ABSTRAKT KEAL AGRAM Bad Thriller (Gooom) cd 15.98
Finally back in stock again!!
How does Gooom do it? Where do these bands come from? (I know, I know, France...) Release after release, they somehow dig up more and more amazingly breathtaking slabs of fuzzy, droney, poppy, rocking electronic weirdness. Bad Thriller is no different. The newest record from the bizarrely named Abstrakt Keal Agram is quite possibly our favorite Gooom release since the mighty M83. Like M83, AKA also dabble in fuzzed out My Bloody Valentine worship, skittery glitched out electronica, and murky creepy atmospherics. But where M83 are all glistening sparkling effervescence and warm pulsing throb, AKA are a much darker proposition, falling somewhere between the epic downer ambience of Godspeed, the shuffling glitch pop of the Notwist and the bastardized hip hop of some of the weirder Anticon artists. Drone-y and moody melancholia woven from spare acoustic guitars, heavy fuzzy electronic organs, squiggly synthesizers spitting out dizzying melodies, mumbly sadboy vocals, stuttering, a vast array of alien sounds and even more alien soundscapes and all sorts of unfunky drum programming and live drums. And it is most definitely about the rhythms. The whole record is an experiment in rhythmic juxtaposition. Warm languid indie rock or fuzzed out shoe-gazey bliss pop or dreamy epic instrumentals, all demarcated by beautifully damaged rhythms that shift from song to song, and sometimes even in the course of a single track, funky almost hip hop drums, stumbling, seemingly random rhythmic chaos, big booming simplicity or dense complex Autechre-ish programming. Sounds like it could be a mess but it all falls (im)perfectly into place. A gorgeously unlikely electronic indie pop dipped in a thick viscous druggy space fuzz. The biggest surprise though is track two, which is straight up hip hop! Somehow it fits though, a chaotic Anticon / Mush sort of number, with multiple whining whiteboy flows, chaotic funky bounce and lots of weird loops and samples. Turntables do surface occasionally throughout the rest of the record, as do some Anticon-ish moments, but in more of an ambient supporting role to the overall buzzing fuzzy murky sonic dreaminess. Once again, SO GOOD!
MPEG Stream: "Bad Thriller"
MPEG Stream: "Ghost Version (+ Atoms Family)"
MPEG Stream: "Riviere"

ANENZEPHALIA Noehaem (Tesco) cd 15.98
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"

ARBOGA TEENAGE RIOT Ugly Crew Demos (Daft Alliance) cd 7.98
Once again, we can just tell when a record is going to be a hit here. Something intangible that tells us that everyone is going to absolutely love (or absolutely hate but still need to own) this record. We felt it about the Conet Project. Hatebeak. Daddy's Curses. The Thai Elephant Orchestra. And now Arboga Teenage Riot.
The story goes like this. Our pal Nathan was on tour in Europe and while travelling through Sweden, two young ladies handed him a tape. The tape sat in the bottom of his bag, unlistened to for months. On his return to the states he remembered the tape, put it in the stereo, pushed play and had his mind promptly blown. And we'll have to admit we feel exactly the same way. Imagine ultra lo-fi, high energy techno / gabber, all four on the floor beats and cheesy synths, whistles and those kinds of melodies usually reserved for cheerleading competitions. "You All Ready For This?!?!" DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK! You know of what we speak. So now imagine two teenage girls, sometimes making up Swedish lyrics and chanting them in cute sing-songy harmonies, but more often, just screaming and growling hysterically in their best aproximation of black metal vocals, sounding like they were just dubbed over the music on a boombox (which they probably were). This is the real digital hard core! Or more accurately ANALOG HARD CORE!!! If Alec Empire had any balls Arboga Teenage Riot would be the next DHR superstars. ATR take techno and black metal and riot grrl and DIY recording and turn it into a totally bizarre, fascinating, fun and funny masterpiece! The cover is pretty sharp too, a huge swamp beast thing emerging from the water, beneath a hot pink totally illegible Arboga Teenage Riot black metal style logo! Fuck yeah!
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

