LOCUST You'll Be Safe Forever (Editions Mego) cd 16.98
We always wanted to like those Locust records that came out in the '90s, with their alluring 4AD-inspired visual aesthetics and matching moody atmospherics, the sound a darkly silken electronica. Even though Locust's principal technician Mark Van Hoen had worked on the best Seefeel albums (and the underappreciated side project Scala), his work in Locust never really hit the mark. The baroqueness of it all seemed a bit too contrived. The female vocals that he was so fond of seemed superfluous as well. So when Van Hoen resurrected his career last year with a record under his own name on Editions Mego, we approached it with some skepticism, but thankfully that skepticism was unfounded as he finally delivered an album of what we always hoped for. The strengths of that album - the spooky atmospheres, the hypnotic sequencing, and those breakbeats which align so nicely next to the best from Boards of Canada - are reprised here on You'll Be Safe Forever, the first Locust album in nearly 12 years.
A somber tranquility eases through You'll Be Safe Forever, with its heavily reliance on swelling ambient synths, languid samples, dark-eyed kosmische vibes, and deconstructed pop motifs. Even when Van Hoen revs up things up on a track like "Strobes," the punchiness of crunched rhythms and taut arpeggiation dissolve within the hypnotic patterning from his female vocal samples and bleary-eyed drones. "The Washer Woman" with its painterly sequencing, skittering rhythm track and tone-bent melodies has all of the tropes of a great Biosphere track. By the end of the record especially on "The Flower Lady" and "Subie", Van Hoen hits those blunted notes of low-slung basslines and slow-motion grooves that would have been right at home on Mo' Wax back in the day. One of the finest electronica records of 2013 for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Strobes"
MPEG Stream: "Fall For Me"
MPEG Stream: "Just Want You"

LOCUST You'll Be Safe Forever (Editions Mego) lp 22.00
We always wanted to like those Locust records that came out in the '90s, with their alluring 4AD-inspired visual aesthetics and matching moody atmospherics, the sound a darkly silken electronica. Even though Locust's principal technician Mark Van Hoen had worked on the best Seefeel albums (and the underappreciated side project Scala), his work in Locust never really hit the mark. The baroqueness of it all seemed a bit too contrived. The female vocals that he was so fond of seemed superfluous as well. So when Van Hoen resurrected his career last year with a record under his own name on Editions Mego, we approached it with some skepticism, but thankfully that skepticism was unfounded as he finally delivered an album of what we always hoped for. The strengths of that album - the spooky atmospheres, the hypnotic sequencing, and those breakbeats which align so nicely next to the best from Boards of Canada - are reprised here on You'll Be Safe Forever, the first Locust album in nearly 12 years.
A somber tranquility eases through You'll Be Safe Forever, with its heavily reliance on swelling ambient synths, languid samples, dark-eyed kosmische vibes, and deconstructed pop motifs. Even when Van Hoen revs up things up on a track like "Strobes," the punchiness of crunched rhythms and taut arpeggiation dissolve within the hypnotic patterning from his female vocal samples and bleary-eyed drones. "The Washer Woman" with its painterly sequencing, skittering rhythm track and tone-bent melodies has all of the tropes of a great Biosphere track. By the end of the record especially on "The Flower Lady" and "Subie", Van Hoen hits those blunted notes of low-slung basslines and slow-motion grooves that would have been right at home on Mo' Wax back in the day. One of the finest electronica records of 2013 for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Strobes"
MPEG Stream: "Fall For Me"
MPEG Stream: "Just Want You"

LOCUST, THE Limited Edition Fan Club Single (I Don't Feel A Thing) 7" 3.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Attention, everyone! In the "we thought something smelled fishy" department:
It has come to light that this 7" is definitely NOT The Locust. Apparently it is a very elaborate bootleg prank. Be warned bootlegger, The Locust.
A mysterious release from the Seattle-based fanclub of San Diego sonic assault team The Locust. This lathe-cut 7" is one side sight (a screen-print of The Locust's one-winged logo), and one side sound (six uncharacteristically spartan, yet suitably spasmodic shrieking spurts). No instruments in sight, just "vocals". The lad who dropped these off here described the stuff as "experimental"... oh. The sleeves were printed on an array of colored paper, but we've got the super deluxe silver cardstock! Yes, drool-worthy. Apparently a very very small pressing of 400 - of which we have only a wee handful. So, hop to it, bud!

LONESUMMER / MARSH split (Starlight Temple Society) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Second missive from black metal weirdo Lonesummer, whose What We Were cd-r from last list was a huge hit around here. A twisted blend of strange samples, totally blown out black metal buzz, and weird sun dappled melodic pop, all wound into a massively confusional, incredibly fucked up bit of blackened avant noise pop, or something, tough to know exactly how to describe this. We have to imagine that most black metallers would find Lonesummer just way too damaged and freaky, but for us, it's exactly the sort of weirdness we've been dying for.
The opening track sums it up pretty nicely, beginning with some sample conversations, street noise, a hushed minimal drone, which explodes into a crumbling in-the-red almost white noise blow out, the sound so saturated, it's impossible to pick out instruments, the sound just a thick cloud of swirling buzz and skree, as the track progresses, riffs seem to materialize out of the ether, but instead of taking the form of a proper BM jam, it seems more than anything to add a sense of rhythm, creating a fucked up, looped bit of buzz drenched mesmer, before, the buzz fades out, leaving some sampled African music, which eventually fades out. Phew. The next song is just s far out, beginning with some new age swoosh, some sampled wind (or is it tape hiss), a delicate chiming melody, before a tiny bit of drum skitter leads into another explosion of impossibly distorted, but weirdly pretty and shoegaze-y blacknoise. 4 tracks total from Lonesummer, and goddamn we already want more!!!
Lonesummer are paired up here with Marsh, a one man band from Minneapolis, whose take on black metal is much more primitive and raw, a bit punky, with a definite D-beat vibe, so folks into Akitsa, Malveillance, Bone Awl, this is definitely your cup of tea, but Marsh manage to infuse their own vibe, the repetitive almost looped sounding arrangements, the cool hazy washed out production, loads of effects and like Lonesummer, a weirdly off kilter pop element too. Need to hear more from these guys as well.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES, we got about half, but they won't last long, so grab one while you can. They come housed in hand sewn, African fabric, drawstring pouches, with two photocopied inserts.

LONESUMMER / MARSH split (Starlight Temple Society) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This awesomely confusional weirdo black metal split now available on cd (cd-r actually), in a dvd case with printed insert and black and white cover art, the digital version of the tape we listed a while back (we still have a couple of those left if anybody wants one before they're gone)...
Second missive from black metal weirdo Lonesummer, whose What We Were cd-r from last list was a huge hit around here. A twisted blend of strange samples, totally blown out black metal buzz, and weird sun dappled melodic pop, all wound into a massively confusional, incredibly fucked up bit of blackened avant noise pop, or something, tough to know exactly how to describe this. We have to imagine that most black metallers would find Lonesummer just way too damaged and freaky, but for us, it's exactly the sort of weirdness we've been dying for.
The opening track sums it up pretty nicely, beginning with some sample conversations, street noise, a hushed minimal drone, which explodes into a crumbling in-the-red almost white noise blow out, the sound so saturated, it's impossible to pick out instruments, the sound just a thick cloud of swirling buzz and skree, as the track progresses, riffs seem to materialize out of the ether, but instead of taking the form of a proper BM jam, it seems more than anything to add a sense of rhythm, creating a fucked up, looped bit of buzz drenched mesmer, before, the buzz fades out, leaving some sampled African music, which eventually fades out. Phew. The next song is just s far out, beginning with some new age swoosh, some sampled wind (or is it tape hiss?), a delicate chiming melody, before a tiny bit of drum skitter leads into another explosion of impossibly distorted, but weirdly pretty and shoegaze-y blacknoise. 4 tracks total from Lonesummer, and goddamn we already want more!!!
Lonesummer are paired up here with Marsh, a one man band from Minneapolis, whose take on black metal is much more primitive and raw, a bit punky, with a definite D-beat vibe, so folks into Akitsa, Malveillance, Bone Awl, this is definitely your cup of tea, but Marsh manage to infuse their own vibe, the repetitive almost looped sounding arrangements, the cool hazy washed out production, loads of effects and like Lonesummer, a weirdly off kilter pop element too. Need to hear more from these guys as well.
MPEG Stream: LONESUMMER "Our Father's Father"
MPEG Stream: LONESUMMER "1135 mg"
MPEG Stream: MARSH "Canvas"

