EXPO '70 Exquisite Lust (Kill Shaman) 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.
We were sent a whole batch of cd-r's from this mysterious group Expo '70, and all the various cd-r covers were designed to look like old seventies krautrock or free jazz records. Which definitely grabbed our attention. Plus they're called Expo '70, so while we weren't exactly sure what to expect, we were definitely thinking it was bound to be good. And boy were we right. This is good. Great in fact. But that wasn't all, the faux vintage covers and the band name ended up being seriously indicative of the sounds within. Gorgeous drifting ethereal krautrocky ambience is what Expo '70 is all about, and eyes closed, you'd be hard pressed to not think this was some Ash Ra Tempel disc or some long lost A.R. and The Machines lp. Crafted entirely from guitars, sitar and Moog, each track here is some sort of lengthy, mesmerizingingly blissed out minimal drone jam. Guitar figures are looped into hypnotic cycles, over shimmery whirls of fuzzy sound and distant drones, the looped riffs slowly shifting and gently changing shape. It's almost like some sort of new age space rock Steve Reich. Swirling FX surround warm deep guitar tones floating weightless in a glistening expanse of muted color and twinkling sonic sparkles. So completely blissful and dreamlike and captivating. One of our favorite new discoveries.
Fans of far out krautrock, deep dark drone, and outerspace guitar exploration will be in absolute heaven, or at the very least in some darkened room, in a trance, drifting off to some druggy dreamy other dimension...
MPEG Stream: "Hitherto"
MPEG Stream: "Motorik"

EXPO '70 Illusive Landscaping (Diagnosis... Don't!) 3" cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've sort of been inundated with dreamy new sounds from this one man drugblissdrone krautrock revivalist outfit. We're definitely not complaining though. We absolutely can NOT get enough of Expo 70's drawn out guitarscapes, extended spaced out kraut raga drones, churning and pulsing and throbbing, spacey synths and thick rumbling guitars all tangled into haunting sonic transmissions. We're just sort of scrambling to get them all reviewed. So we figured we'd start with this one, the latest, a two track missive that is so dense and layered it might as well be two HUNDRED tracks. Especially since we find ourselves setting the cd player to repeat and just drifting off...
The two tracks here are further examples of Expo 70's washed out space rock SUNNO))) sound, both tracks begin as soft swirls of synth and FX, tripped out and abstract, keening high end, rumbling low end, guitars wiggle and squiggle, all very chaotic but still drone-y and meditative, the first track doesn't deviate too much, the guitars are warm throbs, underpinned by a thick wash of buzzing synth, eventually sloughing off all the FX, leaving just a gorgeous Niblock like minimal drone. But the second track, is quickly subsumed by huge walls of crumbling fuzzed out slow motion riffage, super processed though, so instead of sounding downtuned or even heavy, it just sounds even MORE spacey, and thick and warm and druggy, a single riff, pulled apart and looped over and over and over, super mesmerizing, droning and drifting along through a field of distant fuzz and buzz and warm swaths of subtle synth, eventually fading out leaving nothing but tolling bells... So great.
Packaged in thick textured blue paper mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi.
And as always, these are of course SUPER LIMITED -- just a mere 100 copies, of which we got a majority share! -- and will most likely fly out of here...
MPEG Stream: "Chrome Cobras"
MPEG Stream: "Blissful Morning"

EXPO '70 July 18, 2004 Live At Infrasonic Sound Studio (Kill Shaman) 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.
Another gorgeous slab of spaced out krautrocky ambience from Expo' 70, this one a live, completely improvised performance back in 2004, with the band expanded to a trio. And if folks' reaction to the first three Expo 70's releases is anything to go by, then these will be flying out of here in no time as well.
For those yet to discover the sublime joys of Expo '70, these guys (usually just one guy, Justin Wright) traffic in glistening dreamlike kosmiche drift. A krautrock that is less about propulsion and rhythm and more about texture and ambience, think Ash Ra Tempel, AR & The Machines, Tangerine Dream, Eno, Popol Vuh. Guitars aren't strummed and picked, they are sort of allowed to unwind, long glistening strands of reverberating buzz unfurl and float into the hazy ether. Synthesizers unleash a similarly disembodied sonic vibe, soft clouds of fuzzy whir and distant chordal warmth. Very much the sonic equivalent to drifting down a warm summer stream, on your back, watching the clouds drift by, the trees on the shore shimmer and sway. Or maybe more accurately, floating in the vacuum of space, everything weightless, untethered and drifting lazily through the inky blackness. The light of stars and suns bends and twists, slowly cycling through the visible spectrum, disobeying all laws of physics, wrapping you in a thick swirl of sonic brilliance. This music has to be the work of some immortal group of dronelords, sitting in their multidimensional fortress, atop some mysterious lost mountain, who in their infinite wisdom, allow their dreamlike drones and angelic ambience to fall from the sky and settle over us like a light dusting of snow...
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

EXPO '70 Mystical Amplification (Kill Shaman) cd-r 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We LOVE Expo '70. They're playing in SF this week, two shows that will be over by the time you read this. And we might not even get to go, 'cause we're too busy writing reviews, like this one... oh the bitter irony. But even if we miss them live (which would be a shame) we're still in Expo '70 heaven 'cause they've brought us two brand new cd-rs!! (And, there's also a new release on a real cd too, Animism, which we'll list next time!) Wow. That's a lot of Expo '70, but their krautrock inspired instrumental ambience is an expansive sound, that can easily sprawl across the full length of a cd or cd-r in just a track or two...and therefore can also spread beyond, occupying several near-simultaneous releases with no diminishment to our enjoyment. We're happy to hear it go on, and on, and on eternally. Expo overload, no, too much is never enough.
So, this one... Mystical Amplification. With song titles making reference to such things as "Mountainous Caverns Of Black Arts" and Konstantin Raudive's research into EVP (a la the Ghost Orchid) it's easy enough to say things like this music is haunting and mystical... mystical amplification, heck that's the title. The Expo '70 guys are doing all our work for us. The four long tracks (we like how the songs are split into a "side 1" and "side 2" when listed on the sleeve, even though it's of course all on one side of this cd-r) are all one-take improvs, with mainman Justin Wright on electric guitar ("with plenty of effects", all right) and his current Expo associate McKinley Jones playing a Moog synth. Spaced out and psychedelic trips much more on the "kosmische" tip than their Kansas City origin would suggest... this is all buzzing droning bliss, no drums or vocals to reign it in to human scale, just cosmic textures galore, often soothing, and a little bit ominous. There are moments that vaguely sound like Robert Fripp or Eddie Hazel jamming with Klaus Schulze, both of 'em dreamy and drowsy from drugs. Or imagine a mellower SUNNO))), teamed up with Space Machine, perhaps, getting all yogic on us with some abstract instrumental, electronic om-chants. Sleepy, slowly swirling, hissing and purring over quietly churning low-end depths...
By the way, this is slightly (a buck) more expensive than all the other Expo '70 cd-rs 'cause of the attractive vinyl-style gatefold packaging.
MPEG Stream: "Climbing Mountainous Caverns Of Black Arts"
MPEG Stream: "Luminous Phenomena Reacting To The Precognition Of Psychokinesis"

EXPO '70 Surfaces (Kill Shaman) 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.
We were sent a whole bunch of cd-r's by the mysterious Expo '70 a few months back, each one with a strange cool cover, one was some seventies styled naked females making out, another (this one in fact) was an homage to one of those seventies Actuel jazz record label album sleeves. We were already kind of sold, but then we threw them on, and WOAH!! Not at all what we expected. We were imagining some sort of droney free noise whatever, but instead, we got an earful of some timeless cosmic space music, some lost ambient krautrock. So spaced out and lovely. We listed Exquisite Lust on the last list and everyone went nuts for it, so we decided to list another one, and it's just as good. A bit heavier on the guitar, but still completely and utterly droney and dreamlike.
Surfaces is a non-stop journey through inner space, an abstract world of drifting guitars, stretched out into whispy drifts of shimmery ambience, strummed steel strings reverberate over muted propulsive thrum, huge glistening expanses of thick flowing whir oozes from rumbling amplifiers, grinding low end fuzz slithers in and around wandering bass burble, bits of guitar melody break into fragments and float downstream, over a rippling undercurrent of spaced out FX. Totally mesmerizing and ethereal, but strangely rhythmic. Channeling the sprit of Eno, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, A.R. And The Machines and other kosmik travellers, Expo '70 weave guitars, Moogs, sitars, and loads of effects into an expansive ambient shimmer, allowing sonic ripples to slowly spread out into the ether. So good. Anyone who bought the first one will probably need this one too. And all you spaced out interdimensional Kosmiche drone explorers could hardly do better than Expo '70 as the soundtrack to your late night, outer space, journeys into the unknown...
MPEG Stream: "Love Passages To The West"
MPEG Stream: "Prelude To Electric Wilder Beasts"

EXPO '70 White Ohms (Peasant Magik) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is one of those releases that we would normally get maybe 100 copies of, maybe more, but this baby was strictly limited to 200, of which we got about a quarter of the pressing, but hell this is Expo '70, one of, if not our very favorite purveyor of heavy blissed out droney space kraut doom drift, AND this particular release, cassette only, is a sort of addendum to the Black Ohms cd (featuring outtakes from the Black Ohms sessions) which we made Record Of The Week a while back. And of which we sold crazy amounts. So apologies for the folks who don't manage to snag one of these. We always try to get as many copies of things as we can, but it seems that no matter how many we get, it's never enough, and often labels don't want to give so much of the pressing to just one place. But we do try, every time, to get enough for everybody, so again apologies for the fact that these will probably be gone in a heartbeat.
BUT, for the 25 of you who do managed to snag one of these, you will be in total kraut drone space out bliss rock heaven. From rumbling sludgey doom drift, to looped psych shimmer, to pulsing slow burning swells, to smoldering slabs of white hot buzz, more of what we freaked out about on the Black Ohms disc. Dark, dolorous, heavy, hypnotic, even the outtakes are mindblowing.
Beautifully packaged too, full color printed sleeves, the tape and sleeve wrapped in a printed vellum obi INSIDE the case, each one hand numbered. And LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! We have 25.
Sorry.

