LICHTENBERGER, GRISCHA Treigbut (Raster-Noton) 12" 14.98

LIETTERSCHPICH I Cum Blood In The Think Tank (Heart & Crossbone) cd 11.98
Another gorgeously abrasive wall of caustic crushing pounding noise from Israel's answer to Whitehouse. I Cum Blood In The Think Tank! is the first full length from these speaker brutalizing miscreants, and it's just as amazing as the 3" cd-r teaser we reviewed a while back. Like we said in that review, as much as we love Whitehouse, this is what we WISH Whitehouse sounded like. Dizzying swirls of blown out synth buzz, jagged shards of industrial crunch, massive slabs of fuzzed out low end, stumbling lurching rhythmic plod. It's almost like doom metal pulled apart until its noisy splattery insides spill out. The tempos are glacial, the drums are monstrous and sloooooow, the vocals are a glass gargling roar, the soundfield is constantly shifting, layer upon layer upon layer, distant beeps and swooshing FX, massive swells of digital glitch and low end fuzz, electronics glitch and slither, everything is doused in effects and allowed to get all tangled up with all the other sounds. The thing about Lietterschpich is that somehow they make this all SOUND GOOD. This is beautiful noise, there are hooks, melodies, actual parts, they're sort of like real songs, not just long stretches of noisiness, and even at its most abrasive and harsh, it's totally amazing and listenable. Hard to explain why, it's like Bunkur and the Dead C being remixed by Throbbing Gristle. Some tracks have gentle lilting acoustic guitars, but they're doused in white hot streaks of malfunctioning synths and sputtering electronics, others are straight face melting noise, but have hooks buried underneath all the murk and mire, others are buzzy blurry walls of warm sound, but even those tracks eventually transform into prickly icepick in the ear brutality.
It's definitely an intense and punishing listen, fierce and freaked out, druggy and seriously fucking scary, but within that body of blood and bile, lurks a heart of luminous radiance... Noise record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Stockfish!!"
MPEG Stream: "Mud And Fun!!"
MPEG Stream: "I Cum Blood In The Fish Tank!"
MPEG Stream: "Cookies Downtown!!!"

LIETTERSCHPICH Quasi (Something On The Road) 3" cd 10.98
All I can think when I hear Lietterschpich, is man, this is exactly what I always wished Whitehouse sounded like. Don't get me wrong. We love Whitehouse, and while they are definitely harsh and brutal and caustic, they just aren't very heavy. The sound is brittle and shrieking, which yeah, is probably the point, but oh how we longed for a crushingly heavy Whitehouse. Local boys Burmese sort of took that role, with their stripped down slow motion grindcore, so slow motion in fact that the music would become a sheet of white noise, through which the various members would wail and shout, howl and testify. But then we heard Lietterschpich, and it was as if someone had been listening to us and granted our wish. This Israeli combo are seriously one of the heaviest, scariest bands we have ever heard. The opening track, recorded live is a vast expanse of ear shredding high end, sheets of acrid feedback, layer after layer of shrieking skree, underneath a gritty fuzzy buzz of tape hiss and instrument crackle, over which a super distorted voice, drenched in FX, spits out a frightening sounding litany of ROOOOAAAR's and GRRRRRGHGHGHGHGHG's. Each time the vocals come in, they are recorded so hot, that it forces the screeching white noise to recoil, as if it were deathly afraid of THIS VOICE. Holy fuck. SO fierce and totally scary. But impossibly, downright listenable too. Probably the finest (but freakiest) moment, is an all but unrecognizable cover of the Pixies' "Monkey Gone To Heaven", an epic, super abstract dirge, with killer live drums, pounding away some super spare glacial rhythm, while weird creaking keening drones shimmer in the background, and the vocals, harsh and so so brutal, channel the spirit of Frank Black, turning him into some sort of hellish demon, gargling blood and broken glass. Throughout the track, thick electronic fuzz and grind, warbles and pulses, creating all kinds of again, impossibly catchy, alien melodies. Definite contender for best cover version EVER. The final track is a brief, mathy instrumental jam, just drums, pounding and shuffling through a creepy cloud of moaning drones and wailing sirens, disembodied vocals, spastic synths and creepy little glitchy bleeps and bloops. Wow. Only three songs, leaves us DYING for more, but at the same time, after just three songs you feel brutalized, beaten and bloodied, we're not sure we could handle any more than that. But we can't wait to try...
MPEG Stream: "You Tried To Poison Me, Brother!"
MPEG Stream: "Monkey Gone To Heaven"

LIGHT A Million Dead Beneath The Ice (self-released) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From its humble beginnings as a genre, black metal has changed dramatically, transformed into something style and sound based rather than belief based. And where black metal was once strictly the province of the grim and kvlt, and yes, the actual metalheads, it's now gained a certain cache, a definite hip factor, where any band, metal or not, is likely to feature one member with his or her own solo black metal project. We're not complaining, not in the least, it's these fresh injections into black metal's sonic gene pool that keep it interesting, that produce more and more strange and wonderful variations, a great many perpetrated by folks new to metal completely, who were lured to the darkside by black metal specifically, its mystery and unique sound, the sonic possibilities offered by its murky symphony of buzz and blast, rumble and shriek, sounds easily twisted into all manner of shapes.
We got this particular cd-r in the mail a few weeks ago, and as we've mentioned before we do get quite a few. Our first impression was that it would most likely be some sort of minimal drone record, very stark white packaging, hand made, the band is called Light, with song titles like "When The Green Midwestern Sky Comes Crashing Down", and "When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In", the packaging unfolds to reveal nothing but the song titles, rendered in a flowery script, but on the disc, there was what appears to be a smear of actual blood (which we later discovered was in fact menstrual blood!). The first clue as to what sort of mysterious darkness lurked inside...
Once we threw it on, we knew this was something else entirely, there is plenty of drone indeed, but the drone is only one element of Light's mysterious lugubrious buzz drenched blackened crawl. Almost like a more lo-fi Skepticism, Light trudge along at tarpit tempos, the guitars not so much riffing as unfurling thick swirls of soft fuzz, the vocals howled and wailed, but way off in the distance, the drums strangely un-drumlike, more like pots and pans, a clattery, skeletal percussion, the whole thing held together by the warm dramatic keyboards, that sound like the Haunted Mansion soundtrack played at 16rpm, all smeared and blurred together into something only barely black metal, only barely doom, a thick lurching slow motion black doomdrone, evocative and cinematic, at once epic and sprawling, lo-fi and ultra personal. Creepy and haunting, but strangely melodic and beautiful. Think Trollmann, Abruptum, Celestiial, Catacombs, Monument of Urns and again Skepticism, but filtered through the cracked lo-fi filter of underground cd-r dronemusic. If one was unfamiliar with black metal, one might be reminded of Lustmord, or some other sort of deathambient, but with the confusional addition of actual riffs, and those hellish vox, and the strange primitive percussion, the end result a sort of metallicized slowcore, or a washed out ultradoom, or a blurred bleary black metal, however you describe it, Light have crafted some truly original, gorgeously bleak, warm and almost dreamy, slow motion buzzing black beauty.
Hand folded, hand assembled, stark white sleeves, with a Japanese style obi, and an extra inner sleeve, crazy limited to maybe 50 copies or so.
MPEG Stream: "When The Green Midwestern Sky Comes Crashing Down"
MPEG Stream: "When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In"

LIGHT Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever (self-released) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Earlier this year, we reviewed a super limited avant outsider blackened doom record called A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, by a duo called Light. Which was anything but light, in fact, it was one of the darkest and most harrowing discs we'd heard in a long time, a slow motion drone drenched funereal crawl, with a lush almost orchestrated feel that definitely reminded us of Skepticism. And if anything, record number two, the awesomely titled Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever is even more! More black, more doomy, more droney, more beautiful, more harsh and more bizarre.
One long hour long track, which begins with a slowly cycling piano figure, draped over a wash of reverbed tones, distant rumbles, the sound gorgeous, slightly atonal, ominous and sinister, and then there are the vocals, a nearly impossible to describe high pitched shriek, that almost sounds like someone screaming as they breathe in, a twisted strangled howl, totally at odds with the music underneath, reminding us a bit of Tomb Of..., who also paired up piano and black metal vokills, but Light seems borne more of a free noise aesthetic. Minus the vocals, the sound on Life Is Meaningless, is a sort of abstract slowcore crawl, a little post rocky, a little doomy, a bit of black ambient drift, but the vocals are just SOOOO creepy, it definitely pushes it into a whole other realm. And suddenly what could have been something darkly pretty, becomes something fucked up and grimly gorgeous.
Like the first release (which is long out of print so don't ask), the packaging is a hand folded, hand assembled, plain grey origami style sleeve, with a Japanese style obi, and an extra inner sleeve, as well as a hand written insert, and again crazy limited to less than 50 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever (excerpt 2)"

