A KOMBI Music To Drive By (Dual Plover) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As featured in the latest Bananafish magazine, this Australian artist created this cd using only the sounds made by a Volkswagen.

ACAMA Tibetan Temple Bells (Interra) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Great recording of giant Tibetan Buddhist bell-ringing. Yes, an hour or so of deep resonating "chimes", making for an incredible deep drone document! Fans of cosmic/ambient sounds need only turn this up and vibrate.

ALVA NOTO Xerrox (Raster-Norton) cd 17.98
Like most Raster-Noton releases, the latest from Alva Noto begins with plenty of stutter and squelch, sinewaves and dog whistle tones, subterranean rumble and digital clips, but it's actually kind of misleading, as the rest of the disc exists in a sonic landscape much closer to the Kompakt sounds of Pop Ambient, or the hissy soft focus ambience of Tim Hecker, than the lowercase world of glitch and squeak. 
The first three tracks are strange minimal sonic experiments, plenty of hiss and scrape, static and hum, but it's track four, "Haliod Xerrox Copy 3 (Paris)", where suddenly things get downright pretty. Soft distant swells, mysterious slow motion loops, hard to say whether the sounds are synthesizers or tape loops or field recordings, although according to the liner notes all the sounds here are drawn from airports, in flight announcements and telephone hold music, but by 'xeroxing" these sounds over and over, and letting each copy degrade just a little, Alva Noto takes those degraded sounds and shapes them into lovely blurred dronescapes, eventually wrapping them in soft prickly layers of digital hiss, which only adds to the soft focus romance and dreamlike otherworldliness. 
The tracks are named and grouped thematically. The ultra short "Astoria" tracks seem to act as brief respites, tiny sonic events separating the longer more song based tracks. The focus seems to be on those particular songs, each named "Haliod Xerrox Copy" and numbered or given an extra title in parentheses, these are gorgeous fuzzy, blown out dreamy drifts, all reminiscent of "Haliod Xerrox Copy 3 (Paris)" but each, with its own distinctive flow, seemingly drawn from the same sonic template and utilizing a similar melodic theme, but softly molded into subtly different shapes. In "Haliod Xerrox Copy 2 (Airfrance)" it's all warm fuzz and muted white noise, a dense buzz, that is more soothing than abrasive. Moments later, in "Haliod_Xerrox_Copy_6" the buzz becomes washed out, pulsing louder and then quieter, while off in the distant, we are able to observe gentle lilting sonic events, as if alva notojourney, a much heavier drone element. This is intense, brooding, beautiful too, but haunting and ominous, a gorgeous minimal sonic smear of M83 fuzz, Tim Hecker-ish sepia toned blur, and Basinski-esque looped dreaminess, all wrapped in Noto's thick fuzzy ambient buzz. 
The cd comes packaged in another striking and strange oversized Raster-Noton package, a multiple panel fold out sleeve, with die cuts holding the disc in place.
MPEG Stream: "Haliod Xerrox Copy 4"
MPEG Stream: "Haliod Xerrox Copy 3 (Paris)"
MPEG Stream: "Haliod Xerrox Copy 2 (Air France)"

ALVA NOTO Xerrox (Raster-Norton) lp 26.00
Like most Raster-Noton releases, the latest from Alva Noto begins with plenty of stutter and squelch, sinewaves and dog whistle tones, subterranean rumble and digital clips, but it's actually kind of misleading, as the rest of the disc exists in a sonic landscape much closer to the Kompakt sounds of Pop Ambient, or the hissy soft focus ambience of Tim Hecker, than the lowercase world of glitch and squeak. 
The first three tracks are strange minimal sonic experiments, plenty of hiss and scrape, static and hum, but it's track four, "Haliod Xerrox Copy 3 (Paris)", where suddenly things get downright pretty. Soft distant swells, mysterious slow motion loops, hard to say whether the sounds are synthesizers or tape loops or field recordings, although according to the liner notes all the sounds here are drawn from airports, in flight announcements and telephone hold music, but by 'xeroxing" these sounds over and over, and letting each copy degrade just a little, Alva Noto takes those degraded sounds and shapes them into lovely blurred dronescapes, eventually wrapping them in soft prickly layers of digital hiss, which only adds to the soft focus romance and dreamlike otherworldliness. 
The tracks are named and grouped thematically. The ultra short "Astoria" tracks seem to act as brief respites, tiny sonic events separating the longer more song based tracks. The focus seems to be on those particular songs, each named "Haliod Xerrox Copy" and numbered or given an extra title in parentheses, these are gorgeous fuzzy, blown out dreamy drifts, all reminiscent of "Haliod Xerrox Copy 3 (Paris)" but each, with its own distinctive flow, seemingly drawn from the same sonic template and utilizing a similar melodic theme, but softly molded into subtly different shapes. In "Haliod Xerrox Copy 2 (Airfrance)" it's all warm fuzz and muted white noise, a dense buzz, that is more soothing than abrasive. Moments later, in "Haliod_Xerrox_Copy_6" the buzz becomes washed out, pulsing louder and then quieter, while off in the distant, we are able to observe gentle lilting sonic events, as if viewed through a dense fog. Later on, "Haliod Xerrox Copy 1" returns to the billowy bliss of track 4, offering long soft contrails of sound, floating weightless amidst swirls of smeared radio static and and the sound of TV channel snow.
The disc finishes with the lengthy "Haliod_Xerrox_Copy 9", the most dramatic of the bunch. The melody is again similar, there is still plenty of hiss and fuzz and white noise, but the low end is more intense, giving the track more weight and emotion, the peaks and valleys too are more pronounced, a much more dynamic musical journey, a much heavier drone element. This is intense, brooding, beautiful too, but haunting and ominous, a gorgeous minimal sonic smear of M83 fuzz, Tim Hecker-ish sepia toned blur, and Basinski-esque looped dreaminess, all wrapped in Noto's thick fuzzy ambient buzz.
MPEG Stream: "Haliod Xerrox Copy 4"
MPEG Stream: "Haliod Xerrox Copy 3 (Paris)"
MPEG Stream: "Haliod Xerrox Copy 2 (Air France)"

AQUARIUS BUTTONS 2 x 1" buttons 1.00
Spread the word! Show the world your true aQ colors! COOL COOL COOL aQ buttons, in 5 different colors. TWO FOR $1!!! Colors are random, but buy enough and you'll be guaranteed to get 'em all! All 5 feature our spiffy James Gang style logo!!

ARCADE AMBIANCE '81 (GDG) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
You know we love field recordings and "environmental sounds". And you know we love '80s arcade games (witness the vintage Tron and Rastan machines that now make their home in our shop). So when we found out about these "Aracade Ambiance" discs -- which are exactly what the name implies -- we had to have them, and suspect that more than a few of our customers will want 'em too. There's three volumes in this professionally reproduced cd-r series, 1981, 1983, and 1986. We have all three but thought we'd get more of this first and earliest entry to highlight it on our list, this time.
It's one hour of "authentic" eighties video arcade sounds, what you'd hear if you paid a visit to a busy, bustling arcade back in '81. The blips and beeps and blasts of video violence, memorable musical themes from classic games, some crowd noises and of course the occasional clatter of the coin changer/token machine... it's just like we're ten years old again and skipping school. Those of us of a certain age that is -- some of the staff here at AQ weren't even born back then. Actually I might have been a little older before I spent a lot of time hanging out in the local arcades, as when younger I recall having bad day at the "Pennsylvania Spacetion" when some bullies took my tokens... Anyway if you were shooting aliens and asteroids, running mazes and dodging monsters way back when, this is gonna be a definite nostalgia trip!
We put "authentic" in quotes above 'cause this is actually a bit like the Jurassic Soundscapes cd we highlighted on our last list. The fellow who put these together didn't have the amazing foresight to drag a tape recorder out to a real video arcade back in '81. Nor was he able to convert a Time Pilot game into an actual time machine, though there's a good chance that he's dreamed of such a thing (which he probably wouldn't use to meet Jesus or kill Hitler or buy Google stock but instead to blow quarters at his local long-gone eighties arcade). "Composer" Andy Hoyle (whose face appears on the back cover of these discs, for some reason) wanted to create an background ambient soundscape to help give the impression that when playing retro games on his home console, he was actually in an arcade back in the day. Carefully collaging the musical cues and sound effects from period video games (this '81 set including the likes of Centipede, Asteroids, Gorf, PacMan, Defender, Frogger, Qix, Berzerk, Crazy Climber, Missile Command, Rally X, Space Invaders, Tempest, Galaga, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, and many more) with some more generic sounds recorded in a modern day arcade, Hoyle has artificially (and very convincingly!!) re-created what an arcade in 1981 actually would have sounded like. Not unlike the way field recordist Jean-Luc Herelle enabled us to hear the trompings and trumpetings of the dinosaurs of the Jurassic, 200 million years ago... It's a dense, non-looping, almost-hypnotic soundscape that Hoyle has sampled and sequenced. Heck it IS hypnotic for those of us in love with arcades!
And like we said, we also have copies of Arcade Ambiance '83 and '86 available, they're great too, each one guaranteed to bring back remarkably specific memories to those who wasted afternoons (and many quarters) during the golden age of arcade gaming... you can practically smell the cigarette smoke (that's right, they allowed smoking in arcades, and most machines had burns on 'em from players resting their cigarettes) and bask in the imagined video glow. Good times!
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 8"

