PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED Metal Box (Virgin) cd 30.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is a limited edition reissue of the epochal 2nd album by Public Image Limited, with the CD housed in a small metal film cannister, replicating the original 3LP set which earned the album's name.
Here's what we wrote about this earlier:
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of Nevermind The Bollocks at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled Metal Box garnered an equally self-evident title Second Edition. As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. Second Edition opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in Albatross which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around Second Edition is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force Nevermind The Bollocks was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
MPEG Stream: "Albatross"
MPEG Stream: "Careering"
MPEG Stream: "Memories"

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED Second Edition (Warner) cd 11.98
It's a little bit of aQuarius history that none of the current staff have been here long enough to remember, yet stories about the initial arrival of the Sex Pistol's Nevermind The Bollocks LP at aQuarius recOrds back in 1977 occasionally arise in conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban myth; but as it makes for such a great story, we're not going to question it. Here it is, and there may be a grain of truth in here somewhere...
With record distribution back then even less streamlined than it is today, aQuarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. For some reason they were flown from London to Los Angeles, not SF, and thus someone had to drive the boxes up from LA. This shipping detour gave the store the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the record's arrival, with attendees rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezed the confines of aQuarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, aQuarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to stop and call up the store periodically to let everybody know the eagerly anticipated punk album's progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled "Metal Box" garnered an equally self-evident title "Second Edition." As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. "Second Edition" opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in "Albatross" which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around "Second Edition" is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force "Nevermind The Bollocks" was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
As an aside, it was a huge curatorial mistake for Soul Jazz to leave Public Image Limited off of their "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm" compilation, as PiL fits into Soul Jazz's ideology for the project better than anybody else on the record. Thus, "Second Edition" is highly recommended (if not required) for anyone who was into that compilation.
MPEG Stream: "Albatross"
MPEG Stream: "Careering"
MPEG Stream: "Memories"

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED Second Edition (4 Men With Beards) 2lp 22.00
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!!
It's a little bit of aQuarius history that none of the current staff have been here long enough to remember, yet stories about the initial arrival of the Sex Pistol's Nevermind The Bollocks LP at aQuarius recOrds back in 1977 occasionally arise in conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban myth; but as it makes for such a great story, we're not going to question it. Here it is, and there may be a grain of truth in here somewhere...
With record distribution back then even less streamlined than it is today, aQuarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. For some reason they were flown from London to Los Angeles, not SF, and thus someone had to drive the boxes up from LA. This shipping detour gave the store the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the record's arrival, with attendees rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezed the confines of aQuarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, aQuarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to stop and call up the store periodically to let everybody know the eagerly anticipated punk album's progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, we feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as we've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled Metal Box garnered an equally self-evident title Second Edition. As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. Second Edition opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in "Albatross" which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around Second Edition is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force Nevermind The Bollocks was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
Thus, Second Edition is highly recommended, if not required listening.
MPEG Stream: "Albatross"
MPEG Stream: "Careering"
MPEG Stream: "Memories"

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED The Flowers Of Romance (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD Metal Box (4 Men With Beards) 3lp 48.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE AGAIN AS A REPRODUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL DELUXE 3LP METAL FILM CANISTER SET WHICH EARNED THE ALBUM'S NAME!!!
Here's what we wrote about this earlier:
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of Nevermind The Bollocks at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled Metal Box garnered an equally self-evident title Second Edition. As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. Second Edition opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in Albatross which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around Second Edition is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force Nevermind The Bollocks was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
MPEG Stream: "Albatross"
MPEG Stream: "Careering"
MPEG Stream: "Memories"

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. (P.I.L.) One Drop (Cargo Records) 12" 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. (P.I.L.) This Is Public Image Limited (PiL Official) 2lp 29.00

PUBLIC NUISANCE Gotta Survive (Frantic) 2cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here's the record that was never released on account of the Manson murders! (More on that in a second.) This double cd contains all the recordings of Public Nuisance, an obscure (but pretty great) teenage garage/psych band that got together in Sacramento circa 1964. As befits their punky name, they looked like a bunch of hoods, decked out in all-black outfits, with two of 'em sporting proto-Ramones style long hair. That, plus the fact that we read they were like an American version of the wild and crazy English freakbeat bands, piqued our curiosity big time. Supposedly, also, they were as "heavy as the Stooges". The truth is, that's a bit of a stretch. Some of this *is* at least heavier than, if not the Stooges, the Stones, but they do a lot of lighter, Beatles-y stuff too. They perform a nice cover of the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" in fact. So they were as much a pop-psych band as they were a down and dirty garage combo. On the other hand, their song "Love Is A Feeling" sounds EXACTLY like the White Stripes! The 28 tracks here actually cover quite a wide spectrum of sounds from sweet, harpsichord and theremin laced pop to raw, primal R&B stomp w/ plenty o' fuzz. This collection mainly consists of 1969 sessions recorded for an LP that never came out 'cause their label was owned by Terry Melcher, the guy who also owned the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate! After the murders, Melcher, afraid for his life, went into hiding and his label folded... But now, decades later, here are those unreleased sessions plus some rare singles tracks recorded under the band's earlier moniker Moss & The Rocks. Maybe a single-disc "best of" would have been more uniformly killer, and cheaper, but we can't really argue with getting to hear it all. The super thick, colorful, photo-filled cd booklet is full of essays written by Mike "Ugly Things" Stax, Clark Faville, and others -- including notes about each and every song!
Definitely something for fans of the Seeds, Stones, Creation, and "Nuggets" stuff in general to check out. Even if they're not quite the "unknown Stooges" we'd hoped for, Public Nuisance are pretty cool.
RealAudio clip: "Love Is A Feeling"
RealAudio clip: "Time Can't Wait"
RealAudio clip: "Daddy's Comin' Home"
RealAudio clip: "Holy Man"