LIGHT s/t (Crucial Blaze) 3xcd-r 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Three out of print cd-r's from this outsider blackened doom duo, A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever and Worse Than Anyone Would Have Expected, all available again, now repackaged and offered together as a single triple cd-r boxset, with all new art, additional inserts, and two buttons, released on Crucial Blast sublabel Crucial Blaze. Here's what we had to say about each of the records when we first reviewed them individually:
A Million Dead Beneath The Ice:
From its humble beginnings as a genre, black metal has changed dramatically, transformed into something style and sound based rather than belief based. And where black metal was once strictly the province of the grim and kvlt, and yes, the actual metalheads, it's now gained a certain cache, a definite hip factor, where any band, metal or not, is likely to feature one member with his or her own solo black metal project. We're not complaining, not in the least, it's these fresh injections into black metal's sonic gene pool that keep it interesting, that produce more and more strange and wonderful variations, a great many perpetrated by folks new to metal completely, who were lured to the darkside by black metal specifically, its mystery and unique sound, the sonic possibilities offered by its murky symphony of buzz and blast, rumble and shriek, sounds easily twisted into all manner of shapes.
We got this particular cd-r in the mail a few weeks ago, and as we've mentioned before we do get quite a few. Our first impression was that it would most likely be some sort of minimal drone record, very stark white packaging, hand made, the band is called Light, with song titles like "When The Green Midwestern Sky Comes Crashing Down", and "When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In", the packaging unfolds to reveal nothing but the song titles, rendered in a flowery script, but on the disc, there was what appears to be a smear of actual blood (which we later discovered was in fact menstrual blood!). The first clue as to what sort of mysterious darkness lurked inside...
Once we threw it on, we knew this was something else entirely, there is plenty of drone indeed, but the drone is only one element of Light's mysterious lugubrious buzz drenched blackened crawl. Almost like a more lo-fi Skepticism, Light trudge along at tarpit tempos, the guitars not so much riffing as unfurling thick swirls of soft fuzz, the vocals howled and wailed, but way off in the distance, the drums strangely un-drumlike, more like pots and pans, a clattery, skeletal percussion, the whole thing held together by the warm dramatic keyboards, that sound like the Haunted Mansion soundtrack played at 16rpm, all smeared and blurred together into something only barely black metal, only barely doom, a thick lurching slow motion black doomdrone, evocative and cinematic, at once epic and sprawling, lo-fi and ultra personal. Creepy and haunting, but strangely melodic and beautiful. Think Trollmann, Abruptum, Celestiial, Catacombs, Monument of Urns and again Skepticism, but filtered through the cracked lo-fi filter of underground cd-r dronemusic. If one was unfamiliar with black metal, one might be reminded of Lustmord, or some other sort of deathambient, but with the confusional addition of actual riffs, and those hellish vox, and the strange primitive percussion, the end result a sort of metallicized slowcore, or a washed out ultradoom, or a blurred bleary black metal, however you describe it, Light have crafted some truly original, gorgeously bleak, warm and almost dreamy, slow motion buzzing black beauty.
Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever:
Earlier this year, we reviewed a super limited avant outsider blackened doom record called A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, by a duo called Light. Which was anything but light, in fact, it was one of the darkest and most harrowing discs we'd heard in a long time, a slow motion drone drenched funereal crawl, with a lush almost orchestrated feel that definitely reminded us of Skepticism. And if anything, record number two, the awesomely titled Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever is even more! More black, more doomy, more droney, more beautiful, more harsh and more bizarre.
One hour long track, which begins with a slowly cycling piano figure, draped over a wash of reverbed tones, distant rumbles, the sound gorgeous, slightly atonal, ominous and sinister, and then there are the vocals, a nearly impossible to describe high pitched shriek, that almost sounds like someone screaming as they breathe in, a twisted strangled howl, totally at odds with the music underneath, reminding us a bit of Tomb Of..., who also paired up piano and black metal vokills, but Light seems borne more of a free noise aesthetic. Minus the vocals, the sound on Life Is Meaningless, is a sort of abstract slowcore crawl, a little post rocky, a little doomy, a bit of black ambient drift, but the vocals are just SOOOO creepy, it definitely pushes it into a whole other realm. And suddenly what could have been something darkly pretty, becomes something fucked up and grimly gorgeous.
Worse Than Anyone Would Have Expected:
Third and final release from this depressive black doom duo, and it's a fitting epitaph to a short but brilliant streak. Three super limited cd-r's, less than 200 all told, each one overflowing with blackened misery and gorgeous harrowing sonic blackness, the first, titled A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, gave way to the second, titled Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever, which brings us to Worse Than Anyone Would Have Expected, which should give you a decent impression of the overall vibe and tone of Light's distinctly UN-light sound.
Three looooooong tracks, thick caustic layers of buzzing low end drone, sparsely strummed acoustic guitar, shrieked vocals way down in the mix, funereal, glacial, miserable, not even plodding as there seems to be no drums, or if they are there, they're practically inaudible. The melodies are lilting and melancholic, there's some piano, the rumbling buzzing backdrop seems to coalesce into some sort of melody, the whole thing lurching in slow motion, grim, and dense, and miserably and mournfully lovely. Totally hypnotic .
The second track offers up more of the same, another lovely black expanse of pointillist piano, harrowing screams, and slow swells of black buzz, before finally segueing into the epic closing track, a formula similar to the first two, but somehow even slower, more abject, more ambient, so slow and spaced out and minimal, that it nearly ceases being metal or doom and is transformed into some sort of black ambient slowcore, a haunting doomic creep, that to these ears is as pretty as it is grim and harsh.
This reissue is also limited, only 200 copies, each one hand numbered!
MPEG Stream: "When The Green Midwestern Sky Comes Crashing Down"
MPEG Stream: "When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In"
MPEG Stream: "Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever (excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "The City"
MPEG Stream: "Again"

LIGHT Worse Than Anyone Would Have Expected (self-released) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Third and final release from this depressive black doom duo, and it's a fitting epitaph to a short but brilliant streak. Three super limited cd-r's, less than 200 all told, each one overflowing with blackened misery and gorgeous harrowing sonic blackness, the first, titled A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, gave way to the second, titled Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever, which brings us to Worse Than Anyone Would Have Expected, which should give you a decent impression of the overall vibe and tone of Light's distinctly UN-light sound.
Three looooooong tracks, thick caustic layers of buzzing low end drone, sparsely strummed acoustic guitar, shrieked vocals way down in the mix, funereal, glacial, miserable, not even plodding as there seems to be no drums, or if they are there, they're practically inaudible. The melodies are lilting and melancholic, there's some piano, the rumbling buzzing backdrop seems to coalesce into some sort of melody, the whole thing lurching in slow motion, grim, and dense, and miserably and mournfully lovely. Totally hypnotic .
The second track offers up more of the same, another lovely black expanse of pointillist piano, harrowing screams, and slow swells of black buzz, before finally segueing into the epic closing track, a formula similar to the first two, but somehow even slower, more abject, more ambient, so slow and spaced out and minimal, that it nearly ceases being metal or doom and is transformed into some sort of black ambient slowcore, a haunting doomic creep, that to these ears is as pretty as it is grim and harsh.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES. Gorgeous packaging, black on black, black disc, elaborately folded sleeve with a black on black printed obi, super fancy, and most likely gone before you know it...
MPEG Stream: "The City"
MPEG Stream: "Again"

LIGHT OF SHIPWRECK From The Idle Cylinders (Crucial Bliss) cd-r 8.98
Finally, a new batch of releases from the always kick ass Crucial Bliss label, the limited cd-r experimental ambient sublabel of the mighty Crucial Blast. This first one comes from Light Of Shipwreck, a one man power ambient drone outfit that is the work of Ben Fleury-Steiner who runs the also quite awesome Gears Of Sand label (Aidan Baker, Encomiast, Seconds In Formeldahyde) and who for From The Idle Cylinders has woven guitars, percussion and programming into a darkly organic soundworld. The label compares the sound here to some swirly mix of Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Can, and Earth, which is definitely not that far off the mark, but we also hear some This Heat, some Wolf Eyes and lots of Necks in these extended shimmery and serpentine sprawls.
Haunting super rhythmic industrial soundscapes laced with a propulsive locomotive shuffle of programmed percussion, keening high end and hissing whirs of smeared almost jazziness, looped and cyclical, some sort of disembodied krautrock/spacerock like a more mechanical Necks jamming in a thick cloud of Birchville Cat Motel fug. A groaning creaking percussive framework beneath a sky full of shimmering black clouds.
All three tracks begin all abstract and drifty, the first "I Rode And Am Riding On An Ocean Of Violent Lights", quickly explodes into a fog of jagged edges and swirling squalls of chaotic percussion and overlapping drones, while the second, "I Watched And Am Watching A Cold Dead Sun Rise Then Explode" coalesces into a serious chunk of glorious Ur-kraut, a simple stripped down rhythm spread out over a massive expanse of low end whir and phantom drone drift, gorgeous and mesmerizing, with a dark dreamy melody, both ominous and lovely, think a super mellow druggy Circle, or a slightly more noise rock Necks...
The final track begins with subtle Eastern sounding percussion, before giving way to some Fear Falls Burning massive glacial guitar drone, eventually splintering into glimmering harmonics, the rest of the twenty minute track, a tangle of the two, shuffling skittering rhythms wrapped around slow burning solar flare guitar. So good.
As with all Crucial Bliss releases, the packaging is gorgeous, a dvd sized fold over thick cardstock sleeve, full color inside and out, the cd attached to a plastic hub affixed to the sleeve... and LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "I Rode And Am Riding On An Ocean Of Violent Lights"
MPEG Stream: "I Watched And Am Watching A Cold Dead Sun Rise Then Explode"