LONESUMMER / PLANNING FOR BURIAL split (Music Ruins Lives) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We only got about 10 of these, and sadly that's all we'll ever be able to get, a new blast of twisted what-the-fuck black metal weirdness from aQ faves Lonesummer, teamed up with new-to-us Planning For Burial.
Lonesummer are in fine form, introducing their tracks with a weird sampled TV jingles before unfurling sheets of white hot, ultra brittle blasting black metal buzz, super lo-fi, and chaotic, but shot through with strange melodies, and mysterious textures, shifting from frantic frenzied blowouts, to mournful depressive doomic crawls, the vocals a buried inhuman shriek, the guitars so caustic, the sound totally high end, as if they were being played through speakers consisting of nothing but tweeters, finishing off, with a gorgeous bit of melancholy clean jangle guitar pop, the vocals sweetly sorrowful, like a more twisted lo-fi Richard Youngs, that poppiness, no doubt present in the other songs as well, just buried under avalanches of crumbling corrosive crunch. Awesome.
Planning For Burial are not nearly so abrasive, in fact, they're barely black metal at all, instead, they craft a sort of buzz drenched dreamlike slowcore, the opening track is all creepy crawly, measured emotive vox, wheezing organs, all beneath a churning layer of crumbling distortion, the result is actually quite lovely. Then the drums come in, programmed and electronic, and it gets more dramatic and majestic, and sounds almost like some twisted, 4 track, buzz doused take on Antony And The Johnsons, which is absolutely a good thing. The second track takes a woozy, depressive Cure like drift, all tinkling minor key melodies, and shuffling rhythms, and wraps it in thick buzzing bass, and swirling ethereal synths, the beats big and electronic here too, sounding not at all unlike some of the more minimal and moody Witch House jams we've heard. Finally, PFB finish off with a gorgeous softly psychedelic guitar dronescape, all washed out, blurred and bleary, the vocals buried, the guitars lustrous and thick, total hazy shoegazey dream pop drift. So killer.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES and already out of print. We have the last 10 copies, so act fast...
MPEG Stream: PLANNING FOR BURIAL "Sleping In Separate Rooms"
MPEG Stream: LONESUMMER "Joy Is A Burden"

LONGING FOR DAWN One Lonely Path (Cyclic Law) cd 15.98
Atmospheric doom from Canada.
MPEG Stream: "Access To Deliverance"
MPEG Stream: "Lethal"

LONGMONT POTION CASTLE Longbox Option Package (D.U.) 4 x cd-r, 3 x cd, 1 x DVD-r (7 discs!) 60.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Holy shit! This is the crank call mother lode. By now if you don't immediately start to giggle at the mere mention of Longmont Potion Castle, you are truly missing out. This one man prank call juggernaut has spent almost the last 20 years torturing unsuspecting folks, shop keepers, Radio Shack employees, old ladies, testosterone fueled jerks and pretty much everybody else with his totally surreal, unbelievably hilarious phone calls. This box set collects EVERY Longmont recording ever, including a whole disc of unreleased stuff, as well as the long out of print and barely available VHS tape on DVD for the first time! You think the calls are crazy, you should see the havoc this man can wreak on a call in talk show. This is absolutely essential for any one onto bizarre recordings, found sounds, prank calls, all around weirdness.
Included in this box set is LONGMONT POTION CASTLE (originally released in 1988), LONGMONT POTION CASTLE II (originally released in 1992), LONGMONT POTION CASTLE III (originally released in 1995), LONGMONT POTION CASTLE 4 (originally released in 2002), LATE EIGHTIES-VEIN (originally released in 2003), LONGMONT POTION CASTLE 5 (originally released in 2005), a bonus disc that includes a lot of the metal interludes that were cut when the original cassettes were transferred to cd, and the original LONGMONT POTION CASTLE VHS tape, now on DVD(-r) for the first time with tons of extra footage. Also includes a massive set of liner notes, with detailed track listings and the story behind each disc, as well as a custom LPC magnet. Each one personally signed by Mr. LPC himself!
Here's some of our past raves about all things LPC:
How can you not love a guy who gets off on torturing the clerks at radio shack and is obsessed with Tandy products?! A guy who spits out the most retarded and baffling products/names/etc: gugliata, voltor, leprechanjulius!! And on one disc, he continually harasses a foul mouthed cantakerous old man, but by the end of the disc, they become buddies, with the old man asking how the tape was going and LPC promising to send him a copy. FUCKING HEARTWARMING! How often do you get that on a crank call record?!!? Stupid and silly and once in a while totally inspired. This is still to this day constantly in the stereo on all of our road trips and so much Longmmont verbiage has become vernacular for us and all of our friends.
Longmont Potion Castle is the master of deadpan confusional telephone terror. Mr. Longmont no longer practices his art, having hung up his phone (hee hee... sorry) several years ago. But we can still listen and laugh. This stuff never stops being funny. The cool thing about LPC, is he's not an asshole, and he doesn't necessarily set out to piss people off, even though it's obviously inevitable. And when he does get in a tough guy "I'll kick your ass" sort of verbal sparring match, his choice of threats are so ridiculous and nonsensical, you find yourself almost embarassed for him, like the little tiny kid who is oblivious to his mortality and insists on standing up to the bully and always gets his ass whupped. Then add in his obsession with squid meat and an amazing litany of bizarre items / objects / names / services he invokes or offers or pretends to be looking for: Spencer Zebra, Aqualamb, Chowder Julius, Wovenloaf, Frickey Weaver, Chimp Giraffe Loop (making us laugh just typing those!). Wow! It really is amazingly funny. And bizarre. I
Easily the best, funniest, most bizarre series of crank calls ever. There's the always popular picking fights with strangers, but Mr. LPC does it so much better than most with his Steven Wright deadpan and his ridiculous non-sequiters. Constant references to deliveries of peacocks from Lithuania, offers of free manure, and an endless litany of nonsensical recommendations, bizarre suggestions, and problematic overtures, all delivered in that likeable guy-next-door deadpan. Always does raise the question WHY DON'T PEOPLE JUST HANG UP?!?! Lucky for us they don't. We also get a dose of Longmont's metal obsession with the occasional freaked out death metal interludes. So dumb and funny and brilliant. Be sure and keep your ears peeled for a truly distrubing call, that goes from funny to really fucking sad in a matter of minutes, between LPC, a depressed suicidal goth teen and his overbearing fucked up dad. Wow. these discs are full of magic moments like that, a few sad, lots of them just plain demented, but most of them so completely bust a gut hilarious!!
So buy this or we'll start talkin' whip, and may even bring a tennis racket toyaleyup!!!
MPEG Stream: "Syop Playing Harmonica"
MPEG Stream: "Goat"
MPEG Stream: "Levi"
MPEG Stream: "Peacock"
MPEG Stream: "UPS Freakout 1"
MPEG Stream: "Spencer Zebra"
MPEG Stream: "Aqualamb"
MPEG Stream: "Loud Tones"

LONSAI MAIKOV VS DISSONAANT ELEPHANT Thee Darkening Ov Powers (Old Europa Cafe) cd 14.98

LOOP CIRCUIT Sound on Sound (Starlight Furniture Co.) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Originally released in an edition of 88 on Japan's cassette-only G.R.O.S.S. label in 1994. Loop Circuit is a collaboration between Akifumi Nakajima (better known as sound artist Aube) and Dub Murashita (?). Limited to 222 copies, on vinyl only...