PUBLIC NUISANCE Gotta Survive (Third Man) lp 14.98
About ten years ago, an archival double cd called Gotta Survive was released containing all the recordings (the vast majority of 'em previously unreleased), by a band called Public Nuisance, an obscure (but pretty darn great as it turned out) teenage garage psych outfit that got together in Sacramento, California in the mid '60s. That reissue came out of nowhere, and pretty much blew us away. Not just us, but lots of folks, including a certain Jack White, whose band White Stripes ended up covering one of Public Nuisance's songs - which makes sense to us, 'cause when we reviewed that original double cd, we mentioned that one of Public Nuisance's songs really sounded like, you guessed it, the White Stripes.
Now, that selfsame fan Jack White has done all you vinyl-lovers a big favor and re-released a dozen crucial Public Nuisance tracks on a single lp, via his Third Man label. And seriously, this is the good stuff. If you like fuzzy, Anglophilic '60s garage psych at all, you will LOVE this.
As befits their punky name, they looked like a bunch of hoods, decked out in all-black outfits, with two of 'em sporting proto-Ramones style long hair. That, plus the fact that we had read they were like an American version of the wild and crazy English freakbeat bands, piqued our curiosity big time when we first heard about 'em. And, that their record was never released at the time on account of the Manson murders! (More on that in a moment.)
Turns out the freakbeat tag wasn't far from the truth, though their remarkably high quality output actually covered a quite a wide spectrum of sounds, from sweet, harpsichord and theremin laced pop to raw, primal RnB stomp with plenty o' fuzz. So they were as much a pop-psych band as they were a down and dirty garage combo. On this lp, there's the anti-Vietnam-war track "Strawberry Man", the trippy "Holy Man", the raw fuzz-riffed "Love Is A Feeling" (that's the one that sounds EXACTLY like the White Stripes, that's not even the one the White Stripes later covered), the anthemic unknown classic "Small Faces" (which the White Stripes did cover), and eight more tracks, all of 'em pretty killer. These twelve songs come from the late 1968 / early 1969 sessions for what was supposed to be the debut Public Nuisance lp, that never came out 'cause their label, Equinox, was run by Terry Melcher, the guy who also owned the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate! After the murders, Melcher, afraid for his life, went into hiding, and his label folded, leaving Public Nuisance in the lurch and their album in the vaults, unreleased for decades.
Definitely something that fans of the Stones, Seeds, Creation, Pretty Things, plus "Nuggets" stuff in general, need to check out. White Stripes fans too of course. How a record this good could have stayed unknown and unreleased for so long is INSANE, but thankfully it finally saw the light of day and the band belatedly got some of the recognition they truly deserve as a brilliant '60s garage combo. Today's garage popsters definitely don't do it any better!
Thanks also to Jack White/Third Man for now making this available, at last, on vinyl (well, there actually was an expensive double vinyl version of the original collection put out on Shadoks at the same time as the cd set, but you're lucky if you ever saw one of those). Let's hope Third Man do a second vinyl volume, 'cause these 12 songs represent only most of the first disc from that out of print double cd set. There's plenty more great songs that appeared the second disc, from the '68 demos that got 'em signed to the ill-fated Equinox in the first place...
MPEG Stream: "Love Is A Feeling"
MPEG Stream: "Ecstasy"
MPEG Stream: "Small Faces"

PUBLICIST Keep It Off The Record (Voltaire) 12" 7.98
For every one who has been digging Zombi and Majeure, and the various other soundmakers mining eighties sci-fi VHS tapes to create retro futuristic synthgroove funk jams for smokey chrome and neon danceclubs, the sort of sounds you might have heard cyborgs shaking their mechanical thangs to in Logan's Run or Blade Runner, well, then prepare yourself for the oddly monickered Publicist, aka Sebastian Thomson, drummer for electronic post rockers Trans Am, whose latest, Keep It Off The Record, is a killer assemblage of fuzzy sci-fi synths, vocodered vocals, live drums and programmed beats, all woven into some seriously propulsive robotic cyber synthfunk grooviness.
"Hand To Mouth" is the party jam of the year, assuming that year is 1985, super hooky, and fuzzy, and groovy, the synths fuzzy and buzzy, the vocals totally alien and psychedelic, and the live drums/drum machine combo super intense and propulsive and yeah, funky. Some crazy catchy retro futurefunk for sure. "Miscalculation" is no slouch either, another disco flecked, dizzying synth funk workout, that sounds like the soundtrack to a chase scene (through a futuristic club of course) on Buck Rogers, laced with huge spaced out swath of cosmic synth shimmer, draped over that relentlessly percolating futurefunk pulse.
"Schnell Und Sauber" is the most krautrock of the bunch, a driving Kraftwerkian Autobahn worthy krautsynth workout, with driving rhythms and lush layered synths that throb and pulse, the real drums here in full effect.
The flipside starts out with the title track, total eighties electro pop, sort of Zapp via Daft Punk via Zombi if that makes any sense, groovy and funky, but also slightly ominous and cinematic, and still infused with that sort of krautrock core. And finally, the record finishes off with the epic "Self Similar", a soaring pulsing synthdrone workout, that is a total Goblin sci-fi dancefloor destroyer, another one of those jams that sounds like the music behind the credits of some lost Euro sc-fi B move VHS, moody and slightly minor key, the synths swirling and pulsing, propulsive and motorik, the sound groovy, but equally haunting and hypnotic.
MPEG Stream: "Hand To Mouth"
MPEG Stream: "Miscalculation"

PUCE MOMENT Avoiding Certain Topics / Essence Of Mann e.p. / Puce Moment (self-released) 3 x cassette 9.98

PUDDLE THEORY s/t (xPCHUCKPx) cd 8.98
The found photos of the dead racoon, the family posing with the dead lion and the beer-swilling truck driver provide little clues into the mysteries of Puddle Theory (although I like to think that the beer-swilling trucker made this record in the extensive 'home studio' in the cab of his 18 wheeler). Dark and gritty washes of processed feedback with ominous sweeps of electronic isolationism, Puddle Theory's self-released cdr is a worthty entry into the realm of black energy drone, inhabitted by Xenakis and Arcane Device and others.

PUENTE, TITO Mambo Macoco (Tumbao) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
New York born timbalist and band leader Tito Puente hardly needs an introduction. Like Machito, he sought to integrate jazz and mambo together - tight Latin percussion sections, with extended instrumental solos. These recordings were made in New York City between 1949 and 1951 and feature: Tito Puente (vibes, timbales); Gil Lopez & Luis Verona (piano); Mongo Santamaria or Frankie Colon (conga); Manny Oquendo (bongos); Amado Visoso (bass); Frank LoPinto, Jimmy Frisaura & Gene Pappetti (trumpets); Joseph Herde, Irving Butler, Edward Grimm & Sol Rabinowitz (saxes); Vincento Valdes & Bobby Escoto (vocals & maracas.)

PUFFY AMI YUMI An Illustrated History (Bar/None) cd 15.98
They sure do make some of the oddest, fluffiest confectionary treats in Japan, and PuffyAmiYumi is no exception. Although Allan has shown an immense aversion to these J-pop gals, we've got their "Illustrated History" album just released domestically on Hoboken's Bar/None Records (originally on Epic Japan). Sounding not unlike a Hello Kitty pinball and pachinko game arcade at the height of sugar-rush hour with super-slick, huge production that puts Britney, Christina and company (not to mention their record exec. handlers) to shame. As flawless, sweet and crisp as a strawberry Pocky stick. This is not deep. This is not complex. This is not difficult. What it is though is unfathomably cute, sparkling, exuberant fun. And unlike their American pop star counterparts, Puffy jumbles together their sackful of music styles with complete reckless abandon. From song to song, they hop about delving into the vaults of 60s girl groups, surf rock, ABBA ("True Asia"), samba ("Sigh Of Love"), The Who circa-Tommy ("Jet Police"), rumba, Beach Boys summer pop, disco ("Electric Beach Fever"), straight up rock'n'roll... you name it! With bountiful horns, hand claps, tambourine, and a troop of backing singers to boot. Love 'em? Hate 'em? Place your votes! Also includes a bonus video of "Boogie Woogie No. 5" that eerily resembles a Gap khakis ad with its crowd of dancing boys on a stark white backdrop.
RealAudio clip: "True Asia"
RealAudio clip: "Electric Beach Fever"
RealAudio clip: "Sign of Love"

