FENNESZ Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08" (Touch) cd 16.98
Strange that we've never written anything about this album, the second album from Vienna's guitar 'n' laptop rock star Christian Fennesz. Originally released on Mego back in 1999, this album has gone through several pressings, fortunately always preserving the same core tracklisting, although the art has shrunk down to a digipack for the 2008 edition on Touch. The two albums that came after this album - Endless Summer and Venice - may stand as his perfect albums, one obviously summery and the other decidedly wintery; if anything, this is his shoegaze record, as he deftly wrangles with hurricane-strength distortion and tempers that with a post-MBV blur of narcotic auditory bliss. Throughout, Fennesz merely alludes to melody buried beneath all of the fuzzy drones and tempestuous noise, with pixel pointed interludes indicative of the signature Mego inflorescence for digital errata that he and Pita helped define. This is clearly the album that was the major inspiration for Tim Hecker and his digiscapes of guitar drones and 8-bit noise; but this album also bridges back to earlier pioneers of electronic adventurousness such as Main (especially Motion Pool) and The Hafler Trio (like Intoutof). If you've not checked this out, there's no better time than the present.
MPEG Stream: "010"
MPEG Stream: "013"
MPEG Stream: "014"

FENNESZ Seven Stars (Touch) cd 13.98
Now on cd!!! We listed the 10" version a few weeks back.
The Austrian avant-guitarist offers four tracks of beautiful guitarscapes tricked out through his signature glitched-n-blurred processing. Hardly cold for a slab of digitalia, the opening track "Liminal" is one of Fennesz' more structured numbers, built from a simple chord progression on his acoustic guitar, that then stomps on a Mogwai-ish distortion box for at least one burst of incendiary soft-loud-soft dynamics. All of the sounds prickle, squish, and splutter amidst a swarming sea of digitized pixels that reassemble themselves as echoes and ghosts of Fennesz' original guitar playing. "July" darkens the hue quite a bit with a warbling bass that looks back to the post-rock explorations of Rothko or Labradford. "Shift" is one of Fennesz' finer drone-centric moments that builds a hallowed melody out of a cavernous wash of sun bleached tones, and the title track is a collaborative effort with Steven Hess on drums, resulting in a slowcore tune fleshed with all of Fennesz' digital ephemera.
MPEG Stream: "Liminal"
MPEG Stream: "Shift"

FENNESZ Seven Stars (Touch) 10" 13.98
The Austrian avant-guitarist offers four tracks of beautiful guitarscapes tricked out through his signature glitched-n-blurred processing. Hardly cold for a slab of digitalia, the opening track "Liminal" is one of Fennesz' more structured numbers, built from a simple chord progression on his acoustic guitar, that then stomps on a Mogwai-ish distortion box for at least one burst of incendiary soft-loud-soft dynamics. All of the sounds prickle, squish, and splutter amidst a swarming sea of digitized pixels that reassemble themselves as echoes and ghosts of Fennesz' original guitar playing. "July" darkens the hue quite a bit with a warbling bass that looks back to the post-rock explorations of Rothko or Labradford. "Shift" is one of Fennesz' finer drone-centric moments that builds a hallowed melody out of a cavernous wash of sun bleached tones, and the title track is a collaborative effort with Steven Hess on drums, resulting in a slowcore tune fleshed with all of Fennesz' digital ephemera.
FYI, there is a compact disc scheduled for release in September 2011, for those not so keen on the vinyl format. Oh yeah, this has been cut at 45rpm, so you know that we'll be playing this at 33 as well!

FENNESZ Szampler (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This one probably needs very little in the way of description, a new archival release from guitar/laptop maestro Christian Fennesz, the latest from limited edition UK tape label Tapeworm, gathering up an eclectic collection of samples, which were used to create various recordings from 1989 until 1996. Which means maybe some of these will definitely sound familiar, even here in there yet to be Fennesz-ed state, offering a glimpse into the creative process for sure, but functioning fairly well as an album proper, albeit a somewhat fragmented album, short sonic selections, from murky glistening shimmer, to strange creaks and glitches, to warped acoustic guitar strum, to skipping stuttering electronic dronescapes, to psychedelic textural noise blowouts, to haunting loops, a dizzying array of sound and texture and timbre, many of these pieces already sounding practically finished (if it weren't for their brevity), gorgeous and hazy and melodic, mysterious and otherworldly, others simple, obvious building blocks for a bigger whole, the (perhaps hundreds of) fragments seamlessly sequenced into a constantly shifting, ever evolving, fractured and fantastical soundscape, that would also appeal to fans of Philip Jeck, with its weird sensation of skipping and glitching and recontextualization, the short sample format reminiscent of flitting from record to record, but this is obviously essential listening for Fennesz fans, a perfect companion for his records proper.
LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES. With cool Savage Pencil cover art!

FENNESZ Transition (Touch) 7" 8.98
The master returns. To teach the young ones a thing or two about the guitar. And about turning that guitar into something wholly other.
It's been a while since we've heard from Christian Fennesz, but thankfully, very little has changed, he can still take a guitar and a laptop and create a dense world of dreamlike shimmer, with a deftness that puts most other soundmakers to shame. So here's a brief two song taste of what Fennesz has been up to lately. And if this single is any indication, the upcoming full length is going to be the drone-y dreamy disc of the year!
But for now, we'll take these two, and just play them over and over. The A side finds the guitar completely transformed into muted smears, the overall sound a shifting sea of corrosive crumbling distortion, but rendered in breathless whispers and washed out hues. The metallic thrum is spread out into soft shimmers, a murk that would almost sound industrial if it wasn't so pretty.
The flipside is more guitar oriented, a steel string acoustic, the melodies branching out in simple softly strummed strands, a skeletal framework for swirls of soft hiss and chunks of fragmented melody drifting by like leaves on a forest stream. The sound is like some simple folk music, broadcast via a staticky short wave radio, but beneath the guitar, and the dreamy hiss, are lush, stately swells melodic and cinematic, that infuse the track with a dark, but sweetly sorrowful elegiac quality. Gorgeous.

