DEFAULT JAMERSON I Think I'm Starting To Let Go (Diagnosis... Don't!) 3" cd-r 12.98
We found a handful of titles, maybe only 5 or 6 of each, from Aussie label DiagnosisÉ Don't! We've had these for ages, and odds are these are long gone as they were pretty limited to begin with, but for a few of you, here's your chance to grab one (or all) of these super limited 3" cd-r's.
Default Jamerson is a one man noise making machine from Australia, who crafts a lush and billowy low end, all deep whirling tones, thick speaker shredding dronemusic, even with the bass dialed all the way back, this single 20 minute track was sending seismic waves into the room, causing everything to vibrate gloriously. Lots of shifting textures, haunting melodies buried in the mix, the sound murky and muddy and underwater, woozy and warbly and totally hypnotic. Definitely bummed we slept on this. And bummed that only a handful of you will get to hear it. But what can you do? Heavy low end drone freaks should try to snag one while they can...
Packaged in thick cardstock mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. And again, we only have a VERY FEW of these....
MPEG Stream: "I Think I'm Starting To Let Go (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "I Think I'm Starting To Let Go (excerpt 2)"

DEL Vampyr (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We at AQ have long been fans of Campbell Kneale and his project Birchville Cat Motel who along with the Dead C, Omit, Gate and a handful of others have helped to define one of the richest free-rock-noise-drone scenes in the world. For years Kneale has been releasing cds, lps and cassettes (most of them quite limited) of noisy electronic soundscapes and gorgeous organic drones. So when we discovered Kneale also ran a label, we figured it was definitely worth checking out. And how right we were. Not only is all of the music on Celebrate Psi Phenomena amazing, but the packaging is perfectly and stunningly designed as well (quite nice considering this is a cd-r label. See our crappy cd-r packaging rants in the last three or four lists) with each cd in a plastic sleeve nestled between two sheets of old fashioned textured wallpaper, printed, and sealed with a gold star.
This is a single hour long track, an improvised soundtrack to a 1930 Carl Dreyer film. Turkish drum, electronics, guitar and powerbook. Very spare and ambient with lots of room sound, clicks and clatter, the sound of people laughing (at the film we would imagine) and slowly shifting instrument buzz. Dark ambient guitarscapes, wistful feedback, subsonic rumble and gentle notes pulled almost imperceptibly from the guitar.
RealAudio clip: "Vampyr"

DELAY, VLADISLAV Ele (Sigma) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Release number 5 from this great new New Zealand label. Just like the first two (Rosy Parlene and Parmentier, reviewed in the last AQ-List) these are all-white packages of beautiful, minimal music.
Vladislav Delay (from Finland, a hemisphere away from the other Sigma artists physically but not musically) distills dub into faded ghosts of fragmented sound, immersing the listener in a droning deconstruction of snare, cymbal, and analog electronic sounds.

DELAY, VLADISLAV Helsinki (Max Ernst) 12" 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Thomas Brinkmann's influence on Vladislav Delay is far well beyond the fact that Brinkmann released this single on his Max Ernst label. The motorik machines that tick with clockwork precision (and a very static 'groove') are signature of Brinkmann's minimalist techno. However, Vladislav Delay (who also has a great album on the New Zealand label Sigma) does appear to be doing more with the digital metronome in sprinkling cavernous dub and frozen atmospheres, falling closer to the sound of Plastikman or some of the Chain Reaction kids.

DELETIST, THE s/t (Entartete Kunst) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Deletist (aka Bitter Pie) is a member of the SF Entartete Kunst arts collective. While conveying the group's socio-political ideas, she also makes some beautifully aquatic sounding music. Using both acoustic and electronic sources, she blends her dark processed experimentations with airier, delicate melodic lines. The latter is particularly notable on tracks like "Sans Toi" and the "The Lure Of War" in which waves of obscure/effected vocals flow in and around tapped woodblock-y rhythms, acoustic string, keyboard or harpsichord (?) sounds, programmed beats, distorted hiss and sputters. There's also a number of heavier passages that bring to mind the Cold Metal Perfection album by Atari Teenage Riot's Nic Endo. The result is a sharp, effective contrast between The Deletist's enveloping, almost-soothing tracks and her moodier, more abrasive ones.
MPEG Stream: "Sans Toi"
MPEG Stream: "The Lure Of War"

DELETIST, THE / DROWNING DOG split (Entartete Kunst) 7" 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A new split single by two artists from the Bay Area Entartete Kunst collective - a diverse group of outspoken artists who address social and political issues via word and sound. As they state it, they produce "no-field electronica, radical literature and propaganda that promotes positive social change". The Deletist offers the looming "Americans Eye Aeroplanes" filled with shadowy effected strings (note: this track also appears on her new album). On the flipside, Drowning Dog's "Crimson" is a track of sampled spoken word with an ominous backdrop of tactile drones and digital bleep.

DELPHIUM Nobody Sees The Monster In The Light Of Day... (Moloko) cd 16.98
Delphium's first recordings situated themselves along the Scorn/Ice/God axis of devastating, electronic dub fused with bleak isolationist atmospheres. The overall darkness remains for their latest album, but it's been jacked up with time-stretched drum & bass breaks, angular 8-bit bleeping, and synthetic strings manuvering through all sorts of minor chords. "Nobody Sees The Monster In The Light Of Day..." wants to be a bad-ass/industrial strength companion to things like Springheel Jack or Chemical Brothers, but doesn't quite have all of the grooves down right. A strange hybrid.

DEMDIKE STARE Elemental (Modern Love) 2cd 26.00
We would have made Demdike Stare's sprawling quadruple vinyl 12"s epic Elemental our Record Of The Week had it not been for a few things. One, the four records were released over the course of several months, two, the combined cost of all those records ended up being nearly $100, and three, we knew it was eventually gonna come out on cd. So now that the cd version is here, we can finally make this twisted hauntological epic our Record Of The Week, which is great news for everybody, EXCEPT maybe crazy completists, who will be dismayed (or perhaps perversely thrilled) to discover, that not only does the double cd version tack on a bunch of extra tracks (nearly 33 minutes worth!!), but it also features alternate versions of some of the tracks from the 12"s. So it's really up to the folks who already shelled out for all four 12" if they want to buy it all over again, but for everybody else, we can't recommend this highly enough. More on the bonus tracks at the end, but let's talk about Elemental proper first...
Elemental was probably one of the most anticipated records around here recently, the sprawling epic from hauntological duo Demdike Stare, a four part songsuite, Chrysanthe, Violetta, Rose and Iris, the duo's new sound seriously dark, much more industrial sounding, the vibe blackened, the sounds layered and way more dense.
Chrysanthe opens with "Mephisto's Lament", which is all foghorn buzz, deep whirring drones, keening high end melodic fragments, murky buried rhythms, peppered with creepy synth squelches, and when the song gets rolling, it's almost like a hauntological SUNNO))), the same sort of roiling downtuned heaviness, but here stretched into something a bit more sinister and abstract, almost like the soundtrack for some subterranean factory, all rumble and clang, all shadows and very little light. "Kommunion" is up next, a lush looped slow build, all repeated piano motifs wreathed in chanted vocals, and all blurred into fuzzy soft focus swells, the sound suddenly expanding into a blisteringly blown out in-the-red buzz, a swoonsome melody hidden in there somewhere, the sound slipping from caustic and crunchy to blurred and murky, before switching gears completely, lacing a sprawl of staticky hiss to a skeletal trip hop pulse, extra percussion provided by found sounds, clatter and crunch, atonal piano, all woven into a strange almost Art Of Noise sounding beat. Then comes "Unction", a super creepy stretch of undulating lowend, demarcated by a strange sonar ping rhythm, one that is quickly augmented by a twisted effected croaking frog skitter, and another beat seemingly assembled from the sounds of workman scraping and dragging, a crunchy noisy lurching groove, that is soon overtaken by another cloud of reverberating pianos, which finishes off the side with a coda of swirling minimal washed out thrum.
The second part, Violetta, begins with "Mnemosyne", a blissed out sun dappled bit of witch house-y skitter, all hazy and gauzy and dreamlike, until a sudden burst of clattery noisy rhythmic crunch changes everything, and then assembles itself into a strange lumbering cacophonous beat, the sound eventually underpinned by some Eastern style folk music, which drifts briefly, before that clattery beat crashes back in, now accompanied by that Eastern melody, sounding like a weirdly stuttery bit of gypsy electro. Which leads directly into "In The Wake Of Chronos", which opens with some distant mysterious melodies, some sprinkler like textures, some super minimal skeletal skitter, and some seriously deep bass thrum, the minimal drift soon peppered with short sharp bursts of metallic crunch, clipped bits of hiss and skree sculpted into a sort-of-beat, also soon joined by tinkling melodies, wreathed in echo, the sound gradually expanding, and becoming more and more lush, that beat drifting off, leaving the various other sounds to shimmer and hover ethereally over a blackened backdrop of blurred hum. And finally, Violetta finishes off with the title track, a soft cacophony of pounded piano, the chords allowed to ring out and slowly fade, all subtly warped, an ominous sort of avant classical doom, laced with little sonic squiggles, and wreathed in clouds of hiss and static, soon those little squiggles transform into beats, a wild chaotic looped rhythm, which is strangely at odds with that funereal piano, still pounding away in the background, a twisted bit of hauntological IDM, the piano subtly replaced by a hazy sprawl of synth simmer, which is left to fade out once the beat drops off, a thick swirling final movement, washed out and woozy.
Part three is Rose, and begins with a churning industrial chug, grinding through a woozy washed out haze, wreathed in a distant ethereal vocal drift, looped and mesmerizing, the sound is most definitely epic and cinematic, the sound laced with bits of clatter and crunch, and than BAM, the track is transformed into a gorgeous stretch of Middle Eastern string laden groove, all wrapped around that opening industrial rhythm, sounding like a more dense, more psychedelic Muslimgauze! The second track is more murky and dubbed out and spacey, anchored by a muted slo-mo house beat, buried in the murk, the beats wreathed in soft metallic billows, the surrounding sounds swirling dreamily, hazy melodic streaks and blurred background shimmers, clouds of tripped out drift, through which that industrial flecked rhythm soldiers druggily on.
The third track begins as a gauzy, ethereal thrum, that seems to hover wraithlike, before suddenly in drops an impossibly dense and heavy ribcage rattling bass pulse, accompanied by cool spare tabla like rhythms, that Muslimgauze vibe is definitely huge here too, a keening high end sine wave tone flutters over fragmented chunks of dubstep bass wobble, all drifting in the sonic ether.
Finally comes part four, Iris, which might be the grimmest and darkest of the bunch. Opening with buzzing cellos, and swirling blackened drones, which are soon joined by a plodding doomy rhythm, laced with streaks of prismatic feedback and hauntingly melodic harmonies, all the whole in the background, textures and layers softly swirl and undulate, the result is definitely creepy and cinematic, but also a bit blackened and industrial. The second track dials it down even further, unfurling a hushed, blurred thrum, a wash of hazy shimmer, a dubbed out murk laced with mysterious industrial percolations, reverbed clatter, and strange squelches, like a field recording of an old abandoned office building with all the air conditioners and printers and computers whirring away, a creepy disembodied hum which is soon enveloped by crunchy caustic high end, keening shards of buzz and skree, growing ever more dense and noisy. Next up some surfacing sonar pings, over a skittery, skeletal beat, shuffling through clouds of effects swirl, droned out bass warble, and more of that unidentified background shimmer, the sound is cavernous and hypnotic, the background sounds gradually solidifying into sheets of chordal whir, all wreathed in a cowl of soft buzzy sonic gauze, all the while that rhythm churns relentlessly, and that bass thrum stretches out into a strangely undulating low end drone.
Obviously, that should be more than enough to sell you on it, but folks who are after the bonus tracks will not be dissappointed, more than a half hour's worth minutes of extra music, six tracks, the first of which, "New Use For Old Circuits", opens up the set with a blast of psychedelic noise, before oozing into something much more liquid and murky, a sort of subaquatic space dub, a little bit like Chain Reaction style 'heroin house', but instead of hearing the music through a wall, we're hearing it through the thin steel walls of a submarine, stranded in the inky blackness of the deepest sea. "Shade" is a short stretch of gauzey high end shimmer, a haze of blurred melody and buried plink plonk piano, while "10th Floor Stairwell" is a fantastic chunk of thrumming low end pulsations, a minimal blackened drone that slwoly blossoms into something more tonally colorful, eventually becoming a sort of blackbuzz raga. "Metamorphosis" takes a field recording of voices and wraps it in soft swirls of static and tape hiss, soon introducing more of that impossible low end, the voices locked in a chant-like loop, while that skull rattling bass tone, pulses ominously, eventually introducing some throbbing 4 on the floor house music, but all murky and muddy, as if blasting in an upstairs apartment, just the rhythm oozing though the walls, a darkly propuslive slab of late night housemusic murk. "All This Is Ours (Sunrise)", unfurls soft swells of new age synth shimmer, a crystalline drift that soon sinks into a thick layed morass of crumbling bass-synth squelch and gradually intensifying distorted crackle, before finishing off in a squall of soft noise and sc-fi FX swirl, and finally, "We Have Already Died", strings some tribal skeletal skitter into a looped almost Muslimgauze sounding groove, all draped over an ominous sprawl of post industrial hum and layered swirls of blurred ghost-grey ambience.
Packaged much like the last Demdike Stare, in an oversized six panel digi-sleeve, with original Andy Votel artwork, mirroring the artwork from the original quadruple gatefold sleeve that housed all four 12"s...
MPEG Stream: "Mephisto's Lament"
MPEG Stream: "Kommunion"
MPEG Stream: "Mnemosyne"
MPEG Stream: "Erosion Of Mediocrity"
MPEG Stream: "Dauerlinie"
MPEG Stream: "New Use For Old Circuits"