ARCADE FIRE Funeral (Merge) cd 14.98
Hey, check out this new Canadian band's elegant swagger and dandy bombast. If the number of recent in-store queries about them is any indication, many other folks seem to be doing likewise and diggin' what they hear! The lead-off track with its thumpin' dance beat and swooning male vocals (be forewarned, they occasionally cross the line into overwrought moan'n'wail) is totally reminiscent of Pulp's "Disco 3000". At once, it's both steeped in despair and drenched with fun. However, the next song jumps over to more aggressive, post-punk territory a la P.I.L. meets Interpol (particularly in the vocals, although A.F.'s singer has a peculiar warbly voice all his own which received a chilly reception from some folks around these parts). By the fourth song, a galloping very Modest Mouse-y tune, you sorta get the sense that this group has a multitude of personalities. That said, the one track that seems to encapsulate Arcade Fire's scope comes at the mid-point of the album. "Crown Of Love" is a soaring grande orchestral hand-wringer that suddenly bursts into discoland for its finish (again very Jarvis Cocker/Pulp-ish). But then again, the following song is totally in the swirling Flaming Lips vein (complete with very Coyne-esque singing), and the female-sung closing number comes across as very very Bjork-influenced. So what do all of these elder artists have in common which is also at the core of these young'uns' impressive sound? A complete unabashed flair for drama, untethered emotive vibrato-laced vocals and no fear of a thumpin' beat to get the blood pumpin'. This band can raise the roof and sink into a quagmyre of gloom as they see fit. Sure to tickle the fancy of many fans of those aforementioned bands.
MPEG Stream: "Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)"
MPEG Stream: "Crown Of Love "

ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI 2 The Doldrums / Vital Pink (Carpark) cd 14.98
Few records in recent memory have provoked such a breach of unanimity here at Aquarius. Some of us (Andee, Cup, Byram) are the naysayers who feel that the artist's eccentricities ring rather hollow -- i.e, fucking around rather than genuinely fucked up. Meanwhile Jim and Allan lean towards the positive on this one. (Aw heck they'll come right out and admit it: they like the Ariel Pink.) And it hasn't helped (or has it?) that several of our friends have come out as big Ariel Pink supporters. You know how that is. Either you want to jump on the bandwagon (Allan?) or you want to be the contradictory one (Andee?). So if you come into the store and ask somebody here about this record, you'll surely get an impassioned opinion, but who knows on what side it will be.
So what's the deal with Ariel Pink anyway? perhaps you're now wondering. Well he's this young dude from LA and he makes lo-fi fucked up pop music, his heavily effected falsetto vocal stylings drifting out from damaged electronics and naive guitar fumblings. The Animal Collective heard a demo and fell in love with it (you see, Ariel Pink is a love or hate propostion, we think) and had to release this new album on their label Paw Tracks. It kinda sounds like fey '80s Brit-pop, all melodic and swoony, being broadcast via a static-y radio signal, for that far-away, timelost vibe. And then, even more weirdly, there's an element of '70s soul/R&B too! A strange mix...visiting the Fall's dubby adventures...or channelling an adolescent Bowie...and catchy as all get out. Beneath all the orchestral samples and looped beats and layered vocals and generally warped warbliness of this, lies some solid songwriting. Yessir, what might seem at first listen like home-taped half-assedness reveals depth and feeling and...we'll even say talent. Reveals to those of us that like it, that is. So what did it take for Jim and Allan to get into this? Well our Jewelled Antler buddies Loren and Glenn helped to convince us, 'cause they're fans...and also, Allan went and saw Ariel Pink live at the Hemlock a few weeks ago, and though it was a technically disastrous show, it was also one of those completely enjoyable, amusing, so-bad-it's-good experiences. Charismatic chaos. The show seemed to prove that AP is the real deal, not a poser but a genuine, authentically fucked up (drug-addled?) musical wonder. So now the album has grown on Allan quite a bit. And you know what? Even Andee is now admitting that Ariel Pink is at least "stupidly charming."
MPEG Stream: "Among Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Think Twice (Love)"

ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI 2 The Doldrums / Vital Pink (Carpark) lp 10.98
Few records in recent memory have provoked such a breach of unanimity here at Aquarius. Some of us (Andee, Cup, Byram) are the naysayers who feel that the artist's eccentricities ring rather hollow -- i.e, fucking around rather than genuinely fucked up. Meanwhile Jim and Allan lean towards the positive on this one. (Aw heck they'll come right out and admit it: they like the Ariel Pink.) And it hasn't helped (or has it?) that several of our friends have come out as big Ariel Pink supporters. You know how that is. Either you want to jump on the bandwagon (Allan?) or you want to be the contradictory one (Andee?). So if you come into the store and ask somebody here about this record, you'll surely get an impassioned opinion, but who knows on what side it will be.
So what's the deal with Ariel Pink anyway? perhaps you're now wondering. Well he's this young dude from LA and he makes lo-fi fucked up pop music, his heavily effected falsetto vocal stylings drifting out from damaged electronics and naive guitar fumblings. The Animal Collective heard a demo and fell in love with it (you see, Ariel Pink is a love or hate propostion, we think) and had to release this new album on their label Paw Tracks. It kinda sounds like fey '80s Brit-pop, all melodic and swoony, being broadcast via a static-y radio signal, for that far-away, timelost vibe. And then, even more weirdly, there's an element of '70s soul/R&B too! A strange mix...visiting the Fall's dubby adventures...or channelling an adolescent Bowie...and catchy as all get out. Beneath all the orchestral samples and looped beats and layered vocals and generally warped warbliness of this, lies some solid songwriting. Yessir, what might seem at first listen like home-taped half-assedness reveals depth and feeling and...we'll even say talent. Reveals to those of us that like it, that is. So what did it take for Jim and Allan to get into this? Well our Jewelled Antler buddies Loren and Glenn helped to convince us, 'cause they're fans...and also, Allan went and saw Ariel Pink live at the Hemlock a few weeks ago, and though it was a technically disastrous show, it was also one of those completely enjoyable, amusing, so-bad-it's-good experiences. Charismatic chaos. The show seemed to prove that AP is the real deal, not a poser but a genuine, authentically fucked up (drug-addled?) musical wonder. So now the album has grown on Allan quite a bit. And you know what? Even Andee is now admitting that Ariel Pink is at least "stupidly charming."
MPEG Stream: "Among Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Think Twice (Love)"