EXPO '70 / BE INVISIBLE NOW! split (Kill Shaman / Boring Machines) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest from aQ faves Expo '70, masters of modern krautdrone, every record another chapter in their expanding sonic history of the universe, a tale in sound, of suns and planets, of drifting in space, of galaxies expanding, of stars dying, of black holes, and endless expanses, of timelessness and infinity.
Two tracks, each a slow building epic, the first rife with deep chordal swells, simple strummed acoustic guitars, crumbling distorted leads, mournful melancholy melodies, distant streaks of feedback, abstract whir and deep minimal rumble, a gorgeous slab of outer space drone folk, like a more spaced out kraut version of Kiss The Anus, or like a new weird America Santana fused with Hawkwind at their most acoustic and blissed out. The second track is a much dronier affair, a spaced out soundscape of rumbling, buzzing, shimmering synths, layered and textured, rhythmic and hypnotic. Like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, but much darker and buzzier, but just as blissy and space-y. The sound building and building into a heaving wall of synths and guitars, various whirs and rumbles and tangled up minimal melodies, all wavering textures and timbres, eventually joined by strange outer space FX, and more pronounced funereal melodies. Some truly gorgeous spacey shit for sure.
For this cd-r, Expo '70 have teamed up with Italian drone rockers Be Invisible Now, who have a similar sound, but definitely manages to make it their own. Beginning like some Goblin Argento soundtrack, all creepy synths and swells of black ambience, delicate little spacey melodies and swooshing FX, that swirl and build, the track begins to distort and crumble, the effects becoming more agitated and intense, the whole track thickening, until drums come in, offering up a tribal framework, around which the sea of synths swirls and shimmers, a mysterious rhythmic space rock ritual, which quickly fades out, leaving the various layers of synths to slow down, to slip away, to darken and crumble, leaving just a soft, fading buzz.
The second BIN! track begins all heavy and distorted, almost like some spacier Wolf Eyes, wrapped in swirling effects, anchored by simple pounding percussion, the synths getting more intense and more buzzy, thick and blown out, the programmed rhythms growing skittery and chaotic, everything louder and more dense, more distorted, FX everywhere, the track erupting into some strange noise drenched new wave, like the soundtrack to some French new wave horror film, or some New Order remix rejected for being to noisy and fucked up and scary. Awesome.
A pretty good intercontinental space rock, krautdrone matchup for sure. Packaged in a full color eco-wallet digipak style sleeve, and of course LIMITED.
MPEG Stream: EXPO '70 "Heir Of Serpents"
MPEG Stream: BE INIVISIBLE NOW! "I Fiori Devono Morire"

EXPO '70 / I AM SEAMONSTER split (Short Forest / Small Doses) 7" 6.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Back in stock!! Probably the last copies we'll see...
Another gorgeous chunk of spacey tripped out downtuned space kraut doom from aQ faves Expo '70. This time they're sharing a 7" with another favorite of ours, the droney, drifty I Am Seamonster.
Expo '70's track begins super minimal and SUNNO))) like, a slow motion riff, the guitar thick and heavy and distorted, riding a single chord, while all around effects whirl and swirl and streak, very mantra like and hypnotic, spaced out and druggy, part way through a second guitar offers some melodic counterpoint, some woozy spidery lysergic minor key leads that sound sun baked even as they drift through the inky blackness, the sound managing to somehow sound both desert and space-y simultaneously.
We hadn't heard anything from I Am Seamonster since their (sadly) now out of print Nebulum cd-r. The track here seems to expand on the IAS sound on Nebulum, crafting a gorgeous landscape of deep guitar swells, each one wreathed in different effects, crumbly and buzzy, blown out and blurred, the sound at its peak is white hot, but occasionally drift back to something cooler and washed out. Layers of high end settle atop the undulating rumbles and whirs, deep percussive guitars chime and ring out, everything bathed in a blurry shoegazey haze, the guitars slipping and shimmering, the result almost orchestral. So so nice.
Beautiful packaging too, silk screened, metallic blue and silver on black, the back side die cut to reveal the record and sleeve.

EXPO '70 / RAHDUNES split (Kill Shaman) lp 14.98
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Expo '70 just keep getting heavier and heavier. Beginning as a spaced out drone-heavy krautrock-worshipping band, with swirling synths and drifting FX laden guitars, the band has gradually been altering their sound, guitars getting heavier and more distorted, the spaciness swallowed up by huge slow moving black walls of rumble and buzz, the low end slowly but surely taking over, their music drifting ever closer to some sort of SUNNO)))-baked crawl. This new record, a split with SF based Rahdunes, finds the band moving still further into their own dark sonic galaxy of black heaviness.
Cursory listens will reveal just that, a grinding roiling whirl of distorted guitars and throbbing bass rumble, but this is Expo '70, so even when they're channeling their inner doomsludge demons, they can't seem to help infusing their lugubrious crawl with streaks of outer space shimmer, buried melodies, subtly shifting textures, sure this is intense and heavy and loooooooow, but it's also blissed out, and fuzzy and dreamy and in its own weird way still sort of space-y and krautrocky.
Rahdunes take the high road, literally. It's almost like the two bands decided to split the frequency range right down the middle, with Expo '70 taking the low, and Rahdunes taking the high. Their tracks counter Expo's Earth-y throb, with some glistening druggy folky space drift. A swirling expanse of druggy ambience, guitars wreathed in effects drift by. vocals moan and wail, through thick curtains of fuzz and buzz and delay and reverb, percussion shuffles way off in the background. Imagine the Manson Family, and the Beach Boys, high as fuck, sitting in the grass, by the ocean, their faces lit by flickering firelight, as they chant and jam and conjure up some primal space drone energy, and you'd basically be tapped into whatever lifeforce feeds Rahdunes. The rest of the disc gets a little more rhythmic, reminding us of No Neck and Sunburned Hand, but never losing that bleary eyed druggy wonder, looped guitar, stumbling rhythms, more ethereal chanting, finishing off with a fuzzed out murky dreamscape of muted melodies, soft focus tones, buzzing synths, sputtering percussion, mumbled vocalizing and shimmery feedback, somehow perfectly complimenting Expo '70's doomic crawl on the flipside.
Gorgeous silver and black matte covers. And first time on vinyl for anything Expo '70!!!

EXPO 70 Awakening (Sonic Meditations) cd 9.98
This long out of print cassette from kosmische explorers Expo 70 is now available on cd!! (And, vinyl too, which we'll have next week, just ask, and they even pressed it on cassette again as well, weirdly enough). Here's what we had to say about Awakenings the first time around:
Less heavy than some of the other Expo's, Awakening, features some super stripped down drumming (or drum machine, hard to tell), locked into an endless groove, pulsing over a swirling spacescape of smeared riffs and fragmented melodies, it sounds a bit like Goblin, very soundtracky and otherworldly, space-y and mysterious, and not at all cheesy, more sort of classic new age / krautrock, think Klaus Schulze, scoring some super abstract French sci-fi flick from the sixties, and you'll sort of get the vibe.
Like all Expo 70 stuff, dark and dreamy, warm and warbly, drone-y and hypnotic, but the addition of drums really adds a new dimension, and the soundscapes swirling around the groove seem to be endlessly shifting and transforming. Awesome stuff as always. Total blissed out new age spacey krautiness, as only Expo 70 can do it. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Prisms Adrift Luminous Sunbeams"
MPEG Stream: "Descending Celestial Moon Odyssey"

EXPO 70 Awakening (Sonic Meditations) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This long out of print cassette from kosmische explorers Expo 70 is now available on VINYL!!! Here's what we had to say about Awakenings the first time around:
Less heavy than some of the other Expo's, Awakening, features some super stripped down drumming (or drum machine, hard to tell), locked into an endless groove, pulsing over a swirling spacescape of smeared riffs and fragmented melodies, it sounds a bit like Goblin, very soundtracky and otherworldly, space-y and mysterious, and not at all cheesy, more sort of classic new age / krautrock, think Klaus Schultze, scoring some super abstract French sci-fi flick from the sixties, and you'll sort of get the vibe.
Like all Expo 70 stuff, dark and dreamy, warm and warbly, drone-y and hypnotic, but the addition of drums really adds a new dimension, and the soundscapes swirling around the groove seem to be endlessly shifting and transforming. Awesome stuff as always. Total blissed out new age spacey krautiness, as only Expo 70 can do it. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Prisms Adrift Luminous Sunbeams"
MPEG Stream: "Descending Celestial Moon Odyssey"

EXPO 70 Awakening (Sloow Tapes) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Normally we would spread out multiple releases by the same band over several lists and several weeks, but since these are so limited and folks are always so excited about new Expo 70 stuff, we figured fuck it, let's just do it, THREE new Expo 70 releases, all different formats, and surprisingly different sound.
This tape is limited to 70 copies. We got exactly HALF, it's already sold out at the label, so these are THE last copies anywhere. And it's awesome. Less heavy than some of the other Expo's, Awakening, features some super stripped down drumming (or drum machine, hard to tell), locked into an endless groove, pulsing over a swirling spacescape of smeared riffs and fragmented melodies, it sounds a bit like Goblin, very soundtracky and otherworldly, space-y and mysterious, and not at all cheesy, more sort of classic new age / krautrock, think Klaus Schultze, scoring some super abstract French sci-fi flick from the sixties, and you'll sort of get the vibe.
Like all Expo 70 stuff, dark and dreamy, warm and warbly, drone-y and hypnotic, but the addition of drums really adds a new dimension, and the soundscapes swirling around the groove seem to be endlessly shifting and transforming. Awesome stuff as always. Total blissed out new age spacey krautiness, as only Expo 70 can do it. WAY recommended. And it's also recommended that if you want one of these you don't dawdle, as we mentioned before, this is LIMITED TO ONLY 70 COPIES! AND WE GOT HALF!! Already sold out and out of print, so you get one shot at these. Nicely packaged in a hand colored psychedelic fold out sleeve.

EXPO 70 Beguiled Entropy (Blackest Rainbow) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This latest cosmic missive of astral axe exploration and celestial synth trippery finds Expo 70 once again in one man band mode (after a handful of releases as a duo). For this improvised sonic excursion, it's once again just Expo 70 mainman Justin Wright, manning the controls (which in this case, means guitar, analog drum machine and synthesizers), and weaving thick droned out heaviness alongside more abstract shimmer. The opening track "mark Of The Rising Mantis", begins with a swirl of bleeps and bloops, a constant cascade of glittering electronics, hazy and spacey, when all of a sudden, the guitar comes swooping in, distorted and crumbling, the vibe thick and SUNN-like, we were prepared for some serious epic dirgery, but instead, it fades out after a few cycles, only to drift directly into "Luminous Traveler", which much more serene and meditative, a muted starfield of percolating melodies, a slow build to something much more seventies new age krautrock sounding, spidery guitars wound around thick cinematic synth swirls, a gauzy droned out alien raga that builds and builds before fading back into the ether, the sound thick and heavily layered (the tracks here created from multiple improvs), dense and dark and ominously dreamy, like other Expo jams, the soundtrack to drifting into the blackness of space.
After a brief bit of washed out abstract outer space ambience, chugging guitars floating in a field of flute like melodies and woozy electronic pulsars, a deepening drone, growing ever more dense, the record shifts gears a bit, with "Backmasking Deeper Than Darkness", which starts out as another bleary bit of guitarsynth drift, only to quickly gain momentum, the sound coalescing into an old school style soundtracky synth soundtracky synthscape, pulsing melodies suddenly bolstered by the appearance of the drum machine, a murky throb, that gives the track a sinister motorik momentum, that plays out like the score to some chase through the stars. Those drum machines move to the fore on the final track, the evocatively titled "Pulsing Rings Of Ice", which like the previous tracks, definitely have us imagining some strange alien world, in this case, an abandoned ice planet, where the listener is stranded alone, or ALMOST alone. Ominous and brooding, the skeletal almost-rhythm anchoring the billowing clouds of warm chordal thrum in the first few minutes, builds to a tranced out krautdrone pulse, a skittery stripped down beat that drives this sprawl of future-synth tension, super cinematic, the final chase through the icy caves beneath the surface, flickering shadows, and a terrifyingly unknowable future.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!! These are very likely the only copies we'll be able to get. Pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl, and includes a download code!!
MPEG Stream: "Mark Of The Rising Mantis"
MPEG Stream: "Sunseekers (Out Of Diminished Light)"
MPEG Stream: "Pulsing Rings Of Ice"

