brings things down even further, unfurling a haunting mournful bit of balladic dirgery, the sound bleary and blurry and drowsily depressive, the vocals doused in echo, those weird keyboard/horn guitars continuing to undulate and oscillate, surge an swell, creating strange ethereal melodies, which remind us of synth guitar weirdos Xynfonica / Shevalreq, the same sort of medieval majesty, but here buried in sonic murk and mire, the vocals so expressive, and strangely plaintive, the drums slipping from lazy plod to urgent pound and back again. In fact, the B side seems pretty evenly split between druggy propulsive post pop warble, and downright dreamy drift, all ephemeral and gauzy, the whole thing laced with chiming harmonics, warped melodic tangles and weirdly fluctuating production, the sound occasionally slipping into near perfect (albeit extremely damaged) pop, but more often then not, oozing and billowing, the sound seeming to melt before our ears into a warm whirling, almost liquid sound. A strangely soporific and somnolent sprawl of blurred blackness and murky melodicism, that truly is some of the weirdest, most beautifully baffling shit you will ever hear.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Gorgeous packaging too, super striking artwork on a gatefold reverse board jacket, with a big booklet, featuring hand inked artwork, black and white, with gold and silver metallic detail. Gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "Warpath"
MPEG Stream: "Staining The Paper To Create"

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS Old Ghosts (Cocainacopia) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Once again, Finnish 'black metal' weirdos distance themselves even further from what most of us would consider to be black metal. This compiles two 'sides' originally recorded for 2 planned split lps with another bunch of outsider black metallers, Urfaust. For whatever reason, said splits failed to materialize, thus we have this, two part bit of oddness called Old Ghosts, not a new album technically (part 3 of the Shores - Stream - Islands trilogy is coming out soon) but heck, new album or not, this is in fact a new full length from our of our favorite purveyors of damaged, off kilter blackness.
And as we mentioned above, CoO were never really the black and buzzy type, instead they took those elements and fused them with their more sort of abstract folk flecked, Jandekian stumble, the result something we found genius, but a fair amount of TROO black metal warriors found to be hard to handle. Moody, noodily slow motion almost new wave sounding guitars, reminding us quite a bit of some lost Cure demo, dark and spidery and creepy, the vocals sort of sung/spoken, often slipping into weird out of tune crooning, it's easy to see how these jams were intended to be on a split with Urfaust, the same sort of dramatic poppiness, a lurching, bizarrely rendered bit of not very metal blackness.
After the first track, the drums kick in, there's then a bit more buzz, but other than that, the sound remains essentially the same, dour and depressive, stripped down, almost jangly, more a sort of lo-fi doom-pop than black metal, very much along the same lines as the last few Hypothermia records, or maybe Dead Reptile Shrine at their most folky and poppy.
For being two different records, the two sides flow together fairly seamlessly, a sprawling collection of lumbering, loping, downtuned depressive, jangle flecked, blackened, gothic new wave pop weirdness. Further cementing these guys' position as one of our favorite groups around. Both sides finish off with short bursts of urgently strummed atonal acoustic folk, that sounds a bit like a more fucked up blackened Mountain Goats?! So cool.
Comes with a printed insert, with liner notes and lyrics, and features one of the best covers we've EVER seen on a 'metal' record for sure.

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS Shores (Northern Sky) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Not any black metal band can share a split with the mighty and mighty bizarre Urfaust, with their blustery buzz and crazy crooning. But Finland's Circle Of Ouroborus were well up to the task. In fact they actually sound quite bit like Urfaust, albeit in a way more damaged way, which is saying a lot.
On the split with Urfaust we reviewed recently, Circle Of Ouroborus offered up their own cracked take on buzzing black metal, murky almost punky, super lo-fi, practice space production, mumble warbly guitars, drums tinny and buried in the mix, and a totally demented vocalist wailing in a growling cracked croon, WAY up in the mix, shouting and howling. We thought they sounded a bit like a grim black metal Fall.