LIGHT OF SHIPWRECK In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream (Gears Of Sand) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Light Of Shipwreck, while a long time favorite around here, has always been a tough outfit to describe. In the past we've compared the sound of LoS to Wolf Eyes, This Heat and the Necks, but that only scratches the surface. There was all sorts of blurred digital shimmer, dubby beats, lurching almost metallic heaviness, it really was a wild assemblage of sounds, but they were somehow woven into something listenable, heck, more than listenable, something pretty fucked up and far out.
So finally, another full length, and as we might have expected, while some of those references still apply, In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream is a whole 'nother beast.
Two loooong songs, the first clocking in at nearly half an hour, and beginning with a strange cacophony of industrial clatter, warm low end pulsations, a sort of muted noisescape, that manages to be heavy, but strangely soothing, until the drums come in, and then it's just chaos, programmed beats careen all over the place, skittering and pulsing beneath a suddenly active swirling squall of moaning feedback, of grinding metallic crunch, a dark billowing cloud shot through with bits of melody, chunks of throbbing bass, but for the most part the sounds is an ever shifting cloud of hiss and buzz and blur surrounding a looped skeletal beat. Eventually all of the skitter and pound, the skree and crunch slough off, leaving a gorgeous heaving river of low end drones and layered buzz, thick and dense and blackened, slowly drifting like some sonic black tar, until the sound again shifts, more of the low end falling away, leaving a gleaming and glistening shimmer, all soft edged high end that is swallowed up by the darkness almost as quickly as it emerged. The track buzzes and crawls, a moaning drone behemoth, before it finally dissipates leaving nothing but a spectral whisper.
The second track, slightly shorter at 21 minutes, is another multi part epic. This one a gloomy gothic sprawl, again, a sky full of dark clouds, wrapped around more off kilter programmed skitter. The tones thick and heavy, moaning and groaning, like the sound of hellish beasts letting out their final wails of anguish, or some blackened city crumbling to dust, with nothing but the drums to play it out. Weirdly tribal and raw, it could almost be some super obscure eighties goth rock combo, jamming out, drugged out of their gourds, unfurling some impossibly otherworldly murk jam, but it too gives way to something more ethereal and ephemeral, the drums still present, more as echoes, eventually dropping out completely, leaving nothing but shadowy tones to drift weightless in a sky full of FX. Weird as hell, even for a band who already traffic in the weird, but if you're into droney heavy fucked up ambient drum heavy noise drenched weirdness, then In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream should definitely hit the spot.
MPEG Stream: "In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream I"
MPEG Stream: "In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream II"

LIGHT OF SHIPWRECK Through The Bilge Lies A Calm And Bloodless Sea (Waterscape) 3"cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We were totally blown away by the Light Of Shipwreck cd-r released on Crucial Bliss a while back, and have been anxiously waiting for more. That disc was compared to Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Can and Earth by the label, but we were hearing Wolf Eyes, This Heat and The Necks.
We still hear all of that here to a certain degree, but LoS's whole sound has been reimagined and the results are pretty mindblowing. The record begins with a swirling sea of shimmering tones, of deep resonant rumbles and skittery processed rhythms, more textural really than rhythmic, melodies drawn out into long streaks of sound, a strange whirring slow motion driftscape, wrapped around a stuttering almost-rhythm, which eventually explodes into a dubbed out brittle beat, the beat heavily effected and allowed to slip into a sea of churning guitar growl and blurred soft noise, until those dubbed out drums return, and the track is transformed into some off kilter post rock, free noise, free jazz krautrock jam. But even that doesn't last, as the track quickly shifts into something much more tranquil, a haunting confluence of various layers and textures, the tones seem to glow and pulse, overlapping and intermingling, a less digital more lo-fi Oval perhaps, a Tim Hecker-ish dronescape, all bleary and blurry and washed out and dreamlike, but rough around the edges, a bit raw, the sounds organic and deep, woven into creeping minor key melodies and long expanses of crumbling shimmer. So awesome.
Packaged in a full color cover, housed in a mini vinyl sleeve, with a full color printed insert, each copy hand numbered. Pressed on cool blue cd-r's. And LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!!!
RealAudio clip: "Through The Bilge Lies A Calm And Bloodless Sea 1"

LIGHT SHALL PREVAIL Goatcrush (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r ep 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We talk about black metal all the time. Cuz, we love it. A lot. The blacker and more evil the better. Harsh and hateful, nihilistic and brutal, true evil rendered in sound!
But why exactly are the black metal hordes so angry? What exactly are they fighting against? God? The Christians? The powers of Good? Themselves? Well if we've learned anything, it's that good can not exist without evil. Dark can not exist without light, and black metal can not exist without white metal.
What?
That's right, it's time for the darkness to be pushed back a bit. It's time for that age old battle to be fought with buzzing riffs and thrashing blast beats, howled anguished vocals and rumbling low end. And at the front lines are Light Shall Prevail, masters of their own bizarre black metal buzz. That's right, it's still black metal, in fact, this white metal is more black and fucked up and awesomely weird than most of the more 'true' and 'grim' stuff we hear all the time.
Strange off kilter riffing, insanely fast blasts (either a drum machine, or an unbelievable drummer), super damaged start stop arrangements, weirdly catchy melodies, all prickly and tangled up in the fuzzy black ambience. A super heavy, but still lo-fi production. And the vocals. SO nuts, From monstrous growls, to Urfaust like croon, to shrieked howl. Such an awesome combination. Lots of midtempo chug mixed in with the buzzing blasts too. In fact just listen to the title track, probably the weirdest, catchiest black metal song EVER, with it's convoluted stop start gallop. So fucking cool.
Absolutely essential black metal listening. Even for the grim and evil amongst you. Once you hear this buzzing brilliance you won't be able to resist the power of the light. Just don't get too close, lest your black soul be cleansed and redeemed!
MPEG Stream: "Goatcrush"
MPEG Stream: "Refusal Of Damnation"
MPEG Stream: "The Call To Repentance"

LIGOTTI, THOMAS AND BRANDON TRENZ Crampton (Durtro) book + cd 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

LIL UGLY MANE Mista Thug Isolation (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We love twisted underground hip hop. As does our pal Jason who runs the Ormolycka tape label, which was the original home of Death Grips' Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list). There's tons of weirdo hip hop on Ormolycka, including this tape, by Lil Ugly Mane, a Southern rapper, with a killer drawl and a ridiculous flow, who busts over looped jazziness, creepy horror movie clips, woozy off kilter slow-mo creeps, cinematic symphonic stabs and sped-up soul, this is the sort of shit that already sounds chopped and screwed, skittery, stuttery dopesmoke grooves, rife with saxophone (!), strings, clipped vox, all driven by some crunked out beats, but really it's all about LUM's flow, which is seriously bad ass, mush mouthed and WAY laid back, but surprisingly nimble, which manages to be the perfect match for the twisted music underneath!

LILES, ANDREW All Closed Doors (Infraction) cd 13.98

LILES, ANDREW An Un World (Erototox Decodings) 2lp 40.00
Originally released on cd back in 2001, An Un World was Andrew Liles' first album proper after a string of cdr releases. It has recently received the deluxe limited edition vinyl treatment - clear vinyl, only 300 pressed! The double record also features two tracks which did not appear on the previous cd incarnation. Liles, perhaps best known as a member of Nurse With Wound for the past many years, has been a prolific solo artist and multi-instrumentalist for well over two decades. His music falls under the expansive umbrella of experimental soundscaping, incorporating a myriad of processed found sounds and electronics. He ventures through the peaks and valleys of Surrealism, Dada, dark ambient and post-industrial, with a morbid black humor snaking its way throughout. These densely detailed early compositions conjure grim unravellings and profound despair. Seriously, the album envelops the listener in atmospheres that are bleaker than bleak. Not for the faint of heart! But so good...

LILES, ANDREW In My Father's House Are Many Mansions (Fourth Dimension) cd 14.98

LILES, ANDREW Mother Goose's Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle (ICR / Klaangalerie) cd 17.98
Nursery rhymes have always had a twisted quality about them. Their stories revel in floral descriptions of magic, talking animals, and other transgressions against the laws of nature all the while articulating some morality tale or another. It's almost too perfect a medium for a surrealist sound sculptor like Andrew Liles, who has decontextualized many a nursery rhyme on Mother Goose's Melody Or Sonnets For The Cradle. With plenty of Victorian declarations from any number of nursery rhymes sprinkled between odd sound collages, creaky samples, and somnabulant drones, allusions to Nurse With Wound (whom Liles has worked with on occasion) become quite obvious.
MPEG Stream: "One Misty Moisty Morning"
MPEG Stream: "Cannula Tubes As Fine As Straw"

LILES, ANDREW New York Doll (Infraction) cd 17.98

LILYPAD Twin Holes (Arbor) 2x3"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.
Weren't sure what to expect from this mysterious little musical object, two paint splattered 3" cd-rs, each in their own little thick vinyl sleeve, nestled in a fold out poster, all metallic ink and trippy futuristic landscape, the cds and the poster housed in a little cardboard box, each individually hand painted, with another image of that futuristic landscape pasted on the front, and of course LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!! All we knew was that these two discs were the work of some spaced out solo synth loner, and to be honest we were expecting something noisy and harsh, or at least creepy and dark, but instead, our ears were treated to softly shimmering, smooth sonorous drones, looooong resonant tones, overlapping, intertwining and gently lapping like some dreamy sonic sea.
This is the sound of drifting through an outer space bathed in the light of a million alien suns, everything warm and rich, a fuzzy thrum that pulses almost imperceptibly, the various tones woven into chords, but chords only visible from the lithosphere, hovering miles above a strange world of slow shifting sounds, down in it, looking at the chords from within, from beneath, the chords are so expansive, the notes stretched so far apart, it's like laying in warm sand and staring at a sky full of washed out melodic blurs. Totally captivating and hypnotic.
For fans of Expo 70, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Destructo Swarmbots, Tunnels and other practitioners of slow blissy drift.
And again, we only have 15 or 20 of these, OF THE ONLY 50 MADE!! So once these are gone, we won't be able to get more...
MPEG Stream: "Twin Holes (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Twin Holes (excerpt 2)"

LIMITED EXPRESS (HAS GONE?) Sacrificial Jesus Child (Phono-Statique) 7" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Heads up! Here's three new songs from these Japanese spazz-art-poppers. This bright opaque blue 7" record is comin' atcha by way of Australian record label Phono-Statique! Churningly angular and dizzyingly rambunctious, it sounds like they loosened all the strings on their guitars for this one. The b-side "Halation" features lyrics that are primarily a male singer chanting "one two three four" in Japanese. Count along with him! We've said it before and we'll say it again: definitely for fans of Deerhoof and Melt-Banana... and of course Limited Express (Has Gone?)!

