(Students Of Decay) 2cd 21.00

PORTISHEAD Third (Mercury) cd 14.98
It seems a bit strange to spend very much time writing about the new Portishead. Since by now, odds are you're probably sick to death of hearing about it. Sure we all loved Portishead back in the day, they were one of those rare 'electronic' bands whose appeal knew no boundaries, metalheads, moms, indie kids, the sound of Portishead was dark and sexy and mysterious, sinister and ominous, dark and rife with crackle and buzz. Perfect drugged out late night bliss out music, their strange way of creating sound and composing music, recording their own samples on to vinyl and then spinning and scratching those samples to create new textures, made for a totally unique sound.
So what does a band do after taking almost a decade off? Do they return with a record that sounds just like the last one, which is probably what most folks want, or do they return radically altered? With a sound bold and brash, reinventing the sound they themselves invented in the first place.
On first listen, Third definitely sounds like the latter, but with repeated listening, the record slowly and subtly begins to slip toward the former. Which most definitely speaks to the magic of Portishead, and the new record, which at once embraces the old sound, while turning it into something new. More than past outings, Third is dirty, out of tune, atonal, noisy, chaotic, urgent, sure past records had all that crackle and buzz and fuzz, but those elements were carefully placed, and kept well within line. Third sounds much more, well, loose for lack of a better word, like actual musicians, feeling each other out, maybe even improvising. Less like a studio concoction and more like a real live band. And the sound suits them. And makes for a record at once warm and familiar, but also alien, sort of 'rocking' and rife with WTF? moments.
Take the opener, "Silence", which begins with some sort of radio broadcast, which gives way to a killer loping breakbeat, immediately the fastest tempo Portishead have ever explored, strings swoop in, the sound raw and urgent, almost like the chase scene from some spy movie, gorgeous distorted chiming guitar harmonics ring out, until finally the track slows down, and slithers sexily, the vocals a sexy sultry croon, but it's not long before the track kicks back into the haunting and tense, string laden cinematic jam that opened the track.
Then there's "Hunter", which begins like classic Portishead, all smokey and late night sounding, soft muted reverbed guitars, a lush gauzy production, the vocals ethereal and ghostly, but even here, a few seconds in, the song is interrupted by a super distorted crumbling guitar chord that halts things in their tracks, before fading out, and allowing the song to resume. The a few minutes later, a strange noodly synth freakoutsurfaces, again derailing the song's slow motion groove, but It just sounds perfect. It doesn't at all sound like random weirdness for random weirdness' sake. The first time is jarring, the second time, you find yourself waiting for those parts, even humming along as if they were as crucial to the song as the main melody or the vocals, and the thing is, they are.
Near the end lurks the single, "Machine Gun", with its very machine gun like rhythm, herky jerky, stuttery and not at all fluid, reminiscent of Art Of Noise, the vocals sweetly soaring over this jagged rhythmscape below, which only really varies part way through when the original machine gun drums are replaced by BIGGER, more distorted drums, and wrapped in strange moaning horns (or maybe synths), only to shift once again moments later becoming more electronic, the beats awash in strange FX and metallic buzz. It's so unlikely, that it makes perfect sense as the first single. If you can embrace that strange rhythm, that relentless and very un-Portishead like sound, then the rest of the record will make perfect sense, unfolding in front of you, revealing both the warm familiar sounds missed, and the new, bizarre sonic elements never even imagined
All over the record, the band confounds and confuses, gloriously, the brooding whispery "Small" shifts gears partway through and transforms into a fuzzy organ drenched krautjam, "Deep Water" is a straight up old timey folk song, the vocals and strings soaked in fuzzy ambience (and reminding us a bit of vocalist Gibbons' post Portishead project Rustin Man), "We Carry On" is a sort of atonal Stereolab style jam, relentless percussion, thick swaths of synth, very repetitive and hypnotic, "The Rip" is part whispery folky flutter, part synthy electro buzz, every track here offers some sort of surprise, whether it's the song itself, or some little sonic strangeness lurking within, but never is the song or the sound sacrificed, each track is perfect in its own beautifully twisted way, catchy but never obviously so, groovy, but often convoluted and fractured, it's a difficult record to explain for sure, which is perhaps why so much ink has been spilled, and while we may be sick of reading about it, we sure are finding it nearly impossible to imagine ever getting sick of listening to it, which is precisely why it's one of our Records Of The Week.
MPEG Stream: "Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Machine Gun"

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness (Important) cd 14.98
This is the new album from Japan's Acid Mothers Temple, that AMT leader Kawabata Makoto contends is heavier than the average heavy AMT release, going so far as to say it's in the league of something like SUNNO))). Well, is it really?? Would he bet his beard on it? (We all ask, salivatin'.)
The answer: holy shit, yes. It's like indeed kinda like SUNNO))) jamming with Amon Duul, in a relentless riff orgy. That heavy. That droney. That creepy. That kosmic. A slow screaming blackened drone-groan vomiting forth from bad trippin' hippy minds, third eyes staring dull and glassy into the spinning vortex of the void. There's about ten minutes of pure bliss-out at the end of the disc, but before that, what you get is psychedelic guitar gunk out the wazoo. Riff after plodding riff, adorned with alien electronics. Dirge, splurge and more dirge. A roar to end all roars. A space-sludge feedback fantasy.
Each clocking in at about 36 and a half minutes, there's two long tracks (with long track names) here: "Eternal Incantation Of Perpetual Nightmare" and "Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness". Sound kinda black metal don't they? Actually they do. This is an EXTREME Acid Mothers Temple experience let me tell you. Boris, beware! Ufommamut, watch your backs! Electric Wizard, better take another hit!!
Definitely worthy of the nifty, unmistakable Seldon Hunt cover art. Also, FYI we have this in both digital and analog formats. The vinyl version, a heavy gatefold double LP affair, is limited to 1000 copies, and it includes two bonus tracks!!! So act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Eternal Incantation Of Perpetual Nightmare"
MPEG Stream: "Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness "

AHMED, ILYAS The Vertigo Of Dawn (Time-Lag) cd 14.98
Hot on the heels of the recently reviewed, way overdue, double disc reissue of two LONG out of print cd-r's, comes a brand new disc from one of our favorite music makers, Ilyas Ahmed.
In the past, Ahmed has found himself lumped in with lots of modern guitarists, of the neo-Appalachian persuasion, Blackshaw, Rose, etc. And while Ahmed can definitely fingerpick with the best of them, his records were never distinctly 'guitar' records in that same way, even though most of his songs are based around a guitar. And his prowess on the steel string was never really the focal point of those discs. Instead, he used the guitar and those bits of Appalachia, merely as elements in a much larger sonic picture. Vocals, raga like drones, horns, hand drums, each part of a lush lush expansive soundscape, which just happened to be draped across a framework of steel string shimmer, while all around that acoustic guitar, swirled strange and wondrous sounds.
The new disc, The Vertigo Of Dawn, while indeed rich with lustrous guitar, is even more far out, more psychedelic, more druggy, and manages to turn that guitar into something weird and wonderful, a hazy fuzzy ghostlike folk, otherworldly and haunting.
The record begins with a tripped out ESP style free jazz drone drift, all long tones and moaning horns, very serene and sedate and meditative, lots of space, warm whirling reverb, the horns hovering over a soft backdrop of deep rumbles and muted buzz, Eastern style melodies played out like snake charmer melodies, the whole thing very exotic and mysterious and free jazzy.
The second track begins with some aggressively strummed guitar, distorted crooned vocals, and some killer Eastern style melodies (again), it's like freak folk filtered through some Middle Eastern bazaar. The following track is more druggy and woozy, the acoustic guitar again the focal point, but surrounded on all sides by swooping backwards guitars, and ghostlike falsetto vocals. The next track is a sunshiney hippy folk jam, with simple subtle percussion, strummed minor key guitar, but wrapped around some truly haunting vocals and horns, high and drawn out, sometimes hard to tell if it's a horn or a voice, but they add a strange tension, and turn the fluttery folk into something much more intense and mysterious. The whole record is like a long strange trip for Ahmed's guitar, it's gentle melodies, and simple strumming, making their way through strange song after strange song, sometimes, floating unmolested, just glimmering and glistening, while other times being buffeted by thick squalls of buzz and whirring drones, and at others, slowly pulled apart into strange minimal steel stringscapes, each note a sparkling star in a constellation of minor key melancholia, often accompanied by Ahmed's lonesome falsetto wail, wrapping protectively around the guitar's fragile shimmer. So nice.
Fans of all that neo-Appalachia stuff will definitely dig this, as will folks into the freak folk cd-r scene, but even if you're into folky psych like Six Organs Of Admittance, Steven R. Smith, Scott Tuma, and other steel string soundscapers, you might find this much to your liking...
The packaging is fantastic as well, both the lp and the cd are housed in super deluxe fabric textured gatefold sleeves, both with printed insert, the lp is on 180 gram vinyl and is limited to 750 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Golden Universe"
MPEG Stream: "Under The Singing Sea"