PUFFY AMI YUMI Spike (Sony) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
An avalanche of Japanese sticky sweets. These two gals have been at it for a while now - since '96 to be exact. Yumi and Ami are definite J-pop sensations with their own toys, clothing and tv show, but have relatively only recently drawn attention on this side of the Pacific. And although they've had to change their name over here - adding Ami Yumi - because of another artist who doesn't even go by that name anymore, they've made quite a splash at that. This is their fifth album bursting at the seams with their buoyant, bizarre mish-mash of musical styles - slick'n'dance-y, sunny surf-y, pop-a-billy, Chipmunks-y... you name it. Malcolm McLaren, Pizzicato Five and Fantastic Plastic Machine have all joined the Puffy parade. Will you be next? Perhaps more cute than should ever be allowed? Decide for yourself... avoid like the plague? Or embrace with ultra glee?
RealAudio clip: "Boogie Woogie No. 5"
RealAudio clip: "Destruction Pancake"
RealAudio clip: "Wild Girls On Circuit/The Readymade JBL Mix '99 "

PUFFY AREOLAS 1982: Dishonorable Discharge (Hozac) cd 10.98
Now at last in stock on cd! This is the latest blast of blown out heavy psych guitar grime from this oddly named Ohio outfit, and like the records before it, this is some gloriously filthy in the red noise rock crush, equal parts Stooges-y sludge, droned out heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind heaviness, and slithery leather pants-ed, bong smoke-y swagger, a bass driven dirgery that erupts into wild squalls of wah guitar blowout and feedback fried freakout. For fans of the current crop of psych/space rock, these guys are like a dirtier, scarier, grimier, noisier version of all those other bands, which some might argue also makes them BETTER. And while they sound right at home on Hozac, it's easy to understand why they sometimes also call Siltbreeze home, that aesthetic is definitely all over 1982, a continuous barrage of crumbling in-the-red riffage, avalanches of chaotic drum damage, wild shredding leads, buried feral vox, a million tangled melodies woven into walls of blown out psych, and buried underneath all that there seems to be a whole mess of hooks, and heck, maybe even some 'choruses', but instead of hunting for them, it's way better to just crank this as loud as you can, and let PA's psychedelic skree wash over you, wallow in their wild wooly psychedelic noise rock, and eventually, all of that other stuff will seep into your pores, like some glorious sonic poison.
MPEG Stream: "1982"
MPEG Stream: "Not Tonight"
MPEG Stream: "Take My Place"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Place (Guyana Pt. II)"

PUFFY AREOLAS 1982: Dishonorable Discharge (HoZac Records) lp 14.98
Latest blast of blown out heavy psych guitar grime from this oddly named Ohio outfit, and like the records before it, this is some gloriously filthy in the red noise rock crush, equal parts Stooges-y sludge, droned out heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind heaviness, and slithery leather pants-ed, bong smoke-y swagger, a bass driven dirgery that erupts into wild squalls of wah guitar blowout and feedback fried freakout. For fans of the current crop of psych/space rock, these guys are like a dirtier, scarier, grimier, noisier version of all those other bands, which some might argue also makes them BETTER. And while they sound right at home on Hozac, it's easy to understand why they sometimes also call Siltbreeze home, that aesthetic is definitely all over 1982, a continuous barrage of crumbling in-the-red riffage, avalanches of chaotic drum damage, wild shredding leads, buried feral vox, a million tangled melodies woven into walls of blown out psych, and buried underneath all that there seems to be a whole mess of hooks, and heck, maybe even some 'choruses', but instead of hunting for them, it's way better to just crank this as loud as you can, and let PA's psychedelic skree wash over you, wallow in their wild wooly psychedelic noise rock, and eventually, all of that other stuff will seep into your pores, like some glorious sonic poison.
MPEG Stream: "1982"
MPEG Stream: "Not Tonight"
MPEG Stream: "Take My Place"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Place (Guyana Pt. II)"

PUFFY AREOLAS Gentleman's Grip (HoZac Records) 7" 5.98
Another blast of Stooges-via-AmRep noise rock snarl and swagger from these Ohio heavies, and like their Siltbreeze full length, they kick up a seriously dense noisepop din, the vox slathered in distortion, the riffs blown the fuck out, the drums a buried barely there pound, tons of effects, lo-fi, but still in the red and LOUD, the A side has a killer dubbed out / tripped out chorus, that sends the vocals careening through clouds of buzz and crunch, and there are even some wildly skronk horns in the mix.
The flipside takes the same sound, and slows it down, turning it into a serious slab of noisy sludgey pummel, chugging and churning, a blurred, buzzy, druggy dirge that hides a pretty kick ass hook, which leads right into the brief instrumental closer, a short sharp chunk of fuzzy garage punk jangle, all wrapped up in squiggly psychedelic leads, atonal and angular, noisy and chaotic, but still jangly and poppy and weirdly catchy. Super rad!

PUFFY AREOLAS In The Army 1981 (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
What's in a name? Well, with Puffy Areolas, pretty much everything. Or nothing. All we know is a google search offers up many interesting results, very few of them related to the band. Regardless, it's definitely an attention grabber. We missed them at South By Southwest, but listening to this now, we are kicking ourselves big time. These noiseniks from Ohio sound right at home on Siltbreeze, a sort of fiery feral punk infused with just the right amount of in-the-red noise, and chaotic about to collapse heavy rock, maybe if the Stooges existed now, and were signed to Amphetamine Reptile, the PA's offer up a crowd baiting explosion of noise punk, wild riffing buried in a sea of reverb and distortion, the drums a barely there chaotic crash and crunch, the vocals a wild yowl, frantic and frenetic, pounding and propulsive, this is the sort of record that just oozes sweat and blood and stale beer and cigarette butts, and invokes the sort of next day bruised and battered hangover that there shows must produce in spades. Not sure what else to say, if you like it heavy and noisy and chaotic, you probably can't do much better than the Puffy Areolas.
Comes with a download code so the damage can be digital as well. Fuck yeah.

