NEPTUNE TOWERS Caravans To Empire Algol (Peaceville) cd 14.98
We love Fenriz. Not just cuz he's the drummer from legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, but cuz he's a funny, super opinionated, black metal mouthpiece, whose musical knowledge, especially when it comes to metal, but well beyond, are above reproach, and his related rants are hilarious. There's a reason they've been reissuing all the Darkthrone records with a second disc featuring Fenriz's 'director's commentary'. There's a reason he was the focus of the recent black metal documentary Until The Light Takes Us. And if you have the DVD, and there's a reason one of the bonus features is Fenriz in a classroom, with a bunch of blackboards, schooling the rest of us on the history/roots/development of black metal. But as we've discovered over the years, and as the above would attest to, Fenriz is not your normal black metaller. For one, he has a thing for techno, and electronic music as a whole, not to mention a bunch of other seriously non-metallic musics, one of which is spaced out kosmische synth music, a la Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre.
Which resulted in a band mysteriously named Neptune Towers (aka Fenriz and only Fenriz), and a pair of records (with a third that was unreleased) woven together by some overarching sci-fi concept. Sure, by now, synth projects, well, everybody's got one, but in 1994, to have some underground black metal icon release a synth record, well, it was a bit shocking. But what was even more shocking, was how goddamn good they were. Listening to this stuff again now, if the circumstances were a bit different, Fenriz could have essentially been Expo 70 or Zombi neary two decades ago! Sure lots of metalheads probably have this or want it, but all the kids today into the whole retro Goblin / Carpenter kosmische synth axis, will be blown away to discover this slab of brooding, epic, droned out, synthscapery.
Caravans To Empire Algol is part one of Fenriz's Algol mythology, and is self described as "Deep Space Alien Astral Synth", which is pretty much right on the money. The cover featuring a red hued cloud of stars, some mysterious corner of the galaxy, the liner notes simply read: "Escape The Earth. Unlike many synthesizer/space releases, this album has no vocals or drums. This is purposefully in order to enable the listeners to keep 'both feet off the ground.' Vocals and drums are particularly earthbound instruments that would eclipse the mission of this disc. Escape the earth." The original liner notes further suggest that the record "will only reach their optimal goal when heard alone. NOT FOR COLLECTIVE LISTENING." And finally, "Only effectively listenable on large black stereos. Deep space awaits. Neptune Towers supports extinction of all organic life forms. NO TAKEOFF. NO LIFE." And while that may have been a bit tongue in cheek, the sounds here seem to back up those boisterous claims, unfurling a seriously chilling sprawl of isolationist drift, like the soundtrack for some planetarium light show, but an old crumbling planetarium, tucked away in the woods, seemingly abandoned, except for these strange sounds emanating, and instead of stars projected on the ceiling, the building has crumbled, leaving the listener to stare directly into the blackness of deep space.
Two epic tracks, the title track clocking in at 24:35, and its sonic sequel, the 12:39 "The Arrival At Empire Algol" closing out this first installment of our sonic journey. Thick sitar like buzz, droned out, and drifting above a hissing swirl of shimmer that seems to float from speaker to speaker, the sound occasionally building into something more distorted and crumbling, almost like SUNNO))) or some sort of black noise combo, but blurred and billowing, haunting and ominous, the sounds rough and raw, heavily textured, primitive and lo-fi, but somehow transcending their genesis and blossoming into something truly cosmic, a pulsing krautrock style synth throb just beneath the surface.
The vibe is murky and minimal, but also trancey and psychedelic, a serious slab of home brewed kosmische, akin to some kid building a time machine in his bedroom, it's like Fenriz tinkered with his crappy old synth, until it opened a portal to some other dimension, to the far reaches of the universe, and these are the transmissions that came pouring out. And while lots of synth music borders on the new agey, there's nothing wimpy about this, this is synth music that rattles your skull and loosens your bowels, it really does evoke some sort of otherworld, some journey into the unknowable, conjuring up not just the mysterious of the unknown, but the harrowing journey to get there.
About nine minutes in, the clouds part a bit, letting shards of prismatic melody shine through, giving the proceedings a celestial vibe, but soon it settles back into something much more haunting and ominous, long tones, unravelling over a softly swirling sea of tangled melodic murk, yet it remains still weirdly majestic, until the almost bombastic final minutes, dirgey, and distorted, but a groovy bassline that seems to lurk just below the surface throughout, which is what gives this a subtly krautrock feel, and that near the end is panned hard and swings from speaker to speaker, while the synths grind away, slipping back into the sitar like buzz of the opening few minutes.
The second track is much more minimal, the buzz pushed into the background, a low level insectoid hum draped over the glimmering sonic starfield, the feel here even more raw and primitive, a mad scientist concoction, the buried melodies, and delicate textures doused in lots of noise and hiss, and strange sonic artifacts, intentional or otherwise, most likely the limitations of the original synth/4-track set up, but those limitations become as much a part of the sound as anything else, all smeared into a washed out haze, rife with strange barely there melodies, keening feedback, buried percussive thumps, and layers of thick undulating low end whir, all of which eventually devolves into a blurry sprawl of flanged rumbles and melodic moans, all sprawled into an endless series of blackened swells, laced with strange little bits of electronic filigree, sent into the ether like some doomed sonic transmission.
So incredible. ANYONE who digs all the dark synth kosmische cinematic soundscaping that is going on today, will flip for this. Especially if you have a large black stereo to play it on. Comes with updated artwork, swank slipcover, and new liner notes from Fenriz, explaining the genesis of Neptune Towers, and exactly what happened to the lost third part of the Algol trilogy.
MPEG Stream: "Caravans To Empire Algol"
MPEG Stream: "The Arrival At Empire Algol"

EDWARDS, NICK Plekzaktionz (Editions Mego) 2lp 30.00
Woah, kinda blown away by this, a super nice surprise since we didn't have any expectations... or ex-plekzationz! Had never heard of Bristol's Nick Edwards before, nor his cassette-prolific alter ego Ekoplekz, nor his Gutterbreakz blog for that matter either. We just knew this was a new album from some bespectacled fella on Editions Mego, who (as we could see from the photo on the inner gatefold sleeve) employs a tabletop tangle of effect boxes and other electronic devices to make his music. Like all eMego stuff, seemed worth checking out, and it sure was.
A quick and too easy description of this might be lo-fi analog electronic synth experimentation with a heavy dose of dubÉ or even "Merzbow doing dub", though it's not nearly as noisy as that might suggest. But it IS quite abstract and soundscapey. These are noises, not noise. And the dub here is that rare kind we've hardly ever encountered, that's dub but definitely NOT reggae. (In contrast to, say, that rad Seekersinternational record we listed last time, a great modern day dub album whose reggae roots are quite clearÉ or even aQ faves Peaking Lights). Edwards loves his King Tubby, for sure, and kosmiche krautrock and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and techno tooÉ But we can't label his music as being like any of those things exactly, even though that's all in here. Nor is it the clinical, minimal-techno sort of dub (we also like), a la Pole or Vladislav Delay. This is even less reggae than that, and way more 'natural'. It's cosmic-y without being too referential to anything, very loose and flowing and free. The rhythms, which grow organically out of the interaction of effects, are varied and not 'grided' like so much other electronic music. Each and every moment fills our ears with the sort of echoing dubby soundz we love to hear, in constant flux. But, for something that's changing so much, it still has a 'groove' to it, if not necessarily always a 'beat'.É in other words, it's strangely hypnotic, its odd percolations fitting into a larger wash of sound that seems to extend out to infinity, swirling and shwooshing and reverberating into new shapes and patterns.
The album is divided into four parts of roughly equally length, the whole thing about an hour-long trip. Although recorded at four separate sessions, these 'decompositions' and 'spontaneous combustions' are woven into one extended piece, calmly chugging and looping, softly exploding with distortion over and over and overÉ The final track might be our favorite, with its slowly creeping-up-on you vibe. All are great, though.
Look, we LOVE the echo echo echo of dub, and have admitted previously that several of us here wouldn't be into reggae at all if it weren't for the dub variety. So the idea of dub WITHOUT the reggae is interesting and appealing and that's what Mr. Nick Edwards has accomplished here, the echoing of the electronics on this album like a field recording of a mad scientist's laboratory, done dub style. This is maybe, maybe what Sun Araw would/could sound like if he'd ditched his trip to Jamaica for an extended stay in Mego's Austrian studios insteadÉ
Yup, for something we had no prior expectations about, it didn't take long before we were hooked!
MPEG Stream: "Part 1: Chance Meets Causality Uptown"
MPEG Stream: "Part 3: Inside The Analog Continuum"
MPEG Stream: "Part 4: A Pedant's Progress"

EDWARDS, NICK Plekzaktionz (Editions Mego) cd 16.98
Woah, kinda blown away by this, a super nice surprise since we didn't have any expectations... or ex-plekzationz! Had never heard of Bristol's Nick Edwards before, nor his cassette-prolific alter ego Ekoplekz, nor his Gutterbreakz blog for that matter either. We just knew this was a new album from some bespectacled fella on Editions Mego, who (as we could see from the photo on the inner gatefold sleeve) employs a tabletop tangle of effect boxes and other electronic devices to make his music. Like all eMego stuff, seemed worth checking out, and it sure was.
A quick and too easy description of this might be lo-fi analog electronic synth experimentation with a heavy dose of dub... or even "Merzbow doing dub", though it's not nearly as noisy as that might suggest. But it IS quite abstract and soundscapey. These are noises, not noise. And the dub here is that rare kind we've hardly ever encountered, that's dub but definitely NOT reggae. (In contrast to, say, that rad Seekersinternational record we listed last time, a great modern day dub album whose reggae roots are quite clear... or even aQ faves Peaking Lights). Edwards loves his King Tubby, for sure, and kosmiche krautrock and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and techno too... But we can't label his music as being like any of those things exactly, even though that's all in here. Nor is it the clinical, minimal-techno sort of dub (we also like), a la Pole or Vladislav Delay. This is even less reggae than that, and way more 'natural'. It's cosmic-y without being too referential to anything, very loose and flowing and free. The rhythms, which grow organically out of the interaction of effects, are varied and not 'grided' like so much other electronic music. Each and every moment fills our ears with the sort of echoing dubby soundz we love to hear, in constant flux. But, for something that's changing so much, it still has a 'groove' to it, if not necessarily always a 'beat'... in other words, it's strangely hypnotic, its odd percolations fitting into a larger wash of sound that seems to extend out to infinity, swirling and shwooshing and reverberating into new shapes and patterns.
The album is divided into four parts of roughly equally length, the whole thing about an hour-long trip. Although recorded at four separate sessions, these 'decompositions' and 'spontaneous combustions' are woven into one extended piece, calmly chugging and looping, softly exploding with distortion over and over and over...The final track might be our favorite, with its slowly creeping-up-on you vibe. All are great, though.
Look, we LOVE the echo echo echo of dub, and have admitted previously that several of us here wouldn't be into reggae at all if it weren't for the dub variety. So the idea of dub WITHOUT the reggae is interesting and appealing and that's what Mr. Nick Edwards has accomplished here, the echoing of the electronics on this album like a field recording of a mad scientist's laboratory, done dub style. This is maybe, maybe what Sun Araw would/could sound like if he'd ditched his trip to Jamaica for an extended stay in Mego's Austrian studios instead...
Yup, for something we had no prior expectations about, it didn't take long before we were hooked!
MPEG Stream: "Part 1: Chance Meets Causality Uptown"
MPEG Stream: "Part 3: Inside The Analog Continuum"
MPEG Stream: "Part 4: A Pedant's Progress"

SHED The Killer (50 Weapons) 2lp 23.00
For those of you who have been FIENDING for some murky, gritty, booming and dark dubbed out techno, and seething, narcotic wareHOUSE similar to the dose we administered a couple months ago with the fantastic Porter Ricks reissue, Biokenetics, we got it for you RIGHT HERE! Shed, aka Rene Pawlowitz, offers up his third full length, The Killer, and man, while we're kinda bummed we're late to the party, it's SO great to finally arrive!
Rolling, mesmeric, corroded bursts of metallic klang tangle with dark and HEAVY synthscapes, rattling bass tones, and subtle trance inducing rhythmic shifts. Hazy clouds of filtered fuzz, and buzzing skree smokin out the disco tech!
"I Come By Night" is a nefarious and brooding techno stomper. The sounds of robot chatter and malfunctioning factory equipment crumbled up together and spread tautly over a tectonic rhythm grid, the sounds caustic and mysterious, buzzing and droning and teeming with dark energy. Like a WAY more brutal Actress, other worldly squeaks and blips ricocheting to and fro on top of some seriously gothic synthscapes. "Day After", "Phototype" and "Ride On" are more of a broken, fucked up and moody rendition of dubstep or UKG. The bass drum sound has us thinking of the gnarlier side of Chain Reaction, while the snares and hats swing rigidly on top (an oxymoron, we know, but we don't know how else to describe the confusional yet undeniably groovy sound Shed manages to achieve here). The synth vibes on these tracks are totally haunting. Heavy horror vibrations, and blissy blackened grittiness. Unintelligible vocal snippets looping over and over, creating an infectious syncopation.
There are also moments of dubby drifting ambiance that tie The Killer together quite nicely. The introduction, "STP3 The Killer", is a pulsating, Hecker meets Hallucinator vaporous trance dance, while "Gas Up" (Voigt reference?) is a soporific bliss out dreamscape! Bubbling angelic synth tones flow in and out of focus, obscured by a fog of tape hiss.
"The Praetorian (Album Mix) is an evolving digital landscape, again reminding us of Tim Hecker circa "Harmony In Ultraviolet". Arpeggiated plink plonking glassinine sonic shards and delicately discordant mesmer floating up to the heavens! Beautiful!
The Killer is totally right up our alley, as far as techno goes. Massively heavy at points, dreamy and delicate at others. Blurry and narcotic, trance inducing dubbed out seismic GROOVE! If you dig all those Chain Reaction, Basic Channel and Gas vibes of yore, or are feeling that new experi-techno sound of Actress or that forlorn night music that is Burial, Shed's sound is definitely gonna hit you in the gut (in a pleasurable way)! RECOMMENDED FRESHNESS!
MPEG Stream: "I Come By Night"
MPEG Stream: "Silent Witness"
MPEG Stream: "Ride On"

SHED The Killer (50 Weapons) cd 16.98
For those of you who have been FIENDING for some murky, gritty, booming and dark dubbed out techno, and seething, narcotic wareHOUSE similar to the dose we administered a couple months ago with the fantastic Porter Ricks reissue, Biokenetics, we got it for you RIGHT HERE! Shed, aka Rene Pawlowitz, offers up his third full length, The Killer, and man, while we're kinda bummed we're late to the party, it's SO great to finally arrive!
Rolling, mesmeric, corroded bursts of metallic klang tangle with dark and HEAVY synthscapes, rattling bass tones, and subtle trance inducing rhythmic shifts. Hazy clouds of filtered fuzz, and buzzing skree smokin out the disco tech!
"I Come By Night" is a nefarious and brooding techno stomper. The sounds of robot chatter and malfunctioning factory equipment crumbled up together and spread tautly over a tectonic rhythm grid, the sounds caustic and mysterious, buzzing and droning and teeming with dark energy. Like a WAY more brutal Actress, other worldly squeaks and blips ricocheting to and fro on top of some seriously gothic synthscapes. "Day After", "Phototype" and "Ride On" are more of a broken, fucked up and moody rendition of dubstep or UKG. The bass drum sound has us thinking of the gnarlier side of Chain Reaction, while the snares and hats swing rigidly on top (an oxymoron, we know, but we don't know how else to describe the confusional yet undeniably groovy sound Shed manages to achieve here). The synth vibes on these tracks are totally haunting. Heavy horror vibrations, and blissy blackened grittiness. Unintelligible vocal snippets looping over and over, creating an infectious syncopation.
There are also moments of dubby drifting ambiance that tie The Killer together quite nicely. The introduction, "STP3 The Killer", is a pulsating, Hecker meets Hallucinator vaporous trance dance, while "Gas Up" (Voigt reference?) is a soporific bliss out dreamscape! Bubbling angelic synth tones flow in and out of focus, obscured by a fog of tape hiss.
"The Praetorian (Album Mix) is an evolving digital landscape, again reminding us of Tim Hecker circa "Harmony In Ultraviolet". Arpeggiated plink plonking glassinine sonic shards and delicately discordant mesmer floating up to the heavens! Beautiful!
The Killer is totally right up our alley, as far as techno goes. Massively heavy at points, dreamy and delicate at others. Blurry and narcotic, trance inducing dubbed out seismic GROOVE! If you dig all those Chain Reaction, Basic Channel and Gas vibes of yore, or are feeling that new experi-techno sound of Actress or that forlorn night music that is Burial, Shed's sound is definitely gonna hit you in the gut (in a pleasurable way)! RECOMMENDED FRESHNESS!
MPEG Stream: "I Come By Night"
MPEG Stream: "Silent Witness"
MPEG Stream: "Ride On"

OCTAVIUS Laws (Mannequin) lp 14.98
Around here at aQ we live for the moments of musical discovery that seem to appear out of nowhere. On a rare occasion those moments are created by an artifact dropped off in the store by the creator himself. In our age of internet buzz and blogosphere strip mining, it's exciting and refreshing to be floored by a piece of proper wax passed on in person, without us knowing a damn thing about it beforehand. This record represents one of these moments, and Laws, the brand new lp from LA's William Marshall, aka Octavius, is really blowing our minds right now, so much so that we absolutely had to jump on the chance to make it record of the week! A dizzying assemblage of fucked up outsider post witch house, damaged and deranged avant industrial and whispered, hiss-wreathed melancholic brooding downer experi-techno-pop!
Laws is a multidimensional excursion through the depths of urban isolationism. The dead dreams of metropolis living and lifelong plans falling apart seem to be woven into the sonic fabric. You're all alone in this burned out city, and it's a dark, dark time. The sound is grinding, buzzing, thumping and industrial. The beats are constructed with rusted rebar shards, rattling about the charnel house floor, like some subwoofer-shook bones long forgotten. Octavius' caustic and restrained sound world creates an intensely claustrophobic mood. On tracks like "Apartments" and "Of Mask and Money", the sounds of sharpening knives and blistering white noise blasts commingle with a tense, gasping for breath vocal delivery. As the songs flow onward, layer upon layer of noisy mechanical skree stack up against beautifully stark and forlorn melodies. Haunting, discordant synth stabs add subtle harmonic depth to the tunes, as the vocals, seemingly hacked to bits, syllables left out or cut short, writhe to the beat. The sounds are abrasive and damaged and robotic, but there is never too much going on at one time and everything sits in the mix in such a way that the songs really breathe. It's got that hypnotic sonic subtlety of Berlin era Bowie mixed with the pulsating noisy gnash of Throbbing Gristle. Speaking of Bowie, one of the raddest moments on Laws comes in the form of a "cover" of "Breaking Glass". The low slung, heroin sheen funk of the original is replaced by a fiercely mechanical drum machine stomp, some heavy as fuck JK Flesh-like digitally distorted guitar chugs bashing with the beat, while cascading doppler blips and scraping synths swirl around the stereo field. The only recognizable element are the lyrics, although delivered in the by now signature manner in which Octavius uses his voice, and that is to say fractured and corrosive, hissing hypnosis. Totally bent and completely AMAZING!
There are moments of dark meditation, such as "CCC CCC" and "331 155". Moody, drifting soundscapes of splintered metallic klang, ping-ponging singing bowls, bolstered with aphotic, creepy crawly Carpenter-like synth drones. Beautifully oscillating cinematic ambience laid over what sounds like a far off string section unfurling some somber, elegiac melody. Psychic TV's "Silver and Gold" comes to mind, except with a mechanical bass drum throb twisting beneath the surface. These hazy, murky moments of sonic darkness serve as tension builders. Haunting and anxious and mesmerizing respites from the churning corrosive elements that make up the bulk of Laws.
"Liars & Thieves" is definitely the centerpiece of Laws. Abusive electro-psychosis, uncomfortable and polluted with an industrialized cacophony, and scrap metal pounding rhythms, Octavius allows his reflections on failure and anonymity to unravel in a harrowing, stream of conscious cypher. Imagine Tricky rapping over Coil's "Fire Of The Green Dragon". Paranoid and demented, the noise and words melding to create a bleak miasma of isolation. Moody and tense and wholly original.
Laws pushes all the right buttons for us. It references the WAVES (minimal/NO/cold/synth), without getting mired in any particular sub-genre. It's noisy and abrasive and grim, reminding us of the gnarlier moments of Coil and TG, but produced in such a subtle manner that new layers of sound present themselves with each listen. It's got enough Suicide like swagger as not to get totally bogged down in its mechanized, vitriol pummel. Hypnotic and tensely mesmerizing, the album as a whole is so consistent in its vibe, we find ourselves listening to it over and over and over again, just to get lost, deeper and deeper, in its seedy sonic underbelly.
Packaged lovingly in a minimalist, silver embossed white card stock sleeve, with a beautiful 16 page book of lyrics as well as some killer collage work by Brooklyn based artist Justin Sloane. Do yourself a favor and snatch this twisted gem up quick, really some of the most mind fuckingly special and original music we've heard around here in a long time!
MPEG Stream: "Apartments"
MPEG Stream: "Of Mask And Money"
MPEG Stream: "Liars & Thieves"
MPEG Stream: "331 155"
MPEG Stream: "O, How I Have Sinned"