ALTAR SHADOWS Speckledy Falcons (Todestrieb) cd 13.98
Not sure what it was about Altar Shadows that intrigued us more, the fact that they're from Lithuania, or that their record is called Speckledy Falcons. Probably a little of both, but the two taken together, well, they were virtually irresistible to the aQ weirdo black metal obsessives.
And rightfully so. Altar Shadows offer up a blend of majestic Viking tinged black metal, midtempo Burzumic buzz, traditional Lithuanian folk music, black ambience and some field recordings, burbling brooks, birdsong and other sounds of nature. A strange combination, but the band are pretty deft at assembling them into something cohesive and compelling, black and heavy, melodic and mysterious.
Many of the songs start off with field recordings, invoking the spirit of the forest, of the wilderness, which is carried through to the music, even with the riffs are buzzing blackly, they are underpinned by strummed acoustic guitars, mournful melodies, woozy waltz like tempos, often breaking down into a sort of lilting folk interlude, peppered with guitar leads, before swooping back into full buzz.
One track eschews the buzz completely, instead offering up dark brooding acoustic folk, clean crooned vocals, glistening acoustic guitars, melancholy melodies, while another blends the two, turning a folk song into a strange lurching loping blackened jam, with strange staccato drumming, and super emotive melodies, soaring leads, and growled guttural vocals. Their version of a traditional Lithuanian folk song follows a similar pattern, the guitars spread out in long streaks of downtuned buzz, the vocals a demonlike roar, but woven into a strange folky framework, big drums pounding out a rhythm over harmonized melodies, and some simple strumming, strange but quite cool.
But don't let all the folk throw you off, Altar Shadows are indeed a black metal band, who offer up some gorgeously grim black buzz, blast beats, furious riffing, it's just that their black buzz is infused with the spirit of the past, and informed by the folk music of their ancestors, which more than anything, makes their blackness all the more unique, and their sound something special. Plus, SPECKLEDY FALCONS!!!
MPEG Stream: "Margi Sakalai"
MPEG Stream: "Ant Upes Didziausios Smeletr Krantr"
MPEG Stream: "I Dar Gilesni Pragara II"

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB Skelp / Ginnel (Trensmat) 7"+cd-r 10.98
He may be a master of droned out noise, but he's been flirting with club music on and off for the last few years, each full length hiding at least one dancefloor gem, and so Mr. Neil Campbell, ex of Vibracathedral Orchestra, now of Astral Social CLUB, at least on this here new 7", is all about the tripped out psychedelic electronic groove.
But seeing as this is Neil Campbell, his idea of what constitutes dance music, or even electronica is WAAAAY different than most folks. Just check out the A side here. Maddeningly repetitive, a flurry of bleeps and glitches, swoops and burbles, locked into a relentless loop, the main 'beat' staying steady, while all around it a cloud of FX swirls and shimmers, some seriously druggy electro psych drone for sure.
The second track is all minimal house music, sort of. The main beat a stripped down pulse and squelch, with synthy basslines, and some haunting disembodied piano drifting over the top, making for a truly creepy mash up. Maybe one of our favorite Astral tracks ever!
As with all Trensmat 7" releases, the vinyl comes bundled with a cd-r, featuring both the tracks from the 7", as well as three remixes from Richard Youngs, John Clyde-Evans and Magnetize, ranging from super spastic chopped up electronic madness, to spacey static drenched minimal house groove, to wild Bruce Haack like electronic experimentalism, playful and goofy and over the top.
Don't let all the talk of club music scare you away though, fans of recent Astral Social Club know all about Campbell's wild and off kilter take on dance music, which really ends up having more in common with tripped out psych drone and free noise weirdness than it does with -actual- club music.
Pressed on yellow vinyl, and SUPER limited.
MPEG Stream: "Skelp"
MPEG Stream: "Ginnel"

BAKER, AIDAN I Will Always And Forever Hold You In My Heart And Mind (Small Doses) cd-r 8.98
This super limited cd-r, which went out of print in a flash, is available once again, for a limited time, in slightly less elaborate packaging, but still with the same gorgeous music. Here's our review from when we first listed it:
Another slab of blissed out dreaminess from AQ fave Aidan Baker. His umpteenth release this year, every single one of them fantastic. This one, titled like a Damien Hirst piece, I Will Always And Forever Hold You In My Heart And Mind, is one single 50+ minute piece, separated into 12 parts, one for each word of the title, all woven into a single expansive whole.
The opener took us right back to Oval's Diskont 94, a shuffling shimmering underwater swirl, but instead of skipping cds as source material, Baker seems to be using some sort of loping Three Mile Pilot like bass, chopped and looped and smeared over a wash of drawn out synth drones, totally tranquil and dreamlike, but with that bass, lending the track a bit of subtle forward momentum. In fact the whole disc seems to be rooted in the interplay between droning synths and that processed bass. It's a bit krautrocky at times, a little bit Popol Vuh, ambient and abstract but propulsive at the same time. Some of the tracks are more layered, with strange muted bits of percussion, or more distinct melodies (also muted), while others get more and more distorted threatening to crumble to pieces, and still others, remain austere and minimal, throwing a shimmering sonic cloak over the hypnotic circular melodies and slow shifting sonic swells.
What more to say? As always, totally beautiful and completely hypnotic. Another perfect late night soundtrack for spacing out and drifting off...
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "Will"
MPEG Stream: "Always"

BAKER, AIDAN / LEAH BUCKAREFF / NADJA Trinity (Die Stadt) cd 24.00
You read that right, this is indeed another new Nadja AND another new Aidan Baker, at the same time! Even after the world record FIVE Nadja's on a recent list. And while we joke about how prolific this guy is, even we're a bit overwhelmed by what is basically, counting reissues, maybe the 10th or 11th new release in a matter of a month or two. Sure we can whip out reviews like nobody's business, but even we're run a little ragged. But we'll do our best.
Obviously fans will need this, lots of us bought copies, after all, we've yet to hear a bad record from Baker or Nadja, and this one is no different. However it is special for two reasons, one, it's crazy limited, only 500 copies, hand numbered. When we run out of the ones we have it will be gone for good. And two, it features the first (as far as we know) solo jam from the non Aidan Baker half of Nadja, Leah Buckareff.
Three long tracks, released to coincide with a German live performance in April. The Baker solo track is a pretty glistening drift, a bit more dense and thick than past solo efforts, a surprisingly busy sonic swirl, ethereal effects, murky drones, fragments of melodies, bits of feedback and rumble and twinkle, all set in a warm whirring expanse of soft sound.
The Nadja track begins all dark and serene, but quickly builds to an incendiary blown out doom trudge, quite possibly the heaviest and most distorted we've heard the duo, the guitar thick and crumbling and so distorted it almost obscures any melody, the drum machine a chaotic splatter, the last few minutes so intense and heavy and freaked out, the squall of swirling black psych and drum machine sputter almost completely obscures the churning riffage below.
The big surprise here, although we suppose it shouldn't really be a surprise, is Buckareff's contribution. We're tempted to suggest that she start releasing her own records, but that's just what we need! More kick ass records to buy. Anyway, Buckareff's track, is all low end whir, whispery static, and barely there percussion, that builds to a caustic dirgedrone as heavy and intense as anything Nadja has released, but the cool thing is that even when the sound is a wall of heaving roiling black buzz, beneath it lurks that opening bass melody, the strange pit pat percussion, a mournful lope, slowly being swallowed by a massive swell of muted murky washed out heaviness, that quickly fades out, leaving that minimal bassy shuffle to fade out into silence.
Ok, fine, fuck it, bring it on, more Buckareff solo stuff! We can take it. Even if we can't afford more musical obsessions. But after this we need to hear more. Once again, three for three. Nadja, Baker, Buckareff, essential listening for the doomdronedirge inclined.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, hand numbered, in a cool matte paper fold over sleeve.
MPEG Stream: LEAH BUCKAREFF "Socorro"
MPEG Stream: NADJA "Jornada Del Muerto"

BARN OWL From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light (Not Not Fun) lp 16.98
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep hitting and soul satisfying drone anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, they finally have a release that while still limited will at least get to reach a lot more ears then anything they've put out so far. These are sounds that deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare when you hear one that you really feel true soul and spirited passion from. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The lp format suits the duo so well, as their songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just listened to one side over and over and over before we even moved on to the second side with which we then did the same. There is both patience and payoff in Barn Owl's sound. Music that makes you want to close your eyes because you know you are entranced by atrists that know so well what they are doing. While they pressed up way more lps than anything else they've released, it's all relative, meaning these LP's are not going to be around too long, in fact we weren't even able to get as many as we ordered. Highly recommended, but act fast!