ASAHARA, MASAYO Saint Agnes Fountain (Audiolaceration) cd 16.98
The back-story on this is a good one, so let's start with that: We heard about this from a friend of ours (who shall remain nameless). So Loren came in and asked us one day if we could get an obscure album by some '70s Japanese experimental composer named Masayo Asahara. Apparently it was recently reissued on cd by a label in England... and was said to sound like Terry Riley meets Magma meets Soft Machine or something! Well THAT sure sounded interesting. So we looked it up online. Sure enough, Masayo Asahara's rare 1974 LP Saint Agnes Fountain was now available on cd. Here's what the label's website had to say about it: "A forgotten drone-prog-jazz classic from the 1970s Japanese underground...St Agnes Fountain was composed while Masayo Asahara was completing her masters degree at the University of Osaka in 1974. Asahara's doctorate concerned the music of the early American minimalists, especially LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad, and her composition reflects her involvement not only in that music, but also with the thriving Osaka free jazz scene from whose ranks this one-off band was put together specifically for this recording. Asahara also cites Faust, Soft Machine, and the Rolling Stones as influencing her work during this period. The rather curious title and artwork come via Asahara's parallel studies of mediaeval European history and pagan imagery in Protestant hymnal writing." Wow! We had to order that! Wish we could hear if first though...hmm...maybe there's a sound sample here...click here for more info it says...ok...wait, what's this?! We read: "St Agnes Fountain was composed by Martin Archer and UTT/Foster, and was recorded at Yellowarch Studio, Sheffield during 2002. This music is different from Martin's core music, and we have created Masayo in the hope of bringing a different audience into our music journey." Huh?! Turns out the whole thing is a cruel hoax! Albeit not a very deceptive one, if you did a little research. But hadn't our friend said that he'd heard of this supposed composer Masayo Asahara before? He had -- when he visited experimental/jazz musician Martin Archer in England! So, there's no such person as Masayo Asahara at all, she's merely the alter-ego Martin Archer. Apparently he only wanted to fool some of the people some of the time, in aid of making a fantasy LP come true. So, disappointed but still intrigued, we got Martin to send us a copy, thinking, it had better be good! And...it IS good! Really good. Dunno if we would have been fooled had he not revealed the truth, it certainly sounds inspired by all the stuff cited above, though the recording itself is perhaps not authentically '70s-sounding. And what we really think this sound like, is Gas gone prog. The disc begins with the track "Begin" -- twelve minutes of heavily filtered electric organ chording, endlessly building, eventually morphing into the 17+ minute "Continue"! Further into the disc, new themes and instrumentation are introduced, but the basic hypnotic concept progagates. It's a very satisfying trip, the kind of thing that you don't really realize is playing for as long as it is. It really sounds like the pulsing electronics of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project combined with the minimalist jazz-drone of Australia's The Necks (two big AQ faves you'll note), with some detours into psych-fusion freakouts, via Hammond organ and what Martin Archer and his co-conspiratorsconsider their tribute to "Magma's horn section". If this really WAS a long-lost Japanese LP from '74 we'd be losing our minds over it...so why not anyway? Martin Archer's fantasy has resulted in a quite fantastic musical reality on this here disc.
MPEG Stream: "Begin"
MPEG Stream: "Second Tempo"
MPEG Stream: "Third Tempo Plus Organ Solo"