ARCADE AMBIANCE '83 (GDG) cd-r 12.98
Here's the 2nd volume in this cd-r series -- we highlighted volume one, Arcade Ambience '81, last time around. Remember 1983? Remember the video arcade games that were popular that year? The '83 disc will refresh your memory. Burgertime, Dig Dug, Elevator Action, Galaga, Joust, Mario Bros., Millipede, Moon Patrol, Ms. Pacman, Pengo, Pole Position, Qbert, Robotron, Sinistar, Stargate, Time Pilot, Track & Field, Tron, Zaxxon, and more, all make appearances on this simulated arcade field recording soundscape. You'll be listening to it, and be like, oh yeah, I remember that game!, as a simple combination of sounds strikes a chord deep within your brain somewhere -- like, oh crap, here comes Sinistar! or the pesky dragon from Joust!
If you aren't an arcade aficionado (or even if you are), this disc is basically an insane, extremely dense collage of electronic bleeps and bloops, zaps and braps, a bit like being trapped in a fierce sci-fi space battle, but for the snippets of music and the clang of coins dropped into machines... in other words, the general ambience of a bustling video game palace at the height of the arcade era. Our review of the '81 volume explains that while these are not actual field recordings, but instead modern-day, computer-aided recreations, these discs certainly sound convincing. A well-crafted nostalgia trip for video gamers, and also an interesting item for fans of unique environmental sounds!
NB. We're not listing the '86 cd-r quite yet 'cause some of the copies we got were bad burns, unfortunately, and we've got to test out our entire stock for glitches... if you already bought one from us, check and see if towards the things get sort of choppy and distorted? Not saying that doesn't sound cool, but it doesn't sound like any video arcade we've ever been in, except maybe on drugs (just kidding). Let us know if you've got a defective disc and we'll see about getting replacements from the label.
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 8"

ARRUGA, LORENZO, DAVE LOMBARDO & FRIENDS Vivaldi: The Meeting (Thirsty Ear) cd 15.98
Yes, ex-SLAYER drummer, Dave Lombardo drumming furiously along to VIVALDI. Simultaneously amazing and ridiculous. Produced by Alberto Contini, who some metalheads might remember as A.C. Wild from Bulldozer (Italy's answer to Venom). Highly recommended. Sort of. One of those completely uncalled-for projects like, uh, well I can't think of one quite like this actually. Note: the Vivaldi is not "arranged for thrash-metal", "switched-on" or anything like that - it's straight operatic classical Vivaldi with The Great Lombardo incongrously adding his trap kit double bass stylings... Apparently inspired by a real encounter that Vivaldi himself had with a Cuban percussionist several hundred years ago (Lombardo is Cuban-born). Possibly the ultimate novelty record of the year (1999) so far!

AUBE Pages From The Book (Elsie And Jack Recordings) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The newest Aube project, this time using only a copy of The Bible as sound source material! Blasphemous crinklings and tearings? Yes, and he's mangaged to coax a sort of mechanical heartbeat out of it as well, among other noises. Of course without knowing already one could never guess that those sounds were coming from a book, let alone from the pages of The Greatest Story Ever Told--but that knowledge is an added bonus to this enjoyable listen.

AUTODIGEST A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live (Ash International) cd 14.98
Applause. And clapping. And...um cheering. Some whooping. And some stomping too. And, well that's basically it. In AQ's rich history of presenting you with unlikely sounds: hot rod races, life support machines, melting ice, barking dogs, frogs, zambonis, we can now add to the list crowds. Yep. One full hour of crowds, before thes songs start, after they finish, ovations, the whole deal, all seamlessly edited into one hour of cheering. There is some meta-interpretation and of course some uber concept, but ultimately this is nothing but clapping. Which is not to say we don't like it. We do. Although we've only made it all the way through once. On closer listening however, about halfway through, the crowd sounds are joined by an ominous whir / drone way way down in the mix, that unless you are listening really close or on headphones you might not even notice. And it seem to serve no real purpose except to perhaps help the crowd sounds blur into a fuzzy whole that is of course obviously the sounds of cheering, but at the same time indistinct enough that it becomes a weird scratchy, very un-smooth drone. Sort of. A little like when you say the same word over and over until it starts to sound like a made up word with no meaning. Interpret away, or just sit back and let the adulation roll over you, congratulating you with an hour long ovation, for everything you accomplished today!
MPEG Stream: "A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live"

B. MONIKER Station Identification cd-r 7.98
B. Moniker's "Station Identification" parallels the Cassetteboy album also recently reviewed, as a peurile form of People Like Us inspired plunderphonia / channel surfing electronica. This homebrewed concoction recontextualizes tons of non-placed media samples from a number of archetypal genres (i.e. mad scientists, kung-fu movies, gameshow hosts, televangelists, newscast pollsters, hyperbolic commercials, children's radio dramas, and quick tunings through the fm radio band) with a smug sense of irony. Far more reliant upon musical interludes than the never-ending barrage of vocal cut-ups on Cassetteboy, B. Moniker forces his dialogues into a melange of samples from Steinski-like hip-hop instrumentals, those sad post-rock grooves that punctuate the earnestness of "This American Life," and filtered Autechrish breakbeats, all topped off with whimsical casiotone melodies.
RealAudio clip: "KHZS 44.1 FM"
RealAudio clip: "KILR 99.9 FM"

BALTYCKIE SZEPTY s/t (Plus GSM) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Members of Polish avant-hippy collective Atman (aka Magic Carpathians) are involved with this project, the title of which we think translates into English as "Baltic Whisperings". Recordings of seals swimming in the Baltic Sea are augmented with moog, guitar, woodwinds, plus various other instruments and electronics. They've created an aquatic musical document of bathing, breathing creatures and drifting, gorgeous, and sometimes sinister, shimmering soundscapes. This is the kind of "new age" music we can like. Very limited availability.

BATS (MICHEL BARATAUD) The Inaudible World - A Sound Guide Of The French Bats (Ballade Dans L'inaudible - Methode D'identification Acoustique Des Chauves-Souris De France) (Sittelle) 2cd 39.00
I know we've said this before, but the more crazy animal sounds we hear, the more we wonder why musicians even bother. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to get a pop song out of a sled dog or a purring kitten or an insect or a croaking frog, but for any other sounds all bets are off. Be it rumbling or clicking or squeaking or whirring or chirping or some impossible mix of all of those, or even (especially) those sounds we're not exactly sure how to describe, the animal kingdom has us beat. Thousands of years of evolution, technological advances, every manner of sound making device imaginable, and somewhere, there's some little furry thing that can make those same sounds with its mouth or by rubbing its legs together, or using some parts only they possess. That's what makes records like this totally fascinating and completely humbling.
Most of us have seen bats at one time or another, flitting overhead, barely visible in the dark, or maybe at the zoo. But who among us has ever really heard a bat, until now? And these recordings aren't the mewlings and scratchings and other various sounds that small animals make, no these are the sounds of the bats' ultra sensitive sonar, recorded by expert Michel Barataud using a heterodyne detector and a simple tape recorder, culled from a study that lasted from 1988-1995 and covered 251 different bats of 20 different species! The neat thing about this collection is the fact that there are two discs, one with the original recordings, the other with those same recordings slowed down 10 times (we we can hear what the bats are "hearing"). So cool!
The first disc is an expansive series of creaks and clicks, percussive knocks and thumps, strange melodies that sound like analog synths, high pitched pulses, shortwave-like squawks, chattering, sputtering Geiger counter-like rhythms, all very minimal and totally hypnotic. Sounds so much like a record on ultra-minimalist label Raster-Noton it's not even funny. One can almost imagine Ryoji Ikeda or Alva Noto, after spending years locked in a pressure sealed white cube of a studio, packed with state of the art sound modules, liquid cooled speakers, hard disc recorders, every bit of sound recorded and played back in a perfect listening vacuum, each click and tone painstakingly crafted and carefully placed, stepping outside with finished disc in hand, and then upon hearing the delicate fluttering pattern of clicks and chirps of the bats' sonar, throwing their disc to the ground and stomping it to bits, uttering in their best Simpsons Comic Book Guy voice, "Oh... I've wasted my life."
Gorgeously spare and hauntingly musical, an uber-minimal intricate rhythmic soundfield with impossibly abstract barely there melodies and surrounded by the sounds of no sound. Lovely.
On disc two, those very same sounds are slowed down, and thus become less like percussive clicks and more like melodic chirps. The slowed down versions sound remarkably like bird calls, but unlike the trills and songlike elements of birdsong, each note here is suspended all by itself, floating in a soundscape of ambient whir, before it is supplanted by the next. An extended melody spread out over minutes instead of seconds, like a 45 rpm record of bird calls played at 16 rpm. The sped up sounds on disc two are occasionally joined by the sounds of insects and the surrounding landscape, filling out the sound with the chirp of crickets and the croaking of frogs, a distant cacophony underpinning the bats' mysterious melodies.
Included is a 50 page oversized book which contains all of the field notes, recording details, notes on each track and each animal, complete with charts and graphs, very dense and scientific, and there's even a page with a blank chart so you can go out there and take some field recording notes yourself!
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track One"
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track Two"
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track Four"
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track Six"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track One"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track Two"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track Three"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track Four"