On Shores, the band stretch out a bit, but still hew close to the sound they share with their sonic brethren in Urfaust, a loping lurching, midtempo buzz, sing songy melodies, a murky black swirl, downtuned and droney, but stumblingly propulsive. Seasick and swaying drunkenly, these tracks sound more like blackened versions of some eighties British post punk band than some cult black metal band. And when the vocals kick in it pretty much seals the deal. When Mark E. Smith dies, and the Fall are no more, he'll strike a deal with the devil, come back from the dead, and this is where he'll end up. Crooning, in that nasally whine, sing/speaking for some mysterious jangly black metal post punk rock band. And if there was any doubt, Circle Of Ouroborus cover "She's Lost Control" by Joy Division. It's not particularly black either, it's gloomy and gothy and propulsively punky, guitars slide and slither, the vocals a dark croon. It almost sounds like a lo-fi live recording of Interpol or some long lost Damned track. Which is a very good thing for sure. It's just weird that these guys exist as a underground, grim and cult black metal band, when sonically, they owe as much to punk rock, and goth rock, and new wave as they do Darkthrone or Mayhem. Sure there's plenty of buzz and suffocating black atmosphere, but to truly dig this you'll definitely need either a love of totally bizarre and not entirely black metal, or a soft spot for classic newwavepostpunk (Fall, Wire, Gang Of Four, Joy Division) or preferably BOTH! And we definitely have both in spades, so as you might imagine this is WAY recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Nothingness"
MPEG Stream: "She's Lost Control (Joy Division)"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation"

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS Shores (Northern Sky Productions) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available on vinyl. With all new artwork. Deluxe thick jackets and printed inner sleeve, all white with minimal black art, and pressed on super thick white vinyl. Limited of course...
Not any black metal band can share a split with the mighty and mighty bizarre Urfaust, with their blustery buzz and crazy crooning. But Finland's Circle Of Ouroborus were well up to the task. In fact they actually sound quite bit like Urfaust, albeit in a way more damaged way, which is saying a lot.
On the split with Urfaust we reviewed recently, Circle Of Ouroborus offered up their own cracked take on buzzing black metal, murky almost punky, super lo-fi, practice space production, mumble warbly guitars, drums tinny and buried in the mix, and a totally demented vocalist wailing in a growling cracked croon, WAY up in the mix, shouting and howling. We thought they sounded a bit like a grim black metal Fall.
On Shores, the band stretch out a bit, but still hew close to the sound they share with their sonic brethren in Urfaust, a loping lurching, midtempo buzz, sing songy melodies, a murky black swirl, downtuned and droney, but stumblingly propulsive. Seasick and swaying drunkenly, these tracks sound more like blackened versions of some eighties British post punk band than some cult black metal band. And when the vocals kick in it pretty much seals the deal. When Mark E. Smith dies, and the Fall are no more, he'll strike a deal with the devil, come back from the dead, and this is where he'll end up. Crooning, in that nasally whine, sing/speaking for some mysterious jangly black metal post punk rock band. And if there was any doubt, Circle Of Ouroborus cover "She's Lost Control" by Joy Division. It's not particularly black either, it's gloomy and gothy and propulsively punky, guitars slide and slither, the vocals a dark croon. It almost sounds like a lo-fi live recording of Interpol or some long lost Damned track. Which is a very good thing for sure. It's just weird that these guys exist as a underground, grim and cult black metal band, when sonically, they owe as much to punk rock, and goth rock, and new wave as they do Darkthrone or Mayhem. Sure there's plenty of buzz and suffocating black atmosphere, but to truly dig this you'll definitely need either a love of totally bizarre and not entirely black metal, or a soft spot for classic newwavepostpunk (Fall, Wire, Gang Of Four, Joy Division) or preferably BOTH! And we definitely have both in spades, so as you might imagine this is WAY recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Nothingness"
MPEG Stream: "She's Lost Control (Joy Division)"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation"

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS The Lost Entrance Of The Just (Handmade Birds) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Along with the cd reissue of CoO's awesome Eleven Fingers album reviewed nearby on this week's list, comes this brand new, vinyl-only record from Finland's post black metal gloom pop weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus, whose sound really was barely ever actually all that black metal to begin with, but has continually been drifting further and further away, finally arriving here, at a sound that at this point is one distinctly their own, still subtly informed by black metal, but essentially pop music, a gloomy, occasionally buzzing, dour and darkly depressive pop music, but pop nonetheless. And with this record, that sound has mutated once again, taking their low fidelity a step further, and somehow wreathing it in a sonic murk, this new record impossible muffled, and muddied, womblike might be more accurate, the music is all soft focus, the sharp edges smoothed, the notes and chords, the various instruments, blurred and smeared into something more like an abstract chordal drift, the songs less songs, and more like impressions of songs. The only elements seemingly exempt are the vocals, still a haunting deep croon, and the drums, which occasionally stumble, occasionally pound, the combination is pretty stellar, and definitely bizarre, but it most certainly suits the group's dour blackened pop.