EXPO 70 Blackout (Debacle) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's been a little while since we've heard anything new from Justin Wright and his interplanetary sonic soundship Expo 70, and technically this isn't a proper new record, instead this is two live sets captured on tour in 2009, when Expo 70 were in New York, two 30+ minute sets of hazy, swirly, ambient kosmische drift.
The first set, from Ithaca, begins with a wild squall of lead guitar, and sod crowd sounds, before the duo (featuring Matt Hill of Umberto!) get down to business, unfurling a hazy sprawl of tangled melodies, and softly pulsing guitar, a lush backdrop for some seriously soaring psychedelic leads, all washed out and lysergic, like some classic Santana jam stretched way out and hurled into space, the whole thing gradually getting more and more intense and distorted and aggressive, the bass throbbing, the guitar howling, a churning heavy crescendo that quickly dissipates into a super ethereal stretch of ambient shimmer, warm clouds of muted effects and softly swirling electronics, gradually fading into nothingness.
The Manhattan show begins with some hazy crystalline drift, soft clouds of warm guitar drifting over the top, laced with little curlicues of effects, and slow drifting slabs of melodic whir, this track is way more sci-fi, edging into Umberto territory, getting all soundtracky and cinematic, lots of swooping electronic bleeps and bloops, all over some super minimal dubbed out percussion, the second half of the set way more low slung and slithery, deep cavernous bass, distant rumbles, soft streaks of synth, lots of softly swirling layers, slipping through clouds of spaced out electronics, and then a long stretch of almost choral liturgical sounding organs, all droned out and meditative, growing ever more hazy and indistinct. So nice.
We're definitely dying for a proper new full length, but these two chunks of primo sci-fi psychedelic kraut drone drift will definitely hold us over for now!
Super nice packaging, a glossy six panel digipaks with various images from the 2009 tour, from whence these recordings came.
MPEG Stream: "Ithica, NY"
MPEG Stream: "Manhattan, NY"

EXPO 70 Corridors To Infinity (Sonic Meditations) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More druggy space-y kraut drone bliss from Justin Wright and his Expo 70, here expanded to a duo for one track, and a trio for the other, a dizzying drifty blend of minimal guitar rumble and Moog and organ whir, peppered with glistening shards of sonic starlight, buried melodies, blurred into a gorgeous ever expanding expanse of hushed new age drift, not nearly as heavy as some past outings, although the first track, a whopping 30 minute epic, does build to a soft blackened roar, although that roar is muted and dulled into something closer to rib cage rattling thrum. Regardless, it's transcendent and sublime, subtly heavy, and utterly cosmic.
The second track is another nearly half hour exploration of inner sonic space, heavy on the organs this time, thick layered buzz and rumble and whir, flecked with strange little stuttery melodies, a sheet of softly swirling effects draped over slow motion organ melodies, slowly shimmering textures, before the track begins to grow ominous, the sound of a darkening sun, bits of high end glimmer throughout, while the core blackens and expands, the sound shifting into pulses, a strangely surreal sci-fi throb, haunting and harrowing, a caustic cloud that slowly dissipates, leaving vapor trails of soft streaked FX flecked buzz and a stretch of skeletal rhythm, slowly fading out into a horzion of minimal muted high end shimmer.
THE CD-R IS LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! THE TAPE IS PROBABLY MORE LIMITED THAN THAT! Housed in cool red sleeves printed in gold metallic ink!
MPEG Stream: "Meetings Of The Lunar Eclipse"
MPEG Stream: "Black Pyramids Under The Martian Sun"

EXPO 70 Corridors To Infinity (Sonic Meditations) 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.
More druggy space-y kraut drone bliss from Justin Wright and his Expo 70, here expanded to a duo for one track, and a trio for the other, a dizzying drifty blend of minimal guitar rumble and Moog and organ whir, peppered with glistening shards of sonic starlight, buried melodies, blurred into a gorgeous ever expanding expanse of hushed new age drift, not nearly as heavy as some past outings, although the first track, a whopping 30 minute epic, does build to a soft blackened roar, although that roar is muted and dulled into something closer to rib cage rattling thrum. Regardless, it's transcendent and sublime, subtly heavy, and utterly cosmic.
The second track is another nearly half hour exploration of inner sonic space, heavy on the organs this time, thick layered buzz and rumble and whir, flecked with strange little stuttery melodies, a sheet of softly swirling effects draped over slow motion organ melodies, slowly shimmering textures, before the track begins to grow ominous, the sound of a darkening sun, bits of high end glimmer throughout, while the core blackens and expands, the sound shifting into pulses, a strangely surreal sci-fi throb, haunting and harrowing, a caustic cloud that slowly dissipates, leaving vapor trails of soft streaked FX flecked buzz and a stretch of skeletal rhythm, slowly fading out into a horzion of minimal muted high end shimmer.
THE CD-R IS LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! THE TAPE IS PROBABLY MORE LIMITED THAN THAT! Housed in cool red sleeves printed in gold metallic ink!
MPEG Stream: "Meetings Of The Lunar Eclipse"
MPEG Stream: "Black Pyramids Under The Martian Sun"

EXPO 70 Galaxy Of Mysticism (Reverb Worship) 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.
Another gloriously spaced out missive from one of our favorite purveyors of space-kraut-drone, Expo 70, aka Justin Wright, with occasional help from a small cadre of fellow sonic explorers. This one disappeared in no time, sold out in a flash, limited to 100 copies maybe. The label agreed to whip up another batch just for us, but once these are gone, you're out of luck, so grab one while you can, cuz it's another good'un. Then again, we've yet to experience a bad one from Wright.
Three tracks, three movements, each an extended part of Expo's Galaxy Of Mysticism, the parts named Altar Of Mystic Rites, Entrance To The Outer Circle, and Central Sphere Of The Mystical Galaxy, which should give you an idea of what sort of druggy, spacey, heart of the sun shit we're talking about here. Spiralling strands of guitar reach out into the warm whirling blackness, looped effects pulse and throb, the sound crystalline and delicate, but subtly ominous as well, hypnotic, mesmerizing, and dreamily psychedelic.
The second movement amps up the energy a little, a thick wash of whirring organ is the foundation, for high end squiggles and spidery melodies, the sound growing thicker and thicker, the underlying drone getting more and more dense, finally giving way to the closing movement, a swirling cloud of chordal swells, and layered shimmer, all held together by the simple pound of a drum machine, the track quickly growing more freaked out and psychedelic, lysergic leads stretching out amidst streaks of glitched out and swooping space FX, the guitars finally loosed and offering up heaving walls of crumbling doomic distortion. Heavy and spacey and divine.
Seriously transcendent spaced out kraut psych... and INSANELY LIMITED, these are the last copies ever, cool hand screened splatter sleeves with pasted on logo, and mini printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Part I - Altar Of Mystic Rites"
MPEG Stream: "Part III - Central Sphere Of The Mystical Galaxy"

EXPO 70 Journey Through Astral Projection (Immune) cd 14.98
It's been harder and harder to know what to write about Expo 70 records lately. Besides being uber prolific, we've pretty much exhausted out psychedelic stoner space rock thesaurus. Thankfully, this new one changes things up enough to give us something new to work with. Mostly the addition of rhythm, which the band have employed in the past, but never to such an extent. Sure they remain spacey, and psychedelic, and new age-y, and drifty and dreamy, and druggy, and washed out, hazy and gauzy and cosmic and kosmiche, and we could go on, but here, they open up their latest record with what might be their most chaotic and sonically dense jam yet. Starting off all stumbly and abstract, with skittery programmed beats, and loosely strummed guitars, some amp buzz and bits of glitch and random crunch, but then those sounds gradually begin to coalesce, the guitars super reverbed, the rhythms looped and mesmeric, the guitars getting more intense, and more driving, multiple loops and melodies layered, eventually some proper riffs entering the equation, churning beneath clouds of those looped melodies, all the while, that rhythm skitters away, the song getting louder and louder, more intense, easily on of the heaviest things we've heard from these guys in a while, bordering on White Hills / Heads territory there for a minute, before fading back into something much more tranced out and meditative.
And while the rest of the record isn't quite so dense or heavy, the songs definitely display both a cool sort of jammy looseness, as well a penchant for something darker and more dense than usual. "Seven Serpents" minus some spidery guitars is a lush undulating expanse of layered synths, and warm whirling dronemusic, definitely cosmic, and spaced out, minimal, and super mesmerizing. "Growing Mushrooms Of Potency" starts off with a sky full of BBC Radiophonic Workshop / sci-fi bleeps and bloops, before another lo-fi skittery rhythm comes in, and then finally some low slung bass, and some shimmery organ, and we're in full on intergalactic drift mode, dodging stray FX and clouds of celestial glimmer, and then at the very end, the sound shifts, and becomes intensely dark and ominous, like some sort of soundtracky Umberto style creepdrone, which fades out WAY to soon. And then finally, "Heartfelt Moon Tripper" finishes things off with what begins as a hazy big of new age-y shimmer, all glistening crystalline clouds and warm whirring chordal drifts, until about half way through, a dark heartbeat like pulse surfaces, and dense little guitar tangles begin to loop and layer, until the hazy opening layers are shed completely, and replaced with a deep ominous thrum, wound around that sinister pulse, all surrounded by streaks of jagged melody and howling echo drenched sheets of guitar swirl, until a brief bit of Zombi / Goblin like cinematic synthscapery ushers the song to its more ethereal conclusion.
Cassette version coming soon too, btw.
MPEG Stream: "Trajectory Rhythms"
MPEG Stream: "Heartfelt Moon Tripper"