PUFFY AREOLAS / PURLING HISS split (Permanent) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Originally a special Record Store Day release, now sold out and out of print, we managed to get an extra little handful of these (we're talking 5 or 6) so if you were kicking yourself for missing out, grab one of these quick before they are really gone for good.
Puffy Areolas unfurl a slow burning sprawl of flanged psychedelic guitar riffage, and growled distant vox, into a strange bit of droned out strum and jangle, buried drums, fractured electronics and warped effects, wild wah guitars, all wound into a spaced out drift that ruptures a few minutes in and becomes a frantic space drone drugrock pound, the guitars swirling and whirling, the drums pounding, all tangled into a glorious and explosive bit of psychedelic space rock freakout, that wouldn't sound all that out of place on a record by White Hills or The Heads, endless wild riffing and soloing, over loose chaotic drumming, and clouds of constantly shifting effects, seriously druggy and damaged and divine.
Purling Hiss counter with some swaggery Stooges-y garage rock stomp, snarly vox over some sludgey fuzzy riffing, and some awesomely tweaked leads, infusing that Stooges-y swagger with the classic rock/power pop vibe that made us dig these guys so much in the first place, the result something much more dirgey and noisy, the track laced with falsetto vox, and layer after layer of noodly guitars, until the track shifts gears, and the band slip into an almost Aerosmithy style groove, which swaggers and slithers and unwinds woozily through clouds of psych guitar swirl as the track gradually fades out...
And as we mentioned above, crazy limited, as in THESE ARE THE VERY LAST COPIES WE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO GET!!
MPEG Stream: PURLING HISS "My Hell"
MPEG Stream: PUFFY AREOLAS "Walking Down The Street"

PUFNSTUF Original Soundtrack Album (Cherry Red) cd 16.98
Do you like some acid sprinkled into your sun soaked psychedelic G-rated children's television shows, well, what if we added even MORE acid it and made it into a movie... well, then Sid & Marty Krofft were for sure your pushers. The big screen spinoff of HR Pufnstuf, these songs were a crucial part of creating the overall over-the-top fantastical and colorful world of the characters of Pufnstuf. A couple lists back we revelled in there finally being a domestic release of The Bugaloos cd and we gotta say we're rejoicing in just the same drink the crazy kool-aid way for these sounds from Sid & Marty Kroft's other druggy, deliriously metaphor filled, bizarre and bright colored daydream for kids with some winking nods to their parents watching along. With a great weird cast of characters including Mama Cass as Witch Hazel, we wish all family entertainment was this bizarre and jam packed with imagination and pleasure. We're still waiting for folks like The Polyphonic Spree or some Elephant 6 tinged groups like Olivia Tremor Control or Of Montreal to fully embrace our television childhoods and carry the torch of Pufnstuff, the Bugaloos and all of our druggy friends for a new generation of kids to trip out too. So fun and dazzling!
MPEG Stream: "Pufnstuf"
MPEG Stream: "Fire In The Castle"

PULLMAN Turnstyles & Junkpiles (Thrill Jockey) cd 13.98
Bundy K. Brown (Directions in Music, ex-Tortoise), Curtis Harvey (Come), Chris Brokaw (Rex), and Doug McCombs (Tortoise) follow Jim O'Rourke's lead of mimicking John Fahey's avant twang but none of the playfulness of either O'Rourke or Fahey.

PULLMAN Viewfinder (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
Pullman is an acoustic quartet into "rustic soundscapes" that features members of such great bands as Tortoise, Rex, Brokeback, Directions in Music, and Come. Ok, we said they were an acoustic quartet, but actually on this new disc (their 2nd) they've gone and added some electric instruments. Reminiscent of John Fahey and Nick Drake. The LP has 4 tracks not on the cd!
RealAudio clip: "Delta One"
RealAudio clip: "FLT"

PULLMAN Viewfinder (Thrill Jockey) 2lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Pullman is an acoustic quartet into "rustic soundscapes" that features members of such great bands as Tortoise, Rex, Brokeback, Directions in Music, and Come. Ok, we said they were an acoustic quartet, but actually on this new disc (their 2nd) they've gone and added some electric instruments. Reminiscent of John Fahey and Nick Drake. The LP has 4 tracks not on the cd!

PULP Different Class (Island) cd 15.98

PULP We Love Life (Island) cd 20.00
The irrepressible Jarvis Cocker and co. have returned, but you just might wanna think about holding your celebratory cheers. Yes, Pulp has certainly gone through its share of ups and downs, starts and stops, and stylistic shifts since its inception in 1978, but with such high standards set by their last two fabulous albums, the glorious "Different Class" (1995) and considerably darker "This Is Hardcore" (1998), this new full length seems to be taking something of a downswing - especially considering the notable presence of Mr. Scott Walker on these recordings wearing many hats including that of producer. Their ultra-lush, grand production is still present but the songs themselves are no match - hanging limp, lackluster and unfulfilled. Even Mr. Cocker's usually razor-sharp lyric-writing pen seems to have dried of its darkly clever, witty ink. Alas, a soggy disappointment!
RealAudio clip: "The Trees"
RealAudio clip: "Bad Cover Version"

PULSE EMITTER Cosmic Images (Expansive) cd 8.98
What more can we say about Pulse Emitter that we haven't already? We can't seem to get enough of his gorgeous and epic, sweeping, soaring, krautdrone new age synthscapes, but unlike the relative tranquility of the last few PE releases (the 4 volume Meditative Music series), Cosmic Images is a much more spaced out and kosmische affair, channeling Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze as well as modern synthspace explorers like Zombi, Oneohtrix Point Never (who supplied the album artwork), Infinite Body, Innercity, and the like.
A five part song suite, each focusing on different planets and star systems and galaxies, each one a sweeping expanse of modular synth swirls and mesmerizing keyboard melodies, warm and lush and layered, slipping from propulsive and psychedelic and almost blown out, to hushed and shimmery and minimal. A series of perfect solar system soundtracks, much of the record sounding like the background music for some seventies documentary about the universe, with long droning tones, and soft shifting ambience, hazy melodies over soft muted buzz, but with a couple tracks sounding way more aggressive and distorted and tapping into a love of Carpenter and Goblin, the opener, "Eagle Nebula" is a pulsing, throbbing buzzscape, the tones sharp and distorted, lots of crunch and thrum, still spacey and dreamy, but much more intense. And the final track, "Jupiter", offers a sonically similar bookend, taking the ambient cosmic drift of the in between songs, and adding a serious dose of rumbling low end bass buzz, turning the otherwise blissy sound into something much more sinister, adding various other melodies, swirling sonic squiggles, and thick swells of distorted thrum, the perfect brooding, buzzing coda, to a fantastically epic collection of kosmische drift.
MPEG Stream: "Eagle Nebula"
MPEG Stream: "Triangulum Galaxy"

PULSE EMITTER Grass (Gift Tapes) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
That's right. Another killer collection of sci-fi space drone synth bliss from big time aQ fave Pulse Emitter. And yeah, this one is again, crazy limited. Only 100 copies made, we got the very last 20. Which means once these are gone, we will NOT be able to get more. And since we're fairly sure there are more than 20 people out there in aQ land who wand, nay NEED, all things Pulse Emitter, we'll keep this brief.
Grass, while not as 'oppressive' as the recent Oppressive Nature release on Digitalis, and not as meditative as the three part Meditative Music series, manages to fall somewhere in between, probably a little closer to the meditative side of things, we'd say. Slow burning dreamdrones drifting through space would sum it up in a sentence, but why leave it at that. The sound on Grass is epic and expansive and space-y, definitely a Pulse Emitter disc that would hit the spot for all you Expo 70 obsessives, the same sort of space kraut vibe. Loooooong tones undulate and shift, melodies surface and dissipate, laced with some strange Morricone like faux flute melodies. The foundation is a dense throbbing low end, layered and gorgeously textured, shifting overtones and barely restrained feedback, but above and all around that main drone, various layers and melodic fragments drift and shimmer and float weightless as if in orbit around a brilliant black star. So gorgeous.
Definitely recommended, as is grabbing one of these quick before they disappear. Already out of print, these are again, the LAST 20 copies. Packaged in super nice full color sleeves.