FENNESZ Venice (Touch) cd 15.98
Christian Fennesz' 2001 album Endless Summer firmly established him as one of the electronic avant-garde's greats with his delirious balance of hotwired digital glitches and a nostalgic revisitation of summery pop sensibilities. The assimilation of overloaded digital filtering technologies and guitar driven song fragments has continued to be Fennesz' strongest asset through his celebrated arrangements for David Sylvian's Blemish album, and has even earned him a curious forthcoming collaboration with Sparklehorse! Venice is his fourth studio album and clearly stands as his best work to date. According to Asphodel's Naut Humon, Venice was almost a doomed project, as Fennesz' hard drive crashed less than a month before he needed to deliver the record to Touch. With about a quarter of the album salvagable, he scrambled to reassemble the album from memory. While it's hard to say if this time constraint benefitted or detracted from his process, the album itself is stunningly good. Just as Endless Summer channelled the acid fried spirit of Brian Wilson, Venice also finds itself an album with a muse: Kevin Shields. There have always been short-circuited elements of My Bloody Valentine shot from Fennesz' tricked out guitar sound; but Venice pushes Fennesz affection for shoegazer's buccolic atmospheres and sublime melodies to the forefront with marvelous results. Each song appears to be nerve-rattlingly familiar; yet just as Endless Summer invoked Brian Wilson without ever resorting to selfconscious quotation, each of his tracks glides along the same oceanic currents authored by Slowdive, AR Kane, Ride, Loveliescrushing, and The Cocteau Twins. Again, no direct references can be heard in Venice; rather Fennesz taps directly into the hopelessly romantic sentimentality of shoegazer music and replicates it perfectly behind a light dusting of digital pixels.
The one track which gives us pause on Venice is the single collaboration with David Sylvian. While this track on its own works as good if not better than anything on their aforementioned Blemish album, it sticks out like sore thumb against the sublimely textured ambience which dominates the remainer of the record. If every album only had one minor miscalculation, the world would be much better off; thus, we're more than willing to look beyond this track and tell you that this will undoubtably be the best electronic record of 2004 and one of the all around best records of the year!!
MPEG Stream: "City Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "Circassian"
MPEG Stream: "Point Of It All"

FENNESZ + SAKAMOTO Flumina (Touch) 2cd 19.98
It's fitting that the year closes with a breathtaking collaboration between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamato, as 2011 was a great year for both of them individually. This past summer Fennesz released Seven Stars, his first solo recording in almost three years. Sakamato not only teamed up with Alva Noto for perhaps their best collaboration yet, Summvs, but also hit the road with his legendary old band Yellow Magic Orchestra to rave reviews.
This is not the first time these two musical visionaries have collaborated, as they released a great ep back in 2005 that left us very hungry for them to come together again. With Flumina they have created one of the most patient, subdued, and beautiful records of the year. In fact, a few of us are already rearranging our end of year best of lists to make sure we include this, as the record has already seeped so deep into our subconscious, in just the few weeks its been out. Sakamoto's fragile piano playing and Fennesz' gauzy and blurry guitar sound glide in and out of each other to create a melancholic daydream of sound. Much like some of our favorite Harold Budd records and collaborations, these tracks really do sound as if they are unraveling slowly from the heavens. We've been going to sleep with one of the discs playing and then starting our day slowly with the the alternate disc, as its such a perfect record for the space between sleeping and dreaming.
We also really love that despite the use of their laptops, the record seems so minimally processed. This isn't about forced static or manipulative feedback, but instead a powerful restraint in sound that allows each note to leave such a lasting impact. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "0318"
MPEG Stream: "0314"
MPEG Stream: "0405"
MPEG Stream: "0411"

FENNESZ / DAFELDECKER / BRANDLMAYR Till The Old World's Blown Up And A New One Is Created (Mosz) 2cd 16.98

FENNESZ / HARDING / REHBERG Di-n (Ash International R.I.P) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Fennesz and Pita (ne Peter Rehberg) hail from Mego Records from Vienna, while Mike Harding runs Touch and Ash International out of the UK. Collectively, this trio (and their powerbooks) tweek digital glitches and crunchy blasts of computer noise into persistant rhythmic clashes that culminate into tumultous rumbling beats. A close listen will reveal a pretty stellar computing fuck up, when one of the three powerbooks sounded the Macintosh preset error sound 'Droplet'. Even with this, 'Di-n' is pretty fantastic digital noise record. 21 minutes on one-sided vinyl.

FENNESZ / JECK / MATTHEWS Amoroso (Touch ) 7" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Remember that Spire record on Touch a while back? A series of Organ works, by a handful of the usual avant drone suspects: Fennesz, Jeck, Biosphere, Tsunoda, Ambarchi, Watson and othersÉ
Well, this 7" is part of a series of limited eps, based on the Spire recordings. The first we think. And is a tribute to Arvo Part, and to "mystic minimalism". Charles Matthews who was featured on the original Spire recordings, playing the massive pipe organ, is the player here as well, and both Jeck and Fennesz get a side to do what they want with those original sounds.
Fennesz turns the sound of the organ into a minimal whir, gentle washes of grit and whispery buzz, long tones subtly pulsing, deep rich chords, soft swells, gently effected and transformed into haunting alien drones. Those drones infused with melancholic melodies and deep metallic reverberations. Truly mystical and minimal.
Jeck however is much less reverent. Choosing much like he did on the original Spire recording to try something more aggressive, more dark, more noisy, and much less soothing, his side is an almost industrial soundscape or crunch and buzz, the organ's notes transformed into bell like tones, chopped up into jagged melodies, almost like someone is flipping stations, the melody lurching suddenly from note to note, jarring and uneasy, but at the same time hauntingly compelling. The tones are dense and distorted, lots of smeared feedback, thick clouds of pixilated grit and deep droning walls of whir, a super intense and extraordinarily noisy approach from Jeck, something we're definitely interested in hearing much more of in the future.
As always, comes houses in an immediately recognizable Touch style sleeve, with gorgeous Jon Wozencroft photos and design.

FENNESZ / ROSY PARLANE Live (Mego) cd3 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Mego has been really getting into these cute litte 3" cds... They have a similar fetish object quality as the ultra limited and therefore highly collectible Drone Records series, but for the more digitally minded. This collaborative release between Rosy Parlane (former partner with Dean Roberts in Thela) and the swashbuckling Christian Fennesz is a fluid stream of digital pops and timestretched glitches. At first their duet fades from the glitch worship towards something resembling fragments of an Arvo Part vocal chorale, but returns to the rhythmic hard disc edits recalling Oval's "Systemische."

FENNESZ / SAKAMOTO Cendre (Touch) cd 15.98
Had any random drone 'n' piano album been released on Windham Hill and featured some laptop jockey blurring the lilting piano notes of George Winston, would you even consider buying it? Well, we know Andee would. But no matter how good it was, for most of you, the answer would probably be no. Even though certain factions here at Aquarius have long held the belief that there's not much sonic difference between the pastoral impressionism of Windham Hill and the pastoral impressionism of Kranky, the major contextual differences between the two institutions have prevented many from buying into this argument. The full collaborative album between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto also figures into this distinctly Aquarian logic to dismantle any notions of what is 'cool.' This is an album of drifting soundscaping for pretty, pretty piano and pretty, pretty treatments, whose external contextualization drives the reading about the music more than the music itself. Christian Fennesz, of course, is the highly acclaimed guitarist with an exceptional grasp of how to digitally mangle the sounds from his guitar into impressive dynamism that brings a poetic, human touch to digital deconstruction. Ryuichi Sakamoto hails from the seminal electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra and has more recently taken to Erik Satie-like compositions for shadowy gestures upon the piano. Furthermore, Cendre was released on Touch, a record company considered by many to be *the* elite label for sound art. Everything points to what should be a slam dunk of an album; and in many ways, this album succeeds in what it strives for. It's doubtful that Fennesz and Sakamoto would have qualified their intentions as 'New Age' but Cendre's polite piano melodies that drift amidst a benevolent ambience share more than a few parallels to the quintessential Windham Hill sound. We'll leave it in your hands, oh trusted Aquarian shopper, as to whether you'll see a comparison between Christian Fennesz and George Winston as favorable or not. Some of us certainly do.
MPEG Stream: "Oto"
MPEG Stream: "Haru"