EXPO 70 Journey Through Astral Projection (Immune) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW ON CASSETTE!!
It's been harder and harder to know what to write about Expo 70 records lately. Besides being uber prolific, we've pretty much exhausted out psychedelic stoner space rock thesaurus. Thankfully, this new one changes things up enough to give us something new to work with. Mostly the addition of rhythm, which the band have employed in the past, but never to such an extent. Sure they remain spacey, and psychedelic, and new age-y, and drifty and dreamy, and druggy, and washed out, hazy and gauzy and cosmic and kosmiche, and we could go on, but here, they open up their latest record with what might be their most chaotic and sonically dense jam yet. Starting off all stumbly and abstract, with skittery programmed beats, and loosely strummed guitars, some amp buzz and bits of glitch and random crunch, but then those sounds gradually begin to coalesce, the guitars super reverbed, the rhythms looped and mesmeric, the guitars getting more intense, and more driving, multiple loops and melodies layered, eventually some proper riffs entering the equation, churning beneath clouds of those looped melodies, all the while, that rhythm skitters away, the song getting louder and louder, more intense, easily on of the heaviest things we've heard from these guys in a while, bordering on White Hills / Heads territory there for a minute, before fading back into something much more tranced out and meditative.
And while the rest of the record isn't quite so dense or heavy, the songs definitely display both a cool sort of jammy looseness, as well a penchant for something darker and more dense than usual. "Seven Serpents" minus some spidery guitars is a lush undulating expanse of layered synths, and warm whirling dronemusic, definitely cosmic, and spaced out, minimal, and super mesmerizing. "Growing Mushrooms Of Potency" starts off with a sky full of BBC Radiophonic Workshop / sci-fi bleeps and bloops, before another lo-fi skittery rhythm comes in, and then finally some low slung bass, and some shimmery organ, and we're in full on intergalactic drift mode, dodging stray FX and clouds of celestial glimmer, and then at the very end, the sound shifts, and becomes intensely dark and ominous, like some sort of soundtracky Umberto style creepdrone, which fades out WAY to soon. And then finally, "Heartfelt Moon Tripper" finishes things off with what begins as a hazy big of new age-y shimmer, all glistening crystalline clouds and warm whirring chordal drifts, until about half way through, a dark heartbeat like pulse surfaces, and dense little guitar tangles begin to loop and layer, until the hazy opening layers are shed completely, and replaced with a deep ominous thrum, wound around that sinister pulse, all surrounded by streaks of jagged melody and howling echo drenched sheets of guitar swirl, until a brief bit of Zombi / Goblin like cinematic synthscapery ushers the song to its more ethereal conclusion.
MPEG Stream: "Trajectory Rhythms"
MPEG Stream: "Heartfelt Moon Tripper"

EXPO 70 Mother Universe Has Birthed Her Last Cosmos (Universal Tongue) 3"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.
What more can we say about these guys that we haven't already. Masters of divine sci-fi spacekraut dronemusic, sprawling epics that drift heavenward, guitars swirl and pulse, bass throbs and rumbles, rhythms don't pound or shuffle as much as pulse, a gloriously cosmic ur-rock that is not about rocking at all, but instead about sitting back and drifting off, letting the music lull you into a state of suspended animation, moving inward before moving outward, expanding like a new universe being born. All of the above imagery is especially apt to describe Mother Universe Has Birthed Her Last Cosmos, a one track, 20 minute space drone kraut jam from our beloved Expo 70. The main guitar part is surprisingly active, as is the bass, there's a definite groove here, the song has propulsion, and moves with purpose, the sound of a timelapse camera capturing the stars blinking out one at a time, viewed through a capsule full of bong smoke. Dreamy druggy and divine.
But it's not all drift here, about 8 or 9 minutes in, an old drum machine rears up and unfurls a looped beat, the guitars lock in, and suddenly this is some sort of transcendent drugged out hypnospace loop, which almost sounds like a skipping Hawkwind record, so completely mesmerizing and AWESOME. Eventually the drums drift off, and leave the throbbing bass and shimmering guitars to complete the journey on their own.
LIMITED TO 111 COPIES! We got 40 of those, and won't be able to get more. So get while the getting's good. And like all Universal Tongue releases, the packaging is super cool, full color inserts in little mini 5" high clear dvd sleeves, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "Mother Universe Has Birthed Her Last Cosmos"

EXPO 70 Night Flights (Fedora Corpse) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Second of two new releases from Fedora Corpse, and one of THREE new jams from Expo 70, but we're sure as shit not complaining, we can't get enough of Expo's blissed out space rock kraut drone dreaminess.
Lately, it seems like Expo 70 has been leaning toward a heavier, darker sound, dabbling in SUNN-like walls of sound, letting guitars unwind in thick churning blackened swells, but for Night Flights (can't help but think of that bad ass late night video show of the almost same name), the sound is much more blissy and drifty and ambient, at least at first. The two looooong songs that make up side one, are hushed and delicate and crystalline, definitely evoking the sound of outer space, it's not hard to imagine drifting aimlessly and weightlessly through a black expanse of starless sky, the deep black turning almost blue, suffused with the burnished and nearly buried glow of eons old starlight. Tranquil, and contemplative, hypnotic, definitely new age-y, in the best possible sense, a soundtrack for astral projection.
But then the flipside is something completely different, introducing some drum machines, and crafting a swirling chaos of high end glitch and squelch, clouds of bloops and bleeps and swoops, looped and skittery, over spidery minor key guitars and soft warm melodic swells, sounding almost like a Sunroof! jam being slowly drifting into it's constituent parts, some sort of sonic super nova in slow motion. The second track on the B side finds Expo touching once again on the dark and the heavy, the blackened buzz of distorted guitars and thick looped dronescapes, slow burning, slow building, the guitars grow in intensity, until they're locked into a woozy mesmerizing loop, over which, strange atonal guitars tangle and drift, a sort of obtuse bit of lugubrious shredding, before those strangled leads drop out leaving just the initial buzzing swells, now laced with burning hot streaks of high end distorted shimmer. Gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Pressed on thick blue/grey colored vinyl, with cool, super striking one color silk screened sleeves.

EXPO 70 Ostara (Small Doses) 3"cd-r 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What more to say about Justin Wright and his Expo 70 that we haven't already? Every record so far a deep dense slab of drifting droning outer space krautdrone heaviness. And this 22 minute single song ep is no exception.
Taking the glacial downtuned rumble of SUNNO))), and sending it spinning into the outer reaches of the galaxy, Wright crafts another expansive psychedelic, smoldering downtuned dronescape, merging a blissy dreaminess with a seriously caustic heaviness, the two blend and blur into one single epic long form drone, flecked with delicate melodies, constantly shifting textures, overtones surfacing all over the place, the entire track a single heaving organic whole, throbbing and pulsing and whirring and rumbling, if they decided to remake Cosmos (how could you without Carl Sagan?!?!?) updated and modernized, this would be the soundtrack for all of the various and glorious goings on in the universe, exploding supernovas, births of planets, swirling black holes, this is the sound of blackness extending into space, spreading out endlessly, forever and forever.
Gorgeous and breathtaking, Expo 70 is definitely creating some of the most gorgeous dronemusic we've ever heard. And Ostara is yet another fantastic addition to Wright's stunning, and constantly expanding body of work.
LIMITED TO 102 COPIES. Comes in a mini plastic sleeve, with a diecut triangular insert that folds out into a pyramid. Cool!
MPEG Stream: "Ostara (excerpt)"

EXPO 70 Psychic Funeral (Ruralfaune) 2x3"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.
This ultra limited, double 3"cd-r from one of our favorite space synth kraut drone explorers disappeared before we could get our hands on any copies at all. Thankfully, both the band and the label offered to do another (equally limited) pressing of the cd-r's, just for aQuarius, so we got a bunch of those, and we also got a handful of the cassette tape version, just released on Expo 70's own label, so this is definitely your last chance to grab one of these cd-r sets, odds are the tapes won't be around long either, and by now, you know pretty much everything Expo 70 is worth owning.
And Psychic Funeral is indeed another primo slab of glistening washed out space drone drift. Two 18+ minute missives from the farthest reaches of the solar system, the first, a hushed glistening sprawl, all stretched out tones, and upper register shimmer, minimal melodies wrapped around clouds of chordal whir, deep cavernous drones underpinning constantly shifting streaks, buried pulses, swirly and tangled, almost cinematic sounding stretches of lost soundtrack music, haunting and mysterious and otherworldly, building to a buzzing finale, before slipping into a strange looped outro.
The second disc / side is another wide open starscape of melodic fragments, of prismatic glimmer, a softly blurred expanse of tonal color and softly heaving swells, a Tangerine Dream of kaleidoscopic swirls and layered sonic smears, eventually billowing into some soft focus psychedelia, the guitars unfurling some gorgeously chiming reverb drenched melodic tendrils, before drifting back in the blackness of space. So gorgeous.
Killer packaging too, the cd version features hand screened 3" discs, housed in a folded plastic pouch with a full color insert. Tape has a swank full color sleeve. And again VERY VERY LIMITED.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

EXPO 70 Psychic Funeral (Ruralfaune) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The ultra limited Psychic Funeral double 3"cd-r from one of our favorite space synth kraut drone explorers disappeared before we could get our hands on any copies at all. Thankfully, both the band and the label offered to do another (equally limited) pressing of the cd-r's just for aQuarius, so we got a bunch of those, and we also got a handful of the cassette tape version, just released on Expo 70's own label, so this is definitely your last chance to grab one of the cd-r sets, odds are the tapes won't be around long either, and by now, you know pretty much everything Expo 70 is worth owning.
And Psychic Funeral is indeed another primo slab of glistening washed out space drone drift. Two 18+ minute missives from the farthest reaches of the solar system, the first, a hushed glistening sprawl, all stretched out tones, and upper register shimmer, minimal melodies wrapped around clouds of chordal whir, deep cavernous drones underpinning constantly shifting streaks, buried pulses, swirly and tangled, almost cinematic sounding stretches of lost soundtrack music, haunting and mysterious and otherworldly, building to a buzzing finale, before slipping into a strange looped outro.
The second disc / side is another wide open starscape of melodic fragments, of prismatic glimmer, a softly blurred expanse of tonal color and softly heaving swells, a Tangerine Dream of kaleidoscopic swirls and layered sonic smears, eventually billowing into some soft focus psychedelia, the guitars unfurling some gorgeously chiming reverb drenched melodic tendrils, before drifting back in the blackness of space. So gorgeous.
Killer packaging too, the cd version features hand screened 3" discs, housed in a folded plastic pouch with a full color insert. Tape has a swank full color sleeve. And again VERY VERY LIMITED.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

EXPO 70 Psychosis (Peasant Magik) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What else to say really about Expo 70 that we haven't already? Every new release is another gorgeous, softly psychedelic transmission from soft distant corner of the universe. Stray broadcasts traveling across the expanses of space, a sort of timeless music that sounds more like it just IS, and always WAS, more than it sounds created. Justin Wright who is Expo 70, seems to dismantle his guitar at the molecular level, once cracked open, his now rended axe emits a stream of notes and melodies, opens a portal, unleashing a slow burning black fog of sound and texture, through which one can observe and experience other worlds and alternate dimensions.
Heavy crumbling blackness settles atop hushed drifts of crystalline melodic shimmer, eventually transforming into something much more songy, a super druggy spaced out psych jam of the highest order, sounding a bit like Santana fronting SUNNO))), dense rumbling buzz drenched swells beneath super emotional almost wailing leads.
The flipside is another otherworldly songsuite, this one divided into three parts, slipping from minimal and looped to crushing and doomy to hushed and murky and space-y. The opener is a gorgeous spaced out bit of repetitive, stripped down new age kraut rock, a main pulse throbs beneath swirls of warm keyboards, simple chordal strum and muted electronics, super hypnotic and mesmerizing and quite possibly one of our favorite Expo jams yet.
The second track is a thick roiling swirl of crumbling distorted heaviness, slow sprawling chords overlapping into a doomy textured expanse of tarpit riff fueled ambience, before dissipating into part three, a murmured post industrial soundscape that sounds like a field recording of some derelict space station set to music. Creepy and haunting and also quite lovely.
Killer packaging, thick full color sleeve, with a printed full color Japanese style obi, inside, a 12"x24" silk screened poster! [The first bunch came with a bonus cd-r, featuring a live set, recorded on KFJC back in 2008, but those are gone, this is JUST the lp, but heck, that should be more than enough!]

