16-17 Early Recordings (Savage Land) 2cd 19.98
Long overdue reissue of the impossible to find early releases from Swiss extremist free jazz / outrock outfit 16-17! Because of using saxophone, 16-17 were always tagged as some kind of 'jazz' group, but if this was jazz, it was a kind of jazz no one had EVER imagined at the time, extreme and difficult listening for sure, like Borbetomagus filtered through the Swans or like a snake charmer high on PCP jamming with Prong's rhythm section. Or even a free jazz Whitehouse! 16-17 were a shrieking banshee, a pummeling behemoth, massive, ear shredding, primitive horn blasting freakout predating Zorn's extreme jazz (Painkiller et. al.) by at least seven years. This trio (saxophonist Alex Buess, drummer Knut Remond and guitarist Markus Kneubuhler) wove tight, tense grooves of pounding drums, pulsing thick ropy low end guitar throb, and atop it ,all Buess' wildly squealing, squirming, snarling sax. 16-17 sound was so intense and far out, and so much modern music can be heard in these tracks, Flying Luttenbachers, Laddio Bolocko, Aufgehoben No Process, Painkiller, a few years later and maybe Buess would be celebrating HIS 50th birthday with star studded NYC performances and multiple cd releases, but as it is, these guys remained a footnote, lurking on the periphery, making common cause with Kevin Martin's God and Alboth and the even the Digital Hardcore label, their legacy indisputable, modern music's debt unrepayable, so thanks to Savage Land we can all now genuflect before the Gods of ultra extreme hardcore free jazz post punk whatthefuck, hear where it all started, feel the same thrill folks must have felt stumbling into some dingy New York dive when 16-17 came over and toured with the Swans, and being fucking flattened by these guys.
Includes the first two albums, Self Titled (1986) and When All Else Fails (1989) as well as the ULTRA rare Hardkore & Buffbunker cassette (1984). Two discs wrapped in a cardboard slipcover. Transferred from the best available sources, digitally remastered by Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers) and this is the very first time ANY of this music has been available on cd!
MPEG Stream: "Kat"
MPEG Stream: "Speech"
MPEG Stream: "Hardkore 1"

16-17 Gyatso (Savage Land) cd 14.98
WARNING: You -should- play this loud. But still, be careful! Make sure any of your easily-aggravated housemates aren't asleep. Move breakable objects out of the way. Take your heart medication. All reasonable precautions before subjecting yourself to the might of 16-17's newly reissued Gyatso.
The music of Switzerland's 16-17 has been called industrial free jazz. And it's certainly got the swarming, squealing saxophones of the most freaked out free jazz we've heard. But with its industrial/metallic elements, the BRUTAL trance-inducing grind of martial drumming and guitar chuggery, maybe "free" jazz isn't the word. How 'bout "totalitarian jazz"? When we previously highlighted the two-cd Early Recordings collection of 16-17's '80s output, we described the band as the "Gods of ultra extreme hardcore free jazz post punk whatthefuck". Ok, that's about right.
Well, Gyatso, originally released in 1994 on Kevin Martin's long gone Pathological imprint (home to Martin's projects like Techno Animal, God, and Ice, as well as crucial discs by Oxbow, Peter & Caspar Brotzmann, Terminal Cheesecake, Zeni Geva, etc.) was even more insane than the stuff on Early Recordings, being to us the pinnacle of 16-17's recorded existence. The thing is, this album takes their earlier excesses into a whole new realm, finally getting their music the heavy duty production treatment it deserved. It's about the heaviest "jazz" ever! Basically, imagine Godflesh teamed up with Peter Brotzmann (Machine Gun era) and this is about what you'd get. The aggressive, constantly-escalating tension of machine-gunning opener "Attack-Impulse" pretty much wipes the floor with all other contenders, going beyond the likes of Zorn's Painkiller or fellow Swiss maniacs Alboth! It simply kills. Having done so, for the rest of the disc 16-17 make sure you stay good and dead with an expansive onslaught of repetitive, rigid rhythms and psychedelic skree-scapes, with brassy bass drone and high-end sax skronk swimming in an ominous electronic miasma. A couple extra-noisy remixes are included at the end to wrap things up in the most extreme manner possible. (These appeared on the original version too.)
The trio responsible for making this masterwork consisted of Alex Buess (screaming saxophones and bass clarinet), Markus Kneubuhler (guitar, electronics and tapes), and the relentless Knut Remond on drums. Also, this disc features a couple very special guests: on utterly sick, thuddering bass, there's Ben "G.C." Green of (indeed) Godflesh fame. And providing electronic samples, Pathological head honcho Kevin Martin.
This essential reissue has been digitally remastered by Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and comes with a thick booklet of extensive new liner notes based on interviews with Buess and Martin, discussing the history of the band. We were fascinated to learn that Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine was such a big fan of 16-17 that back in 1995, he actually invited Alex Buess to work with him on the (still unrealized) follow up to Loveless! Who would have guessed? Apparently Alex spent a month in the studio with MBV, without much to show for it unfortunately... though we'd be still interested to hear what they were up to..
But, it surely couldn't be anything like this, there's nothing better as far as "ultra extreme hardcore free jazz industrial" or whatever is concerned!!
MPEG Stream: "Attack-Impulse"
MPEG Stream: "The Trawler"

AAIMON Amen (Klangverhaeltnisse) cassette 9.98
It's easy to tell something very witch housey is going on with these guys, present are all the usual signifiers, the band name is actually spelled with a triangle instead of the first 'A' in the band name, the song titles are a mix of lower case and capital letters, as well as all manner of symbols, but the proof as they say is in the creepy, electronic gloom pop ambience, and so it is, as the band unfurls a haunting expanse of swirling ominous ambient synthscapery, before the beats kick, an awesomely distorted and blown out dream-drag groove, a little bit skitter, the beats crumbling in clouds of buzz and crackle, the opener is super epic, almost a sort of cinematic theme type vibe, you can almost imagine some backlit figures walking in slow motion through the ruins of some old Victorian ballroom. And so it goes, we're gonna stop feeling like we need to defend witch house, cuz separated from the blog hyped hipster championed genre signifier, there's very little NOT to dig about this stuff, and this tape in particular. The second track offers up a sort of decayed Portishead, a skittery slowcore downtempo creep, the vocals an almost death metal cookie monster growl, but slowed way down so it sounds even more demonic, the in-the-red synth stabs, that sound more like a malfunctioning dubstep bass wobble only add to the woozy off kilter feel. There are of course creepy angelic (demonic?) female vox, gloomy and gothy and dreamy, with later tracks almost sounding like bastardized gloom pop versions of radio ballads. For everyone into Zola Jesus, LA Vampires, Circuit Des Yeux, Esben And The Witch, as well as the usual witch house culprits like Salem, Mellow Grave and Mater Suspiria Vision. But again, unlike those outfits, Aimon deliver something more darkly dreary and fuzzy, gloom-poppy and bestially balladic.
Of course as these things always are, EXTREMELY LIMITED, includes a download coupon as well!
MPEG Stream: "Pure"
MPEG Stream: "Amen"
MPEG Stream: "Maasym"

ADN 'CKRYSTALL Jazz Mad (Dark Entries) lp 15.98
One of two new Dark Entries titles this week is this bizarre French progressive synth obscurity from 1982, ADN'Ckrystall. Erick Moncollin, the man behind this one-man-band, recorded this in four days but it has as many ideas crammed into its six tracks as a candyland record store filled to the brim with Gong, Vangelis, Tim Blake and Bernard Szajner albums! Starting with the darkwave adrenaline pop of "Cocaina Vitamina", the lengthy mind-bending and genre-jumping tracks that follow employ spacey electronic synthesis, cavey dirges, occasional plodding new romantic vocals and a wonderful outsider sense of unbridled compositional experimentation. Every time we play this, we sell a copy. Weirdo French new wave prog is always welcome in our book and big thanks to Dark Entries for introducing this into our lives!
MPEG Stream: "Cocaina Vitamina"
MPEG Stream: "Pour L'Amour D'Un Cygne"
MPEG Stream: "Le Blues De La Fille Aux Jambes De Jeans"