BLACK BONED ANGEL & NADJA Christ Send Light (Battlecruiser / Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd 12.98
Another matchup that had to happen eventually, it was only a matter of time. Campbell Kneale's Black Boned Angel, and Aidan Baker's Nadja. Two modern groups redefining doom metal. Filtering doom through their own dronedirge aesthetics, each with a distinctly unique take on doom, BBA's more of a glacial noise drenched dirge, Nadja's more of a blissed out metalgaze.
The two together though churn out what can only be described as epic grandiose doom pop. Or something like that. Soaring vocals, over thick churning crumbling distortion. It almost sounds like a sludge metal Queen, or a bit like recent Record Of The Week honorees Torche, or even Harvey Milk at their most dramatic and over the top.
The main riff is a slowed down classic rocker, turned sludgey and lugubrious but not losing any of its might or majesty. Guitars screech and soar and grind all around it, what sounds like a piano plinks along with the vocals, a sunshiney melody, but it's the vocals, that turn this into glorious sludgepop, a minor key lament, delivered in a plaintive wail, way down in the mix as well, but loud enough to totally carry the song, that main melody lodged in your head, forever!
Not really sure what else to say. If the math of Nadja + Black Boned Angel = Harvey Milk + Torche + Queen x loads of blown out distortion and sun baked buzz doesn't add up for you, you just might be reading the wrong listŠ
This is an ep teaser for the forthcoming full length from the same team on 20 Buck Spin, but fear not, this song, all 21+ minutes of it, is available only on this disc!!
MPEG Stream: "Christ Send Light"

BORIS Smile (Southern Lord) cd/dvd 14.98
It really wouldn't be a new Boris record if fans weren't faced with the always daunting challenge of which of the many versions to buy. There's always the obvious choice, cd or vinyl, further complicated by different packaging, and of course extra tracks on the vinyl (and in this case, different tracks on the domestic versus the import vinyl most likely), and with Boris, being as they are Japanese, fans are also faced with the choice of the import version, or the domestic version of the cd, and again, different packaging and alternate track listings do apply.
If it were just packaging, it would be a no brainer, folks could figure out if they wanted to spend the extra money on the much fancier import version, or just hold on for the domestic. But nope, the band continue to drive their fans crazy making every version slightly different. The lp version of Smile, since so many people have asked, is already out of print and selling for $300 on eBay, due to the fact that it was limited to only 500 copies, and was for sale ONLY at Disk Union stores in Japan and from the band on tour. There will, we imagine, be a less limited lp version, most likely domestic, but no idea when as of now, and no idea about the track listing.
The import version of Smile on cd we reviewed a while back, while a bit pricey, was well worth it, the packaging super deluxe, a big puffy fuzzy yellow bathtub toy like digipak. All silver ink and see through yellow vellum and again all fuzzy and puffy! By comparison, the domestic version looks downright plain, but closer inspection reveals it's pretty nifty too (designed by SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley of course). The sleeve is silver and orange metallic, housing an inner booklet packed with photos and lyrics, the jewel case is adorned with half a smiley face sticker and each one is machine numbered, LIMITED TO 3000 COPIES! Plus it's half the price of the import version. BUT, the track listing is pretty different. The track "Statement" here, is called "Message" on the Japanese Version, and is four minutes longer and a different mix. The untitled final track is 15 minutes long here, but on the Japanese version is 19. However, other songs are longer on the domestic. It is pretty dang confusing for sure. The sound is similar, but there are distinct differences within songs, so much so that it definitely sounds like it must be a different mix all the way through. Arghhhh.
But beyond all that, there is one very good reason to pick up this domestic version, even if you already bought the import. We managed to get copies of the Southern Lord "mailorder-only" version of Smile, which comes with a bonus DVD, featuring three Boris videos. It's this version that's limited to 3000 copies, and once these are gone, it will be a regular old single disc. But while we got 'em, the dvd is pretty kick ass. The band, always stylish and stylized, have upped the ante even more on these three clips, the first, "Statement", is all staggered split screen, guitarist Wata looking sexy and bored in front of her massive stack, Takeshi wielding the double necked bass, and Atsuo flailing wildly behind the kit, everything yellowish orange and tripped out, the various split screen elements constantly shifting and shuffling. The whole band looking pretty dolled up, teased hair and clad in all black. The video for "My Neighbor Satan" is awesome. The trio standing almost completely still, Atsuo playing some old electronic drum kit, Wata playing a huge clunky guitar synth, the band all washed out and distorted and indistinct, the screen white and blurry, as if the band were playing inside a cloud. Finally, the video for "Pink" which looks like the pink on red design of the Pink album come to life, the band rendered in high contrast shades of red, very abstract, almost looking more like a Boris screensaver.
So that's about all we can tell you about this new version. If you haven't bought Smile yet, no reason not to pick up this version, if you bought the import, it might be worth it to you for the dvd and maybe the alternate mix. The bummer is that beyond all this multiple versioned craziness, Smile is just an awesome record:
Every once in a while, we sort of wish we could just move on musically, forget whatever it was we were super into, no matter how magical. Find a new band to fall in love with. To obsess over. To slavishly track down every single shred of recorded music by. Buying multiple versions of the same record just to get one extra song, or a just a few more minutes of glorious drone and buzz. But then along comes a record like this, and wipes that wish away. Boris are indeed the rarest of bands. Few groups engender such utter devotion. If it wasn't Boris, sure it would probably be someone else, but it wouldn't be the same.
Not sure if it's the fact that they're Japanese, or that their early records were so shrouded in mystery, or guitarist Wata's utter bad ass coolness, the increasingly elaborate and insane packaging, the outrageously limited releases, it's probably a combination of all of those things, but the overriding factor is ultimately, that they're an amazing band, who are not afraid to change their sound at the drop of a hat, going from shoe gazing dronelords, to crushing sludge doom destroyers, to wild thrashing rock and rollers, with all sorts of unexpected stops in between. Some folks prefer the droning beauty of Flood, others the Stooges-y stomp of Pink, still others the glacial guitar crush of Absolutego, most folks love them all, and who can blame them?
Smile, the latest from this mighty power trio, takes elements of Pink (arguably, most new fans' favorite Boris record, and most old fans' least favorite) and stretches them way out, turning a record that most of us were expecting to be Pink part two, into easily the group's weirdest and most chaotic. Which is in fact a VERY good thing. Add in some guest action from SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley and Japanese guitarist and Rainbow collaborator Michio Kurihara and away we go...
The track listing is all mixed up from the Japanese version, here, they open with what is probably our favorite song on the record, a cover of legendary Japanese group PYG's "Flower Sun Rain", a gorgeously languorous drift, all reverby clean guitars, soulful vocals, simple subtle percussion, a brief squall of gorgeous sun blasted psychguitar, slipping smoothly back into that slow dreamy drift. We'd have been just as happy to hear Boris do a whole record of PYG covers after that one.
The second track, most folks should recognize from seeing the band live. A killer riff, some wailing lead vox, wild thrashy drumming, the various parts spiced up with swoops of backwards guitars, and a crumbling super distorted tripped out FX drenched outro. The next track is THE killer of the disc. With guitars so blown out, they threaten to FRY your headphones, a killer stop start groove, weird blown speaker bass, all wrapped around a pretty sweet pop hook, but the band do their best to bury it in crumbling distortion, and acid fried psych freakouts. Until the last half of the track, where things devolve into some super minimal dronescape with soft strummed whispery guitars, a damaged percussive thud, and lots of barely there shimmer.
A bit later comes the track "Statement", from the 7" of the same name (a different version entitled "Message" is on the Japanese version of Smile in its place) which we described like this: fans of Boris' Pink will feel right at home. A serious KISS like riff, some cowbell, and then some ridiculously blown out in the red acid psych lead guitar. It's weirdly lo-fi sounding, but still fierce, and if the band sounds a bit fuzzy and muddy, the leads sound like Wata is IN your headphones, ramming her guitar straight into your ears. It's pretty amazing actually. The music is a wild wooly garage metal stomp, tons of FX, wah wah, the vocals though are a bit of surprise. Weirdly poppy. Double tracked. Super melodic, almost sing-along-able. But it's all about the riffy groove and those impossibly acidic guitar freakouts. But then comes "My Neighbor Satan" another weirdly blissed out pop song, muted tones drifting over muted programmed drums and a thick sheet of distorted guitar, and the vocals, which in the past have often detracted from Boris' power, have definitely become an intricate part of their new sound and have improved vastly, now able to carry a song, and in some ways this whole record, and here they soar and croon, a wicked hook and a lilting moody melody. But it wouldn't be Boris if they didn't smash it to bits part way through, and they do, unleashing huge sheets of heavily delayed guitar and dubbed out drums, throbbing bass, all tangled up into glorious psychedelic meltdowns.
Even the heaviest songs on Smile are infused with hooks and offer up brief glimpses of the poppiness underlying the crunch and rrroooar, no truer than on "Ka Re Ha Te Ta Sa Ki ­ No Ones Grieve", a thick droned out, bliss blast of thick corrosive guitars, wild sinewy, buzz drenched leads, drums literally buried beneath layer after layer of whir and hiss and a dense wall of guitar. Eventually simple finger picked guitar and more dreamy sad vocals surface from within the roiling psychscape, offering a haunting counterpoint to the fierce fury all around. Even here, at it's thickest and most intense, the song is imbued with a certain melancholy, deftly woven into the freaked out guitars and stuttering mostly buried rhythms.
The second to last track, for its first half at least, is a gorgeous slowcore crawl, just plaintive vocals, delicate guitar, soft cymbal shimmer, a gauzy dreamy drift, that eventually fades to silence, before streaks of feedback fall from the sky, an avalanche of drums follow, until an incredibly emotive main riff, heavy and blown out, takes over, dragging the rest of the track with it, slowly churning, a sort of metallicized krautrock jam, the main guitar thick and distorted, but all around it glimmering harmonics and whirling melodies, those soaring vocals, and of course an appropriately majestic, dramatic in-the-red coda.
The record finishes with a massive 15 minute track (19 on the Japanese version), untitled, that almost sounds like a single song synopsis of Boris' new sound. Beginning with tripped out backwards guitar, and skeletal melodies, briefly interrupted by a fierce squall of intense psychedelia, only to bliss back out, giving way to a dreamy dirgey shoegazey dirge, all cascading distorted guitars and hazy lazy vocals, eventually overtaken by huge crumbling slabs of slow motion distortion and blinding streaks of high end skree and moaning feedback, finally drifting off into a slow shimmery feedback infused fadeout.
As always, just like the Japanese version, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Flower Sun Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Statement"
MPEG Stream: "KA RE HA TE TA SA KI - No Ones Grieve"