AUDIO LEARNING CENTER Cope Park (Vagrant) cd 14.98
So I know most of you don't remember the band Pond, which is a damn shame. We've been trying to track down copies of their sadly now out of print final album Rock Collection forever so we could list it, to no avail. It's one of the greatest weirdest pop records ever, though. And like lots of great weird records, it got them dropped from their label and most likely led to the end of the band. I always wondered how a band could make a completely brilliant record, see it overlooked and ignored and not just give up. But lucky for us these guys just won't give up. We have an amazing array of absolutely brilliant post-Pond projects: Charlie Campbell's Goldcard which we raved about a few lists back, and now the second album from Pond frontman Chris Brady's Audio Learning Center. Where Goldcard was an eccentric hodgepodge of ultrapersonal diary-like ditties, home recorded and all over the place, Audio Learning Center is definitely a band, a ROCK band. But it's unlike a lot of the rock you'll hear these days. Very similar to the final Pond record, guitars warble hypnotic little melodies before roaring riffs overtake them, retreating just as quickly leaving just delicate little melodies for Brady to sing over. And as with most bands, it's the songs, AND the voice. The songs are weird convoluted minor key prog-pop excursions, meandering dizzily from part to part but always returning to a hook that pierces your heart and sticks in your head. And Brady has such a unique voice, throaty and gravelly, but at the same time whine-y, almost cracking and straining to reach those high high notes, lending everything an intensely earnest, almost desparate cast. Think Built To Spill, the Weakerthans, Afghan Whigs, but way more rocking and hypnotic, and way more dark and angst ridden. Sure it's on Vagrant, THE emo label, and ALC does fit to a degree, but Brady's emotions and neuroses are so much deeper and more desperate than most of emo's typical girl/boy/my parents don't understand sentiments. But sonically, there's just some one-in-a-million, alchemical intangible perfection, THAT voice and THESE songs, that give this record such resonance. Hard to know how to process this stuff. Makes you want to jump around and bang your head and air guitar, but at the same time makes you want to hole up in your room, and think about everything and everyone you've lost, and try to figure out what the hell anything means. Which is exactly what makes this record, and this band so fucking great.
MPEG Stream: "The Neverwills"
MPEG Stream: "Cope Park"
MPEG Stream: "Happy Endings"

AYLER, ALBERT Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962-70) 9 CD Spirit Box (Revenant) 9cd 109.00
Another totally and absolutely breathtaking musical artifact from Revenant Records. This long in the works box set finally sees the light of day and is way more overwhelming than we could have hoped for, both musically and design-wise. Albert Ayler was a master on the tenor sax, who decided to forget everything he had ever learned and approach his instrument in a completely different, way more spiritual way, hoping to channel the divine through his music. And goddamn if he didn't succeed. Packaged in an ornate black plastic box cast from a hand carved original 'spirit box', the box is packed with music and material. A 208 page harbound book with essays by Amiri Baraka, Val Wilmer, and other Ayler acolytes. A photgraph of Ayler as a young man, a pressed flower, a reproduction of a sixties underground jazz zine, as well as all sorts of other flyers and Ayler related ephemera. The there's the discs. Seven discs of rare live material: the Herb Katz Quintet with Ayler, Helsinki, 1962, Albert Ayler Trio in NYC, 1964, Ayler Quartet in Copenhagen, 1964; NYC, 1967, Burton Greene Quintet with Ayler in NYC, 1966, Albert Ayler Quintet in Cleveland, Berlin & Rotterdam, all 1966, Newport, 1967, and Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1970, Pharoah Sanders Ensemble with Ayler in NYC, 1968, Don Ayler Sextet w/ Ayler in NYC, 1969 and Albert Ayler solo in NY, 1968. Then there's two discs of interviews from 1964, 1966 and 1970 as well as an interview with Don Cherry from 1971. And finally a rehearsal disc featuring Ayler as a member of the U.S. Army Band. Wow. While this MAY be a bit overwhelming (and pricey) for someone who has never heard Ayler and is just looking for a good introduction (there are plenty of single disc releases still available), for fans of Ayler and lovers of free jazz, this is absolutely ESSENTIAL.

BASINSKI, WILLIAM + RICHARD CHARTIER s/t (Spekk) cd 19.98
Things are not always as they seem. If you were to put on this album, a collaboration between experimental musicans William Basinksi and Richard Chartier, you might have the same reaction that we did. It appears that the album begins, drones quite beautifully for a brief period of time, and then ends, leaving us with the thought, "Hey, that was really short! What the hell?" Ah, but not so fast, for the album's running time is actually a full 57 minutes, and the perceived shortness of duration is a result of these two composers' mesmeric abilities!
William Basinski, of course, has explored temporal phenomonology before, most notably through his breathtaking documentation of tape decay on the Disintegration Loops series. While Chartier's ultra-minimalism tend towards stasis, his underappreciated Archival 1991 album imparts a similar slow-motion effect upon the listener. Working together, Basinksi and Chartier add a considerable amount to each other's work; and hopefully, they will be working together again as Basinksi provides an emotional center to Chartier's rationalism, and Chartier offers a reductivist edginess to Basinski's ghostly romanticism. For this album, Basinksi and Chartier present glacially slow shifts between extended passages of synthetic drones, occasionally haunted by shadowy whisps and windswept details. There's very little drama and very little activity, just an incredible piece of minimalism that has the ability to stop time. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"