DEMDIKE STARE Elemental 4: Iris (Modern Love) 12" 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here it is, the final installment in Demdike Stare's sprawling new hauntological epic, Elemental, split into 4 separate 12"s, the first three already sold out and out of print, as this one will be too shortly. Obviously, if you bought the first one, which came in the super deluxe Andy Votel designed quadruple gatefold sleeve, designed to hold all 4 records, you're gonna want/need this one too, but like we said with the last volume, the record do work pretty well on their own.
This fourth one, titled Iris (they're all titled after different flowers), might be the grimmest and darkest of the bunch. Opening with buzzing cellos, and swirling blackened drones, which are soon joined by a plodding doomy rhythm, laced with streaks of prismatic feedback and hauntingly melodic harmonies, all the whole in the background, textures and layers softly swirl and undulate, the result is definitely creep and cinematic, but also a bit blackened and industrial. The second track on the A side dials it down even further, unfurling a hushed, blurred thrum, a wash of hazy shimmer, a dubbed out murk laced with mysterious industrial percolations, reverbed clatter, and strange squelches, like a field recording of an old abandoned office building with all the air conditioners and printers and computers whirring away, a creepy disembodied hum which is soon enveloped by crunchy caustic high end, keening shards of buzz and skree, growing ever more dense and noisy...
The flipside introduces sonar pings, over a skittery, skeletal beat, shuffling through clouds of effects swirl, droned out bass warble, and more of that unidentified background shimmer, the sound is cavernous and hypnotic, the background sounds gradually solidifying into sheets of chordal whir, all wreathed in a cowl of soft buzzy sonic gauze, all the while that rhythm churns relentlessly, and that bass thrum stretches out into a strangely undulating low end drone.
CRAZY LIMITED of course, already sold out, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get. Comes in another Andy Votel designed sleeve, pressed on blue vinyl, and something weird this time (we didn't notice with the other records), the run out groove is on the OUTside, with the music toward the center, as if it was a 10" with extra empty groves wrapped around the circumference, etched of course with a mysterious message as well...

DEMDIKE STARE Liberation Through Hearing (Modern Love) 12" 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Part two, in Demdike Stare's planned trilogy of 12"s, a comprehensive hauntological study in sound. For those new to Demdike Stare, we tend to fall back on this succinct description: black metal dubstep, or sometimes this one: a blackened dub record on Chain Reaction. Either one should give you an idea of the sort of dark sonic energy these guys conjure up. Thick claustrophobic atmospheres, skeletal rhythms, thick throbbing bass, skittering dubbed out beats, disembodied voices, all woven into a swirling organic mass of dub flecked blacktronica, the sound seeming to grow ever darker, as evidenced here on part two, which is thematically related to the Book Of The Dead, and focuses on the space between death and rebirth. Rendered in greys and blacks, in buzz and rumble, beginning with some woozy late night Portishead style downtempo trip hop, low slung looped skitter and swell, lush swirls of cinematic strings, ghostly choirs, a softly lurching rhythmic stutter, a deep cavernous throb, sounding like a ghostly stripped down dubstep. Which gives way to heaving expanses of black tidal thrum, muted scrapings, all wound into hypnotic pulses of dark energy, laced with distant chiming melodies, a haunting, gauzey faded memory in sound, drawn from radios with dying batteries and gradually slowing turntables, a soft focus symphony of creaks and rumbles and blurred low end shimmer. The A-side finishes with a swoonsome smear of looped ambience, like a field recording of an after hours nightclub captured in a temporal loop, warm an druggy and fuzzy, strangely hypnotic and rhythmic, totally trancelike, a creeped out wasteland soundscape, mysterious and chilling, which is eventually augmented by thick slabs of corrosive low end, and heavily reverbed industrial clatter, which eventually emerges into a strange sea of crackle and hum, of warbly rhythms, chiming bells and distorted crunch, sounding a bit like Jeck spinning Pole record, abstract and spaced out and hauntingly lovely.
The B-side opens with thick streaks of ghostly mesmer, all washed out and slowly decaying, underpinned by thick swaths of dubstep style bass wobble, but muted and smoothed into soft smears of undulating blackness. Subtle skitter surfaces, as do distant voices, the sound getting more and more dubby, a bit like a Caretaker record on Chain Reaction, that sort of hazy abstract drift, but anchored to barely there beats, the buzz building to an intense coda, all the while wrapped in throbbing woofer punishing low end.
Some super stripped down rhythms are laid over a swirling ghostly backdrop of fragmented melodies and a buried house music thump, tangled and blurred strings wrap the proceedings in a veil of softened reverb and subtle echo, the almost Eastern sounding pulse and swell reminding us a bit of the late great Muslimgauze.
Finally, the record collapses into some sort of melancholic sonic reverie, a hushed ambient outro, a tranquil sea of soft swirling swells, clouds of echo and reverb, a dreamy darkness, a blackened pop ambience, laced with muted streaks of fuzz and hiss, but all gradually sinking into Demdike Stare's endless trancelike billowing blackness.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!

DEMDIKE STARE Test Pressings (Modern Love) 12" 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More so than any of the other singles they've released, Demdike Stare here drop two heady tracks of darkened techno and horror-disco. We've long loved their mysterious, hauntological blacker-than-black dub tricknology and claustrophobic atmospherics, and all of that is still firmly intact on these tracks. What IS different here however is that DS push the rhythms forward, jacked in the mix, and not just teasing with a Chain Reactive rhythm here or a Middle Eastern groove there all of which would typically collapse into a pool of echo, dread, and ghostliness. It's actually quite nice to hear Demdike work out a more rhythmic, creeped-out floorfiller sound on these two tracks. The A-side "Collusion" begins with an intense snarl of electrocuted noise that eventually locks into a bassline throb of a skeletal drum-n-bass (yup, the quintessential Amen Break is deconstructed once again). Steadily, Demdike Stare build the rhythm back through its component parts -- a skittered snare fill, a rollicking hi-hat, and that manic frenzy which is why everybody loves this rhythm -- with those thickened, tesla-coil bursts of electricity firing around the programmatic dervish. Think Hrvatski and Aphex at their heights of influence but given over to the dark side. The B-side "Misappropriation" locks in a zombified rhythm culled from West African drum patterns, taking a cue from William Bennett's Cut Hands projects and really cranking the dynamics and darkening the tone if that were even possible. Totally brilliant! Who knows if this is a detour or a new direction for Demdike Stare? But who cares, cuz it's fucking great. Unfortunately, destined to be out of print in the blink of eye.