BULBS Light Ships (Freedom To Spend) cd 14.98
Basic Channel. Jyrk. Free jazz. Put those things together and you've got an idea of what's in store with Light Ships, the band's first release on Pete Swanson's new label Freedom to Spend. Fellow noiseniks out there will definitely remember Swanson's old label Jyrk, but whereas that label seemed to revolve mostly around his Yellow Swans related releases, this seems more of a label proper. Getting back to the record at hand, Bulbs is a two man collaboration between former Axolotl member William Sabiston (some of you might have been lucky enough to get a copy of his super limited release under the name Ball Lightning) and John Almaraz, who left San Francisco earlier this year to embark on some backpacking across the globe. We checked out what a few people had to say about the record, and the one thing that keeps coming up is techno, techno, techno. Well, to be fair, there is a propulsive element to this record, which may be the only truly linear thing present. And yes, sometimes it is an electronic kick drum. Still, it seems that the greatest influences here are free jazz and African polyrhythms and syncopation. Those who checked out any of the recent Monopoly Child Star Searchers albums, then you're maybe understanding what we're talking about, though Light Ships features significantly higher production quality. Still, if this record is any indication as to what's in store for Freedom to Spend, then we're confident that we will be recommending a healthy dose of their bands and/or projects.
MPEG Stream: "Gold Ropes"
MPEG Stream: "Strickfadfins"

CANTU-LEDESMA, JEFRE & PAUL CLIPSON Corridors (Root Strata) dvd-r 11.98
Second dvd collaboration from film maker Paul Clipson and Root Strata / Tarentel head honcho Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Another gorgeous and sonically blissed out tag team, Clipson's films this time around, again on Super-8, shot entirely in NYC, impressionistic shots of cityscapes, rolling hills, the texture of water, sun dappled evening skies, many of the shots textural, extreme close ups, patterns as much as images and shapes, sunspots, shadows, reflections, very active, the world flying past out the window of a train, power lines and bridges slipping out of eyeshot, setting suns and colored clouds, so lovely and dreamy.
Cantu-Ledesma offers up the perfect soundtrack, music culled from the same sessions that produced the huge aQ fave Shining Skull Breath, so even folks who don't care about the dvd, will want this for the sounds, which are thick and dense, whirring dronescapes, textured and layered, slipping from minimal shimmer to buzzing roar and back again, very much active, the intensity and propulsion of the sounds perfectly matching the motion of the visuals, in some cases, seemingly slowing it down, the drone dragging the landscape flashing by into sudden focus before letting it go again.
Either of these elements would be fantastic on their own, we can only imagine seeing these films projected against the side of a building, or on a huge movie screen, and these sounds would kill broadcast through some massive PA, the thick roiling drones washing over us, filling our ears with grit and grime, but together they work even better, even just viewed on the tiny screen of our computer, sonically and visually evoking all sorts of deep feelings and lost memories, of places never visited, of better times, of lost loves and of a past that keeps slipping further and further away. So lovely.
Packaged in an folded up origami style vellum sleeve with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Already sold out at the label so these are the last copies EVER!

CELESTIAL SEA Deep Inside The Cold (God Is Myth) cd-r 8.98
Celestial Sea is the unlikely collaboration between God Is Myth head honcho Todd Paulson, who is also responsible for Dormant, reviewed elsewhere on the aQ site, and Andrew Curtis-Brignell, of UK black metal one man band Caina. Not unlikely because of the folks involved, it's not hard to draw lines connecting Caina Dormant and God Is Myth, but more for the sound they produce. An epic cinematic post rock more influenced by folks like Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Isis and Mono than any black metal or even metal in particular.
Granted the crossover between metal and post rock is pretty common these days with folks on both sides of the sonic divide borrowing freely from the folks opposite. And we're never ones to complain, we love both sounds, pummeling metallic crunch, and loping mathy instrumental jams, and the two together, well, you know where we stand.
So here we Have Celestial Sea, a (perhaps) one off, that finds the duo getting super spacey for the opening 5 minutes, simple minor key guitar figures unfurling over long drawn out drones, ratcheting up the tension, creating a brooding post rock ambience, that to be honest, we'd be happy to hear continue for the length of the whole record.
Instead, the band launch into the first proper song, soaring crystalline chords, breathless vocals, simple drumming, all swept up in a shimmering swell, building to a crescendo that instead of introducing crushing downtuned riffage, offers up some super proggy organs, but only for a moment, a few seconds later, the guitars drop, and the band is soaring majestically, and heavily through some epic major key chords, the drumming wilder and more chaotic, before blissing back out soon after.
Track three, "William Bentley's Grave" is another slow burner, with a definite prog vibe, lots of glistening shimmer, finally exploding in another epic climax, not crushing or heavy, just expansive and cathartic.
The closer, "Deep Inside The Cold" is the darkest of the bunch, and the most overtly heavy, sounding a bit like Opeth or Katatonia but more mathy and introspective. The guitars thick, ringing out, long passages of droning looped riffage, and finally the record's big payoff, high end guitars spiraling heavenward, the drums double time, a serious final blowout.
Definitely for fans of rock both post and math, and of course metalheads not averse to some sonic subtlety and lots of pretty pretty melody
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in a plain white sleeve with a paste on cover and a printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Clouds"
MPEG Stream: "As The Birds Fly South We Prepare Ourselves For The Impending Storm"

CHOP SHOP Oxide (23five) cd 14.98
Akita. Menche. Blankenship. Dilloway. These are the men of noise with discographies the size of small town phone books, proving their might in the international noise community by the sheer audaciousness of their output. But then again, you might really only need a single testament to stake your claim as one of the greatest noise musicians. Chop Shop has chosen the latter tactic, with Oxide being that sole document, after a relatively tiny back catalogue of cassette only releases, a couple of cdrs, and two infamous 10"s. Both released through RRR, the first was the Steel Plate 2x10" that was literally bound to a steel plate; and the second was a split 10" with Small Cruel Party that was literally cut in half, making playback a dangerous proposition for the needle on your record player. Both of those releases have long been out of print; and despite the hushed respect that those 10"s demand, Chop Shop has kept a low profile. A very low profile. Hence, after a career that has spanned nearly two decades, Oxide is his first proper CD. And it's stunning.
The sole proprietor of Chop Shop is New York based noise technician Scott Konzelmann, whose audio demolition revolves around speaker constructions forged out of hammered plate metal and disfigured commercial grade pipes, which focus particular frequencies and resonant overtones into swarming orchestras of rust, noise, drone, and static. Tape has long been Konzelmann's medium of choice for recording; and like William Basinski before him, Konzelmann endures the self-disintegration of the medium whilst transcribing the sounds of Oxide digitally. Where Basinski's vocabulary of decay is all romance and melancholy, Konzelmann's is muscular and urgently present. Oxide offers a metallurgist's din where compressed air strikes hard steel and machine vibrations generate noxious resonant frequencies in neighboring vents. Konzelmann composes the old school way, with a razor blade and pieces of tape, generating jump cut edits alongside the self-generated debris from the magnetic literally falling apart. These grey, dead-tech drones thus rupture and explode along the faultlines of those edits, and Oxide emerges as a forceful, dynamic album without resorting to purile shock tactics. This is a seriously great noise album for anybody with a passing interest in Broken Flag, Hansen Records, or early Hafler Trio.
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 1) "
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 2)"
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 3)"