LOOP ORCHESTRA Not Overtly Orchestral (Quecksilber) cd 15.98
Attention Philip Jeck fans! This is right up your alley! The Loop Orchestra have been around for over 20 years now, and this is really only their third release in the last 15 years! Which is a shame because this is absolutely amazing and essential for anyone into looped hypnotic droney experimental music. Utilising ONLY reel to reel tape machines (NO computers) and chopped and spliced analog tape, the Loop Orchestra construct completely mesmerising, utterly sublime soundscapes of pulsing ambience, rumbling space-y backdrops beneath muted percussion, chimes and woodblocks, with reverbed faraway percussion, shimmery clouds of chordal whir, occasional melodies pulled from the ether, clinking and clattering, and lots of space and drone. Occasionally the loops get shorter and the sound becomes almost like a Raster style techno track, but for the most part, these extended pieces are blissfully droney and mesmeric. The second track is a tribute to the BBC Radiophonic Worskshop, and the final piece incorporates field recordings, the sound of water, birds, chopped up voices, and weirdly percussive little glitches. Hard not to picture a huge post apocalyptic building, burnt and gutted, the inside surprisingly alive with old battered analog reel to reel tape machines in each room, endless lengths of tape connecting all the machines, running the length of the hallways, and up and down the stairs, criss crossing the entire interior with miles of shimmery strips of plastic, all slowly making their way from machine to machine, like some decrepit Rube Goldberg invention, left to run forever into eternity, emiting a lonely hypnotic rumble.
MPEG Stream: "Son Of Not Overtly Orchestral"
MPEG Stream: "Radiophony"

LOOSERS Logic On Its Head (Woodsist / Not Not Fun) 10" 14.98

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Absolute Noise Ensemble (Blossoming Noise) cd 16.98

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches (Alien8 Recordings) cd ep 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Far from being one of the many Francisco Lopez albums of inaudible activity and near silence, "Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches" is an epic construction of densely layered field recordings. Originally released in an edition of 500 copies on ND back in 1997, this album has been long out of print. However, Lopez' insistence of this being his favorite composition to date perhaps prompted Alien 8 to pull this title back into circulation. Despite the obviousness to Lopez' source material (i.e. wind, rain storms, cricket choruses, and other natural phenomenon), the strategies that he uses to collage all of these materials are wholly synthetic and purposefully theatrical. So much so, that Allan thought this was an experimental track from the pummelling necro-metal outfit Anaal Nathrakh! Indeed, Lopez has amplified the horrific elements of these natural sounds, extending his definition of 'acousmatic music' as not simply disguising the source material but rendering it hallucinatory, vertiginous, and ominous. The album opens with an unrelenting wall of sound that surges forward in a startling jolt of mechanical screeches and insect choruses that are more electrical than natural. Lopez ramps the volume and bass equilization of these sounds up to a tumultuous crescendo of furious noise some five or six minutes later, only to abruptly cut to a quiet murky wash of miasmic swirling. Come to think of it, these strategies have much more in common with Illusion Of Safety or The Hafler Trio than the sensorially smooth transitions that have become so prominent in recent Lopez works (especially in the "Belle Confusion" series). Regardless of any precedents, "Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches" definitely qualifies as one of Lopez' masterpieces.
RealAudio clip: "Track One"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Amarok (Glacial Movements) cd 16.98
"The spookiest work I've ever done," states Francisco Lopez. His work very rarely embodies much in the way of emotional resonance, instead there's more often than not a manipulation of field recordings into stoic monuments of grey drone reflecting the physicality of sound. If there is a 'coldness' to his work, it's usually by way of his rather dry, often disembodied aesthetics which draw heavily from the conceptual models of musique concrete and acousmatic musics. So, it's quite unusual for Lopez to arrive (intentionally or otherwise) at this bleak recording on this isolationist label with this title (Amarok is the Inuit name of a monstrous wolf who destroys anyone foolish enough to hunt alone at night). The album is a single 64 minute piece, that like many a Lopez production begins in near silence for about two minutes; but slowly the first of three major movements begins through a slow acceleration of low-end rumblings that coalesce into an aerated growling that builds out of wind-whipped drones only to fade to black after a rather tense 18 minutes or so. The rest of the album is much quieter affair with the clatter of ice, metal, and distant voice hung in an evocatively black space of Lustmord / Koner shadow. A Promethean plod of slowly churning rhythmic subsonics introduces the slow finale of Amarok with distant moans and howls that could be human or lupine defaced by frigid Arctic winds. It's certainly spooky, and fortunately, Lopez is deft enough of a composer to avoid some of the ham-fisted theatrics that tend in many of the lesser dark ambient / isolationist practitioners. Recommended, for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Amarok 1"
MPEG Stream: "Amarok 2"
MPEG Stream: "Amarok 3"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Belle Confusion 969 (Sonoris) 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 prolific ethnomusicologist / ultra-minimalist Francisco Lopez was commissioned to do this as a radio piece. "Belle Confusion 969" is powerful linear electroacoustic minimalism culled from crackling field recordings made from the tropical and sub-tropical forests of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Senegal, China, and Gambia. The end result is not your average field recording collage of festive birds and dreamy rainstorms, rather it is an ominous fluctuation of alien sounds recalling the likes of The Hafler Trio. It's been the long standing AQ policy to recommend all Lopez records that are audible. Thus, "Belle Confusion 969" is both audible and recommended!

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO La Selva (V2 Archief) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Documenting the environmental sounds of a Costa Rican rainforest, Portuguese composer / ethnomusicologist Francisco Lopez has composed this continuous collage weaving the multitude of sounds from the forest: frogs, birds, rain, watrerfalls. The true feat of this album is the liner notes which features a lengthy taxonomy of the almost all of the species causing these sounds (i.e. at 29'09" there's the croak of Debdrobates pumulio - the Strawberry Dart-poison frog).