BURIAL Street Halo / Kindred (Hyperdub) cd 19.98
Like the title suggests, this is the cd version of Burial's last two 12"s. 6 tracks, almost an hour long, complete with obi 'cause it's a Japanese import. Both 12"s are pretty much out of print, so if you missed them, you gotta get this!
Street Halo was the first new music we had heard from Burial in 4+ years, and hardly needed a review at all (then or now), needless to say, the master of dark moody soul inflected minimal dubstep does it again, just check out the murky melancholy "Street Halo", which ditches some of the more overt dubsteppiness of past records, for something a bit more techno flecked, the beat a muted four on the floor pulse, while the surrounding sounds remain appropriately washed out and dreamlike, some spectral soulful female vox just add to the vibe. We actually spun the vinyl version of this at 33 the first few times, and holy shit, not sure if it's just us, but might sound even better that way, syrupy and witch house-y, total slomo cough syrup blackened dub electro drag. Too bad you can't easily slow down a cd, but even at the right speed of 45, it's pretty dang perfect, only a slight swerve from the dubbed out soul of Untrue.
"NYC" slows things way down, lacing some electro skitter and shuffling techno with a seriously dubbed out production and some sped up soul samples, still spare and skeletal, wreathed in a late night, winding down, chill out haze. And finally "Stolen Dog" is a dubby downtempo electro soul ballad, with a super hooky main melody, warm swirling low end swells, a skittery beat buried in the mix, and still more vocal soul. So good!
Beautifully sad and heavy, "Kindred" is laid out like a dystopic symphonic requiem that morphs through a slow-motion roughshodden landscape. Lonely remote vocals spliced and polished into barely discernible words pitter-patter over record crackle, and far-off doomy atmospheres as clanging minimal garage rhythms propel forward and then drop out at irregular intervals. "Loner" steps it up with arpeggiated synths and an anxious pace with a cinematic car chase theme feel and RnB-ish vocal shadows buried underneath a layer of sonic grit and asphalt that freefalls into a strange haunted ambiance. "Ashtray Wasp" show a bit more light and hope at first. The vocals culled from cell phone recordings give a broader sense of actual song structure with sped up minimalist Phillip Glass-like orchestrations wrapping the song in a dramatically understated fury, eventually disintegrating into an extended oceanic womb of crackling unease. The final salvo turning into a lyrical filigree of piano, cascading vocal swatches and waves of radio static that fades like the night into the stratosphere. Chilling!
MPEG Stream: "Street Halo"
MPEG Stream: "Stolen Dog"
MPEG Stream: "Kindred"

BONG Mana-Yood-Sushai (Ritual Productions) cd 16.98
By now, we're pretty sure most regular AQ customers are familiar with Bong. The name rings a bell, right? (Hahaha.) While there's plenty of stoner/sludge type bands with "bong" in their name, and a lot of 'em are pretty good (Bongzilla, Bongripper, and the recent Belzebong, for instance), this Bong, the one true Bong, have deservedly earned the appellation of Bong by itself without any cute suffixes or prefixes. This UK band's sweet sonic smoke does indeed send the listener into an altered state. On this, their latest, recorded by Esoteric's Greg Chandler, they've come from beyond ancient space (the title of their previous album, also released on the aptly named Ritual Productions) to bring us another two looooonnng tracks of their trademark slomo, spaced out, dronedirge dooooom. Dunno though if we should even be calling Bong doom, or dooooom, actually, though we do. What's heralded here is perhaps something more transcendentally wondrous, psychedelically blissful. Tune in, turn on... the first, 27+ minute track is "Dreams Of Mana-Yood-Shushai", its title referencing the poetic, pre-Lovecraft mythology of early 20th century fantasist Lord Dunsany. Mana-Yood-Shushai is the sleeping god, creator of all, the god of "having done", to whom none may pray, for when he wakes the world will end... Bong do a good job of conjuring the gentle, yet ominous mood of such a god's dreams here, as near as we mere mortals can tell. Heaving waves of down-tuned guitar riffage and rolling, rumbling softly thunderous percussion accompany droning monkish vox doing some sort of seemingly ceremonial chant. The deep, Earth-like bass frequencies emanating mountainously from Bong's amps provide a solid foundation also for the exotic East Indian zing of Bong's secret weapon, the Shahi Baaja (an electrified zither / drone harp with typewriter keys) to play its part in the unfolding phantasmagoria of the endless innerspace odyssey that is Bong's gift to you... Massive, meditative. Sinister, somewhat, and sensuous, the Shahi Baaja contributing to the sense of snake-charmer sway.
Next, track two, "Trees Grass And Stones", we must assume is a nod to legendary Swedish psychsters Trad Gras Och Stenar! Certainly not just the name, but the somewhat more pastoral feel of the mesmeric music, supports such an interpretation. If not, then it's a case of great minds... some sort of psychic psychedelic communion between two of our faves. In any event, it's a thick, 19 minute slab of sturdy, stately krautdrone hypnorock, that stirs up a mite more rhythmic umph than what came before.
Once again, highly recommended by all of us here at aQ, especially of course to fans of Bong (or the use of bongs), Megaton Leviathan, OM, Earth, SUNNO))), Hawkwind, and all other bands that could have used the name Bong but didn't, leaving it to this groop to take up the challenge, and succeed. All bow down and pray to Mana-Yood-Shushai! (Whoops!)
MPEG Stream: "Dreams Of Mana-Yood-Shushai"
MPEG Stream: "Trees Grass And Stones"

BONG Mana-Yood-Sushai (Ritual Productions) lp 25.00
NOW ON VINYL!!!
By now, we're pretty sure most regular AQ customers are familiar with Bong. The name rings a bell, right? (Hahaha.) While there's plenty of stoner/sludge type bands with "bong" in their name, and a lot of 'em are pretty good (Bongzilla, Bongripper, and the recent Belzebong, for instance), this Bong, the one true Bong, have deservedly earned the appellation of Bong by itself without any cute suffixes or prefixes. This UK band's sweet sonic smoke does indeed send the listener into an altered state. On this, their latest, recorded by Esoteric's Greg Chandler, they've come from beyond ancient space (the title of their previous album, also released on the aptly named Ritual Productions) to bring us another two looooonnng tracks of their trademark slomo, spaced out, dronedirge dooooom. Dunno though if we should even be calling Bong doom, or dooooom, actually, though we do. What's heralded here is perhaps something more transcendentally wondrous, psychedelically blissful. Tune in, turn on... the first, 27+ minute track is "Dreams Of Mana-Yood-Shushai", its title referencing the poetic, pre-Lovecraft mythology of early 20th century fantasist Lord Dunsany. Mana-Yood-Shushai is the sleeping god, creator of all, the god of "having done", to whom none may pray, for when he wakes the world will end... Bong do a good job of conjuring the gentle, yet ominous mood of such a god's dreams here, as near as we mere mortals can tell. Heaving waves of down-tuned guitar riffage and rolling, rumbling softly thunderous percussion accompany droning monkish vox doing some sort of seemingly ceremonial chant. The deep, Earth-like bass frequencies emanating mountainously from Bong's amps provide a solid foundation also for the exotic East Indian zing of Bong's secret weapon, the Shahi Baaja (an electrified zither / drone harp with typewriter keys) to play its part in the unfolding phantasmagoria of the endless innerspace odyssey that is Bong's gift to you... Massive, meditative. Sinister, somewhat, and sensuous, the Shahi Baaja contributing to the sense of snake-charmer sway.
Next, track two, "Trees Grass And Stones", we must assume is a nod to legendary Swedish psychsters Trad Gras Och Stenar! Certainly not just the name, but the somewhat more pastoral feel of the mesmeric music, supports such an interpretation. If not, then it's a case of great minds... some sort of psychic psychedelic communion between two of our faves. In any event, it's a thick, 19 minute slab of sturdy, stately krautdrone hypnorock, that stirs up a mite more rhythmic umph than what came before.
Once again, highly recommended by all of us here at aQ, especially of course to fans of Bong (or the use of bongs), Megaton Leviathan, OM, Earth, SUNNO))), Hawkwind, and all other bands that could have used the name Bong but didn't, leaving it to this groop to take up the challenge, and succeed. All bow down and pray to Mana-Yood-Shushai! (Whoops!)
MPEG Stream: "Dreams Of Mana-Yood-Shushai"
MPEG Stream: "Trees Grass And Stones"

DEATH GRIPS Money Store (Epic) cd 10.98
Originally released on vinyl for this year's Record Store Day, the Money Store is record number two from this weirdo outsider punk/noise/electro/hip hop trio from across the Bay, whose debut, the twisted noise drenched Ex-Military was a huge hit around here, and The Money Store seems poised to follow suit. Although in some ways, this new record is a lot less weird, and a lot more polished, and while it's still fierce and fucked up, it's definitely not as outwardly angry, less a sonic brick in the face, and more like a carefully plotted and meticulously executed throat slitting, which we would imagine is a comparison these guys would dig.
As with Ex-Military, Zach Hill from Hella is one of the guys behind the production, and while there may be live drumming, it definitely sounds like he spent more time programming beats, the sound more electro than anything, and even moreso that Ex-Military, the sound much more fully realized, more lush and layered, opener "Get Got" has a loop and a beat that sounds like it could've gone in an entirely different direction, and been sort of weird pop radio hit, but with Stefan Burnett's twisted flow and frenetic delivery, it helps transform the songs' shoegazey electro-jitter into something more jittery and dizzying, like some malfunctioning double dutch jam. "The Fever" hews closer to the first record, the flow more of a belligerent bellow, the beat a stuttery skitter, but again, the production is super slick and makes the song a bit more palatable, without taking away from the ferocity, which is definitely a delicate line to toe.
The whole record is killer, every track here, all weirdo loops, twisted flow, sick beats, massive production, this is the sort of shit you imagine being blasted from a booming system in the car of THEE scariest dude in the hood, fucked up and fierce, but also groovy and funky, a little bit loopy and twisted, especially when they do the whole sped up soul sample thing, which here just makes things sound weirder then ever.
Lots of this record remind us of one of our favorite weirdo outsider hip hop records EVER, Too Bad But True, by Fever, released on DHR way back in 1998, the same sort of disregard for standard song structure, typical rapping, lots of distortion and murk, fractured beats, twisted loops, almost like both groups decided to reinvent the genre from the ground up, and just inadvertently touched on the various elements that DEFINE the genre in most cases, but here those bits and bobs just got all fucked up and came out the other side practically unrecognizable, and got all tangled up into an already head spinning, bafflingly brilliant sound. Hip hop record of the year? Quite possibly, but word is there's gonna be ANOTHER Death Grips later this year, so we might have to reserve judgment until then!
MPEG Stream: "Get Got"
MPEG Stream: "The Fever"
MPEG Stream: "Double Helix"
MPEG Stream: "System Blower"

CARLTON MELTON aQ Hits (aQuarius recOrds) cd 12.98
aQ Hits is a new collection from beloved SF psychedelic space rock minimalists Carlton Melton, and is our second annual official aQuarius recOrds Record Store Day release. Last year's was a live disc called Black Valleys, a document of a killer aQuarius instore by NY psych rockers White Hills, and that one sold out in a flash. This year's looks to do the same - if you like White Hills, you like Carlton Melton, right?!
It's a super limited (just 300 copies) compact disc, collecting a handful of rare, and now out of print vinyl tracks, from various singles and split lps from the last couple years, including one super extended version.
Let's run through the various tracks... "Bottle Of Heat [Extended Version]", is, as you can probably tell from the title, the aforementioned alternate cut, which takes "Bottle Of Heat", originally released on the 2011 Agitated Records 12" comp I'm So Convoluted!, and offers up the unedited full-sprawl recording, stretching out to more than 19 minutes, thick smoldering clouds of soft focus psychedelia, drifting and blissed out, free form and abstract, a meandering epic of lush chordal swell and shimmery FX drenched swirl, all over a shuffling hypnotic and motorik kraut-psych beat. "Handling Snakes" is the A side from the group's Valley King 7" single, and is a jolt of heavy hypno-blues a la Wooden Shjips, but in the hands of Carlton Melton, somehow even heavier with wailing riffs and pummeling drums.
The next two tracks are from Carlton Melton's split 12" with Empty Shapes, originally released on Mid-To-Late Records in 2010: "Call and Response" is an epic (and originally nearly side-loooong) blowout, beginning with a heavy rumble of monolithic sludge eventually progressing into a slow wave of burnt-out blues riffage a la early Comets on Fire, that churns and steeps into a gnarly brew of molten fuzz. While "Purer", is more cosmic and dreamy, built on a layer of percolating synth drones that give way to a more uplifting space rock jam trajectory, total heart-of-the-sun zoner blissout.
And finally, the last two tracks are from CM's split 12" with Qumran Orphics, also originally released on Mid-To-Late Records, that one in the beginning of 2011. "March Of The Cicadas" is a glorious ten minute slab of psychedelic heaviness, that sounds exactly like the title implies, a slowmotion dirge over martial rhythms with buzzing electronic hisses and stratospheric guitar leads. And things finish off with "Murder Ridge", a noirish Bardo Pond-like spiral of burning sonic embers and sustained decay, a gorgeous hazy stretch of blurred lysergic drift, the perfect final movement, psych-drone comedown.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the artwork is printed on metallic silver cardstock, everything housed in a slim dvd style case, only available here!
MPEG Stream: "Bottle Of Heat [Extended Version]"
MPEG Stream: "Handling Snakes"
MPEG Stream: "March Of The Cicadas"

GROUPER A I A (Dream Loss / Alien Observer) (Kranky) 2cd 16.98
Finally both extremely limited and way out of print lps, that came and went in a flash last year, have been reissued together on a not-as-limited double cd set via Kranky!
We've gushed and gushed about Grouper so much in the past, and we're going to do it once again because these albums are utterly gorgeous! While 2008's Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill found Liz Harris, aka Grouper, starting to really embrace the idea of songs, we love how these cds, Alien Observer and Dream Loss (framed together by the personally symbolic pictographic title, "A I A") blur that focus once again. While one leans towards songs and structure, and the other towards more abstraction, they are pretty much equal companion pieces that mirror each other, and share similar tendencies that defy a defined experience (especially since it seems we discovered by the track listing that the cd labels are switched, making it even harder to pin down which one is which, but it's really no matter!). They're much more about mood, soft focus, hazy dreams, and ethereal exploration. Harris' voice a murmur built up through tape and Dictaphone loops like soft whispering leaves swirling in and out, and every sound and tone, whether it be acoustic guitar strums, far-off distorted delayed electronics, piano, bell tones or static, she uses and manipulates them with such a mastered ease. There's a hushed reverence to this suite that demands rapturous attention to Harris' cathedral like sound world, as if we were in some universal congregation listening to an angelic choir singing from the deepest remote space. We've been listening to these records late at night and early in the morning and whenever we need to come down from the craziness of the world around us. And smehow whenever we listen to them, everything else just fades away and for a little while all that matters is the soft narcotic rush we feel as the music plays.
MPEG Stream: "Dragging The Streets"
MPEG Stream: "Soul Eraser"
MPEG Stream: "A Lie"
MPEG Stream: "Moon is Sharp"
MPEG Stream: "Vapor Trails"

STOTT, ANDY Passed Me By / We Stay Together (Modern Love) 2cd 24.00
Before we had actually heard Andy Stott, we had a procession of folks come into the store and tell us how incredible his stuff was, and how we should definitely get whatever we could, and yet, with every 12" release, they disappeared before we could get any copies at all, and before we knew it they were gone. We did manage to hear bits and pieces, enough that when we discovered that two of the records were being reissued together as a double cd, we could barely wait, and once it arrived, well, pretty much everyone here has been playing it nonstop. UK producer Stott seems to have taken the minimal downtempo soul of Burial as a jumping off point, taking that same sound and slowing it down even further, adding more grit and grime, creating a sound now twice removed from the dancefloor, a soporific, somnolent techno that fuses murky dirgey slo-mo soul with abstract house music creep, conjuring up a music that is both haunting and sinister, mesmeric and minimal, an array of looped melodies, melded to skeletal thumps and heartbeat like pulses, fragmented samples woven into the mix mostly to provide texture and melody, but for the most part all of the various elements are recruited to either become rhythms themselves, or to be blurred and smeared into a grim washed out backdrop, over which the rhythms slither and skitter. The dub element is huge, but it's a muted sublimated dub, only really showing itself, when a voice escapes the gravitational pull of Stott's black hole dub, the swirl of effects dragging it right back down into the murk, quickly disappearing into the inky blackness, leaving just the churn and lurch, and it's that balance, a delicate one to be sure, that makes Stott's sound so special. Too much rhythmic murk, and it's monochromatic and dull, too much melody, and sonic filigree and suddenly it's not nearly so dark and mysterious. Stott deftly negotiates the middle ground, dragging the more melodic elements into the dark and repurposing them, using them to infuse his sonic black energy with life. The bonus tracks on Passed Me By, are much more active, the pulsing house-y "Stitch House" sounds like Stott covering The Field, still all fuzzy and washed out and Pop Ambient, but much more rhythmic, and less murky, while "Love Nothing" lets the rhythms come front and center, skittering and shuffling over a rubbery low end melody, and swirling synthy chordal swells, not to mention a deep dramatic croon. It almost sounds like a sketch for a future song that would find the various elements dipped in pitch, slowed down and blackened.
The second disc does dial back the murk a bit, instead focusing on the rhythmic component, wrapping everything in a Pop Ambient haze, but letting the beats break free of the whir and thrum, opener "Submission" is all hazy swirls, the only rhythm a sort of echo drenched dubbed out ripple, very dreamlike and abstract, before slipping into "Posers" which at first sounds very much like something off Passed Me By sampled water gurgles beneath a muted techno thump, but soon, fog horn like melodies drift in, and the beat blossoms into something much more active, a shuffling crunch anchored to a house-like pulse, processed vocals drifting over the top, the vibe groovy, but still washed out and druggily abstract. Which is how the first half of We Stay Together plays out, but then about half way through, the sounds begins to veer back toward the murk, "Cherry Eye" being a fantastic bit of muddied minimalism, even at its most propulsive, it's still a muted creep, as is "Cracked", although it does crank the beat a bit, conjuring up a sort of slow motion shimmy, that remains looped and mesmerizingly motorik.
The bonus tracks on We Stay Together, in some ways mirror those on Passed Me By, in that they actually sound more like their opposite, "Work Gate" is super minimal and sketch-like, a little dubby and darkly Portishead-y, while "We Stay Together (Part Two)" begins life as a hushed blur, but gradually blossoms into another Field like chunk of looped techno mesmer.
Released on the same label that gave us all the Demdike Stare records, which should give you an idea that while this might technically be techno, it's some murky dubbed out hauntology that transcends any sort of genre classification. A brand new unanimous store fave, and definite contender for Record Of the Year!
Packed in a super striking oversized gatefold sleeve, with a different cover for each album depending on which way you're holding it, both stunning black and white photos culled from the pages of National Geographic.
MPEG Stream: "North To South"
MPEG Stream: "Intermittent"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Details"
MPEG Stream: "Submission"
MPEG Stream: "Posers"