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 1 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The first installment of Meditative Music unfurls a stream of undulating synth lines, whose phase pattern shifts and oscillating tones are hypnotizing in their own right; then a set of crystalline tones calmly rise and fall at a pace that seems to always be getting just a little bit slower. That's pretty much all that happens with Meditative Music, but it works very well. This is great inner-cosmos exploration music using the simplest of techniques that probably the ambient pioneers of Cluster, Eno, and Schulze would not have shied away from. As Groetsch put it, here's an excellent album for "sleep, massage, or any activity where a peaceful and balanced sound environment is desired."
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 1"

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 2 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The second installment in this series features a soft bit of white noise undulating in the distance, acting much like a field recording of wind, surf, rain, or any combination you would prefer. Above this, Groetsch gradually unfurls a revolving set of notes from one of his modular synthesizers that overlap in various combinations, occasionally creating nifty harmonics, but mostly gradual swells and blossoms of Doppler-effected tones. There's nothing ominous, nothing cheesy, nothing hackneyed about these drifting ambient passages - just great music for, as Groetsch puts it, "sleep, massage, or deep reflective thought." Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 2"

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 3 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely one of the more difficult questions for us to answer: "Do you have any music for massage?"
That question gets addressed to us here at aQuarius more often than you might think; and the as far as music *we* would want as soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The continuation in the Meditative Music series brings us to the brightest of the three released so far. A slow, shimmering oscillation of an interwoven set of synths from Pulse Emitter's patch-bay modules gird the entire album which is dotted by a series of chiming bell-tones placed above. This is more of a record for summertime daydreaming than of the introspective meditations found on the previous two. Still a potent opiate through sound despite the warmly rounded tones of the album. Groetsch offers a brief description of this one: "placid waves for reflective times."

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 4 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The fourth in Pulse Emitter's series of Meditative Music cd-r's, and like the first three, another hour long expanse of warm liquid synthmusic, designed, according to Mr. Pulse Emitter himself, Daryl Groetsch, as the perfect music for "sleep, massage, or deep reflective thought" or as an album ideal for "sleep, massage, or any activity where a peaceful and balanced sound environment is desired." Which this most definitely is, minimal, spacious, spare, abstract and ambient, lush and hushed, softly pulsing synth swells drift in and fade out, leaving lots and lots of space, eventually, the various swells overlap and are layered into blurred stretches of barely there melody, the notes stretched out into long blurred streaks of chordal thrum, allowed to ring out and fade nearly to silence, before another note takes its place, a sort of space music, the soundtrack to the cosmos, or an ultra minimal Carpenter style soundtrack, dark and languorous and so mysterious, the perfect music for mediation or relaxation, but also perhaps to accompany gazing into the heavens, or wandering across moonlit vistas. Besides the usual synth suspects, Pulse Emitter's Meditative Music definitely reminds us of folks like Leyland Kirby/The Caretaker or Indignant Senility, their strange gauzy ambience definitely an analog for PE's hushed sonic dreamworld, if anything, PE taps into the same sort of wistful melancholy, it's definitely relaxing and serene, but it's also infused with a certain amount of pathos and mystery, that evokes thoughts and memories of other worlds, lost memories and forgotten pasts, a lovely chunk of electronic minimalism, that will definitely appeal to anyone into abstract sonic wonder and dreamlike kraudronedrift.
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 4 (excerpt)"

PULSE EMITTER Oppressive Nature (Digitalis) cd 13.98
Oppressive Nature couldn't be a more apt title for this album from Portland's wizard of analogue synthesis Daryl Groestch (aka Pulse Emitter), or at least for the opening track of this album. Through and through, this is a far cry from the pastoral ambient sensibilities administered through his surprisingly great Meditative Music cd-r series. A grim curtain is cast from the onset, with squelching distortions, animalistic grunts, and wounded chirps propagated through electronic means. All of these blistered, cracked, and abused noises are strategically placed on a rumbling battlefield of crunched-low end rumblings, lending comparisons of today to Wolf Eyes and UW Owl and of yesterday to SPK and Factrix. Groestch lets off the distortion pedal for good chunks of Oppressive Nature, relying upon his filter-sweeping modulations and sinusoidal oscillations to craft isolating, deep space atmospheres. Weirdly majestic melodies counter the streams of noise generated throughout the untitled second track, eventually overtaking the noise amidst a series of tightly appregiated squiggles. The fourth cut hangs a sequence of revolving tones of phased dissonance upon a hyper minimal structure of tiny clicks and glitched pulses, which had they been generated digitally could easily fit within the Raster-Noton ethos. The album glides to a stop with windswept drones laced with distant clouds of feedback, white-noise, and one of Groetsch's melodic motifs.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"
MPEG Stream: "Track 5"

PULSE EMITTER Over Clouds (Root Strata) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The good news is that there's a new Pulse Emitter, another collection of dreamy analog drift, softly serene meditative new age synthscapes, laced with muted rhythms and softly swirling abstract melodies. The kind of stuff we, and you, can't get enough of. The bad news, is that we COULDN'T get enough of it, literally. This is out of print already, and we only have 4 or 5 copies, after selling half of the batch we got, which was already less than half the number we ordered. So apologies, we tried our best, we figured we might as well list the copies we had so that way, at least a tiny handful of folks will get a copy.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES (why?!?!), nice, thick offset printed covers, and again, already OUT OF PRINT.
MPEG Stream: "Purple"

PULSE EMITTER Progression To Desolation (Black Horizons) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
First vinyl release from this one man sci-fi synth slinger. Two epic sides of blown out, FX drenched synthesizer spacescapes, drones, and rippling fields of alien bleep and bloop. All produced from a handful of homemade synth modules. The first side is wild and playful, total b-movie sound effects, tripped out and bizarre, atmospheric, buzzy and squelchy, like some long lost recording from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Lots of these sounds would be right at home on an episode of Dr. Who! The flip side is much less playful, more dark and moody, dreamy stretches of fuzzed out drones, very cinematic and Goblin-like at times, a constantly shifting soundscape of rumbling atmospheric murk, peppered with little bits of damaged synth noise. Awesome stuff.
Gorgeous psychedelic cover art, full color paste on black sleeve, with a full color insert.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!