FENNESZ / SAKAMOTO Sala Santa Cecilia (Touch) cd ep 12.98
AQ customers definitely don't need an introduction to Christian Fennesz. We've long been enraptured by his laptopped guitarscapes, all warm and fuzzy, sunny and ethereal, rich and thick and totally memerizing. And certainly no one should need an introduction to Ryuichi Sakamoto either, after fronting the Yellow Magic Orchestra for thirty years as well as producing numerous solo recordings, including his amazing recent collaborations with Alva Noto. So it's pretty exciting to see these two hook up for this lush and gorgeous laptop excursion into dreamy underwater mood music and hazy glitched out ambience. This brief twenty minute piece was recorded live in Rome in 2004 and is the precursor to a forthcoming full length. A simply perfect slab of ambient abstraction and delicate dreaminess. Moody and mysterious, drifting notes and thick chordal swells wash over shuffling minimal rhythms, sleepy summertime shimmer and soaring sheets of dramatic and deconstructed melody float and flutter, shift and sway. So beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Sala Santa Cecilia"

FENNESZ / ZEITBLOM / RANTASA Music For An Isolation Tank (Rhiz) cd 17.98
Subtitled "an acoustic approximation of Oswald Weiner's legendary 'Bioadapter', phase one" this album offers several suggestions for the listener's environment. The lights should be dim, the listener should lie down (possibly in a tank of water with underwater speakers), and earplugs should be worn. As Aquarius Records is painfully unequipped to properly listen to this record (not even a large oil drum I could cram into, nor the time to lie down on the counter and listen to the record while tending to customers, and damn if I'll wear earplugs to listen to something this quiet), the review will no doubtably miss the mark on this one. But for sake of commerce or criticism or simply because you've read this far already, here it goes.
"Music For An Isolation Tank" is a paranoiac black box composition replete with digital fuckery and laptop squiggles (ala Mego / Rhiz) sublimated into subaquatic headrattling lowend. Pure tones
merge into slowed down somatic rhythms that attempt to bring the bodies hectic pace down to a more relaxed state. High tension flanges rupture the digitized drones and pulsate erratically as neurotic distractions to the computerized bliss. There are some definite moments where the trio successfully articulate a synergy between man and machine, but for the most part the album falls nicely within the laptop aesthetic of 'lowercase glitchery'.

FENNESZ, CHRISTIAN Aun: The Beginning And The End Of All Things (Soundtrack) (Ash International) cd 15.98
While not a proper new Fennesz 'album' per se, Aun is in fact a soundtrack to a new film by Austrian director Edgar Honetschlager, incorporating a few collaborative pieces previously released on the album Cendre, which found Christian Fennesz teamed up with pianist Ryuchi Sakamoto. Surprisingly, those tracks, already pretty cinematic, fit perfectly amidst Fennesz' original music for Honetschlager's film. And while we've yet to see the film, the music on its own is lovely, and hauntingly contemplative, especially the tracks with Sakamoto, the pointillist piano lending the music a certain gravitas, moody and melancholy. While the rest of the tracks find Fennesz weaving lush tapestries of deep glowing drones and warm whirring ambience, opening track "Kae" is dense and thick, a lush gauzy melodic stasis rife with buried melodies, the sort of sound that evokes those time lapse nature films, plants breaking through the soil, blossoming, then withering and dying. Poignant and moving, quite a feat for a track that barely cracks two minutes. Later on the soundtrack, Fennesz returns to the guitar, letting gentle strums and delicately picked notes become gently obliterated by clouds of digital errata, transforming the sound into a glitchy dreamfolk drift, those bits of glitchguitar ambience surrounded by thick slabs of deep dense digital dronemusic, tracks like "Euclides" imbuing what would otherwise be an ethereal shimmer, with an almost black hole density, while other tracks display a knack for melding airy ambience with gristled laptop buzz, the results sometimes spare and ghostly, other times bleak and blackened, but always haunting and lovely. In some ways, the sounds are almost too perfect as a soundtrack, the sort of abstract minimal ambience that seems to underpin most movies these days, but close listening reveals that this is more than rote ambience, instead, each track here is a dense multilayered mini-symphony, that even sans visuals, offers much to discover on repeated listens, and seems to blossom before the listener's ears, the sound rich with the promise of endless sonic discovery.
MPEG Stream: "Kae"
MPEG Stream: "Aware"
MPEG Stream: "Haru"
MPEG Stream: "Sekai"
MPEG Stream: "Euclides"

FENNESZ, CHRISTIAN / DAVID DANIELL / TONY BUCK Knoxville (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
Had the now out of print vinyl last time, but now the cd is here to list as well!!
This is pretty much an aQ dream team, guitarist / lap top technician / abstract dronehaze alchemist Christian Fennesz, teamed up with Tony Buck, drummer for outsider minimal jazz legends the Necks, and David Daniell, guitarist for the late great slowcore combo San Augustin, all gathered up for a night of abstract improv noise making.
The session begins with a slow building minimal post rock meander, and over the course of about 8 minutes, the sound grows from spidery and shimmery, a sort of washed out melodic drift, all sun dappled and gauzy, to full on ferocious free form psychedelic freakout, an explosive squall of woozy guitar chords underpinning wild clouds of octopoidal drum damage, Buck letting loose, no Necks like restriant here, the climax of the track like a free jazz Godspeed / White Heaven hybrid, while weirdly, beneath the skree and crunch, the guitars still moan mournfully, giving the jam, even at its noisiest a strange sort of instrumental pathos.
The second number begins with a shimmer of cymbals, some swirling looped guitar, flurries of muted percussion, a heaving hazy whirl of abstract drone, which about halfway through seems to suddenly expand into a slow motion supernova of smoldering sound, building to a blast of Nadja like shoegaze dronedoomdrift, before fading back into a reverbed echo of the chaos that came before.
Buck then creates a drum drone using just a snare roll and some cymbal sizzle, while Daniell and Fennesz add their own shadowy minmalism, the washed out ambience the most Fennesz sounding of the bunch, as if all of the sounds created were winding their way through his guitar, then his laptop and out through the speakers, the cymbals getting more and more busy, sounding like rainfall, another sonic climax, but this one a more subdued subtle bit of cymbal driven swell, sarkly dramatic and so lovely. Finally, the trio finish these off with another bit of softly chaotic clatter, the scattered bits of percussion and jagged shards of guitars, slowly coalescing into something rhythmic and driving, building to a gloriously effulgent climax, a blinding spray of prismatic sound, a high end ur-drone, that fades gradually again, allowing the set to settle to the ground, in a soft fog of hiss and sizzle, rumble and whir. Fucking fantastic.
MPEG Stream: "Unuberwindbare Wande"
MPEG Stream: "Heat From Light"