EXPO 70 Sonic Messenger (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More epic and dense heart-of-the-sun blissed out heavy space drones from Expo 70. And the thing is, we're running out of superlatives, we can only gush so much before we run out of new things to say, which is especially difficult when every record is as good as if not better than the last. So do forgive us if we're repeating ourselves, but hell, any one into spaced out heaviness, and droneprogbliss, who hasn't heard Expo 70 is missing out on one might just be their favorite band EVER.
Like past records, Expo 70 suck the essence out of every Hawkwind record, the soul of every Tangerine Dream record, and filter it through filter of SUNNO))) black hole heaviness, and come up with their own unique psychedelic space rock krautdrone, a sound we just can't get enough of. Expansive and sprawling, dark and meditative, washed out and dreamy, heavy and layered, the opening track on Sonic Messenger is a crushing chunk of low end rumble and pulse, which immediately gives way to some ultra hushed bliss, which smolders and flickers and expands in slow motion like a time lapse film of a planet being birthed. And so it goes, rhythms surface and blink out, guitars groan and whir and weep, synths wheeze and unfurl glimmering sheets of sound, the guitars sometimes coalesce into psychedelic almost-leads, but more often than not fade into clouds of hazy reverb and ethereal delay, the record closes with a 21 minute slow burn that is subtly fierce, a muted ominous swell of sound, wrapped in airy tendrils of fragmented melody, and swaths of gritty texture, a brooding and intense stretch of dreamy darkness.
Once again Expo 70 deliver the divine drugged out sonic space drone bliss.
And while they last (only 150 copies!!), included is a whole extra disc, an actual cd, not a cd-r, 50 more minutes of blissed out krautdrone space psych ambience. Three long long long songs, much more hushed and almost new age sounding that the record proper, except for the first 22 minute jam, that builds to a frenzied psychedelic freak out coda.
Deluxe packaging too, a glossy full color mini hardcover book-like sleeve, while the bonus disc comes in a cardboard sleeve, but there are instructions how to get some bonus stuff for the limited cd via the label's website. Cool!
MPEG Stream: "Amplifying Umbras"
MPEG Stream: "Analog Dreamscape"
MPEG Stream: "Hamadryad"

EXPO 70 Sonic Messenger (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2lp 33.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW ON VINYL, this Expo opus from last year!!
More epic and dense heart-of-the-sun blissed out heavy space drones from Expo 70. And the thing is, we're running out of superlatives, we can only gush so much before we run out of new things to say, which is especially difficult when every record is as good as if not better than the last. So do forgive us if we're repeating ourselves, but hell, any one into spaced out heaviness, and droneprogbliss, who hasn't heard Expo 70 is missing out on one might just be their favorite band EVER.
Like past records, Expo 70 suck the essence out of every Hawkwind record, the soul of every Tangerine Dream record, and filter it through filter of SUNNO))) black hole heaviness, and come up with their own unique psychedelic space rock krautdrone, a sound we just can't get enough of. Expansive and sprawling, dark and meditative, washed out and dreamy, heavy and layered, the opening track on Sonic Messenger is a crushing chunk of low end rumble and pulse, which immediately gives way to some ultra hushed bliss, which smolders and flickers and expands in slow motion like a time lapse film of a planet being birthed. And so it goes, rhythms surface and blink out, guitars groan and whir and weep, synths wheeze and unfurl glimmering sheets of sound, the guitars sometimes coalesce into psychedelic almost-leads, but more often than not fade into clouds of hazy reverb and ethereal delay, the record closes with a 21 minute slow burn that is subtly fierce, a muted ominous swell of sound, wrapped in airy tendrils of fragmented melody, and swaths of gritty texture, a brooding and intense stretch of dreamy darkness.
Once again Expo 70 deliver the divine drugged out sonic space drone bliss.
MPEG Stream: "Amplifying Umbras"
MPEG Stream: "Analog Dreamscape"
MPEG Stream: "Hamadryad"

EXPO 70 Sunglasses / Transcending Energy From Light (Trensmat) 7" 5.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
The only real downside to an Expo 70 single, is that it's ultimately frustrating in its brevity, as the music of Justin Wright, aka Expo 70 (or Expo '70, they seem to have lost the apostrophe on recent releases) is far better served by longer formats, lps, cds, and while both of these songs are indeed fantastic, it's almost criminal to cut them off after only 4 or 5 minutes, these are the sorts of sounds meant to sprawl and ooze and spread and extend for ages and ages. But as far as complaints got, it's a minor (and not entirely negative one), you'll just have to stick close by the turntable so you can lift the needle and set it right back at the beginning again.
No great surprises or strange sonic twists, just more of that thick dark gloriously heavy space kraut drone we've come to expect. The A side is some seriously deep and drone-y outer space exploration, warm languorous tones over a softly grinding and pulsing buzz, sweeping and epic and darkly mysterious, glistening melodies shifting from speaker to speaker, very new age-y for sure, but a sort of dense and blackened new age.
The B side begins all growling buzzing low end thickness, laced with space-y squiggles, long high end streaks and glimmering tones, beneath the blissy drift is a warm whirring and a softly corrosive crumble, all wound up into epic slow building swells of deeeeep deeeeep buzz. So nice.
Gorgeous full color covers, and of course LIMITED, it's already sold out from the label, so these will be the last copies we can get.

EXPO 70 Where Does Your Mind Go? (Immune) lp 27.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest (vinyl-only) chunk of kosmische spacekraut exploration from long time aQ faves Expo 70, for this recording expanded to a duo, consisting of Expo 70 main man Justin Wright, along with his occasional collaborator Matt Hill, aka recent Record Of The Week honoree Umberto. Together they conjure four sprawling smoldering tracks of galaxian space drone mesmer spread out over four vinyl sides. While it seemed like on other recent Expo 70 records, that Wright and Co. were slowly moving toward a heavier sound, dipping into occasional SUNNO))) territory, the sounds here are seem more tranquil and blissed out, although the addition of Hill gives some of these songs a distinctly haunting soundtrack vibe...
The opening track offers up some subtle minimal drum machines, more textural than rhythmic, drifting on a warm whirling sea of shimmering sonic swells and hazy soft focus drones, everything gauzy and washed out, the soundtrack to a sky full of solar flares, blurred and indistinct, bleary eyed and blissful The guitars do gain some momentum, wrapped in reverb and sent spinning into the ether, but everything stays grounded, a dreamlike abstract soft sonic drift.
The second track definitely seems to reflect the presence of Umberto mainman Hill, immediately unfurling a thick swatch of buzzing drone, a haunting ominous tense bit of ambience, streaks of minor key melody, all underpinned by squelchy low end synths and warm washes of synthesized strings, the whole thing sounding like Umberto or Zombi filtered through Expo 70. There are some brief stretches where the low end becomes a bit more corrosive, but it dissipates quickly, leaving synth shadows and melodic traces, to gradually fade into the cosmos.
The second record begins again with some thick droning synths, layered into softly pulsing streaks, wheezing and whirring elegantly, and ominously, building a mysterious background, over which the duo lay swoonsome strings and maudlin piano, it's all very cinematic and soundtracky and classical, like the score to some lost Italian giallo, again like some hybrid of Umberto and Expo 70 (which it essentially is), one can almost picture the strange psychedelic colors, and constantly flitting shadows, some crumbling old villa set atop a hill, beneath a burnt black sky, tense and moody and gloriously creepy.
The final track/side begins with a cloud of processed guitars, wreathed in delay and reverb, a warm swirl of buzz and pulse, that gradually grows more lush and full, hazy and druggy, the drum machine from the first track returns, again adding texture (but this time a little propulsion as well), the swirl of guitars smooth out into something much more hypnotic, before everything seems to meltdown in a soft psychedelic squall, streaks of spaced out effects, fragmented melodies, shuffling rhythms buried beneath clouds of hiss and whir and static buzz, a warm whirling stretch of soft chaos, that soon morphs into a muted murky bit of outer space shimmer, that gradually disappears into the vast endless blackness, like a dying star. Epic and fantastic.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on super thick virgin vinyl, and housed in a fancy old style tip-on gatefold jackets. Includes a download code as well...
MPEG Stream: "Ancient Hawk Soul Takes Flight"
MPEG Stream: "Close Your Eyes And Effortlessly Drift Away"

EXPO 70 Where Does Your Mind Go? (Immune) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This previously vinyl-only chunk of kosmische spacekraut exploration from long time aQ faves Expo 70, now available on CASSETTE!
Where Does Your Mind Go? was one of the first Expo records to find the group expanded to a duo, consisting of Expo 70 main man Justin Wright, along with his occasional collaborator Matt Hill, aka recent Record Of The Week honoree Umberto. Together they conjure four sprawling smoldering tracks of galaxian space drone mesmer. While it seemed like on other recent Expo 70 records, that Wright and Co. were slowly moving toward a heavier sound, dipping into occasional SUNNO))) territory, the sounds here seem more tranquil and blissed out, although the addition of Hill gives some of these songs a distinctly haunting soundtrack vibe...
The opening track offers up some subtle minimal drum machines, more textural than rhythmic, drifting on a warm whirling sea of shimmering sonic swells and hazy soft focus drones, everything gauzy and washed out, the soundtrack to a sky full of solar flares, blurred and indistinct, bleary eyed and blissful The guitars do gain some momentum, wrapped in reverb and sent spinning into the ether, but everything stays grounded, a dreamlike abstract soft sonic drift.
The second track definitely seems to reflect the presence of Umberto mainman Hill, immediately unfurling a thick swatch of buzzing drone, a haunting ominous tense bit of ambience, streaks of minor key melody, all underpinned by squelchy low end synths and warm washes of synthesized strings, the whole thing sounding like Umberto or Zombi filtered through Expo 70. There are some brief stretches where the low end becomes a bit more corrosive, but it dissipates quickly, leaving synth shadows and melodic traces, to gradually fade into the cosmos.
Track three begins again with some thick droning synths, layered into softly pulsing streaks, wheezing and whirring elegantly, and ominously, building a mysterious background, over which the duo lay swoonsome strings and maudlin piano, it's all very cinematic and soundtracky and classical, like the score to some lost Italian giallo, again like some hybrid of Umberto and Expo 70 (which it essentially is), one can almost picture the strange psychedelic colors, and constantly flitting shadows, some crumbling old villa set atop a hill, beneath a burnt black sky, tense and moody and gloriously creepy.
The final track begins with a cloud of processed guitars, wreathed in delay and reverb, a warm swirl of buzz and pulse, that gradually grows more lush and full, hazy and druggy, the drum machine from the first track returns, again adding texture (but this time a little propulsion as well), the swirl of guitars smooth out into something much more hypnotic, before everything seems to meltdown in a soft psychedelic squall, streaks of spaced out effects, fragmented melodies, shuffling rhythms buried beneath clouds of hiss and whir and static buzz, a warm whirling stretch of soft chaos, that soon morphs into a muted murky bit of outer space shimmer, that gradually disappears into the vast endless blackness, like a dying star. Epic and fantastic.
MPEG Stream: " Ancient Hawk Soul Takes Flight"
MPEG Stream: "Close Your Eyes And Effortlessly Drift Away"