DEMDIKE STARE Test Pressings 002 (Modern Love) 12" 17.98
Here be the second 'Test Pressing' from Demdike Stare, which of course is not a real test pressing, but an actual release in an edition of 500 or so. The first of these sold out here in a weekend, and we're expecting the same result for this one too, especially given that we're presented with two more great cuts from Demdike Stare, one of our all time favorite electronica projects, divining the dark arts through horror score allusions, dubstep claustrophobia, and a witchy set of production tricks that are both heavy and ghostly at the same time. The A side "Grows Without Bounds" is a lurching number of industrially grinding electronics that are tempered into a Nocturnal Emissions sound dirge, with a quiet heartbeat pulse easing into the mix. The B side "Primitive Equations" is an updated version of the darkened, cocaine-laden drum & bass stylings of Metalheadz and No U Turn from the mid '90s, complete with sparse placed basslines that stab at a very nice breakbeat that sorta falls between the seminal Apache and Amen breaks, but seems to be something else entirely. Always great to hear Demdike Stare, but if you blink, you might miss out on this one.

DEMDIKE STARE Tryptych (Modern Love) 3cd 28.00
AT LAST, REPRESSED!!
Finally, Demdike Stare's dark and dizzying, murky and mysterious hauntological black dub triptych, previously available via three separate slabs of now very out of print vinyl, is now available on cd, gathered up into a single, nicely packaged triple disc set. And loaded with bonus tracks (nearly 40 minutes extra all told), which makes this pretty much a shoe-in for Record Of The Week...
Demdike Stare are one of the few bands who seem to be a unanimous aQ favorite, everyone here LOVES these guys, and judging on how many of the various lps we've sold, everyone out there does too. Which makes sense, when you consider, DS basically create a kind of black metal dubstep, or as we (and others) like to describe it, a blackened dub record on Chain Reaction. Either one should give you an idea of the sort of dark sonic energy these guys conjure up. Thick claustrophobic atmospheres, skeletal rhythms, thick throbbing bass, skittering dubbed out beats, disembodied voices, stuttering minimal sort-of-dubstep, looped and processed African folk music (??), swirling glitched out electronics, deeeep pulsing dronemusic, reverb drenched post-rock-via-techno skitter, all woven into a swirling organic mass of dub flecked blacktronica, dark and sinister and dubby, and weirdly house-y, sprawling and epic and creepy and so totally sweeping and cinematic.
The first disc, Forest Of Evil, was originally two sidelong tracks, the first starts out all deep shimmer, with a softly melodic buzz, spidery acoustic guitars, long stretches of billowy black ambience, bits of shuffly jazzy drift, peppered with thick shards of buzzy fractured dub bass and Kompakt style skitter, giving way to glistening late night techno, whirling pop ambient, and blissed out ethereal dronemusic, while the second is darkly dramatic, epic and majestic, like some lost Italian soundtrack, big drums, orchestral and ominous, looped samples, blurred melodic smears over deep pulsing bass, whirling clouds of cymbal shimmer, insectoid FX buzz, jumbled atonal melodies (hints of Bernard Herrmann), the vibe tense and haunting, with some dubstep bass buzz, that slowly dissolves into a Caretaker like outro, all layered strings wreathed in hiss and crackle, hazy and druggy and divine. The bonus track "Quiet Sky" conjures up just what the title implies, a quiet sky, but a dark, bruised midnight sky, flecked with stars, soft swirls of metallic shimmer like gauzy clouds, the song gradually developing a strange minimal hiccuppy rhythm, underpinning the deep melancholic swells, a strange almost industrial tinged bit of pop ambience.
The second disc, Liberation Through Hearing, is thematically related to the Book Of The Dead, and focuses on the space between death and rebirth. Rendered in greys and blacks, in buzz and rumble, beginning with some woozy late night Portishead style downtempo trip hop, low slung looped skitter and swell, lush swirls of cinematic strings, ghostly choirs, a softly lurching rhythmic stutter, a deep cavernous throb, sounding like a ghostly stripped down dubstep. Which gives way to heaving expanses of black tidal thrum, muted scrapings, all wound into hypnotic pulses of dark energy, laced with distant chiming melodies, a haunting, gauzey faded memory in sound, drawn from radios with dying batteries and gradually slowing turntables, a soft focus symphony of creaks and rumbles and blurred low end shimmer. The first half finishes with a swoonsome smear of looped ambience, like a field recording of an after hours nightclub captured in a temporal loop, warm and druggy and fuzzy, strangely hypnotic and rhythmic, totally trancelike, a creeped out wasteland soundscape, mysterious and chilling, which is eventually augmented by thick slabs of corrosive low end, and heavily reverbed industrial clatter, which eventually emerges into a strange sea of crackle and hum, of warbly rhythms, chiming bells and distorted crunch, sounding a bit like Jeck spinning Pole record, abstract and spaced out and hauntingly lovely.
The second half opens with thick streaks of ghostly mesmer, all washed out and slowly decaying, underpinned by thick swaths of dubstep style bass wobble, but muted and smoothed into soft smears of undulating blackness. Subtle skitter surfaces, as do distant voices, the sound getting more and more dubby, a bit like a Caretaker record on Chain Reaction, that sort of hazy abstract drift, but anchored to barely there beats, the buzz building to an intense coda, all the while wrapped in throbbing woofer punishing low end.
Some super stripped down rhythms are laid over a swirling ghostly backdrop of fragmented melodies and a buried house music thump, tangled and blurred strings wrap the proceedings in a veil of softened reverb and subtle echo, the almost Eastern sounding pulse and swell reminding us a bit of the late great Muslimgauze.
Finally, the record collapses into some sort of melancholic sonic reverie, a hushed ambient outro, a tranquil sea of soft swirling swells, clouds of echo and reverb, a dreamy darkness, a blackened bit of blurpop minimalism, laced with muted streaks of fuzz and hiss, but all gradually sinking into Demdike Stare's endless trancelike billowing blackness.
The bonus tracks on this one (3 of them, clocking in at nearly 20 minutes) continue the record's surreal sonic journey, spidery rhythms, and chiming melodies are looped and layered over a simple pulsing propulsive groove, the whole thing slightly warped and warbled, as if recorded onto an old piece of tape, and played back on some dusty old ramshackle tape player, ghostly, but surprisingly playful at first, before slipping into some seriously creepy, deeeeeep droning rumbles, wreathed in shimmering solar winds, softly billowing sheets of hiss and static, eventually shedding all of that, leaving just a thick morass of softly undulating low end, shot through with a slo-mo house music pulse, only to have the hiss and whir return, this time relegated to the background, until the track finishes surprisingly with what sounds like a bit of African style funkiness, before disappearing in a brief cloud of swirling hushed buzz.
Finally, the third disc, Voices Of Dust, unveils the Tryptych's final movement, opening with "Black Sun", a short stretch of some super minimal electronic dronemusic, all layered overtones and strange sonic shadings, which gives way to the chopped and looped and stuttery vocal driven "Hashshashin Chant" which takes tribal drums and traditional folk music vocals, and twists them all up, and tangles those elements with strange percussion, industrial buzz, the whole thing a dizzying chunk of hypno-electronic collaged psychedelic mashup weirdness, before slipping into the much murkier and minimal "Repository Of Light", which unfurls like some sort of Hawkwind-meets-Pole spaced out digi-dub drift. And so it goes, the sound flitting between impossibly realized miniature sound worlds, cinematic electronic ambience, ominously pulsing low end rumble, hazy glitchy dubbed out Jeckian smears, super blown out electronic big beat bombast, almost industrial sounding avant big band abstraction, roiling corrosive soft noise, bellowing foghorn-like melodies, warped and woozy scratchy old lp warblescapes and beyond.
The bonus tracks are the perfect, hazy, ghostly coda, the first, a warm, whispery bit of keening abstract melody and thick pulsing thrum, all very washed out and space-y and dreamlike, a constantly vibrating living thing, a throbbing organic expanse of minimal space drone psychedelic ambience, until finally, the whole disc is laid to rest with 9 minutes of heaving, glacial, metallic creep and creak, wreathed in record crackle, the final sounds unfurl like some old dusty Tim Hecker 45 spinning at 16rpm, mournful moaning melodies, buried rhythmic thumps, shimmery sitar like buzz, all hazy and smeared and lysergic and mysteriously murky, the perfect slipping-into-darkness, leaving-this-world-behind finale...
Gorgeously evocative, creepy and cinematic, abstract and otherworldly, druggy and dreamy, fantastically haunting and utterly spine tinglingly stunning. And thus, absolutely recommended.
Packaged in a super swank, oversized, hardcover book style digipak.
Matt's addendum: "Really feeling this collection of tunes these days. Love blasting this spooky dub-collage REAL loud in the shop! Thee neighbors get upset, but they need to chill cuz it has to be MASSIVE!"
MPEG Stream: "Forest Of Evil (Dusk)"
MPEG Stream: "Caged In Stammheim"
MPEG Stream: "Eurydice"
MPEG Stream: "Regolith"
MPEG Stream: "Hashashin Chant"
MPEG Stream: "Repository Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "Rain And Shame"

DEMDIKE STARE Voices Of Dust (Modern Love) 12" 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally part three in Demdike Stare's strange and wonderful hauntological black dub triptych, a logical continuation of both Forest Of Evil and Liberation Through Hearing, a sprawling twisted landscape of sound, from lurching stuttering minimal sort-of-dubstep to looped and processed African folk music (??) to swirling glitched out electronics, to throbbing pulsing deeeeeep dronemusic, to reverb drenched post-rock-via-Chain-Reaction skitter to... well wherever these cracked sonic alchemists decide to dream up.
The record opens with "Black Sun", a short stretch of some super minimal electronic dronemusic, all layered overtones and strange sonic shadings, which gives way to the chopped and looped and stuttery vocal driven "Hashshashin Chant" which takes tribal drums and traditional folk music vocals, and twists them all up, and tangling those elements with strange percussion, industrial buzz, the whole thing a dizzying chunk of hypno-electronic collaged psychedelic mashup weirdness, before slipping into the much murkier and minimal "Repository Of Light", which unfurls like some sort of Hawkwind-meets-Pole spaced out digi-dub drift.
And so it goes, the sound flitting between impossibly realized miniature sound worlds, cinematic electronic ambience, ominously pulsing low end rumble, hazy glitchy dubbed out Jeckian smears, super blown out electronic big beat bombast, almost industrial sounding avant big band abstraction, roiling corrosive soft noise, bellowing foghorn-like melodies, warped and woozy scratchy old lp warblescapes and beyond.
So gorgeously evocative, creepy and cinematic, abstract and otherworldly, druggy and dreamy, fantastically haunting and spine tinglingly stunning.
Rumor is all three lps are getting reissued as a cd box sometime next year, but the vinyl tends to disappear pretty quick, so act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Hashashin Chant"
MPEG Stream: "Repository Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "Rain And Shame"

