FM3 Buddha Machine II : Brown (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).

FM3 Buddha Machine II : Burgundy (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).

FM3 Buddha Machine II : Grey (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).

FM3 Buddha Machine III: Chan Fang Black Soundbox (FM3) battery powered soundbox 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!

FM3 Buddha Machine III: Chan Fang Blue Soundbox (FM3) battery powered soundbox 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!

FM3 Buddha Machine III: Chan Fang Clear Soundbox (FM3) battery powered soundbox 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!

FM3 Buddha Machine III: Chan Fang Green Soundbox (FM3) battery powered soundbox 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!

FM3 Buddha Machine III: Chan Fang Red Soundbox (FM3) battery powered soundbox 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!

FM3 Mort Aux Vaches (Staalplaat) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's possible that many of you may not know of FM3, but have been in love with one of thier pieces of work as Beijing's FM3 was responsible for the heavily applauded Buddha Machine, a self-contained device that played nine-loops of jubilant and meditative drones. The Buddha Machine is not the only thing that FM3 has been up to, as its members Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian have also been producing a similarly sublime form of abstract electronica. In 2004, FM3 took their Buddha Box loops and a couple of computers filled with samples distilled from traditional Chinese instruments on a six month tour of Europe and North America. During that tour, they recorded this session for VPRO Radio in the Netherlands which in turn has just been released on Staaplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series. The crystalline loops from their Buddha Machines make themselves known almost immediately with FM3 working these sounds into Feldman like clusters of tones and drones fluttering against passages of calm inactivity. This is a lovely record, proving that FM3 are not only exceptional conceptual art-fabricators but pretty darn good composers too!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

FM3 / DOU WEI Hou Guan Yin (Lona) cd 16.98

FNS s/t (Miasmah) cd 15.98
Another fantastic Miasmah release, this one from FNS, aka Fredrik Ness Sandoval, who besides playing in a whole bunch of Norwegian bands we've never heard of, has collaborated with members of Acid Mothers Temple, 1/3 Octave Band, the Cranes, Zeni Geva, and Marble Sheep, but here on his solo debut, Sandoval crafts a gorgeous expanse of minimal psychedelic folk, that reminds us both of local dronefolk duo Barn Owl, but also space kraut astral travelers Expo 70.
Imagine folk music transformed into druggy drifty dreamy space ragas, and you'll be getting close, acoustic guitars unfurl gorgeous trancelike stretches of almost Appalachia like strum, while all around, effects swirl, other guitars are layered and woven into the original guitar, creating fantastical stretches of psychedelic drift, of abstract dronekraut minimalism, all infused with a subtle pathos, even the sunshiniest of the tracks here, brood with a somber undercurrent. The record opener sets the stage perfectly, an acoustic guitars strums a melancholy chord progression, while another guitar churns and chugs, a rhythmic counterpoint to the woozy drift of the acoustic, this undulating space raga is laced with tinkling chimes, swooping backwards effects, all wreathed in a sort of otherworldly shimmer, and allowed to loop and repeat and mesmerize, growing subtly more intense and loud, but never fully letting loose, instead, eventually shedding all the extra guitars and strange production, leaving just the warm strummed acoustic, and little streaks of backwards swoop. We say it a lot, but Sandoval could have stretched that out to 40 or 50 minutes and we'd STILL be raving about it. And that applies to all the tracks here.
"Sappelur" is a smoldering blackened dirge, roiling clouds of processed buzz, muted feedback, lots of layered tones and lush chordal blur, a lovely blown out psychedelic haze that just throbs and pulses and drifts, right into "Wooden Leg", which returns to the folk of the album opener, but unlike that track, the progression here is much more subtle, it's nearly 2 or 3 minutes before a strange drone begins to surface, along with gorgeous angelic female vocals, soon male vocals join in as well, not singing so much as sort of crooning along, the result is a darker, more menacing take on classic seventies British acid folk.
"I Think She's Asleep" is more abstract, a gorgeous shimmery dreamscape, all layered tones, and pulled apart melodies, haunting and otherwordly, hushed and lovely, very reminiscent of folks like Machinefabriek and Jasper TX. "Dream" is surprisingly less dreamy, sounding instead like some strange sonic ritual, spidery guitars wrapped around twisted damaged electronics, while the vocals transform the sound into something almost liturgical, lots of reverb and echo, as if it were being performed in some massive black cathedral, the effects swirling and swooping, and pushing the sound into the realms of spacekrautdrone for sure.
Finally, the record closes with the epic 12 minute "Flaggermusvingers Vift I Dimmet", which again begins as a slowly unfurling lush sprawl of melancholy Appalachia, all minor key and mournful, while just below the surface, some thick blackened buzzing is birthed, and as the track progresses, it grows more and more caustic, roiling and churning, eventually nearly swallowing the Appalachia whole, transforming the sound into some washed out doomgaze, all woozy and swirly, the low end swells laced with tangled psychedelic melodies, before dropping out completely, leaving just a soft focus cloud of distant reverbed shimmer, a distant cosmic vibration, that seems to gradually fade, like the stars disappearing behind the clouds.
Dark and dreamy and druggy and so so gorgeous... For fans of Expo 70, Svarte Greiner, Barn Owl, Jacaszek, Nadja, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, Fear Falls Burning and other purveyors of doomfolk, krautdrone, spacefolk and all sorts of abstract minimal guitarscapery...
MPEG Stream: "Silence To Say Hello"
MPEG Stream: "Flaggermusvingers Vift I Dimmet"
MPEG Stream: "Dream"
MPEG Stream: "I Think She's Asleep"

FNS s/t (Miasmah) lp 19.98
Another fantastic Miasmah release, this one from FNS, aka Fredrik Ness Sandoval, who besides playing in a whole bunch of Norwegian bands we've never heard of, has collaborated with members of Acid Mothers Temple, 1/3 Octave Band, the Cranes, Zeni Geva, and Marble Sheep, but here on his solo debut, Sandoval crafts a gorgeous expanse of minimal psychedelic folk, that reminds us both of local dronefolk duo Barn Owl, but also space kraut astral travelers Expo 70.
Imagine folk music transformed into druggy drifty dreamy space ragas, and you'll be getting close, acoustic guitars unfurl gorgeous trancelike stretches of almost Appalachia like strum, while all around, effects swirl, other guitars are layered and woven into the original guitar, creating fantastical stretches of psychedelic drift, of abstract dronekraut minimalism, all infused with a subtle pathos, even the sunshiniest of the tracks here, brood with a somber undercurrent. The record opener sets the stage perfectly, an acoustic guitars strums a melancholy chord progression, while another guitar churns and chugs, a rhythmic counterpoint to the woozy drift of the acoustic, this undulating space raga is laced with tinkling chimes, swooping backwards effects, all wreathed in a sort of otherworldly shimmer, and allowed to loop and repeat and mesmerize, growing subtly more intense and loud, but never fully letting loose, instead, eventually shedding all the extra guitars and strange production, leaving just the warm strummed acoustic, and little streaks of backwards swoop. We say it a lot, but Sandoval could have stretched that out to 40 or 50 minutes and we'd STILL be raving about it. And that applies to all the tracks here.
"Sappelur" is a smoldering blackened dirge, roiling clouds of processed buzz, muted feedback, lots of layered tones and lush chordal blur, a lovely blown out psychedelic haze that just throbs and pulses and drifts, right into "Wooden Leg", which returns to the folk of the album opener, but unlike that track, the progression here is much more subtle, it's nearly 2 or 3 minutes before a strange drone begins to surface, along with gorgeous angelic female vocals, soon male vocals join in as well, not singing so much as sort of crooning along, the result is a darker, more menacing take on classic seventies British acid folk.
"I Think She's Asleep" is more abstract, a gorgeous shimmery dreamscape, all layered tones, and pulled apart melodies, haunting and otherwordly, hushed and lovely, very reminiscent of folks like Machinefabriek and Jasper TX. "Dream" is surprisingly less dreamy, sounding instead like some strange sonic ritual, spidery guitars wrapped around twisted damaged electronics, while the vocals transform the sound into something almost liturgical, lots of reverb and echo, as if it were being performed in some massive black cathedral, the effects swirling and swooping, and pushing the sound into the realms of spacekrautdrone for sure.
Finally, the record closes with the epic 12 minute "Flaggermusvingers Vift I Dimmet", which again begins as a slowly unfurling lush sprawl of melancholy Appalachia, all minor key and mournful, while just below the surface, some thick blackened buzzing is birthed, and as the track progresses, it grows more and more caustic, roiling and churning, eventually nearly swallowing the Appalachia whole, transforming the sound into some washed out doomgaze, all woozy and swirly, the low end swells laced with tangled psychedelic melodies, before dropping out completely, leaving just a soft focus cloud of distant reverbed shimmer, a distant cosmic vibration, that seems to gradually fade, like the stars disappearing behind the clouds.
Dark and dreamy and druggy and so so gorgeous... For fans of Expo 70, Svarte Greiner, Barn Owl, Jacaszek, Nadja, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, Fear Falls Burning and other purveyors of doomfolk, krautdrone, spacefolk and all sorts of abstract minimal guitarscapery...
MPEG Stream: "Silence To Say Hello"
MPEG Stream: "Flaggermusvingers Vift I Dimmet"
MPEG Stream: "Dream"
MPEG Stream: "I Think She's Asleep"