REED, LOU & METALLICA Lulu (Warner Bros.) 2cd 18.98
We know you've all be waiting for us to weigh in on one of the burning issues of our time: just how terrible IS the Lou Reed / Metallica album? Is it terrible terrible, or maybe so bad it's good (but still terrible)? Or, perhaps, like The Wire, would we be all contrary and proclaim it to actually be brilliant, not terrible? Well... let's just say that actually writing a review of Lulu is difficult 'cause simply sitting through Lulu is difficult! Imagine a random rock band (Metallica) jamming on some generic stoner riffs they wrote in like 5 minutes, while Grandpa Simpson (Lou Reed) speak-sings disturbing/cryptic/asinine lyrics from the POV of an underage girl prostitute and whatnot over the top... and it's TWO freaking discs long!
Well, even opinion here at AQ is divided... just like when Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus came out. We DO like stuff that's "fucked up" after all, and certainly this is. And there's ways in which the "transgressiveness" of this might appeal to Oxbow fans, for sure (and we're Oxbow fans). But if you're a Metallica fan... well you're a glutton for punishment already anyway at this point, and this IS better than St. Anger (what isn't)? Is it possible that Lulu is Lou Reed's laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank joke on a clueless, desperate-to-be-artistic Metallica?
Maybe we should just cop out and say that Lulu stands outside of any conventional good/bad judgment. It's just...ludicrous. And not 'cause it's Lou Reed and Metallica, as a concept, per se. Actually, when we first heard about Lou Reed teaming up with Metallica, some of us thought it had potential. On paper. After all, Lou Reed had written songs for KISS before (on 1981's Music From The Elder) and look how that turned out. No, seriously, we dig that KISS album. And if Lou was good enough to write songs for KISS, he should be good enough to write songs for Metallica, heck they should have brought him in sooner. Or, another possibility, was that they would do a full-on noise album together, conducted by Reed: Metallica Machine Music, perhaps?! That could have been cool. Instead, we got this arty absurdity. Which, to be fair, does have its (unintentionally HILARIOUS) moments. For instance, "I Am The Table" (not the name of the song, but it should be, it's actually called "The View", after the TV talk show) is almost worth the price of admission, it's already a classic. Or, check out the very next song, "Pumping Blood", sample lyric from Reed: "Waggle my ass like a dark prostitute coagulating heart pumpin' blood... c'mon, James!"
Yes, he really says/sings that. Wow.
And if Reed's half-assed spoken word style, way-too-high-in-the-mix vox weren't ruinous enough, James Hetfield then sings backup throughout, in his usual heartfelt, gruff, rock dude croon. Singing stuff like the aforementioned, "I am the table!". The juxtaposition is, again, just so ridiculous. As is the entire album. We're not sure what's worse, when they try to do "songs" (like "Iced Honey") or when it's just Lars on the drums providing random backup for Reed's beat poetry.
Ok, it's not all laffs. Ferinstance, in the finale of the set, the whole second half of the epic 20 minute "Junior Dad" is just droning somber strings, and that's quite pretty, although that part doesn't appear to involve either the members of Metallica OR Lou Reed...
So, our "verdict": you should definitely hear this, a least a bit of it, for a laugh. But buy the thing? Well, we've got one copy, and expect to have it for a while. But please go ahead, buy it. We dare you. And when you're listening to it, try not to imagine this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRPzElP_eSI
MPEG Stream: "Brandenberg Gate"
MPEG Stream: "The View"
MPEG Stream: "Cheat On Me"

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB #8-16 (self-released) MP3 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.
The second in the Astral Social Club mp3 reissue program. One disc, 9 cd-r's and close to 8 hours worth of blissed out shimmer, soft dreamy noisescapes and mutant alien discodrone, all jammed onto one little disc. So for those of you who missed out on any of the numbers 8 through 16 (heck we did too, we only reviewed 3 of those!), then this is a good way to get it ALL!
First, an Astral Social club primer would probably be useful:
For those who don't already know, Astral Social Club just so happens to be Mr. Neil Campbell, the mastermind behind the genius Vibracathedral Orchestra, who for years, has been spending his days off from VCO, recording disc after amazing disc of deliriously spaced out drone, blown out extended ragas, and seemingly endless slabs of hypnotic pulse and drift, and more recently a sort of fractured otherworldy dancemusic.
Okay then, odds are, most of you are probably gonna want this, but in case you need a quick description of some of the sonic joys to be found within, here goes:
Strange and murky, looped percussion, with bits of electronic glitch, sounding almost a little like some sort of twentieth century classical filtered through some primitive krautrock, glorious sparkling epic shimmering drones, Technicolor cascades of rich reverberant sounds and all manner of glimmering glittering ear candy, super minimal dark ambience, with drifting whale call melodies and deep rumbling swells, Sunroof!-y bit of high end raga sparkle, complete with the sounds of crickets and running water, sun dappled, dreamy looped guitar sheen, all wrapped up into one big glorious space drone whole, dense synthscapes, lots of hiss and whir, with buried rhythmic pulses, weird underwater bloops and burbles... all sounding very much like some white label Pop Ambient 12", thick corrosive washes of overblown distortion and buzzing droning ragas, thick slabs of feedback, grinding chunks of guitarbuzz, processed vocals, all wound up into a snarled dronepsych blowouts, tranquil smears of soft sound, high end streaks and tangled slivers of feedback all wound up into gorgeously shimmering upper register skreescapes, circular looped hypnotic longform dronemusic, blissy and droney and spaced out and druggy, transcendental slabs of glistening high, super minimal percussive flutter, swirling abstract FX-scapes, pounding almost house sounding bangers all uniquely cracked, effects-soaked, drug-infused and blissed out and more more more more.
Essential listening for fans of all things drone-y and blissed out, fans of Vibracathedral, Skullflower, Yellow Swans, the Skaters and folks looking for some truly twisted outsider dance trax to go with their ambient dronemusic.
packaged in a thick PVC plastic sleeve, in a plain white jacket with a paste on front cover image.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Four"

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: 2XL) T shirt 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Extra Large) T shirt 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Large) T shirt 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Medium) T shirt 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Small) T shirt 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Youth Large) T shirt 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

GAS Nah Und Fern (Kompakt) 4cd 34.00
Not sure where to even start with this one. Everyone here at aQ, heck almost everyone we know loves Gas, the blissed out minimal ambient techno project of Mr. Wolfgang Voigt. But don't let the word 'techno' scare you off, as the music of Gas can easily win over the most ardent techno-phobes. The techno element in the sound of Gas is only a tiny part of Voigt's magical soundworld, often just a shadow, a distant heartbeat like pulse, sometimes more pronounced, but usually just a murky throb or a rhythmic murmur, the music of Gas is Gauzy and shimmery, blurred and softly buzzy, it's like an even more dreamlike Oval, or perhaps Porter Ricks crossed with Labradford, or Tim Hecker recording a record for Chain Reaction. When we talk about Kompakt's Pop Ambient sound, Gas is the template, that which we measure all other 'pop ambience' by. The sound is at once ethereal and intimate, haunting and mysterious, lush and expansive, the beatless tracks drift endlessly, each a divine blur of soft chordal whir and looped effervescence, the more beat heavy tracks, retain that same washed out otherworldliness, but manage to infuse them with a subtle, barely-there groove, sometimes adding gritty crackle, or subtle dubbed out delay, but always sounding light and airy, weightless and darkly blissful. We once described Gas as sounding like being adrift in a sea of electronics, in a fog so deep, the pulsating beats that would guide you back to shore are murky at best, muffled by distance and the unending push of the droning wind. And we're not sure if we could describe it better. But we'll try.
Nah Und Fern collects all four Gas albums, all of which have been out of print for ages: Gas, Zauberberg, Konigforst and Pop. And when we were first preparing to review this set, we were all ready to describe Gas' sonic arc, from the more overtly techno debut, to the much more ambient and ethereal final album. But on returning to the s/t debut, we discovered that the sound of Gas changed very little over the course of 4 albums, instead, each is like a movement in a massive symphony of gloriously murky minimalism.
The self titled debut deftly balances pure ambience with some of the most propulsive Gas tracks, including a 14 minute epic that seems to be assembled from a Chariots Of Fire loop, but in the hands of Voigt, it's transformed into something otherworldly. It is techno, but not for dancing, for many of us Gas serves the same purpose as dronemusic, sounds to lull you to sleep, to allow you to drift off, to disengage and let your mind float freely, led by your ears, entranced as they are by the beautiful shimmer and motorik soft focus propulsion of Gas.
As much as we love all of these records, the two middle records Zauberberg and Konigforst make up the heart of this Gas box. Both luminous and exuberant, yet subdued and melancholic. Sedate technotic pulses beneath wind swept drones, expansive orchestral sprawls burnished to an exquisite golden luster. Voigt's subtle dub techniques on these two discs coax the polytonal swells of deep sustained horns into lush rhythmic repetitions. These are heroic if gloomy electronica epics, realizing a fantasy fusion of Wagner's teutonic vigor and a disembodied dancefloor drone.
The final disc, Pop, is in fact the poppiest, or so we always believed, but in context with the other three discs, we are once again surprised by how consistent the Gas sound remained, while still managing to subtly expand on the sound Voigt virtually created and perfected over the course of the first three full lengths. Much like the original cover art, Pop is the metaphorical sound of the intrusion of the forest onto the dance floor, with all of its mysteries, mythologies, and wonders being ordered by the insistency of Voigt's monophunk beats. Where the earlier works were dark haunts wherein deep fluid ambience topped the nonstop pulsating rhythms, Pop is a shimmering sunfilled excursion that is mostly beatless, forming its structures out of repetitive sequences of trilling ambience swelling in and out of each other within Voigt's surreal soundworld of hypnodub washes. The lost beat resurfaces finally on the last track which is a beautiful looped repetition of the previous ambient modulations, but subtly and gracefully merged with a muted, insistent underwater dancefloor throb. Breathtaking.
A modern minimalist electronic masterpiece, four stunning parts of one majestic whole, finally united into one magnum opus, spanning years, yet sounding to our ears, utterly timeless.
Each disc is packaged in a full color sleeve, along with four inserts, all adorned with blue and green tinted forestscapes, and all housed in a gorgeous matte finished cardboard box, also adorned with a similar image, and the letters G A S embossed across the top of the box.
MPEG Stream: "Gas 2"
MPEG Stream: "Zauberberg 2"
MPEG Stream: "Konigforst - Eins"
MPEG Stream: "Pop 1"

SHIT AND SHINE Kuss Miche, Meine Liebe (Load) cd 15.98
Ahhh, Shit And Shine, even the name give us the warm fuzzies. That's because multiple drummer-ed lawn mower bass tribal drug jams often do. And no one does it better, or quite like the UK's Shit And Shine. With a constantly shifting lineup that often swells to double digits, including as many drummers as they can pack into a room. And a wall of amplifiers that makes SUNNO))) seem like they're playing through practice amps, several bass players, often just a phalanx of shitty Casio keyboards, howling vocals, all tangled up into a heaving mass of post-Butthole Surfers drug psych heaviness.
Much like the cd reissue of Cherry (last week's Record Of The Week), Kuss Mich, Meine Liebe is not entirely brand new, the two longest tracks we've had before on a super limited, crazy expensive lp, but here on cd for the very first time. Along with one other loooooooong jam, and a handful of shorter, but no less appealing chunks of what-the-fuck tribal psych-out heaviness.
Let's cover the tracks we've heard before. "Biggest Cock In Christendom" is an in-the-red tribal workout, like a more metallic and way more distorted and druggy No Neck Blues Band. Or a WAY heavier Chain Reaction disc. Thick pulses of low end drift beneath streaks of super distorted amp damage, all very krautrock sounding, but filtered through a bank of effects pedals, all broken or with dying batteries. Definitely blissed out and mesmerizing, but so ominous and creepy. This is the shit musical dreams are made of. 15 minutes of this stuff is not nearly enough. Set it to repeat, drink a bottle of Nyquil and let yourself get sucked under. The other track from the 12", "Toilet Door Tits", is an endless rhythmic jam, with ultra blown out drums, sounding a bit like some Butthole Surfers / Laddio Bolocko hybrid, albeit WAY more distorted and damaged. The sound is completely fried, the whole track sounding like it's crumbling through your speakers, strangled vocals drift amidst the tribal pummel, as do weird alien sounding squiggly leads that squirm and slither from speaker to speaker giving the whole track a super disorienting effect.
The other long track on Kuss Mich is the epic and drowsily sprawling "Preventions Arise", 10 minutes of muted almost industrial sounding rhythms, way more moody and washed out than the other tracks, an endless muddy murky rhythmic jam, pulsing and throbbing, a propulsive groove beneath a very noir spoken word. Strange but a good balance to the sheer brutality of the other tracks.
Scattered all around these three massive jams are jagged little chunks of shiny shit, blasts of noise and crunch and buzz and pound, from brief flurries of machine like grind, furious blast beats, and stuttering off kilter rhythms, to total Buttholes worship, pounding tribal rhythm, buzzing fuzz guitar, hypnotic and intense, to tripped out abstract skitter, all warbly distorted bass, and processed vox, to huge blown out chug and churn, heavy and epic and massively distorted and blown out.
Once again, more proof that these guys (and gals) are the current reigning kings and queens of crushing chaotic drugged out drone drenched drum corps psych-doom heaviness.
Killer packaging, very simple and cryptic, shit brown paper and metallic gold ink shine!
MPEG Stream: "Biggest Cock In Christendom"
MPEG Stream: "The Germans Call It A Swimming Head"
MPEG Stream: "Kuss Miche, Meine Liebe"

PORTISHEAD Third (Mercury) cd 15.98
It seems a bit strange to spend very much time writing about the new Portishead. Since by now, odds are you're probably sick to death of hearing about it. Sure we all loved Portishead back in the day, they were one of those rare 'electronic' bands whose appeal knew no boundaries, metalheads, moms, indie kids, the sound of Portishead was dark and sexy and mysterious, sinister and ominous, dark and rife with crackle and buzz. Perfect drugged out late night bliss out music, their strange way of creating sound and composing music, recording their own samples on to vinyl and then spinning and scratching those samples to create new textures, made for a totally unique sound.
So what does a band do after taking almost a decade off? Do they return with a record that sounds just like the last one, which is probably what most folks want, or do they return radically altered? With a sound bold and brash, reinventing the sound they themselves invented in the first place.
On first listen, Third definitely sounds like the latter, but with repeated listening, the record slowly and subtly begins to slip toward the former. Which most definitely speaks to the magic of Portishead, and the new record, which at once embraces the old sound, while turning it into something new. More than past outings, Third is dirty, out of tune, atonal, noisy, chaotic, urgent, sure past records had all that crackle and buzz and fuzz, but those elements were carefully placed, and kept well within line. Third sounds much more, well, loose for lack of a better word, like actual musicians, feeling each other out, maybe even improvising. Less like a studio concoction and more like a real live band. And the sound suits them. And makes for a record at once warm and familiar, but also alien, sort of 'rocking' and rife with WTF? moments.
Take the opener, "Silence", which begins with some sort of radio broadcast, which gives way to a killer loping breakbeat, immediately the fastest tempo Portishead have ever explored, strings swoop in, the sound raw and urgent, almost like the chase scene from some spy movie, gorgeous distorted chiming guitar harmonics ring out, until finally the track slows down, and slithers sexily, the vocals a sexy sultry croon, but it's not long before the track kicks back into the haunting and tense, string laden cinematic jam that opened the track.
Then there's "Hunter", which begins like classic Portishead, all smokey and late night sounding, soft muted reverbed guitars, a lush gauzy production, the vocals ethereal and ghostly, but even here, a few seconds in, the song is interrupted by a super distorted crumbling guitar chord that halts things in their tracks, before fading out, and allowing the song to resume. The a few minutes later, a strange noodly synth freakoutsurfaces, again derailing the song's slow motion groove, but It just sounds perfect. It doesn't at all sound like random weirdness for random weirdness' sake. The first time is jarring, the second time, you find yourself waiting for those parts, even humming along as if they were as crucial to the song as the main melody or the vocals, and the thing is, they are.
Near the end lurks the single, "Machine Gun", with its very machine gun like rhythm, herky jerky, stuttery and not at all fluid, reminiscent of Art Of Noise, the vocals sweetly soaring over this jagged rhythmscape below, which only really varies part way through when the original machine gun drums are replaced by BIGGER, more distorted drums, and wrapped in strange moaning horns (or maybe synths), only to shift once again moments later becoming more electronic, the beats awash in strange FX and metallic buzz. It's so unlikely, that it makes perfect sense as the first single. If you can embrace that strange rhythm, that relentless and very un-Portishead like sound, then the rest of the record will make perfect sense, unfolding in front of you, revealing both the warm familiar sounds missed, and the new, bizarre sonic elements never even imagined
All over the record, the band confounds and confuses, gloriously, the brooding whispery "Small" shifts gears partway through and transforms into a fuzzy organ drenched krautjam, "Deep Water" is a straight up old timey folk song, the vocals and strings soaked in fuzzy ambience (and reminding us a bit of vocalist Gibbons' post Portishead project Rustin Man), "We Carry On" is a sort of atonal Stereolab style jam, relentless percussion, thick swaths of synth, very repetitive and hypnotic, "The Rip" is part whispery folky flutter, part synthy electro buzz, every track here offers some sort of surprise, whether it's the song itself, or some little sonic strangeness lurking within, but never is the song or the sound sacrificed, each track is perfect in its own beautifully twisted way, catchy but never obviously so, groovy, but often convoluted and fractured, it's a difficult record to explain for sure, which is perhaps why so much ink has been spilled, and while we may be sick of reading about it, we sure are finding it nearly impossible to imagine ever getting sick of listening to it, which is precisely why it's one of our Records Of The Week.
MPEG Stream: "Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Machine Gun"

BURNING WITCH Crippled Lucifer (Japanese Version) (Daymare) 3cd 42.00
A few weeks back we gushed and gushed like crazy over this legendary doom classic, all gussied up and elaborately re-packaged and re-issued by the fine folks at Southern Lord. Well, we just got our hands on the Japanese version, now a triple cd instead of a double cd, the packaging very similar, the only real difference being that the Southern Lord pressing came with a download card, so you could download some demos and live shows, well, that's what's on the third disc here. So if you already downloaded those tracks, you don't really need this unless you want to own those tracks on cd. And if you somehow missed this the first time around, and the $42 price tag doesn't scare you off, then by all means grab one! It's worth it. And be warned, we only got a handful, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a third bonus disc with a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Predictions"
MPEG Stream: "History Of Hell (Crippled Lucifer)"

NEW THRILL PARADE, THE Slumber In Colorland (Wonder Quest / Big Drum) lp 7.98
The band discovered a small stash of these hidden away, and decided to offer them up to the aQ faithful at a SUPER cheap price. And these are most likely the last copies EVER...
Release me now from my mortal flesh, where all my thoughts look towards death. This blackened void in which I gasp for breath, death release me NOW! Oh, what we mean is, this is the FINAL release from San Francisco's own late great twisted goth, mindfreakin art damaged, sorrowfully psychedelic Death Rockers, The New Thrill Parade! Whoa. Woe.
We have reviewed all their previous releases up until now, and luckily for us things just kept getting weirder and weirder and more and more demented in the New Thrill Parade commune. The sound is an angular misanthropic romp. Bass and drums churning out urgent, fractured rhythms, while the guitar cuts the throat of any soul with open ears, with piercing, discordant, mind-bending leads. Everything swirling, and seething madly, till the brain leaks out of the ears, and any thoughts you had before, about music, life, social relations, death, sex, are completely mutated and subverted. It's a jubilant sonic experience, but travels dark roads to come to it. This explanation of NTP's sound world is not unlike those of our past reviews (which you should check out), but Slumber In Colorland presents a marked development in both the bands sound and aesthetic. The intensely orchestrated, and inspired song craft fuckery of this latest venture show the band maturing and really finding their own unique mode of operation, giving this album a consistency not yet found in their previous works. It's like gothy deathrock darkness has finally met its blurry-brained, altered state, tripped out, color smeared polar blood brother! The songs range from depressive dark jazz sounding crooners, to completely fucked up rock fury, with mutilated melodies and disjointed noises. Heavily warped shit! Not so much genre defying, as it is genre defining!