DEMONOLOGISTS Sermons Of Death And Eternal Damnation (Waves Of Decay) cassette 8.98
With a name like Demonologists and a title like Sermons Of Death And Eternal Damnation, you probably already have a good idea of what sort of sonic sickness these guys have in store for you. And you'd be right.
A bleak, noisy, super distorted, atmospheric bit of blown out, crumbling, industrial doom laden trudge and lumber, the sky a black swirl of metallic crunch and shrieking feedback, what must be guitars are transformed into heaving avalanches of blacknoise, the voices (if they are voices) just add more chaos to the already confusional din, streaks of melodies and a buried slow motion propulsion drag the sound like some blackened carcass, being wheeled into the bowels of hell. Huge shards of moaning melody surface now and again, adding a strange sort of cinematic gravitas, but most of the subtle stuff is swallowed up by the harsh churning crush and pummel on the surface, heavily layered and super texture, so blown out and in the red, the tape gets overloaded, and the sound becomes strangely warm and muted before collapsing again into paroxysms of skree and scrape and howl and buzz.
It's like 10 different black metal records being played at once, and then being remixed by some Japanoise DJ's, the speeds shifting, the tempos dragging and threatening to spill into oozing black puddles of sound, this is definitely rough stuff, but like the best rough stuff, this is not just pedal masturbation or white noise punishment, although to be fair, it is punishing, there is plenty of white noise (and pink, and brown, and BLACK) and heck, there's probably some pedal abuse, but it's all whipped up into a serious speaker melting frenzy, the sort of sound that will definitely appeal to students of the school of Merzbow and Masonna, but also, folks into the noisier and more abrasive end of the black spectrum like Gnaw Their Tongues, BSBC, Aderlating, Alkerdeel, Black Mayonnaise, Grief No Absolution, Endless Humiliation, etc.
Sweet packaging, silver ink on black card stock. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have less than ten!

DEMONOLOGISTS / DEATHSTENCH Incantations In Dead Tongues (Black Goat) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest chunk of grim blacknoise from Ohio duo Demonologists, comes in the form of this super limited split cd-r, with the mysterious Deathstench. We first heard from Demonologists on a cassette from Waves Of Decay, and we described that record as sounding like ten different black metal records all being played at once and then remixed by a Japanoise DJ. Which should tell you all you need to know, brutal, harsh, intense, black buzz brutality. On their half of this split, Demonologists start off each track with some black ambient drift or some creepy cinematic dronemusic, only to eventually explode into full on blacknoise, an avalanche of speaker shredding, ear piercing Merzbow/Masonna style fury, only in this case, buried in there somewhere are buzzing riffs and shrieked vokills, and if you can brave the first few minutes, the songs tend to open up, peeling back some of the noise, revealing all the murky weirdness inside and underneath, whether that's wild squalls of fractured effects, surprising shards of jagged melody, or just stretches of black metal buzz. Headphones seem the way to go, this is the sort of all out aural assault that in a room with regular speakers, just sounds like a vacuum cleaner symphony, but strap on those cans, and you're plunged into a blacknoise abyss, a skull caving collision between Incapacitants and Wrath Of The Weak, a whirling black buzz dervish of unparalleled proportions. Metalheads tread carefully, one must have iron ears as well as a black soul to truly survive this sonic onslaught!
Deathstench start their side off with a creepy sample and some sick, gurgling low end buzz, a churning black expanse of downtuned heaviness and murky oozing creep, the sound super distorted and on the verge of crumbling to pieces, textural and heavily layered, black and black but surprisingly listenable. Which is how these guys roll, balancing the relentless blown out pummel of Demonologists, Deathstench are a bit more subtle with their bleak, grim, abject soundscaping, creating looped landscapes of industrial whir, and buzzy black drones, of machine like rhythms buried in the sonic murk and mire, wreathed in haunting drifting melodies, and swirling black ambience, finally finishing things off with a 15+ minute horrorscape, beginning with some hushed ultra minimal shimmer, but quickly blossoming into something much more evocative and sinister, distant demonic vokills, disembodied voices, churning black low end, lots of spaced out drift, super cinematic and downright scary.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! With full color glossy artwork!
MPEG Stream: DEMONOLOGISTS "Blood Soaked Frequencies"
MPEG Stream: DEMONOLOGISTS "Corpse Orchard"
MPEG Stream: DEATHSTENCH "Wivesblood"

DEMONS Frozen Fog (Aryan Asshole) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another in an almost comically long line of Wolf Eyes related project (do these guys do anything but make noise all the time?!) this one is a duo made up of Nate Young of Wolf Eyes and his similarly synth obsessed pal Steve Kenney of Werewolves, who for Demons, didn't so much as play and compose and rehearse and perform, as just let their wonky damaged malfunctioning synthesizers play themselves and then capture the results. And to be honest, it's a bit hard for us to believe this record was mostly generated by chance, it's too composed sounding, too pretty, too good actually.
Two gorgeous extended lowendscapes, dark and ominous, muted and percussive, looped and cyclical sounding, lots of bassy thrum, pulsing and creeping, streaked with high end shimmer and strange alien effects. Very dramatic and cinematic, a whirring dark ambience with all sorts of subtle melody and tonal color. The B side is similar, but shifts into the upper register, birdlike trills, swooping sweeping feedback, chimes and bells all smeared into a dreamy high end drift, very alien and otherworldly but surprisingly dreamy and lovely.
Super striking naked lady / horned hairy beast / desolate mountainscape cover art too!

DEMONS Frozen Fog (AA Records) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This dense slab of vinyl violence, now available on cd-r... Yet another in an almost comically long line of Wolf Eyes related project (do these guys do anything but make noise all the time?!) this one is a duo made up of Nate Young of Wolf Eyes and his similarly synth obsessed pal Steve Kenney of Werewolves, who for Demons, didn't so much as play and compose and rehearse and perform, as just let their wonky damaged malfunctioning synthesizers play themselves and then capture the results. And to be honest, it's a bit hard for us to believe this record was mostly generated by chance, it's too composed sounding, too pretty, too good actually.
Two gorgeous extended lowendscapes, dark and ominous, muted and percussive, looped and cyclical sounding, lots of bassy thrum, pulsing and creeping, streaked with high end shimmer and strange alien effects. Very dramatic and cinematic, a whirring dark ambience with all sorts of subtle melody and tonal color. The second half is similar, but shifts into the upper register, birdlike trills, swooping sweeping feedback, chimes and bells all smeared into a dreamy high end drift, very alien and otherworldly but surprisingly dreamy and lovely.
Super striking naked lady / horned hairy beast / desolate mountainscape cover art too!
MPEG Stream: "Frozen Fog One"
MPEG Stream: "Frozen Fog Two"

DEMONS Invisible Darkness (AA Records) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "Empty Being"
MPEG Stream: "Self Possession"

DEMONS / VERTONEN split (CIP) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

DEMOULIN, JULIEN & IA The Bay (Basses Frequences) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Taking inspiration from the mysteries and might of the San Francisco Bay, this collaborative effort is authored by two hitherto unknown ambient engineers. With its deep channels and strong currents, the San Francisco Bay is a principal part of the oceanographic and meteorological mechanics that give rise to the region's temperate summers and mild winters. For the most part, the weather patterns are very consistent and become invisible even to those of us who have lived here for decades. But, when those ocean and air currents push the fog bank through the Golden Gate Bridge and around the islands in the Bay, the visual impact (not to mention the physical drop in temperature) can generate responses of awe, transcendence, fear - or just the common lamentation that you forgot to bring an extra layer of clothing....
IA (aka Alex Copeland) resided in Oakland for some time, but Julien Demoulin is a Belgian artist and may have personally experienced the San Francisco Bay in his travels. The collaborative meditation on the San Francisco Bay takes the form of extended drone and dark ambient passages, which easily present themselves as sonic equivalents to the dramatic convergences of land, air, and sea. Thrumming harmonics collapse into lapping washes of soft noise, abstracted field recordings ground brightened arcs of ghostly melodies which shimmer like the flecks of sunlight that rake across the fog bank in the twilight hours, and the numerous drones take up shadowy isolationist strategies. After some 35 minutes of tone color shifting from black to grey to blue with a dreamtime pacing, Demoulin and Copeland snap into a lovely coda, which begins with a strum across an autoharp and leads into an interlude for melancholy flutes swimming in thick reverb. It's a lovely way to end the record, with all of its comparisons to Biosphere, Thomas Koner, and the Mystery Sea label.
MPEG Stream: "The Bay 1"
MPEG Stream: "The Bay 2"