BLACKDEATH / LEVIATHAN split (Niessedrion) picture disc 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While we're waiting to get restocked on the cd version of this killer split (in the next week or two!), which flew out of here after our last list, we managed to get 30 copies of the picture disc vinyl version. Unfortunately that's all we're ever gonna get, so as always, act fast!
Hard to know what to say about Leviathan that we haven't said already. Quite possibly the most innovative outfit in black metal today. The man behind Leviathan, Wrest, has taken traditional black metal and turned it into something new and strange and completely out there, while somehow remaining totally grim and true to the black metal tradition. Here, he is teamed up with Russian black metal group Blackdeath, who specialize in extremely primitive buzzy and blurry black metal a la Burzum, Darkthrone and the like. The most remarkable thing about Blackdeath besides their simple droning fuzzed out riffs, and frosty atmosphere, is the vocals, a weird raspy warble, that slips from black metal shriek to weirdly anguished falsetto, reminding us a lot of SF BM legends Weakling. And the guitars are so thick and buzzy and blown out that you almost can't hear the drums, which lends the whole thing a super hypnotic drone quality that we LOVE. As if playing off of Blackdeath's primitive grimness, Leviathan hits right back with four tracks of his own full on grim buzz, but as with everything he does, no matter how true and grim the sound is, no matter how blasting the drums or buzzing the guitars are, there is always lots of stuff going on beneath the surface, or in the arrangements, not always easy to explain, just this intangible something that makes Leviathan's sound so unique and so much creepier and intense. Minor key melodies, weird stretches of industrial ambience, strangely affected vocals, haunting drones and bizarre soundscapes, all woven into the already twisted framework of Leviathan's uniquely hellish black metal.
WE WERE ONLY ABLE TO GET 25 COPIES. ONCE THEY ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!!!
MPEG Stream: BLACKDEATH "Der Absolute Bose"
MPEG Stream: LEVIATHAN "Derision"

BLIND Fragment (Ash) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is one of the earliest found sound documents from Ash International. To take the most literal definition of a UFO, Blind's 45 minutes of air traffic control broadcasts track the movement of an unknown vector traveling across the air space of the Atlantic. Tense silences are broken up by harsh eruptions of shortwave radio transmissions which merely recount the position of the craft as it passes eratically from one sector of air space to another. While no communication is made with the craft, the controllers maintain an absolute calm and lack of spectulation that is more than a little eerie.

BLONK, JAAP Vocalor (Staalplaat) cd 16.98
To qualify Jaap Blonk as the intellectual sound poet equivalent of Jim Carrey may be an odd analogy... but don't be put off by it as this record features amazing dynamism from carnivalesque humor to dadaist terror to fluxus-inspired sound poets! This is all voice, no electronics have been used on it. Encroyable!

BRANDSTIFTER Rauschgiftengelloops (Gruenrekorder) cd-r 16.98
We recently discovered this little label in Germany called Gruenrekorder, who specialize in "Phonography and Audio Art" which translates to field recordings, turntablism and audio installations, which definitely sounded right up our alley. We then discovered that they had 60 or 70 releases, probably more by the time of this review, most cd-r's and all incredibly limited, usually to 50 or less. Yikes. Had to do some quick thinking, so we picked two of the most promising sounding and got a bunch of those (a bunch meaning 25 copies, which is half of the pressing). So elsewhere on this list you'll find the other Gruenrekorder release, a field recording of bats (and you know our love of bats is second only to our love of frogs!), which somehow seems to perfectly balance this one right here, a live recording of a sound installation for turntables, records and... plastic angels.
The set up goes like this, a bunch of turntables, all set up on a small dais, each with a plastic angel spinning in the middle of the lp, and each angel with a weight hung between its wings, which shifts with each rotation, and causes various loops to alter, drift, shift, change duration, overlap, all the while, Brandstifter, the man responsible, crawls around moving the angels, replacing the records, changing speeds, the result is pretty magnificent, a looped hypnotic soundscape of operatic voices, fluttering flutes and fiddles, droning whirs, hiccupping song snippets, skipping stuttering rhythms, the vibe very festive, as most of the discs are choral, the voices locked into hypnotic mantras, the various cracks and skips adding percussive filigree. Some passages are epic and triumphant, voices soaring, while others are murky and mumbled, sounding like they could have been yanked from some mysterious Finnish free folk record or from some blurred Philip Jeck turntable landscape.
Haunting and eerie, like some damaged funhouse mirror holiday soundscape, Christmas carols twisted and gnarled, holiday favorites scratched up and looped, bits of opera looped into fuzzy repetitive seasick mantras, you can almost imagine some Tim Burton-ish mad scientist armed with a bunch of dusty scratched up records and weird old fashioned turntables and all those painted angels, hovering in a dark cobwebby corner of some old seventies mall, families and children steering clear of the crazy man in the corner and his murky muddy choral din. SO AWESOME!!!
Beautifully packaged, printed cd-r, full color sleeve, but again, LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! So once these are gone, that's it...
MPEG Stream: "Rauschgiftengelloops (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Rauschgiftengelloops (excerpt 2)"

BROTZMANN, PETER & HAN BENNINK Schwarzwaldfahrt (Atavistic / Unheard Music Series) 2cd 21.00
Who doesn't love Peter Brotzmann and/or Han Bennink? If you're into skronky European free jazz craziness that is. Saxophonist Brotzmann is a hard-blowin' legend, and Han Bennink is not only a percussion whiz but also a strong "pro" argument in the whole does-humor-belong-in-music? debate. Teamed up here on this expanded (meaning there's a whole bonus disc with ten previously unreleased tracks!) reissue of what those in the know, know as the 1977 Bro-Ben Black Forest recordings, Brotzmann and Bennink actually did the Jewelled Antler natureboy thing here and took their instruments out into the forest to improvise amid the trees and birds and small curious animals. Along with a supply of bread and wine they toted with them an assortment of clarinets and saxophones, a banjo, a viola, some toys, birdcalls, cymbals, and suchlike sundry instruments -- Han had to make do without his customary drum kit, playing instead on tree trunks and rocks with branches and stones. Their free music got all that much freer for being loosed in the great outdoors, and these Black Forest sessions certainly brought forth all the wildman whimsy you'd expect from this duo. In some ways a precursor to the field recording aesthetic practiced today by the Jewelled Antler gang and all those Finnish free-freak-forest-folk outfits we all love, Schwarzwaldfahrt is replete with the gurgling sounds of water, birds twittering, primal yelps from Han and/or Peter, and other things you wouldn't normally hear in more "civilized" jazz recording. At one point, Han pounds (or splashes) out a stacatto rhythm on the surface of a stream or pond, and you can for sure tell how much fun they were having! So much, that they recorded a lot more music/sound than they could release at the time. They had to edit down their tapes to just one LP's worth of material for the original edition of this on FMP, but now Atavistic's Unheard Music Series has given them two whole compact discs to fill up, and it's a joy.
MPEG Stream: "NR.7"
MPEG Stream: "NR.8"
MPEG Stream: "NR.9"

BRUMIT, JON Piledriver: Recordings From The San Francisco Dump 2002 (self-released) cd 9.98
Oh how we fancy field recordings here at AQ - of both the unaltered, pristine kind and the modified, manipulated variety. This one particularly perked up the ears of Cup and Andee. The man behind it is one Mr. Jon Brumit, and as the title states, he captured these sounds at the city dump. In the liner notes, it is specified that no effects processors were used. Sound sources and equipment included minidisc recorders, a dr sample, a cheap microphone, a full drum kit, a Mac G3 computer and the impressive array of stuff that the dump had to offer... among them were a Nerf Ballzooka, joggin trampolines, a Hello Dolly soundtrack lp, an espresso maker, a mint children's drumkit, bowling balls, a 16mm projector with a silent cowgirl film, a marquee sign, a 100' tape measure, a chandelier, a wetsuit and an assortment of boom boxes and clock radios. Very cool!
MPEG Stream: "Dawn Of Time"
MPEG Stream: "Chasing Kegs For Gong Show"

BUTLER, KEN Voices of Anxious Objects (Tzadik) cd 15.98
In Tzadik's "Lunatic Fringe" series, hybrid instrument creator and composer Ken Butler! Strangely klezmery. (Mr. Butler was featured in the Gravikords... unusual invented instruments book and cd.)