ALCEST Les Voyages De L'Ame (Prophecy) cd 14.98
Really, what can we say at this point about French shoegaze / post black metallers Alcest, that hasn't already been said, by us, and pretty much everybody else? Alcest are pretty much the gold standard when it comes to soaring emotional melodic shoegaze black metal (along with Amesoeurs, but they're both fronted by the same guy anyway), and with every record they move further and further away from actual buzzing blackness, but at the same time, they keep getting better and better (production, arrangement, songwriting) and in the process, their ability to blend their dreamy jangle and black buzz far surpasses any of the other groups out there trying for the same effect. There's no jarring shift from crystalline shimmer, and hazy dreamy drift to blasting buzz, it's totally organic, and sure, in the process, perhaps the black and the buzz becomes muted and less, well, buzzy and black, but the strange thing is, no one is complaining. Even the grimmest of metalheads seems to love Alcest (and Amesoeurs). It's the Depeche Mode principle again, like Depeche Mode, all metalheads love Alcest. Not that we can blame them, what's not to love? Especially here, on what is arguably the group's masterpiece, so epic, and melodic, and sweeping and soaring, lush and textured, alternatingly heavy and majestic, dreamy and drifty, heavy on the post rock and the jangle, with the black metallisims making up a relatively small part of the sound, and when the band do get into some buzzy blackness, the infuse it with an impossible melodic sense, and the fact that the sound is so lush and the record is so well produced, it makes it sound heavier than most proper black metal bands, not brittle and buzzy, or chaotic and furious, but epic and crushing and MASSIVE. It can only really be a matter of time before non metalheads catch on. There's plenty here that would not sound at all out of place alongside Explosions In The Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor and M83 and Mogwai and all the rest, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if this had come out on Temporary Residence, or even Matador. Maybe that's in the cards, but for now, we can all continue to bathe in Alcest's glorious sonic glow, while they still remain, at least tenuously, in the underground. At this point, this can't really be a contender for black metal record of the year, cuz it's finally just too far removed, but it's still so goddamn good, we're having a hard time imagining very many records this year, metal or otherwise, will top it.
MPEG Stream: "Autre Temps"
MPEG Stream: "La Ou Naissent Les Couleurs Nouvelles"
MPEG Stream: "Les Voyages De L'Ame"

ALCEST Les Voyages De L'Ame (Prophecy) lp 42.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Really, what can we say at this point about French shoegaze / post black metallers Alcest, that hasn't already been said, by us, and pretty much everybody else? Alcest are pretty much the gold standard when it comes to soaring emotional melodic shoegaze black metal (along with Amesoeurs, but they're both fronted by the same guy anyway), and with every record they move further and further away from actual buzzing blackness, but at the same time, they keep getting better and better (production, arrangement, songwriting) and in the process, their ability to blend their dreamy jangle and black buzz far surpasses any of the other groups out there trying for the same effect. There's no jarring shift from crystalline shimmer, and hazy dreamy drift to blasting buzz, it's totally organic, and sure, in the process, perhaps the black and the buzz becomes muted and less, well, buzzy and black, but the strange thing is, no one is complaining. Even the grimmest of metalheads seems to love Alcest (and Amesoeurs). It's the Depeche Mode principle again, like Depeche Mode, all metalheads love Alcest. Not that we can blame them, what's not to love? Especially here, on what is arguably the group's masterpiece, so epic, and melodic, and sweeping and soaring, lush and textured, alternatingly heavy and majestic, dreamy and drifty, heavy on the post rock and the jangle, with the black metallisims making up a relatively small part of the sound, and when the band do get into some buzzy blackness, the infuse it with an impossible melodic sense, and the fact that the sound is so lush and the record is so well produced, it makes it sound heavier than most proper black metal bands, not brittle and buzzy, or chaotic and furious, but epic and crushing and MASSIVE. It can only really be a matter of time before non metalheads catch on. There's plenty here that would not sound at all out of place alongside Explosions In The Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor and M83 and Mogwai and all the rest, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if this had come out on Temporary Residence, or even Matador. Maybe that's in the cards, but for now, we can all continue to bathe in Alcest's glorious sonic glow, while they still remain, at least tenuously, in the underground. At this point, this can't really be a contender for black metal record of the year, cuz it's finally just too far removed, but it's still so goddamn good, we're having a hard time imagining very many records this year, metal or otherwise, will top it.
MPEG Stream: "Autre Temps"
MPEG Stream: "La Ou Naissent Les Couleurs Nouvelles"
MPEG Stream: "Les Voyages De L'Ame"

ALPINE, FRANK s/t (Weird Records) cd 11.98
One of two new releases recently from Wierd Records, the other reviewed last list, the long awaited new one from Xeno & Oaklander, and then there's this, the debut from Los Angeles one man dread-dance coldwave synth wrangler Frank Alpine, aka Rich Moreno, an LA punk scene veteran, who channels all that pink energy into a bit of synthwave that's surprisingly grim and grimey, evoking images of the gritty LA streets, of squalor and filth, the sound shadowy and dark and sinister. The opening track has to be THEE synth jam of the year, all creepy crawly, but weirdly melodic, the synth sounds buzzy and thick, cool weird handclap rhythms and all manner of mysterious sonic embellishments. It actually reminds us of a cold wave reinterpretation of The Specials' "Ghost Town", that same sort of haunting moodiness, but wedded to a sound that's weirdly danceable. We've probably listened to that track about 20 times so far, and besides it being a great song, couldn't quite figure out why it resonated with us so much, until we learned a little bit more about Mr. Alpine, who apparently only uses consumer Casio synths to create the harshest, most lo-fi sound possible, which is exactly what that ineffable thing is, other cold/synth wave outfits sometimes sound like they went to Guitar Center and just charged a bunch of cool gear, but these tracks, you can imagine Alpine with a bag full of crappy synths, trudging down the Sunset strip, head down, middle of the night, headed for his dank basement of a practice space, where he creates THESE sounds. The rhythms are immediately recognizable, as those brittle skeletal beats, but hear, wreathed in synth buzz, and woven into gristly shadow epics, they become a weirdly propulsive pulse, driving these grim late night anthems. Just might be our favorite thing on Wierd yet, and definitely the best thing to emerge from this new wave of new (cold/synth/dark) wave in ages...
Packaged in a super striking red and black mini lp style jacket (or not so mini, in the case of the actual lp version).
MPEG Stream: "No Exit"
MPEG Stream: "Heart Is Grey"
MPEG Stream: "Painted Eyes"

ALPINE, FRANK s/t (Weird Records) lp 17.98
One of two new releases recently from Wierd Records, the other reviewed last list, the long awaited new one from Xeno & Oaklander, and then there's this, the debut from Los Angeles one man dread-dance coldwave synth wrangler Frank Alpine, aka Rich Moreno, an LA punk scene veteran, who channels all that pink energy into a bit of synthwave that's surprisingly grim and grimey, evoking images of the gritty LA streets, of squalor and filth, the sound shadowy and dark and sinister. The opening track has to be THEE synth jam of the year, all creepy crawly, but weirdly melodic, the synth sounds buzzy and thick, cool weird handclap rhythms and all manner of mysterious sonic embellishments. It actually reminds us of a cold wave reinterpretation of The Specials' "Ghost Town", that same sort of haunting moodiness, but wedded to a sound that's weirdly danceable. We've probably listened to that track about 20 times so far, and besides it being a great song, couldn't quite figure out why it resonated with us so much, until we learned a little bit more about Mr. Alpine, who apparently only uses consumer Casio synths to create the harshest, most lo-fi sound possible, which is exactly what that ineffable thing is, other cold/synth wave outfits sometimes sound like they went to Guitar Center and just charged a bunch of cool gear, but these tracks, you can imagine Alpine with a bag full of crappy synths, trudging down the Sunset strip, head down, middle of the night, headed for his dank basement of a practice space, where he creates THESE sounds. The rhythms are immediately recognizable, as those brittle skeletal beats, but hear, wreathed in synth buzz, and woven into gristly shadow epics, they become a weirdly propulsive pulse, driving these grim late night anthems. Just might be our favorite thing on Wierd yet, and definitely the best thing to emerge from this new wave of new (cold/synth/dark) wave in ages...
Packaged in a super striking red and black mini lp style jacket (or not so mini, in the case of the actual lp version).
MPEG Stream: "No Exit"
MPEG Stream: "Heart Is Grey"
MPEG Stream: "Painted Eyes"