PULSE EMITTER Spiritual Vistas (Cylindrical Habitat Modules / Expansive) lp 14.98
After the darker, more cinematic buzz and whir of Pulse Emitter's recent The Palace Of Love cd-r, Spiritual Vistas, the latest from Daryl Groetsch, aka Pulse Emitter, finds his sound, as the title might suggest, returning to a zone much more dreamy and washed out, ethereal and kosmische. Four looooong tracks, all variations on that dreamy PE space-synth krautdrone shimmer, the sonic element linking the various tracks together this time around seems to be a super melodic almost new wave sounding synth bassline, that pulses right below the surface, offering a sort of anchor to the otherwise light and airy sounds above, the opening track is a sort of kosmische kraut lope, which gives way to full on Tangerine Dream style ethereal new age swirl, but still held together by that low end pulse.
The flipside starts off with lush string like swells, all majestic and warm, lush and layered, minimal melodies hovering over constantly shifting backdrops, rife with overtones and subtle sonic colorations, the sound so dreamlike, meditative and tranquil, like new wave, blurred and smeared into a sun dappled shadowy impression, before slipping into the final track, which revisits the ominous, more darkly cinematic vibe of the above mentioned cd-r, adding some buzz and crunch to the hazy whirl of prismatic thrum and droned out lysergic shimmer. So nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

PULSE EMITTER Sunset Into Night (Gneiss Things) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of our favorite Portland Modgular synth wizards is back to business with another deeply dreamy dose of synthisizer bliss. Per usual, Sunset Into Night is limited to an edition of 100, a down-right shame considering how much we dig this spaced out new outing. Falling somewhere between his Meditation series and a loosly knit Goblin, Sunset Into Night shimmers, sails and dissipates into the cool evening air, all the while inviting the listener on a cinematic journey through analog dream zones and icey modualr drips. Deep, glacial drones lift off into infinity, gorgeous notes and sounds flutter and errupt through buzzing filters and ambient wash, so nice.
But not all is sunny and blissful in Pulse Emitter's world, the dreamworlds give way to moments of somber reflection, quiet sonic shrines to dusk and the setting sun. Moments of tension dissipate into the sinking tide, darkened tones pulse and hover in blackened ambiance, all oozing into a pool of nu new age grime. We dig Pulse Emitter's tendency to walk the line between light and dark, borrowing equaly from new age soundscaping and dark ambient synth magik, so rad and so recomended!

PULSE EMITTER The Palace Of Love (Ruralfaune / Synth Series) cd-r 9.98
Latest batch of swirly swooshy, psychedelic sci-fi synth new age drift from Pulse Emitter, aka Daryl Groetsch, and since we've raved on and on about PE over the course of close to 15 releases (and those are just the ones we were able to get enough of to list) we most definitely risk repeating ourselves, which is probably okay, as this is another perfect installment in Groetsch's ever expanding catalogue of otherworldly synthscapes.
This one is crazy limited too, we only have about 15 copies, and it's already out of print so odds are these will be gone in a flash, fans, you already know what you're instore for, and probably want to grab one of these quick. Newbies, prepare to be transported to some strange futureworld, but one as envisioned by our 1980 selves, rocket cars, and space probes, cities in orbit around dying planets, whole worlds buried beneath the ruined surface. We can't help but envision Logan's Run, especially on the first track here, a percolating arpeggiating synthscape laced with laser beam effects and deep buzzing ominous basslines, super soundtracky, and evocative of some low budget sci-fi future.
The second track is a bit more sun dappled and new agey, but is cut from the same cloth, so in some ways it almost sounds like the love scene from that imaginary future, but it too is laced with weird swooping low end buzz, and strange streaks of blooping and bleeping FX, which transform the tranquility of the main synth lines into something a bit more dramatic.
After a short-ish, music box like synth ballad, thick swells beneath tinkling melodies, comes the 10+ minute closer, a sprawling expanse of sci-fi space kraut synth drone bliss, super spare and abstract, dreamy and woozy and mediative, hazy and hypnotic, and the perfect soundtrack to drifting off, and floating weightless into space. So good.
And again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Already sold out at the label so these are indeed the last copies we'll be able to get...
MPEG Stream: "07:12"
MPEG Stream: "05:15"

PULSE EMITTER & PETE SWANSON s/t (Jyrk) cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Killer match up between Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans (and also overlord of the mighty Jyrk Collective label) and Pulse Emitter, a one-man synth outfit from Portland who not only whips up a serious wall of analog sound, he also builds his own gear, and has been making his own synths for years. Eat your hearts out Wolf Eyes. Actually, Wolf Eyes would not be a bad reference, although this collaboration is not nearly as caustic or abrasive as Wolf Eyes. In fact, it's downright soothing in a way. The opening track is a swirl of thick warm fuzzy washes of analog synth, like floating weightless in a sea of buzzing whir, neither soft nor sweet, but more a sort of roughly smooth. The second track is a bit more noisy, lots of high end, definitely testing your aural stamina, but in there somewhere is some melody, although it would take a suit of armor and some shock proof pliers to find it. The final track is a gorgeously creepy drone, almost like someone took the least structured Goblin track, and sort of smeared it into a single slow shifting tone, still rife with creepy tension and all sorts of haunting goodness, eventually letting the track explode in a frenzy of thick fuzz and some serious Merzbowian rrroooaaaar!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES. WE GOT 30 COPIES, ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD, IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL!
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

PULSE EMITTER / DATE PALMS / EXPO 70 / FACEPLANT split (Immune) lp 25.00
Originally scheduled to be released earlier this year on Record Store Day, this was easily one of the most anticipated RSD releases, which now, just a few months late, is finally here! Avid aQ list readers probably don't need to know much more. After all, it's four different aQ faves spread out over two lps: Pulse Emitter, Expo 70, Date Palms and Faceplant (Aaron Coyne of Peaking Lights), each offering up a whole side of unreleased material.
But in case you do need a little more to go onÉ Pulse Emitter, aka Darryl Groetsch delivers two length drifts of celestial synthscapery, all new age raga shimmer, soft swirling swells, dreamy melodic cascades, all woozy and washed out, ethereal and abstract, laced with playful melodies and lush ever shifting textures. Date Palms deliver a sidelong slab of smoldering psychedelic minimalism, one that starts out deep and droney, but soon blossoms into something much more rhythmic, a super skeletal sprawl of krautrock like mesmer, driving by a spare programmed rhythm and a thick buzzing bassline, wreathed in sitar like buzz, the vibe laid back and swoonsome, with just a hint of sinister malevolence, the perfect soundtrack for endless highways through darkened deserts, with the various elements gradually growing more and more dubbed out before slipping into a final stretch of hushed mesmer.
Expo 70 starts their side off with some Sabbath like riffage, low slung and swaggery, and then the drums kick in, and we're in full on metal territory, classic old school doom, who knew they had it in them? Sure they flirted with it in the past, but here they go for it. The heavy riffing and caveman drum pound is laced with some more psychedelic breakdowns with killer sorta shredding leads, the sort of spaced out stoner rock jam that could go on forever, but here eventually winds down into an oozing sprawl of muted black buzz. The second track is more what we're used to from Expo 70, at least at first, a sort of brooding cosmic shimmer, thick layers of synth and guitar whirring and swirling beneath a cloud of shimmering soft focus FX, but soon the drums come in, the track ominously and malevolently krautrocky, before blossoming into full on psychedelic space rock blowout, a sky full of tangled leads, the drums pounding and propulsive, the bassline woozy and fuzzy and darkly driving. Another mega jam that needs no terminus, but before it's cut off by running out of vinyl, the drums drift off, leaving just the guitar again to slowly fade out.
Faceplant's side opens with a cosmic disco version of Coynes' Peaking Lights, all dubbed out and psychedelic, but seriously groovy, and darkly funky, squelchy synths, spacey shimmer, plenty of reverb and echo, squiggly synth melodies everywhere, total retro-futuristic dubfunk grooviness. The second track is much more murky and laid back, sounding like a way more psychedelic and tripped out Muslimgauze, lurching rhythms, beneath a sky full of effects heavy swirl, more synth pulsations and an almost housey throb buried underneath, before finishing things off with a track that finds Coynes doing his best Carpenter / Goblin style synthscaping, a warped VHS soundtrack dipped in dub and sent spaceward, heady and hypnotic.
Killer stuff from all four groups. And as you might have imagined, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Includes a download coupon as well.
MPEG Stream: PULSE EMITTER "Bioluminescence"
MPEG Stream: DATE PALMS "Night Riding The Skyline"
MPEG Stream: EXPO 70 "Closet Full Of Candles"
MPEG Stream: FACEPLANT "Aggression"