FO A RM Issue no. 1 magazine 6.00
This is the first issue of FO A RM, a magazine dedicated to "resonances among diverse mediums," [sic] essentially meaning sound art and its conceptual neighbors. The first issue presents writings on the subject of 'utility' from a range of approaches, from anthropology, experimental poetry, sound theory, and cultural reportage as well as several cross-genre works. FO A RM no. 1 includes new writing by sound-artist and researcher Giancarlo Toniutti, essays by composer Matthew Marble, works by noisician GX Jupitter-Larsen and sound-artist Seth Nehil. In addition, an original ode by prolific master Robert Kelly, instructional poems by mARK oWEns, and investigational works by Alicia Cohen, Holley Blackwell and Ashley Edwards, among others.

FOISY, ANDRE After The Prophecy (Land Of Decay) cassette 7.98
We got a big ol' batch of tapes from the Land Of Decay label, run by none other than Andre Foisy, one half (or maybe now it's one third) of aQ beloved doomdronedirge outfit Locrian, the tapes include new jams from ITHI, Number None, Wraiths (all reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and this, the latest solo release from the man himself. And while we were all prepared to say something about how this doesn't veer very far from the sound of Locrian, all it took was about ten seconds to realize it really does. Sure it's still droney and broody and dark and mysterious, but instead of the bleak minimalism and heaving low end thrum of Locrian, Foisy has conjured up two gorgeously heady slabs of folky looped string raga, mandolins and violins unfurl woozy layered loops, constantly shifting, hazy and fuzzy, definitely sounding like snippets of some lost Comus song blurred into a roiling bit of dense folk swirl, while the whole thing is wreathed in a thick churning fog of guitar buzz and rumble, a blackened halo of feedback and thrum, gorgeous stuff for sure.
The second track offers up another variation, a mesmerizing skeletal guitar loop, which is soon joined by droned out violins, sounding a bit like Tony Conrad, all underpinned by deep rumbling guitar swells, streaks of controlled feedback, the sound growing more and more dense, and dreamily blown out, clouds of FX drift in, some tabla like rhythms, the song exploding in slo-mo into a sort of Skullflower/Sunroof! style bliss out, but with a strange sense of raga folk at its core.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

FOLDALATTI ULATULAT Phobia (Gungnir Productions) cassette 4.50
We've yet to get our hands on any releases by the black ambient band Hunok to list and review, but ever since we heard them on a split with AQ faves, Hungarian black metal outfit Marblebog, we have been on a quest! And while this is not in fact Hunok, it is a band featuring folks from Hunok, and the sound is a similarly creepy and haunting ambient weirdness. Foldalatti Ulatulat are from Hungary and have a very distinct and unique take on ambient music. Beginning with some strange disembodied vocals and radio static, the band soon settles into some seriously scary soundtrack music, sounding a bit like an extra creepy, slowed down Peter And The Wolf at times, playful a little, but very ominous, tons of space, low end drones and rumbles, beneath dark swells and strange minor key melodies, mysterious pulses and thick waves of crumbling whir. Very cinematic, like the part in the horror movie when you first enter the abandoned house, and you're slowly creeping up the stairs, the shadows flickering making you think someone is watching... It's all very intense and dramatic and pretty fucking great. Now we just have to track down some Hunok for the store...

FOLK SPECTRE, THE The Blackest Medicine (Woodsist) lp 14.98
Not sure what exactly required the name to change from Spectre Folk, to the Folk Spectre, but fear not fans of all things folky and droney, fuzzy and drifty, this is still indeed the work of Mr. Pete Nolan, of the Double Leopards, GHQ, Wooden Wand and we're sure a handful more. At first we were tempted to think the name change had to do with a slight shift in sonics, as the first few tracks are totally stripped down lo-fi folk. No noise or drone or buzz to be found. At all. Just skeletal guitar, plaintive vocals, wrapped around sad sad melodies, and allowed to drift in wide open expanses of record crackle and tape hiss. But then the closer on side A finds some squealing feedback entering the fray, and simple Velvets like drumming, distant chanting, the main riff sort of wobbly and warbly, a gorgeous laid back stoned and droned drug jam, that while slightly noisier than the tracks preceding it, still falls well within the groovy hippy bliss we've come to expect from Nolan and his folky Spectre-d outfit.
The B side offers up more of the same, but varied a bit, a few tracks of hushed folkiness, but then a long stretch of high end hissiness draped over the lilting guitar beneath, a track of Middle Eastern style melody, with a distinct raga-like vibe, and the record finishes off with a gorgeous muted muddy slo-mo drone-jam, that sounds a bit like a much more mellow Wooden Shjips played at 16rpm, and a little bit like a folkier Spacemen 3. As usual, killer stuff.
Packaged in hand screened black and white sleeves with photocopied inserts, covered in drawings, lyrics and liner notes.

FOLKSTORM Folkmusik (Old Europa Cafe) cd 15.98
We've been blessed recently with multiple releases from the mysterious Nordvargr, whose dense dark ambience we can never get enough of. Nordvargr was a core member of legendary black ambient outfit MZ412, and has recorded as Toroidh, Hydra Head 9,Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, Nordvargr and of course Folkstorm. It's been far too long since the last Folkstorm record, Folkstorm being the guise Nordvargr takes on to produce his unique brand of tense, isolationist, dark and droning industrial music. Thick swells of minor key chords, hypnotic repetitive tribal drumming, all sorts of found sounds and snippets of speeches, traditional songs and old radio broadcasts, huge jagged distorted pulses (sounding almost like Techno Animal or Curse Of The Golden Vampire at times), haunting disembodied female vocals, radio static and amp buzz and all manner of sonic grit and crackle, pounding subterranean rhythms, warm warbly drones, disturbing minor key ambience, creaking industrial clatter, intense nightmarish melodies, all bathed in a thick swirl of fuzzed out distortion and crumbling machinelike whir. Super ominous and dark, intense and strangely beautiful.
Packaged in a gorgeous red, white and black digipak. And while they last we have the EXTREMELY LIMITED special edition (limited to 300 hand numbered copies) that includes a bonus 3" cd containing two unreleased tracks! Once those are gone, you'll receive the standard single disc version.
MPEG Stream: "Ty Han Ar Min Soldat"
MPEG Stream: "In All For All"

FOLKSTORM Hurtmusic (Old Europa Cafe) cd 17.98
Folkstrom is the solo project from MZ.412's Mr. Nordvargr, although it could be some lost leftfield recording from odd black metallers Abruptum or Vondur. It's a weird hyrbid of death industrial / power electronic brutality and Norwegian black metal misanthropy (though it only hints at that sound). Recorded live at Nar Mattaru, "Hurtmusic" is a punishing record loaded with landmine samples, electro-shock blasts of energy, and warbled megaphone shouts. The highlight of the album is a loose reinterpretation of the song "No Place" by notorious Swedish misanthropes the Brainbombs, complete with a slow grinding guitar chug perverted from the classic Stooges sound.