ALTAR OF PERVERSION / MORDAEHOTH / DER BLUTHARSCH Tributo A Der Blutharsch (New Era Productions) cd 13.98
When you imagine a tribute to Austrian apocalyptic industrial / militaristic folk legends Der Blutharsch, you might not imagine it being black metal by way of Italy and the Netherlands, but that's precisely what transpired way back in 2005, when Italian black metallers Altar of Perversion and Dutch BM horde Mordaehoth each offered up their own sonic homage to DB, each taking up a side of the record with their own twisted take on DB's already twisted blackened sounds. While that slab of vinyl disappeared before we could manage to get a single copy, it's now been released on cd, with the original tracks from the 10", but with the added bonus of SEVEN Der Blutharsch tracks, over thirty minutes of grim grey sonics, the sounds which ostensibly inspired these blackened reworkings.
Altar of Perversion are up first, with a sprawling 11 plus minute epic, that blurs the line between lurching doomic creep, and frenzied black blast, the sound raw and lo-fi, the guitars murky and droney, the track a lumbering dirge for the first little bit, melancholic and depressive, the sounds seem to bleed and ooze, sometimes slipping into killer droned out stretches of blurred buzz, before slipping back into that doomy trudge. It's not really until maybe half way through that things get really black and buzzy, but even then, the production is so warped, brittle and weirdly spare, that it retains that doomy energy of the first half, while wedding it to blasting beats and soaring fast picked majestic melodies. Eventually the sound does explode into a more standard blasting blackness, still, the sound retains a sort of seasick lurch that lurks just below the surface. Hard to say if it's a cover, or just a song dedicated to the mighty DB, but either way, it definitely exudes the same sort of black energy.
Mordaehoth take up three tracks, starting off with what sounds like some wartime radio recordings, only to launch right into it, weaving pagan flute like melodies into an almost punky sounding crush, clean vocals add to the pagan vibe, lulling us into thinking there won't be much blackness until the song darkens considerable, the vocals transformed into a sinister demonic croak, the music following suit, blasting and buzzing, only to return to that opening lilting shuffling blackened folk. The second track is a bit more dirgey, and simultaneously more majestic, soaring melodies, over crumbling distorted riffage, buried lo-fi drumming, but it's the third track where the Der Blutharsch homage becomes way less subtle, after starting out with a blast of growled buzzing blackness, the song slips into a more folky buzzy sort of cadence, which is soon joined by a distorted voice, sounding like some sort of militaristic sloganeering, over loudspeakers, before the band explodes into some serious churning black buzz, still accompanied by those voices, transforming the black metal into an almost military sounding march, and then the metal is peeled away leaving, some old scratchy military propaganda record spinning, then what sounds like some super dramatic footage from a war film, all ominous horns and more mysterious voices. Pretty goddamn great. easy to imagine this is what DB might sound like if they were black metal.
But then come the DB tracks, worth it for the price of admission alone even if you're not into black metal, unclear if these tracks are exclusive, but they are fantastic, brooding and dramatic, haunting and cinematic, deep spoken vocals, all manner of samples, martial snares, woozy ominous strings, warped swirling black ambience, wheezing industrial crunch, blurred blackened melodies, darkly rhythmic apocalyptic folk, Caretaker-like fuzzy, faded atmospheric drift, mysteriously cinematic soundscapes, raga like drones, and of course plenty of military marches, snippets of propaganda films, all woven into DB's gorgeous, barren, blackened soundworld.
Gorgeous packaging too, all black on black and extremely subtle. LIMITED TO 999 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: ALTAR OF PERVERSION "Untitled"
MPEG Stream: MORDAEHOTH "Untitled"
MPEG Stream: DER BLUTHARSCH "Untitled"
MPEG Stream: DER BLUTHARSCH "Untitled"

AMBER ASYLUM Frozen In Amber (Neurot) cd 14.98
Reissue of the debut cd from this atmospheric local group, that uses classical chamber music instrumentation to create dark, beautiful sounds akin to a black metal Rachel's. Black metal? Well, this was originally released this by Elfenblut, an imprint of now defunct British label Misanthropy, famous as the home of Burzum! And, for further "heavy" credentials, we should mention that band leader Kris Force has played with both Neurosis and Swans. This was previously only an import, and now boasts three bonus tracks exclusive to this new version!

AMBER ASYLUM Garden of Love, Autonomy Suite, Still Point (Bio-Fidelic) 10" 9.98
First we've heard from local moody metallic chamber ensemble Amber Asylum in quite some time. Rumor is there have been label problems, but you'd never know it from this amazing self released 10" (other than it being, um, self released). Three brand new tracks that take Amber Asylum's gothic strings and vocals soun even further out, having now expanded their lineup to include former members of the Gault and SF black metal legends Weakling. The opening track is quite possibly the best thing we've heard from them, a brooding dramatic soundscape of intensely moody strings, and anguished melodies. Locked in by simple almost programmed sounding rhythms with haunting operatic vocals drifting ghostlike through the mix. Sounds a bit like Skepticism with a string section, and you know that is a very good thing. The second track heads into almost Goblin territory at points with super aggressive pizzicato strings, bows sawing away at the strings emitting truly ominous melodies. Side B clocks in at a little over 12 minutes, and is far more tranquil, an expansive, romantic epic, melancholic yet hopeful, with delicate crystalline piano figures, very subtle strings and sweetly plaintive vocals. So nice. Available only on limited edition 10" vinyl!

AMBER ASYLUM Still Point (Profound Lore) cd 12.98
Esteemed chamber music goddess Kris Force returns with what is quite possibly her most stark compositions to date. She's joined by some of the Bay Area's finest and most beloved of the indie metal and rock community including John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, Ludicra), Jackie Perez-Gratz (Grayceon), Tim Green (The Fucking Champs, Concentrick), Lorraine Rath (The Gault), and Sarah Schaffer (The Gault, Weakling). Still Point begins with three songs that slowly drift in on droning strings (violin, viola and cello) and ghostly choral vocals. From there the gothic proceedings build gradually with the entrance of minimal piano, guitar, flute, trumpet and percussion. As always, absolutely haunting and stunningly gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "In The Still Point He Remains"
MPEG Stream: "Black Phoebe"
MPEG Stream: "The Summation"

AMBER ASYLUM The Supernatural Parlour Collection (Release) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Fourth album from this popular local chamber-rock outfit. Somewhere between Dead Can Dance, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and In Extremo (the more RenFaire parts). Gothic atmospheres created with cello, violin, drums, and wispy female vocals. Mournful instrumental acoustic string-drone embellished with electronic effects: a beautiful, depressive sound. The album concludes with their surprisingly straightforward cello-metal version of "Black Sabbath" (complete with rain and thunder intro). That cover, which seemed so suitable, is a bit disappointing, but the rest of the disc is quite nice and mood-inducing.

AMENTI SUNCROWN Zenith Pitch (World Serpent) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Not your laptop processing from Mille Plateaux or 12K, Amenti Suncrown prefer the increasingly antiquated arsenal of multiple keyboards, samplers, and color flashing gadgets to achieve their dark ambient / electronic soundscapes. Aptly released by World Serpent, Amenti Suncrown reflects a number of the same ideas held by World Serpent staples Coil and Nurse With Wound, with an absurdist / sci-fi / occultist view of the seminal electronic synthesis created by Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler. For those of you current re-living New Wave through Adult, Fischerspooner, and The Faint, Amenti Suncrown will offer a slight detour back to the 'magick ov 23.'