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Live In 'S-Hertogenbosch (Bottrop-Boy) cd 16.98
A few years back, Byram and I (Jim) had the preposterous idea of getting really drunk at a Francisco Lopez concert and then heckling him when he performed one of his infamous, nearly inaudible compositions, simply because, quite frankly, they really annoyed us. Having giddily consumed a bottle of whiskey and entered the gritty confines of the 7hz warehouse performance space, we were a bit surprised at Lopez' request that everyone in the audience be blindfolded. It wasn't enought to simply turn off all the lights and let the audience sit in the dark; Lopez requires more absolute sensory deprivation in order to listen to his work. Regardless of how you might interpret our perception of the show due to our sloppy intoxication, we both left elated and exhausted from his very impressive, phenomonological excursion into raw sound. Having very little definition within the reverb-happy warehouse of 7hz, Lopez' massive roar of sound steadily increased around us, before coming to an abrupt conclusion. I thought the performance was a little too quick for my tastes, until I checked my watch to discover that almost an hour and half had passed! In effect, Lopez had hypnotized me.
The cd documentation of "Live In 'S-Hertogenbosch" does its best to repeat the experience of a Francisco Lopez live show by including a blindfold along with the music itself! That said, this show is a mere 34 minutes, but it is nevertheless an impressive recording, and not at all inaudible!
RealAudio clip: "Excerpt"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Live In San Francisco (23five) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Live In San Francisco is a fantastic document of Francisco Lopez' pursuit of an 'absolute concrete music.' In previous recordings, Lopez has recontextualized the insects from rainforests, ambient din of the urban environment, human voices, the run-out grooves of vinyl, and even death metal blast beats in constructing his textural slabs of gray sound; and his live concerts rework similar themes and source material with compositional strategies that best fit the performance context. While he's performed in San Francisco numerous times, the two performances that found their way onto Live In San Francisco were the Hexaphonic show at the Lab in August 2000 and an intimate performance at 3feetofftheground in July 2001. The documentation from The Lab show opens with a noxious hiss that builds up to loud crash like a heavy steel plated door slamming shut in a cavernous warehouse. Slowly another hiss ramps out of the reverberation of his initial crescendo and becomes more and more volatile until the kill switch is cut some 25 minutes later. The second recording from 3feeofftheground resembles some of the leviathan plods from Daniel Menche as a monstrous mechanical rhythm increases in strength and ominously marches forward. As with the previous Live in 'S-Hertogenbosch document, Live in San Francisco comes with a blindfold so you too can replicate the experience of being blindfolded at a Francisco Lopez show.
MPEG Stream: "Live At The Lab"
MPEG Stream: "Live At 3feetofftheground"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Lopez Island (Elevator Bath) cd 14.98
Lopez Island is one of the many islands that dapple the Puget Sound of Washington state, located about 150 miles NW of Seattle. It seems an isolated environment that probably attracts a good deal of outdoorsy types in the summertime; yet for the field recordist / composer Francisco Lopez, he explored the island's soundscape during the winter of 1999-2000 when sleet, snow, wind, and rain perpetually fell upon the island. Lopez has always been a consummate phonographer, with his typical strategies being acousmatic in nature, whereby he would extract and filter particular sounds from his recordings and build monolithic slabs of grey sounds elegantly shifting from near silences to tumultuous crescendos. La Selva (and to a lesser extent Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches) remain the most highly regarded compositions through this strategy, with sounds becoming blurred into a miasma of turbulence, confusion, and intrigue. Here on Lopez Island, our man Lopez begins his composition with an extended passage of raw recordings, in particular there's the damp tactility of sleet sploshing amidst wet leaves and twigs. If anything, Lopez has set the stage for a very cold environment, followed by a brisk whistling of wind that Lopez slowly transforms into a thoroughly synthetic climax of sparkling drones and haunted siren songs that resemble the isolationism of BJ Nilsen, Stilluppsteypa, and the Hafler Trio much more than before. Since the release of his Live In San Francisco recording, we haven't been too keen on Francisco's output; but Lopez Island marks the inevitable return to excellence for Mr. Lopez.
MPEG Stream: "Lopez Island (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Lopez Island (extract 2)"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Machines (Elevator Bath) 2cd 17.98
"Industrial Music for Industrial People," well that was a tagline that Monte Cazzazza used to 'brand' Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records, who intended the slogan to be an expression of going beyond the 'agricultural music' which came before. Some 30 years later, and the meaning of Industrial Music has gone through numerous permutations, some of which are quite reprehensible. Yet, that transition from the 'agricultural' into the 'industrial' ethos could be apt for this body of work from the self-proclaimed purveyor of 'absolute' music, Francisco Lopez. It's all machines, all the time for this 2cd set of recordings; and he's clearly building upon the techniques he had used during his seminal recordings of natural sounds such as La Selva or Wind. Yes, yes, yes, Lopez *has* used mechanical sounds throughout his body of work, so the Industrial Records metaphor might not be an exact fit. But it's close enough.
"Klokken" is the first piece on Machines, built out of recordings collected from large collections of clocks from the Netherlands. His piece is a bright collage that overlays the precise motors and machinations found within each of those machines. As these flywheels spin and gears click, the regularity of these repetitions is surprisingly uneven, perhaps as a metaphoric explanation as why time can be a relative construct with the machines pushing time forwards and backwards ever so slightly. Whether intentional or not, this piece has a considerable aesthetic similarity to Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique, composed strictly through metronomes. It ends with 6 minutes of silence, just because that's the way Lopez is. "Fahstuhle" is more of a typical Lopez construction with the sources culled from various elevators in Germany, as the elliptical hisses and tension-based drones from the elevator cables emerge as the fundamental sound construction that Lopez punctuates with various resonant clangs and motorized ruptures. The source material to "Labs" should be somewhat self-evident, with resonant frequencies captured from large-scale institutional devices of unknown origin and pressurized aerations. Compositionally, this is again a signature Lopez piece, focussed upon the gradual acceleration and occultation of his sounds, with grandiose bursts of sustained energy. "Fabrikas" finds Lopez indulging in the fineries of chocolate and beer factories, all the while taking time to make some field recordings. At first, it seems like a reprise of the mechanical whirlings of the clock piece, but as he builds the layers with greater density, this piece grows into a huge mass of rasping buzz and accreted white noise. Excellent!
After so many years at the turn of the millennium of high caliber records, Lopez has been floundering recently. Machines is a welcome exception finding Lopez once again at the height of his game.
MPEG Stream: "Klokken"
MPEG Stream: "Fahstuhle"
MPEG Stream: "Labs"
MPEG Stream: "Fabrikas"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Qal'at Abd'al-Salam / O Parladoiro Desamortuxado (Asellus) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Francisco Lopez's monumental catalogue of field recordings, ultra minimalism, and Zen-like barely modulating pure tone recordings is a daunting one to step into. This cd collects two distinct bodies of Lopez' work with "Qal'at Abd'Al-Salam" (a loosely connected collection of field recordings of public spaces) and "O Parladoiro Desamortuxado" (fragments of highly textured noise pieces set against ultra quiet passages).

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Technocalyps (Alien8) cd 14.98

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Temizlemek (Linea Alternativa) 2cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
In answer to the first question... yes, you can hear this Lopez record. When the often inaudible Francisco Lopez gets audible, the results are some of more interesting manipulations of field recordings (along with L. Chasse, John Hudak, and Giancarlo Toniutti). And this double cd may be the best work that we have encountered. Slow burning drones layered from undefined yet organic source material lull beautifully within all of the disperate textures. Recommended.

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Untitled #180 (Alien8 Recordings) cd 13.98
For well over two decades now, Francisco Lopez has defined his impressive body of electro-acoustic composition and manipulated field recordings as "absolute concrete." Through the bulk of his recordings, he has so thoroughly abstracted the source materials (some of which he has named, some of which is unspecified) that it often realizes itself as monumental slabs of imposing rumbles and grey static steadily progressing through effectively simple compositions. In many ways, Lopez' "absolute concrete" parallels the definition of acousmatic compositions, whereby the source material is hidden from the audience to present sound in its pure form away from any visual distractions. Curiously enough, this recontexualization away from the original object is pretty much the strategy employed by Hollywood sound designers; and this course of logic is one that must have crossed Lopez' mind, as Untitled #180 culls its sound from a dozen or so Hollywood blockbusters. Given that those blockbusters so thoroughly enhance each and every sound to maximize the dramatic impact of the scene, the sounds from Untitled #180 are monstrously loud crashes often quickly cutting to yet another sound. It ends up much more of a cavalcade of thrum and crush as if Pierre Henry were to hand over some scores to Brian Lustmord (a Hollywood sound designer by day FYI). A bit of an detour for Lopez, but well worth the trip.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 180"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Untitled (1981-83) (Staalplaat) cd 7.98
This 3" cd represents the field earliest recordings from Francisco Lopez, although Lopez did remaster them in 1998 - pushing original tapes (which probably found the recordings well within the audible range) into incredibly quiet volumes. Water, radiators, and air ducts appear to have been his earliest fascinations (and ones that I believe he still seeks out, although his recording techniques have certainly improved to capture a lot of the low end from such sources). This may certainly be indicative of his earliest work, but it isn't nearly as expressive as his latest outut.