EXXASENS Polaris (ConSOULing Sounds) 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.
For a while there, Belgian label NOTHingness was one of our favorite sources for grim droning black ambience. Pretty much everything they released was fantastic. Well, NOTHingness sadly is no more, but in it's place, has risen Consouling Sounds, a new label focusing less on dark ambient and dronemusic and more on post rock, space rock and drone rock, with a distinct focus on up and coming unknown artists. The label is split into two distinct entities. They recently released the Bungled & The Botched cd from Nadja (now out of print, sorry) via the 'Soul' imprint, home for established acts, and this, the debut from Spanish metallic post rockers Exxasens is the first release in their 'Con ' series, limited cd-r releases of unknown bands, offering people an inexpensive chance to check out some new sounds.
As mentioned above, these particular sounds come via Spain, and the weirdly named Exxasens, who while choosing a somewhat overpopulated style, do manage to do their own thing. Their sound while definitely rocking, is more on the math/post side of things than the metal, at their heaviest, they sound like a lighter Isis or maybe more like a slightly more metal Mogwai, and those heavy parts soar more than pummel, but they balance well with the more loping introspective bits. Regardless, math rockers and post rockers will definitely be in heaven, these guys certainly push all the right buttons, the drumming is intricate and mathy with some intense squalls of rapid fire double kick, the guitars ring out, chiming majestically, there also seems to be some sort of keyboard action, or perhaps that's just some extra guitars, either way, it adds all sorts of texture to the proceedings. There are some cool production tape speed tricks, a bunch of samples, but of course no vocals, this is all instrumental, every track rife with slow building elaborate arrangements, epic melodies, and some killer chops, as well as a flair for crafting some subtly catchy tunes.
Explosions In The Sky, Pelican, Isis, Mogwai, Mono, Irepress, Souvenir's Young America, if that reads like your iTunes library, then, you probably will want to pick this up too...
Packaged in a cd sized dvd style plastic sleeve, with a full color insert. LIMITED TO 170 COPIES in two editions, both already sold out, so these are the very last copies.
MPEG Stream: "Polaris"
MPEG Stream: "Your Dreams Are My Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Space"

EYE s/t (CMR) cd-r + lathe cut 7" 10.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
We won't go into too much detail with these as we only got a tiny handful of each. Latest batch of ultra limited lathe cuts from New Zealand label CMR. Each one packaged in a super striking, simple cardstock jacket, most with printed inner sleeves, Limited to 60 copies, of which we got the remaining stock. Once these are gone, they are gone forever.
We had never heard Eye before, but they seem to be the new outfit of NZ underground luminary Peter Stapleton (Flies Inside The Sun, Sleep, A Handful Of Dust) and no surprise, fans of any of his past work will for sure dig this.
The 7" is a crumbling soundscape of shortwave interference, wavering tones, constantly shifting drones, all very sea sick and dizzy sounding, bits of whispery static, all swaddled in a thick buzz, with lots of strange effects, and what sounds like the hiss and whisper of an army of ghosts that builds and builds to a fever pitch.
The flipside is more of an old school NZ freerock jam, all tribal rhythms under a swirling sea of fuzz and distortion and bits of skree. Layer after layer of constantly shifting grit and grime, propulsive and blown out, but still sort of shimmery and almost ambient.
This lathe cut comes with a cd-r, which contains a single 38 minute track, more glorious abstract soundscaping, bits of rhythms here and there, lots of buzz and hiss, strange disembodied melodies, lo-fi and constantly shifting and drifting, eventually building into a seriously heavy fuzzed out jam, complete with strange horns and bursts of random musical snippets. Cool.

EYE / ZORN DUO John Zorn 50th Birthday Celebration, Vol. 10 (Tzadik) cd 15.98

EYEBALLS The Invisible Castle (Blackest Rainbow) cd 16.98

EYELESS IN GAZA Plague of Years (Songs And Instrumentals 1980-2006) (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98
We figure that since AQ pal Loren Chasse is so obsessed with Martyn Bates and Eyeless In Gaza, we figured we oughta just let him review this new one:
In the endless stream of comps, there's got to be something pretty special to get this listener to take notice. For most listeners, when an anthology by a favorite band comes out there's the feverish question, "Are there any unreleased tracksÉ raritiesÉdemos?!" andÉ "What about the packaging -- any unseen art from some original pressing?" The new Eyeless in Gaza compilation Plague of Years: Songs and Instrumentals 1980-2006 released by Sub Rosa offers only token fulfillment of the first obsession by including a track from a yet unreleased Eyeless record, Summer Salt and Subway Sun (supposedly due out in 2006...guess not?). The rest of the songs and instrumentals are all from full length records in the Eyeless catalog, but for three semi-rare songs from an old Sub Rosa Myths compilation from the early Eighties. So what's left for someone who's already 'in the know' about this legendary Cherry Red Records band? Not much but for a sensitively-mixed document of the musical prowess of Martyn Bates and Peter Becker, including some of their best songs -- "Fever Pitch" and "Bite" (is that a typo on this release, labeling it "Ever Pitch"...?), and "One by One" -- mixed among examples of their more mysterious and beautiful instrumental pieces. For a potential initiate to Eyeless In Gaza -- that is, someone who's perhaps all over the New Weird Now folk freakout and who might also have a soft spot for the drone and clang of such artists as Organum, Andrew Chalk or :zoviet*france: -- this comp would indeed be the perfect introduction. And if that potential initiate harbors a taste for beautifully fruity vocals (used only in adoration and reverence, Martyn!), then this could be a heavenly match, especially on those nights alone, rain pounding the window, black candles throwing moody shadows. If things worked out, of course, this comp might very well end up getting checked into the used bin on one's way to consuming the entire Eyeless in Gaza catalog. SoÉ while offering little to the fan other than reassurance that Eyeless in Gaza is still awesome 26 years after its first record, Plague of Years succeeds as a flare for alerting new ears!
MPEG Stream: "Ever Pitch and Bite"
MPEG Stream: "Lights of April"

EYES LIKE SAUCERS Parmalee, Tribute To A Dog (Ikuisuus / Ruralfaune) cd 13.98
We first heard from Eyes Like Saucers back in 2007, when we reviewed the record Still Living In The Desert, which found ELS, aka Jeff Knoch, fomerly of hypnotic psych folkers Urdog, abandon his band, and his friends, ditch all the usual rock band instrumentation, and head off for places unknown, with nothing but a VW van, a handful of acoustic instruments, most importantly, an Indian harmonium, and his faithful canine sidekick. That record, was a fantastic bit of hypnotic dronemusic, a wheezing, druggy droniness, whirring and shimmery and meditative, steeped in the traditions of Indian ragas and modern minimalist drone music more than the psychedelic sounds of his former outfit.
Parmalee is the follow up, and is dedicated to his canine companion, as the subtitle suggests: "Tribute To A Dog". Hopefully this is just an expression of love for his dog, and they are still wandering the wilds together. Our first assumption was that perhaps Parmalee had died, and this was a musical eulogy, the sounds are definitely dark and moody and contemplative enough to be some sort of sad send off, but either way, these are some fantastic psychedelic space drone ragas, all wheezing organs, warm whirling chords, the sound thick and lush, but definitely ragged around the edges, urgent and intimate, captivating and totally mesmerizing. It's impossible to not fall immediately under their spell. Once again, we're reminded of nineties NZ dronerockers Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, but this is much more ritualistic, much more home spun drone folk. The rest of the record introduces strange percussion, electronic synths, chimes and bells, slipping from alien folk ritual, to spare almost Appalachian sounding strum, to sea shanty like ballad, all culminating in the gorgeous woozy three part 23 minute epic Warrigal, a lush harmonium workout, the chords and notes wheezing lazily, all sun dappled and drone drenched, the sounds so organic and hypnotic, laced with bits of percussion and tinkling chimes, so haunting and hazy, meditative and dreamy.
MPEG Stream: "Sun And Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Warrigal Part One"

EYES LIKE SAUCERS Still Living In The Desert (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
Urdog was one of our favorite groups, a primitive psych folk ensemble, hypnotic and heavy and surprisingly prog, with a bit of space rock and a whole lot of drone. What was not to love?! The band called it a day a while back, but then a year or two later this little gem surfaced, a solo record from Eyes Like Saucers, which just so happens to be ex Urdog-er Jeff Knoch. But For ELS, Knoch has abandoned all the trappings of a proper rock band (ie drums, bass, guitar, etc), and he and his faithful canine companion took off in a VW van for the desert, armed only with an Indian harmonium, a toy piano, a glockenspiel, an oscillator, a Farfisa minicompact organ, a ukulele and presumably some sort of recording device.
The results are much how you might imagine from the instrumentation, long warm, warbly whirring dronescapes, the organ(s) pulsing, and wheezing, the chords shifting subtly, dense and layered, and drifting slowly, contemplative and dreamlike. Super obscure reference: reminds us a bit of NZ outfit Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, but blurred into something much more static and meditative.
The record begins with a twinkling field of bells and chimes (the toy piano we're guessing) a playful high end field of plinks and plonks, melodies like sunlight through icicles, but then quickly the record gets slower and lower, transforming into a glorious shamanic drone record. Some of the tracks are rich and melodic, almost playful, jaunty, a bit like sea shanties (or desert shanties in this case), while others are lugubrious slow crawls, all whirring shimmer and blurred slow motion slither, some are peppered with the chiming toy piano percussion, or laced with Knoch's buried in the mix monotone vocals, others are left unadorned, just the notes and the melodies, the timbre and the tone, tangled into soft smears, drifting like a warm evening fog over the wide open sands of the desert.
So great. And there's even a Robert Wyatt cover! Quite recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Ideas Of Reference"
MPEG Stream: "Sea Song"
MPEG Stream: "Delusion Of Reference"