LIMPE FUCHS Vogel Musik (Robot) cd 16.98

LINDAHL, MASON / ELLIE FORTUNE / RALEIGH MONCRIEFF/ ZACH HILL s/t (Life's Blood Flow) 2x7" 8.98

LINDAHL, MASON / ELLIE FORTUNE / RALEIGH MONCRIEFF/ ZACH HILL s/t (Life's Blood Flow) 2x7" 8.98

LINDBLAD, RUNE RL (Firework Edition Records) lp + cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As decreed by the dual monarchs of the Kingdoms of Elgaland / Vargaland (those being CM von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren), Swedish composer Rune Lindblad should be held in the same canonical reverie as Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and Pierre Schaeffer. For Lindblad engaged the spirit of ardent innovation, brash risktaking, and an unwavering social agenda that could easily be found in the works of those more well known composers. Von Hausswolff -- having studied under Lindblad in the '80s -- had already released a number of Lindblad's compositions on his Radium 226.5 label (all of which have been reissued through Pogus on CD), now he, Elggren, BJ Nilsen (aka Hazard), Edvard Graham Lewis (of Wire), Kent Tankred, and a few others have put together this compilation as an homage of Lindblad's work. Sprawling across a cd and an lp, "RL" begins with two pieces from Lindblad himself - which are haunting musique concrete / electronic music compositions that also appear to involve some amplifier / microphone feedback synthesis, in the end sounding like lo-fi recordings of Morton Subotnik topped off with emotionally charged spoken word snippets. The cd portion of this package continues with various experiments that follow the sonic intent of Lindblad with Edvard Graham Lewis and BJ Nilsen offering a dark, fluid pieces of Eno ambience, Tankred and Elggren sputtering through amplified motors and shortwave dissonance, Von Hausswolff laces distant vocal samples with the ominous pulse of a ventilator.
The lp is much more loose in its interpretation of Lindblad with Brommage Dub pulling off a good Monolake / Chain Reaction piece of minimalist techno, and Jean-Louis HuhtaJ offering some leftfield electronica a la Two Lone Swordsmen or Plaid. Nice work, but doesn't really hold much insight into Lindblad's work beyond distant samples. Nevertheless, this is an excellent overview of Lindblad's work and his influence over contemporary Swedish experimental electronics.
RealAudio clip: RUNE LINDBLAD "Worship Op. 196"
RealAudio clip: EDVARD GRAHAM LEWIS "A Strong Candidate For Isolation"
RealAudio clip: C.M. VON HAUSSWOLFF "Out Of Optica 1"

LINDSTROM, MATS Mig (Ideologic Organ) lp 22.00
The Swedish composer Mats Lindstrom is the studio director for the storied EMS studios in Stockholm, whose mission for the advancement of electro-acoustic music and sound art began way back in 1964. BJ Nilsen, Kevin Drumm, Brian Lustmord, and Stephen O'Malley all passed through the studios in their respective careers, alongside a plethora of more composerly types who we're not all that familiar with. While the connection was never made all that clear, it was probably during O'Malley's residency at EMS when he first met Lindstrom and became familiar with his work, which is now anthologized for the first time on O'Malley's imprint Ideologic Organ. Lindstrom's aesthetic harkens back to the classic era of musique concrete and post-serialist electronic composition from the '60s (e.g. Pierre Schaefer, Xenakis, Nordheim, etc.), playing with the metaphors of his sounds much more than the semantic detachment that usually embodies such acousmatic practices. Take for example the title track, which must refer to the Russian fighter jet, as the track was commissioned for an aviation museum in St. Petersburg and races forward and backward with jet engine roars, possibly simulated, possibly recorded, all of which is surgically cut with mechanical clank and industrial hum. The two IBM tracks clatter away with the anachronistic sounds of typewriters, rigorously collaged with bizzaro scrapes, gratings, and atonal tactile events more in keeping with the irr. app. (ext.) / Nurse With Wound realm of sonic fuckery. The finale is a demonic tape-piece of continuously ascending violin notes that could practically be a brilliant reworking of the 5000 Fingers of Dr. T soundtrack in the style of Penderecki. Excellent stuff!
MPEG Stream: "Mig"
MPEG Stream: "IBM I"
MPEG Stream: "Children Of Paradise"

LIPPOK, ROBERT Open Close Open (Raster-Noton) cd ep 16.98
Robert Lippok may be better known for his throbbing pseudo post-rock / electronica excursions with Tarwater and To Rococo Rot, but here he has turned to the laptop and the minidisc to construct his first release for Raster/Noton. At first, this has all of the trappings of the Raster sound: a few micro-second laptop samples revealing a simple play of click and pop. But then things find their way outside of that crystalline synthesis -- a gaggle of ducks quacking, door slams, Mahler. The effect is sheer yet textured, very lovely, fans of Oval will be pleased. "Open Close Open" is the eighth in the "clear" series from Raster/Noton and the second to come in this sleek prefab non-jewel case. Recommended.
RealAudio clip: "Open"
RealAudio clip: "Close"

LIPTON, DR. (AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ORDER OF THE WING) The Lipton Files (Pseudo Arcana) 3 x cd-r / 1 dvd-r / 50 page booklet / ringbinder 40.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We won't go into too much detail with this one, since we only got 10 copies, which is about a quarter of the entire pressing. This is essential listening for all you WEIRD music obsessives. Some seriously high concept outsider, minimal experimental electronic music. But much like those Funerary Violin cds, the music is only half of the story. This is a 3 cd-r / dvd-r set, contained in a three ring binder, filled with tons of text and documents from some defunct research station. It's almost like that TV show Lost. It seems real, but it's so bizarre and unbelievable.
Might be easier to just quote the label's blurb:
"Gathering together the documentation surrounding a top secret research institute devoted to perception and memory research. The Lipton Files is perhaps the most extravagant folly undertaken by PseudoArcana yet. Packaged in an A5 ringbinder this set contains 3CDRs, 1DVDR and a multitude of supporting images and texts. These documents illuminate the history of the experimental work undertaken by one Dr Lipton and his colleagues (as well as the history of allies- 'The Brotherhood of the Order of the Wing') via research papers, oppositional pamphlets, website screenshots, and the xeroxed documents and photos of what is presumably a private investigator. The story unveiled is one of radical science, utopian visionaries, the magical arts, shadowy conservative networks, and ultimately of governmental cowardice. The 3 CDRS present the audio component of 3 separate experiments undertaken by the Lipton Institute. To the uninitiated these sound not unlike long (60 min+) experiments in minimal electronic music... The DVDR (10 min) re-caps something of the history of the Lipton project through film and image and also presents a short but extraordinarily vivid sequence of video footage of 'memory capture' from Lipton's experiments utilising EEG technology."
Sound amazing? That's cuz it is. It's a bit overwhelming actually, we've only just cracked the surface, but we're hooked, even if it is all made up. It's more fun to believe. The music is all bleeps and bloops, crackle and hiss, primitive electronic music, creepy and haunting, minimal and super interesting. The dvd is a trip, with snippets of speeches, weird flickering slide shows of old photos, all set to Lipton's minimal electronica, lots of old decayed film stock and crackly hissy sound. The accompanying paperwork is rife with conspiracies and drama, as if someone had snuck in to the complex in the middle of the night and liberated them from some locked drawer. Packaged in a ring binder and sealed in plain brown paper (as if it was just handed to you in a dark parking garage!) Fun and fascinating and freaked out, and so brilliantly assembled and presented.
Conet Project? The Ghost Orchid? I Saw It All Happen From Beginning To End and Sometimes I can't Believe What I Saw? The Guild Of Funerary Violinists? Well, you can now add the Lipton files to that list.
And remember, we only got 10 copies, and once these are gone they are gone forever!
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

LIQUID COP The Clear Album EP (self-released) cd-r 2.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. NOTE: This ep is now included on Liquid Cop's full length self-released cd-r called Data So Nice I Saved It Twice.
An all too brief seven tracks of delightfully collaged samples, guitar, vocals and digital gleeps 'n' meeps from this SF gentleman. Light and playful, they alternately take a sip of lounge-iness, dip their toes in glitch-y, down tempo electronics, and venture gently into other soundscape terrain. A wee detail I found a bit disappointing was the disc's abrupt end, the final cut just stops. It was like being jarred out of a 12 minute daydream. Nonetheless, this is a very very warm and pleasing introduction to Liquid Cop!
RealAudio clip: "Prissy Goes To Beauty School"

LIQUORBALL W/ STEVE MACKAY Evolutionary Squalor (Rocketship Records) lp 15.98
We LOVE Liquorball. Distorted, drugged out, off kilter, noisy, space-y, dirgey, seriously fucked up and freaked out sludgey garage rock genius. Someone needs to do a cd reissue of all the old out of print lps (there have been rumors, tUMULt? Holy Mountain?), but these guys keep plugging away, this latest vinyl-only sonic behemoth finds the newly expanded Liquorball mixing it up with legendary saxophonist Steve Mackay (Stooges' Funhouse!) as well as another horn player and a viola player. Definitely sounds intriguing. And the horns definitely add a strange vibe to the proceedings, but we're not so sure it's for the better.
Where the sound of LB of old was transcendent, fucked up and blown out in a way that was difficult to understand, and hell, why even bother, all we knew was it sounded insane and amazing, the sound on this new record is weirdly tame, partially the horns, but also the recording, lo-fi for sure, but not as scuzzy and BURNT sounding as old recordings, they sound more like a bar band (which granted, they sort of always were, albeit a seriously demented and damaged bar band), the sort of band you might stumble across on a regular Saturday night, in a regular bar. A bit subdued, still space-y and a bit freaky, but not nearly as far out. The B-side though does get a little wilder, the effects nearly taking over, finally melting into an oozing sprawl of lysergic sonic weirdness, easy to get gloriously lost in, until the last couple minutes, where the band slip back into a sort of woozy, last call blues jam, which has us thinking that maybe they're taking the piss, since seconds earlier they were soaring through scorched landscapes of psychedelic space guitar freakery.
It might be that we're a little hard on this record, it's only cuz the other records kicked out asses so utterly and completely, that said, this is still a cool record, and the majority of side 2 should definitely hit the spot for folks looking for some spaced out psychedelia, but it's no Fucks The Sky, but then that was probably too much to hope for. By the way, Julian Cope just picked this as his Record Of The Month, so that's somethin'!