ANENZEPHALIA Noehaem (Tesco) cd 17.98
This is quite possibly one of the scariest records we have ever heard. It's occasionally pretty, occasionally noisy, but always haunting and pregnant with the possibility of tragedy. Not sure how or why this particular record evokes such a strong reaction, but this most recent record by German ambient noise terrorists Anenzephalia pushes all of those buttons. Feeling like you're being followed, sensing you're about to die, knowing that there is nothing you can do about anything...powerful stuff.
First there are rumbling strings, reverberating in vast expanses of near silence. Like a twentieth century classical score to a horror movie, Lustmord plays Ligeti, with a dark sweeping romanticism tempered by slight unease. Soon, we're subsumed by a dense field of distorted crackle, over a simple militaristic clunk, like a mysterious stranger trudging up a flight of rickety stairs, while a super distorted voice buried in the shortwave struggles desperately to reach across from the other side. The record continues on in a similar fashion, a hair raising, lugubrious crawl through massive washes of low end throb, surrounded by a cracking field of interference, wth random distant clanks and clatter, all coalescing into a barely discernable rhythmic pulse, that mesmerises and leads you deeper. This sounds like the soundtrack to the scariest haunted house ever, but unlike normal 'haunted house records', Noehaem would have the neighborhood children having coronaries, soiling themselves, and sent soon afterwards to asylums to live out the rest of their catatonic days. This is some dark and doomy, creepy and dreary, and gorgeously frightening stuff.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

ANENZEPHALIA s/t (Death Factory) cd 17.98

ANGELS OF LIGHT How I Loved You (Young God) cd 14.98
A few years back, Michael Gira dissolved the Swans, and effectively split his band's aesthetic in two, with the soiled ambient project Body Lovers / Body Haters on one side, and the orchestrated songs of Angels of Light on the other. "How I Loved You" is the second Angels of Light album and, as could be gathered from the title, is a collection of love songs. The album begins speaking of love with elation, as in "Evangeline," where Gira pleads to his object of desire with the wistful innocence of a school boy. The following "Untitled Love Song" is a strolling duet between Gira and ex-Pain Teen's singer Bliss Blood, both of whom seem uncharacteristically full of sweetness and light. With those being the most benevolent images of love that he has to offer, Gira then guides the album down a steep slope of sexual dependency, perverse lusts, and a gristled despair in which Gira's body continuously betrays his mind's wishes to never fuck again.
From here on, each track from "How I Loved You" begins with a simple languid melody that could easily be mistaken for anything from the recent Low record but steadily builds in complexity, driving into deeper, darker, and more intense realms.
RealAudio clip: "Evangeline"
RealAudio clip: "New City Of The Future"
RealAudio clip: "My Suicide"

AQUARIUS BUTTONS 2 x 1" buttons 1.00
Hey, we just got another batch of AQ buttons made up...
Spread the word! Show the world your true aQ colors! COOL COOL COOL aQ buttons, now in 6 different vibrant color combinations. 5 new color combos (blue on pink, red on dark grey, dark blue on blue, orange on black, and yellowish green on dark green) and a popular one we had previously (brown on yellow).
TWO FOR $1!!! Colors are random, but buy enough and you'll be guaranteed to get 'em all! And of course all feature our spiffy James Gang style logo!! So stylish!

ASSS August 2010 (self-released) cassette 5.00

AUTHOR & PUNISHER Ursus Americanus (Seventh Rule) cd 11.98
We first discovered Author & Punisher via a super limited dvd, cuz really, as good as the music is, and it is amazing, you sort of have to see the music being made to understand just how fucking nuts this stuff, and this guy really is. A&P is one man, Tristan Shone, who builds his own instruments, which in and of itself is nothing new, but we're not talking cobbled together rickety speakers and Amps For Christ style plywood soundmachines (although we love that stuff), we're talking gorgeous, precision machined instruments, that look like modern art, huge smooth steel drums, strange handles that slide along metal rails, bizarre triggers and stainless steel mouthpieces fitted with multiple microphones, Author & Punisher's setup looks like some post modern Rube Goldbergian sonic mousetrap, all glimmering metals and smooth expanses of perfectly fitted machines, the live performance as physical as any normal instrumentalist if not more so, Shone spinning the huge metal; drum creating thick swells of rib cage rattling low end, slamming the strange handles along the steel rails producing booming bursts of percussion, the strange Cylon like microphone producing an inhuman alien bellow. Even sans sound, the performance is riveting. Mesmerizing. We were lucky enough to host an Author & Punisher instore, and besides being incredible to see up close, the sounds produced shook the old wooden building that houses aQ so hard, that our upstairs neighbors came down in a panic, explaining that the whole hose was vibrating, and things were falling off shelves and tables.
Now imagine that sort of physical energy, converted into sound, but not just any sound, but totally mesmerizingly epic, crushing buzz drenched post industrial heaviness. A sound that falls somewhere between the industrial crush of Godflesh, and the blown out electronic buzz and glitch of Digital Hardcore, but all blurred into a sort of abject blackened industrial doom. All manner of low end pulsing and buzzing, rumbling and whirring, the beats skittery and stuttery one second, pounding and Teutonic the next, and then there's the bass generator, which we assume comes from that huge metal disc, cuz a sound that thick and intense should really come from a massive 300 pound hunk of spinning metal, that impossibly dense low end, weirdly woozy and almost liquid, the tones being adjusted on the fly, so much so that it sounds like the speed of the recording is being messed with, the sound warbly and woozy, warped and darkly damaged and druggy. While at the same time being heavy as fuck, and pretty much WAY more brutal that bands with real drummer and a phalanx of guitarists in front of rows of amps.
It's amazing how much of the physicality is captured on the record, more so here than on past recordings, the sound managing the delicate balance between blown out amp destroying crush, and tightly wound, barely controlled chaos. The songs slipping from lumbering doomic lurch, to swoonsome skittery abstract dronemusic, from noisy metallic pummel, thick, sinewy digidub, and from thick almost metalgaze drift, to super spare haunting minimal skitter.
Ursus Americanus is definitely the culmination of past recordings and live performances, managing the seemingly impossible task of creating something that stands on its own musically, but that captures a soundmaking method that you're unlikely to experience from anyone else. Totally incredible. And obviously, if you get the chance, see A&P live, and have your mind (and ears) blown.
MPEG Stream: "Terrorbird"
MPEG Stream: "Lonely"
MPEG Stream: "Mercy Dub"

AUTONERVOUS s/t (Cochon) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Autonervous are Jessie Evans of The Vanishing and Bettina Koster of Malaria -- bringing together two generations of post punk and new wave. Both Koster and Evans are hellions on the saxophone, so it's not surprising that that instrument is featured as prominently on the front cover as the ladies themselves. The two also share the synthesizer, bass and vocal duties on the album, but go it alone on guitar (Koster) and drums (Evans). It's clear they're having a blast together in producing their shiveringly cold marches, sharing an easy flair for dramatics with ample nods to their respective pasts.
MPEG Stream: "Ancors Aweigh"
MPEG Stream: "Still Kaltes"

AUTUMN Synthesize (Minimal Wave) lp 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For those who have been delving into the many minimal wave / synth punk reissues and anthologies that have been emerging in the recent years, the name Linear Movement should be familiar. They were a Belgian synth-pop outfit with a few art-disco-punk leanings, featuring Geert Coppens and Peter Bonne (Bonne would later found the EBM project A Split Second, but his earliest synth-wave work has stood the test of time much better than A Split Second). Unfortunately, much of this early work had only been released on small cassette runs, despite some exceptionally strong production values and some great song writing to boot. The aforementioned Linear Movement had an album slated for release in 1983, but the label dropped the album from their release schedule. It was rediscovered later by Minimal Wave who released that lost album 25 years later in 2008. While a few breathtaking gems of early OMD / Human League sequencing are found within, that album was admittedly an inconsistent listen.
However, Autumn's Synthesize fares much much better. This project operated on a parallel track, using all the same gear, but they come across as a slightly darker alter-ego of Linear Movement and with a bit more weird science thrown into the mix. Their catalog consists of four self-released cassettes and a single, with Synthesize being a best-of record in all the right ways. Tracks like "Night In June" have an uptempo, sing-songy melodicism amidst the squelchy analogue sequencing sort of like a more robotic incarnation of New Order, and then there's "Behind You" with its dark sequencing of vocoder driven proto-electronica, prescient of an Italo-disco / Model 500 sound, with a nod to Ruth as well.