CAT, THE s/t (Time Stereo) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Frogs. Demonic and / or cult possessions. Caves. Numbers stations. EVP transmissions. VLF static. These have been the subject matters for AQ's favorites from the "Found Sound / Field Recordings" section. Without a doubt, 'The Cat' ranks as one of those great oddball records alongside the Sounds of North American Frogs or the Ghost Orchid or the Conet Project. This album is simply a 45 minute recording of a purring cat whose contented rumblings have been amplified through the careful placement of a contact microphone. The cat in question is named Urchin and resides at Stormy Records in Dearborn, Michigan. There, Windy Weber (of Windy & Carl fame) and Davin Brainard (who helps run Time Stereo) recorded this amazing document of deep-rumbling cat happiness.
Now you can enjoy all the comforting joy of a cat's warm purring without all those nasty hairballs. Allergic? No problem. This cd is hypo-allergenic. No litterbox to clean (or to let get filthy). No fishy cat food to dish out. No unsightly scratching post that the cat will ignore while it shreds your new sofa. What you get instead with The Cat is a marvelous recording of a cat enraptured in drooling bliss. As these recording attest to, Urchin seems to spend a lot of time splashing in water, which isn't normal cat behavior at all. Or at least that's what it sounds like. Maybe he's lapping up milk, or cleaning itself with A LOT of saliva. Anyway, this is a nice disc for you fans of drones and field recordings, who don't have cats of your own to amplify.
And we figured we'd end this review with a couple of timely haiku courtesy of our pal Harvey Sid Fisher:

We're almost equals
I purr to show I love you
Want to smell my butt?

You must scratch me there!
Yes, above my tail!
Behold, elevator butt.
RealAudio clip: "Track 1"
RealAudio clip: "Track 2"

CATS & KITTENS Our World's Sounds (Oreade Music) cd 12.98
Meow. We have trouble keeping that Time Stereo "The Cat" cd-r in stock, but now at least we can offer you this new cd, also of cat sounds. This is from the same label that brought us the ever-popular Frogs and Deep Into The Earth natural sounds recordings (and Woodfire, and Sea & Dolphins, etc.). Cats might seem a bit more warm and cuddly than frogs and fish, but when mic'd up close and amplified all that purring takes on a massive droning quality, and playful kitten cries become disturbingly angst-filled. There's some twittering songbirds also heard here in the background, which may explain the feline excitement. On the back cover it says something about the cats "contemplating doves that seem to outsmart them every time" -- good, as a recording of cats devouring doves might not be as pleasant. Not that this won't drive your housemates (and housecats, and dogs!) insane if played back at high volume. So don't let the cute n' colourful cover (what's that kitten doing playing with a sewing machine, anyway?) fool you. This is a serious piece of sonic documentation every bit as interesting as a Francisco Lopez field recording *and* as dramatic as a Dead Raven Choir cd-r.
MPEG Stream: "Biscuits! Purrrr...fect"
MPEG Stream: "Kittens Demand Some Attention From A Contented Purring Mother"

CHASSE, L. Synthesis of Neglected Places (Unique Tavern) cassette + book 9.99
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. THERE'S A CD-R VERSION NOW AVAILABLE
A 60 minute tape of field recordings from Mr. Chasse's sabbatical to Pennsylvania this past summer. Humid atmospheres and fragmented sounds of stones scrapping across each other are accompanied by bittersweet piano and violin. While not intended to be as conceptually complete as some of Chasse's other albums (notably the brilliant Id Battery record for Ecstatic Peace), this a nice document into the working process into of the most underexposed sound artists.

CHEVY BOYS, THE (Anthem) dvd-r 12.98
With the current deluge of 'reality this' and 'reality that' on the TV and the internet, it's hard to watch this dvd-r without wearing irony goggles, but this footage and the kids on it are real and truly from back in the day. Much like the pre-YouTube old VHS classics Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Metallica Drummer, The Chevy Boys is a document of regular ol' American teens doin' what regular ol' American teens do. But when viewed from a third person perspective their antics, activities and conversations are nothing short of irregular, unintentionally hilarious, and at times downright homoerotic. Perversely fascinating. Shot in Anytown, USA (actually Eugene, OR) circa the late '80s, these sixteen minutes are packed with flailing body moves that vaguely resemble kung fu and breakdancing, butchered renditions of Bon Jovi and Skid Row tunes, and assorted other fucking around. Heck, the boys' haircuts alone are unflinchingly donned by today's fashion mavens and Vice Mag readers far and wide. And no doubt some of you, like us, will recognize some cringeworthy moments not all that far removed from some of your teenage antics. You'll definitely find yourself laughing your ass off, and thanking your lucky stars it isn't you captured in your awkward teenage metal mullet break dancing prime...

CICADAS AND CRICKETS (JEAN C. ROCHE & JEAN THEVENET) Cicadas And Crickets (Gigales Et Grillons) (Sittelle) cd 24.00
Chirp chirp chirp chirp... those of us who grew up somewhere outside of the city where you get to hear the sounds of nature at night are familiar with the wonderful, pulsating background drone provided by crickets and cicadas in warmer weather. These particular "singing" insects (60 different species!) were recorded all over the world (in France, China, Boreno, Cameroon, Australia, Venezuela, Sengal, and many, many other locales), but some of them could just as easily been in my parents' wooded backyard in Pennsylvania. OK, well maybe if I was an expert I could tell otherwise. But the buzzing chirping sounds still sound familiar, comfortingly so. Yet alien too, when you think about it... as with the somewhat similar Sublime Frequencies volume Broken Hearted Dragonflies, this could just as easily be the work of an experimental electronic musician! Ryoji Ikeda, Noto, or Nerve Net Noise perhaps...and the examples of "buzzers" on the Conet Project also come to mind.
With sixty tracks here, it's hard to pick faves. They all have their individual charms, each group of insects its own rhythmic and timbral signature, plus the different background ambience (frogs, bumble bees, woodpeckers) found from track to track, some recorded at "nightfall in a banana plantation" others at "twilight in a plam grove", or "during the day from a tree" etc. Also, these bugs' high pitched whines and massed chattering vary in intensity levels from the soothing to the downright frightening...
Definitely recommended to all you fans of the likes of Sounds of North American Frogs and Chris Watson's field recordings. And, as further recommendation, this comes from the from the same label that brought us Rutting Red Deers, The Inaudible World of Bats, and this week's Record Of The Week, Pastoral Bells!
MPEG Stream: "Crickets: Reunion Island (track 14)"
MPEG Stream: "Cicadas: China (track 35)"
MPEG Stream: "Cicadas: Venezuela (track 47)"
MPEG Stream: "Cicadas: Malasisa (track 40)"

CLIMAX GOLDEN TWINS s/t (Locations) (Fire Breathing Turtle) cd 13.98
This is a record that shouldn't be around; yet, against the odds, we have a handful of these discs in stock for the moment. The Climax Golden Twins refer to this eponymous CD as Locations although we can't find any reference to that title on the all white, embossed folding cardstock. In recent years, Robert Millis of the Twins has produced some of the finer contributions to the Sublime Frequencies series of obscure ethnomusicology, including the Phi Ta Khon DVD and the Harmika Yab Yum compilation from Tibet. And, had this 1998 collage of field recordings and shortwave radio transmissions been released in this day and age, it surely would have warranted a Sublime Frequencies release, as it fits so closely within their agenda. Yet, it remains a Climax Golden Twins production, and given CGT's radically eclectic aesthetic sensibility (Victrola 78 collages, cannibalized psychedelia, horror soundtracks, long-form dronemusik, etc.), why not call this a Climax Golden Twins record? So what we have here is an interwoven collage from unspecified locations, with some of the locales being more obvious than others. The temple gongs and bells getting banged about with jubilant indeterminance are from South-East Asia (probably being Javanese Gamelan), the deeply reverential incantations set against clouds of crickets could be from any Muslim temple in Asia, and only an etymologist could pinpoint where in the world those cicadas could be residing. Altogether, a mighty fine collage of phonography before such a term was coined.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 2"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"

CONCEPT BUREAU Identity Encoder (self-released) cd-r 6.98
Concept Bureau is the name of this Bay Area project who generate a plethora of sounds using a machine they call The Identity Encoder. According to the liner notes the mysterious mechanism "translates personal facts and preferences into sound". These particular recordings were done just down the street from us at Artists' Television Access (ATA for short, it's a cool center for d.i.y. underground media works). The fourteen tracks of the fourteen participants range from soothing womb-y pulses and blips to a cavalcade of wind-up and squeak toys run amok. If you didn't know the story behind this release you could easily believe that these are some home recordings made by an old BBC Radiophonic engineer.
Limited to 50, packaged in hand-numbered, hand-sewn cardboard sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "Heather Dewey-Hagborg"
MPEG Stream: "Charlie Kayamoto"