CLOUDLAND CANYON Lie In Light (Kranky) cd 14.98
Lie in Light shows Cloudland Canyon wearing their Krautrock worshiping influences fully on sleeve.
We have previously mentioned their cosmic-kraut influence on their debut and follow-up ep. But on those, the lysergic free music of Ash Ra Tempel, Faust, Hawkwind, and Amon Duul II, mixed with more contemporary experimental shimmers of Dead C and This Heat were the key influential touchstones. On Lie In Light, with song titles like "Krautwerk" (how obvious can you get??), "You & I" and "Scheiss Schatzi, Auf Wiedersehn!", Cloudland Canyon this time around channel the Kosmiche and Motorik pulse of Neu!, Can, Cluster, La Dusseldorf and Popol Vuh. More song-structured than their debut, but no less cosmically atmospheric, Cloudland Canyon have upped the ante on their sound and production. While their Krautrock inspirations and tongue-in-cheek song titles may sound derivative on the surface, they bring enough of their own unique perspective on things to make for a highly engaging listen. Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Krautwerk"
MPEG Stream: "Heme"

COSBY, BILL Badfoot Brown (Dusty Groove) cd 13.98
When we think of Bill Cosby we usually think of amazing bold pattern sweaters, undeniably funny PG-rated humor and the dad we kind of all wish was ours. Maybe Fat Albert too. What doesn't usually come to our mind is deep hitting, groove heavy, spiritual jazz akin to early '70s Miles Davis. But damn we sure will be thinking about those things now after hearing this previously super impossible to find recording of Cosby on the keys along with a very strong yet mysteriously uncredited band by his side. Some of us had heard Cosby's vocal jazz albums which were likable in their own right, but this is an entirely different and much more potent beast. Believe us when we say this record goes way beyond the novelty of who created it. No matter who was behind this recording, these two long tracks sizzle with fiery passion and flawless execution. Inspired heavily by Bitches Brew era-Miles as well as the likes of Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus and Herbie Hancock, Cosby was tapping into some serious mind expanding and soulful funk infused jazz.
The cd comes with Cosby's thoughtful original liner notes where he talks about the origins of these tracks. The first track "Martin's Funeral" came from his and so many other's experience with coping with the sadness and depression that followed in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination and his personal experience attending King's funeral. The record is all instrumental, and who knew that listening to Bill Cosby and being stoned could be a perfect combination?? While he might still be known best for his TV persona and funny skits about going to the dentist office, there is no doubt after listening to this album that Cosby also has some major depth and musical talent under those amazing large sweaters. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Martin's Funeral"
MPEG Stream: "Hybish Shybish"

CUB Betti-Cola (Mint) cd 14.98
Cuddle-core lives! Here's the newly remastered reissue of Cub's 1992 debut album Betti-Cola which comes with four bonus tracks. First things first, yes, the remastering did make a difference. This cd does sound a whole lot better than the original!
For those unfamiliar... Once upon a time, three Canadian college friends (including our own Cup, pre-I Am Sponbender and AQ!) with little or no previous band experience got together to have fun trying something new for themselves (yeah, you might think "big deal!", but back then things were different... the indie music scene was even more of a boys club for one thing!). Taking the spirit & ethics of DIY punk rock, but understanding the undeniable joy of '60s girl groups, Cub's basement rehearsal space was where the musical genre cuddlecore was born. Releasing a slew of 7" eps (the bulk of which comprise Betti-Cola) and touring extensively, the three gals were definitely kindred spirits with the scene happening just a few hours south at Olympia' WA's K Records (Beat Happening, Tiger Trap, Lois, etc). They even cover Beat Happening's "Cast A Shadow".
A decade and a half later, Betti-Cola's still burstin' with youthful exuberance and blithe spirit (and topping the college radio charts once again to boot!). The tunes are sweet, peppy, rough around the edges, and a bit unsteady at times just like, yes, a cub! On the surface it may seem a little silly or childlike, but looks can be deceiving. It takes guts to throw caution to the wind like they did. As a result, the trio inspired countless young girls and women to pick up guitars or drumsticks or... Heck, look no further than Ms Neko Case who drummed with the band for a spell!
With each album they grew in confidence, skill and composition (personally we favor their second and third albums Come Out Come Out and Box Of Hair), but this is where it all began. Their bright, playful pop is perfect matched with the cover art custom drawn for them by noneother than Dan DeCarlo of Archie Comics fame!
FYI: Come Out Come Out has also been remastered and reissued, and the band's third and final album Box Of Hair has also been rereleased with a bonus fan-pleasin' item.
MPEG Stream: "Go Fish"
MPEG Stream: "My Chinchilla"
MPEG Stream: "Cast A Shadow"

CUB Box Of Hair (Mint) cd 14.98
Cub's newly remastered and reissued third and final album, Box of Hair, plays up the edgier and urgent side of their cuddle-core ethos. The distortion is upped, the song-writing more heartbroken, the lyrics more snarly in their delivery. Stiffer 'real world experience' influences are more pervasive here than on previous releases, and there's an overall feeling that the band is going for broke, and sensing an end coming, want to leave things with a bang. And that's definitely what Box of Hair is, a maturing sum up of priorities, showcasing their best song-writing and musical craft and taking it as far as it can go. One mesmerizing and charming highlight on the album, "Magic 8 Ball", captures all the Cub essentials - infectious pop hooks and clever, bittersweet lyrics. Box of Hair's not as carefree as their previous releases, but it's probably their most meaningful and resonant. Includes a bonus fan-pleasin' item -- a bright, embroidered patch of the band's sunshiney logo!
Note: If you can endure the seemingly endless chair creakiness ("it's not bed squeaks!" says Cup) at the album's end you'll be rewarded with a truly retarded punk rock finish.
FYI: Along with Box of Hair, Betti-Cola and Come Out Come Out, have also been rereleased with bonus tracks!
MPEG Stream: "Freaky"
MPEG Stream: "Loaded"
MPEG Stream: "Main and Broadway"

CUB Come Out Come Out (Mint) cd 14.98
Come Out Come Out is Cub's masterpiece. Newly remastered with bonus tracks (a couple of them hidden), it is the culmination of all the DIY spirit of their debut but also shows the band honing their skills as musicians and songwriters into a tight set of upbeat tunes with a joyful edge - although Cub was often skillfully bittersweet. Self-proclaimed cuddle-core trio from Vancouver, BC, Lisa, Lisa and Robynn veered away from the battle cries of their more raucous riot grrrl contemporaries preferring to wave the 'home-crafted' flag with a more confident (and varied) direction. Obviously, legions of fanatic cubsters (likely whipped into a frenzy during thir sugar-pop-overload live shows) got the message. On this their second full length, wonder along to "Everything's Geometry", "New York City" (later covered by They Might Be Giants), and covers of the Go-Gos' "Vacation" and Yoko Ono's "I'm Your Angel"!
Originally released as a triple 7" colored vinyl fiesta with some wonderfully twisted cover art by Canadian artist Fiona Smyth, the extra bonus tracks here include a live version of "Cast A Shadow" featuring some Italian dude who jumped on stage to play harmonica, and a sweet phoned-in version of "My Chinchilla" on Canadian Radio, that really captures the band's energetic live spirit. Another key groop in a line of influential DIY femme trios from The Shaggs, Kleenex, and The Raincoats, to The Marine Girls, Shonen Knife and Le Tigre, it's time once again for Cub!!
FYI: Betti-Cola has also been remastered and reissued, and the band's third and final album Box Of Hair has also been rereleased with a bonus fan-pleasin' item.
MPEG Stream: "Everything's Geometry"
MPEG Stream: "Life of Crime"
MPEG Stream: "New York City"

DAVIS, JOHN The Gold Hooped Nature (Root Strata) cd 12.98
We're not sure if this is the first proper full length from this local soundscaper / field recordist, but it's definitely the first one we've ever had. We raved about the last two Davis discs we carried, both cd-r's both now unfortunately out of print.
But this is an actual cd, so it should be around for a while, which is a very good thing, as it's just as fantastic as those long gone cd-r's, so hopefully this time a few more folks will get a chance to lay their ears on Davis' minimal loveliness.
And minimal and lovely is precisely what this is. In past reviews we've mentioned Niblock and Coleclough, and obviously those comparisons still apply, but the cool thing about Davis is that he is not nearly so precise. His sounds have grit and static, there is room sound, tape hiss, not to a distracting degree, but only in so much as it adds a bit of warmth and texture.
Davis' music, while deep and shimmery, mysterious and dark, is also natural, captured and created in its environment, not in some vacuum, so a nearly static drone is often peppered with bits of glitch, strange percussion, slivers of feedback. Sounds pulse and waver, drift and shift, often creating incidental rhythms. Those more rhythmic tracks are like some darker dronier pop ambient music, subtly throbbing beneath slow shifting layers of sound, not murky as much as washed out and soft around the edges.
A few tracks stick out here and there, like the warbly almost jazzy interlude "Half Consumed" with it haunting trumpet melody and strange backwards rhythm, but for the most part, The Gold Hooped Nature is simply another breathtaking collection of minimal dronemusic, from an unsung modern master.
Packaged in a beautiful silkscreened gold on white gatefold cardstock sleeve and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Before And Since"
MPEG Stream: "Hudibras"
MPEG Stream: "Queen Mab's Chariot"