FENNESZ, CHRISTIAN / DAVID DANIELL / TONY BUCK Knoxville (Thrill Jockey) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is pretty much an aQ dream team, guitarist / lap top technician / abstract dronehaze alchemist Christian Fennesz, teamed up with Tony Buck, drummer for outsider minimal jazz legends the Necks, and David Daniell, guitarist for the late great slowcore combo San Augustin, all gathered up for a night of abstract improv noise making.
The session begins with a slow building minimal post rock meander, and over the course of about 8 minutes, the sound grows from spidery and shimmery, a sort of washed out melodic drift, all sun dappled and gauzy, to full on ferocious free form psychedelic freakout, an explosive squall of woozy guitar chords underpinning wild clouds of octopoidal drum damage, Buck letting loose, no Necks-like restraint here, the climax of the track like a free jazz Godspeed / White Heaven hybrid, while weirdly, beneath the skree and crunch, the guitars still moan mournfully, giving the jam, even at its noisiest a strange sort of instrumental pathos.
The second number begins with a shimmer of cymbals, some swirling looped guitar, flurries of muted percussion, a heaving hazy whirl of abstract drone, which about halfway through seems to suddenly expand into a slow motion supernova of smoldering sound, building to a blast of Nadja-like shoegaze dronedoomdrift, before fading back into a reverbed echo of the chaos that came before.
Buck then creates a drum drone using just a snare roll and some cymbal sizzle, while Daniell and Fennesz add their own shadowy minimalism, the washed out ambience the most Fennesz sounding of the bunch, as if all of the sounds created were winding their way through his guitar, then his laptop and out through the speakers, the cymbals getting more and more busy, sounding like rainfall, another sonic climax, but this one a more subdued subtle bit of cymbal driven swell, starkly dramatic and so lovely. Finally, the trio finish these off with another bit of softly chaotic clatter, the scattered bits of percussion and jagged shards of guitars, slowly coalescing into something rhythmic and driving, building to a gloriously effulgent climax, a blinding spray of prismatic sound, a high end ur-drone, that fades gradually again, allowing the set to settle to the ground, in a soft fog of hiss and sizzle, rumble and whir. Fucking fantastic.
The bad news is, the vinyl version of this is somehow already out of print, so we only have 4 or 5 copies, and that's IT. But, we WILL have the cd version next week, got some of those coming from the label (everyone else is out!), so if you want that, just ask...
MPEG Stream: "Unuberwindbare Wande"
MPEG Stream: "Heat From Light"

FENNESZ, CHRISTIAN / SACHIKO M / OTOMO YOSHIHIDE / PETER REHBERG (Erstwhile) cd 14.98

FENNESZ, O'ROURKE, REHBERG Magic Sound Of Fenn o' Berg (Mego) cd 16.98
With just the mention of Jim O'Rourke, this will sell itself. But for those of you out there who have been taken in by his recent pop aesthetics, we should state the warning that this is not a pop album. Collaborating with powerbook geniuses Christian Fennesz and Pita Rehberg (both from the venerable Mego collective), O'Rourke sheds the pop schtick for a streaming barrage of digital splices which are predominantly needling synthetic tones and random clicks, but sporadically reference a rhythm or a melody before being mutilated into the digital cacophony.

FENNESZ, O'ROURKE, REHBERG Return of Fenn O' Berg (Mego) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The second production from the Fenn O' Berg laptop trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter "Pita" Rehberg adds just a bit more structure to the previous collaboration, but falls in line with the increasing number of Max / MSP improvisations that have been coming out as of late. The general feel for the album retains some of the digitally deconstructed dreaminess found on some of the Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers recordings, but with the additional collaged pitter patter of digital squiggles and clicks. Where Fenn O'Berg succeeds is in their sporadic use of fuzzy rhythms, post-acid melodies, and antiquated samples from carnival music and melodramatic film scores. All of these, of course, get the pixel treatment.
RealAudio clip: "Floating My Boat"
RealAudio clip: "A Viennese Tragedy"

FENRIZ' RED PLANET / NATTEFROST Engansgrill (Indie Recordings) cd 21.00

FERENC Cronch (Kompakt) 12" 10.98

FERENC Fraximal (Kompakt) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: "Diplodocus"
MPEG Stream: "Sandia"

FERIAL CONFINE (ANDREW CHALK) First, Second And Third Drop (Siren Records) cd 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Andrew Chalk recorded as Ferial Confine for a few years in the mid '80s. At that time, all of those recordings were cassette only releases, mostly self-released / private editions of just a couple of copies with the exception of the Meiosis cassette put out by Broken Flag. That cassette and the Full Use Of Nothing LP, which Fusetron reissued from one of those private edition tapes, found Chalk embracing an acoustic teethgnashing through metallic noise junk. It was no wonder that The New Blockaders and Organum would seek him out as a future collaborator. But there were only hints on those two recordings of what would later become what Chalk would be best known for: the majestic, sublime, and beautiful drone.
Chalk's 1986 album Crescent, which was released under his own name, has long been viewed as the bridge between the Ferial Confine aesthetic of blistered noise and the softened timbral complexities of later work including that of Mirror. That said, nobody had heard First, Second And Third Drop. Also recorded in 1986, this Ferial Confine album truly is the missing link between the two polarities of the Chalk aesthetic, as the scraping metallic skree is present but often tuned in sympathy to bowed gongs and long-thin wire drones. Blossoming reverberation consumes some of these tracks, which sound even better than the classic Organum sound of that time period. It goes without saying that this album is incredible. Well, Andrew Chalk made it, of course. But the historical nature of this record makes it even all the more interesting. Oh yeah, it's also painfully limited; and already sold out at the label.
MPEG Stream: "The Flying Fish"
MPEG Stream: "Advent"
MPEG Stream: "It's Past"