CONET PROJECT, THE (Irdial Disc) 4cd+book 62.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Once again, the wait is over! Feels like we spend a whole lot of time waiting for the Conet Project to come back into our lives. We sell these like crazy when they're in stock, but it always seems to go out of print before we know it and we're forced to wait again for the re-emergence of one of our all time favorite "musical" documents. And hell, if there was ever a quadruple cd / book of shortwave transmissions worth waiting for, this is the one!! We're now on the FOURTH pressing of the Conet (or maybe even the fifth?) and we still can't get enough! This is one of our ALL TIME favorite releases EVER, as evidenced by the fact that EVERYONE who works here owns at least one copy, and to date, we've sold 680 copies! And counting! We'd probably have broken 1000 if this darn thing would stay in print. This version is again exactly the same as the others EXCEPT that this one includes a postcard seeking "cold warriors" with personal knowledge of numbers stations. As stated on the card, if you are one of those warriors, contact Irdial immediately. Your identity and whatever information you are able to share will be kept strictly confidential. If you are not one of those warriors, pass the card on, in the hopes that it will find its way into the right hands. Why so mysterious? What's with the cloak and dagger stuff? Well, my friends, read on, and learn all about the beautiful and mysterious Conet Project:
If there's one recording we have sold here that is most identified with Aquarius Records, or that at least we mention most often when trying to explain to people what it is that we're all about here, it'd be the Conet Project. Some others come close: Sounds of North American Frogs, Os Mutantes, Burzum "Filosofem", Comus "First Utterance", Boris, Circle, Philip Jeck, Village of Savoonga...and there's of course many other discs and LPs near and dear to our hearts (for instance, hearing the first Neutral Milk Hotel album always makes me nostalgic for the old 24th street store). But for some reason it's the Conet Project that really seems to sum it all up. It's all the things we really love: completely ridiculous (four cds!), completely fucked (secret government spy transmissions), droning, weird. It's just so interesting and evocative on so many levels, both musical and totally non-musical, as a listening experience and also as a geopolitical cold war and beyond artifact. Definitely a big AQ fave: Allan's got the whole thing on his iPod, Andee has multiple copies, many of which found their way into his old band's live perfomances, Jim has steadfastly maintained that this is the greatest record of all time, and we all are a little bit obsessed.
If you've been in the store, you've probably noticed that we have a chart on the wall behind the counter keeping a tally of Conets sold. It went up to 387 (yes, three hundred and eighty seven!) before it became unavailable/out of print a few years ago, then again up into the 400's, and then again into the 600's always forced to wait patiently until it becomes available again -- there's even snapshots of some of the happy purchasers (#382, Mike Patton) beside it. Now we're ready to start checking off more boxes on our chart, as we at last are able to offer you The Conet Project once again!! After several years of going in and out of print, the Irdial label has finally done another re-press! We're not sure if the re-presses are still funded by the $30,000+ settlement they recieved from Wilco's record label, who Irdial sued for the unauthorized use of a Conet Project sample on their breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, whose title itself comes from that Conet sample. (Read more about that here http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63952,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7.) We're not sure if we understand or agree with the legalities behind Irdial's lawsuit, but we're happy at least that the outcome resulted in more Conets to go around (if that's where Irdial got the money to repress, as we suspect). There was also the use of a Conet track in that Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky...
Basically, the Conet Project is a four-cd compilation of recordings of mysterious shortwave radio broadcasts, known as "numbers stations". These numbers stations are generally believed to be encrypted spy transmissions, but no concrete evidence has ever surfaced proving that suppostion. However, no credible *alternate* explanation has ever been demonstrated, either. For years (ever since the start of the Cold War), amateur radio enthusiasts have come across these sinister signals, and they continue to this day, broadcast in many languages all over the world (the theory is that some are CIA, some are KBG, some are Mossad, etc).
In general, the transmissions consist of a deadpan voice (sometimes an old man, sometimes a young woman, etc.) reading a seemingly random, meaningless series of numbers over and over. Sometimes the broadcsts are preceded by a musical cue (the "Swedish Rhapsody" music box one being a favorite of ours), and sometimes the numbers are not conveyed by voice but by even more cryptic electronics (as with "The Buzzer", and other noisy, abstract stuff found mainly on disc four).
Needless to say, hearing those amazing and baffling sounds collected on these four cds is an unnerving experience. Not only does knowledge of the supposed purpose of these transmissions imbue them with a disturbing quality, but the repetition of the numbers combined with the background of shortwave radio static makes for a aurally hypnotic experience. If merely regarded as a piece of experimental ambient sound scupture, the Conet Project would be a brilliant and affecting piece of work, yet with the added context of international intelligence and conspiracy theory, it becomes even more intriguing and creepy. The four cds come with a large book (housed in its own jewel box) that provides a great deal of description of, and speculation about, the many recordings. Very well done. The Conet Project is possibly the most incredible, and weirdest, item of sound art/documentation that we've EVER had here at Aquarius. Mesmerizing, fascinating, unique, massive, scary, but sometimes even soothing. 100 percent recommended to the adventurous listener ('cause it's not for everyone!). And once you have it you'll understand why it had to be a full four cds--being overwhelming is part of the obsessive allure of this Project.
MPEG Stream: "Swedish Rhapsody"
MPEG Stream: "5 Dashes"
MPEG Stream: "Iran/Iraq Jamming Efficacy Testing"
MPEG Stream: "Magnetic Fields"
MPEG Stream: "Tyrolean Music Station"
MPEG Stream: "The Buzzer"

CONRAD, TONY Bryant Park (Table Of The Elements) cd 16.98
An interesting idea for sure. One afternoon in October, 1969, Tony Conrad found himself in a fifth floor loft in Manhattan a couple blocks from Bryant Park, which was hosting a rally protesting the Vietnam War. The TV in his loft was blaring coverage of the protest, while the echoes from the speeches bounced through the city streets and into Conrad's apartment. Not surprisingly, he was recording the co-mingling between the mediated sounds of that protest through the TV and the diffused amplification of the live event, appearing with a subtle time-lag. Given the rather tumultuous political context of 2005 with an increasingly unpopular war abroad and an administration bungling almost every task at hand, the parallels to the context of 1969 protest should be self-evident by now.
MPEG Stream: "Bryant Park"

COYLE & SHARPE These 2 Men Are Imposters (Sharpeworld) 3cd + dvd 32.00
Hallelujah!!! All of you folks already well-versed in the much-more-than-comedy duo of Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe, you know this is the one you've been waiting for! If you've not yet gotten your introductory dose of their genius antics, this is a perfect place to commence your schooling. For a brief spell in the early '60s -- waaay back before everyone and his mother became acclimatized to guerrilla 'man on the street' style pranks -- these two sharp dressed gents were wreaking havoc in and around SF, blindsiding pedestrians along Market Street. Their unflinchingly methodical mischief was an effortless razor sharp blend of social criticism, surrealism and utter hilarity. Often their verbal interrogation would take on somewhat sinister and/or downright subversive undertones. Indeed, theirs was a much more refined and thought provoking mind-boggle than the recent parade of heavy on the obnoxious, gross out factor peeps such as the Jerky Boys or Jackass crew. Sure much of Coyle and Sharpe's antics may seem tame by today's standards, but simply put, their perfect balance of lightning quick wit and stoic straight-facedness has seldom been matched, let alone bested.
Released on the Sharpeworld label run by Mal Sharpe's daughter Jennifer, this fantastic four disc set comes pretty much straight from the horse's mouth... well, at least one of the two horses' mouths. Sadly Jim Coyle passed away in 1993, but in the years since his passing his cohort Mal Sharpe and their legions of diehard fans (including one Henry Rollins) have kept the Coyle & Sharpe magic alive. Sharpe compiled the proceedings here which include a Best of '63 collection recorded off the radio on New Year's Eve '63, a reissue of Coyle & Sharpe On The Loose (originally released in 1995 on Rollins' 213 label), a third cd of recently unearthed raw recording odds'n'ends with their earliest known recording from '61 plus 'Coyle & Sharpe Get Arrested' (yes, really!), and finally a dvd of the pair's 1965 pilot TV show The Imposters (the socialite dinner party and employee evaluation segments are particular viewing treats). This is truly a case of that old truism "they don't make 'em like they used to"! These 2 Men Are Imposters is a genuine treasure trove. Highly recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Record Your Stomach"
MPEG Stream: "Daring But Dead"
MPEG Stream: "114 Noises"

CRACK WE ARE ROCK Strawberries / Mount Shine (333 Recordings) 7" 5.98
Cool cool. A super-limited 7" release from San Francisco's psychedelelectro dirge party band, Crack: We Are Rock. Three hundred and thirty three of these were put out, as part of a 7" series from 333 Recordings.

CREEL, WALT Shooting / Loading: An Audio Companion For The Visual Series Deweaponizing The Gun (self released) lp 15.98
We've carried some strange sounds in our shop. We've listed them in other reviews, but it definitely bears repeating, ice melting, drag racing, life support machines, bats, lots of frogs, insects in stored foodstuffs, EVP voices from beyond the grave, chanting cults, arcade ambience, applause, silence, purring kittens, shortwave broadcasts, the sounds of Symphony intermissions, deer in heat, singing power lines, guitars dragged behind trucks, the aurora borealis, blank tapes, monkeys, crackling fires, the ocean, elephants playing gamelans, vibrating docks and bridges, hollerin' and so much more. The one thing we've yet to carry is the sounds of a gun being fired. Until now.
But this isn't just some random sniper fire, or some yahoos firing their shotguns out in the woods. No these gunshots have a purpose. And that purpose is art. The shooter is a man called Walt Creel, who uses a rifle to perforate big pieces of sheet metal, and in doing so creates huge images from the bullet holes. Cool huh? The works are part of a concept called Deweaponizing The Gun, wherein the gun's destructive power is transformed into the power to create. In conjunction with the visual works, Creel decided to deweaponize the gun in another way, by capturing the sound, one that usually invokes panic and terror and recontextualizing it into something while maybe not musical, something distinctively sonic, and textural, percussive and strange.
And that it is. A one sided 12", featuring recordings of Creel firing his gun into metal, an auditory glimpse into the process of creating his art. Sonically, it's reminiscent of pop guns, or firecrackers, or a screen door slamming, not the huge roar and bang you hear in movies or on TV, instead, the sound is actually slight, tinny, high end, the shots fired create a strange spare soundscape of not quite rhythms, the recording hissy and lo-fi, adding texture and grit, not the easiest listening, but still pretty fascinating, in both concept and execution. Found sound and field recording enthusiasts will definitely dig.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES! Beautiful one sided black and white sleeves, each one hand numbered and signed by the artist, and each with a small cardstock antlered insert.