FOLKSTORM Information Blitzkreig (Old Europa Cafe) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

FOLLAKZOID II (Sacred Bones) cd 14.98
Once again, these two Chilean psych bands, Follakazoid and The Holydrug Couple, each sharing a member with the other, release their records at the same time, giving us a glimpse of two sides of a similar sonic personality. Elsewhere on the list you'll find the latest from The Holydrug Couple, but here, we revisit the psychedelic modern space-kraut sprawl of Follakzoid, whose sound is equal parts classic psych/space rock, and more modern garage psych mesmer. The opening track here definitely had us thinking of Wooden Shjips, the looped and loping low slung bassline, the sonic swirls and laconic vocals, everything drenched in echo and reverb, a hazy, druggy, droned out psychedelic space dirge laced with weird little synth squiggles, and dense clouds of crumbling distortion. Like a darker, more rocking Spacemen 3, which is most definitely not a bad thing. A lot of the rest of the record drifts way more into old school jam band territory, think Hawkwind, Santana, Pink Floyd, just hazy, washed out stretches of hypnotic, rhythmic mesmer, the core sound a bass and drum groove, very propulsive and motorik, the krautrock vibe is huge, then all around that groove, synths, and guitars, and voices, swirl and swoop and drift. It's heady hypnotic stuff, in fact, some tracks, like "99" sound a lot like Circle at time, that same sort of kick ass hypnorock churn, but Follakzoid definitely make that sound their druggy, laid back, tripped out own. And be sure and stick around for 15 minute closer "Pulsar", which is the sort of heart-of-the-sun psych groove bliss out we could listen to forever.
MPEG Stream: "9"
MPEG Stream: "Rivers"
MPEG Stream: "99"

FOLLAKZOID II (Sacred Bones) lp 19.98
NOW HERE ON VINYL! Once again, these two Chilean psych bands, Follakazoid and the Holydrug Couple, each sharing a member with the other, release their records at the same time, giving us a glimpse of two sides of a similar sonic personality. Elsewhere on the list you'll find the latest from The Holydrug Couple, but here, we revisit the psychedelic modern space-kraut sprawl of Follakzoid, whose sound is equal parts classic psych/space rock, and more modern garage psych mesmer. The opening track here definitely had us thinking of Wooden Shjips, the looped and loping low slung bassline, the sonic swirls and laconic vocals, everything drenched in echo and reverb, a hazy, druggy, droned out psychedelic space dirge laced with weird little synth squiggles, and dense clouds of crumbling distortion. Like a darker, more rocking Spacemen 3, which is most definitely not a bad thing. A lot of the rest of the record drifts way more into old school jam band territory, think Hawkwind, Santana, Pink Floyd, just hazy, washed out stretches of hypnotic, rhythmic mesmer, the core sound a bass and drum groove, very propulsive and motorik, the krautrock vibe is huge, then all around that groove, synths, and guitars, and voices, swirl and swoop and drift. It's heady hypnotic stuff, in fact, some tracks, like "99" sound a lot like Circle at time, that same sort of kick ass hypnorock churn, but Follakzoid definitely make that sound their druggy, laid back, tripped out own. And be sure and stick around for 15 minute closer "Pulsar", which is the sort of heart-of-the-sun psych groove bliss out we could listen to forever.

FON Proof (Werkzeug / Mego) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The ultra-electronic parasitic duo Fon regurgitates the technological mutilations of wired arrangements of broken televisions, microwaves, metal detectors, etc. within piercing electronic architectural rhythmic packages. Released in conjunction with the Viennese conceptual electronics thinktank Mego, mutant electronics and digital glitch worship abound.

FOOD Molecular Gastronomy (Rune Grammofon) cd 17.98
We liked the other Food discs, but this one's just a bit to wanky fusiony whatever for us, sorry.

FOOD Quiet Inlet (ECM) cd 17.98

FOOD PYRAMID Creation Beat (These Are Not Records) 12" 12.98
These oddly monikered psychedelic electro kraut synth wranglers return, after the super awesome Mango Sunrise record we reviewed a little while back, which was equal parts classic Klaus Schulze, synth-kraut worshippers and aQ faves Bitchin Bajas, and of course John Carpenter and Goblin. But on this new 12"s FP take those sounds and focus more on their dancier side, still weaving lush tapestries of layered synths, and electro skitter, which were definitely all over Mango Sunrise, but here that sort of retro cinematic futurism is given a dancefloor makeover, the end result being a sound closer to, say, Majeure than Zombi, that sort of Italo-disco style soundtrackery, fused to Food Pyramid's undeniable krautrock leanings.
The opener, had the beat been removed, would be a pulsating groover, but with the house-y beat, and the reverb drenched megaphone vox, this sounds like some weirdo dance party, noisy, a little post punky, but most definitely groovy, funky and tranced out. The second track adds a whole mess of murk, positioning the sound more toward the James Ferraro side of the sonic spectrum, a sort of old VHS tape vibe, but then when the thick buzzing synth comes in, it could almost be Daft Punk or something, albeit a much more raw and underground version.
The flipside offers up two similar jams, the first a super driving groove, with super distorted, crumblingly distorted guitars over what almost sounds like a calypso beat fused to a house music pound, again, sans beats, this would be some blissed out ultra distorted guitarnoise psychedelia, so imagine that sort of sound anchored by a churning looped groove. The closer is more sparse and skeletal, cheesy eighties synth pads over blurry synth drifts, the background almost sounding like ABC or Spandau Ballet, but then female vocals drift in, and the song becomes a glimmering late night downtempo driftscape, that sounds like a more post punk 4AD given a modern krautdrone synth wave makeover, the whole thing hazy and gauzy and dreamily druggy.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in a cool, full color DJ style 12" sleeve, and includes a digital download as well.
MPEG Stream: "Creation Beat"
MPEG Stream: "Crosshatch"

FOOD PYRAMID & ROY ORB D.MT. Arp Navigators (Moon Glyph) lp 14.98
We dug the most recent Food Pyramid record, Mango Sunrise, a fantastic collection of psych kraut synth wave weirdness that we couldn't stop listening to. So we were super excited for this, a collaboration with the oddly monikered Roy Orb D.MT., not sure who, or what that is, but he/they make a good match for Food Pyramid, this collaboration even more blissed out and ethereal than the FP record proper. The opener sounds like a warped, lysergic reinterpretation of Vangelis' Chariots Of Fire, with swirling, soaring washed out ethereal melodies, that distinctive 'ch-ch-ch-ch' dubbed out drum skitter, the whole thing laced with eighties style drum fills, squiggly melodies, and crunchy squelchy synth swirls. The follow up is another sprawl of soft shimmery synth swirl, but here wedded to a programmed beat, which grows more and more propulsive as the track progresses, eventually the track transforming completely into an awesomely cheesy chunk of eighties VHS chase scene / credit sequence synthscapery, replete with shredding guitar leads, and pulsing Carpenter like synths.
The rest of the record sonically splits the difference, from the electro pop via psychedelic hypno-rock of "Summit Expedition", to the buzzy, noisy, dubby kosmische skitter of "Sandstorm", to the prismatic planetarium, synth bliss out of "Passage Rites", to the low slung electro-funk pop synth swirl of closer "Corealis".
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Windsong"
MPEG Stream: "Visualizer"