AFCGT (A FRAMES + CLIMAX GOLDEN TWINS) s/t (Fire Breathing Turtle) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Holy shit, this is fucking great! And who would have ever thought that the A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins would make a record together? And who would have imagined that it would be this fucking awesome? It's all superlatives and all expletives in describing the first collaborative production from AFCGT. The A Frames had managed to raise some eyebrows here through their post-punk appropriations of early Wire and early Fall, but the vocals had always been something of a miss for them especially on the last Sub Pop album. But in working with the AQ-endorsed Climax Golden Twins who are a band accustomed to delivering exemplary instrumentals from literally every corner of the avant-rock landscape, the A Frames have the permission to shut the hell up and let the Climax Golden Twins dump the fucking kitchen sink all over A Frames rhythmic swagger. The album opens with a tumultuous blast of glue-huffing noise-rock, sort of like a fistfight between the Butthole Surfers and the Sun City Girls. Soon after, a series of bad-ass Birthday Party / Oxbow swamp rock riffs explode with spindly space-age gamelan leads; elsewhere, the No Wave ghosts of R.L. Crutchfield-era DNA emerge with of jagged chops across the guitar pick-ups, bloodied fingers and all. Fuck, it all sounds fucking great! It's a damn shame that this thing is only limited to 50 copies! That perhaps is our only complaint.
MPEG Stream: "New Punk"
MPEG Stream: "Old Spy"
MPEG Stream: "Thug"

GOSLINGS, THE Occasion (Not Not Fun) cd 14.98
Not many artists can lay claim to their very own musical genre, but Hollywood, Florida's The Goslings are among the elite few who most definitely can. On first listen their sound seems to fit pretty comfortably amongst the current crop of distorted deconstructed decaying blissed out dreamy dirge rock that seems to be all the rave (Nadja, Alcest, Hjarnidaudi, Procer Veneficus, etc.), after all they often get described as half SUNNO))) and half My Bloody Valentine, but that's really only half (again) true. And while their sound does share some of the elements of those other bands, The Goslings are their own perfect, synergetic sonic force, an organic, original soundworld that has absorbed and re-synthesized those influences entirely. In other words, on this latest record, they somehow manage to sound way, way heavier and much, much more lush, transforming any vestiges of other bands' sounds into something distinctly theirs. Formerly just a husband and wife duo, Max and Leslie Soren, Occasion finds the couple joined by two apparently full-time members which does nothing but help make their sound, thicker, and more dense, more intense, more distorted, and impossibly, more beautiful. It's not a huge departure from the sound of their previous outings, but that's not really a bad thing. Occasion just serves to demonstrate that their sound is now even more of a particularly refined and menacing chunk of skull crushingly gorgeous sound.
Each of The Goslings' records has been self-recorded straight onto tape in their $15 an hour rehearsal space. Before it was a 4-track, now it's a reel-to-reel 8-track tape, with any additional tracks being added at a friend's house in Pro Tools -- a slight upgrade, but again, one that merely serves to push their sound even further into some hellish sonic realm. Mastered by James Plotkin, their commitment to relatively lo-fi, analog recording a significant part of why each and every track is so totally ear-stabbingly, skull-fuckingly shit heavy. But beneath the obvious doom veneer, the crushing sludge, the washed out hiss and buzz, there are buried some lovely melodies and more of the Goslings' near perfect pop songs. Fear not though, it's not like Nadja or Jesu, where there is potentially enough of said pop to turn-off those more dedicated to the seriously heavy and/or utterly grim. Regardless of the surprising melodic structures lay hidden beneath the blown out bluster, or the prettiness of Leslie's vocals drifting ethereally throughout, the music, the sound, the Goslings' sheer power continually threatens to overwhelm, a bludgeoning slab of sonic destruction that's systematically destroying your entire life, note by note. Then out of nowhere, there's a weird little bluegrass number, a brief respite before the band lurch back into motion, unleashing another avalanche of village crushing, ultradistorted, stumbling, downtuned beautiful brutality.
A higher recommendation would be difficult to give. Essential!
MPEG Stream: "Mew"
MPEG Stream: "Parsley Halo"
MPEG Stream: "Vitium"

SWANOX / SCRAPS OF DOGS split (Caligulan Records) cassette 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A beautiful and harrowingly dark cassette release from the mysterious new tape label, Caligulan! Based right here in not so sunny these days San Francisco, Caligulan brings the droney, woozy, doomy skull fuck sounds that make a tape head cringe with sorrowful delight!
The Swanox side is one long track, called "Forests Of Pluto", and indeed sounds like an exploration of some alien, yet wooded planet. Deep and dark doomy folk, other worldly voices emmanating from blackened caves, the sounds of ancient trees creaking in the haunted winter winds, reverb drenched guitars plunked by some wraithy wood elf of the unspoiled natural landscape of old. The sounds of Swanox on this release are both haunting and contemplative, letting the mind drift off into the spectral world of tones. Spooky and strangely beautiful music!
The Scraps Of Dogs side is also a dark beauty, but much nosier and much heavier. The first track, "Nag Hammadi" is sort of a metallic drift. The sounds of metal scraping against metal, churning and contorting itself into every changing sonic shapes. Bass tones rumble in a deathlike scree, creating beautifully distorted drones and thick swells of darkened texture. The second track, "Leave Your Body Behind", Is all fuzz and rumble. It sounds like an Orcish army on a death march, in blizzard conditions. The distorted textures undulate in a syncopated way, while more high end elements swirl around your head, like some cold blowing, northern wind. Drifting drones made up of thick fuzz and crackle, mixed up in some evil witch's cauldron, along with a few blackend frog gullets, filtered through the grimmest, most kult coffee machine you could imagine, till it fills your sonic pot with oozing nefarious soundscapes. The coffee machine of grimnity!
The packaging on this fella is beautiful! Much like the Robedoor tape featured on this list, which is also on Caligulan, The cover is adorned with a gorgeous photo of the Northern Woods. More accurately the Pacific North Western woods, where these two doomy bummers originally hail from. The inside is spraypainted to look like some far off galaxy, and there's a beautiful handmade insert to boot! Along with this tape, and the Robedoor, we got the last 10 copies of this gem, so act now or forever hold your deathlike peace!!!

BELONG Colorloss Record (St. Ives) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Belong are just one of many new bands exploring the sound of decay. The sound of music within murk, the sound of pop, melted down and smeared into shapeless forms. For a while there it seemed like every band was lacing their delicate pop with bits of glitch and electronic shimmer. To the point where ANY band, no matter what they sounded like originally, were suddenly 'experimental' with nothing but a bit of crackle and bleep added to the mix. A similar thing has happened lately, another movement has taken hold, of bands burying their sounds under distorted drones, blistering feedback, bleary eyed shimmer, oceans of crackle, sounds pulled apart and layered into strange organic ambient blurs. We're not complaining though, we've long been proponents of distressed sound. The more distressed and heavy and fucked up and crackly and distorted the better. The problem lies in the fact that a movement usually entails everyone and their brother suddenly wanting to sound like whatever band or sound is 'happening' at the moment. SUNNO))) spawned a legion off doomdrone combos, and these movements are not all that different.
A band, be they pop or metal or whatever, can wrap everything in buzz and distortion and suddenly whatever genre they were can get hyphenated with the suffix GAZE, or alternately, a band can blur everything, slow it down, make it muddier and murkier and dronier, and voila, become a doomdronewhatever outfit.
But with all these things, it's not as easy as the truly amazing artists make it sound. And this becomes evident on almost first listen. Anyone can plug their guitar into a laptop, but no one can create gauzy gristly soundscapes like Fennesz. Anyone can tune way down and let their guitars ring out, let riffs crumble to pieces, but it takes more than that to make something a compelling listen.
From the very first listen to Belong's last full length, October Language, we knew these guys were special. They were one of those bands who had the sound down, but were using the sound to create glorious sonic worlds of their own invention. Not aping anyone else's sounds, merely absorbing elements, and transforming them into something new, and distinctly Belong. And the other thing about Belong, was they weren't just making beautiful noise, they were writing songs, that were infused with beautiful noises, sometimes obfuscated by them, but there was always a song, a melody, never just sound for sound's sake.
This new four song ep takes things even further, by being about someone else's songs. Reinventing, reimagining, reinterpreting the sounds of four different artists, and making them all sound like they could have come from nowhere else than this mysterious entity known as Belong.
The first might be the best of the bunch, and it's no coincidence that it's the most song-y. A Syd Barrett cover, via the somewhat more obscure Cleaners From Venus, "Late Night" in the hands of Belong becomes an epic sweeping cinematic warped record spinning underwater, on the surface of some alien moon, beneath the warm glow of twin suns. Soaring vocals, gorgeous melodies, all beneath a thick churning lush wall of crumbling, shimmering sound. Woozy and seasick, dizzying, dense and warm and absolutely gorgeous, it's almost like a more blurred and buzzed version of Oval, digital skipping replaced by indistinct slow motion riffage, everything gauzy and washed out. The other three tracks, covers of '60s psych pop songs by Tintern Abbey, Billy Nicholls and July, are even more ethereal, almost choral sounding, voices and streaks of sound drifting in a softly churning sea of hum and whir, and breathy blur. The final track a thick, viscous outro, the July original barely audible beneath a blown out swirl of creeping low end and free floating metallic flutter, somehow sounding heavy and intense, but laid back and soporific at the same time, eventually fading to a whispery hum. So good. Definitely one of our favorite groups exploring the world of distressed / decayed / deconstructed / dreamy / dronelike sound.
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 300 COPIES!! Each one hand made by the group using recycled sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "Late Night"
MPEG Stream: "My Clown"

VAMPIRE WEEKEND s/t (XL Recordings) cd 13.98
Don't know what all the fuss is about with this current flavor of the day, but we suspect that XL Recordings must've gotten a particularly crack team of marketing schemers and hype generators 'cause their name is absolutely everywhere!
Sure, it'd be easy to be suspicious and slag this band on that aspect alone, but we won't. They're not bad really, but nothing really special or 'holy shit!' either. Nope, they sound like an adequate cross between Arcade Fire, The Shins and New Pornographers... who've eaten way too many Cracker Jacks. Worth checkin' out if you're looking for some lighter fare along the lines of those two abovementioned bands.
MPEG Stream: "Oxford Comma"
MPEG Stream: "A-Punk"

ZENI GEVA Maximum Money Monster (Cold Spring) cd 15.98
Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane. Zeni Geva. We're concerned here with the latter, who maybe aren't as well known as the first half dozen bands mentioned, but sure as heck belong in that illustrious company... and sound VERY much like some unholy, heavier-than-thou hybrid of all of 'em!! It's been a long time since we've had a new Zeni Geva album to write about... and no this isn't actually a new album. But we're still pretty excited. Every once in a while, we have the opportunity to list and review an old favorite. Something that's been out of print for longer even than we've been doing the Aquarius website and New Arrivals emails, that we'd never had the chance to stock and recommend before, that finally at long last gets a well-deserved reissue and is cause for much celebration 'round here. For instance, to name a couple of recent examples, Harvey Milk's My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. And Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper. You'll note the examples we just cited are all on the "heavy" side... well that's 'cause what we're about to recommend here also pretty darn heavy. To say the least.
You may already be familiar with Japan's Zeni Geva, as they've been around for years and years. This cult "progressive hardcore" trio is the brainchild of guitarist Kazuyuki Kishino Null, also well-known for his "nullsonic" solo recordings. Definitely influenced by early Swans, KK Null started up the doomy and noisy ZG in about 1987. Previously he'd done time in Tokyo underground industrial noise-terrorists Absolut Null Punkt, and with prog act YBO2, which also featured drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, who of course later went on to lead the incredible Magmoid duo Ruins. Meanwhile, post-YBO2, Null formed the far more metallic* Zeni Geva. Null did draft Yoshida in to play drums on some early ZG material (wouldn't you?), and you'll here him here on about half of this disc's tracks, contributing his distinctive vocals as well to a couple songs. Ikuro Taketani (ex-Hanatarashi) plays drums on the other half. The lineup also includes Tabata Mitsuru (ex-Boredoms and Leningrad Blues Machine) on guitar. That's right, there's no bassist in Zeni Geva which is pretty incredible considering how hellishly heavy they are! And it's clear that ZG are something of a underground Japanese rock supergroup.
MMM was ZG's first cd release, coming out originally in 1990 on the UK's now long-gone Pathological label. It's a lumbering juggernaut fully blessed and bloated with everything we LOVE about Zeni Geva that would also be heard on later, Albini-produced releases like Total Castration and Desire For Agony: Utter headbanging, slo-mo, dirt-plowing destruction. Molasses thick riffs dripping from electric axes. Frenzied, technical bashing. Mathy post rock song structures. High-end guitar solo skree. Mean misanthropic attitude. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition.... adorned with the aforementioned guitar soloing, providing a crashing, crushing soundscape to underscore the throaty proclamations of "Sweetheart!" or "War Pig!" or "Blackout!" from gruff vocalist/guitarist Null -- the lyrics to these tracks being little more than the song title shouted over and over with fervent anguish. Glorious stuff, massive and mesmeric.
From the first track, the 16 minute harrowing dirge-stomp "Slam King" that ends terrifyingly with waves of unaccompanied, effected vocals, to the last, the rhythmic and witchy "On Suicide", featuring lyrics borrowed from Bertold Brecht, this is scary, monolithic, artistic heaviness of the highest order.
Let's give a big thanks to Cold Spring for making this classic available once again (as part of a wave of Japanese releases including a new disc from noise legends CCCC). Though we don't see why Cold Spring felt the need to replace the original, much more colorful, and in our opinion, superior artwork, we are happy to note that they did make one major improvement. While the eight songs on the original disc were inexplicably presented as one loooong track with no separate-song indexing (annoying!) they're thankfully corrected that. Now you can skip right to "Guystick Bodie", or put "Skullfuck" on repeat. And in addition to the eight original tracks, they've added three previously unreleased bonus cuts as well! Devastating live versions of album cuts "War Pig" (a Zeni Geva song, not Sabbath's "War Pigs" plural) and "Skullfuck", along with "Dead Car, Sun Crash" (an early ZG number not included on the album proper), recorded in Tokyo circa 1988-89. Whee! Like we said, we're so stoked to get to list/review/recommend this!
*Though not metallic enough to be accepted by the online metal authority Encyclopedia Metallum it must be noted...
MPEG Stream: "Slam King"
MPEG Stream: "Sweetheart"
MPEG Stream: "War Pig (live)"

LONGMONT POTION CASTLE 6 (D.U.) cd-r 12.98
The return of the always hilarious Longmont Potion Castle!!! If you're like me (Matt), you missed LPC the first time around, and are super stoked to have a disc from this side splitting and incredibly aggravating (to his victims) prank call mastermind! The most amazing thing about these calls is how long these people on the other end stay on the phone! Most of the calls consist of LPC picking fights with mall employees and local business owners, trying to sell dog bowels to a pawn shop, and requesting Orange Julius employees to feed him grapes while he's interviewed for a job. There's also a lot of fucked up editing and sample based pranks on this disc that are sometimes more creepy than they are funny, like the fucked up effected speech impediment of "Can O' B.S.". The receivers of these pranks range from confused elderly folks to aggro townie redneck dudes, all of whom get super pissed and usually end up threatening some sort of beatdown. It's interesting and hilarious to realize how many people love a good verbal tussle, and out of frustration how many people are willing to actually fight assuming the prankster "comes on down there...". LPC's delivery is totally dry and deadpan, almost stoned sounding, but the things coming out of his mouth are so completely absurd and absolutely hysterical! The best is when the delay pedal is implemented over the phone for extra confusional hilarity. LPC records are by far the most consistently funny, clever, bugged out, annoying, and ultimately excellent pranks on disc EVER!!! If you have 1-5 (compiled in a now out of print boxset), 6 certainly stands up, and for those of you have never checked LPC out, this is a great place to start! It's a bit hard to describe how great this stuff is, but it's one of a kind, So funny and super recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Dog Gnash"
MPEG Stream: "Citation"
MPEG Stream: "Sandyman"

DAFT PUNK Alive 2007 (Virgin) cd 17.98
It's been over 6 months since Daft Punk played in San Francisco but anyone who was there will never forget it. Daft Punk proved they are one of the greatest live experiences on the planet. From an immaculate trance inducing light show, to a futuristic pyramid shaped console that they were housed in and then of course the loud, supremely danceable songs that they blasted through the amphitheater as thousands of people grinning wildly, completely let themselves go, dancing with ecstasy and an adrenalized joy that we rarely ever get to experience. Alive 2007 captures that show (and that recent tour) perfectly. It's pretty much the same set they played here as they morph many of their songs into one new track which gives a new life to many of their already well known songs from their three albums.
We're sure that at least one Daft Punk record has found its way into your subconscious (Discovery will always be our favorite!) as they are a duo who have discovered an amazing way to be accessible to such a wide range of people (ravers, metal heads, hip-hop kids, gay club scene, indie rockers, ordinary joes, etc) yet create music with such charged and creative energy. They manage to bring elements of disco, prog, house, psychedelia, funk and rock to a level of ecstatic heights rarely reached in popular music. Long live Daft Punk!!!
MPEG Stream: "Burnin' / Too Long"
MPEG Stream: "Aerodynamic Beats / Forget About The World"
MPEG Stream: "Around The World / Harder Better Faster Stronger"

BURNING WITCH Crippled Lucifer (Southern Lord) 2cd 17.98
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a "drop card", which is a thing that lets you download a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Predictions"
MPEG Stream: "History Of Hell (Crippled Lucifer)"

XYNFONICA A Feast For Famished Ravens (Hekaloth / Cyclops) cd 15.98
What we're about to say, we don't say lightly. Trust us. We may traffic in hyperbole. And our shelves may be stuffed with lots of 'best evers' and 'worst evers' and 'greatest evers', but this friends, is quite possibly the weirdest record we've ever carried. When we first threw it on, we were immediately struck with the realization, that what we were hearing, was either the most amazing thing we had ever heard, or absolutely the worst piece of shit EVER. Andee quickly decided on the former. And no matter how hard he tried, or how many repeated listens he was subjected to, Allan is sticking with the latter. But the more we play this in the store, the more the tribe of Xynfonica worshippers grows, Antaeus, Matt, Cameron, one can only handle a few listens before you're forever in its thrall. We're not sure how Allan does it, maybe there's some sort of chip in his brain, or maybe he's not really human at all, who knows. What we do know is we will wear him down, and just like you, faithful yet doomed reader of this list, he will eventually bow down to the damaged glory that is Xynfonica.
By now you're probably wondering what the fuck we're on about. Fair enough. So let's go back a bit. Not sure how we first heard about Xynfonica, but we got the disc in, it had an amazing cover, an old painting of some ancient battle, men on horseback, wielding swords, the record title: A Feast For Famished Ravens, song titles like: "From Your Father's Skull" and "The Viking Zodiac", a huge booklet jammed with more lyrics than could possibly fit in the three songs here, there are even footnotes!!! So we still hadn't listened to it, but we were pretty much sold already.
So we finally threw it on, and were greeted with some strange synthesizers, guitar synthesizers to be specific (we later discovered) and a growled demonic vocal, the synths, sort of atonal and detuned, like a demented Peter And The Wolf, the vocals, a strangled black metal rasp, so okay, we're thinking, a cool weird intro, so we waited for the band to kick in, and waited, and waited, and waited some more, scanned forwardÉ So then we thought, okay, maybe the whole first track is the intro, so we skipped to the second track, which of course started with the raspy vocals and the seasick synths, but we gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited and waited, scanned forward, and then it dawned on us. HOLY SHIT. This was the band. There were no drums, no guitarist. It was just some trollish demon and his damaged synth, spewing endless tales of mysterious battles and lost civilizations. And suddenly, it had us. Xynfonica. Sure it's creepy and demented, and borderline retarded, and the synths sometime sound so wrong it makes us dizzy, so 'off' it makes our eyes water, the melodies are demented, alien, creepy ominous one second, bouncing cheerfully the next, but always those vocals, an everpresent demon storyteller, it's hard to explain exactly why we're so taken, but we are. Every time we play this, initial reactions range from confusion, to hysterical laughter, to anxiety to sheer unadulterated joy. Imagine if Jandek was the keyboard player in a black metal band and decided to make a solo record, or imagine Mr. Roger's neighborhood but Mr. Rogers is out sick, so the dude from Abruptum is filling in, or imagine the music files from some medieval video game getting corrupted, and then used as the intro music for some evil metal band. Well you know, what? There's no need to imagine. It's all right here. Xynfonica will give you all of that and more. With just a rudimentary grasp of the synthesizer, and a frog in his throat, all will be revealed, and we shall all revel in his stumbling, confusional musical brilliance.
Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. XynfonicaÉ
MPEG Stream: "A Feast For Famished Ravens Pt.1"
MPEG Stream: "The Viking Zodiac Pt.1"

NEW THRILL PARADE, THE s/t (Mountain Landis) 12" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is a mind fuck of a 12"! We just got our hands on this, The New Thrill Parade's first ever document of their brand of head-trippy angular goth madness, and we could not be more pleased. This EP brings the listener to the edge of neurotic insanity, the place in your mind where shameful thoughts and nervous feelings are waging endless war. Dark, creeping discordances pummeling one and other, skull drilling guitar lines, saxophone squawking, and crooning vocals desperately narrating the most tenebrous thought processes of the human psyche. Heavy.
The ep begins with the drunken swagger of "Gift Horse". Starting slow and low, at a sort of swung pace, vocals sighing deeply, specks of reverby guitar and flittering sax punctuating the creeping crawl of the rhythm section. The chorus bursts in suddenly with a jagged romp, piercing guitars and guttural whoops, reminding us of The Birthday Party at their most frenetic. The second track, "Jealous Brothers" is a bit more rocking, the fucked up guitar lines becoming a little more strident and noisy. The bass lines on this one are throbbingly heavy, with the drummer playing a sort methamphetamine cowboy shuffle. Rounding out the a-side is "Spare My Teeth", starting off with a twisted spazzy groove, guitar wailing, drums churning out a clatter of syncopation, before everything pretty much drops off, and the tempo becomes stretched and abstracted, pushing and pulling with howling vocal lines, and then snapping back into the rocking tempo of the beginning. The song slowly dies, twisting and curling like the end of a fragmented dream.
The b-side starts up where the a-side left off, "Moat" is a riff heavy stomper, but maintains the abstract form of "Spare My Teeth". The tempo is stretched to hell, noisy and arrhythmic at times. The closing track is far and away our favorite. "Little Dancer, Age 14" is a creepfest! Dark and heavy aRes fuck, starting off with just twangy strung hgrfhtrt guitar stabs and funerary sounding organ carrying out the progression, the vocals murmuring in deep tones, lamenting some horrific train of thought. The song has an overwhelmingly elegiac feeling, drifting along like a Lynchian dream (nightmare?), fractured and abstracted. The piece ends beautifully, with tremolo picked wailing guitar melodies, outlining a more major sounding chord progression. A stark contrast from the rest of this minor sounding document. Killer!
This band recently moved to San Francisco from the nefarious beaches of Santa Cruz, and we are glad to have them. They are quickly becoming one of the most interesting and confounding local acts. While a little more raw then the debut full-length (reviewed on list #252) the dark intensity has been present from the beginning. This record is a bad trip, but in the best way! Like the type of nightmare you don't want to wake up from. Fractured and fucked up, noisy and scattered, and all together AMAZING! For fans of The Birthday Party, Public Image Ltd., Swans, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Lydia Lunch, and all jams damaged and demented. Recommended!