LITHIUM DREAMS / STARLA DUST split (Monorail Trespassing) cassette 6.98
Two enigmatic projects share this 20-minute cassette, which provides little more than the names of the two bands and their respective track titles. There is an enticing inscription inside the j-card which reads "dusseldorf lunar sand continuum." Yup, sci-fi soundtracks and kraut-inspired electronics are in the cosmological order for both Lithium Dreams and Starla Dust. The former transmits a linear stream of tremolo augmented soft noise with ambient swoops and half-melodic blurs. Eventually, small tone pulsations and percolating lazer-ping synths open up Lithium Dreams to sounding like those early Oneohtrix Point Never cassettes or some of John Elliot's non-Emeralds output, as if it were the soundtrack to some long lost scientific / industrial film about satellites. Starla Dust keeps to the oblique sci-fi sound with low-end oscillations dappled with metallic half-formed drones, malleable ambient wash, and squiggling electronics. The vibe here is not all that far from Coil's Music To Listen To In The Dark in all of the deep space hypnosis and synth miasma. Another fine cassette from Monorail Trespassing!

LITTLE SKULL Collected 7"s (Pseudo Arcana) cd-r 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Most of you have probably never heard of Dean Brown. A New Zealand musician and artist, who over the last few years has created ultra limited and incredibly beautiful lathe cut 7"s, each one in an amazing hand crafted package. The most infamous being one that unfolded into a pop up diorama with ghosts and gravestones. So gorgeous and homemade and labor intensive, that each release was limited to 50 copies or less. The music was equally compelling, sweet little lullabies constructed from accordions and pump organs, blown bottles, percussion and strings.
This compilation collects five of the tracks from various 7" releases, unfortunately, this cd-r is also limited to only 50 copies, meaning Brown's music will no doubt continue to be a special little secret, but at least for now, a handful of you will be able to explore his magical mysterious soundworld.
The tracks are all longish, and are simple and subtly melodic, drone-y and dreamy, from fluttery folk, with swoonsome strings, to dark rumbling expanses of wheezing low end, blown bottle melodies hovering over soft shimmering tape hiss, muted mumbly twang, sizzling clouds of metallic buzz, glistening twinkling chimes, percussive thumps, and creaking detuned chords, field recordings, tape hiss and drop outs, lush washes of thick murmur, all spread out within long expanses of near silent ambience.
A gorgeous collection of minimal and microscopic soundscapes.
The packaging is handmade as well, in the tradition of the seven inches, a handmade black book, with a pasted on front cover image, inside, page after page of simple silhouettes of bats, included is a tiny black envelope, with a cryptic letter from the artist. So cool.
And again LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!!
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

LITTLE SKULL s/t (Scrimshaw Artefacts) 3"cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We go on and on about deluxe packaging, but it's truly only once in a while, where an artist really blows our mind, whether it's totally over the top, or super subtle and sublime, the musicians who care enough to meticulously craft their packaging, as much as the music inside are a rare breed.
Which leads us to Little Skull, aka Dean Brown, who some of you may remember from a super limited cd-r singles collection on PseudoArcana a while back, which gathered the music from his various impossible to find 7"s, and the reason that they were impossible to find, is that he made each one by hand, elaborately cutting, gluing, pasting assembling, the only one we've ever actually seen, had little creatures hanging from strings, a haunted little diorama, WOW.
So this latest ep, is another fantastically assembled object, a handmade silkscreened miniature box, holding within it a three dimensional multi layered framed mini diorama, a ballet dancer, hovering over a backdrop, hidden behind a hand made paper frame. So nice, and it perfectly suits the music inside, a darkly delicate ambience, hushed soft drones and a gentle piano, drifty, and ethereal, minimal, but strangely lush as well, softly spidery melodies, a languorous drift, abstract slow motion Appalachia, stretched into blurred drifts, muted twang, and minor key shimmer, deeeeeeep droning rumbles, subtle murky percussion, such breathtaking Spartan dreaminess. Gorgeous.
INCREDIBLY LIMITED, as each one is made by hand, so not sure how long we'll have these...
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"

LITTLEJOHN, HERBERT STANLEY 17th And 18th Century Works Of Funerary Violin (The Guild Of Funerary Violinists) cd-r 12.98
Another installment in the convoluted and lost history of the Funerary Violin. A mysterious body of work, attributed to the equally mysterious Guild Of Funerary Violinists, all of which was lost to history until quite recently. A book has been published, and a handful of recordings were discovered, illuminating this amazing, and surprisingly, entirely fictitious movement.
We've reviewed two other unearthed recordings from this historically valuable series, one a compilation called Babcotte, Sudbury And Eaton: The English School Of Funerary Origin, the other by Wilhelm Kleinbach called The Funerary Notebooks Of Herr Gratchenfleiss. Check those reviews more a more detailed description of the Guild and its contentious history. Both were recorded before the advent of modern recording, preserved with the fuzz and whir and scratchiness of old wax cylinder recordings, gorgeous, mournful, beautiful, delicate and wistful, each a heart wrenching funereal lament, but all of it a massive hoax.
Not that it takes away from the brilliance of the music, or the incredibly detailed liner notes, if anything it makes it even more amazing. That someone could create what is essentially an entire alternate history, complete with sound.
These recordings, supposedly performed Herbert Stanley Littlejohn in 1956, were taken from a book of music discovered in a dusty corner of a church in 1954, dating back to the late 1600's! In the process of recording the pieces, Littlejohn tripped on a cat, fell down a flight of stairs and smashed his skull dying instantly. This disc collects the finished pieces from that session.
As with all the Funerary Violin releases, the liner notes are extensive, names, dates, events, the notes to this disc are particularly humorous commenting on, among other things, "the poor technical performance standard amongst guild members in what remains one of our darkest periods." And like the other discs, the music is exquisite, genuine or not, utterly lovely, the melodies are mournful and sad, the playing smooth and refined, the notes drifting dreamlike into the starry night, the recording lo-fi, but warm and shimmery. Even without the amazing backstory and fabricated history, this would still be entirely recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Grave (Addleston)"
MPEG Stream: "Pompe I (Meunier)"
MPEG Stream: "Intrada (Faustmann)"

LLOYD, DALE Akaska For Record (Elevator Bath) picture disc 17.98
Strange that we haven't posted anything about Dale Lloyd in previous lists, but this is a man whose influence should be well known throughout the experimental and sound-art communities. Lloyd runs the And/OAR label, which specializes in environmental soundscaping with a few subsidies that push toward an electronic-pop context. Even so, the last full album from Mr. Lloyd emerged well over five years ago. This album continues in Elevator Bath's very impressive series of picture discs, which began in 2008 with releases of corroded drones from our own Jim Haynes and kosmiche brainmelting from Rick Reed. Lloyd's work is an excellent companion to these two releases. One of the two sides opens with a modulating hiss that harmonizes with a sinewy drone and gets punctured by a series bone-numbing electrical charges for something that could have some unsavory context had it been generated by John Duncan, but then again it could be a field recording of a grain-slew with minor post-production techniques. In fact, each of the pieces on Akasha For Record have this sense that they could be the results of well-situated field recordings like those of Tarab or Eric La Casa, as the smudges and grittiness of these recordings allude to such strategies. Another track shimmers like the vibration of a loose piece of metal on an industrial HVAC, with the timbres generating a surprisingly fluid and beautiful resonance like something Andrew Chalk would actively seek out. There's greater evidence of field recordings on the tracks that do feature the roar of surf and a cold wind intermingled with the softened white noise of sand getting pushed around. Lloyd had devised this album to complement the crackles that get magnified through the picture disc - a medium which notoriously wears heavier than most pressings of vinyl. The album certainly works well with its medium. Beautiful stuff, and super limited to 216 copies.