BATHTUB SHITTER Lifetime Shitlist (Shit Jam Records) cd 12.98
If you've been hanging out with me (Andee) much lately, you've undoubtedly heard me singing the praises of Bathtub Shitter. In fact before I had even heard them, I knew Bathtub Shitter had the potential to be my favorite band. C'mon, they're Japanese, they are called Bathtub Shitter, oh and did I mention they only sing about shit? For a while I was fantasizing about releasing a split with the two best bands in the world (as determined at the time solely by monicker as I had yet to hear either) Bathtub Shitter and Fuck I'm Dead. I'm still thinking about it, but while I ruminate, we're lucky to have this, the first full length Bathtub Shitter record and their only cd. We spent a good long while tracking down 7"s, but since the world leans heavily in the digital direction we had to wait until this beautiful shiny shit-obsessed marvel fell into our hands! What's it sound like you're probably wondering by now. Well, imagine some strange mix of Drop Dead, the Boredoms, Brutal Truth, CSSO, death metal, grindcore, and well....um...shit! Crunchy riffs swing from almost-surf rock, to Zeppelin groove to metallic crunch, but spend most of their time in grind mode, splattered and speeding out of control. Crazy drumming, farting bass and some wicked guitar noodling add to the sick sonic stew. But the vocals are where things get really weird. The main vocals are of the burping, grunting, cookie monster death metal variety, belching out indecipherable tales of shit and shitting, but their foil is a squealing, squeaking little girl of a man voice, sounding either like a babblingly hysterical middle age housewife shrieking at the top of her lungs or a horror movie cheerleader being evicerated, screaming in that terrified way only dying cheerleaders in horror movies do. The two vocal styles swing and switch and battle and butt heads like some sort of bastard grindcore Beastie Boys. Or imagine Chuck D as Chris Barnes in his Cannibal Corpse days and Flavor Flav as the aforementioned shrieking dead cheerleader. With the everpresent S1Ws made up of members of S.O.D. and Angelcorpse. Other sorts of vocals are occasionally introduced like the 'dog barking underwater' and the 'asthmatic yodel' but I don't want to give away too much. It's better if you just let the Bathtub Shitter unfold before you like a beautiful, shit-filled flower.
MPEG Stream: "Control Of Own Hole"
MPEG Stream: "One One One"
MPEG Stream: "Fuck Hip Raper"

BATTLES B EP (Dim Mak Records) cd ep 11.98
Battles seems to have a thing for EPs. Well, why not? Might be the best format for their brand of attention-span sapping math rock. And you do get a full half-hour here, filled out with these five tracks of advanced instrumental action. This band -- featuring (ahem, selling points here) Ian Williams from Don Caballero/Storm And Stress, Tyondai "Son of Anthony" Braxton, John Stanier of Helmet/Tomahawk and Lynx's Dave Konopka -- are pros at making impressively complicated yet undeniably enjoyable post-rock music, as lively as it is listenable (which we mean in a good way). Often hectic but never harsh. It's as if these guys are taking King Crimson's early '80s comeback classic Discipline and giving it a fractured, abstract and electronic makeover. Venturing into totally deconstructed Starfuckers-ish territory, the twelve minute "BTTLS" might be the highlight, or at least the most abstract track on here by far... but the whole B EP is a fine dose of Battles for their quickly growing legion of fans.
MPEG Stream: "Ipt2"
MPEG Stream: "Dance"

BLACK-EYED SNAKES Rise Up (Chairkicker's Music) cd 14.98
Garagey blues rock meets Sonic Youth guitar squall. Yep, it's the second raw n' grungy platter from Minnesota's Chicken-Bone George and company. Chicken-Bone being better known to most as Alan Sparhawk of Low, y'know. This side project already proved with their debut from last year that Mr. Sparhawk's got some shitkickin' punked-out blues in him that Low's lovely slow sadness can't quite capture. And we're glad to hear it. Lemme crack open a brewski and crank this up. Sound distorted? Well that's the ideer ain't it! There's a dozen tracks here, including a stab at "Bo Diddley", each one fulla moanin' hollers, menacing grooves, high-energy exuberance and sheer noisy fun. Some w/ slide guitar guestin' by Tim from Califone btw. We like how it's all retro n' all but you can't quite guess what's gonna happen next, this is more creative and artier than it seems... Definitely a band in the running in the current garage revival for sure, if you're into Coach Whips and The Husbands and of course The White Stripes etc. make no mistake you oughta party with the Black-Eyed Snakes too.
MPEG Stream: "Mexican Half-Stick"
MPEG Stream: "Cornbread"