CROWLEY, ALEISTER 1910 - 1914 Wax Cylinder Recordings (Transparency) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
If all of that dark gumbling on your Current 93 records got in the way of listening to Aleister Crowley's incantations of magick, then this is certainly for you. A collection of very raw wax cylinder recordings in all of Crowley's spellcasting 'fury'.

CROWLEY, ALEISTER 1910-1914 Black Magic Recordings (Cleopatra) cd 16.98
Folks had been bugging us to track down this disc for ages, Black Magic Recordings by none other than the "wickedest man in the world" (at least when he was still OF this world), but we hadn't been able to figure out where to get them. We assumed it must have been released on some tiny obscure microlabel, or maybe it was a bootleg or something, but lo and behold, it was right under or noses, released on good old Cleopatra Records. Home to much modern goth and industrial. And while we can definitely see how this stuff might appeal to the industrial goth kids, it is evil after all, and black magic, but it seems to us the folks that would be way more into this, are aQ customers, fans of the obscure and mysterious, found sounds and field recordings, this would fit perfectly between your Conet Project and your Ghost Orchid disc of EVP recordings (depending, we guess, on what strange alien alphabetization you use).
These recordings have been available before in various quasi bootleg editions, probably most notably as 1910-1914 Wax Cylinder Recordings released on the Transparency label. But they are the same recordings, since these are the only recordings of Crowley in existence.
It's been a while since we listened to the Transparency disc, but these tracks definitely sound a little cleaned up, which is almost too bad, but fear not, there's still plenty of hiss and crackle and warble and buzz and fuzz, it's taken from wax cylinders after all. Basically, this is a collection of Crowley recording various stories, poems, writings, incantations and magical spells. His delivery very songlike, chantlike at times, fans of the Doomsday Cult recordings will also probably love this. The highlight probably being the Call Of The Aethyr tracks, each delivered both in English, but also in Enochian, a magical language supposedly discovered and used by John Dee, magician to the court of Queen Elizabeth. It may sound like speaking in tongues, but it is in fact a real language, with grammar and syntax, rumored to be a degenerate form of the language spoken in the lost city of Atlantis.
Comes in one of those new fangled rounded-corner jewel cases, includes extensive liner notes, nothing about the recordings, but a fairly comprehensive history of Crowley's life. And while they last, it also comes with an Aleister Crowley patch AND pin!
MPEG Stream: "The Call Of The First Aethyr"
MPEG Stream: "The Pentagram"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpts From The Gnostic Mass"

CUSACK, PETER Baikal Ice (Spring 2003) (ReR Megacorp) cd 16.98
Are you into Chris Watson's "Weather Report", that "Indian Soundscapes" double disc, "Night Sounds From Bali", and the like? Well field recording fans, here's another one for ya! This disc documents the journey of UK improvising musician Peter Cusack to a remote lake in Siberia, on a mission to record the sounds of ice creaking, cracking, and melting in the springtime. The ice in question covers the surface (up to a meter deep) of one Lake Baikal, which geography and/or trivia buffs will know as being the world's deepest, oldest lake, holding one fifth of the earth's fresh water. On his way to the lake, Cusack puts his recording equipment to good use, bringing us audio verite encounters with the Trans-Siberian Railway, percussion on a broken metal fountain, children playing with a village's loudspeaker system, bird calls, and other interesting sounds. Armchair travellers will delight. And then there's the whole reason for the trip: Lake Baikal's ice breaking up after a frozen winter. A crinkling, tinkling sound, like a sharp-edged rain, drones nicely, with louder, larger cracks and creaks and groanings. Several tracks are devoted to this crystalline rumbling, and it's both mysterious and lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Baikal Ice Flow Split 3"
MPEG Stream: "Port Baikal Weird"

DADDY'S CURSES s/t (Prophecy Connection) cd-r ep 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Aquarius Records is proud to present the newest in field recording fuckery: "Daddy's Curses". The disc is exactly as the title implies, a recording of someone's father cussing his brains out. Apparently, in 1987, an enterprising young son surreptitiously recorded his father as he attempted to repair a piano. For ten solid minutes the father lays out a steady stream of profanities ranging from the milquetoast Ned Flanders end of the spectrum to out and out Raymond & Peter nastiness. The combination of the two from one mouth is absolutely pant wetting at times, such as when our protagonist locks onto a repeated "Gosh Darn It!!" after having been laying out a heavy stream of "You Motherfucker" style potty mouth. For better or worse, the piano itself is never heard throughout the recording. The closest thing we get to hearing it are repeated strikes with what sounds like a hammer against maybe the piano's frame, eventually resulting in pieces of wood falling to the floor.
RealAudio clip: "Excerpt 1"
RealAudio clip: "Excerpt 2"

DAHL, ANDERS Habitat (Kning Disk) cd-r 14.98
Last list (#249) we reviewed the quite lovely Hundloka, Flockblomstriga 1 cd on Hapna by this Swedish sound artiste... in which we mentioned another release of his, devoted entirely to FAKE field recordings of nature sounds. That is, what sound remarkably like real bird calls and frog croakings and insect buzzings but are totally artificial constructs made by Dahl himself. No actual creatures involved. That's this 36 minute disc, Habitat. And it's fantastic, if you (like us) revel in the organic textures of outdoorsy soundscapes. Knowing how it was made -- at home with computer, electronics, accordion, recorder, speakers, toys, etc. -- is an interesting twist, but concept aside it's just a really nice listen. And (almost) totally convincing. If you didn't know better you'd imagine Dahl stalking critters in the wild with his microphone...but there'd be something strange, sorta plastic and brightly, wrongly colored about the landscape, enhanced with CGI animation perhaps. Very pleasant and somehow peculiar...
This cd-r release is limited to 100 numbered copies, of which we got the last ten of 'em!! The label is sold out, we won't be getting any more...
MPEG Stream: "Habitat (excerpt)"

DAHL, ANDERS Hundloka, Flockblomstriga 1 (Hapna) cd 16.98
Sweet! Hundloka (named for a flowering weed known in English as Cow Parsley) is another wonderful, textural, abstract release on Sweden's Hapna label, the first for field recordist/sound manipulator/visual artist Anders Dahl of Sweden, who is quite at home there (on Hapna, we mean, though he's also Swedish), alongside such artists as Tape, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, and Giuseppe Ielasi. At home in a realm of dreamy, twilit soundscapery full of snap, crackle, and drone. The three untitled tracks here, all but the middle one quite long (19:45, 6:22, and 12:37 respectively) are all performed (improvised? composed?) on stringed and wind instruments like guitar, bouzouki, violin, and recorder, also with the use on one track of computer and on another of "prepared speakers", plus percussion by Henrik Olsson. Yet the mysterious buzzingness of this sounds a lot like Dahl has woven in some field recording tapes as well. However, since he's apparently constructed *fake* nature sound recordings (digital birds!) in the past, we suspect that it's all Dahl here, no help from swarming insects or twittering birds or frolicking woodland creatures... It's all very gorgeous and glitchy, with guitar pluckings and gentle electronic hums, quiet and calm but for some moments of drone drama and surprise percussive attack.
MPEG Stream: "track 2"
MPEG Stream: "track 1"