AVIAN BONES Only On The Surface (Chaos Of The Stars) cd 5.98
A few lists back we hailed the return of the Mausoleums, our coworker Andrew's band which had lain dormant for far too long, and who in that time seemed to have morphed into a completely different beast, trading in the schizophrenic black metal weirdness for something much more droned out and psychedelic. And apparently that sonic shift also inspired the formation of a new band, this one called Avian Bones, which traffics in a similarly murky psychedelic krautdrone sound, taking obvious inspiration from Spacemen 3, Loop and other purveyors of druggy hypnorock, the emphasis in AB seeming to be much more on propulsion, the rhythm mixed way higher and giving these songs some extra heft, and some propulsive momentum. And the murk being such that it often seems to blur the riffs and other instrumentation into clouds of shimmering sound, more of a textural backdrop for the rhythm and the fore, the sounds shifting melodically, but drifting dreamily into oblivion.
After a brief lovely reverbed guitar intro, AB launch right into a long droned out stretch of dronerock bliss, the shifting sounds subtle enough that it almost feels looped, the song trancelike and fantastically relentless. "Going Somewhere Else" is another slab of similarly murky mesmer, the drums a bit busier this time, a bit loose limbed which gives the track a more organic feel, as if it could derail at any point.
It's not until "Only You Will Know" that the songs shifts dramatically, the drums machinelike and skittery, the droned out noise of the first few tracks dialed way back, leaving the sound more low slung and slithery, but gradually building to another spacey psychedelic sprawl, and once it reaches that point, the song locks tight, and we're once again carried away by the endless riffing and motorik rhythm. "Anoxia" offers up a false start, before lurching into a strangely spidery abstract bit of psychswirl drift, the guitars spare, the drums simple and skeletal, the guitars over the course of the track's 8 plus minutes, growing more melodic, but not necessarily louder, the track remaining spares and spare, but building in intensity, which is a nice effect, and leads right into the caustic crunch of the closer, a heady chunk of Loop meets Jesus And Mary Chain, with most of the JAMC shoegaze noise pop blurred into Loop-ed expanses of soaring melodies, and swirling distorted murk, and again, the song locks into a lumbering groove, and proceeds to churn away, with the clouds of guitar overhead swirling and constantly shifting, a seriously blissed out drone-psych coda.
And like the Mausoleums record, this one too is cassette only, the low fidelity and tape hiss only serving to enhance AB's marvelous murk. And we'd be surprised if the psych rock obsessives who freak out over every Carlton Melton / White Hills / Wooden Shjips release, finally started getting hip to the newly (re)launched Mausoleums / Avian Bones sonic axis...

AX Metal Forest (Cold Spring) cd 17.98
Finally! The long out of print nineties releases from legendary industrial / power electronics / UK noise / black drone one man band AX once again see the light of day. Longtime fans of the mighty Skullflower, will no doubt be familiar with AX, the project of one time SF member Anthony Di Franco, who also did time in a number of other bands you might also be familiar with: Ramleh, Novatron, Ethnic Acid, JFK. But we always had a soft spot for AX, whose first two vinyl lps (collected here), Nova Feedback and II, originally released in 1994 and 1995 respectively, were for some of us our first taste of power electronics, and unlike much of the more harsh, ear shredding power electronics, AX trafficked in something much more droned out, a sound that whether intentionally or not, seemed to foreshadow the sort of slowburn sludge, and crumbling slo-mo ultra-doom that would follow. It's hard not to hear hints of Earth and SUNNO))) and Bunkur and Khanate or even groups like Troum and Maeror Tri, for all of its noise, and it IS noisy, that noise is sculpted in such a way as to render it impossibly listenable, totally hypnotic, and utterly mesmerizing. You can almost imagine a primitive hybrid of Troum and SUNNO))), the dark trancelike dronescape of the former, fused to the impossible black hole heaviness of the latter, but then the whole thing doused in a haze of caustic industrial crunch, and liberal swaths of grinding howling feedback.
This collection opens up strangely enough with one track that is NOT from either of those two 12"s, but is instead plucked off AX's only proper full length cd, 1997's Astronomy, but that track, "Kortex", is definitely the perfect opener, and in some ways the perfect introduction to AX. The doomiest of the bunch by far, due in no small part to its plodding slow motion 'beat', a gristly metronomic crunch, that sounds like a snare hit slowed down a hundred times and run through a bank of dead distortion pedals, over which Di Franco lays down a churning layer of crumbling blackened distortion, wreathing those plodding squashed bug beats in squalls of overloaded powergrid buzz, it's a sort of primitive electron-level ultra doom, snakelike tendrils of hiss wrapped around sheets of grinding metallic buzz, all driven by that sinister blacknoise pulse. Which leads directly into "Nova Feedback 1", a swirling psychedelic wash of rumbling black buzz, and phased out thrum, evoking the whole guitar-against-the-amp style near-static minimalist doomdirge. Fans of the late great Vulture Club and other practitioners of that sort of doomdronedrift will be in heaven.
"Heavy Fluid" is near symphonic, a sprawling 11 minute soundscape of layered guitar buzz, gristly electronics, shards of static, clouds of hiss, some serious proto-SUNN extreme slo-mo heaviness, which had us thinking a bit of another recent aQ fave, Blackwolfgoat, unfurling an endless cascade of woozy guitar buzz and melting blackened psychedelic riffage, the tones shifting constantly, as if someone was continually fiddling with the pitch knob, or more likely, an endless fiddling with the tuners, letting notes morph into other notes, to dip down into an even murkier thrum, before slowing drifting into a near howl. The sort of track, that we could listen to ENDLESSLY, only really exploding about 8 minutes in, when the original detuned creep is barraged by scrapes and squiggles and an avalanche of still more roiling guitarnoise. There are moments of pure noise, "Theme One", is in fact pretty much a four minute blast of face melting, ultra corrosive, blacknoise blur, but it almost acts like a palette cleanser, as it leads directly into the title track, which might be the most tranquil jam here, again foreshadowing the sort of bleak black soundscapery of groups like Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer or Gnaw Their Tongues, a gorgeously abject stretch of haunting post industrial buzz and hum, super cinematic, laced with all manner of grinding guitar noise, and strange moans and creaks, slipping easily from hushed drift, to cavernous bellow, and back again.
We then move into the two tracks from AX's II 12", the first a 10+ minute of grinding power electronics bliss out, which after an opening blast of speaker destroying crunch, seems to gradually settle into something more spaced out and atmospheric, but really no less noisy, buried voices, shards of feedback, and all manner of metallic crunch, are blurred and smeared into a softly heaving sprawl of dense, droned out, psychedelic free-noise drift. The second part begins as a low level hum, distant heaving moans buried beneath layers of static and hum, super dense and tense, the perfect cue for the final shot in some long lost seventies horror movie, but soon the haunting elements are all but subsumed by the swirling noise, the result a roiling sea of hiss and howl, grinding metals and churning buzz.
Finally, the collection finishes off with the last two tracks from Nova Feedback, the first, a dreamily psychedelic swirl of prismatic deconstructed guitar shimmer, and process chordal whirl, pulsing and pulsating, easily the prettiest track here, those strange melodies a recurring theme throughout the track, but gradually pulled apart and recontextualized, drifting dreamily one second, chopped up, looped and layered the next, wreathed in delay and reverb, and sent swirling into the ether, keening melodies over soft focus background guitarnoise, here rendered a dreamlike haze, totally hypnotic, and strangely tranquil. And finally, "Cluster" finishes things off, with what sounds like a classic chunk of black metal buzz, but here looped and layered and stretched out into an endless stretch of guitarbuzz mesmer, again reminding us of Blackwolfgoat, or perhaps Mick Barr, if he was restrained to just using the lowest strings, but that sort of near symphonic buzz, a churning tangle of blackened riffage, but blurred into something much more amorphous, a dreamlike cloud of psychedelic black shimmer, that is the perfect finish, to a near perfect collection.
Needless to say EXTREMELY recommended, and not just for nineties industrial obsessives (although obviously, for those folks, this is a no brainer), but if you dig minimal guitar mesmer, psychedelic doom, abstract heaviness, post industrial soundscaping, all strains of drone, especially heavy guitardrone, this collection will blow your mind.
MPEG Stream: "Kortex"
MPEG Stream: "Nova Feedback I"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Fluid"
MPEG Stream: "Metal Forest"
MPEG Stream: "II"

AYERS, NIGEL / JOHN EVERALL / MICK HARRIS Mesmeric Enabling Device (Soleilmoon) cd 14.98
Outside the morphological sounds of Nocturnal Emissions, Nigel Ayers has embarked on a few collaborative projects - one with Robin Storey and Randy Grief, and this one with Mick Harris (Scorn, Lull, Painkiller), and John Everall (Sentrax Records). Collectively, the trio delves into the deepest pits of the dark ambient, pioneered by the likes of Lustmord. Sublime.

BAD SECTOR / CONTAGIOUS ORGASM Vacuum Pulse (Old Europa Cafe) cd 15.98
"Vacuum Pulse" is a collaborative effort between Japan's Contagious Orgasm and Italy's Bad Sector, both of whom have extensive catalogues of post-industrial rumblings. This was originally a cassette from Old Europa Cafe, who fortunately issued this again in a digital format with two extra collaborative tracks. Bad Sector's sound is typified by slow Wagnerian melodic progressions creeping out of tense John Duncan-esque data-crunched drones. Contagious Orgasm prefers to lace processed authoritative speech patterns with Eraserhead radiator sounds. Their collaborative efforts sounds a lot like a louder Main without as much bass and with a gilded aura surrounding all of the work.