The vibe here extraordinarily woozy and warped, washed out and slurred, at times gauzy and nearly meditative, and when the band crank up the intensity, the hazy murk is dragged along as well, and instead of sounding heavy or rocking, it just sounds slightly heavier, but only really slightly. The songs tend toward the midtempo, and the dirge, but do occasionally erupt into some punky pound, but it's all behind a sheet of muffled murk, which again changes everything. The coolest moments are when the band introduce dueling vocals, clean and crooned, croaked and metallic, making for some strange harmonies, which are the perfect match for CoO's depressive blackened jangle pop, which throughout the record sounds alternately melty, detuned or oozing, often all three, a darkly and deliriously druggy songsuite that we're digging just as much as we did Eleven Fingers, which is a whole lot!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! The lps pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank textured card stock jacket, with a 7" x 7" booklet, printed on nice heavy paper, with illustrations and lyrics!

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS Tree Of Knowledge (Hospital Productions) cd 14.98
We've always held a special place in our darkened hearts for Finnish black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. The duo churns out a very strange brand of metal that would appear to share just as much, or maybe even more, with melancholy gloom merchants like Joy Division (who they have covered) and Dead Can Dance, as it does with black metal. They definitely share some of the influences of groups like Lifelover and Amesoeurs - you know, a gothy 4AD shimmer, cleanly arpeggiated guitar melodies, and vocals that don't rely exclusively on shrieks or growls - but to compare Circle Of Ouroborus to those bands, or anyone else really, is to neglect just how unique these guys are. For one, an ever present murkiness permeates all COO recordings, giving their songs a weird dreamy quality that seems to exist completely out of any time or place. The vocals, which have garnered understandable comparisons to the off kilter approach of Mark E. Smith, are hardly what you would expect from a "black metal" band, but there is obviously an acute awareness of the bleak realities of life that is TOTALLY black metal. Maybe more than anything, Circle Of Ouroborus have completely sidestepped any expectations of what a black metal band is supposed to be, and redefined it for their own purposes. In doing so, they have carved out a unique place in the metal underground and never failed to blow our minds with their bizarre sound. Now, after the completion of their Shores/Streams/Islands trilogy of records (we're still trying to track down Islands for y'all!), COO have progressed way beyond the awesome but at times amateur practice space sonics of some of their earlier work and delivered Tree Of Knowledge, not only their most accomplished and well thought out work to date, but certainly one of the best and most interesting metal releases we have heard this year.