F-SPACE Preliminary Impact Report (Mobilization) cd 12.98
F-Space is the brainchild of Scot Jenerik and Ethan Port, two veterans of the West Coast noise / punk community. In many ways, Jenerik fully embodies the Burning Man ethos (or at least the way Burning Man presented itself about a decade ago), still proclaiming that the apocalypse is coming and when it does, he'll be out in the desert celebrating the destruction of society along with a bunch of other Mad Max renegades with their recycled art cars and homebuilt flamethrowers. His solo performances and installations find Jenerik in a literal circle of fire while hammering out post-Neubauten jack-hammer rhythms on abused pieces of metal. This visual appeal for immolation infiltrates the stage presence of F-Space, while the musical side shows much greater ties to his creative roots harkening back to his days in Savage Republic and Death Ride 69. Sprawling blasts of dueling monochord guitars drive the F-Space sound which marches through pounding tribal drums (compliments of Aleph Kali of Chrome) and slow-burning gritty walls of guitar sound which situate themselves somewhere between the early Skullflower albums and a slightly less psychedelic Acid Mother's Temple. On occasion, the Arabic motifs which haunted the later Savage Republic recordings emerge on F-Space as well. If DIY destruction is your bag, then boy do we have a record for you!
MPEG Stream: "Through The Night Softly"
MPEG Stream: "Sans Soleil"

F/I A Question For The Somnambulist (Strange Attractors Audio House) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This 2003 release went out of print WAY too fast, so the kind folks at Strange Attractors Audio House have swooped in to save the day. And they didn't just make it available again, they repackaged it in a super swank silkscreened sleeve and added a killer bonus track!
F/i have been somewhat of a buried treasure since the early eighties, spewing a rich brew of buzzy psychedelia, sludgy stoner doom, and extended space jams over the course of numerous lps and cassettes, but never really reaching out beyond the space rock underground. That's a shame as there has been a recent plenitude of reissues, making available again some of F/i's most seminal recordings, on cd for the first time, reminding us what a psych/space rock powerhouse these guys were. And still are! These guys never really stopped kicking out the jams. A Question For The Somnambulist finds the band back to its original lineup with the return of founding member Richard Franecki, and while one might hope this would mean a fiery, triumphant comeback of amp melting, spine crushing intensity, you also have to consider that it's been 20+ years since the launch of F/i, and these guys are getting older, and wiser, and mellower. So while there are moments where the whole thing threatens to combust and leave your stereo a charred husk, most of AQFTS is more on the dreamy, hypnotic, Krautrocky side, reminding us quite a bit of Finnish drone rockers Circle or local psych rock tribe Subarachnoid Space, with warm fuzzy riffs, swirls of squiggly Moogs, propulsive infinitive rhythms, and the occasional squall of freakout guitar.
MPEG Stream: "A Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Daisy Cutter"
MPEG Stream: "Hit The Kill Switch Eugene"

F/I Blanga (Lexicon Devil) cd 16.98
Since the beginning of the eighties, the strangely monickered F/i have been turning their amps up to 11, firing up the bongs, filling their space ship with all manner of effects and illicit mind altering substances and setting the controls for the heart of the sun. Here we are more than two decades later and F/i are still drifting in a dreamy and drug addled Hawkwind meets Loop meets Acid Mothers Temple meets Spacemen 3 meets way too many drugs sonic stupor and it still sounds so good. Music to take drugs to make music to take drugs by for sure! Huge streaks of reverb drenched distorted guitar, swirls of synthesizer swoop and sizzle, electronic beeps and bloops and burbles, throbbing, rumbling basslines, Hendrixian psych guitar freakouts and simple krautrock rhythms keeping the whole thing from floating off into the atmosphere. From full on Stooges-y psych stomp, to blissed out shimmering space trance, to smeary echoey ambience to almost Stereolab / Neu! style synth heavy krautrock, F/i manage to take whatever sonic course they're laid and make sure it also involves flying way too close to a black hole and thus being doused by white hot radioactive guitars or dense clouds of thick fuzzy synths or being bombarded by blown out cymbal sizzle, and burning up in a gloriously dreamy and druggy white hot space rock ball of flame!
MPEG Stream: "In The Garden Of Blanga"
MPEG Stream: "Blanga's Transformation"

F/I Blue Star / Merge Parlour (Lexicon Devil) cd 14.98
Final blast from the past in this F/i reissue blitz of late and it's a doozy. The first half is a reissue of the Blue Star lp, three lengthy tracks of spaced out fucked up Hawkwind meets Gore meets Acid Mothers Temple outer-space-psych. Sludgy riffs are pounded into oblivion, splintering into shards of psychedelic swoosh and druggy shimmer. Endlessly and gorgeously hypnotic. The second half is the F/i half of their split with Vocokesh, and is way more electronic. Same vibe and feel as the first half, but with the riffs becoming weird modulated tones, and the propulsive drumming turning into mechanical throbs and pulses. Imagine a krautrock Wolf Eyes or Factrix covering Sabbath. This is some awesome shit. As recommended as the rest of the recent F/i reissues!
MPEG Stream: "Om Twenty-One"
MPEG Stream: "Pleasure Centres / The Beach"

F/I Paradise Out Here (Lexicon Devil) cd 16.98
Maybe the most anxiously awaited release in Lexicon Devil's comprehensive series of F/i reissues. Paradise Out Here, originally released in 1989, might just be the heaviest, most freaked out, most spaced out of all the F/i records. All it takes is about one minute of opener "From Poppy With Love", an acid fried, ultra freaked out, swirling psychrock blowout to understand why. A chugging scuzzy garage rock riff scratches out a relentless spacey stomp beneath a massive roiling cloud of FX that make Acid Mothers Temple's arsenal look like a broken down collection of Casio distortion boxes and Fisher-Price keyboards. So heavy and so spacey. Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, AMT, Colour Haze, UFOmammut, White Hills, Comets On Fire, the Heads, the Telescopes, Atomic Bitchwax, Loop. If those are the kind of bands that get your blood boiling and your bong bubbling then this record is definitely for you. Extended excursions into the outer reaches of deep deep deep space, where the stars blink and twinkle in dizzyingly psychedelic colors, everywhere you look guitars are all twisted and distorted, thick slabs of rumbling bass plow through reverbed swirls of shimmer, melodies explode and splinter into jagged bits in gloriously incendiary bursts, everything is blurry and swathed in a thick drug rock haze, and everywhere you look huge slabs of blown out wah guitar drift past, like fluffy prismatic clouds, underneath it all, drums pound a never ending rhythm, while being endlessly pelted with synth squiggles and a veritable hail storm of bleeps and bloops and beeps. Woah. This record is so relentless and about as tripped out and psychedelic as a record can get without completely collapsing in on itself.
If there was ever a record that made us want to get super high, turn off all the lights, rock the fuck out and drift WAY WAY WAY OUT.... it's this one.
MPEG Stream: "From Poppy With Love"
MPEG Stream: "The House Of The Pharoah's Daughter"

F/I Space Mantra (Lexicon Devil) cd 15.98

F/I The Past Darkly / The Future Lightly: Rare & Unreleased 1983-1989 (Lexicon Devil) 2cd 17.98
The Australian label Lexicon Devil has certainly picked an unusual scene to ressurrect from the mires of terminal obscurity, as they've been reissuing a handful of records from the mid-'80s psych-electronic-noise rock scene of Milwaukee. It's probably a stretch to qualify this as a 'scene,' since the bands in question had only a handful of rotating members in a couple of guises, specifically F/i, Boy Dirt Car, and Vocokesh. F/i began as a trio with Richard Franecki, Greg Kurczewski, and Brian Wensing, although Franecki parted ways in 1990 to form Vocokesh and record solo albums, leaving Wensing in charge of F/i, which theoretically is still operational. Despite its subtitle as being rare and unreleased, "The Past Darkly / The Future Lightly" was originally issued as a 3LP set on RRRecords with a tiny pressing of 300 copies in 1989, and makes for a pretty good overview of F/i's diverse history that runs from gritty electronic passages to dusted psych rock explosions. The earlier electronic pieces are clearly the best work in F/i's catalogue coming across as droning fields of sound not unlike Conrad Schnitzler or MB. The move to distorted and wah-wah heavy hypno-space-rock never quite rises above bearing a passing resemblance to Hawkwind, Blue Cheer, or the early Skullflower rock explosions. Pretty great stuff though.
RealAudio clip: "Dormant"
RealAudio clip: "Standing In The Garden"

F/I Why Not Now?... Alan! (Lexicon Devil) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another grimy blast of drugged out psychedelia from unheralded underground psych gods F/i. This is the third or fourth F/i reissue in the last several months (and definitely Andee's favorite), finally restoring their epic and long out of print back catalog. Why Not Now?...Alan! was originally released on lp way back in 1987 on RRR and suffered sonically from poor mastering, as well as cohesively from the fact that several of the tracks were chopped to fit on a single lp. This cd reissue finds the chopped songs restored to their original extended versions, and the sound remastered and beefed up significantly! F/i around this period were a noisy, abstract, psychedelic juggernaut, equal parts Hawkwind, Lustmord, Skullflower, Amon Duul and a healthy dose of free noise gleeearghhh like some of their RRR labelmates. Glitchy, sputtering, malfunctioning instruments, amp buzz, and crackly bursts of short wave radio whirl chaotically into a sonic supernova, until a propulsive rhythm struggles and emerges from the chaos, a krautrock behemoth, lumbering through a landscape of swirling wah guitars, squalls of shrieking, space-y bleeping swoosh, clattery 'pipe fights', rumbling subsonic drones, super distorted drum / car horn industrial crunch and all manner of drugged out grit, but throughout it all, the hypnotic riff powers on, head down, chugging into oblivion. Think a massively damaged Neu! Or maybe Hawkwind on a really, really bad trip, or Circle, drugged and forced at gunpoint to do their best Agitation Free until their fingers bleed, or Amon Duul II, if instead of German hippies, their commune consisted mostly of American noise rockers from the eighties. As the record progresses, some of the extraneous noise is shed in favor of a more sleek psych/kraut rock, relentless and hypnotic, repetitive and mesmerising, but even streamlined, it still sounds seriously damaged and dangerous. Fucking awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Zombie Theme 2"
MPEG Stream: "Number 27"
MPEG Stream: "QR (Z)"

FABRIC A Sort Of Radiance (Spectrum Spools / Editions Mego) lp 21.00
Fabric is the work of Chicago's Matthew Mullane, who could be seen as a one-man doppleganger of Emeralds. Not only does Mullane have an album of acoustic solo guitar work on Vin Du Select Qualitite, following Emerald's guitarist Mark McGuire in such an honor; he's released this stunning piece of liquid electronica that could fool even the most die-hard Emeralds fan. To further matters, A Sort Of Radiance had caught the attention of Emerald's John Elliott, who released the album through his Spectrum Spools imprint manufactured by Editions Mego. Present throughout A Sort Of Radiance are the percolating cosmic synths with the same classical overtures to Cluster, Fripp & Eno, and Schulze that Hauschildt and Elliott would adopt on those brilliant Emeralds records (especially What Happened and Does It Look Like I'm Here?). Even with very similar synth programing through step sequencing and hypnotic iterations of electronics, Mullane also seems to tap into the same bittersweet expressivity found on those Emeralds album. The same rounded notes which brought Emeralds' What Happened to a conclusion are reprised on Fabric's "Light Float" (an apt name for this levitational track with all of its fizzing lines of patterned electronic static), and even the harpsichord sounding electronics which girded Emeralds' near poptune "Candy Shoppe." The similarities can be unnerving; but when you forget about this and just listen to the wonderful music within... A Sort Of Radiance is a thing of beauty.