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Untitled (1993) (Staalplaat) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Some time back, AQ prankster Andee thought it funny to put a empty jewel case out on the shelves with a tag stating that the audio content was so minimal that it didn't even exist. Little did we know that this high art/bad joke concept was paralleled by the very first Reynols record -- which was a 'dematerialized' cd. With that lengthy precursor, we are happy to say that this Francisco Lopez record is NOT another in the continuum of sub-audible recordings. Rather "Untitled (1993)" is a collection of live collaborations between Lopez and a handful of guests (John Hudak, Michael Gendreau, Michale Northam, Gen Ken Montgomery, Steve Peters, and Zan Hoffmann). Lopez manages to corral all of the diverse aesthetics of these artists into the more audible spectrum of his own sound of lengthy environmental drones. Like all of the records you actually can hear by Lopez, "Untitled (1993)" is pretty fantastic.

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Untitled (2006-2007) (Monochrome Vision) 2cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The first published work in Francisco Lopez' ongoing Untitled series was Untitled 74, released on Table Of The Elements in 1998; and in less than a decade that number of untitled compositions has bloated to well above 200. With this Russian release, Lopez collects many of the Untitled recordings, dated from 2006 and 2007, giving some credence to his numbering systems. Perhaps, he didn't just start with #74 and jump around; rather he's constantly making field recordings, composing new works, and considering raw material from various collaborators, with too much work to get everything released.
It's been a while since we had to cautiously approach the work of Francisco Lopez with the concern that he might be issuing an inaudible or near-inaudible record, and even those long periods of silence which do pop up on some of his records are completely done away with on this collection. The reason for this is that each track is a discrete composition of repurposed environmental sound, stretched, blurred, occluded into magnified hiss, aerated drone, grotesquely exaggerated texture, and industrial hum snapped against the sounds of the Amazon and the Costa Rica rainforests, whose rich bird and insect life chatter in polyphonic choruses. Source material on a couple of tracks was provided by Rapoon and Lawrence English; and there's a piece that Lopez composed for an avant-garde chamber ensemble, that certainly presents an ominous atmosphere of piano stabs against agitated strings and rumbling double bass, very Zeitkratzer. As a whole, this 2cd set is Absolute Lopez near his absolute best!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 193"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 194"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 202"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 203"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Untitled 104 (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
I kid you not. This is the album where Lopez goes metal. Not the recording of sheet metal resonance, not the amplified vibrations of metal molecules, not even the inactivity of two pieces of sheet metal thoughtfully sitting alone in a room with nothing to ponder but their own existential (in)audibility. The normally sedate Lopez goes metal like Emperor, Slayer, or Cradle of Filth.
If anybody has recently witnessed the cascading power of Lopez's recent live shows, then "Untitled 104" is certainly not a surprise. Of course, Lopez sets everything up with 4 minutes of his usual silence, before a tumultuous assault of sampled metal blast beats destroys any semblence of serenity. Lopez layers wave after wave of rhythmic clatter that reveals an incredible amount of textural noise. One blast beat takes the aural center stage, and you find yourself asking "Huh? Is this Cannibal Corpse? Or was that last one from Morbid Angel? I don't know." (Actually, we suspect that all the samples are from one band, but even the metal minds here at AQ haven't confidently guessed which one.) Lopez could have unwittingly devised the ultimate trivia contest for metalheads to name the sample. 35 minutes pass (35 head spinning, if not head banging minutes) and then the metal rhythms stop. Ten more minutes of silence provide the coda.
While this record is really fucking good (indeed, it's one of Jim's favorites of the year along with Reynols' "Blank Tapes"), it is also another example of the academic / art world colonization of metal. Like Matthew Barney's awe-inspiring image in "Cremaster 2" of Dave Lombardo hammering at his drum kit behind the sound of swarming bees, Lopez's "Untitled 104" effectively translates the pure masculine power of metal to an audience who may not care for the, uh, aesthetics of metal. Fortunately, it appears that Lopez and Barney do not approach metal with a snobbish irony (like Harmony Korine's reprehensible photo-enlargements of black metal album covers that sold for tens of thousands of dollars), but such appropriation nevertheless marginalizes metal as nothing more than a texture or an attitude, far from the vibrant and deviant culture that it is.
Rant aside, if this record causes one fan of Bernhard Gunter to get into Burzum, then, as far as Aquarius Records is concerned, Lopez has succeeded. Recommended.
RealAudio clip: "Untitled 104 (excerpt)"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Untitled 123 (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98
Like almost all of the Francisco Lopez recordings, silence introduces the album, with the intention of forcing the listener into a state of mind for attentive listening. Of course, with a couple of his records being so barely audible as to render them practically empty, the staging of silence can makes us nervous that this record too is practically empty. Thankfully, we can announce that "Untitled 123" is not silence, and like those Lopez records that are audible, this one too is worth checking out!
In 2000, [the user] undertook an daunting installation of transforming an abandoned grain silo in Montreal into a gigantic instrument that could be accessed by anyone around the world via the internet. Since anybody could play the Silophone (by sending real audio files to a computer which broadcast those sounds into the huge resonatings space of the silo, which in turn were bounced back in the form streaming digital audio), it's a little unclear if the sounds that Lopez used were his own or if they included random elements from other people using the Silophone. But it does appear that Lopez was actually recording these sounds while in the space itself, and not just pulling off the net.
Anyway, I mentioned that Lopez began this album with silence, but this is disturbed by a distant grey sound which gradually increases in volume. It is not a stationary sound, but one that whips and fluctuates as if caused by moving air, but these do not sound like wind recordings. Lopez then unexpectedly jolts his composition with a series of rhythmic static bursts that are quite unusual for the normal Lopez recording and sound somewhat like the Hafler Trio's early '90s dyptic of sexually explicit recordings, "Fuck" and "Masturbatorium." These tones abruptly stop and the process begins again with another set of grey sounds emerging from the distance; these slightly more nervous with several tightly modulating vibrations extending outward from the silence. This in turn gets louder and louder, with lots of overdubbing sounds of hurricane force blasts of white noise that has all of the transcendent energy of Keiji Haino, but with none of the chords being audible. Again, this comes to an abrupt stop and the album concludes where it started with an extended period of silence.