The album begins with "A Root Casket", and it pretty much sounds like a more beefed up (and better) version of the COO we originally lost our shit over. The band sounds full and spacious, but still raw and lo-fi, like a ninth generation cassette dub of a lost Factory Records band. A catchy keyboard melody carries the song majestically, while murky guitars spin a sustained droniness that works perfectly with the vocals. At the same time, it manages to give a glimpse into their weird folky side. The seasick queasiness of the band's past releases endures, it just seems like they've better grasped how to work with their limited recording technology. "Demon In Iron" is a slightly atonal piece that makes perfect use of the band's cyclical guitar riffs and shimmery keyboards. It's so melodic and sad, but just BEAUTIFUL and even a bit punky, and you'd be forgiven if you mistook this one for some gloomy as hell indie band from the early '90s. "Show Me The Way To The Wishing Wall" is a midtempo downer with more cool circular guitar and steady, midtempo drumming. The singer's croon goes perfectly with the hazed out nature of the songs, and the natural overdrive on the otherwise clean guitars definitely help to make COO sound unlike most metal bands. Of course, around the 4 minute mark a Xasthurian black metal croak reminds you that, yes, this is some evil shit and not just another shoegazey black metal band. "Dead Eyes, Dead Soul" (how's that for further Joy Division comparisons?) follows another beautifully sad melody with phased out guitars and a discordant chorus that offers a cool transition to the tunefulness of the rest of the song. Instrumental number "Summer Graves" features sustained synth strings and an exotic touch with guitars that, at moments, *almost* brought to mind Polvo... Weird, but not quite as weird as the addition of a trumpet on the closing song, "Through My Fingers". Slow picked guitars and a chorus that manages to throw in some metal as fuck pinch harmonics with the contemplative dreaminess are accompanied by the sustained trumpet melodies that seem almost hopeful. Of course, the lyrics prove otherwise...
Like all COO releases, Tree Of Knowledge features totally amazing artwork, with 8 unique icons (each corresponding to a different song, it would seem) wrapped in the roots of a broken tree. It's rare that a band is able to achieve such a unique and perfectly realized vision, especially within a genre known for its dogmatically orthodox bullshit. But Circle Of Ouroborus are hardly just another band, and with Tree Of Knowledge, they have made that abundantly clear.
MPEG Stream: "A Root Casket"
MPEG Stream: "Demon In Iron"
MPEG Stream: "Show Me The Way To The Wishing Wall"

CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS / CROOKED NECKS Ruins Of Resurrection (Cocainacopia) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The return of weirdo Finnish black metal outsiders Circle Of Ouroborus, whose sound continues to mutate, and move well beyond the bounds of black metal. In fact, the opening track here sounds like some lost eighties minimal synth wave jam, with it's weezing keyboards, reverbed Teutonic percussion, and dual vocals, one crooned, the other spoken, all the folks who have been snapping up the vinyl reissues on Dark Entries might be surprised and converted to the way of CoO. The sound is super saturated and ultra distorted, in a way that makes it sound warm and whirling and washed out.
The follow up track is ostensibly more black metal, but it mostly just ups the tempo and wraps the guitars in a little blackened buzz, but the vocals are still cold and crooned, the sound fantastically murky, the crashing climaxes causing the sound to buckle and crumble, a propulsive bit of cold wave punkishness. The rest of CoO's half of this split follows suit, from brooding minimal crush, to loping meandery murk, the vocals atonal and bordering on Anton Maiden-ish at times, but just as often lush and gorgeously crooned, accompanied by a sound that while constantly distressed and distorted, veers from washed out brittle shimmer, to thick molasses-y mush, but always minor key and melancholy and moody, and just like all the other Circle of Ouroborus releases, twisted, and bafflingly brilliant.
Some of you probably remember the group Frail, who we described as sounding exactly like the Cure, just with harsh black metal vokills. Well Frail has transformed into Crooked Necks, and guess what? They still sound just like the Cure, new wave-y and jangly, a little dark wavey and goth poppy, the guitars chiming, the bass all Joy Divisiony, the drums propulsive and motorik, and of course the vocals, still harsh occasionally, but also, clean crooning here and there. The new sound is slightly more polished, still quite melodic, the perfect match for Circle Of Ouroborus's new more gothy cold wave-y sound. There are some heavier more black metal moments, but it's more like Lifelover style black metal pop than traditionally blasting and buzzing grimness, and the rest of Crooked Necks' sound could have been lifted straight off some goth rock / eighties new wave mix tape, The Cure, Echo And The Bunnymen, Icicle Works, if it wasn't for the vocals, these guys could be on Captured Tracks or Sacred Bones, and could be opening for Cold Cave or Blessure Grave, hell, maybe they still could be...
MPEG Stream: CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS "Ideals In Rust"
MPEG Stream: CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS "Rhythm Of The Spring"
MPEG Stream: CROOKED NECKS "Poisoning The Seed"
MPEG Stream: CROOKED NECKS "Time Of Disaster"