FORBIDDEN PLANET s/t (self-released) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Bay Area improv dude and Rastascan label owner Gino Robair (drums, "materials") teams up with AQ-fave Bjoern Eichstaedt (keys, voice) and fellow Germans Pit Schmidt (sax, tapes) and Thomas Maos (guitar, "mts modulation" whatever that is) for this live session, recorded April 15th 2000 at Club Voltaire, Tuebingen Germany. If you read our lists closely, you'll know Eichstaedt as a very creative and eclectic musician, responsible for solo electronic recordings, the Bunglized jazz/rock of Bretzel Killing Machine, AND the utter black metal weirdness that is Caacrinolas! Eichstaedt's new Forbidden Planet project incorporates his pal Robair's improv jazz sensibilities into a crazy half-hour-plus stew of everything from mellow noir-jazz to full-on Hendrix-style distorted guitar skree to sizzling electronic scrape-scapes to Patton-esque abstract vocal blurt. Quite a trip. Must have been a great show, although of course this was edited down from the raw recordings. It's a cd-r, numbered and limited to 100, packaged in an ever-popular *sandpaper* cover!
RealAudio clip: "Track 2"

FORCEFIELD Lord of the Rings Modulator (Bulb) cd 14.98
The second album from Providence Rhode Island art darlings Forcefield (the band who knits sweaters that they sell in art galleries for thousands of dollars, apparently, and who also performed at the Whitney Biennial!) is the second Bulb release we've noticed after the Mind Flayer album bearing a logo saying "Bulb Underworld" and a crude drawing of a twenty-sided die. Allan's D&D senses are tingling. Thus the following conversation in our office...
Allan: Hey this new Forcefield is a pretty cool, textural electronic noise record! It sounds like angry rats, squeaky balloons and exploding synths. Very listenable though. Wasn't their other album a herky jerky arty rock punk kinda thing though?
Andee: Yeah, I think so.
Allan: Well, I like this album.
Andee: Uh, I think the world's seen enough noise records...
Allan: But this one's called Lord Of The Rings Modulator!!
MPEG Stream: "track 2"

FORDELL RESEARCH UNIT Repetition (Basses Frequences) cd-r 10.98

FOREST s/t (ISO666) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally, one of our all time favorite black metal records, out of print forever, is available again for a limited time. For those of you who somehow missed out on Russian black metallers Forest the first time around, they struck a particularly AQ chord with their impossible Jewelled Antler meets Burzum sound, and if Burzum-meets-Jewelled-Antler is not enough to get your black metal knickers in a twist, then there is something seriously wrong with you. Absolutely at the top of AQ's essential black metal listening list. Here's what we had to say about Forest when we first reviewed it way back when...
Ok, this is a black metal band, but non-metallers into the improv-drone sounds of the Jewelled Antler collective, Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith and the like should keep reading!
Not to be confused with the other Forest we've raved about (the psychedelic British folk band from thirty years ago), *this* Forest is a Russian black metal outfit, and a pretty good one belonging to the raw, primitive, corpse-painted end of the genre. The first four tracks on here consist of blasting, frozen Darkthrone worship, keeping alive the cult spirit that so few bands today still possess -- maybe because those tracks were actually recorded in 1996. Malevolent, majestic pagan metal full of Burzumic mayhem. Fans of this vein of true, trancey black metal darkness will be pleased. And if that was all that was on this disc we'd think it was cool. But then comes the fifth and final track, a surprise twenty-minute opus called "Winter Howl" taken from a 1994 rehearsal tape. Suddenly Forest isn't so obviously black metal at all, they've entered a psych-drone realm that's more akin to the aforementioned Jewelled Antler stuff (Thuja, The Birdtree, etc.) or Taj Mahal Travellers or Reynols or Amon Duul's krautrock jams, still as forest-y and primitive as the preceding metal songs though. A wavering whispy wordless vocal winds over a bed of lost, primal percussion and haunting washes of mild feedback. Simple melody lines on guitar wander through the increasing haze, with deeper vocals providing additional layers of drone. If you really heard this in a forest you'd be mesmerized and scared, but it's really nice and pretty (in a damaged way) when heard at home...pretty to us anyway, dunno if Kaldrad and Dagorath meant it to be so! The vocals, until they get a little more metal-ly, totally remind us of the bliss-out singing by British folk experimentalist Richard Youngs or Jewelled Antler's pop soul Jason Honea. If Finnish avant-forest-folk folks like Avarus and Kemialliset Ystavat or the Jewelled Antler collective decided to make black metal, this is what's we'd imagine it would sound like! Meanwhile, on the black metal side, fans of Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Potentiam, and other weird ones should dig this track, along with Forest's other more typical black metal sounds. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Enburnst The Christians"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Howl (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Howl (excerpt 2)"

FOREST s/t (Werewolf) 2lp 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of our all time favorite black metal records EVER, now available on vinyl, in a super deluxe, totally gorgeous gatefold sleeve.
For those of you who somehow missed out on Russian black metallers Forest the first time around, they struck a particularly AQ chord with their impossible Jewelled Antler meets Burzum sound, and if Burzum-meets-Jewelled-Antler is not enough to get your black metal knickers in a twist, then there is something seriously wrong with you. Absolutely at the top of AQ's essential black metal listening list. Here's what we had to say about Forest when we first reviewed it way back when...
Ok, this is a black metal band, but non-metallers into the improv-drone sounds of the Jewelled Antler collective, Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith and the like should keep reading!
Not to be confused with the other Forest we've raved about (the psychedelic British folk band from thirty years ago), *this* Forest is a Russian black metal outfit, and a pretty good one belonging to the raw, primitive, corpse-painted end of the genre. The first four tracks on here consist of blasting, frozen Darkthrone worship, keeping alive the cult spirit that so few bands today still possess -- maybe because those tracks were actually recorded in 1996. Malevolent, majestic pagan metal full of Burzumic mayhem. Fans of this vein of true, trancey black metal darkness will be pleased. And if that was all that was on this disc we'd think it was cool. But then comes the fifth and final track, a surprise twenty-minute opus called "Winter Howl" taken from a 1994 rehearsal tape. Suddenly Forest isn't so obviously black metal at all, they've entered a psych-drone realm that's more akin to the aforementioned Jewelled Antler stuff (Thuja, The Birdtree, etc.) or Taj Mahal Travellers or Reynols or Amon Duul's krautrock jams, still as forest-y and primitive as the preceding metal songs though. A wavering whispy wordless vocal winds over a bed of lost, primal percussion and haunting washes of mild feedback. Simple melody lines on guitar wander through the increasing haze, with deeper vocals providing additional layers of drone. If you really heard this in a forest you'd be mesmerized and scared, but it's really nice and pretty (in a damaged way) when heard at home...pretty to us anyway, dunno if Kaldrad and Dagorath meant it to be so! The vocals, until they get a little more metal-ly, totally remind us of the bliss-out singing by British folk experimentalist Richard Youngs or Jewelled Antler's pop soul Jason Honea. If Finnish avant-forest-folk folks like Avarus and Kemialliset Ystavat or the Jewelled Antler collective decided to make black metal, this is what's we'd imagine it would sound like! Meanwhile, on the black metal side, fans of Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Potentiam, and other weird ones should dig this track, along with Forest's other more typical black metal sounds. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Enburnst The Christians"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Howl (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Howl (excerpt 2)"