DENNIS DUCK Goes Disco (Poo-Bah) cd 14.98
Awesome slab of early turntablism, from a member of the legendary LAFMS, the Los Angeles Free Music Society, a loose group of artists, writers and musicians active in the seventies and eighties. Dennis Duck, aka Mehaffey originally released this disc as a cassette tape, limited to 20 copies, each one hand decorated and signed.
So here we are almost 30 years later, and heck if this doesn't still sound amazing. Raw and simple and ultra primitive turntable manipulation, none of the techniques here are mind blowing, in fact, odds are most of them are something we all tried with our own record players at one time or another. Lots of changing the pitch, placing the record on the spindle so it wobbles up and down, placing a seven inch atop a 12" and letting the needle be bumped back every time it touched the seven inch, adjusting the anti-skating setting to cause the record to skip or the needle to jump, it all comes down to two things, the choice of records, and the random behavior of the needle and the records. The records Duck employs are fantastic, weird and wonderful, strange children's records, bizarre jazz, spoken word as well as a handful of discs that end up so fragmented and transformed it's hard to say what they were pre-fuckery. And while some of these tracks don't do a whole lot other than play at the wrong speed, or skip haphazardly, others DO, their bits and fragments looped into strange rhythms and bizarre arrangements, something weird and new and totally mesmerizing.
Our favorite track might just be the nearly 8 minute "One O'Clock Jump", a dense swirling assemblage of strange percussion, jazzy horns, sped up and skipped into incredibly complex patterns, a few minutes in it's difficult to discern the various sounds, or even remember what it is you were listening to, it sounds like some primitive lo-fi lost piece by Reich or Riley, or Lubomyr Melnyk's Wave-Lox performed on turntable instead of piano, swirling and spinning and skipping and looping and hiccuping and blurring into impossible patterns and textures. Hard to believe that it could possibly be just a turntable and a couple records, it sounds like some modern processed piece done on a computer and -treated- to sound like an old piece of vinyl. A few other lengthy tracks near the end of the disc explore similar territory, weaving dense sprawling flurries of loops and skips, and those tend to be our favorites, although the shorter ones do have their own magic, leaning more toward the brief and playful, percussively skipping little sonic vignettes between the longer stretched out skipscapes. Awesome!
Definitely for fans of Marclay, Jeck, Strotter Inst, Yoshihide, Bastien, Brinkmann, Tetriault , Gum, Saule, Cordier, Loop Orchestra, the recently listed Prehistoric Fuckin' Moron(s) and other like minded turntable tinkerers...
MPEG Stream: "Intro "
MPEG Stream: "Do The Fence"
MPEG Stream: "4xie"
MPEG Stream: "Nice Shave"

DENNIS DUCK Goes Disco (Poo-Bah) 2lp 29.00
Awesome slab of early turntablism, from a member of the legendary LAFMS, the Los Angeles Free Music Society, a loose group of artists, writers and musicians active in the seventies and eighties. Dennis Duck, aka Mehaffey originally released this disc as a cassette tape, limited to 20 copies, each one hand decorated and signed.
So here we are almost 30 years later, and heck if this doesn't still sound amazing. Raw and simple and ultra primitive turntable manipulation, none of the techniques here are mind blowing, in fact, odds are most of them are something we all tried with our own record players at one time or another. Lots of changing the pitch, placing the record on the spindle so it wobbles up and down, placing a seven inch atop a 12" and letting the needle be bumped back every time it touched the seven inch, adjusting the anti-skating setting to cause the record to skip or the needle to jump, it all comes down to two things, the choice of records, and the random behavior of the needle and the records. The records Duck employs are fantastic, weird and wonderful, strange children's records, bizarre jazz, spoken word as well as a handful of discs that end up so fragmented and transformed it's hard to say what they were pre-fuckery. And while some of these tracks don't do a whole lot other than play at the wrong speed, or skip haphazardly, others DO, their bits and fragments looped into strange rhythms and bizarre arrangements, something weird and new and totally mesmerizing.
Our favorite track might just be the nearly 8 minute "One O'Clock Jump", a dense swirling assemblage of strange percussion, jazzy horns, sped up and skipped into incredibly complex patterns, a few minutes in it's difficult to discern the various sounds, or even remember what it is you were listening to, it sounds like some primitive lo-fi lost piece by Reich or Riley, or Lubomyr Melnyk's Wave-Lox performed on turntable instead of piano, swirling and spinning and skipping and looping and hiccuping and blurring into impossible patterns and textures. Hard to believe that it could possibly be just a turntable and a couple records, it sounds like some modern processed piece done on a computer and -treated- to sound like an old piece of vinyl. A few other lengthy tracks near the end of the disc explore similar territory, weaving dense sprawling flurries of loops and skips, and those tend to be our favorites, although the shorter ones do have their own magic, leaning more toward the brief and playful, percussively skipping little sonic vignettes between the longer stretched out skipscapes. Awesome!
Definitely for fans of Marclay, Jeck, Strotter Inst, Yoshihide, Bastien, Brinkmann, Tetriault , Gum, Saule, Cordier, Loop Orchestra, the recently listed Prehistoric Fuckin' Moron(s) and other like minded turntable tinkerers...
MPEG Stream: "Intro "
MPEG Stream: "Do The Fence"
MPEG Stream: "4xie"
MPEG Stream: "Nice Shave"

DENVER'S NECK, NATE Live (Rock Is Hell) 3 x 3"cd-r 15.98
Those of you who flipped for Denver's recent insane and insanely packaged No One Is Coming To Help You deluxe screen printed lp (we have a few left!!) will most definitely want to miss out on this ULTRA limited triple 3" cd-r set of live and not live recordings. The first two discs were recorded while Denver and his 'Neck were on tour with the Dirty Three. The third disc is new studio stuff. For those of you unfamiliar with Nate Denver, imagine, every band you liked in high school, every comic book you have ever read, every fantasy movie you've ever seen featuring either dragons or wizards or both, some skateboards, a lot of heavy metal, death metal to be specific, some beautiful folk songs, spikes, elves, banjos, Nintendos and anything else you remember fondly on your convoluted path to where you are NOW, all chopped up and blended into an impossibly catchy, goofy, funny, pretty, heavy, folk metal ultraviolent goofball spazz rock mess. Denver is insanely adept at squashing all manner of unlikely sounds into a single performance, or even a single song, and make it sound perfect. Pretty songs are only pretty on the surface, but are actually subtly violent and evil and hateful and miserable, howling chaotic blasts of pummeling noise are somehow happy and joyful, filled with flowers and clouds and sunshine. Which goes a long way to explainging the charm of Nate Denver's Neck. This world where metal and folk, dragons and elves co-exist peacefully, is fun and funny, ironic but not intentionally, wild and ridiculous, but ultimately, heartfelt and insanely well crafted. Schizophrenic for sure, but in a gloriously satisfyingly demented sort of way!
Packaged in a little paper bag sealed with a giant brad, containing as well three hand screened inserts on thick textured paper. Nice!
MPEG Stream: "Cough"
MPEG Stream: "Execution"
MPEG Stream: "Lunatic Of God's Creation"

DENVER'S NECK, NATE Swan Lake (Rock Is Hell) 10" 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We love Nate Denver. Not only is he just about the nicest guy we've ever met, he's also utterly batshit crazy, musically at least, the stuff he comes up with is totally baffling and brilliant, often goofy and puerile, but always hilarious and impossibly catchy, or punishingly heavy. He was the frontman in the short lived weirdo metal band Dig That Body Up It's Alive (which also featured John Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees), and he played with SF noise punks Total Shutdown, he's done hip hop, folk, he's obsessed with metal, and he's a paramedic. He's also a writer, and has published at least one book, which was hilarious and touching in equal measure.
So here we have the latest musical missive from Nate Denver and his musical Neck, and it's a doozy. We figured the elaborately photoshopped cover art was a put on, it looks like an old taped up and beat up thrift store lp of Swan Lake, the ballet music, but it says Nate Denver in the same font, and Rock is Hell too, it's gorgeous, but like we said, we figured it was a goof, we flipped it over, and there's the story of Swan Lake, told in Denver's bizarre and ridiculous style, so we still weren't really sure what the music would be like. And then whattayaknow? It's Denver, and an acoustic guitar, singing the story of Swan Lake, a single repeated chord progression for the whole of the side, with Denver's delicate croon, spinning the tale of Swan Lake. And weirdly it's a fantastic listen, mesmerizing, and crazy catchy, we couldn't stop, and even now we have little turns of phrase and bits of melody sticking in our head, but after all it is Nate Denver, so when it comes time for the ultimate battle between the protagonist and Boris Smith his archenemy, Boris' lines are delivered by a full on death metal band, grinding guitars, blasting drums and guttural gurgled vox, Denver easily flitting between the two, and we won't tell you how it ends, but you can probably figure it out.
The flipside, as far as we can tell, contains the ACTUAL ballet music from Swan Lake, presumably the music that was on the original record that came with the original cover, and it's of course beautiful, and bombastic, and bears pretty much no relation to Denver's version of the events.
So totally recommended, as is pretty much everything Denver plays or writes. Comes with an insert featuring some Nate Denver artwork, and is pressed on orange vinyl and is LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!

DENVER, NATHANIEL DRAKE (AKA NATE) Wait, You're Not A Centaur (La Mano) book / cd 14.98
We love Nate Denver. And his Neck. How could we not? He's so cool and cute and funny and nice and he's one talented motherfucker. From wielding a string-ed stick in the free skronk noise merchants Total Shutdown, to his strummy folk warblings, to his fucked up metal obsessed weirdness, to his masterful vocalizing in the now defunct Dig That Body Up It's Alive, to his weird rambling white boy hip hop, to his amazing artwork and completely demented stories, hard to resist.
So here we have Nate's latest project, a book of short stories, 50x50 stories he calls 'em, which means 50 stories, each 50 words long, accompanied by 50 drawings. The stories are awesome. From wacked and surreal, to simple and poignant, from awww shucks to what the fuck. Sweet and sour, happy and sad, usually somehow both. Nate's gorgeous and mesmerizing mini elephant artwork is all over the place too, but let's give some props to Mr. Zak Sally, formerly of slowcore legends Low, now master of the La Mano publishing house, the man who helped layout, design and print this puppy, cuz it is one beautiful looking little tome. The pages are all rough edged, printed on gorgeous thick textured paper stock. The cover is a sort of irridescent grey, with a dizzying mini elephant design printed in metallic silver ink, with built in dust jacket, and more printed metallic elephants on the end papers. And all over the book there are really funny little testimonials from Mick Turner of The Dirty Three, Mark Whiteley, the editor of Slap Skateboarding magazine, MF Grimm and Tom Araya of Slayer ("I hate this book.") as well as an introduction by Adam Jones of Tool!
As if that weren't enough, also included is a brand new Nate Denver's Neck full length album, "Ghost Alarm", packed with Denver's sweet folky ramblings, seriously funky hip hop jams, his playful white boy flow in full effect (he teams up with MF Grimm on one track!!), lots of little random snippets, Nate as a child, a botched shout out from the GZA, a killer introduction with a bunch of super stars giving Nate a shout out (see if you can figure out who's who), and all sorts of other random sonic weirdness.
Absolutely fucking amazing, looking AND sounding. All Hail Nate Denver!! And his all powerful Neck!!
MPEG Stream: "Introducing"
MPEG Stream: "Mace"
MPEG Stream: "Agony (Featuring MF Grimm)"
MPEG Stream: "Ballad Of The Bullied Demons (Extended)"
MPEG Stream: "Who?"