FERIAL CONFINE (ANDREW CHALK) The Full Use Of Nothing (Siren Records) cd 21.00
This marks the second reissue of these recordings from Andrew Chalk's early noise-junk project Ferial Confine. The Full Use Of Nothing was originally a cassette self-released back in 1985 and was most likely one of the recordings that piqued the interest of Broken Flag to eventually release some of Chalk's more gnarled constructions. While the Ferial Confine records are definitely noise albums, there is a thread which ties these into the drone-centric work for which he's best known, in the gradual evolution of the compositions that shift from one set of demolished sounds into another. The process seems to find Chalk beginning with metal-bashed percussion recorded at very slow speeds on a 4-track then bounced to a different track at very high speeds with swarming synth / reverb saturated dronescraping draped beneath the volatile squeaking and dissonant klanking aktionism. One can hear some of the early Merzbow and / or Yeast Culture noise-junk recordings and most certainly the frenzied clamour of The New Blockaders (who had in fact worked with Chalk around this same time period), but it's that phasing, slippery drone miasma suspended as a backdrop to all of the tactile noise that gives this a very Andrew Chalk feel. Even working with noise, Andrew Chalk proved himself much better than many of his contemporaries! The cd reissue of The Full Use Of Nothing is the first in a triology of Ferial Confine recordings which will include the Broken Flag cassette Meiosis (1985) and a second pressing of the First, Second, And Third Drop (1986, unreleased until a cd version came out in 2008).
MPEG Stream: "Introduction"
MPEG Stream: "Part Three"
MPEG Stream: "Part Four"

FERMATA Fe rmata/Piesen Z Hol (Bonton Music Slovakia) cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The first two albums (from 1975 & '76) by this hot-rockin' instrumental Slovak prog/fusion band. Rippin' stuff, with heavy guitar/keys interplay. Complex, flashy, very '70s. If we saw a band like this play today we'd be all "we're not worthy"! (Not new, but we got a couple and wanted to list it, along with the equally awesome Collegium Musicium disc, for the Iron Curtain prog freaks we know populate our mailing list!)
RealAudio clip: "Rumunska Rapsodia"
RealAudio clip: "Piesen Z Hol"

FERN KNIGHT Music For Witches And Alchemists (VHF) cd 13.98
Another gorgeous missive from the ever expanding world of modern freak folk, this time from Philly based singer, songwriter, guitarist, cellist Margaret Wienk, who with Music For Witches and Alchemists has crafted a darkly dramatic gem of moody mournful melancholia. Equal parts Pentangle, Incredible String Band, and of course some of her more modern sonic compatriots, Brightblack, Vetiver, Espers (Greg Weeks and Meg Baird both play on Music For Witches and Alchemists) and the like, Fern Knight is most definitely modern folk, but at the same time sounds so classic, the songwriting, Wienk's voice, the arrangements, a perfect combination. But the band manage to take that classic sound and infuse it with some sweet sonic mystery, due in no small part to the unlikely instrumentation, the sweet moaning cellos, dreamy swaths of harp, alien melodies on the singing saw, the twang of the Jew's harp, the wheezing harmonium, but unlike most bands, those sounds don't define Fern Knight's sound, merely add to the texture and mood of the music, which even stripped to its bare basics would still sound as sweet.
MPEG Stream: "Song For Ireland"
MPEG Stream: "Awake, Angel Snake"

FERN KNIGHT Music For Witches And Alchemists (Eclipse) lp 21.00
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Another gorgeous missive from the ever expanding world of modern freak folk, this time from Philly based singer, songwriter, guitarist, cellist Margaret Wienk, who with Music For Witches and Alchemists has crafted a darkly dramatic gem of moody mournful melancholia. Equal parts Pentangle, Incredible String Band, and of course some of her more modern sonic compatriots, Brightblack, Vetiver, Espers (Greg Weeks and Meg Baird both play on Music For Witches and Alchemists) and the like, Fern Knight is most definitely modern folk, but at the same time sounds so classic, the songwriting, Wienk's voice, the arrangements, a perfect combination. But the band manage to take that classic sound and infuse it with some sweet sonic mystery, due in no small part to the unlikely instrumentation, the sweet moaning cellos, dreamy swaths of harp, alien melodies on the singing saw, the twang of the Jew's harp, the wheezing harmonium, but unlike most bands, those sounds don't define Fern Knight's sound, merely add to the texture and mood of the music, which even stripped to its bare basics would still sound as sweet.
MPEG Stream: "Song For Ireland"
MPEG Stream: "Awake, Angel Snake"

FERN KNIGHT s/t (VHF) cd 13.98

FERN KNIGHT Seven Years of Severed Limbs (Normal) cd 14.98
Fern Knight is not a person's name as we initially thought, it is the moniker for this duo from Rhode Island whose hushed folk pop songs take a number of haunting instrumental twists, turns and detours into atmospheric soundscapes. Heavily reverbed and tremoloed guitars are interwoven with strummed and plucked acoustic guitar as deep somber strings and an occasional accordion wind their way around the unmistakable warm sound of a Fender Rhodes keyboard. So heart-baringly bittersweet and intimate, much like a cross between Julie Doiron and Mirah. Absolutely lovely!
MPEG Stream: "If I Could Write A Book About You"
MPEG Stream: "Boxing Day"

FEROCIOUS FEW Juices (Birdman) cd 12.98

FEROCIOUS FEW Juices (Birdman) lp 14.98

FERRANTE AND TEICHER Soundproof / Soundblast: The Sound of Tomorrow Today! (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
Anyone who scours thriftshops regularly for records will surely be familiar with the names Ferrante and Teicher. World-renowned pop-classicists and dueling pianists from the fifties to the seventies, they're often squarely associated with the Lawrence Welk and Liberace markets our grandparents dallied in. While their recorded output easily tripled the most prolific artist you can imagine, their legacy has pretty much resulted in stacks and stacks of the kind of unwanted records that make crate digging an oft-frustrating chore.
But not everything they did was so square. In the early fifties at the dawn of the hi-fi age, they were among the first composers to take John Cage's prepared piano experiments (a method of altering piano tones by wedging various objects between the strings and hammers) and apply them toward orchestrated melodies. By doing so, and then running the sounds through state-of-the-art, multi-channeled stereophonic recording equipment of the time they were able to create an illusion of multiple instrument sounds such as tympanis, marimbas, xylophones, glockenspiels, and various percussion instruments, all from playing pianos. This reissue of Soundproof and its follow-up Soundblast is the result of such experiments. While this is hardly what we think of as experimental music, it sure does sound amazing. The kind of music you can imagine with Tex Avery cartoons on the moon, or in some space lounge on Venus. Some songs sound like the far-out Afro-Cuban rhythms of Esquivel, other songs have a more impressionistic underwater quality, while others have a more Joe Meek sci-fi surfy vibe. Some tracks experiment with reverse piano and early echo effects. In fact, to create the echo effect, in a time without easy echo electronics, they wired the sound from the piano down to a tiled bathroom a floor below, and placed microphones looped to a delay outside the bathroom door. Out of the two records, Soundproof is more experimental and playful while Soundblast relies on more Latin compositional formulas albeit ones you might hear in danceclubs on Mars. If you come across these Ferrante and Teicher albums in your crate digging adventures, don't dismiss.
MPEG Stream: "What Is This Thing Called Love"
MPEG Stream: "Man From Mars"
MPEG Stream: "Siboney"
MPEG Stream: "Loose Ends Merengue"