BAUHAUS Burning from the Inside (Beggars Banquet) cd 12.98

BAUHAUS Crackle (Beggars Banquet) 2lp 16.98

BAUHAUS Crackle (Beggars Banquet) 2lp 16.98

BAUHAUS Gotham (Metropolis) 2cd 21.00
Documenting these Goth superstars' recent live reunion tour, two discs worth. At first listen, one thing we can say is that this is surprisingly damn HEAVY. Yes, this includes "Bela Lugosi's Dead" amongst other black eyeliner hits. And, this has a new studio track too, their first in like 15 years, a cover of Dead Can Dance's "Severance".

BAUHAUS In The Flat Field (4AD) 2cd 21.00

BAUHAUS Mask (Beggar's Banquet) 2cd 26.00

BAUHAUS Shadow of Light / Archive (Beggars Banquet) dvd 15.98
Both Shadows of Light and Archive had been made available in the '80s as collections of Bauhaus' videos and live recordings; and now they've been compiled onto a single DVD for your viewing pleasure. Shadows of Light originally featured all of the videos Bauhaus made, including the particularly grotesque chiaroscuro of "Mask" as well as four live tunes recored in stark black & white at the Old Vic in London. Archive fills in the remainder of the live material shot at that Old Vic show, albeit framed by a curious vignette of a Victorian gentleman being pursued by a couple of no-good thugs. Nonetheless, Peter Murphy stands out as a vampish hybrid of David Bowie and Iggy Pop during these outstanding live versions of "The Passion Of Lovers," "Dark Entries," and "Stigmata Martyr." Essential for anybody bit by the '80s revival bug.

BAUHAUS The Sky's Gone Out (Beggars Banquet) cd 12.98

BESTIAL MOUTHS Hissing Veil (Dais) lp 21.00
The bloodletting goth-punk of LA's Bestial Mouths is likely to find black-clad company with contemporaries like Zola Jesus and Chelsea Wolfe, but this outfit harnesses a creative dualism between voice and drums that's a unique take on what Siouxsie and Budgie had done so brilliantly for so many years in the Banshees and Creatures. Vocalist Lynette Cerezo shrieks, barks, and howls between the operatic vibrato that reaches for the atavistic bellowing that's something of a cross between Diamanda Galas and Rozz Williams of Christian Death. Ebrahim Saleh's percussion is hardly the death-disco that's so often heard from goth drummers, but more of a splattercore punk likened to a No Wave version of Crass regressing at times to caveman pummelling. Christopher Myrick's synths fill in the blanks, and often do get upstaged by the spiralling dynamism between Cerezo and Saleh with all of their car-crash stops and thunderous stomps. Where many of the songs on Hissing Veil are short sharp blasts of feral energy, Bestial Mouths settles into an effectively infernal dirge that's equivalent to Lydia Lunch ripping apart The Cure's Pornography and leaving the parts ugly and abused in some forgotten alleyway. A great addition to the Dais catalogue of recordings!

BESTIAL MOUTHS Live (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98
Another batch of kick ass new tapes from local tape label Black Horizons is here. Two of 'em: the other a grim slab of ritualistic demonik black ambience from Trepaneringsritualen, reviewed elsewhere on the list, and this one, a gloriously blown out live set from LA goth-noise / postpunk combo Bestial Mouths, the first recordings from their new expanded 4 piece lineup, and holy shit does this stuff sound amazing. A dense wall of drum machine driven synthscapery, the rhythms super distorted and blown out, a rib cage rattling tribal pound surrounded by fields of ethereal synths, and ominous industrial buzz, super noisy and chaotic, but weirdly mesmerizing, and impossibly catchy. Howled shrieked female vox swoop and soar, but are mostly buried in the mix, giving them a much more impressionistic vibe, and making this a bit less abrasive than other BM records, but it's still pretty punishing, a sort of super heavy noise-wave power-electronics goth rock bliss out even adventurous metalheads should be able to get into.
Bestial Mouths sound like a band on Wierd or Captured Tracks, being remixed by some industrial / noise outfit, the tracks pounding and crushing and brutal as fuck, but still infused with all sorts of whirling melodies and shifting textures, the new wave synthiness ever present, but often obscure by sheets of white noise, and cascading crumbling heaviness, with the band dialing it back here and there for some woozy gloom dirge drifts, but those moments generally bookended by extreme noisepunk blowouts. Fucking AWESOME. Includes a bonus track of improvised noise, that to these ears harkens back to some of the other BM records we've carried, mirroring the groups penchant for pure noise punishment.
Like all Black Horizons releases, some sweet packaging, a multi panel metallic silver on black J-card, xeroxed reflective silver tape labels. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!

BEYOND DAWN Electric Sulking Machine (Peaceville) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Norway's Beyond Dawn build upon the unique sound they established with their Misanthropy-label classic "Revelry": gothic dirge-pop infused with both electronica and metal. Kind of like Katatonia meets Tarwater, with a healthy dose of the Swans (the vocals are magnificently, uncannily close to those of Michael Gira). Beyond Dawn began as yet another black metal outfit (albeit one that stood out from the pack by their use of the trombone!), and now have evolved into something very different, and very special. But the trombones remain! Highly recommended.

BLACK MAYONNAISE Ttssattsr (Emperor Jones) cd 13.98
Our good pal Cayce, who sadly passed away back in 2007, was as obsessive about freaky and fucked up music as we are, and was the first to bring this record to our attention, which we might have otherwise ignored on account of the somewhat dodgy sounding band name they possess. Black Mayonnaise? Eww. But Black Mayonnaise are definitely AQ-material, Cayce was right. Self-described (it says it right on the back cover) as "Warped Lunar Sludge-core", this band is akin to a lo-fi melding of SUNNO))) and Godflesh. It is sludgy and doomy, but not so much heavy or riffy, more just ominous and creepy and droney and dubby and distorted... Imagine plodding, repetitive, hypnotic, echoey drum machine hits mixed with mellow Merzbow-ian drone, whilst gargling, not-even-vocals bubble up from a tarpit of rumbling bass, amidst sundry sci-fi synth noises and the distant wails of whales and wookies. And there's a 'cover' song on here too, "Graveyard" by the Butthole Surfers, a choice that speaks volumes.
Listening to this disc is like stumbling through a miasma AND slowly sinking into a mire. We love it! Chances are there's only one guy behind Black Mayonnaise, and he recorded this in his bedroom -- but it sounds more like it was recorded in a moist, dark cave...perhaps the cavernous stomach of some extraterrestrial monster. Gastro-intestinal, interstellar doom, anyone? If that sounds good to you like it does to us, then this is quite recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Narcotic Fog"
MPEG Stream: "Floating Body II"

BLOOD BOX The Iron Dream (Eibon) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Blood Box is a project of Michael Hensley whose work in the terrorist ambient ensemble Yen Pox we have praised before. On his own, Hensley strikes a more menacing pose; where Yen Pox conjures a narcotic numbness laced with the imagery of fear, death, and horror, Blood Box places you directly in the midst of a tragic aural nightmare. Snarling beasts and whispering demons haunt the nether regions of bleak reverberating dronescapes, giving way to majestic swells of minor key orchestral fragments. Later on, claustrobophia from The Iron Dream's sonic catacombs open into expansive forests, ominously crackling and creaking in the wind. At the same time, subtle musical gestures punctuate the wash and din, offering a hint of optimism to this otherwise oppressive album. On the Iron Dream, Hensley brings together the shadowy ambience found on Burzum's Filosofem, the soul-crushing depression of Anenzephalia, the darkly shimmered elegance of Maeror Tri, and subterranean terror of Lustmord. Morose, creepy, and gorgeously frightening.
MPEG Stream: "Fall In"
MPEG Stream: "Far Side Of The Sun"

BODY LOVERS Number One Of Three (Atavistic) cd 15.98
The Body Lovers was the first project that Michael Gira established after dissolving his stalwart abject rock ensemble Swans. For this project (which presumably will be a trilogy of albums, if the title is an indication), Gira has chosen to concentrate on the production techniques which culminated so magnificantly on Swans "Great Annihilator" album - dominated by epic song structures built out of increasingly dense tape splices of archetypal Swans' rock grooves. Here, Gira has all but done away with the song (leaving that for his folk etherialism on Angels of Light) in favor of a beautifully ornate if nervously bleak drone album. Multiple layers of sustained organ chords resonate violently against each other as distant choruses of Branca like single note guitars and anguished non-linguistic chants build in intensity, sounding very much like a claustrophobic and highly controlled version of Hermann Nitsch's monumental Aktion pieces.