TRICLOPS! Cafeteria Brutalia (Sick Room) cd ep 11.98
A savage proggytrippypunkasfuck megablast in the form of Triclops!' Cafeteria Brutalia ep. This four song rager is the perfect blend of post-Jesus Lizardy mathy fucked up punk and spacey effects-riddled shreddyness. Hailing from right here in the bay area, Triclops! featuring John Geek From local punk heros The Fleshies on vocals, piece together a super interesting combination of weird rock elements. One moment angular and furious, while another blissy and tripped the hell out, and still at another just plain super rocking! The vocals are processed and effected, the guitar is furious and fierce, and the rythym section is just about as tight as can be, churrning out an ever-changing, multi-metric pummelfest of pure rock brutality. All the songs on this way too short document are great, to be sure, but the ONE for us is definetly the 10 plus minute epic, "Bug Bomb". Within this track, all the disparate elements that makes this band awesome perfectly coalesce. Super proggy acid-punk to begin with, breaking down into some suprisingly melodic pop, before getting heavy and crazy to round it out. Excellent! Triclops! are also one of the best local live acts we have here in SF, and they seem to play all the rad shows around these parts. In fact, most of us discovered them earlier this month at the killer Circle show at Bottom Of The Hill, which they opened. All in all, a really great ep! For anyone thats been missing that old 90's Touch and Go / Amrep sound, or people that just love proggy flipped out PUNK RAWK, this is definetly recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Bug Bomb"
RealAudio clip: "Salton"

TRICLOPS! Cafeteria Brutalia (Sick Room) picture disc 12" 14.98
A savage proggytrippypunkasfuck megablast in the form of Triclops!' Cafeteria Brutalia ep. This four song rager is the perfect blend of post-Jesus Lizardy mathy fucked up punk and spacey effects-riddled shreddyness. Hailing from right here in the bay area, Triclops! featuring John Geek From local punk heros The Fleshies on vocals, piece together a super interesting combination of weird rock elements. One moment angular and furious, while another blissy and tripped the hell out, and still at another just plain super rocking! The vocals are processed and effected, the guitar is furious and fierce, and the rythym section is just about as tight as can be, churrning out an ever-changing, multi-metric pummelfest of pure rock brutality. All the songs on this way too short document are great, to be sure, but the ONE for us is definetly the 10 plus minute epic, "Bug Bomb". Within this track, all the disparate elements that makes this band awesome perfectly coalesce. Super proggy acid-punk to begin with, breaking down into some suprisingly melodic pop, before getting heavy and crazy to round it out. Excellent! Triclops! are also one of the best local live acts we have here in SF, and they seem to play all the rad shows around these parts. In fact, most of us discovered them earlier this month at the killer Circle show at Bottom Of The Hill, which they opened. All in all, a really great ep! For anyone thats been missing that old 90's Touch and Go / Amrep sound, or people that just love proggy flipped out PUNK RAWK, this is definetly recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Bug Bomb"
RealAudio clip: "Salton"

CLOCKCLEANER Babylon Rules (Load) cd 13.98
Maybe the most aptly named band ever? Weird that when we first stumbled on Clockcleaner, it was in our search for more music from damaged drug addled caveman noisemakers the Violent Students, but it seems Clockcleaner is now the more viable band, with the VS sort of fading away, with only one proper record we know of. And where the sound of the Violent Students was more of a massive frontal lobe melting cacophony, Clockcleaner seemed to take that same aesthetic, and apply it to actual songs, the poppier Dr. Jeckyl to the Violent Students' Mr. Hyde...
And right off the bat, Clockcleaner up the ante with maybe their best song ever. A dense propulsive, grungy, filthy, swampy stomp, a malevolent, lascivious and lurching Swans slither, an ominous stumble and plod over Morricone Western twang, reverbed surf guitar, growled baritone vocals, sounding straight out of late eighties NY noise underground Copshootcop, the Swans, everything bathed in reverb, and swirling alien FX, bizarre little bits of melody... And the record sort of goes from there, adding damaged Jerry Lee Lewis piano pound, crumbling chest rattling bass, slippery drunken slide guitar, more super dramatic crooned vocals, still more reverb and effects, the whole thing a sort of hellish end of the world swing, plenty of groove, but gnarled and convoluted, dangerous and drunken, reminding us quite a bit of Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost even Nick Cave, a blackened noise flecked confusional cabaret. Awesome.
Killer tape-faced cover art too...
MPEG Stream: "New In Town"
MPEG Stream: "Vomiting Mirrors"

CLOCKCLEANER Babylon Rules (Load) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now in stock on vinyl!!
Maybe the most aptly named band ever? Weird that when we first stumbled on Clockcleaner, it was in our search for more music from damaged drug addled caveman noisemakers the Violent Students, but it seems Clockcleaner is now the more viable band, with the VS sort of fading away, with only one proper record we know of. And where the sound of the Violent Students was more of a massive frontal lobe melting cacophony, Clockcleaner seemed to take that same aesthetic, and apply it to actual songs, the poppier Dr. Jeckyl to the Violent Students' Mr. Hyde...
And right off the bat, Clockcleaner up the ante with maybe their best song ever. A dense propulsive, grungy, filthy, swampy stomp, a malevolent, lascivious and lurching Swans slither, an ominous stumble and plod over Morricone Western twang, reverbed surf guitar, growled baritone vocals, sounding straight out of late eighties NY noise underground Copshootcop, the Swans, everything bathed in reverb, and swirling alien FX, bizarre little bits of melody... And the record sort of goes from there, adding damaged Jerry Lee Lewis piano pound, crumbling chest rattling bass, slippery drunken slide guitar, more super dramatic crooned vocals, still more reverb and effects, the whole thing a sort of hellish end of the world swing, plenty of groove, but gnarled and convoluted, dangerous and drunken, reminding us quite a bit of Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost even Nick Cave, a blackened noise flecked confusional cabaret. Awesome.
Killer tape-faced cover art too...
MPEG Stream: "New In Town"
MPEG Stream: "Vomiting Mirrors"

STRIBORG Solitude (Displeased) cd 14.98
Black metal bands come in many varieties, and we have our favorites among everything from blackened thrash drunkards to grandiose symphonic keyboard-laden festival headliners to grim trance-y one-man-band eccentrics... particularly the latter, though, especially when we're trying to find black metal to recommend to AQ customers who aren't necessarily metalheads but who like weird weird music whatever the genre. Droning fucked up stuff that's almost more experimental than it is metal. And this (one-man) band Striborg is precisely what we like to have on hand when the subject of, "if I were to buy just one weird black metal record, what should it be?" comes up.
For the longest time, it was next to impossible to find cds by this still-obscure artist from far-off Tasmania (that's right, Tasmania!). Fortunately others besides us have recognized his peculiar genius and now the releases are (somewhat) more readily available. Which brings us to this brand new album, Solitude, and it to us, hot on the heels of Striborg's other recent full-length release, Ghostwoodlands. As with that album, here Striborg has uncapped his usual aerosol spray of buzzing guitars and wretched effected vokills. The fuzzed out, bleak black metal clatter is interspersed with long stretches of what approaches D.I.Y. 20th Century Classical electronic music spookiness! The ambient, isolationist tracks that cropped up on Ghostwoodlands are again to the fore, as is an even more droney, doomy, droomy mood. There are several exclusively "black metal" tracks (two of 'em quarter hour epics!), some of them powered by blazing drum machine beats, but even so the overall vibe of Solitude is so slooooow and doooooomy.
Drum machine? Don't worry, it sounds good, and at times, we think he really IS playing the drums. Striborg's less-than-tight timekeeping and fucked up fills have always been paradoxical highlights of his albums in our perverse estimation, but Solitude finds many ways to provide those idiosyncratic so-wrong-its-right pleasures. Tracks like "Ektoplasmic Dreams", "Doppelganger" and "The Untouched Land" are purely electronic-sounding, ominous abstract dronescapes, piercing with high-end synth-shards and soothing with somnolent textures. Elsewhere, his blurred guitars do the same, reminding us of dreamy gloom dronesters Angelic Process, a hushed guitar tone... not even a tone, more like a pure wave, a solid mass.
We mentioned that Striborg hails from pretty far south -- Tasmania. The rainforests of his island are not that distant from the icy wastes of Antarctica. But this album, Solitude, is the sound of Striborg's one-man, one-way journey even further south, falling right off the edge of this world...
MPEG Stream: "Ektoplasmic Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "The Grandeur of Melancholy"

STEEL MAMMOTH Atomic Mountain (Ektro) cd 14.98
You were warned. We reviewed this Circle side project's insane debut ep a couple weeks ago. Now, here's the full-length follow-up. The battletoads are back!
Not Sacred Steel, Steel Attack, Ritual Steel, or Steel Assassin. Not Wooly Mammoth. Or Mammatus. Or Mastodon. Or Pelican's "Pink Mammoth". Not Titan Steele, or Virgin Steele, or Steeler. It's STEEL MAMMOTH!! A metal band, presumably? Well, no, not quite. It IS another example of the many flirtations our favorite Finnish prog-psych band (Circle, including offshoots like Pharaoh Overlord and Krypt Axeripper) has always had with the elements of heavy metal (sonic, visual, lyrical). But the high-concept of "Circle does '80s metal" that you might expect from the band name and cover graphics and band pics with spikes and leather isn't quite what you actually get here, these guys being too clever and creative and crazy to do the obvious thing. Really, if you want to hear Circle-goes-metal, they come a lot closer on certain songs from Circle albums like Sunrise and Tulikora, and the recent, ever so slightly black metal bewitched Katapult. Not to mention, way back on their debut Meronia, with all its Helmet-style heaviness. And probably the most metal they've ever been is on Pharaoh Overlord #4.
So no, Steel Mammoth isn't a metal band, or even a joke metal band (though there's definitely some tongue in cheek joking going on). It's pure WTF? weirdness in the guise of a metal band. More catchy than crushing, it's a hitherto unheard hybrid of Circle's trademark hypnotic pulsations, a relaxed pop sensibility, tossed off hard rock riffing, moody tension, and sensitive vocals delivering ridiculous lyrics. Lyrics that are so ridiculous they're genius, lyrics that would make Monster Magnet or Manowar laugh and crumple up their notebook page if they'd written them. For instance, lines like: "barbarian lords/we ride alone/until we're just a pile of bones", or "lonely banzai rhino blackout leather/volcano hideout of the mountain owl/masterplan suicide war machine/lady death on the steering wheel", or "black diamond thunder dragon/beast of vampire torture/silver locusts on the desert sky/acid rain wasteland"! We also hear about a "multiheaded lion", "switchblade messiahs of hate", "midnight witches", a "metal infant", and the "powersweat of the demonwolf" to pick some other gems at random. Wow. Death and destruction and kicking ass seem to be the themes... yet there's some thought and depth to it all, extending to a self-constructed cosmology for these "nuclear barbarians" on their journey to the center of the "atomic mountain", that's depicted in a schematic in the cd booklet. We even detect a sincere sentimentality to some of this -- when album closer and title track "Atomic Mountain" finds the band sweetly crooning "Down, down, down I go" you FEEL it on some meaningful level, really.
As for the music, most of the songs share a skeletal Judas Priest vibe, stripped down and mellowed out and infused with effects. The opener, "Black Team", reminds us more of a handicapped Rolling Stones, fronted maybe by Danzig, but odder even than that would be. Several tracks later, "Nuclear Barbarians" is reprised from the ep, not really sure why they did that, though it is a cool song -- love how they pronounce nuclear, "nuck-leeyer". But it's followed by something completely different, the 11 and a half minute "Commando Leopard", an instrumental that starts off with primitive krauty rhythms before entering into a long beatless stretch of atmospheric, electronic spookiness. Like we said, WTF? Or should we say, NWOFWTF?
MPEG Stream: "Blackout Leather"
MPEG Stream: "Riders Of Death"
MPEG Stream: "Commando Leopard"

V/A Museum Of Future Sound Vol. 1 (Flogsta Danshall) cd 12.98
Yo droids! You wanna know what's been boomin' on Pluto lately? It's gotta be skweee. Y'know here at Aquarius we're always on the lookout for something new, the next big thing perhaps (though we're talking big 'round here, not necessarily elsewhere). Well we think we've found it! SKWEEE. Skweee? That's the self-proclaimed name for a new scene of electronic music in Scandinavia. It's basically Nordic b-boys doing DIY electro, and it's true, if they hadn't called it skweee but something less silly like, uh, "Scandi-funk" or "Vikinglectro", we might have not been as initially intrigued, though we did already have an interest in electro from Finland 'cause of that Sound Of Suomi comp we listed a while back. Something about "skweee" though just grabs us. You don't have to like bad puns to like skweee but it helps. Hey what are you doing this skweeekend? There's a skweee show Saturday skweeevening. Some of our favorite skweeejays will be spinning. Skweee you there!
We kind of randomly found out about it on the internet, listened in to some online samples on the "Nation of Skweee" webpage, and were hooked. Imagine a warped crossover between old school video game music and '90s hiphop instrumental tracks, that laidback Dr. Dre style funk as if hacked on a Commodore 64, programmed by Finnish and Norwegian kids trying to stave off the boredom and depression of long sunlight-deprived winters (as opposed to embracing it like their countryfolk into black metal would do). There's an obscure but active scene up in that part of the world skweeepin' it real with the support of a couple local labels, Harmonia and Flogsta Danshall, releasing the skweee on 7" and 12" singles. We did discover this one compact disc compilation that Flogsta Danshall put out, and figured we had to get it, it features a lot of the "stars" of skweee and obviously would be a good starting point for us, and any AQ customers who wanted to get turned on to skweee. And funnily enough, the guy from Flogsta Danshall had previously been to Aquarius on a trip to the USA, so he was himself excited that we wanted to stock some skweee in our shop!
Here's the artists: Mesak, Pavan, Rigas Den Andre, Beem, The Munchies, Randy Barracuda, Wizards of DOS, PJVM, Mangrove, Uday, Vakttornet, Daniel Savio, Maja Hedin, and Claws Costeau (great name!). Although each one's different, there's a definite "skweee ID" shared between 'em: elements like distorted squelching synthetic bass, computery bloops and bleeps, fractured funk beats, crazed dance logic, and what's either a playful sense of humor or just plain weirdness. Or both. Some tracks (say, Pavan) are a bit more uptight techno-rigid kraftwerkouts than others, which skweee like along with the looser, more fucked up cuts (like Randy Barracuda's which sounds like Inspector Gadget done Doug E. Fresh style or somethin').
The Museum Of Future Sound exhibits 14 trax, 54+ minutes of the finest in skweee, packaged in a thin, square, black plastic cd case, with simple, stark black & white cover graphics and a tracklisting on stickers affixed to the front and back. [2008 update: now it's in a cardboard sleeve, not plastic, a la vol. 2.] No further info is given about any of the contributors, unfortunately, so they stay mysterious... but they probably all have MySpace pages and would love to get visitors!
Next big thing? Could skweee. We'll skweee.
MPEG Stream: MESAK "Popkumm"
MPEG Stream: RANDY BARRACUDA "Rick James Is Dead"
MPEG Stream: CLAWS COSTEAU "The Franzzz Connection"

STEEL MAMMOTH Nuclear Barbarians (Ektro) cd 9.98
Ohh yeahhh. All the Krypt Axeripper fans here have been waiting for this. Circle fans too. Same thing, sorta. Krypt Axeripper, you know, that was the very entertaining, brilliantly stupid, supposed "heavy metal" side project of our Finnish friends Circle, enshrined on a four song ep earlier this year. After Krypt Axeripper could the NWOFHM get any more ridiculous?? You be the judge, they certainly tried: ta dah, STEEL MAMMOTH!! Seemingly a similar high concept (that being, Circle's metal obsession goes too far?) but actually more confusional than you'd think. Sure the cd booklet is filled with awesome D&Dish artwork and pisstake photos of the truly chuffed band members posing in full leather and studs regalia. But then, check out the music. As with Krypt Axeripper, there's a quota of crotch-rock riffs but it's also so oddly poppy, more like some sort of twisted rock n' roll alternative to the alternative than anything really made of molten metal. English-language lyrics (about Satan and radiation, "metal blade warriors" and "scorpion wizards", and suchlike metallic subjects, 'tis true) are weirdly crooned over shuffling beats and guitars that whilst fully fuzzed aren't exactly wielded by Hanneman/King. It's absurd, and absurdly catchy. When they sing something about how "battletoads explode in stereo" you'll be humming along (if not quite headbanging) and won't even bat an eye.
Looks like the Steel Mammoth trio of Garfield Steel, Rema 7000, and Juicyifer (hmm) and their pal Krypt (all pseudonyms for Circle folks) have invented a new cartoony subgenre all their own, jokingly initiated perhaps but inadvertently (?) awesome. Extra dimensional, post apocalyptic, astral travelling silliness that's part pop, part metal, and yes, part Circle ('specially on "Slow Death" with its unmistakable motorik drumming). This first attack from Steel Mammoth clocks in at 5 tracks, 18 minutes. But get this, future members of the Steel Mammoth Army: there's a Steel Mammoth full-length album in the works now, too! Look out, the battletoads have only begun to explode in stereo...
MPEG Stream: "Spirit Horse"
MPEG Stream: "Nuclear Barbarians"