FERRARI, LUC Cycle Des Souvenirs (1995-2000) (Blue Chopsticks) cd 14.98
A tautology is a statement which is necessarily true because it cannot be used to make a false assertion by virtue of its logical form. Often tautologies involve the needless repetition of a self-evident statement in order to prove that the idea is true; it can also take the form of asserting the truth of a statement by controlling the logic itself. Thus, the authoritarian decree, "because I said so!" defines one of the most common tautological situations. The maverick musique concrete composer Luc Ferrari continues to cite both of these definitions of a tautology when discussing his own work. The liner notes hold much more of the aura of the latter, with his autocratic voice insisting that this is important art and you better believe it! Yet his music which holds elements of the former, is far more seductive with the shifting repetitions of subtle aleatory themes that reflect Ferrari's ideas on memory as always being true to the individual who remembers. It's not clear if Ferrari has picked up these ideas from Proust, but that's another ball of wax.
His work on "Cycle Des Souvenirs" is something of an extension of the psychosexual narrative found within his "Presque Rien." Here field recordings were taken of European streets, the sea, a train station, wind through a valley, etc. with various fragments of speech whispered just beneath the surface of those judiciously edited recordings. The quiet of these passages are disrupted by clipped drum crashes which explode throughout the sonic landscape, further fragmenting the continuous spoken narrative. The end result is quite evocative, recalling Robert Ashley's masterful "Automatic Writing."
RealAudio clip: "1"
RealAudio clip: "4"

FERRARI, LUC Danses Organique (Elica) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Luc Ferrari left the reptutable INA-GRM outfit in the early 70s to take his expressive electronic & musique concrete experiments to his own studio. 'Danse Organique' is one of the earliest pieces Ferrari made in his own studio. "This could be a 'strange meeting between two girls and a tape recorder' and is one of his most unorthodox, lively, and sensually charged pieces. Ferrari lent his tape recorder to two girls who are supposed to meet and start a relationship and then builds his imaginary folkloric music around their confidential dialogue... The resulting music has a groovy rhythmic quality in its surreal synthetic development and is outstandingly modern with its similarities to some very unacademic electroacoustic music.

FERRARI, LUC Danses Organique (Elica) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Luc Ferrari left the reptutable INA-GRM outfit in the early 70s to take his expressive electronic & musique concrete experiments to his own studio. 'Danse Organique' is one of the earliest pieces Ferrari made in his own studio. "This could be a 'strange meeting between two girls and a tape recorder' and is one of his most unorthodox, lively, and sensually charged pieces. Ferrari lent his tape recorder to two girls who are supposed to meet and start a relationship and then builds his imaginary folkloric music around their confidential dialogue... The resulting music has a groovy rhythmic quality in its surreal synthetic development and is outstandingly modern with its similarities to some very unacademic electroacoustic music.

FERRARI, LUC Ephemere I & II (Alga Marghen) cd 21.00
Pay no attention to the liner notes, as the text is ultimately meaningless when attempting to describe this incredible recording by Luc Ferrari. The French musique concrete composer is mostly known for his psychosexual contextualizations that 'telescope' tape manipulated environmental recordings dotted with fleeting whispers of female voices. Symphonic works, pieces with indeterminant scores, radiophonic broadcasts, and theater have all worked within the expansive ouvre of Ferrari; but very little of the work that we had encountered prepared us for what's found on Ephereme. Here are two lengthy pieces recorded in the mid-'70s that look forward to the grim expressionism of the '80s post-industrialists coupled with the drugged-n-droned psychedelia that has been flourishing today!
The first piece is grounded upon a set of low-end synth tones that oscillate and slowly spiral into dissonant harmonic patterns. A stream of disembodied voices emerges from within this grey wash, for a very ghostly shortwave radio feel, with some resemblance to Delia Derbyshire's Dreams or Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing. Along with these voices, a slow churning plod from a downtuned piano furthers the tension of the piece, which gradually dissolves by the end when Ferrari replaces the voices with some lovely Takoma-inspired acoustic guitar playing; and here, the work is really sympathetic to those collages from irr. app. (ext.). Brilliant stuff! The second piece (which clocks in at a whopping 52 minutes) is a much brighter affair, again with synth tones and percolations reflecting the kosmische aesthetic of the day (e.g. Cluster, Tangerine Dream, etc.). Given the extended duration of the piece, all of the revolving sounds are not in any hurry to further their progressions. It's quite enveloping and meditative, somewhat like the droned parts of Natural Snow Buildings or some of the sprawling Emeralds tracks. Again, the acoustic guitar becomes the central focus by the end of this piece. As you could imagine, this sounds nothing like Ferrari's seminal Presque Rien, but it is an amazing document that more than holds its own against anything in his impressive back catalogue. Wow.
MPEG Stream: "Ephemere 1"
MPEG Stream: "Ephemere 2"

FERRARI, LUC Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 (Blue Chopsticks) cd 13.98
The debut release on David "Gastr Del Sol" Grubbs' new Drag City-sponsored label is the cd reissue of this rare LP by French musique concrete artist Ferrari. Apparently such an important work that the label states that "any other record that sounds like this is but a pale imitation."

FERRARI, LUC Presque Rein (Recollection GRM) 2lp 32.00
Self-deprecatingly qualified by Ferrari as a "poor man's concrete music," Presque Rien is a brilliant piece of Spartan tape music that Ferrari began in 1967 with four variations on the Presque Rien theme composed over the next three decades. The first version was originally released in 1970 through Deutsche Grammophon, the next found its way through INA-GRM on vinyl in 1980, the third (composed in 1989) ended up on a cd compendium of the first three Presque Rien suites released through INA-GRM in 1995, and now the fouth chapter (completed in 1998) sees the light of day with the other three version thanks to the Editions Mego subsidized Recollection GRM project. Thus, this complete version makes a hell of lot more sense than the previous INA-GRM version which tacked on a densely claustrophobic and politically charged collage track at the beginning of the disc, setting an entirely different context for how Presque Rein was heard. Each of the four suites operates in a very spacious framework with long passages of placid sounds from nature being ruptured by short aggressive bursts of tape noise, proto-industrial machinations, and psychologically charged fragments of sound. Like Robert Ashley's ultra creepy "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon", Ferrari intertwines fragments of various whispered narratives with the steady buzzings of choral cicadas, as if each narration were that of a voyeur spying upon the intimacy of nature. It's easy to hear the influence that Ferrari's masterpiece had on a young Steven Stapleton and a pre-pop Jim O'Rourke, as well as pretty much every field recordist / phonographer that picked up a digital recorder... but Ferrari started this way back in 1967. The new 2lp was cut to perfection by D&M at 45rpm. Normally, we'd be all over playing this at the wrong speed, but this is an album really does sound way better at the correct speed. There, it's brilliant.