FOREST CREATURE Frustrated Analogue - 7 Edits From 2009 (Blackest Rainbow) cd 16.98
Apparently, this UK duo, Ben Moon and Richard Sides, aka Forest Creature, have dabbled in all manner of noisemaking in their brief existence, creating huge crushing walls of speaker shredding brutality, or super glitched out psychedelic beat heavy crunch, or howling, live, drum driven psychnoise freakouts, and while traces of those sounds are still present, we have to say, we're pretty partial to the twisted noise captured here, a seeming distillation of those disparate sounds, into something much more refined and focused, perhaps equally varied sonically, but somehow still strangely cohesive, and epic 'song' suite, due in no small part to the editing and sequencing as the actual music making itself.
The label drops names like Black Dice, Fuck Buttons, Animal Collective, Autechre, and those all do pretty much apply, but to our ears, there seems to be much more to Forest Creature than just aping their influences, we hear the ominous cinematic synthiness of Goblin, the intense late night noir buzz of recent aQ faves D.A., the murky swirl and shimmery out-of-time new age-y drift of the recent crop of pop hypnogogists, but here, those influences, as well as a handful of purloined sounds, are all reimagined, reinterpreted and all tangled up into constantly squirming and unraveling soundscapes, that skitter from almost kraut-like mesmer, to nineties style IDM, to looped woozy minimal synth wave, to gorgeous haunting murky heroin house, but no matter what the sound, or where the songs seem to be headed, Forest Creature mold all those elements into something truly original, lush, and deep, and dark, sometime super chaotic and hyper rhythmic, other times hushed and ominous. "Edit 4" begins as a foreboding minimal slow burning drone, but eventually builds to a warped synth loop, that gets more and more crunchy and buzz, the low end billowing out like a black cloud, the effects eating away at the original loop, super intense and totally mesmerizing. "Edit 5" is all rumbling low end whir, a distant beat, buried way down in the murk, looped and skittery, hovers below a black ambience that seems to swirl and shimmer in slow motion. "Edit 3" might be the prettiest of the bunch, beginning with a skeletal high end looped rhythm, which is soon joined by some warm warbly synths way off in the distance, the rhythm remains steady, but that low end grows thicker, and buzzier, creating thick warm slabs of chordal hum, playing out a gorgeous melancholy slowcore melody, a haunting depressive slow pop crawl, run through with that skeletal skitter, until both the buzz and the beat, begin to crumble, and intensify, until the song is transformed into a noise drenched psychedelic swirl.
So awesome. And a little bit surprising coming from Blackest Rainbow, whose past releases have tended more toward groups like Jazzfinger, Barn Owl, Bong, Starving Weirdos and the like. Frustrated Analogue is some fantastically twisted, blissed out, synth heavy electronic psychedelia, repetitive, hypnotic, spaced out, warped and glitchy, drone-y and rhythmic, moody and mysterious, a dizzying melding of This Heat, Goblin, John Carpenter, old Warp Records 12"s, early Chain Reaction, modern synthdrone, early analogue synth music, and the groups we mentioned up top (Fuck Buttons, Black Dice, Animal Collective, etc.). Way way recommended. Easily one of our new favorites...
MPEG Stream: "Edit 1"
MPEG Stream: "Edit 2"
MPEG Stream: "Edit 3"

FOREST SWORDS Dagger Paths (No Rain In Pop) cd 14.98
How could we NOT make a record described as 'drone-step' our Record Of The Week? Well, we couldn't. Not. We could not. So we did. We made the lp version of Dagger Paths, the full length debut of drone-steppers Forest Swords, our Record Of The Week back in March. And now it's been released on cd, with TWO bonus tracks to boot, so it seemed like a no brainer, another chance for folks who may have missed it the first time around, for the turntable-less, and for the folks who can't get enough drone-step, here it is again, aQ Record Of The Week, second time around...
It was only a matter of time. If Forest Swords hadn't done it, someone definitely would have, but hard to imagine it could have sounded as good as this. DRONESTEP. That's what they call it. A fusion of dark post-rock ambient drone music and skittery spaced out dubstep. Warm languid guitars, brooding atmospheres, and laid back downtempo grooves. In the wrong hands it definitely could have been lame, but Forest Swords nailed it, the result so organic and warm and mesmerizing, odds are the last thing you'll be thinking about is what to call it. Instead you can just sit back, and let these lush droned out grooves carry you off.
Had this not been on Olde English Spelling Bee, it certainly wouldn't have been out of place on some upstart dubstep 12" label, it definitely has the same sort of lugubrious soporific feel as Burial or Kode9, murky, washed out, muted, muddy and bass heavy, but instead of being sample based, guitars unwind, spidery melodies all tangled up in clouds of hazy reverb, vocals drift in and out all spectral and ethereal, in fact if anything, it's like some awesome, nineties slowcore jam, Codeine, or Seam, or someone like that, remixed by Portishead, transformed into a different kind of slowcore, a bleak, moonlit, forest dancefloor slowcore, everything bathed in dark blues and soft blacks, smokey and gauzy, the beats skeletal and minimal, the guitars chiming, glistening and glimmering, the bass, rumbling and throbbing, a rib cage rattling hum, samples woven into the mix, but doused in effects, so vocals becomes little swirling clouds of truncated melody, and melodies drift heavenward like wisps of grey smoke. Every track here is a smoldering late night blur, a bleary ear-ed slither and skitter through some soft focus soundscape, dreamlike and hypnotic.
The cd bonus tracks are more of the same, the first track a dense sprawl of thick swirling murky chordal thrum, distorted melodies, tripped out FE drenched dubby drums, reverbed guitars, clipped vocal samples, wheezing organs, low slung bass grooves and a little soulful crooning, while the second drapes some reverbed Morricone-ish twang over lazy shuffling drumming, bits of disembodied vocals drift by in clouds of echo and delay, the main melody so darkly melancholy, everything hazy and washed out and hypnotic, groovy and super cinematic.
So good. And gorgeously dark, otherworldly, warmly mysterious, and still damn close to being our favorite new record this year...
Matt's addendum: "Late to the party on this one, but glad I finally got there! This is some real dark beauty; tarnished and haunted hypnodub with Dead Man style guitar shit and minimal haunted vocals. Deep Dustbowl Dead Dreamz Vibez!"
MPEG Stream: "Miarches"
MPEG Stream: "Hoylake Misst"
MPEG Stream: "Rattling Cage"

FORMA s/t (Spectrum Spools) lp 21.00
Forma are a Brooklyn synth-trio, fabricated from the same mold that gave us Oneohtrix Point Never, James Ferraro, and Stellar Om Source. Their Kraut-inspired electronics revolve around brightly rendered step sequencing, squelchy percolations, soft streaming melodies and quasi-ambient pads set upon drum machines. It's the rhythms that set Forma apart from many of their contemporaries, looking back to the Connie Plank productions in the early '80s (especially those Moebius & Beerbohm records) and without any indication that Forma has ever heard a techno or disco record, well maybe they've heard Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, but that would be the most recently forward-thinking production that Forma would be referencing. Everything else is firmly planted at the Kosmische center of Cluster and Harmonia. Released on the suitably retrogarde Spectrum Spools imprint curated by Emeralds' John Elliott and funded by Editions Mego.