DELAURENTI, CHRISTOPHER Favorite Intermissions (GD Stereo) cd 14.98
As many of our favorite records have demonstrated, music is where you find it, anywhere, and more often than not, the most amazing sounds are waiting to be found where one might not always look. In the past we've had straight up field recordings of drag races, a life support machine, barking sled dogs, rutting deer, cowbells in the alps... We've also had the microscopic captured vibrations of Tsunoda, the voices from beyond of the Ghost Orchid, the singing telephone wires of Alan Lamb, and we could go on and on. 
Some adventurous listeners/recordists have set their sights on the sounds BETWEEN the sounds. The continuous applause of A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live, and of course multiple 'moments of silence' strung together by Jonty Semper, and now we have Christopher DeLaurenti's Favorite Intermissions, which is just what the title indicates. At various classical performances, during the intermissions, when most folks went to the lobby to smoke, or grab a snack, visit the rest room, DeLaurenti stayed put, or wandered through the partially empty auditorium, capturing all the wonderful sounds that exist when the musicians are not playing and the crowds are not hushed and listening attentively. 
There is of course the general hubbub, foot steps, the low murmur of conversation, papers being folded, the ruffling of garments, laughter, coughing, snippets of conversation, all blended together into a surprisingly pleasant hum, a minimal multilayered drone, which on its own would be quite an excellent listen. But the other element, that is maybe the most fascinating, is capturing the musicians -- who are normally quite disciplined, playing the score perfectly, following the conductor, striving for utter perfection -- with their hair down as it were, relaxed and sort of just messing about. Lots of improvising, which they are not afforded the opportunity to do EVER, and some subtly impromptu jams, percussion and horns, weaving elaborate little sonic tableaus, fragments of the pieces they just performed, or are about to perform, removed from their context and allowed to breathe. It's loose and spirited, ramshackle, but also amazing to listen to. 
The combination of the room noise and the random bits of orchestral music are totally fascinating and sound absolutely perfect together. It's hard not to hear these excerpts as composed avant garde pieces: Symphony Number 4 for laid back oboe player, screwing around percussionist, crinkled candy wrapper, shuffling footsteps, random conversation and occasional laughter....
Sometimes the sound is quite minimal and quiet, just a few players playing scales, a handful of scattered voices, other times it's intense and cacophonous, with nearly the whole orchestra jamming wildly on some theme or another, exuding more of a wild free Sun Ra vibe than what you might normally expect from typically reserved classical performers. 
A surprisingly complex super intimate portrait of every day sounds, interactions between people transformed into performance, the noise of modern life mixed with the the mostly ignored sonic events surrounding some of the most beautiful music on earth, revealing that once again, music truly is where you find it, even if you find it while all dressed up, sitting in a plush velvet seat, with the lights up, listening to musicians tune up and the folks behind you talking about their plans for dinner.
MPEG Stream: "Holst, Hitherto"
MPEG Stream: "Before Petrushka"
MPEG Stream: "Awaiting AGON"

DIELECTRIC FIELD RECORDING ALL-STARS Re: Record (Dielectric) cd 10.98
Final release from beloved local label Dielectric, so sad, but what a way to go! After a clutch of killer releases, some simple and lovely, some high concept, all beautifully executed and assembled, each sonically breathtaking: the Dielectric Drone All-Stars, the Dielectric Minimalist All-Stars, a handful of super limited cd-r's as well as a four pack of killer 12"s, Dielectric bows out with their most expansive and sonically overwhelming release, the Dielectric Field Recording All-Stars, and like each of the Dielectric All-Stars releases, the title says it all, minimal, drone, and now field recordings. Although all three of those distinctions tend to blur together, especially here.
The All-Stars this time around are ten strong: label head honcho Drew Webster, Jen Boyd, Leticia Casteneda, Cria Cuervos, Mark Griswold, WIll Mitchell, Maggi Payne, Toby Paddock, Rudy Trubitt and Aaron Ximm. As with any record like this, there are three critical elements, the players, the sounds, and how those sounds are woven into something listenable. Sometimes a straight field recording can be as compelling as the most intricately composed piece of music, but sometimes, it's exciting to hear a piece of music only to learn later that it was actually a recording of insects or cars or sneezes or whatever. The Field Recording All-Stars got you covered either way.
The above ten recordists, compiled an incredible palette of sounds, from all over the world, there's even a chart inside the cd booklet, to see who contributed what sound to each track. The sources are overwhelming to just read, let alone hear: a floating restaurant in Barcelona, Spain, evening in Oakland, California, song on Chinese radio station, eating an apple, pigs in a pen, squeaky shoe, tomato, red ball, phasing radio, Voice of Vietnam, space shuttle, shortwave, Barcelona subway, SF 6am, freezer, blue angels, record player, various radio broadcasts, buskers in Paris Metro, under a dock Berkeley, CA, incident on subway, Chile, dog versus rattlesnake, finger-picked acoustic guitar, weird buzz, air traffic controller, storm drain, weird radio, underwater, answering machine, TV show, shortwave sweep, protest march, failing speaker, Rise up!, protest drums, Riley running, police siren, crosswalk signal, police dispersing demonstrators, turntable, creek pebbles, buoy, leaky organ oscillator tube, Wuhan taxi dispatcher, Chinese busker, wasp nest, streetlight, skipping cd, church mass on radio, unknown feedback, violin, psalter & ball bearing and a slide guitar! Phew!
Now, not all of those sounds are present on each track. Some tracks play out like straight field recordings, voices, vehicles, birds, animals, strange clatter and thumps, footsteps, dogs barking different texture and timbres presented raw and unprocessed, but on other tracks, the various sounds were woven together by Webster, aka Die Elektrischen into fantastical soundscapes, running the gamut from deep cavernous drones, grinding metallic melodies, strangely rhythmic bits of skitter and shuffle, dreamy backwards warble, slow shifting underwater shimmer, a few tracks even almost rock, the core being some sort of buzzing guitar or vibrating steel string, with the various found sounds simply adding to the texture or lurking in the background as another layer of sound, while other tracks are epic and expansive, mysterious new worlds of sonic wonder, like wandering beneath strange colored skies, or slow shifting landscapes, swimming in strange seas, every track is like a sonic road map of some unexplored territory, some soft and shimmery, some harsh and brutal, others just really really strange, but every one totally listenable and truly fascinating. This is one of those discs that is definitely amazing on first listen, but benefits from closer scrutiny, repeated listens, deeper listenings reveal so much more going on, layer after layer, each unfolding and blossoming and blurring into each other like some dizzying kaleidoscope of sound. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Making A Recording... Go Away Please"
MPEG Stream: "Crunchy Frog"
MPEG Stream: "Aether"
MPEG Stream: "Bigger Fewer Smaller Manyer"

DRECOJECAI, PETROS Mistaken Receptions (Petros Drecojecai Archives) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
According to the liner notes, written in (intentionally?) broken English, Petros Drecojecai was a would be anthropologist visiting California from Hungary in the mid 1990's. Drecojecai spent much of his spare time in between conferences listening to and recording what he thought were American talk radio programs but were in fact cordless phone transmissions of his neighbors that he was picking up. The excited and naive Drecojecai sent a cassette back to his native Hungary for his colleagues to listen to and now, years later, it has found its way back to our fair state in it the form of a cd-r. Claims to the validity of this account aside, 'Mistaken Receptions' is still quite the anthropological document. From banal accounts of toothaches to get rich schemes involving putting things in one's butt, there's a wealth of strange calls here that will satisfy both the voyeur as well as the connoisseur of found sounds and field recordings. While generally not longer than a few minutes each (some tracks are well under a minute) the random snatches of life give one enough information to start asking questions like: "Are these two a couple? Why don't they know one another's pager numbers then? What's he doing in her house? Why did smoking pot make him feel better?" Diet tips, sex tips, court tips, junkie poets, stripping, reading the riot act to would be boyfriends, and much more. It's all you ever / never wanted to hear and more.
RealAudio clip: "$500 A Night"
RealAudio clip: "Some Authority"
RealAudio clip: "In The Sink"

DUMAS, OLIVIER Rutting Red Deers (Le Brame Des Cerfs) (Sittelle) cd 16.98
Although it's definitely NOT what's on their minds, these rutting deer could make great death metal vocalists, with their astonishingly lower-than-low utterances. I mean, a band with a rutting red deer on the mic would really give such animal-fronted bands as Caninus and Hatebeak a run for their money! One of my housemates certainly thought so (as he demonstrated by "lip-synching" along to these loud, belching cries while crouching with an imaginary microphone and making death metal singer faces). But no, these braying bucks are less interested in lending their talents to the service of brutal death metal than they are in attracting the ladies. Speaking of ladies, my girlfriend found this to be so disturbing she made me turn it off... it was giving her a headache. I guess she's lucky that she's not a female red deer!! Meanwhile, I actually find this rather entrancing...hmm I wonder what that means? Well, the misty, desolate background ambience of the forest is definitely nice, with birds twittering and hooves tromping through the underbrush. And despite her reaction, I knew instantly that we definitely needed these for Aquarius (she, knowing the sort of stuff AQ folks dig, like the Thai Elephant Orchestra and the Sounds Of North American Frogs, agreed).
Anyway, as you can see, I've been playing this for a lot of people. It's impossible not to. You'll be like, "Check this out!! Yes, that's a deer!" A real deer, not some monstrous behemoth, or a creaking door, or a sick cow stuck in a well, or a Wookie, or something sampled from a Fflint Central cd-r... Though their deep, echoing, weirdly stretched-out-sounding mating calls really sound like they have some sort of electronic effect on them! Nope, these are just pure, unadulterated field recordings from a forest in France of some lonely deer looking for love.
This 70+ minute disc has 16 tracks, acquainting the listener with all manner of roars, belches, barks, coughs, and other sounds produced by these stags during the rutting season (roughly September/October, as the weather cools). Some are solo performances, others feature choruses of other deer roaring in response...there are the bellows of a stag asserting dominance over his "harem", and there are recordings of male deer in competition -- including one track of clashing antlers (which is kinda their version of the infamous AQ "pipe-fight", a term we like to use to refer to the sounds of certain experimental recordings).
This cd comes with liner notes in both English and French that are extremely detailed, telling you everything you'd care to know and more about the sexual behavior of these deer and the noises they make, including a glossary and even sound spectrographic analysis of individual rutting calls. Such throughness is typical of the Sittelle label, the same folks that also brought us this week's Record Of The Week, The Inaudible World - A Sound Guide Of The French Bats. As you might guess, there's a lot of other cool environmental recordings on this label, and now that we've gotten into the swing of importing 'em from France we'll be listing more in the near future!
MPEG Stream: "From The Cle des Fosses to the Fonde du Verne"
MPEG Stream: "The Belches Of A Lying Stag"
MPEG Stream: "A Clash At The Goutte d'Argent"