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Untitled 150 (Antifrost) cd 15.98

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Warszawa Restaurant (Trente Oiseaux) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Warszawa Restaurant" was one of the first albums to be released from the ultra-minimalist Francisco Lopez back in 1995, though he provides hints that he has an immense amount of work that predates this album and has yet to be released. This is mostly from his ongoing "Untitled" series which begins with "Untitled 74" (one of his most unsuccessful works which happened to be released on Table of the Elements). Anyway, "Warszawa Restaurant" fits into Lopez' ideas of manipulated any given acoustic space with the intrusion of increasingly powerful drones culled from environmental recordings. Air conditioning ducts, wind, the ambient din of a city, rainforests, run out grooves for vinyl, and of course death metal blast beats ("Untitled 108") have been some of sources for the textural recordings that Lopez has manipulated into his dynamic compositions that blur the boundaries between silence and sound. For the most part, Lopez doesn't wish his source material to be known... and "Warzawa Restaurant" delivers in the mystery department. Bleak swells of grey sounds slowly breathe and fluctuate out of periods of silence, with very little direct references to the world around us. Instead, this album forces the listener to concentrate on their auricular surroundings in an attempt to make us aware of his belief that the world itself is the most extravagant instrument known to man.
RealAudio clip: "Warszawa Restaurant 4"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Wind [Patagonia] (And/OAR) cd 13.98
Wind [Patagonia] is the third in a series of recordings from Francisco Lopez which also included Building [New York] and the universally acclaimed La Selva, all three of which are raw field recordings in the Chris Watson vein of sleight edits rather than Lopez' typical strategies for acoustmatics. As you can imagine, Wind is a collection of wind recordings; and as you could probably also gather, Lopez captured these sounds in the southern regions of Argentina. Lopez himself describes this as "relentless environment of sonic strength;" and yeah, these field recordings do hold a dynamic abrasion heard in most noise records, yet the sounds are all of winds whipping across the Patagonian landscape.
MPEG Stream: "excerpt"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO & XABIER ERKIZIA Elektra Bidasoa (Ferns) cd 15.98
So, Andee just asked the perennially valid question, when it comes to Lopez recordings at least, after coming up to the front of the shop and seeing this new cd on the counter, yet hearing 'nothing' coming from the speakers: "Are you actually listening to this right now?" With a sizable portion of Lopez' nearly 300 compositions being sub-audible at best, it is in fact not always a bad idea to pose that question. It should be stated that the above query was made between tracks one and two, when Lopez was enjoying some downtime; but aside from this brief moment, Lopez is much more forthright in presenting a goodly amount of immersive sound.
For Elektra Bidasoa, he and Xabier Erkizia (better known as half of the AQ-endorsed noise-rock outfit Billy Bao!) slogged down the Bidasoa River in Spain, making recordings from the various hydroelectric plants located on that waterway. Earlier in 2011, the two presented an installation of their findings intermeshing the two sets of recordings; but here, their findings are presented in parallel. While both Lopez and Erkizia were drawing from the same source material - industrial hum, hiss, drone, and klank - they arrive at considerably different compositions. For Lopez, the whorl of the turbine, the hum of the circuit board, and the hiss of the cooling unit all become sustained elements in a gradually evolving composition of dehumanized activity. Such pneumatic and automated systems can function rightly on their own, seemingly independent of the human hand; and Lopez speaks to the engineered functionality as an aestheticized language - a poetry of the sterile and antiseptic.
Erkizia is far more in awe of those machines than Lopez', presenting his recordings with considerable dynamic force. Along with the machined drones that Lopez uses, Erkizia occasionally turns his microphones to the water which drives those dams, at times sloshing at the riverbank and at times roaring through the massive concrete sluices that guide the water through the turbines themselves. This contrast from the bursts of activity from either source, poses a threat of electrocution. Coupled with the intense explosions that Erkizia uses in his concrete-styled composition, this work can be downright scary at times.
MPEG Stream: FRANCISCO LOPEZ "Untitled 226"
MPEG Stream: XABIER ERKIZIA "Bidasoa, Presak"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO & ZAN HOFFMAN Concert For 300 Magnetic Tapes (The Tapeworm) cassette 8.98
Yet another chunk of awesome audio weirdness from UK cassette label The Tapeworm (along with three other releases reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). They had us with the title, Concert For 300 Magnetic Tapes. We were maybe envisioning something more like Reynols' Blank Tapes, a composition of the hiss and noise from playing back unrecorded audio tapes, this is Francisco Lopez after all, whose compositions offer border on the absolutely inaudible. But instead, Lopez and Zan Hoffmann solicited tapes from various musicians and artists in the international home recording 4 track cassette tape underground, and embarked on a tour, during which the two would add some of their own sounds, to a glorious cacophonous collage of the various contributions. In this wall of taped sound, impossible to tell what is pre-recorded, or what is being performed live (this recording was culled from various performances in 1994), but a hazy, washed out, softly noisy swirl of voices, and sonic snippets, truncated melodies, lots of grinding and buzzing and hissing, everything layered and tangles, often a confusional mess, but just as often coalescing into something strangely composed sounding, tinkling melodies over a heaving wall of crumbling distortion, or some distant lilting dreaminess, underpinned by jagged shards of chaotic crunch, fuzzy radio broadcast like voices swathed in gritty swirls of static, bits of guitar twang surface occasionally, before slipping back into the grey wash of constantly shifting sound. Really cool. And maybe one of the coolest compositions/performances we've heard from Lopez!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO & ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI Whint (.absolute.) 2cd 19.98
Another of Zbigniew's many projects, this time recorded in cahoots with the equally prolific minimal (often barely audible!) composer Francisco Lopez. On "Whint" these two experimental electronic superstars collaborated in creating shared "sound materials" and then produced separate pieces (Lopez on one disc, Karkowski on the other) that draw on these same sound sources -- what was originally plain old white noise before this duo got their hands on it. Now it's dynamic, whooshing, rumbling, hissing white noise, punctuated with stretches of near-silence on the Lopez disc. The extremes of volume alone make this a scary listen. Note: packaged in a clear jewelcase with no booklet or other artwork, just the cds, a la so many other experimental/electronic discs these days. What is it with that aesthetic? For $20 you ought to get some packaging!

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO / AMY DENIO Belle Confusion 00 (Absolute) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Even through his collaborations (as seen here on Belle Confusion 00 with Amy Denio), Francisco Lopez has successfully resisted procedures, craftsmanship, and semantics. What's left behind are paradoxically both ominous and serene compositions of open ended droning mysteries to be researched and investigated by the audience as they see fit. While Belle Confusion 00 uses Denio's voice (no saxophone) as the basic sound material, Lopez and Denio have built a haunted gray drone from the complex harmonics of a human voice that never utters anything except its own somatic textures. Their collaboration begins with a mirage-like sound of undefinable yet delicate fluctuations, then a silence, followed by a slow rumble of similar sounds as the first interlude but much less friendly, and then another silence. I find myself thinking that Lopez has stretched out two brief syllables from Denio's voice over the course of an hour.
RealAudio clip: "Belle Confusion 00"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO / MICHAEL NORTHAM Belle Confusion 0247 (Absolute) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Francisco Lopez's Belle Confusion 0247 with fellow field recording artist Michael Northam is certainly one of the strongest recordings to come from Lopez's encyclopedia of 'absolute concrete music' which in the past, has included investigations of the physicality of silence, the swarming sonic tapestries of South American rainforests, and the textural intricacies of death metal blastbeats. Northam and Lopez began an exchange five years which resulted in Northam's appearance on Staalplaat's release of Untitled (1993). For this album, the two apply a considerable amount of pressure to their processed field recordings which gradually increase from near silence to roaring floods of metallic noise and gives way to a hovering buzz from an indeterminant timestretched echo, striated by almost imperceptible tinklings of wooden objects. Very nice.
RealAudio clip: "Belle Confusion 0247"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO / SCOTT ARFORD Solid State Flesh / Solid State Sex (Low Impedence) 2cd 16.98
Perhaps it took Scott Arford winning honorable mention at the 2005 Ars Electronica to get this split release with Francisco Lopez to come out. These two pieces were originally recorded back in 2002 and had been slated for release by a couple of different labels, until Low Impedence had the sense to finally just do it. Curiously enough, this is one of several releases to come pouring out of Arford's 7hz studios after a couple of years of silence. Electricity appears to the source material and subject matter for the two composers on Solid State Flesh & Solid State Sex. The latter is the work of Mr. Arford who has always had a penchant for hard, blistered noises and cacophonic feedback squallor; and those sounds are heavily featured here punctuating the deadened buzz of smoldering electricity. It's hard to think of this as being sexy music or even sexual music given the electrocutionist throb of Arford's sounds, thus lending to plenty of transgressive readings if you're so inclined. On the slightly more voluptuous Solid State Flesh, Lopez expands the monotone of 60 cycle hums and the hissing buzz of electrical static through his signature compositional strategy of slow-burning tumult which abruptly halt and annouce a prolonged passage of inactivity. Unlike some of his Belle Confusion pieces, Solid State Flesh adds a considerable menace to his self-professed absolute concrete, but nevertheless is very well done and an excellent companion to Arford's work.
MPEG Stream: SCOTT ARFORD "Discharge"
MPEG Stream: SCOTT ARFORD "Strange Attractor"
MPEG Stream: FRANCISCO LOPEZ "Solid State Flesh"