LOCKWELD Metal Pieces (Crucial Blast) cd-r 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
Lockweld should be a familiar name to industrial fans. This noisy sampling duo has been at it for years. For their Crucial Blast recording, Karen and Makita employ a mighty arsenal of synthesizers, samplers, vocals, electronics, machinery, tools, weapons(!) and fire(!). The sound is brutal and harsh. A thick wall of sound, white noise and pink noise with looped samples creating barely audible rhythms and the occasional melody being beaten bloody amid all the ROOOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRR. And since it's called "Metal Pieces", each cd comes with a little baggie of custom cut little metal pieces. Cool.
RealAudio clip: "We Can Not Return"
RealAudio clip: "Metal Pieces"
RealAudio clip: "With Best Regards, As Always"

LOCKWOOD, ANNEA Early Works 1967-82 (EM Records) cd 22.00
Hooray, Japan's EM Recordings is back with two new discs! You never know what sort of stuff they're gonna dig up for reissue, only that it's probably going to be pretty far-out and interesting. The releases we're reviewing this week both fit that general description, thought they couldn't be more different. One's an amusing and strange attempt at calypso-punk (!) from 'Wild' Billy Childish, the other, this, is an anthology of early sound-experiments from New Zealand-born avant garde composer Annea Lockwood. She studied in England and Europe during the sixties and early seventies, and since 1973 has been a professor at Vassar College in New York. Her music, as heard here, is on the conceptual side, abstract but fascinating and listenable. Her 1970 album The Glass World (previously reissued on cd in 1997 by What Next? Recordings) appears here in its entirety, plus her 19 minute droning musique concrete tape piece "Tiger Balm", originally released on a 10" record in 1970 that came with issue number 9 of SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde magazine.
Moody and mysterious, her Glass World is a weird and wonderful place, indeed. Clinking, tinkling, scraping, shimmering, humming, droning... every sound you could imagine somehow generating with pieces of glass, and more! It originated as a performance piece she developed in 1966, of "discreet sound actions" all using glass as the prime source material which has been bowed, scraped, shattered, tapped, etc. There's 23 individual tracks, each one with a straightforward title ("Glass Rod Vibrating", "Water Gong", "Wine Glass", "Bottle Tree Showered With Fragments") more or less explaining what's going on, usually with a glass object noun and sound-producing verb. It's a veritable catalog, sort of a Smithsonian Folkways approach: The Sounds Of North American Glass Objects! Meanwhile "Tiger Balm" features a woman's orgasmic sighs, tinkling bells, and of course the purring of a big cat... it's pretty trippy!
This includes two booklets, one with vintage photos, scores, and Lockwood's own liner notes. The other documents the realization of her conceptual art piece "Piano Transplants" (i.e. "Piano Burning", "Piano Garden", etc.). As with all EM releases, this is really nicely presented (and now, EM's putting things out in non-jewel case, cardboard digi-packaging).
Oh, and EM fans, look out for this summer's "EM Under Water Series" of five surfing-related reissues from '60s/'70s Australia, all really cool stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Micro Glass Shaken"
MPEG Stream: "Glass Rod Vibrating"
MPEG Stream: "Vibrating Pane"

LOCKWOOD, ANNEA The Glass World (What Next? ) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"For me, every sound has its own minute form - is composed of small flashing rhythms, shifting tones, has momentum, comes, vanishes, live out its own structure." - Annea Lockwood. 'Glass World' originated a two hour performance of discreet sound actions, using glass as the prime source material which has been bowed, scraped, shattered, tapped, etc.

LOCRIAN Dort Is Der Weg b/w Frozen In Ash (Flingco) 7" 10.98
Latest from these blackened doomdrone soundscapers, once again demonstrating that these guys definitely don't let any sort of genre classification define what they do, cuz what they do here is let their krautrock freak flag fly, whipping up a gorgeous chunk of hazy, rhythmic psychedelia, a reinterpretation of a classic Popol Vuh jam (from 1976), which does indeed channel the same sort of brooding, blissy mesmer, a dreamy, dark dirge, hypnotic and hazy, spidery guitar melodies over simple spare propulsive drumming, all wreathed by distant synth shimmer, the female vocals adding an ethereal angelic vibe to the proceedings. The track explodes about halfway through in a little squall of blackened psychnoise, only to slip right back into it, albeit a bit louder and heavier, some seriously mesmerizing metallic shoegaze krautrock heaviness, that had us sort of wishing these guys sounded like this all the time.
But then the B side goes ahead and reminds us why, as cool as that would be, we would most definitely miss what these guys do already. And what they do here is, lay down some frantic buzzy black metal riffing, letting the riffs unfurl into long streaks of tangled melodies and layered lush blackdronebuzz. Howled vokills come in, and the sounds drifts ever closer to pure black metal, the tension in waiting for the song to kick in, the blasting beats, the galloping crush, but instead, a sort of liquid black drone surface from below, and begins to envelop the sounds, the whole track growing darker and more dense, until finally, inexplicably, the band introduce melancholy acoustic guitar, and what sounds like piano, changing the tenor of the song completely, the buzzing riff no longer defining the sound, but instead acting as a blurred shimmery backdrop for the creeping dirgey drift that's now at the forefront, the drums minimal and spare, the sound seeming to build once again for an inevitable black metal blow out, but instead, the song shifts and fades out an soft squall of hazy shimmer and slowly dissipating psychedelia.
Maybe the best stuff we've heard from these guys, which at this point is saying a LOT.
Gorgeous packaging too, a striking black on black 4 panel sleeve, includes a sticker and a download code. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "Dort Ist Der Weg"

LOCRIAN Drenched Lands (Small Doses / At War With False Noise) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Somehow this is exactly what we've been hankering for. A sprawling blackened songsuite, equal parts dark ambience, dense drones, heavy electronics, buzzy lo-fi almost new wave sounding keyboards, spidery post rock guitars and soft noise. Even writing it, that seems like a pretty unworkable, or unrealistic combination, but somehow these Midwesterners make it work. Big time.
They definitely could be considered sonic brethren of bands like SUNNO))), Pussygutt, MZ412, Troum, To Blacken The Pages, Wolf Eyes, Vulture Club and the like. However, Locrian take that sound someplace all their own, creating actual SONGS, as opposed to just soundscapes or drones. And there's a definitely black metal component for sure, no matter how abstract. Guitars are everywhere, seemingly the foundation for Locrian's sound, although as often as the guitars are unfurling spidery post rocky melodies, or distant reverbed riffs, they are also smeared into warm whirling clouds, left to drift and gradually change shape, or pulled apart and allowed to crumble into jagged little shards. Noise in a big component too, often the prettiest parts are treated with a patina of grinding soft focus electronics, or groaning downtuned tones.
The record opens with a gorgeous, elegiac guitar part, simple and stripped down, like it could be a black metal intro, until the organ comes in, wheezy and warbly, giving the track a weirdly lo-fi almost industrial vibe, definitely had us wishing it was in fact more than just a two minute intro.
That is until track two, "Ghost Repeater" takes over. An epic slow motion drift, strange echoey sounds floating in a warm muted sea of buzz and drone, glitched out bits of electronics, and eventually, a very epic black metal riff, that remains off in the distance, repeated and repeated until it too simply becomes another layer of sound.
"Barren Temple Obscured By Contaminated Fogs" (another great title), begins again with some creepy spindly guitar, draped over a deep pulsing low end, before transforming into some seriously abject and WAY abstract blacknoise. Shrieked distorted vokills over that same spidery guitar, Abruptum like ambience meets warped Goblinesque synth drones, the whole track twisted and warbly, eventually the vocals dropping out, leaving the buzzing guitars and wheezing keyboards to play out a super haunting horrorscape. "Epicedium" is delicate and crystalline, noodly guitar lines looped beneath a glimmering softly throbbing drone, peppered with fragmented strums, soon the track begins to grow gradually more and more distorted, the guitars more tense and frantic, the mood so haunting and weirdly beautiful and so subtly dramatic, reminding us of a super twisted soundtrack to some lost Giallo.
The record proper ends with another awesomely titled jam: "Obsolete Elegy In Cast Concrete", tolling bells, space kraut drones, all washed out and shimmery, the bed for some seriously corrosive guitar buzz and grind, adding layer after layer of crunch and rumble, but also slipping to some seriously black chug, joined by still more harsh hellish vox, a strange combination for sure but manages to be both beautiful and brutal, until the very end, where the track shifts gears and becomes all dramatic and melodic and weirdly majestic.
The cd features a bonus track called "Greyfield Shrines", which is nearly as long as all of the other tracks combined, a sprawling slow building blackened world of sound that slithers from hushed drift, to fractured buzz, to woozy moody ambience to blown out speaker shredding crunch, absolutely epic, super cinematic, mysterious, and even at it's noisiest, still quite melodic and blackly beautiful. Most definitely a track that could have been (and we think maybe was) a record all on its own.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Cool fold over arigato-pack style sleeve, with a full color printed booklet. And for anyone going to the Matchitehew metal/noise festival in Chicago in a few weeks, you'll be able to catch these guys live.
MPEG Stream: "Obsolete Elegy In Effluvia and Dross"
MPEG Stream: "Ghost Repeater"
MPEG Stream: "Obsolete Elegy In Lost Concrete"