ANGELS OF LIGHT We Are Him (Young God) cd 14.98
As harrowing and depressive yet magical and luminous as ever, Michael Gira returns with his fourth proper Angels Of Light record, We Are Him. Recorded with his buddies the Akron Family, the overall feeling of this record is hypnotic and repetitive... It's tough for us to write an objective review, we're basically really big Michael Gira fans and have dug most everything he's done. He always manages to get awesome musicians, and his records sound really great, always. That being said, We Are Him is definitely different from all his other releases, maybe a little more angular rhythmically speaking, a bit more prog, even jangly almost at times. One of our favorite elements of Gira's music is most definitely his lyrics. They have a kind of universal quality, dealing with more existential themes, and less of personal emotional type stuff, which is rare in the world of song-writing. Akron Family are amazing as well and their unique musical contributions have much to do with the unique sound of the record. Stark and a bit abstract, stripped down, but still lush, and of course haunting and beautiful. And just really fucking great. Another great album in a long line of great albums. If you liked the other Angels Of Light albums, you'll probably dig this one too. It's certainly a development, and there are lots of subtle differences, but it manages to maintain the eternal quality of all Gira's work. Yeah, it's really beautiful, there are awesome brass parts too, the lyrics rule, the textures are evocative, GREAT ALBUM! That's all we need to say.
MPEG Stream: "My Brother's Man"
MPEG Stream: "We Are Him"

FAUST So Far (Polydor / Universal) cd 17.98
One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice.
But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"
MPEG Stream: "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl"
MPEG Stream: "No Harm"

HARVEY MILK My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be (Relapse) cd 13.98
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. What an awesome title. And the record cover, a bull and a rooster and an ornate candle, the words Harvey Milk in tiny blue type over the rooster. On the cd, the text: "Harvey Milk is Cronos, Mantis, Abadon". Song titles like "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", "The Anvil Will Fall" and "Merlin Is Magic". By now most avid AQ customers are very familiar with the mysterious sludge rock power trio Harvey Milk, but when we first laid hands on this disc, back in 1994, we had no idea what to think. As if the artwork wasn't enough to have us scratching our heads, the music inside was even more willfully difficult. And still is. Obviously borne of some serious Melvins worship, Harvey Milk, took the already difficult sound of the Melvins to new heights, or depths, crafting lengthy sludge jams, packed with as much space as riffs, long expanses of spastic John Bonham like drumming, vocals a whiskey soaked gravelly bellow, guitars thick black sheets. This was without a doubt some of the strangest music we had ever heard. But at the same time, somehow the most beautiful. The sound of Harvey Milk was some impossible blend of noise rock, math rock, post rock, punk rock, twentieth century composition and METAL. All tangled into one huge gnarled black hole of sound. A sound that crawls more than it rocks, but when it does rock, it blows away pretty much any other band in the land.
Lots of you no doubt already own Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men, arguably one of the greatest records EVER, heavy, sludgy or otherwise. If you don't you need to stop reading for a second and go buy it right now. We'll wait...........
Okay, Courtesy was HM record number two, and found the band 'tightening' up their sound, taking the chaos of My Love, and crafting it into, well, more chaos. It's hard to say how they changed between these two records. My Love is a tiny bit faster. The best way to describe it is like this: My Love is to Courtesy, the way Nirvana's Bleach is to Nevermind, more immediate and raw, but with some of the best songs the band ever wrote, and like Bleach, it's a record that tons of fans continue to insist is the best thing they've ever done. And while we are of the mind that Courtesy is in fact the best Harvey Milk record ever (unless you ask Allan, who would probably say The Pleaser, the -other- HM reissue this week, a killer disc of Harvey Milked ZZ Top worship) returning to My Love has us maybe reconsidering. We can't actually decide. There are so many amazing songs on My Love that we had forgotten about, as good as anything on Courtesy. It would probably be more realistic to proclaim My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be / Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men as the ultimate math-sludge-slow-motion-dirge-doom-whatever one-two punch EVER. Maybe the greatest first and second record combo of all time. Needless to say, if you're at all into the current crop of slow motion doom mongers, and have somehow missed out on these records, you will lose your fucking mind (and odds are loads of you have never heard My Love as it's been out of print for ages). It's no exaggeration when we say every song on My Love is darn near perfect. But a few of our favorites:
"A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" was the absolute first peep we ever heard out of HM, and it's brutal and beautiful, so utterly confusing and unlike anything ever. A frustratingly obtuse abstract jam, even calling it a jam is stretching the definition of the word jam, there's LOTS of space, the track begins with a minute of weird electronic noodling, a huge wash of cymbals and guitar scrape, a killer BIG drum fill, and then... nothing... a weird barely there buzz, some cymbal dings, a moaning cello.... How amazing is that?!?!? It isn't until halfway through the song before the riff finally kicks in, and even then, it's like pulling teeth to get these guys to let loose and rock. In fact, it's not until the last two minutes that the band really go for it. And it was worth the wait, but before you know it comes "Women Dig it", slowing everything waaaaaaaaay back down. A super drawn out exercise in tension and release, with long stretches of just drums, big Zeppelin style drums, accompanied by mewled vocal, but which features one of the most awesome riffs EVER, so much so, that when it kicks in, it makes you want to rock the fuck out, which you could do if it wasn't just played once every couple minutes.... oh the glorious frustration!!! It's the sort of riff most bands would not only kill for, but that most bands would repeat over and over and over and base a whole song around, whereas the Milk kick out that riff maybe twenty times, in the whole song, and all clumped together, with the rest of the song spent plodding and drifting and doing anything but locking into a killer groove. But that's what makes Harvey Milk so great, when that riff DOES drop, it's a ridiculous release, like an orgasm, this unbelievable rock-out relief, but like with most things it's the wait, the build up, that is the best part. Or at least the 'other' best part.
Another classic Milk track is "The Anvil Will Fall", a moody drifting whispery ballad, peppered by huge bursts of downtuned pummel, when out of nowhere, in come the strings, some patriotic hymn, an almost recognizable tune that Creston sings along too in his warbly raspy croon, even kicking it up into a wicked falsetto, before petering back out into the original hushed crawl, eventually launching into a super moving moody goddamned ANTHEM. The sort of song that should have sludge fans teary eyed with hat in hand, and hand over heart. And finally...
"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", besides being the best song title maybe EVER, it's also one of the greatest songs ever, a really really fucking weird song, howled tortured vocals over a relentless tribal drum fill with occasional bursts of Zeppelin like riffage, before the guitar transforms into a static rumbling drone, and the drums just sort of do whatever the hell they want, for ever it feels like... and then the band launches back into it and it's some relentless bastardized groovy Southern sludge jam, but like all HM songs, they stop not long after to just sort of wander, and plod and wait, and pause, before doing it all over again....
We could go one and on, and get all mushy and fanboy about every single song on My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be, but you get the drift. This record is magical. Majestic. Freaked out. Furious. Heavy as anything you've ever heard. Strangely pretty. Mind meltingly difficult. Crushing. Confusing. Baffling. Brutal. And pretty much one of our favorite records ever...
MPEG Stream: "A Small Turn Of Human Kindness"
MPEG Stream: "Women Dig It"
MPEG Stream: "The Anvil Will Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I"

HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (Relapse) cd 13.98
It's official Harvey Milk week here at AQ. Like another '90s epitome of heaviness, Earth, they're a band underappreciated the first time 'round, now a long last deservedly revered -and- better yet, back among us!!
Andee's already gone over a bit of the backstory of this amazing band in his review of their -other- Record Of The Week this week, the reissue of My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. That one HAD to be a Record Of The Week, heck it's one of Andee's all time favorites, a Harvey Milk album almost he loves nearly as much as the one that got a release on his own tUMULt label, Courtesy And Goodwill Towards Men. Now, along with reissuing their crucial debut, Relapse has also simultaneously reissued what (until recently, with the release of another AQ ROTW, Harvey Milk's reunion album Special Wishes) was HM's swansong, their 1997 album The Pleaser. And since The Pleaser happens to be Allan's very favorite Harvey Milk, it too had to be a ROTW, just to be fair (the idea being, get 'em both... but we'll go on with this review just a bit more).
This one has always stuck out as, uh, different, in the brief but utterly ruling Harvey Milk discography. Mindblowingly different. On The Pleaser, these dirgey, heavier-than-thou arty post-rockers decided to really rock out with their cocks out, to put it crudely. It's the surprise Harvey Milk for headbangers, a beer-foaming behemoth of explosive rock n' roll riffola! No more holding back for 20 minutes at a time, they'd had it with that. From song one, riff one, this is pure RAWK, inspired by Motorhead, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top. (Again, a bit of a parallel with Earth, whose last '90s album Pentastar also featured badass, muscle car, classic rock motifs.) And that would be enough for us to love it. Yet, 'cause it's Harvey Milk, there's more to it than that. They do the rawk thing with Harvey Milk style -- even though it's unusually uptempo for them, their weird avant-artistry is still at play. Song structures aren't so straightforward as they seem, that throaty Harvey Milk howl is still there, and strange chord progressions abound... and of course it's way HEAVIER than the hesher beloved bands that inspired it. And possessed of unexpected flashes of beauty, also in the Harvey Milk tradition.
Listening to this, you can imagine what the kind of band playing this music would look like: long hair, beards, jean jackets, maybe a backwards baseball cap or two, the bassist perhaps wielding an axe that's shaped like a Jack Daniel's bottle. Sweaty and hairy and throwing the devil horns, leering at the girls. But... that they're actually more like nerdy indie rock dudes (a la The Champs) might cause some confusion and/or consternation. And admittedly the very last track, "Rock And Roll Party Tonight" reveals some indie irony at work, tongues planted in cheek. But try to find the humor in the likes of "Shame" and "Misery". Or the slow, bluesy, balladic "Lay My Head Down". No, this is as serious as they ever were, just expressed in a far rock-ier mode.
They slow down to the turgid doomy pace of My Love Is Higher and Courtesy And Goodwill only occasionally ("Red As The Day Is Long" being one such example), instead preferring a more energetic attack, packed with shred guitar solos, catchy hooks, and hoarse but melodic vocals. Shorthand summation: it's kinda like the Melvins meets Tad meets Thee Speaking Canaries (the Van Halen influenced indie mathrockers), playing a wild kegger for a drunken crowd of revelers, the smarter few of whom realize they're witnessing something really amazing and weird and subversive of the party vibe, but ALL of them having a great time. It can't be denied, this is the Harvey Milk we put on when it's Miller Time, Allan definitely finding himself giving this more spins-per-decade than a lot of their other, equally awesome but much more spacious and difficult-to-grok output.
And wait, that's not all! There's more: this reissue comes with a bonus disc of the previously cd-r only live-on-the-radio set Live Pleaser, value added for fans picking this up for the first -or- second time. It's got kickass versions of all the tracks from The Pleaser -- plus a cover of "Deuce" by KISS, that fits in with songs from The Pleaser just perfectly like they wrote it themselves!
MPEG Stream: "Down"
MPEG Stream: "Get It Up & Get It On"
MPEG Stream: "Lay My Head Down"
MPEG Stream: "Shame (Live)"

HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (Chunklet) 2lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Available for the first time on vinyl! Thanks to the kind folks at Chunklet, Harvey Milk's The Pleaser is now available on lp, with a second lp featuring Live Pleaser, an out of print cd-r that was available as a companion disc with the Relapse reissue, also never before available on vinyl. Super thick, fancy pants gatefold sleeve, the gatefold a classic rock and roll collage of band photos, snapshots and live pix, inside a full color insert with lyrics, and the lps are pressed on colored vinyl, one red, one blue, housed in nice black inner sleeves. And since you knew this was coming, VERY VERY VERY LIMITED!!!! Here's what we had to say about the record itself:
The Pleaser has always stuck out as, uh, different, in the brief but utterly ruling Harvey Milk discography. Mindblowingly different. On The Pleaser, these dirgey, heavier-than-thou arty post-rockers decided to really rock out with their cocks out, to put it crudely. It's the surprise Harvey Milk for headbangers, a beer-foaming behemoth of explosive rock n' roll riffola! No more holding back for 20 minutes at a time, they'd had it with that. From song one, riff one, this is pure RAWK, inspired by Motorhead, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top. (Again, a bit of a parallel with Earth, whose last '90s album Pentastar also featured badass, muscle car, classic rock motifs.) And that would be enough for us to love it. Yet, 'cause it's Harvey Milk, there's more to it than that. They do the rawk thing with Harvey Milk style -- even though it's unusually uptempo for them, their weird avant-artistry is still at play. Song structures aren't so straightforward as they seem, that throaty Harvey Milk howl is still there, and strange chord progressions abound... and of course it's way HEAVIER than the hesher beloved bands that inspired it. And possessed of unexpected flashes of beauty, also in the Harvey Milk tradition.
Listening to this, you can imagine what the kind of band playing this music would look like: long hair, beards, jean jackets, maybe a backwards baseball cap or two, the bassist perhaps wielding an axe that's shaped like a Jack Daniel's bottle. Sweaty and hairy and throwing the devil horns, leering at the girls. But... that they're actually more like nerdy indie rock dudes (a la The Champs) might cause some confusion and/or consternation. And admittedly the very last track, "Rock And Roll Party Tonight" reveals some indie irony at work, tongues planted in cheek. But try to find the humor in the likes of "Shame" and "Misery". Or the slow, bluesy, balladic "Lay My Head Down". No, this is as serious as they ever were, just expressed in a far rock-ier mode.
They slow down to the turgid doomy pace of My Love Is Higher and Courtesy And Goodwill only occasionally ("Red As The Day Is Long" being one such example), instead preferring a more energetic attack, packed with shred guitar solos, catchy hooks, and hoarse but melodic vocals. Shorthand summation: it's kinda like the Melvins meets Tad meets Thee Speaking Canaries (the Van Halen influenced indie mathrockers), playing a wild kegger for a drunken crowd of revelers, the smarter few of whom realize they're witnessing something really amazing and weird and subversive of the party vibe, but ALL of them having a great time. It can't be denied, this is the Harvey Milk we put on when it's Miller Time, Allan definitely finding himself giving this more spins-per-decade than a lot of their other, equally awesome but much more spacious and difficult-to-grok output.
And wait, that's not all! There's more: this vinyl reissue (like the cd reissue before it) comes with a bonus lp of the previously cd-r only live-on-the-radio set Live Pleaser, value added for fans picking this up for the first, second -or- third time. It's got kickass versions of all the tracks from The Pleaser -- plus a cover of "Deuce" by KISS, that fits in with songs from The Pleaser just perfectly like they wrote it themselves!
MPEG Stream: "Down"
MPEG Stream: "Get It Up & Get It On"
MPEG Stream: "Lay My Head Down"
MPEG Stream: "Shame (Live)"

CIRCLE Panic (Ektro) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ah, Circle. We love 'em. You love 'em (or, if this is the first you've heard of them, then please do an artist=circle search on our website for plenty o' info). And we've all come to expect the unexpected from these freaky Finns, yet also always expect the "Circle" sound: rhythmic, krautrocky, "circular". And they always deliver. Yet we'd have to say, with this new record Panic they've also managed to come up with the Circle album that we doubt -anyone- would quite have predicted, nosiree.
Spoiler warning! Since we know that the legions of Circle fans reading this pretty much don't need us to tell 'em that they want this or any new Circle cd and will be all over this like stink on a pig regardless, we should mention that this review contains something in way of a "spoiler" about the album's contents and if you're already planning on buying this you might want to read no further. Not that the surprise is, y'know, like The Crying Game or anything. So read on if you want.
Looking at this, you might be wondering, what do the apocalyptic, crusty-punk looking black-and-white graphics mean? And why'd they call it Panic? And what's with the sticker on the front, proclaiming Circle to be "Finland speed-kraut pioneers" and telling us that they consist of ex-members of Sorto Ja Riiso, Saaste, Nyrkinen Kehitys, Spiders, and Suomen Ruutivarasto? Are those even real bands? Ultimately, you're wondering, what's this gonna sound like??
So, let's put it on... it starts off with "Black Tape", reminiscent of their recent lovely Miljard set: minimal piano plinking amidst spacey organic washes of synth, sort of Circle in an ambient Aphex Twin / Terry Riley mood. As that track flows into the next, and the next, the tone becomes more urgent, ominous, and busier... And then, without warning (well, unless you've read this) track number four ("Neverending Dinner") blasts from the speakers, a loud n' raging PUNK rock shock to the system, 38 seconds long. Seriously retro '80s styled hardcore punk, boots and spikes and all that, with vocals angrily shouting subversive political diatribes, the music uber-distorted and as catchy as a veneral disease. Wow. That's what we mean by a surprise! Thus begins this mayhemic middle portion of the album, six tracks, averaging not much more than a minute in length each, is Circle's teenage punk rock rebellion reborn and moshing hard. But since it's Circle's version of punk, so you can still hear the sci-fi prog rock keyboards layered in there, twittering and swooshing amidst the purely punk noise. Weird weird weird. Then, like a summer thunderstorm, all that's over with... and we're back to the vast, instrumental reaches of deep, dark space, the disc coming to a conclusion with its two longest tracks, the 12 minute "Tunnel" and the 14 minute "And Far Away", both even dronier and spacier than the synthscapes that began the album. Wow again.
If you think about it, those two extremes -- spacey prog and quasi-metallic rockin' -- are both integral parts of the hard-to-define Circle sound. So it's as if on Panic, they've taken the "usual" Circle thing and pulled it apart, like taffy. The opposite ends of the album are stretched out into a bleak and beautiful drone-zone, while the heaviest densest craziest stuff settles into the middle.
Some might criticize Circle for what might appear to an indulgence in high-concept joking around... post-modern appropriation... punk playacting... taking the piss... whatever. But what we think is that they're all the more amazing for it, for deciding to do a "punk" record yet keeping it Circle. After all, if you're gonna make as many albums as these guys have AND always have to make sure you stay true to the very distinctive sound they're established (the "circular", repetitive thing), you've gotta be creative, which they are. So their solution here is to sandwich their warped '80s punk pastiche between something completely different -- cosmic electronics like '70s Schulze or maybe a John Carpenter soundtrack. The jarring juxtaposition is brilliant and maybe even meaningful, somehow tying in with the nuclear nightmares depicted on the album graphics. And there are many clever details in the graphics dep't by the way, from the collaged riot pics to the fonts used to the barbed wire borders and the Ektro flag-logo... tight. In fact, we might wonder which came first, the graphic notions or the music...!?
By the way, while we've got your attention, may as well let you know to look forward to another new Circle album coming out on No Quarter in September. Haven't heard it yet, but Jussi from Circle tells us it sounds like "60's black metal"... whatever that means! No doubt more surprises in store.
MPEG Stream: "State Powder"
MPEG Stream: "U.M.F.G. Horsemen"
MPEG Stream: "And Far Away"

CANTILO, MIGUEL Y GRUPO Sur (Viaiero Inmovil Records) cd 15.98
While there ARE lots of amazing reissues of all sorts of old records -- psychedelic, rock, folk, jazz, reggae, metal, etc. -- coming out all the time (and hopefully you've read about a bunch of 'em here, we do our best to keep up), it's also become evident to us that the vast majority of reissued obscurities were, well, obscure for a reason, and it's hard to understand WHY someone would choose to reissue 'em. But then there's reissues like this one, that make us wonder, why hadn't we ever heard of this band before? Why weren't they HUGE? Well maybe Miguel Cantilo Y Grupo were famous in their native Argentina, they should have been, we certainly can't imagine that there were all that many bands of this quality releasing records in that country back then (this dates from 1975). At any rate, we're pretty excited to learn about 'em now thanks to this reissue. An eclectic psychedelic progressive rock album, with songs ranging from acoustic mellow melodicism to heavy hard rockin' bombast, this is something that we'd rank with a few other '70s reissues that have become big favorites 'round here -- if you loved the Eduardo Bort from Spain, or the more-recently reviewed Tarkus from Peru, you'll want this too for sure! It's got strong songs, a charming heavy-duty hippy vibe (check out the cover art), exotic appeal (all songs sung in Spanish, very emotively), and is definitely Classic Rock worthy (reminding us of Led Zep, Budgie, and even Aerosmith at their most mystical, magical a la "Kings and Queens"). Miguel's vocals are a bit Bolan-esque as well. But what puts it over the top for us is the killer blend of exquisite prettiness and sudden, frantic rock n' roll action, a lot looser and rawer than some other progressives of the era. Very dynamic and surprising. It's weird in all the right places. It's always neat to discover cool stuff like this out of the blue, proving that there definitely are unknown reissues worth taking a chance on... Nicely packaged in a slim colorful cardboard digipacky thing, with the cd itself in a sleeve with the lyrics printed on it.
MPEG Stream: "Algo Esta Por Suceder"
MPEG Stream: "Naturangel"