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Beileid (Ipecac) cd 13.98
Our favorite Teutonic twilight doomjazz combo, the awesome Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, is back with a new, 35+ minute ep, once again released via mega fan Mike Patton's Ipecac label (as have been their past few domestic outings). It's classic Bohren we know and love, more of their usual slow, sad, sparse jazz, that's "heavy" and noirish and minimalistic. But this ep also introduces a WTF? factor we weren't expecting. Of the three (long) songs here, one's a cover. And it goes a long way to establishing their metal cred, more than the Immortal and Emperor t-shirts they sometime wear (with suits) on stage. No, rather than cover a black metal song, as you might expect, they instead proved that they're real old school metal fans by doing "Catch My Heart" by '80s German heavy metal band Warlock, you know, the outfit fronted by blonde metal siren Doro Pesch before she went solo.
It's a nice, melodic song, and Bohren successfully adapt it to their own style, extending it to over 13 slowly trickling minutes, and making it all the more emotive and moody. And... they got Mike Patton to sing it. Which is where your mileage may start to vary, depending on how much of a Mike Patton fan you are. Patton doesn't get too over the top or anything, he sticks to a deep voiced, torch-song croon that's only a little bit weird, reminding us a bit of the singer for Urfaust in fact. But, we kinda think they should have done it as an instrumental (which is of course Bohren's usual mode), and also that way the weirdness of doing a Warlock cover woulda been a bit more subtle. Or, if they had to have somebody sing it, maybe they should have just gotten Doro herself!!
Aside from the presence of Patton's vocals, though, "Catch My Heart" sounds very much like a typical Bohren piece. As do the other two songs here, quietly droning, glacially paced, utterly gorgeous, no vocals. "Zombies Never Die (Blues)" is all drifting near-ambient synth, adorned with some smokey sax which tends to give this the vibe of the soundtrack to an '80s Jonathan Demme film, wistfully perfect for a late night street corner scene between two young lovers. The final, title track, is the longest, over 14 minutes, wonderfully atmospheric, shimmering textures from the trap kit, limpid notes arising from the keys, no sax. Nice.
But, the Warlock song isn't the only thing that's really weird about this ep. Another truly WTF? element to this release is the cover art, as discerning music fans will recognize it as some sort of tribute to the album Fun At The Funeral by the band Jesters Of Destiny (you know, the late '80s LA alt-metal act beloved by our Finnish friends Circle, they reissued that album on their Ektro label!). Same logo/typeface, almost identical (but different) artwork. No explanation. We're really curious what the deal is with that, 'cause it's such an obscure thing to reference and has nothing to do with anything else about this release, if they'd have done a Jesters cover on the ep rather than a Warlock one, it would make more sense. Instead, it's a total non-sequitur that almost nobody will even "get".
And thus, Bohren are somehow even cooler now than we already thought they were!!!
MPEG Stream: "Catch My Heart"
MPEG Stream: "Beileid"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Dolores (Hydra Head) 2lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
FINALLY AVAILABLE ON VINYL, DOMESTICALLY! (Thanks, Hydra Head!)
Imagine a blackened, funereal dooooooom band like Skepticism or Nortt morphed into the jazz idiom (after having kissed a frog, or some fairytale scenario like that), playing their slow, sad music in a smoky Berlin jazz club. The sound is jazz (electric piano, organ, vibes, sax, double bass, trap kit...) but the feeling is doom. That's our usual shorthand for describing the unique music made by longtime AQ fave, Germany's Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. Here at last is their eagerly anticipated 5th album, Dolores (not named after the San Francisco street near us, presumably). If you're fans like we are, you know what to expect, it's just as ponderously "heavy" as a "jazz" band can be. No, not loud, not harsh, not noisy. The opposite of all that. Rather, whisper-quiet, glacially slow, and spacious, with sparse snare hits keeping time like a wound-down clock ticking off the eternity between 2 minutes to midnight and the witching hour itself. Doomsday so slowly arrives on a velvety bed of somnolent deep bass notes, and the cool slinky tones of vintage Fender Rhodes. Cymbals shiver in a dark haze of ambient drones near to silence. Several of the songs are infused with the warmth of tenor or baritone sax breathes gorgeous expiring breaths. It's all so sad and woeful and achingly beautiful, Bohren nodding off, their fragile melodies trickling like tears, and by the end you may find you have shed a few too.
This newest Bohren differs mainly from their previous Ipecac outing Geisterfaust by being composed of somewhat shorter, sweeter tracks, ten in all, in about an hour. But it is, again, an-ever-more-perfected example of why Bohren is one of our all time favorite bands, especially at twilight and late at night...
We only have black vinyl!
MPEG Stream: "Staub"
MPEG Stream: "Orgelblut"
MPEG Stream: "Still am Tresen"

BOOTBLACKS s/t (Eve of the Last Migration) lp 12.98
Bootblacks are a relatively new NYC outfit mining classic 1980's post-punk and no wave, creating dramatic songs that, in their best moments, evoke Depeche Mode as much as The Birthday Party. This self-titled lp captures the group early on in their career, on the cusp of a transformation into a really great live band, one we here on the Left Coast have only managed to see twice. Strange pyramids, ever-present smoke and psychedelic lights frame really loud songs that wear their influences like a runway model wears the latest designer frock: with pride and style. Bootblacks have found moderate success in Europe, through touring there multiple times, and on the East Coast where they play constantly.
On the record itself, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds are ever-present, especially on "Save Me Maria" which sounds, in the best possible way, like a B-side off Tender Prey. Jim Sclavunos (of the Bad Seeds / Grinderman) produced a few tracks, including one of the record's best, "The Flood". A tom-heavy beat stomps around a big fuzzy bassline and a clean vocal line. Layers of guitar lines slip in and out, building tension, until the chorus erupts with some weird backwards sounding laser-gun effects. The guitar playing throughout the entire record is excellent, full of skill and heart and hooks. Alli Pheteplace, musically the record's shining star, fluidly conjures the spirit of Rowland S. Howard and makes it her own. Melodies seem to fly effortlessly from her reverb-laden instrument. Her backing vocals on songs like "The Things We Did" and "The Flood" provide an almost sensual contrast to vocalist Ryan MacDonald's in-your-face sexual overtones. Pheteplace and MacDonald are both formerly of San Francisco's The Holy Kiss, another group that worshipped at the altar of The Birthday Party, albeit the swampier-blusier side of the band. The best track off the second half of the record is "Machina", a cacophonous rolling ride of a song. A repeating trumpet line and lyrics you can't quite understand play call and response until the chorus busts through with a perfectly complimentary marching snare beat. There's just enough noise to make the song sound fucked-up and interesting without distracting from its bass-and-drums guts.
The record is housed in a nice silver and black jacket, with some kind of sliver sticker on the back. An obi proclaims the glories of Bootblacks and provides the only information available on the outside of the sleeve. Limited to 350 copies, each one hand numbered. Also includes an mp3 download card, as well as a silk-screened patch for all you punks out there.
MPEG Stream: "The Flood"
MPEG Stream: "The Things We Did"
MPEG Stream: "Machina"

BORGHESIA Clones (Dark Entries) lp 15.98
Here, Dark Entries reissues the terminally obscure second album from the Slovenian minimal-wave quartet Borghesia. The band formed in 1982 during the death throes of the fractious Yugoslavian republic, operating in a liminal space between the art world and the underground punk scene, through their own club Disco FV. During these early years, the quartet produced video installations and performances alike, with the sound design being an instrumental, hard-edged variant on new wave sensibilities. By the mid '80s, the project stripped down to a duo and took up a sweaty DAF-inspired muscularity of industrial funk. But here on Clones (originally self-released as a cassette in 1984), we find Borghesia doing their best work. All instrumental trax of hypnotic, pulsing electronics with some very forward thinking 808 drum programming that foreshadowed the reductionist strategies of Detroit electro and techno, albeit within a context that favored the darker sounds of The Human League and Soft Cell. The A side features spry and punchy tracks with plenty of elliptical arpeggiations and ramped up BPMs, whereas the B side is more pastoral and slower, sporting an eerie, melodic homage to Cindy Sherman. Clones, indeed!