LOCRIAN Drenched Lands (Bloodlust) lp + 3" cd-r 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL AS AN LP + 3" CD-R (as the record apparently was too long to fit on a single lp)!!!
Somehow this is exactly what we've been hankering for. A sprawling blackened songsuite, equal parts dark ambience, dense drones, heavy electronics, buzzy lo-fi almost new wave sounding keyboards, spidery post rock guitars and soft noise. Even writing it, that seems like a pretty unworkable, or unrealistic combination, but somehow these Midwesterners make it work. Big time.
They definitely could be considered sonic brethren of bands like SUNNO))), Pussygutt, MZ412, Troum, To Blacken The Pages, Wolf Eyes, Vulture Club and the like. However, Locrian take that sound someplace all their own, creating actual SONGS, as opposed to just soundscapes or drones. And there's a definitely black metal component for sure, no matter how abstract. Guitars are everywhere, seemingly the foundation for Locrian's sound, although as often as the guitars are unfurling spidery post rocky melodies, or distant reverbed riffs, they are also smeared into warm whirling clouds, left to drift and gradually change shape, or pulled apart and allowed to crumble into jagged little shards. Noise in a big component too, often the prettiest parts are treated with a patina of grinding soft focus electronics, or groaning downtuned tones.
The record opens with a gorgeous, elegiac guitar part, simple and stripped down, like it could be a black metal intro, until the organ comes in, wheezy and warbly, giving the track a weirdly lo-fi almost industrial vibe, definitely had us wishing it was in fact more than just a two minute intro.
That is until track two, "Ghost Repeater" takes over. An epic slow motion drift, strange echoey sounds floating in a warm muted sea of buzz and drone, glitched out bits of electronics, and eventually, a very epic black metal riff, that remains off in the distance, repeated and repeated until it too simply becomes another layer of sound.
"Barren Temple Obscured By Contaminated Fogs" (another great title), begins again with some creepy spindly guitar, draped over a deep pulsing low end, before transforming into some seriously abject and WAY abstract blacknoise. Shrieked distorted vokills over that same spidery guitar, Abruptum like ambience meets warped Goblinesque synth drones, the whole track twisted and warbly, eventually the vocals dropping out, leaving the buzzing guitars and wheezing keyboards to play out a super haunting horrorscape. "Epicedium" is delicate and crystalline, noodly guitar lines looped beneath a glimmering softly throbbing drone, peppered with fragmented strums, soon the track begins to grow gradually more and more distorted, the guitars more tense and frantic, the mood so haunting and weirdly beautiful and so subtly dramatic, reminding us of a super twisted soundtrack to some lost Giallo.
The record proper ends with another awesomely titled jam: "Obsolete Elegy In Cast Concrete", tolling bells, space kraut drones, all washed out and shimmery, the bed for some seriously corrosive guitar buzz and grind, adding layer after layer of crunch and rumble, but also slipping to some seriously black chug, joined by still more harsh hellish vox, a strange combination for sure but manages to be both beautiful and brutal, until the very end, where the track shifts gears and becomes all dramatic and melodic and weirdly majestic.
The 3" cd-r features a cd track that's not on the vinyl called "Greyfield Shrines", which is nearly as long as all of the other tracks combined, a sprawling slow building blackened world of sound that slithers from hushed drift, to fractured buzz, to woozy moody ambience to blown out speaker shredding crunch, absolutely epic, super cinematic, mysterious, and even at it's noisiest, still quite melodic and blackly beautiful. Most definitely a track that could have been (and we think maybe was) a record all on its own.
MPEG Stream: "Obsolete Elegy In Effluvia and Dross"
MPEG Stream: "Ghost Repeater"
MPEG Stream: "Obsolete Elegy In Lost Concrete"

LOCRIAN Falling Towers / After The Torchlight (Black Horzions) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest jam from these atmospheric black metal drone ambient soundscapers. Now expanded to a trio, this epic two track workout finds the band sounding better than ever. Slow burning riffs churn relentlessly over a swirl of electronics and rumbling drones, vocals drift ghostlike throughout, melodies peal amidst the crumbling low end and heaving blackness, like some epic post doom, stripped of it drums and blurred into whirling shimmering riffscapes, haunting and otherworldly, abject and post industrial, pulsing and throbbing, gradually transforming from doomdrone to dreamdrift, but remaining heavy and mysterious.
The second track begins with a buzzing black riff, but instead of exploding into a blast of black fury, the riff seems to melt into the background, the various drones and tones bleeding into the riff, all smeared into a swirling black cloud of slow burning blackness, washed out and gauzy, growing more and more abstract, the riff pulled apart, the notes left to drift amidst a vast sea of wheezing chordal shimmer and crumbling glitched out electronics. So awesome. And if that wasn't enough, the flipside features a palindromic rendering of the two songs, the whole first side played in reverse, a warped woozy, swooping bit of twisted droned out black mystery.
Super sweet packaging, silver reflective sticker on the tape, seven panel, silver ink on black matte j-card. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!

LOCRIAN Plague Journal (Bloodlust!) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Super limited tour only 7", we got the very last handful. Unlike the blackened drones on Locrian's full length, this is way more in the realm of guitar heaviness, not quite black metal, but there is definitely some shades of black happening. A killer riff fragment, looped over and over, hypnotic and trancelike, slowly evolving in tone and timbre, getting higher and more jagged, while all around it, the ambient sounds build to a thunderous almost industrial cacophony.
The B side is a billowy bit of spaced out drift, trippy synth shimmer, another looped bit of abstract guitar, swirling effects, layered textures, erupting into a stretch of slow motion doominess right at the end. More dark heavy beauty from this Chicago duo.
All white cover, white labels, very little info, a Xeroxed insert with liner notes. 300 copies, these are the last ones ever.

LOCRIAN The Crystal World (Utech) 2cd 17.98
Full length number three from these black drone audio alchemists, offering up their latest sprawling epic, this one conceptually based on a JG Ballard novel about a leper colony, and the mysteriously crystallizing forest that threatens their existence. Heady stuff, but the sort of concept perfectly suited to Locrian's sprawling sonic mystery, epic and cinematic, haunting and harrowing, the music of Locrian already plays like a soundtrack, their sound evoking all manner of other worlds and alternate realities, lost civilizations and spiritual planes, underworlds and inner worlds and what lies between.
Normally a duo, here Locrian have been expanded to a trio, with an additional member contributing electronics and percussion, allowing the band to expand their sound even further, stretching out into lengthy explorations, drifting from deep buzzing drones to starry fields of glitched out electronics, swooping spacey black ambience to lumbering blackened doom, abstract post rock to churning crumbling low end dirges.
After what plays like a black metal power electronic intro, all corrosive black buzz, layered drones, distant buried melodies, howled anguished vox, and delicate tinkling chimes, the record shifts into a more tranquil blackness, the two tracks connected by those tinkling chimes, that melodic refrain, distant melodies drift beneath chant like vocals, processed guitar throb and thrum, eventually evolving into a stretch of gorgeously epic doomic plod, deep ominous vocals over keening high end melodies, subtle tribal drumming, and swirling ambience, a glacial groove that finally dissolves into a squall of white noise.
Gorgeous looped proggy guitars drift over electronic squelches, dizzying and hypnotic, multiple guitars layered into a mesmerizing harmony, eventually, another melody, and a thick crumbling distorted riff join in, drums too, and it's a fantastic bit of hypnotic chaos, laced with squealing guitars and bursts of free drum splatter.
The record unfurls an epic bit of hushed dronemusic minimalism, that also eventually erupts into some abstract rhythmic churn, looped and cyclical, all over grinding guitars and FX drenched squealing electronics, before slipping into some caustic blackened drones, abject and grim, the guitars rumbling and crumbling and super distorted, while voices wail and howl way off in the distance. Finally the record finishes with a long stretch of moody melodic doom, acoustic guitars, crooned wordless vox, swirls of psychedelic guitar, high end electronic streaks, which expand into another pounding dirge, this one strangely pretty, even the anguished vokills can't take way from the track's lilting loveliness, a hazy bit of metallic slowcore, wrapped in increasingly frantic psychguitar, before all of that fades out completely, leaving just acoustic guitar, strings and what sounds like harmonium or accordion, a darkly emotional outro, culminating in a wild tangle of frenzied freaked out strings.
But that's just the first disc. Disc two continues with a nearly 54 minute single track, all instrumental, an epic sprawling, ever shifting chunk of blackened dronemusic, that could have easily been its own record. Deep ominous pulses, give way to hazy washed out melodies, laid over that ominous low end creep, which slips into spaced out looped electronics and haunting stretches of chantlike chorales, blown out blasts of white noise psychguitar splinter into blurred expanses of soft focus static, all wrapped around buried melodies, and muted metallic riffage, huge pummeling sheets of blown out black rrrrooaar plunge directly into black hole shimmer, laced with woozy bass thrum, and finally a stretch of tinkling echo drenched ambience, a swirling cloud of tinkling guitar melodies wrapped in thick black rumbles, and creepy looped laughter.
Epic and gorgeous, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES! Housed in a super swank Stoughton style cd gatefold with gorgeous grim art by aQ pal Justin Bartlett, aka Vuberkvlt.
MPEG Stream: "Triumph Of Elimination"
MPEG Stream: "The Crystal World"
MPEG Stream: "Pathogens"

LOCRIAN The Crystal World (Utech) lp 19.98
This killer slab of blackened ambient doom drone, a Record Of The Week here when it came out on compact disc, NOW ON VINYL!!! (But it doesn't include the bonus 2nd disc that the cd had.)
Full length number three from these black drone audio alchemists, offering up their latest sprawling epic, this one conceptually based on a JG Ballard novel about a leper colony, and the mysteriously crystallizing forest that threatens their existence. Heady stuff, but the sort of concept perfectly suited to Locrian's sprawling sonic mystery, epic and cinematic, haunting and harrowing, the music of Locrian already plays like a soundtrack, their sound evoking all manner of other worlds and alternate realities, lost civilizations and spiritual planes, underworlds and inner worlds and what lies between.
Normally a duo, here Locrian have been expanded to a trio, with an additional member contributing electronics and percussion, allowing the band to expand their sound even further, stretching out into lengthy explorations, drifting from deep buzzing drones to starry fields of glitched out electronics, swooping spacey black ambience to lumbering blackened doom, abstract post rock to churning crumbling low end dirges.
After what plays like a black metal power electronic intro, all corrosive black buzz, layered drones, distant buried melodies, howled anguished vox, and delicate tinkling chimes, the record shifts into a more tranquil blackness, the two tracks connected by those tinkling chimes, that melodic refrain, distant melodies drift beneath chant like vocals, processed guitar throb and thrum, eventually evolving into a stretch of gorgeously epic doomic plod, deep ominous vocals over keening high end melodies, subtle tribal drumming, and swirling ambience, a glacial groove that finally dissolves into a squall of white noise.
Gorgeous looped proggy guitars drift over electronic squelches, dizzying and hypnotic, multiple guitars layered into a mesmerizing harmony, eventually, another melody, and a thick crumbling distorted riff join in, drums too, and it's a fantastic bit of hypnotic chaos, laced with squealing guitars and bursts of free drum splatter.
The record unfurls an epic bit of hushed dronemusic minimalism, that also eventually erupts into some abstract rhythmic churn, looped and cyclical, all over grinding guitars and FX drenched squealing electronics, before slipping into some caustic blackened drones, abject and grim, the guitars rumbling and crumbling and super distorted, while voices wail and howl way off in the distance. Finally the record finishes with a long stretch of moody melodic doom, acoustic guitars, crooned wordless vox, swirls of psychedelic guitar, high end electronic streaks, which expand into another pounding dirge, this one strangely pretty, even the anguished vokills can't take way from the track's lilting loveliness, a hazy bit of metallic slowcore, wrapped in increasingly frantic psychguitar, before all of that fades out completely, leaving just acoustic guitar, strings and what sounds like harmonium or accordion, a darkly emotional outro, culminating in a wild tangle of frenzied freaked out strings. So good.
And like the cd version, housed in a super swank eye popping jacket with gorgeous grim art by aQ pal Justin Bartlett, aka Vuberkvlt. Only 500 copies pressed!
MPEG Stream: "Triumph Of Elimination"
MPEG Stream: "The Crystal World"
MPEG Stream: "Pathogens"