DER BLUTHARSCH The Philosopher's Stone (WKN) cd 25.00
The Philosopher's Stone marks the end the of ten long and productive years during which Der Blutharsch have unleashed their signature dark neo-folk upon the masses. Apocalyptic prophecies, mantras, and manifestos spewed forth from the hate-forged lips of Albin Julius, but even this must come to an end. Over the course of 8 tracks and nearly 56 minutes, long-time fans can't help but sit back and marvel at the gargantuan change between 1998's Der Sieg Des Lichtes Ist Des Lebens Heil! and the present release.
The band was considered highly innovative at its inception, but in retrospect it's easily classifiable as straight-forward neo-folk, albeit at its very finest. These days? Geez, I mean, we're hearing something like a blackened, post-industrial Loop or Jesus and Mary Chain. Or maybe even what the Birthday Party would've sounded like if they were a suicidal '70s psych group. Staccato dirges grab distorted basslines and ride them into droney psychedelia, underneath a sky of swirling guitar leads and brutal, haunting vocals. In a way, the album is heavily indebted to Death In June's old, old album The Guilty Have No Past, but on tons of heroin -- and probably a fistful of other downers and/or mood stabilizers. But through it all Julius's mantra could not be clearer. In fact, the back page of the booklet even reads in bold letters: "Uniforms are always changing, rock n' roll will stay forever." And if rock n' roll's main objective is to scare parents, or the majority of society in general, Der Blutharsch are definitely, definitely a rock band. Even though they sure as hell don't look like one. If you were to see them in the street, you'd probably try as hard as possible not to make eye contact, and maybe assume they were an extremely well-funded fascist militia of sorts. A dark and brooding, mysterious crew for sure...
The Philosopher's Stone is a fantastic cross-section of what Julius and crew are capable of producing, truly mood-altering, honestly fucked up music that completely transcends any traditional understanding of the way songs -- and albums -- work. Somewhere between a heathen liturgy and a well-produced personal catharsis, Der Blutharsch never fails to provide the listener with new experiences and forge new territory in a genre that tends to be cripplingly simplistic, predictable, and indulgent. Recommended.
As always, the packaging is incredible, the cd is in a miniature hardcover book style digipak, all glossy inks and subtle embossing, a big booklet, and super striking imagery. The lp too is extravagant, a similarly rendered glossy layout, but with a BONUS 7" with two tracks not on the cd, in a full color sleeve affixed to the inside of the gatefold.
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone IV"
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone VIII"

DER BLUTHARSCH The Philosopher's Stone (WKN) lp 39.00
The Philosopher's Stone marks the end the of ten long and productive years during which Der Blutharsch have unleashed their signature dark neo-folk upon the masses. Apocalyptic prophecies, mantras, and manifestos spewed forth from the hate-forged lips of Albin Julius, but even this must come to an end. Over the course of 8 tracks and nearly 56 minutes, long-time fans can't help but sit back and marvel at the gargantuan change between 1998's Der Sieg Des Lichtes Ist Des Lebens Heil! and the present release.
The band was considered highly innovative at its inception, but in retrospect it's easily classifiable as straight-forward neo-folk, albeit at its very finest. These days? Geez, I mean, we're hearing something like a blackened, post-industrial Loop or Jesus and Mary Chain. Or maybe even what the Birthday Party would've sounded like if they were a suicidal '70s psych group. Staccato dirges grab distorted basslines and ride them into droney psychedelia, underneath a sky of swirling guitar leads and brutal, haunting vocals. In a way, the album is heavily indebted to Death In June's old, old album The Guilty Have No Past, but on tons of heroin -- and probably a fistful of other downers and/or mood stabilizers. But through it all Julius's mantra could not be clearer. In fact, the back page of the booklet even reads in bold letters: "Uniforms are always changing, rock n' roll will stay forever." And if rock n' roll's main objective is to scare parents, or the majority of society in general, Der Blutharsch are definitely, definitely a rock band. Even though they sure as hell don't look like one. If you were to see them in the street, you'd probably try as hard as possible not to make eye contact, and maybe assume they were an extremely well-funded fascist militia of sorts. A Dark and brooding, mysterious crew for sure...
The Philosopher's Stone is a fantastic cross-section of what Julius and crew are capable of producing, truly mood-altering, honestly fucked up music that completely transcends any traditional understanding of the way songs -- and albums -- work. Somewhere between a heathen liturgy and a well-produced personal catharsis, Der Blutharsch never fails to provide the listener with new experiences and forge new territory in a genre that tends to be cripplingly simplistic, predictable, and indulgent. Recommended.
As always, the packaging is incredible, the cd is in a miniature hardcover book style digipak, all glossy inks and subtle embossing, a big booklet, and super striking imagery. The lp too is extravagant, a similarly rendered glossy layout, but with a BONUS 7" with two tracks not on the cd, in a full color sleeve affixed to the inside of the gatefold.
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone IV"
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone VIII"

DER BLUTHARSCH Time Is Thee Enemy! (Tesco) cd 17.98
Not sure why we've never listed any Der Blutharsch before. Especially considering they've been a favorite of ours for a long time. And in that whole militaristic folk / industrial scene, we much prefer Der Blutharsch (and MZ 412) over Death In June or Current 93 (at least if you ask Andee). As far as we can tell, this is DB's sixth full length and is as dark and hypnotic and intense as ever. Weaving together childrens choirs, maniacal growls, martial drumming, dark ambient drones, epic cinematic soundscapes, soaring strings, mumbled spoken word, pagan folk, found sounds, wartime propaganda soundbites, industrial rhythms, and apocalyptic / nihilistic lyrics. For those of you new to this stuff, imagine a renaissance faire, strolling minstrels the whole bit, but suddenly the sky starts to darken, shadows lengthen wrapping everything in inky blackness, the strolling minstrels slowly take on the appearance of demons, and the music loses its sunshine and cheer, becoming more and more ominous, major keys change to minor, bells toll, the men start chanting, invoking some unspeakable mystery, while the children's eyes turn black and they begin to sing as well, as if in some sort of trancelike state, the whole thing becoming less of a celebration and more some sort of ancient pagan ritual. Imagine Dead Can Dance with the vocalist from Rammstein, performing in the forest, covering the Comus record in its entirety, backed up by a military drum corps. Or imagine some impossible mixture of Current 93, Magnetic Fields, World War 2, In The Nursery, Ennio Morricone, a gypsy caravan, all the great black metal intros and all of those times you were lost and alone and afraid. It's that intense. And amazing. Allan actually thinks parts of this sound like a Hari Krishna version of Swedish drone folk outfit Parson Sound which they most definitely do at times. Time Is Thee Enemy is an epic and dark, cinematic journey through war and hell and the dark side of human nature. So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Time Is Thee Ememy! Pt. IX"
MPEG Stream: "Time Is Thee Ememy! Pt. III"
MPEG Stream: "Time Is Thee Ememy! Pt. IV"
MPEG Stream: "Time Is Thee Ememy! Pt. V"

DER BLUTHARSCH Werkschau: 1997-2010 (Handmade Birds) 2lp 26.00
A sprawling and expansive career retrospective from seminal militaristic folk / post industrial / dark ambient outfit Der Blutharsch, whose sound, while ever shifting, has remained constant in its dark mesmer, each record, and every track, a miniature epic, harrowing and hypnotic journeys through war and hell and the dark side of human nature. Weaving together children's choirs, maniacal growls, martial drumming, dark ambient drones, epic cinematic soundscapes, soaring strings, mumbled spoken word, pagan folk, found sounds, wartime propaganda soundbites, industrial rhythms, and apocalyptic / nihilistic lyrics.
Imagine a renaissance faire, strolling minstrels the whole bit, but suddenly the sky starts to darken, shadows lengthen wrapping everything in inky blackness, the strolling minstrels slowly take on the appearance of demons, and the music loses its sunshine and cheer, becoming more and more ominous, major keys change to minor, bells toll, the men start chanting, invoking some unspeakable mystery, while the children's eyes turn black and they begin to sing as well, as if in some sort of trancelike state, the whole thing becoming less of a celebration and more some sort of ancient pagan ritual. DB take the apocalyptic folk of Death In June and fuse it to the Teutonic metallic stomp of Rammstein, wind it all up in the clattery industrial cabaret of Einsturzende Neubaten, before dousing it in the swampy fire and brimstone dirge of Sixteen Horsepower and the dramatic gothiness of Sisters Of Mercy or Bauhaus,.
Elsewhere the sound is even more dazzlingly disparate, a roiling sonic cauldron equal parts Dead Can Dance, Laibach, Comus, Current 93, Magnetic Fields, World War 2, In The Nursery, Ennio Morricone, a gypsy caravan, all the great black metal intros ever, all of those disparate elements deftly woven into something dark and delightfully dreary, creepy and sometimes truly haunting...
Der Blutharsch's music most definitely mutated and transformed over the years, the core sound still dark and droning, but the rock element much more noticeable, with a seemingly omnipresent churning low slung bass weaving a dense framework of rumbling low end, supporting doom laden soundscapes constructed from moaning cellos and martial snares, wartime sound samples and military speeches, pounding rhythms and dramatic Teutonic vocals, gypsy violin and distorted guitar. But even within this industrial doom rock framework, DB managed to inject all sorts of truly unexpected twists and turns, like some hellish take on a Morricone spaghetti western with little bits of blackened twang one moment, and like a lost track from some sixties girl group, albeit in this case, swathed in dark sonic swirls and all sorts of rhythmic interference, the next.
This later sound something like a blackened, post-industrial Loop or Jesus and Mary Chain. Or maybe even what the Birthday Party would've sounded like if they were a suicidal '70s psych group. Staccato dirges grab distorted basslines and ride them into droney psychedelia, underneath a sky of swirling guitar leads and brutal, and of course the apocalyptic prophecies, mantras, and manifestos spewed forth from the DB mastermind Albin Julius...
"Uniforms are always changing, rock n' roll will stay forever" is boldly emblazoned on a later DB release. And if rock n' roll's main objective is to scare parents, or the majority of society in general, Der Blutharsch are definitely a rock band. And really always were....
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, on 180 gram vinyl, with hand numbered inserts, housed in black and red foil stamped jackets, odds are these could very well be the only copies we ever see...