DEADSEA s/t (Chrome Leaf) cd 11.98
The return of Deadsea, not to be confused with New Zealand noise rockers the Dead C. But of course the second you laid ears on this, there would be no confusing the two. Not a chance.
Deadsea were born out of the late great tech grind outfit Three Studies For A Crucifixion, and while the grind is pretty much gone, Deadsea are for sure technical, so much so that much of their music is utterly dizzying in its complexity. Maybe that's the reason these guys aren't huge already. Cuz man, if there was any justice in the world, these guys would be touring with Mastodon or Neurosis or playing Ozzfest or something. Not only are Deadsea heavy as fuck, but the songs are crazy catchy, over the top proggy, an impossible blend of Iron Maiden, Carcass, Voivod, with a million parts, tons of awesome harmonies, incredible drumming, insane riffing, tracks shift from thrashing fury to groovy chugging to woozy breakdown to mathy freak out to sludgey doom all in the blink of an eye. Some tracks get all Champs-like, others are almost Southern sounding. The vocals are generally a guttural sort of shout, but here and there they will soar majestically, usually coinciding with a similarly soaring guitar line.
This is just epic and majestic and brutal and blasting and heavy and we hope that the rest of the world catches on soon, not just for the band's sake, although hell, they deserve it, but for all the heavy music obsessives out there whose lives are less full, and whose iPods are that much shittier, and whose headbanging can only be less frenzied for being without Deadsea. Easily remedied though. So do it!!!
MPEG Stream: "Northwitch"
MPEG Stream: "Coming Home"

EDU K FEATURING MARINA Me Bota Pra Dancar (Man Recordings) 12" 12.98
We first were introduced to Edu K on the second installment of the party starting, raw booty shaking Rio Baile Funk collection. His two tracks on that comp really stood out and grabbed our attention and our bodies as we couldn't help but smile and shake it everytime they came on. So we've been wanting to hear more and we finally were able to get our hands on a new 12" from him. Teamed up with Marina of Bonde De Role fame they make a potent one-two punch of raw and sizzling fun. Edu K brings the sweaty ass shakin' bombastic bounce of Baile Funk better then almost anyone. With Marina on vocals it's kind of like if Peaches got hyphy or if Timberland hooked up with CSS. The Crookers edit on the 'b' side kills, making this a must have 12" for anyone who wants to sweat and shake it all summer long.

EK CAMINITI Buried Light (Digtalis Limited) cassette 9.98
Rich has the pleasure been, of late, to sit down with a new issuance from the stellar Digitalis Limited label. Sean Mccann's wobbly wonder "Flutter Oasis," and the last gem from the ever-unfolding Natural Snow Building's saga have had our ears smiling. And not least of all because they are cassettes. It seems re-aquaintance with any medium is accompanied by a degree of intentionality that peaks you to the details of the experience. And particularly in this case, the warmth of the cassette has been on display, with each of these releases huddling up close to the glowing embers of their mic settings slingshotting into the red. The effect can be quite comforting, as though panned to the far reaches are the sounds and feelings of a few angels blowing on a contact mic. We think it might be worth mentioning too, that the scientific name digitalis means "finger-like," and refers to the ease with which a flower of digitalis purpurea can be fitted over a human fingertip. If the music were fingers, and the flowers your ears, you'd be starting to get the picture.
And so, with all that said, it was with obvious excitement that we received a new installment from Digitalis. And from a store favorite and friend no less, Evan of Barn Owl! Elsewhere on this list you'll find their new full length lp on the awesome Not Not Fun label from LA. Buried Light is a decidedly more droney affair than the last two Barn Owl full lengths, but still very much in keeping with their broader vocabulary. The opening track is like listening to the oscillating resonance frequencies of a massive bell breathing. And in time, its host emerges, an ambiguous and ghostly voice, weaving and wandering on broad syllables through the dense murk. On other tracks, this dynamic is extended to the accompaniment of some Tacoma-like guitar picking, giving the tape a faint western vibe. In fact there are parts of the tape that could be comfortably inserted into one of the more recent Earth records or even Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack. In all cases the pace and depths of the tone relationships are entirely transporting. Evan excels in evoking the texture, pace, and scale of the elements, without attaching the songs to anything too specific. In this manner we are free to imagine them as the soundtracks to a kind of collapsed landscape where the wind of water blows ripples across a lake of sand. What is miraculous about Evan, and Barn Owl, at their most abstract and disintegrated, is the profound ambiguity of their temper. They live at the 360th degree, when you've wandered all the way to end of the light, and things start getting dark. What's more engrossing, perhaps, is you may not even remember if you started out towards the dark or the light in the first place. It's the liminal plane on which we witness the gathering of a cadre of genres; folk, metal, and drone, and watch them sculpt with the naked vibrational core of sound. It's purity, and spiritually relative qualities, align it with the antecedents of some new age music, but rather than easy listening, we might beg you to follow us out onto the thin branch of a pun and call it hard blisstening. It's what it is.
We've only got fifteen of these, so act fast. After that they are gone FOREVER!
MPEG Stream: "The Moss Aglow"
MPEG Stream: "Vedic Pavement"

ENCOMIAST s/t (Lens) cd-r 7.98
Yet another disc from one of our favorite cd-r dronelords, Encomiast. Last heard from on the divine Bathed In Sunlight released on Crucial Bliss earlier this year, this disc is actually an archival recording from way back in 1999, gussied up in 2006, finally seeing the light of day right now.
Bathed In Sunlight was a big surprise as It featured more actual songs, with singing, acoustic guitars, even drums, we still dug it, but definitely nothing like the rest of the Encomiast catalog. This disc however returns us to the brooding slow motion dronescapes that made us dig Encomiast in the first place. Unclear what exactly the instrumentation is, but whatever the source, it's obscured enough that it really doesn't matter. The original sounds are offered up in streaks and blurs, whirs and rumbles, melody here is muted and subdued, this is not nearly as tranquil as some drone records, much of this is harrowing and ominous, sinister and downright scary, Lustmord, Wolf Eyes, you're not far off, some sort of post industrial sprawl, the rumble of distant machines, of subterranean engines, thunder filled skies, a world in ruins, painted in blacks and greys.
Later on in the record, strange percussion is introduced, a lurching distorted crunch, that gives the record some sort of strange propulsion, once again, trudging through an eerie wasteland, while all around strange sonic events occur, shining brightly and briefly before fading away.
"Concupere" is the record's nearly half hour centerpiece, an ultra minimal low end drift, shifting slowly beneath warm metallic swells, and haunting black ambience, eventually the track morphs into something much softer and dreamier, sounding almost angelic up against the bleak sonic sprawl that came before.
Incredibly dark, but also incredibly beautiful. Fans of the slow and low, of deep drones and of dark miserablism, this is your stop.
MPEG Stream: "Suborbit"
MPEG Stream: "Azazel"

EX-COCAINE / YELLOW SWANS split (Not Not Fun) lp 15.98
Is it even necessary to point out that Noise nerds and Free Jazz freaks tend to keep the sort of the same company? Probably not, but if it were, then we would just play you this record and say goodnight. Those of you who don't like jazz, don't get scared off! The sensibility coloring this record with that spirit is really just one of genuinely free improvisation, so don't expect Coltrane or anything like that, this is still largely a Noise affair. Ex-Cocaine starts off with a loose instrumental guitar piece, accompanied by various drum sounds. The second track follows a similar trajectory, with the addition of vocals. If Aztec Camera were a lo-fi art rock band, this is what it might sound like. Side two features none other than the prolific -- and soon to be extinct -- Yellow Swans. Yes, it's true, after 7 years or so of trying to destroy both your ears and your speakers, Gabriel Saloman and Pete Swanson are calling it quits. They're not exactly going to disappear though, just saying goodbye to the Swans and starting some new things. If you saw our last list, then you probably noticed Mr. Saloman's collaborative effort with Aja Rose of In Flux. As for Pete Swanson, he's got a new label called Freedom to Spend -- check our review of it's first release, the album "Light Ships" by Axolotl off-shoot Bulbs. Okay, you're all caught up, now: the second side of the record. From mindfuck analog meltdown to blissful psych incantations, YS have certainly changed over the years, and, perhaps for the best, their final days have drifted into a more melodic, psychedelic direction. This track could not possibly better demonstrate that trend. In fact, if you didn't know who this actually was, it would be pretty dang impressive if you could guess. Meandering guitars, buried vocals, and a final showdown that dissolves into beautiful sheets of noise. Recommended!