LOCRIAN Visible / Invisible (Small Doses) 3"cd-r 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ultra crazy limited tour only 3"cd-r from these Chicago blackened dronelords, we tried to order a ton of these, but managed to get less than a dozen. Considering it was limited to 93 copies, and most of those went on tour with the band, these are most likely the last and only copies we'll ever get.
Which is a bummer cuz this is really great. Two tracks, both the same length, the second is the exact reverse of track one - which makes this a musical palindrome. Prettier than most of the other Locrian stuff, delicate and drifty, washed out and woozy, long fuzzy layered drones, a little bit space-y, very hypnotic and trancelike, the end of the first track (and thus the beginning of the second) builds to a buzzing blown out looped sounding coda, which then follows the reverse path through the length of the second track eventually settling back down into some soft sun dappled dronebliss, before finally fading out completely. Quite lovely, even the heavy parts are more pretty than heavy. Only 10 or so of these in stock. Be quick, or be without...
LIMITED TO 93 COPIES. Housed in a mini plastic sleeve, with a cool black on black fold out insert.
MPEG Stream: "Visible / Invisible"
MPEG Stream: "Invisible / Visible"

LOCRIAN & CHRISTOPH HEEMANN s/t (Handmade Birds) cd 12.98
Now here to list on compact disc, too!
Christoph Heemann (of HNAS , Mirror, and many other storied tape music/drone outfits), finds himself in yet another collaboration, this time with none other than aQ faves, Chicago's blackened doom drone duo Locrian, and the results are fruitful to say the least. Albeit a bleak and black fruit, that the shiny and happy amongst you might be hesitant to taste. But then, there's much to enjoy, even for the less adventurous, in the moody drifting darkness conjured up here.
We see Locrian dialing back the harshness in favor of a more hushed and dreary post apocalyptic soundscapery. Opener "Hecatomb" starts with a creepily stark, almost Nitschian drone, complete with what sound like a cacophony of burbling horns, with disassociated fragments of 12 string guitar floating atop a heady haze of drifting textures. Part way through a lush drift of beautiful piano harmonies intermingle with a pulsating tom tom, while scraping doom-laden electronics lie buried beneath the surface, creating a haunting whirlpool of mesmeric aphotic bliss. The proceedings take a much grimmer turn with "Loathe The Light". As the title suggests, this is a dark one. Wonderfully depressive skeletal guitars outline the overall feeling of doomed helplessness. Scraping cymbals swell and clang and hiss, tortured blacked screams reverberate inside some long forgotten cavern. The mood is tense and forlorn and beautiful. "Edgeless City" has more of a lost in the cold depths of space vibe. Writhing guitar textures seep out across a barren moonscape, buzzing and dubbed out, it builds subtly into a spacious brooding stasis. A throbbing grumbling underpins the whole thing, a moody desolate soundtrack for impending end times. The last cut "The Drowned Forest" is a deep and murky miasma of death time vocal crooning and cold twisting drone harmonics, completely enveloping and angelic, like a much bleaker depressive Tim Hecker, the track as a whole developing into a churning lush hypnotizing swirl of glacial black drone. A stunning collaboration brought to us by the always ruling Handmade Birds imprint. RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Hecatomb"
MPEG Stream: "The Drowned Forest"

LOCRIAN & CHRISTOPH HEEMANN s/t (Handmade Birds) lp 24.00
Christoph Heemann (of HNAS , Mirror, and many other storied tape music/drone outfits), finds himself in yet another collaboration, this time with none other than aQ faves, Chicago's blackened doom drone duo Locrian, and the results are fruitful to say the least. Albeit a bleak and black fruit, that the shiny and happy amongst you might be hesitant to taste. But then, there's much to enjoy, even for the less adventurous, in the moody drifting darkness conjured up here.
We see Locrian dialing back the harshness in favor of a more hushed and dreary post apocalyptic soundscapery. Opener "Hecatomb" starts with a creepily stark, almost Nitschian drone, complete with what sound like a cacophony of burbling horns, with disassociated fragments of 12 string guitar floating atop a heady haze of drifting textures. Part way through a lush drift of beautiful piano harmonies intermingle with a pulsating tom tom, while scraping doom-laden electronics lie buried beneath the surface, creating a haunting whirlpool of mesmeric aphotic bliss. The proceedings take a much grimmer turn with "Loathe The Light". As the title suggests, this is a dark one. Wonderfully depressive skeletal guitars outline the overall feeling of doomed helplessness. Scraping cymbals swell and clang and hiss, tortured blacked screams reverberate inside some long forgotten cavern. The mood is tense and forlorn and beautiful. "Edgeless City" has more of a lost in the cold depths of space vibe. Writhing guitar textures seep out across a barren moonscape, buzzing and dubbed out, it builds subtly into a spacious brooding stasis. A throbbing grumbling underpins the whole thing, a moody desolate soundtrack for impending end times. The last cut "The Drowned Forest" is a deep and murky miasma of death time vocal crooning and cold twisting drone harmonics, completely enveloping and angelic, like a much bleaker depressive Tim Hecker, the track as a whole developing into a churning lush hypnotizing swirl of glacial black drone. A stunning collaboration brought to us by the always ruling Handmade Birds imprint. RECOMMENDED!
Fyi, there's a cd version too, we have a handful, waiting to get more though...
MPEG Stream: "Hecatomb"
MPEG Stream: "The Drowned Forest"

LOCRIAN / CENTURY PLANTS Dissolvers (Tape Drift) lp 13.98
Another fantastic split, on a list jam packed with killer splits, this one featuring recent aQ Record Of The Week honorees Locrian, whose The Crystal World double disc was a big hit around here, and Century Plants, a duo we dig who are WAY under represented on the aQ site, with only a single cd-r having ever been reviewed.
Unlike the black and buzz of The Crystal World, Locrian explores a sound world more hushed and minimal, more cinematic and soundtracky, two long tracks, that flow into one another, the first beginning with streaks of shimmering buzz, over deep ominous drifts, tinkling melodies way off in the distance, soon overcome by thick swaths of swirling thrum and whir, gorgeous shards of keening high end, bits of electronics and feedback, the sounds thickening as the track progresses, sounding more like a lost John Carpenter soundtrack that some avant/post black metal thing, haunting and atmospheric and mysterious. Which leads directly into the second track, pulsing, throbbing, muted melodies, a brooding tense slow build, strangely pretty, but still dark and ominous, plenty of murky buzz and roiling blackness beneath the surface, the track never exploding into something strictly heavy, instead, drifting darkly and dreamily as a suite of mysterious cinematic dronemusic.
Century Plants dial it down even further, an ultraminimal strum and drift, whispering riffage over a cavernous low end hum, tendrils of minor key melody intertwine with smears of moaning low end, soft swoops of backwards guitars, and super subtle effects, the sound gradually becoming more insistent, the guitars subtly buzzier and blacker. The second track begins similarly, a soft hushed shimmer, but quickly blossoms into something much more sinister, a thick slab of churning black SUNNO)))-ed buzz, a glacial low end drift, that heaves and roils, but is deftly smoothed into something more tranquil and otherworldly, than heavy and harrowing.
Fantastic stuff from both bands. Definitely needing to hear more Century Plants, and of course can never get enough of Locrian.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in a beautiful silkscreened blue metallic ink on matte black sleeve, with heavy printed insert.

LOCRIAN / CONTINENT split (self-released) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

LOCRIAN / HARPOON split (HeWhoCorrupts Inc.) 7" 12.98
With all the Locrian love going on, a recent Record Of The Week, a new split lp on this week's list, thought we'd get a few more of these back in to relist as well...
Killer tag team match up from two of Chicago's finest, Locrian and Harpoon. We've long been fans of Locrian's grim dark drift, infusing their ritualistic black ambience with plenty of black metal, but here, they go full on black, spitting out a slab of dirgey, muted, murky, howled hate. After a rumbling intro, the track explodes into a swirling cloud of frenzied riffing, loping demonic pound, and shrieked anguished vokills, with the drummer from Velnias driving them in their dirgey blackened plod, grim and atmospheric and surprisingly metal. We dig. Ambient drone fanciers might be a bit... overpowered, but everyone else will definitely dig.
The flipside comes from Harpoon, who we've yet to list, which is a bummer as it features ex members of LONG time aQ faves (and tUMULt recording artists!) 7000 Dying Rats. But Harpoon is not comedy grind, no this is some serious metallic brutality, slipping from frenzied blackened thrash, to pounding downtuned doom, throat shredding vox, crushing riffage, all wound around some complex arrangements and of course some seriously brutal drum damage.
A pretty heavy seven inches for sure. And in some seriously sweet packaging. Letter pressed black on black gatefold sleeve on super thick nice cardstock, green and black swirled vinyl, a full color two sided printed insert, and a download card.