FORMATT Minor Curations - 17:55 (Pseudo Arcana) 3" cd-r 5.98
A second release from the mysterious Formatt, aka Belgian sound sculptor Peter Smeekins, we relisted a back-room find elsewhere on this list, a cd-r originally reviewed 2 years ago, that we dug big time, and in discovering extra copies of that release, we also found a little stash of these 3"cd-rs, released on Antony Milton's Pseudo Arcana label, a single 17 minute track featuring another brief glimpse into Smeekins' dreamy mad scientist sound world.
Much like the other disc, the root of Smeekins' sound is soft hushed shimmers and ethereal drones, a sky full of glimmering sonic stars, all smoothed out into gorgeously languid long-form slow motion drifts, which on their won would be plenty pretty, and would definitely hit the spot for deep ambient late night drift off music, but the sounds here are not so tranquil, over the top of these glacial low end murmurs, Smeekins drapes all sorts of other sounds, that manage to add all sorts of depth and color and activity, somehow without taking away from the track's soporific stasis. Showers of crystalline sparkle, swirling soft focus clouds of grit and static, bis of hiss and pop, more layers of thrum and rumble...
At low volume, Minor Curations exists simply as a gorgeous slice of minimal electronic ambience, but strap on some headphones and it's like that ride at Disneyland where you go through the microscope into a world of atoms and molecules, Formatt takes us on a similar ride, moving slowly through layer after layer after layer emerging finally in a strange microscopic world of inner sound.
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

FORMATT Re:Take_Repeat (Audiobot) cd-r 9.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Found a stash of these, and they are WAY out of print, thus these are the last copies we'll see...
Latest release from Belgian sound manipulator Peter Smeekins aka Formatt. A dense mix of soft droney shimmer and all manner of glitch and crunch. Imagine hearing Low or some other slow motion band through a concrete wall so thick that just the bare essence makes it through, a sort of ghostly outline, a dreamy, barely audible hum, then stretch it into a gauzy soft sound blanket and spread it out over the whole record. This soft, shimmery bed is the foundation for all of Re:Take_Repeat. Over the top of this Formatt fiddles and fidgets, like some tinkering mad scientist, glitches and crackle, bursts of shortwave interference, white noise, industrial machinery, haunting EVP-like transmissions, pops and creaks, amp buzz and distant feedback, it's like some giant mysterious soundmaker upended his rusty old tool box full of sounds and dumped all of those strange sharp metallic shapes, all over the thick velvety background, like stars sparkling chaotically in the black night sky.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "Keramiek"
MPEG Stream: "Kristal"

FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN Black Trenchcoats & Swastikas 'n Shit (Panaxis) cd-r 12.98
Regarding the title and the cover art here, Ferrara Brain Pan - the lone pilot of San Francisco's obscurant project Forms Of Things Unknown - is taking the piss out of the perennial flirtations of Nazi culture found in experimental and post-punk musics over the past 30 or 40 years. It's an odd form of humor, but one that stops at the cover art, never to be brought up within these eccentric and disparate tracks that harken back to the early days of United Daires. Whimsical collages, complete with bongo-boy rhythms and cut-up vocal samples (which really could be an extract from Nurse With Wound's Funeral Music For Perez Prado), are juxtaposed against icy cold electronic tone workouts that draw from the precisely constructed, psychoacoustic experiments of Ryoji Ikeda or John Duncan. Ferrara also interjects his favorite instrument, the bass clarinet, on a few somber pieces that warp the brassy notes of a maudlin funereal passage into air raid sirens. As beautiful as some of these pieces can be, Ferrara's deft use of electronics and the digital razor blade is all the better. All of these tracks are demos, outtakes, or compilation rarities, including the Forms Of Things Unknown contribution to the Nurse With Wound remix album of Two Shaves And A Shine. While there is a disjointed quality to the album, this is a well needed investigation into this music of this seldom heard musician.
MPEG Stream: "Interrupted by Interior Design, Part 1: Speculum (for Marcel Duchamp)"
MPEG Stream: "Interrupted by Interior Design, Part II: From Here to Parker Posey"
MPEG Stream: "Quadrilateral"
MPEG Stream: "Elegy"

FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN Cross Purposes (Panaxis) cd ep 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Cross Purposes" is an half-hour of weird, spooky music from longtime AQ patron and obscure music-maker Ferrara Brain Pan. Yes, that's his name -- but here he goes by the Forms Of Things Unknown moniker, a suitably vague and creepy name for this disc of Gothic dark ambient experimentation, that seems to be vying for retroactive inclusion on the famed "Nurse With Wound list". Indeed, NWW's Stephen "Babs Santini" Stapleton makes a guest appearance somewhere on here (see if you can find it)!
The first track, evocatively named "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit", is sixteen minutes of sinister drone and wind instrument dolefulness. On this album, Ferrara plays bass clarinet, flutes, recorders, saxophones, along with various other mostly archaic and/or ethnic instruments -- and electronics too of course. Perhaps to illustrate that FoTU's influences are eclectic and extend back further than the goth/industrial heyday, "Black Candles..." is followed by an anonymous 14th century composition in both instrumental and vocal versions -- the vocal by lovely soprano Shannon Wolfe, not Ferrara. It's somewhat sombre, but not scary like the first piece. Rather beautiful. Then, again shifting gears and displaying esoteric influence, this disc's final cut turns out to be a moody cover of "Stupid Blood", a song from the Beast Box album by Howard Devoto's post-Buzzcocks band Luxuria. With one Bob Ayres handling the portentous baritone vox, and Ferrara's horns and flutes, this track could just as easily be taken as a tribute to Peter Hammill's Van Der Graaf Generator!
MPEG Stream: "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit"
MPEG Stream: "Stupid Blood"

FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN Cross Purposes (Panaxis) cd-r 12.98
BACK IN PRINT!
Cross Purposes is chock full of weird, spooky music from longtime AQ patron and obscure music-maker Ferrara Brain Pan. Yes, that's his name - but here he goes by the Forms Of Things Unknown moniker, a suitably vague and creepy name for this disc of Gothic dark ambient experimentation, that seems to be vying for retroactive inclusion on the famed Nurse With Wound list.
The first track, evocatively named "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit", is sixteen minutes of sinister drone and wind instrument dolefulness. On this album, Ferrara plays bass clarinet, flutes, recorders, saxophones, along with various other mostly archaic and/or ethnic instruments - and electronics too of course. Perhaps to illustrate that FoTU's influences are eclectic and extend back further than the goth/industrial heyday, "Black Candles..." is followed by an anonymous 14th century composition in both instrumental and vocal versions - the vocal by lovely soprano Shannon Wolfe, not Ferrara. It's somewhat sombre, but not scary like the first piece. Rather beautiful. Then, again shifting gears and displaying esoteric influence, this disc's next cut turns out to be a moody cover of "Stupid Blood", a song from the Beast Box album by Howard Devoto's post-Buzzcocks band Luxuria. With one Bob Ayres handling the portentous baritone vox, and Ferrara's horns and flutes, this track could just as easily be taken as a tribute to Peter Hammill's Van Der Graaf Generator! Ferrara concludes Cross Purposes with an unreleased track of elegaic dark ambience with haunted flute melodies floating on top of deep, slow motion thuds upon a drum and windswept atmospherics. Gone is the inclusion of Steve Stapleton leaving a message on Ferrara's answering machine, but that was probably an unneccessary trifle from the first edition anyway. The bonus track on this version is a much stronger, albeit less star-studded, attraction.
MPEG Stream: "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit, Part I: Risen, The Judas Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Mariam Matrem, Part II (Vocal Version)"
MPEG Stream: "Mesozoica [bonus track]"

FORREST, JASON The Unrelenting Songs Of The 1979 Post-Disco Crash (Sonig) cd 13.98
The return of Donna Summer! Er. well, not that Donna Summer, the disco diva. We're talking about the WFMU disc jockey / electronic musician who went by the name Donna Summer and who we can only assume no longer does due to legal issues with the -actual- Donna Summer. Whatever. Just wanted to clear up any confusion, since we initially didn't make that Forrest-Summer connection. But since so many of us dug the last Donna Summer record, This Needs To Be Your Style (unfortunately now out of print) we wouldn't want anyone to miss out on this one due to some confusing name change. So what Donna Summer, I mean Jason Forrest, specializes in, is making some serious glitched out spastic plunderphonia with lots of ultra-recognizable pop, from Zeppelin to the Who to all sorts of top 40 schlock. He cuts them up, rearranges them, distorts and disguises them, and creates entirely new songs and new melodies. This mashup shit is getting a bit tiresome we'll admit, as anyone with a computer and a decent record collection can make their own record, but Forrest is really talented, and has a great ear for recontextualising pop ephemera into something much harder and weirder and sometimes even dancable. This record is a lot less abrasive and over the top than the last Donna Summer record, which is actually a good thing as the arrangements and subtleties this time around don't get obfuscated and obliterated by super distorted wooaaarrrggggghh! At least not all the time. Worth it alone for the amazing final track, a reworking of the Who's "Who Are You?" complete with re-done drum solo!
MPEG Stream: "Spectacle To Refute All Judgements"
MPEG Stream: "Satan Cries Again"