BLUES CONTROL s/t (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Don't let the punny name fool ya, this surely isn't "blues rock". Nor blues. Nor rock. Not really. Nor is it of Yugoslav origin, despite the biographical misinformation posted on the Holy Mountain website that claims Blues Control to be an obscure '70s psych band from Yugoslavia. Nope, Blues Control are an instrumental Brooklyn duo on guitar and synths and drums, making a wonderfully fucked up yet pleasantly listenable psych-squabble of a sound that's not super easy to describe, actually... let's just say that if it were blues rock, it'd be druggily confused, utterly EXPERIMENTAL blues rock. The eight tracks found on this eponymous debut wander through mellow, spacey passages, interludes of seasick synth symphonics, and blown-out epic episodes full of fuzzed-up motorpsycho guitar leads, drunken and damaged sounding. Blues Control's two-man trash team are up to something strange here, counter-intuitive creativity that can make a cool track out of some pretty piano dropped into a droney wash, followed up by a broken-amp bass solo and some off-kilter beats, ferinstance. This totally fits in on the out-there Holy Mountain label alongside the likes of Residual Echoes and Aufgehoben, especially considering how fractured and distorted they can get, almost like a fuzzed-out Starfuckers on the very first track. We're digging this a lot.
MPEG Stream: "Blues Control"
MPEG Stream: "Boiled Peanuts"
MPEG Stream: "No Sweat"

V/A Rumble In The Jungle (Soul Jazz) cd 21.00
When we first got wind of this comp, for some reason, we just assumed it was gonna be another amazing Soul Jazz reggae comp, it didn't even occur to us that it would be a collection of killer classic jungle jams from the early nineties. But we threw it on, and were just knocked on our asses, transported back to '93/'94 when we first discovered jungle, particularly, ragga-dancehall-jungle or whatever you wanted to call it, a killer blend of traditional Jamaican dancehall, and this new breed of sped up hip hop that had grown out of the rave scene in the UK.
The history and genealogy is complex, but there's been plenty written about it, the liner notes here are particularly informative, tracing the development of ragga-jungle from the early Reggae sound systems, through the rave scene, UK hardcore hip hop, and beyond. Ragga jungle was a flash in the pan, existing for 3 or 4 years before most of the folks making it moved on to two-step, garage, drum and bass and on an on. But for our money, this was it. This was THE music we had been waiting for. We have loved dancehall forever, the harder and faster the better, so here was the toasting and melody of dancehall, draped over chopped up stuttering and pounding hip hop beats, all sped up into a rhythmic frenzy.
If there's one track that sums it up for us, it's DJ Zinc's "Super Sharp Shooter", with its interminable vocal and squelchy synth intro, the loping creeping reggae groove, the buzzing melody, the simple shuffling drum beat, the slowed down Method Man sample, and that's all before the track actually even drops, and when it does... Whoooowheee. We remember hearing this for the first time in one of the few clubs in SF that played jungle back in the day, and it nearly knocked us out of our seats. We ended up buying a DJ mix tape from one of the DJs spinning, and thankfully it had "Super Sharp Shooter" on it, and from that point on, we listened to it over and over every day, in the car, cranked as loud as it would go, bass pumping (as much as the bass could be said to pump in a crappy old van). So fucking heavy and hooky and funky. When the track finally kicks in, it's massive, relentless serpentine pass line, ultra complex drums, funky and groovy but so tangled and dense, every once in a while the bass line locks on a single not and just hooooooooolds steady until it drops, hard, and we're off on another junglistic jam. As far as we're concerned this would be worth it just for this track, but thankfully, the rest of the disc is just as kick ass.
Lots of familiar reggae and dancehall names, Ninjaman, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Cutty Ranks, and for those in the know, the rest of the names read like an early nineties jungle all star lineup: Ragga Twins, Poison Chang, Ragga Twins, DJ Zinc, Shy FX... but even if you don't know any of these names, the music speaks for itself. Check out "Original Nuttah" by UK Apachi & Shy FX, beginning with some super hooky sing songy reggae vocals before the track launches into a maddeningly dense rapid fire snare workout underpinning a raw and tongue twisting flow. Furious and intense and so goddamn good. Then there's tracks like Ragga Twins' "Illegal Gunshot", with its playful and circusy melodic loop, but juxtaposed with some seriously aggro toasting, some Bomb Squad like production, and some outrageously funky drumming.
Pretty much every track on here is a killer, never has a record so much made even us non-dancers want to head for the dancefloor and go fucking nuts. The cool thing about this stuff, is even if you're dancefloor phobic, is that these tracks are so dense and multi layered, full of convoluted rhythms and mad drumming and rapid fire rhymes and wild toasting and strange melodies and killer grooves, that they're almost as fun to listen to as they are to dance to. Almost.
Like all Soul Jazz stuff, gorgeously packaged and extensively researched. Tons of liner notes, track notes, photos, all wrapped up in a full color slipcase.
MPEG Stream: DJ ZINC "Super Sharp Shooter"
MPEG Stream: RAGGA TWINS "Illegal Gunshot"
MPEG Stream: ASHER SENATOR "One Bible"
MPEG Stream: POISON CHANG "Press The Trigger"

V/A Rumble In The Jungle (Soul Jazz) 2lp 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When we first got wind of this comp, for some reason, we just assumed it was gonna be another amazing Soul Jazz reggae comp, it didn't even occur to us that it would be a collection of killer classic jungle jams from the early nineties. But we threw it on, and were just knocked on our asses, transported back to '93/'94 when we first discovered jungle, particularly, ragga-dancehall-jungle or whatever you wanted to call it, a killer blend of traditional Jamaican dancehall, and this new breed of sped up hip hop that had grown out of the rave scene in the UK.
The history and genealogy is complex, but there's been plenty written about it, the liner notes here are particularly informative, tracing the development of ragga-jungle from the early Reggae sound systems, through the rave scene, UK hardcore hip hop, and beyond. Ragga jungle was a flash in the pan, existing for 3 or 4 years before most of the folks making it moved on to two-step, garage, drum and bass and on an on. But for our money, this was it. This was THE music we had been waiting for. We have loved dancehall forever, the harder and faster the better, so here was the toasting and melody of dancehall, draped over chopped up stuttering and pounding hip hop beats, all sped up into a rhythmic frenzy.
If there's one track that sums it up for us, it's DJ Zinc's "Super Sharp Shooter", with its interminable vocal and squelchy synth intro, the loping creeping reggae groove, the buzzing melody, the simple shuffling drum beat, the slowed down Method Man sample, and that's all before the track actually even drops, and when it does... Whoooowheee. We remember hearing this for the first time in one of the few clubs in SF that played jungle back in the day, and it nearly knocked us out of our seats. We ended up buying a DJ mix tape from one of the DJs spinning, and thankfully it had "Super Sharp Shooter" on it, and from that point on, we listened to it over and over every day, in the car, cranked as loud as it would go, bass pumping (as much as the bass could be said to pump in a crappy old van). So fucking heavy and hooky and funky. When the track finally kicks in, it's massive, relentless serpentine pass line, ultra complex drums, funky and groovy but so tangled and dense, every once in a while the bass line locks on a single not and just hooooooooolds steady until it drops, hard, and we're off on another junglistic jam. As far as we're concerned this would be worth it just for this track, but thankfully, the rest of the disc is just as kick ass.
Lots of familiar reggae and dancehall names, Ninjaman, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Cutty Ranks, and for those in the know, the rest of the names read like an early nineties jungle all star lineup: Ragga Twins, Poison Chang, Ragga Twins, DJ Zinc, Shy FX... but even if you don't know any of these names, the music speaks for itself. Check out "Original Nuttah" by UK Apachi & Shy FX, beginning with some super hooky sing songy reggae vocals before the track launches into a maddeningly dense rapid fire snare workout underpinning a raw and tongue twisting flow. Furious and intense and so goddamn good. Then there's tracks like Ragga Twins' "Illegal Gunshot", with its playful and circusy melodic loop, but juxtaposed with some seriously aggro toasting, some Bomb Squad like production, and some outrageously funky drumming.
Pretty much every track on here is a killer, never has a record so much made even us non-dancers want to head for the dancefloor and go fucking nuts. The cool thing about this stuff, is even if you're dancefloor phobic, is that these tracks are so dense and multi layered, full of convoluted rhythms and mad drumming and rapid fire rhymes and wild toasting and strange melodies and killer grooves, that they're almost as fun to listen to as they are to dance to. Almost.
Like all Soul Jazz stuff, gorgeously packaged and extensively researched. Tons of liner notes, track notes, photos...
MPEG Stream: DJ ZINC "Super Sharp Shooter"
MPEG Stream: RAGGA TWINS "Illegal Gunshot"
MPEG Stream: ASHER SENATOR "One Bible"
MPEG Stream: POISON CHANG "Press The Trigger"

JODOROWSKY, ALEJANDRO The Films Of Alejandro Jodorowsky: Fando Y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain (Anchor Bay) 4dvd/2cd 49.00
Visionary cult cinephiles get ready to drool! If you were as excited as we were about the recent reissue of Kenneth Anger's early films, then this incredibly packaged and affordable 4dvd+2cd box set of the early films of Chilean theatrical genius Alejandro Jodorowsky will surely make your head explode!!! Fando Y Lis! El Topo!!, HOLY MOUNTAIN!!!! Marvelously restored and beautifully remastered, there is so much amazing material here that has either never been available before, or only available previously as extremely hard to find poor quality transfers from mediocre prints.
AND there's more! This set also includes the absolutely killer SOUNDTRACKS to both El Topo and yes, Holy Mountain!!! The Holy Mountain Soundtrack has never been released before and it so totally kills, and why wouldn't it, Don Cherry is all over it! But more about that in a minute, there's also bonus features, interviews, deleted scenes, audio commentary, a documentary and a short film from 1957 that was presumed lost until it was found early last year.
So for those who may be unfamiliar with Jodorowsky's films, a bit of back story:
Born in Chile and struggling to become an actor, Jodorowsky became fed up with the idea of scripted theatre and moved to Paris to study mime. Working with the great mime, Marcel Marceau while at the same time influenced by the Surrealists, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, Jean Cocteau's mythical fantasias, and the European Art House cinema of Fellini and Bunuel, Jodorowsky relocated to Mexico to form the theatre troupe, The Panic Movement, which would stage early happenings (involving lots of nudity and rotting food) and existentialist plays by Ionesco, Beckett and Fernando Arrabel. It was Arrabel's play, "Fando Y Lis" that would inspire him to move away from the theatre into cinema, but far from any structured or direct form of filmmaking. Jodorowsky wanted to re-interpret Arrabel's play by filming it completely from memory and in a remote and ruggedly extreme locale. Here he would bring together all the soul-baring psyche of experimental theatre, the role-playing excess of costumes, props and pageantry, the ritualistic entanglements of violence and beauty as catalysts of transformation, and most importantly the notion of existence as a journey through all kinds of personal and mystical revelations both sacred and profane. All of these qualities permeate each of the three films here.
Ok, you get the idea. So let's just break it down for you, what you get from this awesome box set:
--Fando Y Lis (1968): Jodorowsky's first full length black and white feature started riots at its premiere at the Acapulco Film Festival and was banned in Mexico due to its violent sexual imagery and ritualistic mocking of church beliefs. Based on Arrabel's play about a pair of dysfunctional lovers (one impotent, the other paralyzed) in a Fellini-esque quest for the spiritual city of Tar.
Extras on this disc include the 1994 French documentary, La Constellation which features interviews with Marcel Marceau, Peter Gabriel (who was inspired by El Topo, when he wrote The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway), and the French sci-fi illustrator, Moebius, who began working with Jodorowsky on the failed attempt to film Frank Herbert's Dune, which sparked Jodorowsky's interest in graphic novels.
--El Topo (1970): The bloody surreal western that spawned the Midnight Movie. Funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, this film is like a Sergio Leone film on a serious dose of brown acid.
Extras include an interview with Jodorowsky about the Midnight Movie phenomenon.
--Holy Mountain (1973): The ultimate spiritual quest film. Jodorowsky takes us through every imaginable belief system only to completely shatter our preconceptions about spiritual enlightenment.
Extras include deleted scenes and commentary about Jodorowsky's continuing interest in the Tarot.
--La Cravate (1957): A 35 minute silent film in color based on Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads about a girl who sells heads and the men who are her customers. This film was presumed lost until its discovery last year in someone's attic in Germany!
--El Topo Soundtrack: 18 tracks composed by Jodorowsky and John Barham inspired by both the soundtrack work of Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota. Full of flutes and droning horns, accordions and organs and twisted Mariachi styles.
--Holy Mountain Soundtrack: 24 tracks composed by Jodorowsky, Don Cherry and Ronald Frangipane. Ranging from spiritual free drones to acid rock to Moroccan desert jams to pensive marches to soft jazz and everywhere in between. There are even themes for each of the nine planetary characters. Such a wild, weird, and wonderful soundtrack and it alone is worth the price of admission.
Phew! So can you guess, that this is totally and absolutely recommended!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "La Catedral De Los Puercos (The Pigs Monastery)"
MPEG Stream: "Vals Fantasma"
MPEG Stream: "Las Flores Nacen En El Barro (Flowers Born In the Mud)"
MPEG Stream: "Trance Mutation"
MPEG Stream: "Psychedelic Weapons"
MPEG Stream: "Baby Snakes"

MAMMATUS The Coast Explodes (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Sometimes music is more than just pure sound, or the exposing of deep personal secrets and emotions, or even an homage to one's inspirations. Sometimes it's meant to tell a story... a vessel for a message. Then again sometimes music can combine all of those facets, AND MORE! Such is the case with Mammatus' sophomore effort, The Coast Explodes. On a purely sonic level, this record is absolutely amazing (we'll get there), but it's amazing on a conceptual level as well.
This record is the second installment of Mammatus' gradually unfolding tale of the battle between Light and Darkness. Goodly Light vs. the Evil of Man. Communion with Nature and the casting out of the corrosive agents of Man's doooom. The inhalation of divinity's smoke/breath... exhaling peace from every pore of the translucent flesh. Harnessing the power of Nature in your throat and fingers... swinging the sword to the heart of darkness. Bludgeon the dragon's foul heart! Mammatus is here to bare the Blade of Truth against nature's corrupters, and to ROCK against the cowardly haters of peace! Ahem, their "blade" is of course music, so lets talk about that for a sec.
This epic journey continues right where their self-titled debut left off. The first track "Dragon of the Deep part 3 (Excellent Swordfight)" is a continuation of the Dragon saga (the first album ending with "Dragon of the Deep" parts 1 and 2), and right off the bat you can hear the development. Holy shit! PROG!!!!! Where the last record was more of a trippy blend of hypno-kraut Can-ishness with the slaying heavitude of stoner lordz Sleep, this record somehow maintains that comparison and adds an incredible dose of YES! and YES!!! it rules! So the album starts with a creeping guitar drone, almost as if directly continued from part 2, before bursting in with a driving and hypnotic groove, a la Circle or the above mentioned Can, with little time change shreds at the end of each phrase (kinda proggy) and then suddenly the tempo breaks and we hear a killer stoptime, full-band SHRED! bringing us into another mesmeric groove with beautiful guitar leads soaring perfectly over the everchanging trance. The track builds and builds, ever climbing. Just when you think it can't get more ripping, another amazing riff is unearthed, the band playing so tightly we suspect they might share one cosmically unified mind. In tune with the alignment of the planets and such. All of this is building to something, you can feel it, when suddenly the song crescendos into a freeform cacophonous skronk! Cowbells, drums, and about 500 simultaneous guitar solos! FREAKOUT!
What emerges from this undulating swell is just about all a worshipper of heavy could hope for, an earth shaking riff with the first vocals of the record. Singer Nicky Emmert enters with his first cry to battle, calling us to raise the sword! The vocals are as trippy as ever, beautiful, as if sung from the back of a deep cave. This brutally sick aural climax ends almost as soon as it begins only to plunge axe first into the second track, "Pierce the Darkness", Starting with a gong crash and woodflute solo (!) then charging directly into another trance like groove. The vocals this time start right away, floating and glistening over the motorik pulse, again seemingly a call to arms. The track eventually develops into a blasting free time psychedelic guitar jam which then decompresses into some serious blissy drone.
And what happens next is one of the highlights of the record. The sound of synthesizers enter the drone and build up to a spine tingling harmonized guitar/Moog solo! You know the euphoric feeling you get when listening to shimmery synth part in Yes's "Close to the Edge", and the triumph in the pit of your stomach when Wakeman's church organ finally enters ("I get up, I get down")? A similar energy is in operation here. After this shining moment the song takes another turn towards the HEAVY and some kick ass riffage again fills the speakers. After a bit of strange synth tweakage, the mood of the album changes. Track 3, "The Changing Wind" is an all out drum circle folk jam! Acoustic guitars, propulsive hand drum rhythms, and another lilting melody from Nicky, praising mother nature and her unknowable ways. Hypnotic and blissful for sure. Suddenly the sounds of waves crashing and sea lions barking brings us seamlessly into the final movement, and title track, "The Coast Explodes". Starting with one of the catchiest "stoner" riffs we've heard for a long time. In fact this riff gets stuck in our heads for days at a time. So groovey and catchy, it makes the trees dance. Ahem. This song is a slow builder, rising subtly, and then dipping once more till it finally becomes an almost whisper. The vocals again invoking mother earth, sung in a beautiful falsetto. After this quiet respite the amps again get cranked to 11 and we are blessed with another monolithic slab of heaviness! So satisfying and perfect, it almost makes ya weep. At the end of this journey the chanting of some mythic and mysterious wizard is heard, as if belted out from the peak of a snow covered mountain, beckoning to the children of nature to rise up and join the crusade! The song then gently winds down and the whooshing sounds of the ocean again take over the mix, leaving the listener in a state of utter peace. SHIT! This album really takes you on some sort of transcendental adventure... We got lost there for a minute.
At the most basic level, Mammatus make some of the most inventive and inspired heavy music of our day. Combining diverse inspirations and molding them into something that comes across as totally genuine and pure, and of course TOTALLY RULING! Crushing and mesmerizing and beautiful all at the same time. The story behind the music makes the album all the more powerful. The listening experience of this record is akin to reading a super epic novel, one where the payoffs happen in all the right places. So duh, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!! For fans of Sleep, Yes, UFOmammut, Can, Circle, King Crimson, and all things heavy and trippy and shredding and rocking and ruling! And by the by, if you have not yet, catch them live for one of the best live shows ever! On tour now with Acid Mothers Temple in the USA!
MPEG Stream: "Dragon Of The Deep Part Three (Excellent Sword Fight)"
MPEG Stream: "The Coast Explodes"

RAKHIM Crimson Umbrella (20 Buck Spin) cd 12.98
Disturbing, verrrrry disturbing.
You might expect that something from Circle and Pharoah Overlord members going under the names Krypt (Jussi) and Rudimentor (Janne) might be sorta metallic (especially after that Krypt Axeripper ep reviewed last list). This silver-on-black screenprinted package certainly looks dark and evil: the illegible logo, the band photo (long hair, spiked armbands), the song titles -- there's just two of them, "Transylvanian Error" (17:45) and "Ultimate Sword" (16.34). And the album title is a nod to Jussi's favorite '80s "metal" act, Jesters Of Destiny.
But we also know to expect the unexpected from our Finnish friends. So while this IS dark and evil, there's not a metal riff in sight. Rather, this duo utilize percussion, voice and effects to create a psychologically sick, rhythmically fucked drone-zone. The two long tracks are black, bottomless abysses both, caverns echoing with monstrous processed vokills and clattering pipe-fights, awash in a dense, drifting electronic miasma.
The label press info references Z'ev (the percussion), Faust (the weirdness), Wolf Eyes (the noise), Darkthrone (the evil) and we hear all that for sure. We'd further compare Rakhim's improvised blackness to black metal experimentalists (and AQ ROTWer's) Abruptum, with some of the screaming sounding like the insane-asylum inmates from a Staalagh record! Maybe like Staalagh on a broken boombox, being played the the corner of a room where spaced-out Circle side project Dr. Kettu are jamming with the Black Boned Angel.
Actually, last year we reviewed an expensive Qbico import LP by Rakhim (weirdly enough, we still have a few copies, if you act fast...) and ever since experiencing the mesmerizing psychedelic murkiness of that debut we've been wanting to hear more.
Disturbing, yes. But we like being disturbed like this!!
MPEG Stream: "Transylvanian Error"
MPEG Stream: "Ultimate Sword"