BLACK, FRANK Frank Black Francis (SpinArt) 2cd 15.98
There was a time, before this current Pixies rennaisance came about, when a lot of us were jonesing for something, anything, by the Pixies that was even remotely rare or otherwise previously unreleased. Time was that your best bet to get anything was in mp3 format through ye olde file sharing program. Never the most satisfying way of scratching an itch if you're a music geek. We eventually got satisfaction with the BBC sessions, the Complete B-Sides, and The Blue Tape, but there are still some genuine nuggets out there worth putting on disc. A friend of mine, a swaggering pirate of the ethernet, once scored on a pillage a copy of "I'm Amazed" featuring Frank Black singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. I've kept it in my treasure chest ever since. I swear sometimes I think it's better than the version with the full band that was eventually released. I always knew that if there was this one track, that there must be more out there. And why the hell wasn't anyone willing to make a little money selling it to me? Thank you Spin Art. For now we have that and 13 other gems from that same session, all classic Pixies tracks, all solo Frank Black on acoustic guitar. Like "I'm Amazed" these are all great. Whether it was all recorded in one session -- the result of a burst of inspiration -- or not, they're all quintessential un-restrained Frank Black. Obviously not intending these recordings would ever be released Frank gives running commentary on some songs "there's supposed to be screaming here", and even sings several guitar solos and a bass line. If they'd spent a few bucks more on the original recordings they could have been released as they were in 1987 and had almost as much impact as the Pixies.
In an interesting addition to these seminal brain stormings is a second disc of classic Pixies tracks that Pere Ubu's David Thomas & Two Pale Boys re-recorded in 2003. We had hoped that this was going to be another collection of solo Frank on acoustic. Instead it's Thomas laying down all sorts of tracks -- guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, sequencers, effects -- using copious amounts of delay and, for the most part, destroying the great work the Pixies had done. To be fair, there are a few interesting moments: an added harmony on "Caribou" that's quite beautiful, some VU/Conrad-esque violin stylings on "Into the White" and a drugged out version of "Monkey Gone To Heaven". Just be sure to take off the disc when you've had enough of the 15 minute dub remix of "Planet of Sound" (never the best Pixies song to begin with). But after all is said and done we can't complain and can still recommend this with a clean conscience. After all, it's priced as one disc, so with the second one you can take it or leave it.
MPEG Stream: "I'm Amazed"
MPEG Stream: "Oh My Golly"
MPEG Stream: "Caribou"

BLOOD FARMERS Permanent Brain Damage (Leaf Hound) cd 14.98
Doom! Not just doom...but maybe the best doomy release of the year, sez Allan...and it's a reissue. Of a demo tape, no less. NewYork's Blood Farmers (now defunct) recorded one self-titled album in 1995 for the (also now defunct) German label Hellhound, who are not to be confused with the Japanese label Leafhound responsible for this release. The Hellhound album was an obscure, now-out-of-print, but seriously heavy and deranged slice of doom-adelica in the vein of the masters Black Sabbath and especially Saint Vitus. But it turns out that the Blood Farmer's 1992 demo was easily as good if not better than their actual album (and has only one cut in common, "Bullet In My Head", which is a very different version here). Heads up, heads -- this starts with the 14 minute long psychedelic doom opus "Behind The Brown Door" ends with another 14+ minute epic "Deathmaster", a suite in five parts. Extended fuzz-wah terror ensues throughout those epics and all over the album as a whole, with guitarist Dave Depraved's soloing brilliantly channelling the heavy trippiness of Vitus' Dave Chandler. There's also more more concise rockers here like the aforementioned "Bullet In My Head" and "St. Chibes". Basically, imagine The Heads jamming with Vitus or Church Of Misery. Regarding the latter, the Blood Farmers share the same serial-killer obsession as do those Japanese doom freaks, but theirs is really more about the fiction films about the serial killers than the killers themselves. In addition to the original demo tracks, which are remixed and remastered, there's also a live bonus track from '96, itself followed by a hidden bonus track of ambient music/sound fx, accompanying a monologue, all doubtless lifted from one of the Blood Farmer's fave horror flicks. So if you'd like a severe dose of acid-sludge rock, look no further!
MPEG Stream: "Behind The Brown Door"
MPEG Stream: "Bullet In My Head"