FORREST, JASON The Unrelenting Songs Of The 1979 Post-Disco Crash (Sonig) lp 13.98
The return of Donna Summer! Er. well, not that Donna Summer, the disco diva. We're talking about the WFMU disc jockey / electronic musician who went by the name Donna Summer and who we can only assume no longer does due to legal issues with the -actual- Donna Summer. Whatever. Just wanted to clear up any confusion, since we initially didn't make that Forrest-Summer connection. But since so many of us dug the last Donna Summer record, This Needs To Be Your Style (unfortunately now out of print) we wouldn't want anyone to miss out on this one due to some confusing name change. So what Donna Summer, I mean Jason Forrest, specializes in, is making some serious glitched out spastic plunderphonia with lots of ultra-recognizable pop, from Zeppelin to the Who to all sorts of top 40 schlock. He cuts them up, rearranges them, distorts and disguises them, and creates entirely new songs and new melodies. This mashup shit is getting a bit tiresome we'll admit, as anyone with a computer and a decent record collection can make their own record, but Forrest is really talented, and has a great ear for recontextualising pop ephemera into something much harder and weirder and sometimes even dancable. This record is a lot less abrasive and over the top than the last Donna Summer record, which is actually a good thing as the arrangements and subtleties this time around don't get obfuscated and obliterated by super distorted wooaaarrrggggghh! At least not all the time. Worth it alone for the amazing final track, a reworking of the Who's "Who Are You?" complete with re-done drum solo!
MPEG Stream: "Spectacle To Refute All Judgements"
MPEG Stream: "Satan Cries Again"

FORSYTH, CHRIS Kenzo Deluxe (Northern Spy ) cd 14.98
Probably better known as the guitar player in weirdo / outsider avant-jazz free-rock outfit Peeesseye, Forsyth ventures out on his own here, and while we were originally expecting something more like his previous PSI mothership, Kenzo Deluxe is something else entirely, more like a modern warped take on classic Appalachia, the label refers to it as cosmic Americana, which isn't that far off, long form compositions, simple and spare, softly doused with effects, but relying more on the melodic structure, and the subtle rhythms of the pieces.
"First 10 Minutes Of Cocksucker Blues", is a mesmerizing bit of slo-mo abstract blues, a woozy loop gives way to some awesomely emotive melodies draped over the top, a tranced out sprawl of psych-blues minimalism, that finds some slippery slide guitar sneaking into the woozy, hazy drift. "Downs & Ups" is more contemplative, the sounds muted and lovely, sounding almost liturgical, or like some lost piece of arcane holiday music, the melodies lilting, the overlapping guitar lines creating beautiful subtle harmonies, a gentle bit of pastoral guitarmusic.
From there on out, the sound drifts into different directions, lush billows of guitar strum are drenched in distorted crumble, soaring melodies become almost raga like buzz, the sound gloriously distorted, while elsewhere super spare folk builds into dense stretches of lush guitar soundscapery, and still elsewhere, the sound is totally delicate and crystalline, notes ringing out, the melody heart wrenching and dreamily minor key, the melodies unfurling lazily, and drifting into the grey sky above.
MPEG Stream: "First 10 Minutes Of Cocksucker Blues"
MPEG Stream: "Downs & Ups"
MPEG Stream: "Boston Street Lullaby No. 2"

FORSYTH, CHRIS Kenzo Deluxe (Northern Spy ) lp 17.98
Probably better known as the guitar player in weirdo / outsider avant-jazz free-rock outfit Peeesseye, Forsyth ventures out on his own here, and while we were originally expecting something more like his previous PSI mothership, Kenzo Deluxe is something else entirely, more like a modern warped take on classic Appalachia, the label refers to it as cosmic Americana, which isn't that far off, long form compositions, simple and spare, softly doused with effects, but relying more on the melodic structure, and the subtle rhythms of the pieces.
"First 10 Minutes Of Cocksucker Blues", is a mesmerizing bit of slo-mo abstract blues, a woozy loop gives way to some awesomely emotive melodies draped over the top, a tranced out sprawl of psych-blues minimalism, that finds some slippery slide guitar sneaking into the woozy, hazy drift. "Downs & Ups" is more contemplative, the sounds muted and lovely, sounding almost liturgical, or like some lost piece of arcane holiday music, the melodies lilting, the overlapping guitar lines creating beautiful subtle harmonies, a gentle bit of pastoral guitarmusic.
From there on out, the sound drifts into different directions, lush billows of guitar strum are drenched in distorted crumble, soaring melodies become almost raga like buzz, the sound gloriously distorted, while elsewhere super spare folk builds into dense stretches of lush guitar soundscapery, and still elsewhere, the sound is totally delicate and crystalline, notes ringing out, the melody heart wrenching and dreamily minor key, the melodies unfurling lazily, and drifting into the grey sky above.
MPEG Stream: "First 10 Minutes Of Cocksucker Blues"
MPEG Stream: "Downs & Ups"
MPEG Stream: "Boston Street Lullaby No. 2"

FORSYTH, CHRIS Live Journal at The Mice Machine VIP Dance Floor (Incunabulum) cd 14.98
What a title! Don't know what the heck it means, but we love the sounds contained inside. Released on Jozef Van Wissem's Incunabulum imprint, this is a beautiful solo 12-string record by Chris Forsyth, Brooklynite multi-instrumentalist and founding member of Peeesseye (PSI). But this has a different approach to the solo guitar genre than we've heard before. Focusing on a restless back-porch style minimalism, Forsyth layers overlapping and slow repetitive cascades of mandala-like rhythms and patterns with subtly shifting melodic changes. Often undercut with organ drones, cymbal washes, and minimal percussion, the sounds unfold like intricate patterns of Oriental tapestry or Tibetan sand-paintings, captivating and mesmerizing us into circling and swirling trance-like states. Quite lovely and very limited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Anxious"
MPEG Stream: "Wind Machine"
MPEG Stream: "Contrarian's Lament"

FORTIETH DAY, THE / SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS / TERENCE HANNUM split (Land Of Decay) cassette 7.98
The final installment in the recent batch of tapes from Land Of Decay, this one a three way collaboration between Terence Hanuum, he being one half of aQ faves Locrian, and two other groups we had never heard before, The Fortieth Day and Shee Retina Stimulants, and like the rest of the tapes in this batch (Number None, Ithi, Andre Foisy, Wraiths) this is another slab of grim, low end minimal blackness, a sort of post industrial thrum, all looped layers and blurred rumble and crunch, but LIKE those others, this is way more than just noise, the sound here is lush and haunting, the loops add a subtle rhythmic element, much of the time spent creeping and drifting and woozily shimmering, but the proceedings pocked with bursts of static, blasts of tangled psychedelic noise, the framework provided by sonar like beeps, and softly stuttering clipped loops that become actual rhythms, occasionally sounding like some murky sprawl of heroin house, while at other times like some sort of abstract doom pulse, a heady plunderphonic songsuite of blacknoise, post industrial drift, and blissed out psychedelic minimalism, that manages to be surprisingly hypnotic.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

FOSEN s/t (nnc) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The mysterious Norwegian outfit Fosen provides little to no context for us to describe their music, leaving it much harder to position this set of dronescapes against the next batch. It appears that Fosen's source material is acoustic in nature, possibly being flutes and bells; the group then renders each sound dronological with considerable care via basic loopings, sonar depth reverb, and vast pitchshifting manipulations. The first track entertains a looping passage from a breathy flute stretched into a wonderfully hypnogogic drone that favorably compares with Biosphere's more minimal ambience or the Hafler Trio's fluttering drones. Other tracks flicker with feedback oscillations and attack-modified bell tones, some pitter and clank like some mutant tape construction derived from water dripping in a cavernous warehouse. Altogether, Fosen offers a very evocative if equally mysterious album.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