PULSE PROGRAMMING s/t (Aesthetics) cd 13.98
On the same label that brought us the beautiful, minimal postrock of Icebreaker comes this disc of free-floating ambience and fragments of melody. A amniotic/cosmic record that will appeal to fans of Eno, and would fit perfectly in the Kranky-label's stable of drone artists...

PULSEFEAR Perichroresis (Profound Lore) cd 10.98

MPEG Stream: "Gauze"
MPEG Stream: "Lighthouse Pt. 1"

PULSINGER, PATRICK & TUNAKAN Schwanensee Remixed (Volksoper) cd 17.98
Paralleling the meticulously abused vinyl collages of Philip Jeck and the post-Fluxus artfulness of Eyvind Kang, Pulsinger & Tunakan's "Schwanesee Remixed" is an incredible piece of electroglitchmusik that could very easily hold its sampled origins in Zorn's sublime chamber ensemble, Masada.

PUMICE Pebbles (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations -- while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
MPEG Stream: "Eye Bath"
MPEG Stream: "Stop Over"
MPEG Stream: "Greenock"

PUMICE Pebbles (Soft Abuse) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL, this NZ fave from back in 2007! Lp limited to 300 copies, remastered, comes with download.
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations - while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
MPEG Stream: "Eye Bath"
MPEG Stream: "Stop Over"
MPEG Stream: "Greenock"

PUMICE Quo (Soft Abuse ) cd 14.98
For the last 14 years, New Zealander Stefan Neville has been issuing a steady stream of cassettes, lathe-cuts, cd-rs, 7"s and other assorted slabs of mysterious small-run skronk under the Pumice moniker. Somehow through it all Neville has managed to find a comfortable spot nestled in between two very distinct strains of NZ music-making. At their heart, the songs he writes are pop songs obviously indebted to the legacy of Flying Nun, The Tall Dwarves and The Clean; that said, his willful disregard for fidelity, his love of tape hiss, wow and flutter, garbled vocals and blasts of harsh drone are a tip o' the hat to kiwi noiseniks like Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, and Antony Milton. It's a compelling combination, as it allows his records to be both densely textural and supremely melodic - for every piece of blown out headphone candy, there's a memorable vocal or frighteningly catchy guitar riff. It's this incredible tug-of-war between (as we put it in our review) "doleful drone" and "sheer pop umph" that made us flip out over the last Pumice full-length, Pebbles, and we're happy to report that Neville's latest, Quo, finds him refining the Pumice formula in all the best possible ways to create a record full of impish charms, slack anthems, rambling bedrooms hiss, and speaker fried drone assaults!
Quo opens with "Pumice Quo," a song that hints at what is to come on the rest of the album: fuzzed-out, atonal guitars klang and skree like some sort of netherworldly faux-sitar over a ragged, swinging stomp that effortlessly mutates back and forth with a breezy, expansive, half-time swagger. Rhythmically and structurally it's all angular and math-y but it never sounds cold or analytical - it's like some incredible mix of Doc At The Radar Station and Celebrate The New Dark Age where you can't tell if it's Beefheart covering Polvo or vice versa, but everything sounds perfectly fucked up and damaged but so inexplicably catchy at the same time. Likewise, "World with Worms," a creeping, rumbling, blown-out, billowing sea shanty that mixes Neville's signature, mannered (almost goth, really) vocals with a teetering melody pounded out on some sort of half-broken chord organ or accordion.
The first half of the record continues to cast a few different lines - "Fort" sounds like some sort of classic mid-'90s B-side pop anthem you'd expect from GBV or Boyracer buried under 10 feet of shrieking keyboard noise; "Thermos in the Studio" is a winsome bedroom pop instrumental that would sound right at home buried amongst the ruins of Pavement's Westing (By Musket and Sextant) with lyrical slide guitar melodies that are simple, gorgeous and over in an instant; "Pebbles" is 2 minutes of rambling, shuffling, ramshackle pop. However, everything starts to come together with the second half of the record, as "Whole Hoof" looks back to the Polvo/Beefheart battle royale of the album opener but this time ads layers of distorted howling vocals. It starts out like Simply Saucer plowing through some freaked out rockabilly jam but mutates into something completely creepy and sinister at the end.
The album's second half is incredibly strong and manages to focus the scattershot elements of the first half without sacrificing any of those songs' chimpy playfulness. There's a darker element that emerges, but it never overwhelms the whole proceedings. "Sick Bay Duvet" starts out like a lost Fahey side being played back on a broken down gramophone, all rumbling, twanging, echoing, and slightly out of tune. When drums, melodica and a low, throbbing drone finally kick in at the end, it changes into something completely different - a kind of dour, anti-anthem that leads perfectly next track, "Dogwater," whose warbling, garbled take on Blackheart Procession's western goth vibe manages to come as both tongue-in-cheek and gracefully mannered. Things get stronger still with the last three songs: "Heavy Punter" is a solemn funeral shuffle built around a fractured Beefheart/Polvo riff filled out by ghostly keyboards that woosh and drone in and out of the background and fantastic, layered, pseudo-goth vocal stylings; "Battersby" is almost like Pumice's stab at punk rock with Casio tweeters battling against four on the floor drums and stumbling, disaffected vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on a Fall record (the whole thing comes across like some weird mashup of a NZ cd-r salvo and something off of a Messthetics comp - bizarrely catchy and certainly one of our favorites!); and album ender "Beak Remedy" is 7 minutes of blissed out, see-saw chord organ drone, ghostly tape loops, fluttering, stuttering ambient flickers of feedback, hum and hiss with percussive clomps that sneak in toward the end until the whole thing trickles out with choppy puffs of feedback and static.
All this adds up to a brilliant mix of pop songwriting and freaked out fuzzmongering that has been perking the ears of both customers and staff since it first arrived. We're confident that Quo is going to show up on many of our year end best-of lists, and we think you'll feel the same way about this blissed-out, smashed to pieces, melodic, thoughtful, mannered, playful and thoroughly recommended record!
MPEG Stream: "Pumice Quo"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Punter"
MPEG Stream: "Whole Hoof"