BORGHESIA Ljubav Je Hladnija Od Smrti (Dark Entries) lp 15.98
At the time Borghesia was formed in 1982, Yugoslavia was beginning to exhibit the cracks in its federalist system of government; by good fortune, the Croatian born members of Borghesia, Aldo Ivancic and Dario Seraval, chose to study in Ljubjana, located in Slovenia - the state which peacefully separated from the Yugoslavian federation in 1990, unlike those states to the south. Ljubjana had long been the home of a lively arts and music scene, having spawned a number of underground venues / art-spaces including the first gay disco which caused considerable controversy within the conservative society at large. This was also home for Laibach, the Irwin Group, and other arms of the Neue Slowenische Kunst collective. Borghesia had always played second fiddle to Laibach, even though they really sounded nothing like the band. Where Laibach offered bleak appropriation of cultural elements within a cold industrial context, Borghesia was one of the early proponents of "electronic body music" - the sweaty electro-funk that really exploded out of Belgium by the late '80s, with D.A.F., Cabaret Voltaire, and Chris & Cosey influencing Borghesia's hedonistic, leather-clad electronics. The mutant funk sensibility takes up tracks like "A.R." and "Brisk Vomit" with choppy guitars, darkly bubbled electronics, and neck-wrangled basslines. On the aforementioned "A.R.", Borghesia filters the vocals through a megaphone of barked sloganeering for the closest thing that the band ever came to sounding like Laibach. The dirge "Tako Mladi" with its whip crack, reversed delay, and stalking electronic sequences is probably the strongest track on the record, through its oppressive atmosphere.
This album was originally released on an Italian label in 1985, and came with Italian translations of the Croatian lyrics. Those have now been transcribed into English, but keeping the same oversized poster with dot-matrix artwork / text that was on the original. As with all Dark Entries releases, this has been exquisitely remastered and pressed on big chunky vinyl. Limited to 500 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Tako Mladi"
MPEG Stream: "Kdo Je Ugasnil Luc"
MPEG Stream: "On"

BR0WN ANGEL Agonal Harvest (Thunderhaus Ltd.) lp+cd-r 16.98
The return of these Pittsburgh heavies, the oddly named Br0wn Angel (yup, that's a zero), who deliver their swansong in the form of this epic and darkly melodic chunk of churning low-end heaviness, having recently called it a day. But what a note to go out on! And what a change from their self titled debut. That record (which is included here on the accompanying cd-r) was a sick and sinister chunk of superdistorted sludge, equal parts industrial pummel and droned out black crawl, with the band equally capable of kicking some seriously dense mathrock jams as they are churning, downtuned ultradoom. But the first track here, at least the first few minutes, displays a side of the band only hinted at on the first record. Starting with some mysterious field recordings, the band unfurl a thick sprawl of minor key buzz, and washed out melancholic heaviness, the title "You Can Find Heartbreak Anywhere" suits the sound perfectly, the vocals a weary croon, in a different context this would be some woozy dreamlike slowcore, but here, wreathed in thick, crumbling swaths of guitarnoise, squalls of feedback, and massive drum pound, it somehow makes it sound even that much more moody and malevolent. But then again, this is Br0wn Angel, so halfway through, the song splinters into a woozy start/stop, with squealing feedback, and harsh vokills, before again switching gears, and adding some chiming melodies to the proceedings, giving the sound a sort of ultra melodic Godflesh style industrial vibe, maybe Godflesh fused to Interpol, which sounds like a weird, but an AWESOME combo, especially the final salvo, where the vocals are belted out, and the song is transformed into something seriously dark and emotional.
The rest of the record is equally progressive and emotional and WEIRD, the second track is a dense slab of math metal chug and churn, a definite AmRep thing going on, but much more abject and downtuned, and like that first track, the band deftly incorporate all sorts of unlikely melody and still more clean vox. From there on out, it's a constant battle between light and dark, noise and melody, the sort of sonic tension that makes for compelling heaviness, "Days Of Vagrancy" taking those massive drums, and wreathing them in woozy, heavily effected guitars, and thick caustic bass buzz, the result more atmospheric than brutal, at times reminding us of eternal aQ faves Geronimo, that sort of almost motorik pound and mesmerizing bassline, surrounding by swirling clouds of noise and FX. "Did You Ever Need Me" is some seriously heartfelt indie rock / post rock in industrialblacknoise's clothing, stripped of the huge drums and buzzing guitars, it might pass for pure indie rock, but but instead, the sonic heft and underpinning darkness elevate Br0wn Angel's sound to something much more intense, and emotionally resonant. The last two tracks offer up more of BA's new twisted industrial / metal / gloom pop hybrid, seems like exactly the sort of thing fans of Pinkish Black and Wreck And Reference would dig big time.
Sad that this is the last we'll hear from these guys, but like we said, we couldn't have hoped for a better final missive. The lp includes a cd-r, that contains both the new record, AND the self titled debut, which we described thusly:
Br0wn Angel (yeah, that's Br0wn with a zero) hail from Pittsburgh, and offer up a heaving helping of blown out, super industrial metallic crunch, some strange hybrid of Godflesh, Author & Punisher, Big Black, and Jesu, but they add all sorts of unlikely stuff that makes this SO much more than just wannabe Streetcleaner. The opening track alone should have metaldrone obsessives in a trance, it's a blackened doomdrone raga, that finds these guys weaving a sprawling landscape of crumbling, superdistorted guitar crunch, a bit like SUNNO))) but way more melodic, infusing this blackened crawl with chiming melodies, strangely melodic seeing as they're set amidst barren fields of crumble and pound, the sound thick, gristly, but warm, and thick, and then the vocals come in, and they're quite unexpected, a monk-like chant, transforming the song into something way more ritualistic and spiritual, and we can tell you, if that first song had been stretched out to fill up both sides, we would have been pleased as punch, but instead, the band do get way more metallic and propulsive, the sound thickening into a sort of slowed down tarpit Austerity Program, thick guitars, lots of harmonics, streaks of feedback, starts and stops, ultra dynamic, sheets of guitar skree over black industrial creeps and proto industrial metal pummel, which again would have been just fine, but these guys continue to twist and tangle up their sound, occasionally launching into full on progged out math rock, but just as often slipping into some sort of super sludge death march, the interesting part is how those two sides bleed into that plodding, industrial core, creating a fucked up hybrid that is all their own.
MPEG Stream: "You Can Find Heartbreak Anywhere"
MPEG Stream: "Days Of Vagrancy"
MPEG Stream: "Did You Ever Even Need Me"

BR0WN ANGEL Br0wn Angel (Thunderhaus Ltd.) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Br0wn Angel (yeah, that's Br0wn with a zero) hail from Pittsburgh, and offer up a heaving helping of blown out, super industrial metallic crunch, some strange hybrid of Godflesh, Author & Punisher, Big Black, and Jesu, but they add all sorts of unlikely stuff that makes this SO much more than just wannabe Streetcleaner. The opening track alone should have metaldrone obsessives in a trance, it's a blackened doomdrone raga, that finds these guys weaving a sprawling landscape of crumbling, superdistorted guitar crunch, a bit like SUNNO))) but way more melodic, infusing this blackened crawl with chiming melodies, strangely melodic seeing as they're set amidst barren fields of crumble and pound, the sound thick, gristly, but warm, and thick, and then the vocals come in, and they're quite unexpected, a monk-like chant, transforming the song into something way more ritualistic and spiritual, and we can tell you, if that first song had been stretched out to fill up both sides, we would have been pleased as punch, but instead, the band do get way more metallic and propulsive, the sound thickening into a sort of slowed down tarpit Austerity Program, thick guitars, lots of harmonics, streaks of feedback, starts and stops, ultra dynamic, sheets of guitar skree over black industrial creeps and proto industrial metal pummel, which again would have been just fine, but these guys continue to twist and tangle up their sound, occasionally launching into full on progged out math rock, but just as often slipping into some sort of super sludge death march, the interesting part is how those two sides bleed into that plodding, industrial core, creating a fucked up hybrid that is all their own.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!! Packaged in super swank, metallic bronze silk screened covers, each on hand numbered, and each one with a random photograph insert.

BRIGHTER DEATH NOW Greatest Death (Cold Meat Industries) cd 14.98

BRIGHTER DEATH NOW Necrose Evangelicum (Cold Meat Industries) cd 16.98
"Necrose Evangelicum" is a bleak 'death ambient' album from the founder of the Swedish label Cold Meat Industries. Ghastly sounds from beyond the grave wallow through the bass-heavy drones in the best Lustmord tradition of dark ambience.