RTX Western Xterminator (Drag City) cd 14.98
YES! The follow up to the RTX's totally sick first record, Transmaniacon!!!! This record is the next step in RTX's path to hair metal scuzzy party excellence. The opening track, "Western Exterminator" which is a sort of dusty old Mexican cantina acoustic number, with sweet backwards guitar shreds and flute solos... might be a little unexpected, but by the second track we know what's up. The good time Shreddy Van Halen "Balls To Pass" harkens back to the debut. Filled to the brim with hot lixxxx and killer song writing. Jennifer Herrema's voice is sounding as fucked up as ever, adding a really cool noisy element to all the songs. The lyrics are also perfect. In the third track, "Black Bananas" she sings something about being the Garbage Collector...!!! Fuck yeah. Basically, if you like the first one, and also if you like the Accelerator side of Royal Trux, you're gonna love this record. Its a little bit more metal, especially on the track "Wo-Wo Din"...weird heavy. Uhhh, don't know what else to say...the whole record is killer and we're probably gonna be partying and BBQing to it all summer...poppy, heavy, party, noisy, kinda weird, and PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Balls To Pass"
MPEG Stream: "Wo-Wo Din"

HAGEN, NINA Fearless (Koch) cd 15.98
What a Blast from the Past! Probably the weirdest record produced by Giorgio Moroder, Nina Hagen's 1984 release Fearless has some of the craziest new-wave-disco tracks EVER made. Charting with "New York, New York", Hagen's tribute to that city's underground club culture, the rest of the record is a no-holds-barred romp of excess glamour and zany electro-funk, topped with her trademark bi-polar vocal range. There's even a cameo by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (man, they've been around for a while!). If you've been rocking lately to Maurice Fulton and/or his crazy "Paris Hilton" singing wife, Mu, or any of the Tiger Sushi G.D.M. series of past and present club jams, you might want to take an indulgent gander here. Guaranteed that the unique vocal stylings and punk-funk freakiness will have you saying WTF?! pretty darn quick. Glad to have this reissued! Also be sure to check out her Nunsexmonkrock album as well if you're new to Nina.
MPEG Stream: "New York New York"
MPEG Stream: "TV Snooze"
MPEG Stream: "Springtime In Paris"

SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
The first 5000 of these (long gone now, sorry) included a bonus disc, featuring, guess who, Dylan Carlson of Earth (making our April Fools joke come true!!). But even without Dylan's presence on the album proper, there are lots of guest performers including Jesse Sykes, Joe Preston from Thrones (also ex-Melvins, ex-Earth), Kim Thayil from Soundgarden (aha) and Rex Ritter from Jessamine.
Packaged beautifully in a mini cd style gatefold, with AMAZING cover art, black on black with weird muted color and text printed in glossy varnish and metallic gold, both bands be-robed and standing in a cornfield, a full color booklet attached to the inside.
MPEG Stream: "Etna"
MPEG Stream: "N.L.T."
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)"

V/A I Belong To This Band: Eighty-Five Years Of Sacred Harp Recordings (Dust-To-Digital) cd 15.98
Initially we were thrown for a puzzlacious loop by the title. Sounds a lot like the Pamela Des Barres autobiography! Then, admittedly not being familiar with the phrase 'Sacred Harp', we also thought the subtitle might be somewhat misleading. We did a little homework though, and found out that it is a traditional choral singing style originating in the Southern states, gospel folksong with a repertory of pre-Civil War vintage. Whew, glad we got it all figured out. Anyways, confusion and definitions aside, the strength of this compilation is something far less complicated. An amazing document of both individual vocalists and congregations singing en masse, it exemplifies the power of the human voice, in concert with spiritual belief. Quite a force to behold, at once both humbling and uplifting. This disc is the aural companion to the documentary film Awake, My Soul, which we're now eager to see, after having spun this numerous times since it showed up here!
The absolutely wonderful Dust-To-Digital label (responsible for the massive, wooden Goodbye, Babylon box set, and the Fonotone one too, among other treats) has again done a great job with the compiling and packaging of these olde timey treasures. The 30-track cd is housed in a handsome cardboard foldy kind of pack, and of course in the cd booklet there's an expert essay on sacred harp singing, as well as individual track notes. As the subtitle indicates, this is a recorded tradition going back 85 years. The earliest recording here dates from 1922, with plenty more from the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s -- along with several from 2006. We like the timbre of the older recordings best, of course (and the scratchier the recording, the better in our view!), but they're all pretty awesome (an appropriate word to use in this context, in its deepest meaning!). Majestically eerie, moving, and powerful are these songs raised to heaven. As voices overlap and merge, some of these tracks begin to almost sound like some avant-garde 20th century, prog choral piece or something. Others have more of a hillbilly, homey appeal. It's all quite beautiful, and highly recommended!!
MPEG Stream: DENSON'S SACRED HARP SINGERS 1928 "The Christian's Hope"
MPEG Stream: HENAGAR-UNION SACRED HARP CONVENTION 2006 "Antioch"
MPEG Stream: THE ORIGINAL SACRED HARP CHOIR 1922 "The Christian Warfare"

WILDLIFE Wildlife EP (Bodies Of Water Arts And Crafts) cd ep 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From right here in San Francisco, via Boston, comes this debut recording from Wildlife. And in the interest of being totally up front, we should tell you that we do actually have a vested interest in Wildlife, not only can SF always use another killer band to call its own, but we also got another amazing AQ employee out of the deal, Matt in mailorder, but all of that aside, this shit is seriously cool.
Opening with a hushed soundscape of record crackle (we're sold already!), a swirl of hiss and static and pops, underpinning thick bass thrums that shimmer like black clouds, while above this low end miasma hover simple muted guitars and huge drums way up in the mix (where they belong). Suddenly the sound is some sort of abstract slowcore indie doom, with beautiful drifting melodies, lugubrious tempos, all beneath a simple caveman plod and clouds of little effected guitar squiggles. The song eventually erupts into a massive downtuned crunch, thick waves of detuned riffage pile up beneath howled Stooges-y vocals wrapped in thick swaths of reverb, swaggering over the slippery tarpit dirge underneath. The song ends in a flurry of gorgeous harmonics, with shimmery distant angelic vocals, and strange dynamic shifts all tangled up with shards of angular jagged high end scrape and skree. Phew, and that's just the first song.
After a brief interlude, a strange cloud of ambient clatter, made up of blurred bits of fuzz and hiss, clockwork like rhythms as well as distant booming percussion, the band launch back into the rock, with a muted angular groove, not unlike Sonic Youth or Blonde Redhead with dense reverby guitars and simple tribal rhythms that build into a lurching sea sick stumble, with distorted shrieked vocals, swirls of feedback and moaning guitar wail before winding back down into a swirling dense coda of wild drumming and tangled squalls of blown out psych guitar.
The final track is a spare slab of creepy disembodied folk, thick stabs of tangled steel string dissonance wrapped in a bleak doomy ambience. A slow creeping monotone strum, with simple percussion and snarly vocals. The whole thing very sun baked with lots of reverb, a wild and clattery, Jandekian dirge folk work out that manages to be strangely epic and majestic.
We only have about twenty of these so we may run out quick. A repress is in the works, but it might be a while, so if you don't want to wait (and you definitely don't) then don't dawdle...
MPEG Stream: "Sit On The Ground"
MPEG Stream: "Love"

FARMACIA Crucial Sky In The Land Of Premonitions At Lorenzo's Weekend (Psych-O-Path) cd 14.98
We all agree here at AQ that this is a really amazing disc. We also all agree that it's tough to describe! Which is maybe why we didn't manage to review it right when it first appeared a few months back. But now we'll try, since we like it so much and want you know about it. Simply put (which is impossible), Farmacia from Argentina straddle the line between minimal dance music and rhythmic noise. Crucial Sky In The Land Of Premonitions At Lorenzo's Weekend (there, doesn't that title tell you all you need to know? no? uh, yeah, you're right) is the work of a trio who are making their OWN original music first and foremost, not something we hear everyday. There's an experimental, home-brewed, kit-bashed approach here that possesses some of the charming weirdness of Argentine AQ faves Reynols without sounding like them... much more user-friendly, these guys! It's a sort of playful industrial/electro music, part Throbbing Gristle, part Aphex Twin, part Mouse On Mars, part Ratatat. One track even reminds us of Itavayla, or Trans Am. There's bopping abstract noises, wordless vocals, distortion and drone and disco-friendly beats. Surprisingly beautiful, beautifully surprising. The three members are credited with the use of plenty of analog synths, samplers, computers... an array of ethnic flutes... eggs, noises, and "atmospheric crucial voices"... y'know, the usual stuff. And the results are, as we said, tough to describe. But we figure it's got a wide appeal, to fans of Kraftwerk and Cluster back in the '70s... to fans of Lindstrom yesterday. Totally recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Doctor Krupa"
MPEG Stream: "Estas Tecnicas"
MPEG Stream: "Que Se Le Va A Hacer"

VILLALOBOS Fizheuer Zieheuer (Playhouse) cd 16.98
You know we like repetition here at Aquarius. We like repetition. We like it. Repetition. Whether it's the motorik pulses of Neu! and Circle, or the minimalist throb of Steve Reich and The Necks, or the crackling loops of Philip Jeck and Thomas Brinkmann, or the headnodding riffs of Om and Les Rallizes Denudes, or the blurring buzz of Wigrid and Wold... we like it! Keep it goin' and we'll keep listening. Well of course one of the many musical forms that makes good use of repetition is dance music, and although sometimes we give the impression that techno and house music "isn't our thing" that's definitely not true about all techno music. Not when it's really, really about the mesmeric repetition, and in an interesting way, like the clicks and cuts of Ryoji Ikeda or the "heroin house" of Fluxion. Or the whole Kompakt catalog of pop ambient drone and beats.
Or this new disc by critical darling Ricardo Villalobos! Which is probably getting a lot of attention because of the sheer length of the tracks on it -- there's two of 'em, clocking in at more than a half-an-hour each! The title cut, "Fizheuer Zieheuer" is truly hypnotic, based on endless, slightly altered iterations of the same happy little horn riff (sampled from a Balkan brass band?), expertly joined to echoing four-on-the-floor techno beats, slowly morphing and shifting over time -- 37 minutes! Deceptively simple, but brilliantly crafted. And yes, totally, totally mesmerizing. Allan turned on the "visualizer" function on his iTunes while playing this and we all got totally tranced-out watching the flashing lights...
This album is maybe really sort of an extreme maxi-single, as the 35 and a half minute second track "Fizbeast" is a stripped-down (minus the horns) recap of the first track -- yay, more repetition! But you might also just hit play on track one again, 'cause you're gonna want to hear that infectious Balkan horn part again and again and again. Recommended, recommended, recommended...
FYI this cd is intentionally packaged by Playhouse without a tray card in the jewel case. Either 'cause it's sort-of a single, or 'cause they feel that electronic music is so modern it doesn't need a back cover, we don't know. Just mentioning this fact so that if you mailorder it, you won't think there's something wrong with your copy...
MPEG Stream: "Fizheuer Zieheuer"

NEW THRILL PARADE, THE Universal Shame (Litter Box Records) cd 10.98
Welcome to New Weird Santa Cruz! New Thrill Parade are not your typical bowl-roasting beach bums. They're more likely to smear their faces with cherry red lip stick and hang out under that bridge from the movie Lost Boys, drinking goats blood and cutting themselves. This shit is GOTH. Fuck yeah. The sound of this record is actually a bit of a tough one to describe. The heart of New Thrill Parade's music lies in the pounding, arrhythmic dark dance created by the sexually charged rhythm section, compelling you to move as though you were mounted by some sort of Yoruba diety. Super discordant guitar lines, soaked in reverb and chorus float atop this propulsive thump. The sax squawks, the sounds of a knife being dragged against a piece of sheet metal creeps through the mix at points, and the vocals HOWL! Vocalist Amitai's yelps and croons push the band's already amazing sound WAY over the top...his lyrics are perfectly dramatic and dark, and his sense of delivery conveys the fucked up, twisted world this band seems to exist in. Favorite tracks include the slow building creep fest "Peace Punch", and the twisted fucked up "Body Ship", which sounds like some evil bubble gum music you might hear in a nightmare after watching too much Twin Peaks. But all the tracks are killer!! For fans of The Birthday Party, Christian Death, and the Butthole Surfers...and any other freaky, fucked up insane band that rules. Also, if you get the chance, SEE THEM LIVE! Amazing theater for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Ululations"
MPEG Stream: "Peace Punch"

SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar (Southern Lord) 2cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
The first 5000 copies come with a bonus disc titled SatanOscillateMyMetallicSonatas (a nod to Soundgarden, there?) that features a single 28 minute track called "Her Lips Were Wet With Venom" guest starring Dylan Carlson from Earth! Before we go any further... are you thinking what we're thinking... April Fool's? SUNNO))) and Boris And Earth!!! And I bet you at least some of the bonus track is in E!! Boy, did we call it. And actually Atsuo from Boris confided in a friend of AQ that indeed, part of the reason they got Dylan to guest was because of that April Fool's review! How cool is that?!?
Anyway, the bonus track is a monstrous wall of churning guitars, with occasional howled almost death metal vocals buried way down in the mix, and languorous Earth Hex-like twang guitar draped lazily above a churning blackhole ambience. So good.
Besides Dylan Carlson of Earth, there are lots of other guest performers including Jesse Sykes, Joe Preston from Thrones (also ex-Melvins, ex-Earth), Kim Thayil from Soundgarden (aha) and Rex Ritter from Jessamine.
Packaged beautifully in a mini cd style gatefold, with AMAZING cover art, black on black with weird muted color and text printed in glossy varnish and metallic gold, both bands be-robed and standing in a cornfield, a full color booklet attached to the inside, a metallic sticker on the front, each copy individually numbered. [whoops, no longer, while we do still have copies of this double cd version left, they don't have the sticker for some reason, a manufacturing snafu we're told... no biggie since it's the extra disc not the sticker that makes these so desirable!!]
MPEG Stream: "Etna"
MPEG Stream: "N.L.T."
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)"

SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar (Southern Lord) 3lp 27.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Okay vinyl nerds, the wait is finally over. The ultimate sludge doom matchup, East meets West, is now, in fact, available on vinyl!!! An insanely deluxe elaborate triple lp in an impossibly oversized sleeve, gorgeous matte finish, with gloss varnish filigree. Inside, a deluxe oversized 12" booklet of color photos, liner notes by Soundgarden's Kim Thayil, each of the three lps pressed on swirled green vinyl, housed black sleeves, printed in glossy black ink with various symbols. The whole thing is pretty mindblowing. Much like the music inside. PLUS!!! This deluxe version includes the 28 minute bonus track which was originally included as a bonus disc with the first few thousand cds, the amazing three way team up "Her Lips Were Wet With Venom" which adds Earth to the already stellar SUNNO))) / Boris mix. Phew!! These triple lps are limited to 2000 copies, we got a bunch, but odds are they will be gone in no time! And while the sticker on the front claims that there is a libretto included, it is actually referring to the picture book, so don't freak out when you can't find the 'libretto'... Anyway, here's what we had to say about the music:
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
The first 2000 copies of the Altar lp include the bonus track "Her Lips Were Wet With Venom", a single 28 minute epic guest starring Dylan Carlson from Earth! Before we go any further... are you thinking what we're thinking... April Fool's? SUNNO))) and Boris And Earth!!! And I bet you at least some of the bonus track is in E!! Boy, did we call it. And actually Atsuo from Boris confided in a friend of AQ that indeed, part of the reason they got Dylan to guest was because of that April Fool's review! How cool is that?!?
Anyway, the bonus track is a monstrous wall of churning guitars, with occasional howled almost death metal vocals buried way down in the mix, and languorous Earth Hex-like twang guitar draped lazily above a churning blackhole ambience. So good.
Besides Dylan Carlson of Earth, there are lots of other guest performers including Jesse Sykes, Joe Preston from Thrones (also ex-Melvins, ex-Earth), Kim Thayil from Soundgarden (aha) and Rex Ritter from Jessamine.
So awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Etna"
MPEG Stream: "N.L.T."
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)"

SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar (Inoxia) 3lp box 130.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We took pre-orders for this puppy and of course they flew out of here in no time. But as with most things like this, a handful of folks dropped the ball and ended up not picking up their record. Thus, we have a tiny handful (5 copies!!) up for grabs. This is the super deluxe Japanese version of Altar, 200 gram vinyl, packed in a thick box, embossed, gloss on matte printing, printed vellum obi, silk screened gold on black fabric insert inside, full color printed heavy duty sleeves, so so nice. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES WORLDWIDE!! You thought the Southern Lord version was a killer, wait until you see this!! And again, we only have FIVE copies, first ones to order get 'em and once they're gone that's it. Here's the review:
Okay vinyl nerds, the wait is finally over. The ultimate sludge doom matchup, East meets West, is now, in fact, available on vinyl!!! An insanely deluxe elaborate triple lp set. The whole thing is pretty mindblowing. Much like the music inside. PLUS!!! This deluxe version includes the 28 minute bonus track which was originally included as a bonus disc with the first few thousand cds, the amazing three way team up "Her Lips Were Wet With Venom" which adds Earth to the already stellar SUNNO))) / Boris mix.
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
The first 2000 copies of the Altar lp include the bonus track "Her Lips Were Wet With Venom", a single 28 minute epic guest starring Dylan Carlson from Earth! Before we go any further... are you thinking what we're thinking... April Fool's? SUNNO))) and Boris And Earth!!! And I bet you at least some of the bonus track is in E!! Boy, did we call it. And actually Atsuo from Boris confided in a friend of AQ that indeed, part of the reason they got Dylan to guest was because of that April Fool's review! How cool is that?!?
Anyway, the bonus track is a monstrous wall of churning guitars, with occasional howled almost death metal vocals buried way down in the mix, and languorous Earth Hex-like twang guitar draped lazily above a churning blackhole ambience. So good.
Besides Dylan Carlson of Earth, there are lots of other guest performers including Jesse Sykes, Joe Preston from Thrones (also ex-Melvins, ex-Earth), Kim Thayil from Soundgarden (aha) and Rex Ritter from Jessamine.
So awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Etna"
MPEG Stream: "N.L.T."
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)"

SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar (Japanese Edition) (Inoxia) cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Okay, it's that time again, you know, when we tell you about a new, slightly different version of a Boris record you already have. And then you decide just how much of a Boris (and in this case, SUNNO))) as well) freak you really are.
This is the Japanese version of the recent collaborative effort between Japanese sludgelords Boris and their American counterparts, glacial doom merchants SUNNO))). Arguably the best release from either band in years, it's alternately achingly lovely, and crushingly brutal. But what's the deal with the Japanese version, and do you need it? Well, if you're as Boris obsessed as most of us are, the answer is yes. First off, it's got amazing new artwork. A gold and black slipcover with shimmering spot varnish text over a subtly altered booklet, on nice paper and with a fold-out Japanese insert. But it's the five minute bonus track that may have most of you shelling out another $20. A five minute alternate version of the track "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)". Already the record's strangest and most haunting track, female vocals hover over slow shifting slabs of glistening sound. Like doom metal gone slowcore. But on the alternate extra track, the "Black Sheep" version, the doomy moody slowcore is transformed into a string quartet, all warm soaring strings over swirling shimmers, drifting sun dappled melodies over swoonsome melodies and long drawn out chords. Quite pretty, and very much a strange addition. But is it worth buying all over again. Well, it is missing the bonus disc that came with the first pressing of the American version, but if you missed out on that completely, this is obviously essential. If you have that one already, well, it just might be worth it to have both. Up to you.
Here's what we had to say about the original disc:
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
MPEG Stream: "Etna"
MPEG Stream: "N.L.T."
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)"

ROPE Heresy, And Then Nothing But Tears (Family Vineyard) cd 14.98
Second full-length album by this dark and difficult avant-rock band, originally from Poland though now based in Chicago. This album consists of quietly creepy, whispery post-rock, abstract jazz-flecked soundscapes riven by anguished, loud outbursts of emotive vocals and guitar skree. Imagine Smolken of Dead Raven Choir (another Polish expat) fronting Oxbow... Or a moodier, malevolent US Maple with Keiji Haino sitting in. And on four of the tracks here, this sounds even more akin to Oxbow, because Oxbow's vocalist Eugene Robinson takes a guest turn at the mic. Intense!
MPEG Stream: "Heresy"
MPEG Stream: "Our Beast"