FAUST Kleine Welt (Live) (Ektro) cd 14.98
Forget for a second that this is a Faust album. What if it was just some unknown new band, some cd-r we got in the mail, some limited edition cassette release? Heck we've tried that thought experiment, and we'd be all over it! Telling you that it's a mysteriously murky, throbbing psychedelic freak-scene, fraught with krautrocky rhythms and tense textures. Sorta reminds us of a mix of Blues Control and Wooden Shjips... or White Hills and Expo 70... there's a druggy '60s garage vibe, industrial electronic atmosphere, blissful moodiness, and clockwork Circle-like propulsivity, all crammed into one crazy counter-intuitive whole, raw and live! Everything in the way of organ drones, harmonica blurt, echoing voices, shuffling drums, and serious dosage of searing psych-rock geetar found here were all taken from various European performances in 2006, later mixed and edited at fauststudio. We'd assume most of the tracks are pretty much unique to this disc...
Yeah, we'd be pretty into it if it was some new group! Does the fact it's a new disc by krautrock legends Faust, released by Circle's Ektro label, make it any cooler? It doesn't need to. Though if that's what it takes to get you to check it out, that's ok. Conversely, if you were like, oh just another umpteenth Faust reunion album, don't be like that. First off, Faust rule. Even today. Sure, this isn't the original line up. In fact, it's not even the ONLY current line up! Apparently, in the grand tradition of, uh, Saxon and others, there's now more than one version of Faust, each featuring different original band members, going around touring under the name. Weird. Not sure if this fractured factioning is an agreed-upon thing (to cover more ground?) or if they're in competition. Hopefully the former! It would be sad to hear that there's litigation pending.
So anyway, THIS Faust consists of Jan Wolbrandt on drums, Michael Stoll on bass (and flute), Lars Paukstat on percussion and vocals, Steven Wray Lobdell on guitar, and Hans Joachim Irmler on organ, keyboards and vocals. That's a good line up all right, they've got Lobdell in the band after all! Hence the dosage of searing psych-rock geetar previously mentioned...
Recommended, as one of the two very different and very cool live albums newly issued by Ektro that we're reviewing this list (the other one is by '80s strong-man metaller Thor, believe it or not!). Hmmm. Faust + Thor, does that sort of = Circle??
(And note, there's another new live Faust 2cd that we have in stock and hope to review soon, Od Serca Do Duszy, that's the work of the OTHER active Faust unit, featuring Jean-Herve Peron, Zappi Diermaier, and Amaury Cambuzat.)
MPEG Stream: "Foam Of War"
MPEG Stream: "Crawling Wax"
MPEG Stream: "Terrorize Me"

FEAR FALLS BURNING Frenzy Of The Absolute (Conspiracy) cd 14.98
Drums are maybe the last thing you might expect to hear on a Fear Falls Burning record, which makes the opening of the new FFB, Frenzy Of The Absolute, all the more fascinating, since it opens with JUST drums, a huge crash, a doomy drum plod all spread out, spacious and spare. But eventually guitars enter the mix, and slowly take over.
Fear Falls Burning is the one man guitardrone project of axeman Dirk Serries, and over the last year has released numerous cds and lps, each filled with his unique take on the otherwise played out doomdronedirge sound. Fear Falls Burning is a much more musical take, no less thick or corrosive or caustic or heavy, but Serries makes his walls of downtuned drone, and whirring buzz, glisten and shimmer, shot through with melody and unlikely texture, about as poppy as a music this un-poppy can get. And it's no different here. Well minus the HUGE difference of having a drummer. Or should we say drummerS! Serries is joined by a series of guests on Frenzy, most notable the drummers from Swedish post-metallers Switchblade and Cult Of Luna.
At first we were worried that adding drums would just turn FFB's ethereal doomic drift into something much more generic and run of the mill, but just the opposite is true. Serries and his guests subtly transform the sound of FFB into something wholly different, the opening track says it all. That sprawling simple, spread out drumming, continues on throughout the first three quarters of the track, pounding away, not pummeling, but pounding, almost delicately if that were even possible, while Serries introduces soft shimmery delicate melodies, that drift dreamily in the background, the whole thing underpinned by a thick, gradually building Niblock like static guitar drone. But that little lullaby like melody, keeps the track from becoming pure dirge. There's way too much space. It's almost like a seriously metallicized and doomed up slowcore band. This is Low covering SUNNO))), a dreamy droney soporific downtuned dreamlike creep.
The guitars thicken, the ambience grows ever more woozy and buzzy, the various swells of distorted buzz, wash in and out, various melodies surface and then drift off, the song slowly transforming into something much blackened and sinister. Until with about 5 minutes left, the track switches gears and becomes a roiling blur of washed out industrial buzz, muted picked apart riffage, processed percussion, the drums slowly surfacing from below, creeping into earshot, like some black beast clawing its way up from the abyss, creating a dirgey sort of Godflesh / Jesu jam, but way more muddy and murky blown out, blurred and soft focused, and somehow still weirdly pretty.
The second track is way more in line with past FFB recordings, huge heaving slabs of buzzing low end, a vast expanse of fluttering, reverberating guitar growl, slow motion swells of whir, peppered with clouds of cymbal shimmer, shooting star streaks of high end, all blearily blurred into one fluid, constantly shifting dronescape. This track too grows in intensity, becoming more cacophonous, more ominous and atonal, a deep black hole of swirling black melody and thick textured guitarscapery. Like a dreamier, blissier Wolf Eyes.
The final track begins like some super charged Spacemen 3 jam, a crumbling distorted space rock riff, doused in delay, the last note allowed to pulse and skitter off into the ether, before the riff re-engages. Over the top, in swoop more layers of guitar buzz, synth sounding whir and warble, all very trancelike and mesmerizing, the drums don't even kick in until near the end, and even then, they just offer up a huge pulse like pound, a skeletal framework for the swirling buzzing blissy blackness above, the drums finally exploding into an actual rhythm with about 2 minutes to go, the guitars soaring into a serious frenzy, suddenly it sounds like the climax of an Explosions In The Sky song AND the finale of a Godspeed song all woven together into one explosive blown out finish.
As much as we love pretty much everything Fear Falls Burning, this record has us hoping this drum thing is not just a one off, but even if it is, we'll dig it while we can.
MPEG Stream: "Frenzy Of The Absolute"
MPEG Stream: "He Contemplates The Sign"

GREY DATURAS Return to Disruption (Neurot) cd 14.98
Huzzah! Our favorite instrumental down-under doom-bringers return (to disruption) with this new
full-length, the prolific Melbourne trio's debut for Neurosis' Neurot label. It's a good fit, of course, this should go over well with the whole post-rock/metal crowd, this album often grindingly hypnotic, the Grey Daturas' lumbering sheets of distorto-drone skullflowering forth over a roiling bed of precision percussive clangor right from the get-go! Their threatening waves of pure heaviness, sharpened into a drill-drone of an attack, also occasionally take detours into areas of abstract ambience, the guitars of Bonnie Mercer and Rob MacManus carving psychedelic feedback sculptures, then tightening again back into full metallic impact, driven by the skittering drums of Robert Manson.
As heavy as they are (which is HEAVY) you can't really call the Grey Dats a metal band. They're in that quasi-metal realm with the likes of SUNNO))), Boris, Harvey Milk, and Nadja, perhaps, with a certain amount of experimental lo-fi fuckery going on that reminds us of many of their freenoise comrades over in nearby New Zealand... The title track itself is a clattering, pottering about, like something the Dead C would come up with, while the track called "Undisturbed" is anything but, sounding like a violin or creaking door hinge dying a slow and dismal death. And the high-end scraping skree of "Balance Of Convenience" should peel some paint. And then, as already mentioned, there's all the juggernaut, trance-inducing, spaced-out, instrumental doom rock post rock surging through tracks like "Beyond And Into The Ulimate" and "Neuralgia".
The Grey Daturas definitely like all the varieties of drone! And fans of, what should we call it, avant-doom, or drone-doom, or whatever, should like all varieties of the Grey Daturas, starting with this disc if you haven't already made their acquaintance, covering all the bases as it does!
MPEG Stream: "Beyond And Into The Ultimate"
MPEG Stream: "Answered In The Negative"
MPEG Stream: "Undisturbed"