FOSSILS / DARKSMITH Million Year Spree (Kye) lp 16.98
The first in an occasional series from Graham Lamkin's Kye Records of split releases by like-minded noiseniks. Fossils are an outfit from Ontario, Canada, mostly content to release editions of 5-10 cassettes to their friends, amassing a discography that rivals that of Phil Blankenship or Aaron Dilloway. It's a horrific blackened noise that Fossils muster, with something that might resemble a band trying to break through the 10,000 year old tarpit of tape hiss that everything is buried in. It's either that or a tin can getting kicked around an alley. As those gritty noises settle onto the horizon, Fossils articulate an undulating sinewave that ramps up and down at a slow-motion cycle. This is smashed up in a noise-junk assault with some atonal blurts and alarm sirens screeching behind a smoldering aktionist pipe-fight. The Canadians finish things off with a desolate chorale of bowed metals, smashed radiators, and thumming engine noise, that all pitches into a grim stupor.
Tom Darksmith hails from San Francisco and has one fine piece of obliterated tape-music released on Hanson. He follows the tradition set by a generation of California nihilists (Joe Colley, Scott Arford, John Wiese, etc.) of creating the antithesis to fun-in-the-summer vibes. His hand-off, neurotic-ray-gun synth crawl is one taken right from the Maurizio Bianchi playbook with looping sandpaper textural scraping and EVP-like thumps in the night. This seance of dark electronics snaps to a hiss-laden recording of various rustlings, metallic scrapes, and strange emanations of vibrating ectoplasm. A halo of midrange feedback slowly blossoms across the activities, which collapse into the final episode of slumped activity that could be some nocturnal loop caught from failed demagnetization of tapes run through a 4-track a couple million times. Here lies the negation of sound. Dig it.

FOUNTAIN, JUDSON Completely In The Dark (Innova) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We never understood why this disc was ever allowed to go out of print. Fortunately Innova finally decided to print up some more (it's still a cd-r, alas) and we're happy to have this amazing weird insane release to sell to y'all again. Here's what we said when we originally reviewed it back on list 184:
Oh man. If you are a faithful Aquarius list reader and lover of musical oddities, just stop right here, and push the buy button because you need this record. Judson Fountain was born in 1952 and was obsessed with radio dramas since he was old enough to talk. In fact as soon as he was able to talk he began doing impressions of cackling hags, wicked witches and all sorts of animals. All of which would come to play a big part in these radio dramas right here. Recorded between the ages of 17 and 22, these eight dramas are only a drop in the bucket of the hundreds of radio plays Judson wrote and performed. All of them primitive and simple, but amazingly creative and entertaining, and all featuring Judson's unique vocalizations along with his partner/foil Sandor Weisberger. But there's no way to describe them, you just have to hear them. Judson has a crazy East Coast accent, and he talks like a hyper school boy who thinks faster than he can get the words out, which you can hear in a handful of interviews preceding some of the radio dramas. Using crude sound effects and sometimes painfully deliberate plot exposition, these dramas all rely on Judson and Sandor's crazy array of voices, from Irish Brogue, to old Thai man, to teenage gangster to tuneless singing grandma, to British detective to various witches and demonic women, all with distinctly hysterical and completely bizarre cackles. The plots are all very simple, good vs. Evil, haunted houses and witches and stuff. But they are all done so sort-of-professionally and so earnestly that they're just completely irresistible. Listen to "Garbage Can From Thailand" and you'll immediately know what we mean. Judson is just so cute. And so is Sandor who introduces each drama (which he pronounces drahmmer) and also reads the credits afterwards. I've had a Judson Fountain cassette for years now thanks to AQ pal Jay Lesser so you can imagine how excited we were that some of this stuff was actually finally getting released. Our only complaint is why did Innova make it a cd-r??! It's got a professionally printed booklet and everything, so how hard would it have been to press up real cds?! It costs as much as a real cd after all. Cd-r or not, this is so good, and so funny, and so cute, and so weirdly brilliant, that it definitely needs to be in your collection!
MPEG Stream: "The Garbage Can From Thailand"
MPEG Stream: "Two Boys In A Haunted House"

FOURTH WORLD MAGAZINE The Spectacle Of Light Abductions (Pacific City Sound Visions) lp 17.98
Latest release from former Skater Spencer Clark, whose partner in the Skaters, James Ferraro, was recently awarded record of the year honors by UK music mag The Wire, but as much as we dig Ferraro's stuff, we have to say, we often find ourselves more partial to Clark's outings, especially his project Monopoly Child Star Searchers, especially those early cd-r's, twisted murky soundscapes woven from woozy looped rhythms and blurred samples, dense and dizzying and druggy and dreamy, so we're always excited when we discover a new record from Clark. Fourth World Magazine is in fact Clark's new project, and in some ways it finds his sound drifting toward that of his former bandmate, this high concept record based on something called the Spectacle Of Light, which happens in Salt Lake City and concerns UFO's, as does most of Clark's recordings we seem to remember, hard to tell if it's a put on, or if all this spiritual stuff is real (or at least real to Clark), but ultimately it hardly matters, cuz musically it's real, and whatever the twisted concept, it gets woven into Clark's sonic flights of fancy, this one in particular opening up with swirling new agey synths, what sound remarkably like the music from one of those late night star chart segments on cable access, and thus like much of Ferraro's recent work, but from there on out, Clark definitely mixes it up, beginning with garbled voices, weird tape manipulation, and more hazy synth shimmer, peppered with weird bird call like squawks, before transitioning into a collage of warped looped melodies, playful and sunshiney, almost like a snipped of fifties film music as envisioned (or reworked) by the Caretaker. Soon those new agey synths return, but now with murky muted rhythms, which somehow transform the sound into something more raga like, then adding more of the garbled vocals until we finally reach the final track, and epic nearly sidelong jam, that might be our favorite stuff here, definitely harkening back to the aforementioned Monopoly Child Star Searchers cd-r's, all lo-fi Casio melodies, chaotic looped rhythms, skittery tangles over woozy collaged layers, everything muddy and smeared and gloriously washed out, a fantastic chunk of outsider psychedelic rhythmic drift.
This is the first release on Clark's Pacific City Sound Visions label, and comes in a full color 12 page 12" x 12" jacket/book, with fuzzy photos, and plenty of text explaining (sort of) the Spectacle Of Light, of which this music is dedicated to.

FOUST! Jungle Fever (Swill Radio) cd 14.98
Not to be confused with the legendary krautrock band (notice the spelling, and the punctuation), Foust! is in fact Scott Foust, member of experimental soundmaking combo Idea Fire Company, who share a label and an aesthetic to a certain degree with the Shadow Ring.
For Foust's first solo record, he's conjured up a nearly 80 minute soundscape of lo-fi loped rhythms and drones. The first 35+ minutes are slowly shifting, barely changing bit of stutter and thump, wreathed in hiss and set atop a soft bed of static, super mesmerizing and hypnotic, while the rhythm remains virtually unchanged, the sounds around it, softly and slowly shift, growing more and more murky, the tone and timbre gradually transforming until finally the rhythms drops out, leaving long shimmering tones, stretched out over what sounds like field recordings, the various tones are layered into almost-harmonies, the low tones thick and undulating in slow motion way up in the mix, higher tones way off in the distance, a soft tangle of warm languid dronemusic, until with about twenty minutes left, the drones fade out leaving mostly just ambient sounds, birdcalls, rainfall, running water, the crackle of leaves and branches, while way off in the distance, remnants of the first half of the record hang on until they too finally disappear, the sound building to a hiss until the track ends with the storm disappearing in a little swirl of effects.
So nice. An awesome combination of soundscaping, dronemusic and field recordings, definitely for fans of all three!
MPEG Stream: "Jungle Fever (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Jungle Fever (excerpt 2)"