FERRARI, LUC Presque Rien (INA/GRM) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Smugly qualified by Ferrari as a "poor man's concrete music," "Presque Rien" is a brilliant piece of musique concrete that reflects the turbulent psychological landscape of Paris in the late '60s and early '70s. While the liner notes make no reference to participation in or sympathy with the Parisian rebellion of May 1968, Ferrari's "Music Promenade" (which opens the "Presque Rien" album) has a rough-hewn, decentralized quality which appears to refer to the incendiary immediacy of those few weeks. Yet as soon as the "Presque Rien" suites begin, the politically charged references of grim military waltzes, impassioned revolutionary speeches, and whirling factory sounds are done away with, in favor of subtle collages of natural sounds. It is as if Ferrari set up an aesthestic antithesis between the tense, urban sounds on "Music Promenade" and the suposedly placid sounds of nature on the rest of the album, all the while maintaining a firm grip on a psychoanalysis upon the landscape. Like Robert Ashley's ultra creepy "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon," Ferrari intertwines fragments of various whispered narratives with the steady buzzings of choral cicadas, as if each narration were that of a voyeur spying upon the intimacy of nature. Upon superficial listens, "Presque Rien" appears somewhat simple; however, do yourself the favor by listening to this attentively (preferrably on headphones) to capture the subtle theatrics of Ferrari's composition.
RealAudio clip: "Music Promenade 1"
RealAudio clip: "Presque Rien 2 pt. 2"
RealAudio clip: "Presque Rien Avec Filles pt. 1"

FERRARI, LUC Tautologos And Other Early Electronic Works (EMF Media) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Collection of early recordings from one of the pioneers of Musique Concrete. Includes "Etudes aux Accidents" & "Etudes aux sons Tendus" (from 1958), "Visages V" (1959), "Tete et Queue du Dragon" (1960), "Tautologos 1 & 2" (1961) and "Und so Weiter" (1966).
MPEG Stream: "Etudes Aux Accidents"
MPEG Stream: "Und So Weiter, Part 1"

FERRARO, JAMES Citrac (Arbor) 2lp 16.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
More warped otherworldly sound collage murky warble from one half of the late great Skaters. And like everything else we've heard from Ferraro post-Skaters, the sounds on Citrac, a two lp collection of mostly previously released material (but most so limited you probably never heard 'em anyway), are a blurred jumble of fantastically twisted time machine lo-fi anti-pop. Ferraro along with his ex-bandmate have been credited with spearheading the so called 'hypnogogic pop' movement, but pop seems to have very little to do with this. Pop CULTURE maybe. Visually, the jacket and inner sleeve are adorned with all manner of eighties cheesiness, which thankfully isn't necessarily reflected in the music. Instead, Ferraro takes his arsenal of music making devices, busted effects and falling apart 4-track, as well as a handful of samples from cop shows and after school specials and late night made for TV movies, and goes about, snipping and pasting and looping and smearing those various sounds into some totally tripped out krautdrone, psych-synth, buzz-loop weirdness.
All of the sounds here are murky and muddy and sound like they were recorded on an old VHS tape and then duped over and over and over and over. The percussion is clattery but buried in the mix, tons of reverb and delay, much of the first disc sounds like a John Carpenter soundtrack spinning lazily on a fucked up turntable while someone holds their thumb down on the vinyl, causing the record to slip and slow down, the whole thing peppered with strange howled vocals (or what sound like vocals). The end of side two features a sonic event that seems to pop up all over these two records, an awesome lurching synth-psych loop, that could have gone on FOREVER, but ends way too soon. Also, as far as we can tell, the first record is meant to play at 45, it definitely sounds like Ferraro at 45, but it sounds really cool at 33 too, even more industrial and woozy and washed out.
The second disc though, sounds like 33 is the correct speed, 45 makes it a bit manic, but still pretty intense and psychedelic, but at 33, it's way more aggressive than the first record, more industrial too, like a doom metal Wolf Eyes or something, albeit way more fucked up and fractured, loads of low end, metallic percussion, and some sick inhuman barks wreathed in effects, at 33 it's creepy, at 45 it becomes some sped up soundtrack video game alien techno. Weirdly twisted and almost proggy. Rad stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

FERRARO, JAMES Clear (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
It's been a while since we've listed anything Skaters related, and not for lack of action on their part, they have an avalanche of new cd-r's, that we'll try to get to eventually, but for now, let's tackle this, the latest lp from half of the Skaters, James Ferraro. Pretty sure this is an lp reissue of some out of print tapes or something, but it hardly matters, cuz wherever it came from it's pretty damn cool. The sticker calls the sounds within "tropical drones". But if we had to describe it, NEW AGE seems way more accurate. And we don't meant that in a bad way at all. We love new age, as long as it's like this, gorgeous blissed out crystalline shimmer, long slow moving tones, delicate melodies, everything glistening and glimmering, reflective and prismatic and hypnotic, but then about halfway through the song shifts and things get freaky, in come the muted crunchy eighties sounding guitars and the muffled buried rhythms, the original tones get a little fuzzier as the song evolves into an imaginary eighties new wave cop show theme song. Which is awesome.
The flipside definitely sounds tropical, with squiggly fake flute melodies, the chirp of dolphin calls buried in the ooze and warble of the shimmery underwater warble, the sound gorgeously warped and washed out, trippy and almost otherworldly, it's a bit like the sound you hear when you wake up on the couch in the middle of the night, all groggy and half asleep and you left the TV on and some bizarre nature program or softcore porn is playing, but all you can hear is the sound, and then you suddenly open your eyes and all you can see are clouds and pyramids and your living room seems to have sunken into the deep blue, it sort of sounds like that. Awesome.
Comes with a download card too, so you can get your self another digital chunk of underwater tropical new age-y bliss.

FERRARO, JAMES Discovery (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
Don't be confused, it may look the same, but in fact, it's the second of two lp reissues from James Ferraro, one half of floor core legends the Skaters. We reviewed his Clear lp on our last list, this time it's Discovery, almost the exact same cover, the alien pyramids floating in some strange sea, only the name of the record is different (and don't trust the sticker, on about half of the lps we got the stickers were all switched up), although really it barely matters, as the sounds on Discovery, sound very much like the ones on Clear, which make sense as they are archival recordings from about the same time period.
Two side long jams, exploring that alien new age only those Skaters guys seem capable of, this one sounds like two parts of the same jam, equal parts new age swoosh, staticky old AM radio and alien soap opera theme music, all blurred and smeared into a weirdly organic warped and warbly drift. Bleary and blown out, glistening and glimmery, a buried krautrock groove, that seems to fade out and return at random, all imbued with a cool psychedelic eighties B-movie Goblin vibe.
The flipside is more of the same, only a bit more rocking, more feedback and distortion, but just barely, the guitars a tad more noodly and spidery, but all the sounds still washed out and sun dappled and hypnotic. Like Clear before it, Discovery is a fantastic chunk of blissed out Baywatch new age, and here's hoping Holy Mountain keeps digging up and reissuing these tripped out artifacts.
Comes with a download card too, so you can get iPod-able versions of these tracks as well!!