HELLHAMMER The Demon Entrails (Century Media) 2cd + book 27.00
We could easily fill several paragraphs talking about the historical significance of Hellhammer (speaking of metal history, not world history, of course, though for some of us the two are of equal importance). But if you're reading this, and possibly already considering buying a deluxe double cd (or triple vinyl!) set of the band's early demo recordings, you probably already know something about the seminal significance of Swiss primal metal trio Hellhammer, the precursors to Celtic Frost. If you do want to know more, we'd point you to the liner notes to this release, written by HH/CF mainman Thomas Gabriel Fischer (aka Tom G. Warrior, aka Satanic Slaughter), which were adapted from his forthcoming book Only Death Is Real, all about the early '80s origins of those two bands.
As you probably know, Hellhammer started off as an amateur but enthusiastic exercise in teenage worship of NWOBHM black metal originators Venom, but took Venom's defining sound to further extremes, becoming a pioneering band not only in the black metal genre, but also for death metal and sludgy doom metal as well. And all this without much of a recorded legacy, just the 1984 Apocalyptic Raids ep and some compilation tracks and these demos, the band's initial recording sessions at long last presented officially on cd and vinyl, remastered from the original master tapes.
These three demo cassettes -- Satanic Rites, Death Fiend, and Triumph Of Death -- were released in mere handmade handfuls back in 1983. Including raw(er) versions of such later classics as "The Third Of The Storms", "Triumph Of Death", and "Revelations Of Doom", as well as many otherwise unheard Hellhammer hammerings, such morbid morsels as "Dark Warriors", "Crucifixion", "Decapitator", "Ready For Slaughter", and, er, "Bloody Pussies", it's 29 tracks, 102 minutes of truly ancient evil that any self respecting black/death/doom metaller should revel in. With a twanging low-end of rubbery bass, lurching riffs, pogoing rhythms, echoed vocals, these decidedly lo-fi recordings sound almost like a no-wave take on metal. Accidentally avant-garde (unlike Celtic Frost's later efforts to intentionally be so), Hellhammer were so wretched and fucked up that they've defined "necro" for all time. Hear here how they began.
The limited edition double cd version is packaged in a handsome, slipcased hardback digibook, 5.5" x 7.5", with a 36 page booklet bound inside, plus a small poster. Within the booklet, you'll find hella vintage black and white necro photography, xeroxed flier artwork, the original cassette covers, lyrics and liner notes from the band. Along with occult artwork, including a previously unpublished demonic pencil sketch by bassist Martin Eric Ain that, since it's rendered on graph paper, has us speculating that these guys probably were playing D&D in their bunker as well as recording the metal of death.
Meanwhile, the vinyl edition (also quite LIMITED, the eight we have are probably all we'll ever have) is a truly weighty proposition, 180 gram vinyl in a thick gatefold package with the aforementioned booklet, etc. as well.
Once the deluxe cd edition is gone, we'll have the regular, less-deluxe (but also less expensive) version.
MPEG Stream: "Crucifixion"
MPEG Stream: "Maniac"
MPEG Stream: "Decapitator"

ISUNGSET, TERJE Iceman Is (All Ice) cd 16.98
Yet another mysterious disc of ice music, from the ice music master, Terje Isungset. What is ice music you ask? Well Isungset crafts actual musical instruments out of ice, yep, ICE instruments, all playable, from horns to vibraphones, the tones they create lustrous and surprisingly warm.
The instruments are beautiful, ice sculptures, glowing blue and white shapes that when struck, or blown, or rubbed, produce amazing sounds. Much of the music is percussive, the ice sounding like amuted gamelan, or a xylophone, the notes lustrous and deep. There are horns as well (although we won't even begin to question how someone can play an icehorn without getting their lips stuck), whose sounds range from alien cries, honking bleats, deep moans and every variation in between.
Where past discs have been super pretty, serene, and almost new age in their blissed out tranquility, Iceman Is manages to create a sound a bit more dark and ominous. The vocals on past releases, which reminded us of Bjork, here are replaced by strange mewlings, creaking falsettos, haunting ghostlike whispers, drifting amid the ice chimes and cold ambience.
In fact minus the fact that this record is played primarily on ice instruments, it wouldn't be all that surprising to hear these sounds on some super limited cd-r, some strange band of Finnish folkies or mysterious Midwestern bedroom 4-trackers. Very percussive, tribal, primitive, abstract and free, the melodies are spare and spread out, every track seems to have a definite drone element, no matter how minimal, the ice percussion offers up dreamy underwater sounding rhythms, there are some electronics, but they blend in perfectly with the sounds of the ice, in fact there are some tradition instruments mixed in here and there, but so deftly, they also end up sounding dark and delicate and icy.
Too bad it will never be cold enough out here to get Isungset and his band here to play. Maybe we should get them to do a tour of walk in freezers! Anyway, another gorgeous disc of haunting music made with ice, the darkest of the bunch, which of course means WAY recommended.
And like the three ice music releases before it, Iceman Is also boasts some of the most amazing packaging we have ever seen. The booklet and tray card are semi-transparent vellum, printed images of Isungset, behind icicles, playing the ice harp, in gorgeous deep blues, the whole thing wrapped in a thick slip cover made from a thick foggy semi transparent textured plastic, printed in silver metallic ink, the edge cut away to reveal the cd's spine, which is filled with water, with tiny bubbles drifting back and forth, and yes, we mean ACTUAL water, in a little custom made vial, so perfect it does indeed look like the cd tray is full of water, just waiting to be frozen and played! So awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Blue"
MPEG Stream: "Frozen"
MPEG Stream: "Iceman Is"

JALDABOATH Hark The Herald (Death To Music) 3"cd-r 13.98
Another three inch chunk of demented black metal weirdness from the UK. If you love the grim bizarre buzz of Old Forest, who recently returned after nearly 7 years, and whose own 3" cd-r we reviewed a few lists back, or the medieval madness of Meads Of Asphodel, then odds are you're gonna love Jaldoboath. From the same strange land, and featuring at least one dark knight who has done time in both Meads and Old Forest, Jaldoboath sound a bit like the Meads mixed with power metal thrashers Bal Sagoth, if they were a bit less serious and had recorded a holiday album. Seriously. The guitars gallop, the riffs and melodies are soaring and triumphant, the vocals are gurgly and growly, but there are horns, fanfares, fluttering flutes, jaunty little jigs, strange little sound effects, proggy organs, it's almost like listening to the strangely metal court musicians of King Arthur's court in some alternate reality.
Songs like "Bring Me The Head Of Metatron", "Seek The Grail", "Hark The Herald" and "Da Vinci's Code", each track plays like the theme music for some insane medieval Monty Python metal sitcom. On "Seek The Grail" you can almost picture the credits, the freeze frames as each character is introduced, and the horns, make it sound almost ska at times. "Jargue De Molay" is the least goofy, playing instead like some metallized Emerson Lake And Palmer, with awesome organ jams, creepy crackly breakdowns, a wicked main riff, all peppered with hand claps, blasting double kick, minor key trumpets, throbbing bass.
But then right after that comes the title track, which has a strange sing song vocal line, over a lopped trumpet fanfare, and a very holiday sounding main melody. Like a legion of musical mall Santa's gone metal and marauding through the hordes of innocent holiday shoppers. But then the last track swoops in, sounding a bit like Tool filtered through UK black metal buzz, all brooding buzz, Eastern sitar like melodies, and crooned baritone vocals. Over the top and dramatic, and weirdly hooky. WTF?
So fucking far out. But if like us, you're already a loyal knight of the Meads round table and sometime dweller in the Old Forest, well then this is just the sort of thing you can't get enough of.
WAY recommended, but only for truly twisted musical souls...
And like the Old Forest 3"cd-r also on Death To Music, SUPER LIMITED!!!
MPEG Stream: "Hark the Herald"
MPEG Stream: "Da Vinci's Code"

LES RALLIZES DENUDES Le 12 Mars 1977 a Tachikawa (Over Level) 2cd 27.00
BACK IN STOCK. This Japanese psych essential, originally reviewed back on list 156, has been hard to come by for some time now but finally has been repressed or something, and we've got 'em, again!
You hear that? That echoing, droning, heavy psych jamming destroying your mind? Yep, at last, we've got 'em. Real cds, not cd-rs. Reasonably priced. More than a handful in stock (for now). The distorto-delic seventies Japanese guitar psych holy grail known as "Live '77", previously released only in an absurdly expensive, impossible to track down double cd-r edition, and in part on long-gone vinyl bootlegs, is now within your grasp (almost). This we expect to have around for more than two seconds at least, and is a comparative steal at only $25. Nicely done too, with a die cut cover revealing a blurry b&w photo of Les Rallizes Denudes guitarist Mizutani Takashi in action.
Disc one starts off exploring Les Rallizes mellow side, all sensitive and lovely, with "Enter The Mirror", but then soon explodes into sheer amplified overload, with throbbing mantric rhythms Circle fans should dig. It's a searing wash of guitars in the most far out VU, Neil Young, Fushitsusha realm, but taken way further out. Rough, raw live sound, but really all the fuzz and distortion and grit sounds just right. There's four long tracks on disc one, three looong tracks on disc two. By the time the epic 20+ minute "The Last One" on disc two marches into white noise oblivion, you -- and maybe your speakers -- will be fried.
Apparently, Takashi and co. are still out there, somewhere in Japan, making music as they have been for the past 30-odd years, but rarely leaving a recorded trace. But this 1977 live set isn't just about the only thing really available, it's also proof of their obscure genius. Next to 60's beat-psych legends the Jacks, they are maybe THE pioneering Japanese psychedelic outfit, obviously a BIG influence on today's underground Japanese psych bands, like Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, High Rise and Mainliner, Acid Mothers Temple, Nagisa Ni Te, maybe even noiseniks Hijokaidan... All of 'em could simply be Les Rallizes tributes, really. We'd have to imagine that Keiji Haino and co. cau