ELOPE 3WD (Gravitation) cd 14.98
YES! Sweden's Elope are back. One of our favorite discoveries of 2004, their No Name Album was Beatlesly (or Wingsy), Neil Youngish, sorta stonery, and maybe a little Stonesy, authentically retro '70s classic rock sounding, utterly entrancing, mostly mellow pure POP genius! So we're excited to hear their new one, 3WD (three wheel drive?? somebody clue us in... maybe now we understand why their first album was more or less untitled). And additionally excited to learn that this is only the first of two new Elope albums due out this year, this one supposedly being the more rockin' one, with another cd coming this fall entitled 9 Distilled Dreams that will focus on mellower, slower, quieter material.
So how's 3WD? Well we couldn't be happier. It is on the uptempo side -- they even break out a boogie now and then -- but still has the wonderfully laidback vibe we loved about their debut. And their abilities in the pop songsmithery department haven't diminished at all. Elope's honeyed vocals and harmonies help give a gentle glow to the hard-rocking energy on display. Reference points, '60s/'70s retro and otherwise ('cause they sound modern too): The Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, Redd Kross (but not soo nyahh nyahh nyahh), and maybe even a little bit Elliott Smith if he had been more rockinger... And definitely if you like Dungen (especially the poppier side to their psych-pop equation) you should definitely be aware of their talented countrymen Elope.
Totally recommended, and now we're impatiently awaiting the next one!!
MPEG Stream: "Dragonstone"
MPEG Stream: "Friend Of Mine"

ENTOMOPHONIA s/t (INRA) cd / book 33.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The French National Institute for Agricultural Research has assembled this massive collection, documenting a multitude of sounds from a variety of grasshoppers, cicadas, katydids, beetles, ants, moths, etc. Structured in the same fashion as the "Sounds of North American Frogs" on Smithsonian/Folkways, "Entomophonia" explains the taxonomic definitions of a specific insect sound and then provides an example of the sound. For better or for worse, all of the text (both spoken and written) is in French, providing a rather odd listening experience to those of us who have forgotten our high school French. More than a educational recording, this sounds more like some weird Ryoji Ikeda or Noto electronic record, with some Frenchman reciting Gilles Deleuze philosophy amidst the buzzing clickery. And it's an unbelievably beautiful package, a full cover slipcase, an enormous and amazing book (with lots of great color photos of the insects, so it has value for the French-impaired). Another entry in the AQ-pantheon of ridiculous but essential field-recordings, along with the aforementioned "Frogs" disc.

ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS OF CRAWFORD TEXAS, THE (Koch) cd 10.98
Hmm...Crawford, Texas...Crawford, Texas... Why does that ring a bell? Oh right, it's the place that our beloved frickin' President calls home when he's not in DC. And that explains why somebody thought they could wander around the town recording everyday sounds, put 'em on a cd and sell it. It's hard to tell if this is meant for red staters or blue staters -- I mean, you'd assume that one possible market for this would be Bush backers... but then again, *environmental* recordings seem like so much more of a blue state, liberal thing, don't they? I guess the idea is it could appeal to all sorts of folks across the political spectrum -- a gag gift for Dems, a very special memento for the GOP faithful. But we figure that it may also appeal to AQ customers who like recordings of frogs and loons and shortwave spy stations and rutting deer and doomsday cults and all that.
So, listening in to Crawford, Texas, what exactly do we hear? The sound of President Bush clearing brush on his ranch? Falling off his mountain bike? Whispering conspiratorially with Dick, Donald, and Condi? Choking on a pretzel? Nope, no such luck. Nor do we get the sound of chanting protesters, or of Cindy Sheehan crying herself to sleep at night at Camp Casey. Instead, this is what you'd hear in any small, rural town: early morning outdoor noises... birds, cows... rushing water... the noise of local industry... an airplane flying by overhead... dogs barking... the murmer of conversation and television in the gift shop and diner... trucks and trains going by... and the creaking of the gates to Hell. Whoops, no, that last one's not on here. But the rest are. One hour of all that and more, recorded on December 3rd, 2004. Just an ordinary day in a more-or-less ordinary Texas town, deep in the heart of "Bush Country". Forget that Crawford has any special significance and really this is a perfectly enjoyable slice of life, Americana field recording sound collage project that could just as easily have wound up in our racks as a cd-r on some experimental label! Definitely something that we had to have for the "found sounds, field recordings, oddities" section of our store!
MPEG Stream: "Gift Shop"
MPEG Stream: "Tonkawa Falls (Far Away)"

FAMILY JAMS (Aoroa) 2cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
2 cds worth of Charles Manson's "desert music" as recorded by his friends at the time of his trial, plus a 20 booklet. The full color packaging is pretty nice, and the whole thing was approved by and partly produced by, like, Squeaky. "There WAS no Manson Family till we got busted. There was a music group known as The Family Jams" --Charles Manson

FASSETT, JIM Symphony Of The Birds (EM Records) cd 25.00
We recently discovered a completely amazing Japanese label called EM Records. Pretty hard to pin down what exactly it is that they specialize in but that's precisely why we're so smitten. From not one, but -several- singing saw records, to acid psych reissues, long lost singer songwriters, early experimental tape music, bizarre robot disco, fifties rock and roll, Australian dub, Isophonic boogie woogie (?) and tons more. We've only begun to dip into the wonderful world of EM, but we're going to start listing them one at a time. This record was initially the release that convinced us to get in touch with EM. Jim Fassett's Symphony Of The Birds is bizarre and beautiful and had AQ written all over it. The liner notes are mostly in Japanese so it's hard to know too many of the details, but Symphony Of The Birds is an amazing example of early tape music, it just so happens that all the tapes used were recordings of songbirds, which Fassett chopped, and cut, spliced and sequenced into a totally unique symphony of bird calls.
The record opens with Fassett's explanatory comments featuring our favorite line: "But keep in mind, as you listen, that nothing has been added. If you think you hear something that sounds like a particular musical instrument, or a human voice, or anything else other than birdcalls, YOU'RE WRONG." The first movement is definitely the best, whistles and chirps, chopped and stretched into dense swirls of psychedelic sound, if you weren't paying close attention, you'd be hard pressed to hear that it was birds making these sounds. Very trippy and spacey and alien sounding, like some crazy analog synthesizer freakout. The second movement involves a lot more itch shifting and changes in tape speed, resulting in sort of clunky purposeful melodies, the same bird call in different pitches to assemble very simple sing songy melodies. The third movement gets back on track, with some of the bird call slowed WAY down so they becomes rumbling drones, while others are sped up and repeated rapidly making impossible trills that almost sound like some blast of Sunroof!-y skree.
The last three tracks feature Fassett narrating an imaginary trip through a meadow, allowing us to study closely the bird song of each different bird isolated from the others, with some deft mixing and stereo panning, and the affect is actually quite stunning, with each bird getting 30 seconds to a minute right up on the mic! Cool!
The whole thing comes packaged in a super tough oversized (to accommodate the massive booklet) jewel case. The booklet contains lots of great photos, liner notes in Japanese, transcriptions of Fassett's spoken word segments on the disc, the album's original liner notes, and strangest of all, a pictorial guide to various and random birdcall records, separated by theme it seems: whistling accompaniment of instruments or big band, field recordings, canary training, instrumental, experimental happening (?) etc. Weird!
MPEG Stream: "Explanatory Comments"
MPEG Stream: "First Movement"
MPEG Stream: "Second Movement"

FUZZBOY Manipulated Field Recordings With Li'l Marshall (Solipsists Unite!) cd-r 12.98
Here's a lovingly homespun assemblage of field recordings which have been altered and pieced together over the last couple years into a hushed collage of mysterious texturous scrapings and ambience. These three hazy soundscapes were created by Bay Area artist Fuzzboy (aka Dan Bornstein). 'Tis the gentler side of experimental noise that he treads.

GARLAND, JUDY Speaks! (Celebrities at Their Worst, Volume 2.5) (Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God) 2cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Volume "2.5" of the series that shows what stars past and present say when the cameras and tape recorders *aren't* supposed to be rolling. This double disc set features just Judy Garland in all her drunken pillpopping glory, much of it purportedly from never-released home recordings she made for her autobiography.
"I'm an angry lady: I'm a lady who is angry. I've been insulted, slandered, humiliated -- but still 'America's Sweetheart.' Now I'm rather intelligent, I think, and I'm emotional -- YEAH -- I'm a woman; I'm emotional... I wanted to believe, and I tried my damndest to believe in the rainbow that I tried to get over and I COULDN'T... I've sung, I've entertained, I've pleased your children, I've pleased your wives, I've pleased YOU -- you SONS OF BITCHES! Now you better write it, YOU BETTER PAY FOR IT, OR DON'T LISTEN AND GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LIFE!"