FACTRIX Artifact (Storm) 2cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
After months of digging, we were finally able to track some of these down. For those of you not in the know, Factrix just happen to be AQ faves Wolf Eyes favorite band, so much so that not only do they try to sound like them, but to this day they continue to send their industrial-doom heroes letters of gratitutde and worship! Factrix originally manufactured their proto-Wolf Eyes sound in San Francisco some 20+ years ago. The history of underground music on the West Coast in the late '70s is not an easy one to trace. Unlike the punk explosion in England or New York, the influences and disturbances of the musical circuits manifested collusions of ideas that never really fit into the marketable ideas of punk or new wave. Even before those terms were commonplace, California was home to such anomalies in artrock as the Residents and the Los Angeles Free Music Society, who both experimented freely with technology, dadaism, culture jamming, and the detritus of post-psychedelia and bad acid trips. This was the environment that also spawned such genre unfriendly projects as The Screamers, Savage Republic, Non, Survival Reseach Laboratories, Nervous Gender, Negativland, and -- Factrix.
In truth, SF's Factrix belonged to the original Industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Cabaret Voltaire, although their take on trangressive themes and their grim abuse of technology never reached as wide an audience as those icons of Industrial Records. In their short lifespan from 1978 - 1982, Factrix developed a language that clearly rivalled that of their European comrades; but in many ways, Factrix owed their sound to their San Francisco roots, as they inverted the paisley pretenses of psychedelia into a grim seance of sound in which free love became sexual taboos, universal peace became soul-crushing dread, and transcendence became morbidity. This inversion of psychedelia used many of the same tools of Haight-Ashbury in composing through non-structured improvisations as well as through a steady diet of psilocybin mushrooms; but the sound came out all wrong. Factrix devolved '70s pop banalities into dissonant slabs of noise with squiggling guitar feedback and all-encompassing dirges from over-distorted basslines, with a continuous, tinny pulse from an abused drum machine. The process of free association carried over in the vocal duties, which were typically shared amongst the chief protagonists Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph Jacobs, although industrial culture celeb Monte Cazzaza was also known to offer his demented lisp to Factrix.
While not presented as a 'best-of' collection, "Artifact" features the best material that Factrix had produced, including all of the tracks from their seminal "Schentot" LP on Adolescent Records and a ton of live material, which has been digitally salvaged so as to sound great. "Artifact" is an essential artifact, in fact and a great surprise!
MPEG Stream: "Empire Of Passion"
MPEG Stream: "Snuff Box"

FACTRIX Scheintot (Superior Viaduct) cd 12.98
About ten years ago, we championed the San Francisco industrial prodigies Factrix via their Artifact 2cd anthology released on Storm, in fact, we made it a Record Of The Week. That went out of print quickly; so we are now quite grateful to Superior Viaduct for at last reissuing two of this band's seminal recordings! Factrix originally manufactured their proto-Wolf Eyes sound in San Francisco some 30+ years ago. The history of underground music on the West Coast in the late '70s is not an easy one to trace. Unlike the punk explosion in England or New York, the influences and disturbances of the musical circuits manifested collusions of ideas that never really fit into the marketable ideas of punk or new wave. Even before those terms were commonplace, California was home to such anomalies in artrock as the Residents and the Los Angeles Free Music Society, who both experimented freely with technology, dadaism, culture jamming, and the detritus of post-psychedelia and bad acid trips. This was the environment that also spawned such genre unfriendly projects as The Screamers, Savage Republic, Non, Survival Research Laboratories, Nervous Gender, Negativland, and - Factrix.
In truth, SF's Factrix belonged to the original Industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Cabaret Voltaire, although their take on transgressive themes and their grim abuse of technology never reached as wide an audience as those icons of Industrial Records. In their short lifespan from 1978 - 1982, Factrix developed a language that clearly rivalled that of their European comrades; but in many ways, Factrix owed their sound to their San Francisco roots, as they inverted the paisley pretenses of psychedelia into a grim seance of sound in which free love became sexual taboos, universal peace became soul-crushing dread, and transcendence became morbidity. This inversion of psychedelia used many of the same tools of Haight-Ashbury in composing through non-structured improvisations as well as through a steady diet of psilocybin mushrooms; but the sound came out all wrong. Factrix devolved '70s pop banalities into dissonant slabs of noise with squiggling guitar feedback and all-encompassing dirges from over-distorted basslines, with a continuous, tinny pulse from an abused drum machine. The process of free association carried over in the vocal duties, which were typically shared amongst the chief protagonists Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph Jacobs.
Scheintot was the only studio album from Factrix, originally released on Adolescent Records in 1981. Its dark lysergic murk and obsessive decomposition crawls through scabrous guitars, clanking metal, distorted electronics, shadow-cast vocals and atmospheric doom, certainly paralleling the death-factory churn of TG's Second Annual Report and SPK's Leichenshrei. It must be stated that all of the tracks here (including the cd's two bonus tracks!) were present on the aforementioned Artifact 2cd; but with that long out of print, this becomes a recommended purchase!
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Breathing"
MPEG Stream: "Center Of The Doll"
MPEG Stream: "Thin Line"

FACTRIX Scheintot (Superior Viaduct) lp 14.98
About ten years ago, we championed the San Francisco industrial prodigies Factrix via their Artifact 2cd anthology released on Storm, in fact, we made it a Record Of The Week. That went out of print quickly; so we are now quite grateful to Superior Viaduct for at last reissuing two of this band's seminal recordings! Factrix originally manufactured their proto-Wolf Eyes sound in San Francisco some 30+ years ago. The history of underground music on the West Coast in the late '70s is not an easy one to trace. Unlike the punk explosion in England or New York, the influences and disturbances of the musical circuits manifested collusions of ideas that never really fit into the marketable ideas of punk or new wave. Even before those terms were commonplace, California was home to such anomalies in artrock as the Residents and the Los Angeles Free Music Society, who both experimented freely with technology, dadaism, culture jamming, and the detritus of post-psychedelia and bad acid trips. This was the environment that also spawned such genre unfriendly projects as The Screamers, Savage Republic, Non, Survival Research Laboratories, Nervous Gender, Negativland, and - Factrix.
In truth, SF's Factrix belonged to the original Industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Cabaret Voltaire, although their take on transgressive themes and their grim abuse of technology never reached as wide an audience as those icons of Industrial Records. In their short lifespan from 1978 - 1982, Factrix developed a language that clearly rivalled that of their European comrades; but in many ways, Factrix owed their sound to their San Francisco roots, as they inverted the paisley pretenses of psychedelia into a grim seance of sound in which free love became sexual taboos, universal peace became soul-crushing dread, and transcendence became morbidity. This inversion of psychedelia used many of the same tools of Haight-Ashbury in composing through non-structured improvisations as well as through a steady diet of psilocybin mushrooms; but the sound came out all wrong. Factrix devolved '70s pop banalities into dissonant slabs of noise with squiggling guitar feedback and all-encompassing dirges from over-distorted basslines, with a continuous, tinny pulse from an abused drum machine. The process of free association carried over in the vocal duties, which were typically shared amongst the chief protagonists Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph Jacobs.
Scheintot was the only studio album from Factrix, originally released on Adolescent Records in 1981. Its dark lysergic murk and obsessive decomposition crawls through scabrous guitars, clanking metal, distorted electronics, shadow-cast vocals and atmospheric doom, certainly paralleling the death-factory churn of TG's Second Annual Report and SPK's Leichenshrei. It must be stated that all of the tracks here (including the cd's two bonus tracks!) were present on the aforementioned Artifact 2cd; but with that long out of print, this becomes a recommended purchase!
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Breathing"
MPEG Stream: "Center Of The Doll"
MPEG Stream: "Thin Line"

FACTRIX & CAZAZZA California Babylon (Superior Viaduct) lp 15.98
About ten years ago, we championed the San Francisco industrial prodigies Factrix via their Artifact 2cd anthology released on Storm, in fact, we made it a Record Of The Week. That went out of print quickly; so we are now quite grateful to Superior Viaduct for at last reissuing two of this band's seminal recordings! Factrix originally manufactured their proto-Wolf Eyes sound in San Francisco some 30+ years ago. The history of underground music on the West Coast in the late '70s is not an easy one to trace. Unlike the punk explosion in England or New York, the influences and disturbances of the musical circuits manifested collusions of ideas that never really fit into the marketable ideas of punk or new wave. Even before those terms were commonplace, California was home to such anomalies in artrock as the Residents and the Los Angeles Free Music Society, who both experimented freely with technology, dadaism, culture jamming, and the detritus of post-psychedelia and bad acid trips. This was the environment that also spawned such genre unfriendly projects as The Screamers, Savage Republic, Non, Survival Research Laboratories, Nervous Gender, Negativland, and - Factrix.
In truth, SF's Factrix belonged to the original Industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Cabaret Voltaire, although their take on transgressive themes and their grim abuse of technology never reached as wide an audience as those icons of Industrial Records, even as Factrix teamed up with fellow San Franciscan provocateur Monte Cazazza for this Spartan yet very caustic live recording. California Babylon was originally released by Subterranean Records back in 1982. There are songs lurking throughout the scalding guitar noise, announced through repetitive, lurching basslines that sound like Flipper tunes played at super slow-motion. Growling slabs of toxic noise, grim electronic murk, tape collages (including some rather diabolical rants from somebody who sounds a lot like Jim Jones), and plenty of guttural No Wave deconstruction spew out from underneath those bass throbs, with Monte Cazazza occasionally spitting his own transgressive venom with his unmistakable, devilish lisp. There's even an appearance from Z'ev on a couple tracks clanking on found metal objects!
The bonus tracks on California Babylon are pretty amazing, we have to say; and all of these were in fact featured on that aforementioned Artifact compilation. On these tracks, the trio was certainly honing their songwriting craft, but they had not eschewed the noise, the murk, nor the bad vibes. "Silver River" is an awesome slab of downer, drone-rock orchestration that could very easily be mistaken for some New Zealand / Expressway gem by Gate or Alastair Galbraith, where "No Trees" reprises Factrix' searing guitar noise with staccato punk vocals and deconstructed post-punk basslines.
The accompanying dvd (which comes only with the cd edition, not the vinyl) features "Night Of The Succubus", the video that was shot at the same California Babylon live recordings. Like Scheintot, California Babylon is an essential document of San Francisco's industrial culture!
MPEG Stream: "Death By Hanging"
MPEG Stream: "Poltergeist (Theme From "Shift")"