LORD TANG s/t (Gigante Sound) cassette 5.98
Live performance and touring (especially internationally) does much to sharpen the chops, expand the scopes and get the creative juices flowing for most artists, and it certainly appears so in the case for one Mr. Dominic Cramp. It seems the many journeys on the road performing as keyboardist and sound shaper for Carla Bozulich's group Evangelista have spurred him - already a very prolific music maker for many years - to stretch his limbs a bit, and push the boundaries of his music-making comfort zone into some fresh but not altogether foreign territory.
Lord Tang is definitely the brethren of Cramp's other musical personas (particularly Borful Tang, but also Vulcanus 68, Qulfus et al), and those familiar and fond of his Bay Area indie label Gigante Sound will surely geek to this too, but what sets Lord Tang apart are the new influences and inspirations Cramp has drawn upon, and the incorporation of more conventional song foundations (at least comparably so when placed next to his alter egos' more loosely structured soundscapes). However, he does not remain within those confines. As always, his music is free roaming. His soundscapes creep along, build, dissipate, and shapeshift like the cloud formations referred to in the opener. At once, both dense and vaporous, the tracks may linger on a note sequence or beat pattern for a spell then moving on, occasionally returning to revisit a theme in cyclical fashion.
In previous works and incarnations, Cramp scavenged, sculpted and collaged together the structures and narratives from existing samples (field recordings, tapes, and such). In Lord Tang, the elements (most notably melodies and rhythmic passages) are much more composed from scratch, and the sounds are built, shaped and performed on instruments (we detect a gaggle of analog synths, drum machines and digital effects processors among them). That said, although his creative processes may have diverged somewhat from his usual path, the resulting tracks aren't too alienatingly different to the ear. As with many of his instrumental recordings, this one oozes, lurches and seeps its way into your ear canals. Moody with a dark whimsy. We envision a subterranean being clawing its way up to the Earth's surface to eavesdrop on the city dwellers. Curiosity piqued by their daily routines and mundane dialogues, the churning rhythms of traffic reverberating down into his dank sunless world.
MPEG Stream: "Fog"
MPEG Stream: "Slumberer"

LORD TANG s/t (Gigante Sound) cd-r 7.98
Live performance and touring (especially internationally) does much to sharpen the chops, expand the scopes and get the creative juices flowing for most artists, and it certainly appears so in the case for one Mr. Dominic Cramp. It seems the many journeys on the road performing as keyboardist and sound shaper for Carla Bozulich's group Evangelista have spurred him - already a very prolific music maker for many years - to stretch his limbs a bit, and push the boundaries of his music-making comfort zone into some fresh but not altogether foreign territory.
Lord Tang is definitely the brethren of Cramp's other musical personas (particularly Borful Tang, but also Vulcanus 68, Qulfus et al), and those familiar and fond of his Bay Area indie label Gigante Sound will surely geek to this too, but what sets Lord Tang apart are the new influences and inspirations Cramp has drawn upon, and the incorporation of more conventional song foundations (at least comparably so when placed next to his alter egos' more loosely structured soundscapes). However, he does not remain within those confines. As always, his music is free roaming. His soundscapes creep along, build, dissipate, and shapeshift like the cloud formations referred to in the opener. At once, both dense and vaporous, the tracks may linger on a note sequence or beat pattern for a spell then moving on, occasionally returning to revisit a theme in cyclical fashion.
In previous works and incarnations, Cramp scavenged, sculpted and collaged together the structures and narratives from existing samples (field recordings, tapes, and such). In Lord Tang, the elements (most notably melodies and rhythmic passages) are much more composed from scratch, and the sounds are built, shaped and performed on instruments (we detect a gaggle of analog synths, drum machines and digital effects processors among them). That said, although his creative processes may have diverged somewhat from his usual path, the resulting tracks aren't too alienatingly different to the ear. As with many of his instrumental recordings, this one oozes, lurches and seeps its way into your ear canals. Moody with a dark whimsy. We envision a subterranean being clawing its way up to the Earth's surface to eavesdrop on the city dwellers. Curiosity piqued by their daily routines and mundane dialogues, the churning rhythms of traffic reverberating down into his dank sunless world.
MPEG Stream: "Fog"
MPEG Stream: "Slumberer"

LORD TIME Black Hole At the End Of The Tunnel (Universal Consciousness) cassette 8.98
Another blast of nekro-black "morbid dead metal" filth from this aQ fave, the solo project of Andorkappen, the drummer of LA black metal trio Harassor. And like the previous tape on Universal Consciousness, this is some dark, sinister, hateful heaviness, the sound raw and primitive, filthy and crusty, the sound lo-fi, but still somehow weirdly lush and LOUD, buzzing guitars, pounding practice space drumming, and some seriously sick demonic croak vokills. The sound is all over the map, slipping from super brittle and tinny, to murky and muddy and sludgey, the songs too, dirgey ritualistic creeps, frantic lightning speed blasts, pounding punkish d-beat blowouts, the sounds not at all typical, with clean effects laden guitars and warped FX, wild tangled psychedelia, field recordings, all woven into this twisted black epic. 36 minutes, 20 brief blasts, plus a super creeped out almost 20th century sounding piano dirge outro, spare and abstract, percussive and darkly ominous. The whole track repeats on both sides. The label describes this as "primitive devotional caveman soul music" and who are we to argue.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in super deluxe, embossed, heavy textured metallic paper J-cards, each one hand numbered and sealed with a sticker, each copy marked with Mr. Lord Time's actual blood!
MPEG Stream: "Black Hole At the End Of The Tunnel (excerpt)"

LORD, MARK Tachyon Firing Squad (Phaserprone) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

LORD, MARK / MORGAN EGG Last Chance In Heaven / Discontinue Stardust (No Label) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK!!!
Ah, the second release from the Mimaroglu Music Sale sponsored "No Label" which probably will stick as a name, when it really was meant to be a private imprint with the absence of a label name. No matter, though as this split LP from Mark Lord (the pseudonym of Christopher Forgues) and Morgan Egg (who we know next to nothing about). Forgues has previous work under the Whitehouse inspired project Kites with blistering pierced noise surrounded by shock-horror tactics; and that sensibility has been tempered under the Mark Lord moniker. The only semblance of that former self appears in an appropriated dialogue of a '70s porn, buttressed by some fantastic retro-garde / minimal wave electronics. These looping synth modulations arpeggiate and expand along linear pulsations dappled by circuit bent twiddle and scrags of cheap noise. Sort of like a more progressive take on the Units without so much of the punk overdrive; or conversely, more of an Oneohtrix / Emeralds synth vibe jacked up a bit. The final cut "Warpath" tops the drum machine propulsion with an almost charmingly playful melody to the counter the insistent synth bass pulse. Really great stuff!
Morgan Egg's snarled drone tempests declares their influences from the classic Italian industrial work by Maurizio Bianchi and Giancarlo Toniutti. Washes of grey static and revolving chunks of leaden distortion meld into the grim atmospheres that Egg laces with oscillating electronics and curiously languid bell tones. Quite a departure from the Mark Lord side, but just as incredible.
Less than 300 copies in print!