BONGWATER The Power Of Pussy (Instinct / Shimmy Disc) cd 12.98
Not that you're necessarily going to be as psyched about this Bongwater reissue as Cup is, but we'll have you know that she's already listened to it, oh, about seven or eight times, and it's been here less than a week! When she first heard this album back in 1992 she'd yet to find out what bong water actually was, and only thought it to be an odd band name. Now many out-of-print moons later, Power Of Pussy is back and it continues to hold a very high spot on Cup's all-time faves list! And Andee's as well! The combined genius of Kramer and Ann Magnuson is responsible for this amazing album which is at times twistedly satirical, brazenly bizarre, dreamily lovely, ballsily glammy, heartbreakingly bittersweet and thoroughly entertaining. More a string of dizzying vignettes than individual songs it includes a rendition of Dudley Moore's "Bedazzled". Plus you'll find out about the "fat lead singer for Canned Heat". So great!
MPEG Stream: "Great Radio"
MPEG Stream: "Nick Cave Dolls"

BOYJAZZ In The City Tonight (Frenetic) cd 13.98
Yep, that's a dumb name. Yep, that's a drum machine. Yep, Boyjazz actually DO kick ass. Seriously, ya wanna rock? We've got a band for you here! They're called, uh, Boyjazz. Ignore their dumb name and enjoy their dumb rawk. This'll give you a buzz quicker than quaffing a six pack of Pabst. Boyjazz are a duo, consisting of Sexmouth and Supertouch (Adam and Aaron to their moms). Sexmouth sings and plays guitar and bass. Supertouch handles the production and the drum programming (although live, oddly enough, he plays real drums, but prefers to program them on record, which actually sounds great). The deal here is fuzzed out, distorted ROCK. Metal, punk, stoner, cock-rock. Simple, catchy riffage with a definite glam vibe (both '70s and '80s varieties of glam). The likes of Grand Funk, T-Rex, Sabbath, Kiss, Crue, are all no doubt influences, and we'd say that this oughta appeal to fans of The Darkness, Drunkhorse, and Andrew W.K. Not only does Sexmouth manage to actually pull off the rawk vocalisms required, he writes lotsa great clever/dumb lyrics. Sample song titles: "You + Me = Fight" and "Tuff Luv". One song, "Swedish Dates", is all about how they're gonna go over and tour Scandinavia and show the Hives & co. a thing or two. Might even be a true story someday. With very few of the dozen songs on this disc even reaching the three minute mark, you know they're all about dealing out the short, sweet, swift ass-kicking your rock needs require. F'n recommended, for when you're in the mood to hear a singer yelling "yeah!" and "all right!"
MPEG Stream: "Potfinger"
MPEG Stream: "Stank On The Halo"

BROCAS HELM Defender Of The Crown (self released) cd 11.98
You'd half-expect to have to venture to a far off foreign land and besige the walls of a lofty, mist-enshrouded castle in order to obtain metal this "true", but the legendary Brocas Helm hail from here in San Francisco and bring these discs straight to us. It did, however, take them SIXTEEN years to release this, their third album, the long awaited follow-up to 1988's Black Death! That's right. And the wait was indeed worth it, for fans like myself anyway. After all, it's got some of my (Allan's) favorite metal songs *ever* on it, like "Time Of The Dark"! A simply classic galloping metal steed, of which there's a whole herd here. If you're lucky enough to live in SF and smart enough to go see these guys, you'll already be familiar with some of the songs on this disc (like that aforementioned favorite) -- likewise if you're a fan who possesses their last two rare 7" singles or decade-old demo tape. But there's also stuff here too I'd never heard before, all living up to the Brocas Helm standard of questing metal might. Although recorded, as always, in their home studio the Caverns of Thunder, this IS certainly their best sounding release...but being polished and tight and up-to-date is not what these guys are about anyway. They're on their own planet, where '80s metal reigns supreme but someone put drugs in the drinking water.
Speaking of drinking,there's two songs about drinking on here: one's a not very PC, hopefully tongue-in-cheek tune called "Drink and Drive" (one of the lyrics goes: "Drink and drive/drink and drive/got mothers against me/but I'm still alive"). The other is a grandiose metal statement entitled "Drink The Blood Of The Priest"! Silly and/or Satanic, sure, but damn I like 'em. Anyway that should give you an idea of the sort of punkish eccentricity the Brocas Helm troops muster. I probably can't really convey how good these guys are, and how metal...they have years of experience, unconquerable enthusiasm, and basically just know how the heck to ROCK.
This was self-released for reasons known only to the band, as there were no dearth of dedicated cult metal labels in Greece and Germany who'd have loved to put this out...no matter, though the self-release does LOOK self-released too, which perhaps gives it more of an appropriately '80s underground vibe anyway. Y'know, old Manowar, Cirith Ungol, Omen, Manilla Road. So as you might guess, this is probably ESSENTIAL for any fan of The Lord Weird Slough Feg. By some cosmic coincidence, they just happen to live in the same city, and had a lot of the same influences...and are equally insane. Really it's absurd how alike they sound (and though they're fans of one another, they both already sounded the way they did long before having a metal rendezvous here in SF). So any 'Feg fan ought to get this for sure. And here's hoping that we won't have to wait another 16 years for more from these guys (I might be too old for this by then!)...
MPEG Stream: "Ghost Story"
MPEG Stream: "Defender Of The Crown"
MPEG Stream: "Time Of The Dark"