DER BLUTHARSCH When Did Wonderland End? (Tesco) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Final glorious missive from Austrian militaristic folk / post industrial / dark ambient outift Der Blutharsch. Ex members of The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud and former collaborators with Death In June, DB carved out a truly unique and musically diverse niche in a genre rife with problematic politics and unoriginal ideas. The music of Der Blutharsch was and is a seemingly impossible mix, taking the apocalyptic folk of Death In June, the Teutonic metallic stomp of Rammstein, the clattery industrial caberet of Einsturzende Neubaten, the swampy fire and brimstone dirge of Sixteen Horsepower and the dramatic gothiness of Sisters Of Mercy or Bauhaus and crafting all of those disparate elements into something dark and delightfully dreary, creepy and sometimes truly harrowing. Their sound has gone from dark ambience to industrial clatter to dramatic doom, and have now arrived at a sound that is even more difficult to describe. We once wrote that the music of DB sounded like "Dead Can Dance with the vocalist from Rammstein, performing in the forest, covering the Comus record in its entirety, backed up by a military drum corps. Or some impossible mixt of Current 93, Magnetic Fields, World War 2, In The Nursery, Ennio Morricone, a gypsy caravan and every great black metal intro ever" and that still pretty much sums it up. BUT, somehow, for their last hurrah, they've managed to sound even more bizarre and unique and all over the map. The core sound is still dark and droning, but the rock element is much more noticeable this time around, with a seemingly omnipresent churning low slung bass weaving a dense framework of rumbling low end, supporting doom laden soundscapes constructed from moaning cellos and martial snares, wartime sound samples and military speeches, pounding rhythms and dramatic teutonic vocals, gypsy violin and distorted guitar. But even within this industrial doom rock framework, DB manage to inject all sorts of really unexpected twists and turns, one track sounds like some hellish take on a Morricone spaghetti western with little bits of blackened twang, and another even sounds like a lost track from some sixties girl group, albeit in this case, swathed in dark sonic swirls and all sorts of rhythmic interference. So amazing and strange and totally mesmerizing. It's sad to think this is the last we'll hear from Der Blutharsch.
Packaged in a gorgeous all black, letter pressed sleeve, with a little sprig of edelweiss in full color, black text on a black background. Quite striking.
MPEG Stream: "When Did Wonderland End? II"
MPEG Stream: "When Did Wonderland End? III"
MPEG Stream: "When Did Wonderland End? IV"

DER BLUTHARSCH When Did Wonderland End? (Tesco) cd + dvd 25.00
Another glorious missive from Austrian militaristic folk / post industrial / dark ambient outift Der Blutharsch. Ex members of The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud and former collaborators with Death In June, DB carved out a truly unique and musically diverse niche in a genre rife with problematic politics and unoriginal ideas. The music of Der Blutharsch was and is a seemingly impossible mix, taking the apocalyptic folk of Death In June, the teutonic metallic stomp of Rammstein, the clattery industrial caberet of Einsturzende Neubaten, the swampy fire and brimstone dirge of Sixteen Horsepower and the dramatic gothiness of Sisters Of Mercy or Bauhaus and crafting all of those disparate elements into something dark and delightfully dreary, creepy and sometimes truly harrowing. Their sound has gone from dark ambience to industrial clatter to dramatic doom, and have now arrived at a sound that is even more difficult to describe. We once wrote that the music of DB sounded like "Dead Can Dance with the vocalist from Rammstein, performing in the forest, covering the Comus record in its entirety, backed up by a military drum corps. Or some impossible mixt of Current 93, Magnetic Fields, World War 2, In The Nursery, Ennio Morricone, a gypsy caravan and every great black metal intro ever" and that still pretty much sums it up. BUT, somehow, for their last hurrah, they've managed to sound even more bizarre and unique and all over the map. The core sound is still dark and droning, but the rock element is much more noticeable this time around, with a seemingly omnipresent churning low slung bass weaving a dense framework of rumbling low end, supporting doom laden soundscapes constructed from moaning cellos and martial snares, wartime sound samples and military speeches, pounding rhythms and dramatic teutonic vocals, gypsy violin and distorted guitar. But even within this industrial doom rock framework, DB manage to inject all sorts of really unexpected twists and turns, one track sounds like some hellish take on a Morricone spaghetti western with little bits of blackened twang, and another even sounds like a lost track from some sixties girl group, albeit in this case, swathed in dark sonic swirls and all sorts of rhythmic interference. So amazing and strange and totally mesmerizing. It's sad to think this is the last we'll hear from Der Blutharsch.
Packaged in a gorgeous all black, letter pressed digipak, in a black slipcover, with a little sprig of edelweiss in full color, black text on a black background. Quite striking. And for a limited time, there's also a second disc, a DVD with a really cool and creepy video for the track "So Bring Your Iron Rain Down Upon Me."
MPEG Stream: "When Did Wonderland End? II"
MPEG Stream: "When Did Wonderland End? III"
MPEG Stream: "When Did Wonderland End? IV"

DER VENTILATOR s/t (Silbing Sex) 7"+cd 8.98
Didn't know too much about this Spanish combo, but the fact that they seemed to often be described as equal parts Kraftwerk and Arab On Radar definitely piqued our interest. And once we finally heard this latest 4 song blast of electro punk crunch, we'd probably add Black Bug to the equation, the same sort of urgent punked out riot grrly rrroooaaar. But instead of BB's synthpunk howl, the sound of DV is more garagey, a sort of punky Stoogesy groove, laced with bits of electronics and peppered with dueling boy girl vocals. The opening track here, "Kill D.I.Y Idols" is itself a killer, with fuzzy bass, programmed beats, caterwauled vocals, and a bad ass main riff, the tripped out FX and minimal electronics only adding some extra weirdness. In an odd way, it reminded us a little of Burzum, the same sort of lilting electronic melodies, but here wedded to some garage punk blast. Super dynamic, with some rad stop starts. "Potential H-Bomb" is more of the same, with a postpunk groove, some cool weirdly harmonized vox, some noisy chaotic guitars, and lots of fuzzed out synth blurt. "Scrawl" applies the same sonic approach to punk folk, acoustic guitar, simple drums, off key crooning, sassy female back up vox, and occasional feedback drenched squalls of noise. Finally "Lightning Field" gets back to the warped electro punk, with thick synth buzz under some frenetic programmed beats, some bloopy spaced out melodies, crunchy guitars swirls, the whole thing pretty spaced out and psychedelic, again laced with occasional blasts of in-the-red buzz and howl, everything wreathed in alien synths and fractured FX. So killer. A bit surprised these guys (and gal) aren't way more popular. Imagine it won't stay that way for long...
Super nice packaging, thick super striking black and white sleeve, with a full color printed insert, pressed on orange vinyl, and includes a cd version of the same music on the 7"!
MPEG Stream: "Kill D.I.Y. Idols"
MPEG Stream: "Lightning Field"

DERBYSHIRE, DELIA, BRIAN HODGSON, DON HARPER Electrosonic (Glo-Spot) cd 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We had the super limited (and crazy pricey!) vinyl version of this a while back, and they flew out of here. We only have a couple left of the vinyl, but we finally got it on cd, at a slightly cheaper price, and now all you sans turntable can dig on these far out sounds!!
We all went a little gaga for those BBC Radiophonic Workshop cds, amazing collections of freaky and far out music for movies and radio and television, crafted in mad scientist like labs packed to the gills with strange sound making devices, primitive analog synths, tape machines and all manner of random electronic bric a brac. Delia Derbyshire was one of the Workshop elite, having been responsible for the Dr. Who theme as well as the Tomorrow People theme and loads of other legendary BBC songs and sounds.
This cd, is a reissue of a super limited lp, which was itself a repress of a rare and long out of print disc of library mood music released on KPM in 1972. Derbyshire and her sonic cohorts recorded the record as Electrosonic, using pseudonyms as well, to avoid any sort of complications due to their positions at the BBC. The results were of course fantastic. Moody and mysterious, wild and playful, spacey and haunting. From Goblin-esque creepy haunted house synthscapes, to freaky fuzzy funky seventies sci-fi grooves, to far out bloops and bleeps. Analog synths, jazzy upright bass, tons of primitive and not so primitive effects, all whipped into impossibly catchy and fantastical sounds and songs.
MPEG Stream: "Quest"
MPEG Stream: "The Pattern Emerges"
MPEG Stream: "Celestial Cantabile"
MPEG Stream: "The Wizard's Laboratory"

DERBYSHIRE, DELIA, BRIAN HODGSON, DON HARPER Electrosonic (Glo-Spot) lp 35.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We all went a little gaga for those BBC Radiophonic Workshop cds, amazing collections of freaky and far out music for movies and radio and television, crafted in mad scientist like labs packed to the gills with strange sound making devices, primitive analog synths, tape machines and all manner of random electronic bric a brac. Delia Derbyshire was one of the Workshop elite, having been responsible for the Dr. Who theme as well as the Tomorrow People theme and loads of other legendary BBC songs and sounds.
This super limited lp, is a repress of a rare and long out of print disc of library mood music released on KPM in 1972. Derbyshire and her sonic cohorts recorded the record as Electrosonic, using pseudonyms as well, to avoid any sort of complications due to their positions at the BBC. The results were of course fantastic. Moody and mysterious, wild and playful, spacey and haunting. From Goblin-esque creepy haunted house synthscapes, to freaky fuzzy funky seventies sci-fi grooves, to far out bloops and bleeps. Analog synths, jazzy upright bass, tons of primitive and not so primitive effects, all whipped into impossibly catchy and fantastical sounds and songs.
This was SUPER SUPER LIMITED. It's already out of print. We have about 10 copies and once those are gone this is gone FOR GOOD. Gorgeous super stylish sleeve with amazing artwork, extensive liner notes, and pressed on super thick milky green vinyl!

DESCENSION Live March 1995 (Shock) cd 18.98
Ascension, the guitar/drums improv duo of Englishmen Stefan Jaworzyn (Skullflower) and Tony Irving, are joined by leading British jazz players Charles Wharf (saxophone) and Simon Hessian (double bass) for some extreme blowouts. Killer, says Allan.