FERRARO, JAMES Far Side Virtual (Hippos In Tanks) lp 19.98
When beloved noise duo The Skaters broke up, the two partners went in drastically different directions sonically, with Spencer Clark taking his Monopoly Child Searchers in a more hazy, tribal, washed out direction, which wasn't really all that removed from the Skaters' sound, at its loveliest, at least. And James Ferraro going off the musical deep end, transforming into some sort of bizarro avant pop songsmith, his last record Night Dolls With Hairspray, exactly what the title might have you expecting, a tripped out, lysergic collection of tweaked lo-fi glam rock weirdness, which managed to be totally baffling, but pretty much totally irresistible at the same time. And while we were expecting more of the same on Farsidevirtual, Ferraro once again has mixed things up and managed to come up with something even MORE ridiculous, and again, a glorious car crash of a record, channeling the cheesiest parts of eighties music, sure he was sort of doing that before, but now it's like new age mixed with the sort of upbeat music that would accompany one of those workplace educational films, all swirly synths, programmed rhythms, weirdly funky grooves, all rendered in shades of super shiny, super well produced, gleaming ultra produced electro rock. Or something.
The opener "Linden Dollars" sounds like Shadowfax covering the theme from Peanuts, but given a little 21st century new age makeover. Then there's "Global Lunch" which just baffles all the way through, super cheesy synths, a woman asking if you want something or other beamed directly to your "I-Tablet", with faux strings, tinkling chimes, a melody played using those weird voice presets on synthesizers, then a solo played on a fake sitar, or the sitar setting on a synth, while male vox are clipped and sent stuttering off into the distance, and then finally the song builds to a crazy climax with a wild sax solo, and some fuzzy electronic bass, it's literally some of the craziest shit we've ever heard. The whole record sounds like library music from 1985, composed and recorded for infomercials, straight to video rom-coms, and third tier sporting events, and if that seems like we're bagging on it, we're totally not, we're just baffled by how someone could even conceive of making music like this in the 21st century, how they would make these sounds, and why the hell we can't stop listening to it.
Packaged in the usual garishly futuristic sleeve, with thick printed cardstock insert and a download coupon too!
MPEG Stream: "Linden Dollars"
MPEG Stream: "Global Lunch"
MPEG Stream: "Dubai Dream Tone"
MPEG Stream: "Slim"

FERRARO, JAMES K2-Chameleon Ballet (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 17.98

FERRARO, JAMES Last American Hero (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More 'hypnogogic pop' from ex-Skaters soundscaper James Ferraro, whose latest album remains rooted in the off kilter whatthefuck (heavy on the lost late night eighties vibe), visually, with a bizarre Best Buy / pick up truck / parking lot / alien robot / Fox Sports graphic collaged cover art, and a lyric sheet / manifesto packed with references to Judge Judy, Costco, Beverly Hills, energy drinks, lost highways, tongue rings, gladiators, batteries, 'no fear', etc, as well as sonically, continuing to mine a fantastically bastardized John Carpenter soundtrack / late night cable sort of warped dronepop melodicism.
The A side here is definitely and immediately recognizable as Ferraro, but unlike past jams which occasionally tended toward the dense and layered, this sidelong track is stripped way down and laid way back, a simple pulsing rhythm, skeletal and minimal, laid out under a glimmery smear of sun dappled synth, over which, still more synths add haunting melodies, would around warm guitar figures, all hazy and washed out and lysergic, the loops warped but subtly so, woven into the perfect fusion of new age shimmer, and retro futurist kosmiche drift, and hell it still sounds like it could have been lifted straight from some lost Argento or Carpenter flick, which is in no way a bad thing.
The flipside is another warbly dreamjam, new age-y and soft focus, gentle tangles of melody tumble frame by frame over a motorik synth pulse, wreathed in hiss, and glistening streaks of reverb and delay, notes ring out, chiming, synths soar and sing, total sun dappled free energy divine sonic bliss for sure. Halfway through, the track shifts gears, and suddenly it's a full on raga, with warped sitar buzz, loping tarpit synth basslines, and lots and lots of space, a sound like looking at the sun, through some glowing alien crystalline structure, reflective and prismatic, with strange bursts of organ warble, swirling clouds of barely there tape hiss, all blurred and smeared into a meditative drift, that gradually gains momentum, transforming into a weirdly propulsive, but still totally laid back new age groove, peppered with cool/weird drop outs, and skipping samples, which only add to the track's mysterious home brewed charm.
Another gorgeous inner space excursion from Ferraro, comes with a download code, and is most likely very limited.

FERRARO, JAMES Multitopia (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 17.98

FERRARO, JAMES Night Dolls With Hairspray (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 17.98
We sometimes think lysergic free noise floorcore duo the Skaters might as well have never broken up. Sure both James Ferraro and Spencer Clark (aka Monopoly Child Star Searchers) have carved their own sonic path, but they seem perpetually linked. On the same label, releasing records at the same time, often playing on each other's records (which makes it the Skaters sort of anyway, right?), sounds that while different, definitely share many similarities, and most notably, both possess a visual aesthetic so appalling and seemingly purposefully eye gouging, it's almost as if they're trying to get people not to listen to their records. Which is a shame, cuz another thing these guys have in common, is almost without exception, their records are fantastic. Tripped out and woozy and warped and psychedelic, each in his own twisted way.
Ferraro has mixed up his sound quite a bit, trading the confusional murky loopscapes for what sounds like a lo-fi eighties after school special soundtrack version of Ariel Pink. Which is not a bad thing, just fucking awesomely bizarre. Like eighties FM radio rock mixed with seventies glam rock run through the warped lysergic lo-fi warped retro pop of NOW. Hard to tell if the music is actually played, it sounds so genuinely old, it seems like it must be sampled, but either way, Ferraro straps on his best falsetto and lets loose, sounding one second like Russell Mael from Sparks, the next like Prince, and the next like some hair metal howler, the music similarly flits from sound to sound, one minute sounding like eighties MTV cheese, the next spandex-ed glam metal, the next dizzying warped collages, and the next like some Saturday morning commercial for some gloopy messy toy.
It takes a lot these days to confuse and confound, but this stuff is wacked, and weird, and pretty twistedly wonderful. Not sure exactly who the audience for this stuff is, us it seems, cuz for all of its what-the-fuck-ness, we can't seem to stop listening to this, which either says something about the record, about us, or most likely both.
MPEG Stream: "Dollhouse Frotteur"
MPEG Stream: "Runaway"
MPEG Stream: "Brittney's Gum"

FERRARO, JAMES Rapture Adrenaline (Hundebiss) dvd 25.00
Uh... two films by Mr. Ferraro. One short one, where he delivers a guided tour of LA, focusing heavily on OJ Simpson related sites. This one is bemusingly funny, and we're assuming its a clever put-on. The other one, is an endless editing together of scenes from B-grade '80s sci-fi VHS tapes, with Dutch subtitles for some reason. Some cool stuff on there too, but it went on and on and we didn't finish watching it, sorry. Hmm.