LOS ANGELES FREE MUSIC SOCIETY Blorp Esette Collector's Edition (Transparency) 4cd 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As if the 10cd box set previously released by Organ of Corti was not enough, the Transparency label now reissues another 4 discs of material from this semi-legendary, decidedly anti-rock, '70s pseudo-collective. Fortunately, this release is a lot easier on the wallet than that previous box set was. Taking Captain Beefheart's destruction of the song to the outsider art extreme of non-musicality, the members of the LAMFS experiment with noise, broken instruments, and juvenile behavior. Tracks from Smegma, Christian Death (!!?--yeah, it's good!), Rick Potts, Henry Kaiser, etc.

LOSCIL Triplepoint (Kranky) cd 14.98
Scott Morgan has spent his fair share of time in a number of notable Vancouver pop outfits. For instance, most recently he's played in Destroyer (with former New Pornographer Dan Bejar) and with retro-popsters The Battles, but neither revealed even a hint of this decidedly ambient electronic persona. The first glimpse I ever had of Loscil was on the "Vancouver Special" compilation. His contribution was a reworking of the Destroyer song "Merci". His second surfacing is this album which finds its home in the welcome nest of Kranky Records. Subtle, ethereal dreamscapes perfect for rainy days like those in his hometown. Very nice!

LOST DOMAIN Palace (Pseudo Arcana) cd 13.98
This is somehow the first record by The Lost Domain we've listed, even though we've been digging their music for a while now. You may have heard some Lost Domain on the killer Gold Leaf Branches compilation a while back, and this is more of the same, long expanses of non-ambient ambience. Delicate layers of raga like buzz, gentle distant drones and lots and lots of space. This sounds like some sort of alien temple music. You can imagine some strange structure on a rocky outcropping on some distant planet, inside mysterious hooded figures kneel in prayer, a gorgeous spacious meditative drone drifting like insence smoke through the temple. This is so lovely and thick with strange sonic subtleties. Music for fading into sleep, or slowly emerging from a dream world. Definitely the perfect music to lull you into a trancelike state and allow your soul to come loose from your body and drift off into other dimensions. So nice.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

LOTUS CIRCLE Caves (Dusktone) cd 13.98
Caves is the latest sonic ritual from this mysterious Greek horde whose sounds is a blackened doomdrone, that seems to have more in common with the strangely hypnotic solo guitar psychedelia of aQ faves Blackwolfgoat that any of the more typical black/doom metal outfits we've reviewed in the past. No drummer, we can only assume LC is a one man band, and his M.O. is the sort of thing we love. A sort of post SUNNO))) sort of doomdronedirge, unfurling a churning slo-mo riff, and then looping it, over and over and over, a mesmerizingly cyclical core, around which various other sounds are arranged, blurred streaks of rumbling buzz, haunting chantlike vocals, clouds of FX drenched chordal whir, streaks of high end, buried melodies, bits of murk other sonic detritus, the result is indeed very ritualistic, record opener "ÉTo Witness Under The Stars" spends a good four minutes chugging away, before the riff drops out, leaving just a strange swirl of overlapping voices, very liturgical, wreathed in crackle and hiss, before a new riff takes over, this one more brittle, wrapped in feedback, and more distinctly metal, but still essentially a slow motion bit of doom-ed riffery, one that seems to grow more downtuned as the surrounding sounds grow more horrific and blackened.
And so it goes, "Dawn Of A Dead Sun" follows a similar pattern, but wraps it's droned out feedback soaked riff in banshee wails and blackened vokills, and as the track progresses, it seems to grow more psychedelic, more raga like, inspiring a sort of trance state, a gloriously droned out blackriff ritual that is utterly entrancing. "Secret Entities" is the most 'rock' of the bunch, sounding like it might explode into proper song form at any time, but instead the chords ring out into the ether, the melodies fading into blackness, while "From The Depths" wraps the core riff in a weirdly processed almost slappy synth sound, which at first sounds odd, but soon more effects join the fray, and it becomes a strangely heady hypnotic crawl, and finally "Plutonian Funeral", finishes things off with the creepiest and most minimal sprawl of the bunch, layering a sort of creepy carnivalesque synth, beneath an oozing layer of crumbling low end, peppered with weird reverbed twang, and wrapped in distant melodic shimmers, as well as the occasional hellish shriek, a dark, occultic coda for sure.
Gorgeous haunting heaviness, that just might appeal to fans of black psychedelia and abstract guitardrones more than metalheads...
MPEG Stream: "...To Witness Under The Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Dawn Of A Dead Sun"

LOTUS EATERS Mind Control For Infants (Neurot) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
With an avant-metal / metalcore membership of superstar proportions with Stephen O'Malley (Sunn 0))), Burning Witch, Teeth Of The Lion Rule The Divine, Khanate, etc.), James Plotkin (Old, Atomsmasher / Phantomsmasher, Khanate, etc.), and Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, HydraHead Records, etc.), the Lotus Eaters locate themselves quite far away from the archetypes of metal. Actually, their sound is more of re-contextualization of remnants from the disintegration of metal into fragments of ominous spectres of atmosphere, distant orchestrations of acousmatic sound, and slivers of guitar drones. With very spartan arrangements, the Lotus Eaters' first CD (after a couple of super limited vinyl only releases) invokes the archaic ritualist behavior, gnostic alchemical symbolism, and dark ambient transgressions of the post-industrial work of Troum, Cranioclast, and even Coil's "How To Destroy Angels" album. However, throughout the suitably nightmarish activities, the trio of guitarists reveal very simple two or three note melodies; and on more than one occasion, "Mind Control For Infants" loosens its iron fisted grip on a dark atmospheres, exploring some pristine, glistening bell tones, rich acoustic guitar fingerpicking, and gossamer threads of feedback. This album makes for wonderful late-night listening, and is certainly recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Track 1"
RealAudio clip: "Track 5"

LOTUS EATERS Mind Control For Infants (Taiga) 2lp 42.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Long out of print on cd, now available again as a super deluxe double lp, and we mean DELUXE, incredible heavy gatefold jacket, like a cloth covered hardcover book, printed in gold metallic ink, tip on cover image and inside gatefold, printed inner sleeves, so fantastic looking, hence the price. Here's our review of Mind Control when we first listed the cd way back in 2002:
With an avant-metal / metalcore membership of superstar proportions with Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Burning Witch, Teeth Of The Lion Rule The Divine, Khanate, etc.), James Plotkin (Old, Atomsmasher / Phantomsmasher, Khanate, etc.), and Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, HydraHead Records, etc.), the Lotus Eaters locate themselves quite far away from the archetypes of metal. Actually, their sound is more of re-contextualization of remnants from the disintegration of metal into fragments of ominous spectres of atmosphere, distant orchestrations of acousmatic sound, and slivers of guitar drones. With very Spartan arrangements, the Lotus Eaters' first cd (after a couple of super limited vinyl only releases) invokes the archaic ritualist behavior, gnostic alchemical symbolism, and dark ambient transgressions of the post-industrial work of Troum, Cranioclast, and even Coil's "How To Destroy Angels" album. However, throughout the suitably nightmarish activities, the trio of guitarists reveal very simple two or three note melodies; and on more than one occasion, "Mind Control For Infants" loosens its iron fisted grip on a dark atmospheres, exploring some pristine, glistening bell tones, rich acoustic guitar fingerpicking, and gossamer threads of feedback. This album makes for wonderful late-night listening, and is certainly recommended!