PUMICE Quo (Tipped Bowler Tapes) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
List #297's Record Of The Week (well, one of 'em) is now available on vinyl, 180 grams of it, limited to 300 copies! With new cover artwork as well. Here's our review from when we listed the cd version:
For the last 14 years, New Zealander Stefan Neville has been issuing a steady stream of cassettes, lathe-cuts, cd-rs, 7"s and other assorted slabs of mysterious small-run skronk under the Pumice moniker. Somehow through it all Neville has managed to find a comfortable spot nestled in between two very distinct strains of NZ music-making. At their heart, the songs he writes are pop songs obviously indebted to the legacy of Flying Nun, The Tall Dwarves and The Clean; that said, his willful disregard for fidelity, his love of tape hiss, wow and flutter, garbled vocals and blasts of harsh drone are a tip o' the hat to kiwi noiseniks like Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, and Antony Milton. It's a compelling combination, as it allows his records to be both densely textural and supremely melodic - for every piece of blown out headphone candy, there's a memorable vocal or frighteningly catchy guitar riff. It's this incredible tug-of-war between (as we put it in our review) "doleful drone" and "sheer pop umph" that made us flip out over the last Pumice full-length, Pebbles, and we're happy to report that Neville's latest, Quo, finds him refining the Pumice formula in all the best possible ways to create a record full of impish charms, slack anthems, rambling bedrooms hiss, and speaker fried drone assaults!
Quo opens with "Pumice Quo," a song that hints at what is to come on the rest of the album: fuzzed-out, atonal guitars klang and skree like some sort of netherworldly faux-sitar over a ragged, swinging stomp that effortlessly mutates back and forth with a breezy, expansive, half-time swagger. Rhythmically and structurally it's all angular and math-y but it never sounds cold or analytical - it's like some incredible mix of Doc At The Radar Station and Celebrate The New Dark Age where you can't tell if it's Beefheart covering Polvo or vice versa, but everything sounds perfectly fucked up and damaged but so inexplicably catchy at the same time. Likewise, "World with Worms," a creeping, rumbling, blown-out, billowing sea shanty that mixes Neville's signature, mannered (almost goth, really) vocals with a teetering melody pounded out on some sort of half-broken chord organ or accordion.
The first half of the record continues to cast a few different lines - "Fort" sounds like some sort of classic mid-'90s B-side pop anthem you'd expect from GBV or Boyracer buried under 10 feet of shrieking keyboard noise; "Thermos in the Studio" is a winsome bedroom pop instrumental that would sound right at home buried amongst the ruins of Pavement's Westing (By Musket and Sextant) with lyrical slide guitar melodies that are simple, gorgeous and over in an instant; "Pebbles" is 2 minutes of rambling, shuffling, ramshackle pop. However, everything starts to come together with the second half of the record, as "Whole Hoof" looks back to the Polvo/Beefheart battle royale of the album opener but this time ads layers of distorted howling vocals. It starts out like Simply Saucer plowing through some freaked out rockabilly jam but mutates into something completely creepy and sinister at the end.
The album's second half is incredibly strong and manages to focus the scattershot elements of the first half without sacrificing any of those songs' chimpy playfulness. There's a darker element that emerges, but it never overwhelms the whole proceedings. "Sick Bay Duvet" starts out like a lost Fahey side being played back on a broken down gramophone, all rumbling, twanging, echoing, and slightly out of tune. When drums, melodica and a low, throbbing drone finally kick in at the end, it changes into something completely different - a kind of dour, anti-anthem that leads perfectly next track, "Dogwater," whose warbling, garbled take on Blackheart Procession's western goth vibe manages to come as both tongue-in-cheek and gracefully mannered. Things get stronger still with the last three songs: "Heavy Punter" is a solemn funeral shuffle built around a fractured Beefheart/Polvo riff filled out by ghostly keyboards that woosh and drone in and out of the background and fantastic, layered, pseudo-goth vocal stylings; "Battersby" is almost like Pumice's stab at punk rock with Casio tweeters battling against four on the floor drums and stumbling, disaffected vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on a Fall record (the whole thing comes across like some weird mashup of a NZ cd-r salvo and something off of a Messthetics comp - bizarrely catchy and certainly one of our favorites!); and album ender "Beak Remedy" is 7 minutes of blissed out, see-saw chord organ drone, ghostly tape loops, fluttering, stuttering ambient flickers of feedback, hum and hiss with percussive clomps that sneak in toward the end until the whole thing trickles out with choppy puffs of feedback and static.
All this adds up to a brilliant mix of pop songwriting and freaked out fuzzmongering that has been perking the ears of both customers and staff since it first arrived. We're confident that Quo is going to show up on many of our year end best-of lists, and we think you'll feel the same way about this blissed-out, smashed to pieces, melodic, thoughtful, mannered, playful and thoroughly recommended record!
MPEG Stream: "Pumice Quo"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Punter"
MPEG Stream: "Whole Hoof"

PUMICE Raft (Last Visible Dog) cd 9.98
Another slice of prime lo-fi New Zealand "pop" music. But pop only in the absolutely loosest sense of the world. Pumice, AKA Stephan Neville, crafts a haunting, murky, off kilter, otherworldly sort-of-pop music. Lots of warble, both instrument and malfunctioning tape, big ol' reverbed guitar, super distorted heavily affected melodies that sound like high pitched alien transmissions, mumbling marbles in the mouth vocals, clattery percussion, damaged motorik rhythms, not exactly in tune guitars, angular riffing, all cobbled together into one big beautiful chaotic pop mess that sounds a bit like a battle of the bands between the Dead C and the Velvet Underground, after all had partaken of the complimentary pot brownies, the secretly spiked punch, the PCP popsicles, oh and all that horse tranquilizer..
Damaged and druggy and darkly delirious, truly bizarre but strangely beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "In Space (On The Burst)"
MPEG Stream: "Pipes"

PUMICE s/t (CMR) lathe cut 7" 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We won't go into too much detail with these as we only got a tiny handful of each. Latest batch of ultra limited lathe cuts from New Zealand label CMR. Each one packaged in a super striking, simple cardstock jacket, most with printed inner sleeves, Limited to 60 copies, of which we got the remaining stock. Once these are gone, they are gone forever.
Two brief blasts from AQ fave Pumice, aka Stephan Neville. One side delicate and ephemeral, gorgeous disembodied guitar melodies, drifting in a wide open field of static and distortion, drifty and spacy and so lovely. The other side clattery free noise jam, with junkyard percussion, atonal melodic buzz, bits of low end growl, everything angular and abstract, stumbling and chaotic and strangely catchy.

PUMICE Sexual (Live) ( Pseudo Arcana) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Re-release of two out of print cassettes from 1998-2202. Indie rock, but of the fuzzed out, buzzy and drone-y, ramshackle EXTREMELY LO-FI variety. Jangly at moments, sparse and damaged at others, noisy and spastic at others. Cool and weird and pretty fucked up. Includes a handful of extra live tracks!
MPEG Stream: "The Lady Of The Pitch"
MPEG Stream: "Tank In The Hole"