DESCENT INTO THE VOID s/t (NOTHingness) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Three new sonic missives from the ether, from whatever mysterious alternate sonic universe the NOTHingness label exists in. A world of bleak emptiness, massive expanses of barren rumbling tundra, of glassy black surface sonic pools... Every disc dark and lovely, creepy and ominous, haunting and super intense. And of course outrageously limited...
This one is an epic, 73 minute, single track plunge into the sonic abyss, or maybe more accurately 'descent into the void'. Long, drawn out, slow rolling soundscapes of deep swells, soft metallic buzz, and all manner of complex low end filigree buried way down in the mix, giving the track some strange inner momentum, a sublimated chaos, lurking just below the tranquil surface. Harrowing and gorgeously minor key, but the melodies here are just distant streaks, and strange smears of tonal color, everything super subtle, drifting billows of grey grainy shift and pulsing diffused light. Over the course of this expansive sprawl, random sounds surface, float ghostlike and sink back into the ether, disembodied voices, haunting clouds of high end harmonics, bits of hiss and stretched out slowed down percussion, all floating weightless above a soft blackened backdrop. So gorgeous.
LIMITED TO ONLY 66 COPIES!! Packaged in a slimline dvd style case with full color cover.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled (excerpt)"

DESERT OF TRAUN Part III: The Lilac Moon (Bruhtal Shocks Music) cd 10.98

DESIDERII MARGINIS Deadbeat (Cold Meat Industry) cd 21.00

DESORMAIS Dead Letters (Intr-version) cd 14.98

DESTROYER FEAT. TIM HECKER AND LOSCIL Archer on the Beach / Grief Point (Merge) 12" 10.98
Pretty sure these will be gone in a flash, so we'll keep this review short and sweet! Likewise, if you want one, please don't dilly dally. A limited edition 12" by a super Canadian team-up of aQ faves - Destroyer, Loscil, and Tim Hecker. Dan Bejar wrote and sang the lyrics, while the other two gents of ambient artistry composed and performed the atmospheric backdrop. Zoweee! Includes a digital download coupon.

DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS Clear Light (Public Guilt) cd 10.98
The return of the Destructo Swarmbots, who from the name, one can only assume is in fact a species of alien android, who appear in clouds of millions and millions of microscopic musical machines, that swarm into your ears and work their micromusicalmagic on your inner ear, and we love it. The last ep from these things (actually, this guy, named Mike) was a huge AQ favorite, a gorgeous soundscape of whirring droning ambience, and it wasn't difficult to imagine it could have been the work of millions of tiny sentient machines.
This new one is a lot more organic, and more musical, conjuring up spaced out seventies krautrock as much as ambient experimental drone music. Trolling similar dark musical paths as Expo 70 or Horseflesh, to name a few recent AQ list luminaries, and thus the curtain is pulled back revealing the heart beating softly within each and every one of these Swarmbots.
The opener is a nearly 40 minute ambient space jam, some musical outer space exploration, ribbons of buzzing guitar, and swirls of shimmery synth unfurl in huge weightless loops, drifting amidst glimmering stars and clouds of sonic space dust, rumbling and reverberating as the hull of the mother ship passes overhead. Eventually a keening wash of resonating high end builds into a swirling ocean of sound, melodies breaking apart and joining together again in different formations, almost like some primordial musical DNA, the guitar continuing to resurface like some massive black SUNNO))).
The three shorter tracks are like satellites orbiting the first: brief cinematic snippets of sound, strange ambience, mysterious murk, the warm warble of what sounds like horns, the groan and drone of low end tones, fluttering flickers of feedback, buzzing space synth psychedelic freakouts, cavernous low end loops, whirring minimal softdoom, haunting reverbed guitar muted and sent spinning into the ether, foghorn like swells, dreamy bleary eyed melancholy drifts, each track a strange little musical microcosm.
MPEG Stream: "Fireberry"
MPEG Stream: "Sipping On The Fog"

DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS The Mountain EP (Public Guilt) cd ep 7.98
What kind of sounds would you expect from a band called Destructo Swarmbots? Don't bother guessing because you'd probably be way off. No squealing, grinding metallic mayhem here, instead this mysterious duo offer up three extended tracks of warm and creepy, fuzzy rumbling drone. As if you were sneaking through a mazelike series of tunnels, only to discover a whole legion of Destructo Swarmbots, secretly toiling away in an underground cavern, assembling some mysterious organic machine, and the huge space reverberates with the ominous humming and whirring of the 'bots incessant laboring. Definitely for the drone minded among you. Cool 3" cd packaged in a normal sized jewel case.
MPEG Stream: "36 Beautiful Songs"

DETONI, DUBRAVKO Dubravko Detoni with Acezantez (Paradigm) cd 17.98
Five compositions for small ensemble, electronics and tape by obscure Croatian composer Dubravko Detoni (b. 1937). Trained as a pianist and having studied composition at Darmstadt, Detoni is well versed in modern composition techniques, electronics, musique concrete and group improvisation, and manages to incorporates all these elements seamlessly in his works. The five compositions on this CD, recorded between 1973 and 1976, have never before been released in the U.S. Utilizing recorders, clarinets, saxophone, piano, harpsichord, celesta, electric organ, glockenspiel, voice, viola, double bass, tuba, electronics and tape, the music of Dubravko Detoni falls somewhere in the 20th century spectrum between AMM, Gruppo Di Improvvisazione, and Igor Wakhevitch.

DEUPREE, TAYLOR 1am (12k) cd ep 11.98

DEUPREE, TAYLOR Northern (12K) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

DEUPREE, TAYLOR Polr (Raster-Noton) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The packaging of the anti-static shielding bag is certainly appropriate to house the electron modulations of Taylor Deupree's "Polr" album. Released right on the heels of an album for the Mille Plateaux subsidiary Ritornell, this actually marks a big step in the development of Deupree's nano-technist productions. His post-techno rhythmic structures and delicately phased crystalline fluctuatations (dare we call them melodies?) slowly rise out of black box empty spaces much in the same way as Mika Vainio's solo work (especially the ¯ "Metri" album). Very good!

DEUPREE, TAYLOR & TETSU INOUE Active / Freeze (12K) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
An inevitable collaboration between digital clicksters Taylor Deupree and Tetsu Inoue. Insect-like.

DEUTER Nada Himalaya (New Earth) cd 16.98
This was given to me as a gift, from a friend who shares the same love of the deep dark ominous drone as we do, and before he let me unwrap it, he had all of these provisos: ignore the horrible cover, promise to listen to it before you pass judgment, ignore the fact that it's on New Earth records and that it says "Music For Meditation" on the cover, ignore the rainbow logo and the cheesy landscape, ignore the blurbs on the back cover, basically, try to ignore everything BUT the music. I did, and I'm so glad I did. So now we must do the same for you, faithful AQ customer. Listen to the sound samples, close your eyes and let these gorgeous mystical drones carry you off.
Some of you may know of Deuter before he went all 'new age' -- he was responsible for D, an awesome early '70s Krautrock document of studio experimentation, tape effects, and guitar explorations. While this is a completely different beast, and may have been intended for a whole different audience, it's actually quite stunning. This definitely holds up to any of our favorite dronelords, Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, in fact this is another one of those releases that if it were some super limited homemade cd-r imported from Finland packaged with twigs and some wire, people would be freaking out BIG TIME! So let's just pretend that this IS some weird obscure drone cd-r, that way we can skip all the bullshit and totally dig in to this divine droney drift.
Made completely from the sounds of Tibetan bells, bowls and chimes, these two tracks (skip the third track, a two minute recording of a burbling stream) are lengthy gorgeous meditational drifts, a deep sea of overlapping tones, shimmering resonance, slowly drifting ovetones, beating gently against each other, creating a dense swirl of microscopic colors and warm subtle shadings. Nearly fifty minutes of divine drone, simultaneously dark and ominous, bright and dreamy, close listening reveals layer after layer of hidden almost-melodies, super subtle mysterious sonic events, a divine dreamworld of deep drifting ambience. So totally and utterly amazing. Pretty awesome that one of our favorite new drone records is not a cd-r from Finland, but a cd from a German ex-hippie new age guru living in New Mexico. Fuck yeah!
MPEG Stream: "Nada Himalaya 1"
MPEG Stream: "Nada Himalaya 2"

DEUTROM, MARK A Value Of Decay (Rock Is Hell) 2lp 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've pretty much dug everything we've heard from Mark Deutrom, one time bassist for the mighty Melvins, which is saying a lot, considering his recorded output has been all over the map, from Queens Of The Stoneage like metal-pop, to full on experimental soundscapery, so we weren't super sure what to expect from this new double lp, but we figured it was Deutrom, and it was on the always kick ass Rock Is Hell label, so we figured that however it panned out, we'd be psyched. And right off the bat, Deutrom unfurls some Earth-like dusty twang, not at all what we were expecting, but super cool, acoustic guitars, simple dramatic percussion, we were definitely into it, and then the second song kicked in and BAM, total epic sludge heaviness, huge churning riffage, wild chaotic drumming, angular slo-mo melodies, murky textural drones, the sort of shit that should send fans of the Melvins and Harvey Milk into paroxysms of doom/sludge pleasure. And so it goes, over the course of three sides (the fourth one features a cool etching), the sound pretty much all over the place, but with a focus on riffs and heaviness, which is right where the focus should be. Deutrom has a handful of guest vocalists, who compliment his own gruff croon, with the music slipping from lurching noise rock, to Harvey Milk-ish sludgey groove, churning riffage, howled bellowed vox, at some points that Earth-y twang returns, but in the heavier bits, making for some awesome twangy sludgey noise rock epic-ness. There are some bits with drum machine, and some strange interludes, but the record is rife with epic doomy heaviness, sometimes laced with angular noisiness, but also sometimes slipping into something more dirgey and even almost ballady at one point, but it all works, the production is massive, the riffs kill, there are plenty of hooks too, seriously Melvins/Harvey Milk fans, grab one of these before they are gone!
LIMITED TO 466 COPIES!!! Packaged in a super swank full color gatefold jacket, with two full color cardstock inserts, pressed on heavy vinyl, and again, side 4 features a cool mysterious etching!