CAN Ege Bamyasi (Spoon/Mute) cd 15.98
A perfect krautrock album.
Can's second with Japan-born singer Damo Suzuki.
Brilliant!

CAN Ege Bamyasi (Spoon) lp 16.98
Oooh. Nice new vinyl reissues of several classic Can albums have just been released. Their fourth LP "Ege Bamyasi" was originally released in 1972 and is Allan's favorite Can album ever (although, it IS hard to choose). Can of course were one of the most important 'krautrock' bands, along with Amon Duul II, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Faust and a few others. "Ege Bamyasi" has Japanese singer Damo Suzuki at the mic, and on this he sings some of their best songs, like "Sing Swan Song" and "Vitamin C" and "I'm So Green". Actually EVERY song on here is wonderful. Languid and laidback, yet rhythmically insistent. Mellow and gorgeous and deep. Right on.
Enough. You know the score. Fans already know how good this is, everybody else should trust us and pick up one of these reissued LPs or the cd versions that we also have in stock, you won't be sorry!

CAN Tago Mago (remastered) (Mute / Spoon) cd 16.98
Tago Mago! Let us just say that if you don't own this already, here's a good chance to buy, not only this reissue, but a whole bunch of the best early Can on cd. The reissues contain extra liner notes and candid photos. But unless you're totally obsessed with the band and are certain of your ability to appreciate the remastering note-for-note, there's not too much else about these that's too terribly special. If you've happy with your older copies, you'd probably do well to just keep them and sleep soundly at night knowing that by not buying these reissues, you're not missing too much. If however, you'd like to spread some holiday cheer, here's what we said about this when the vinyl was reissued some time ago: 1971's "Tago Mago" double album was their third full-length release, and their first with expatriate Japanese singer Damo Suzuki (who they discovered busking on the street outside a club). It's truly a sprawling masterpiece of krautrock. Witness the weird noise/drone stuff on the 17 minute "Aumgn", or the totally hypnotic rhythmic psych groove of the equally side-long "Halleluwah". Again, we probably don't have to say much more, you already have this, right? But if Can's new to you, we'd recommend this (as well as Monster Movie and Ege Bamyasi and Soundtracks) as among their best efforts. PS If you like Circle and you don't have this record, get it!!
MPEG Stream: "Mushroom"
MPEG Stream: "Oh Yeah"

CASE, NEKO The Tigers Have Spoken (Anti) cd 13.98
Yay! How long has it been since we've had a new album from Neko? Over two years now, and that's too damn long. In lieu of her new studio album, due out sometime in the near future, we're graced with a nice live album by one of our favorite voices. All the tracks were recorded within the last year and more importantly, all but two (including the title track to her last studio album) are either covers or songs which Neko collaborated on with co-conspirators The Sadies. The exciting news is that the two exceptions are brand new originals ("If You Knew" and the title track to this here cd), and it's no surprise that they're pretty darn great! Neko picks up tunes by a wide range of songwriters including Buffy Sainte-Marie ("Soulful Shade of Blue"), Loretta Lynn ("Rated X"), The Shangri-Las ("Train From Kansas City") and old standards like "This Little Light" (an absolutely rip-snortin' rendition!) and "The Wayfaring Stranger" which is graced by a full chorus of voices on the, uh, choruses. Take that, Grand Ol' Opry! Plus she includes some of her own crowd faves such as the aptly titled, achingly beautiful "Favorite". Knowing Neko, you can bet there's gobs and gobs of 'room' on this recording, and by that we mean the gal loves her reverb. Neko is joined on stage here by The Sadies along with Jon Rauhouse on pedal steel, guitarist Brian Connelly, Kelly Hogan and Carolyn Mark among others.
MPEG Stream: "Train From Kansas City"
MPEG Stream: "Wayfaring Stranger"

CHANCE, JAMES & THE CONTORTIONS Buy The Contortions (Ze) cd 16.98
A genre-defining album finally receives its deserved reissue (along with a bunch of other James Chance / James White releases yet to be reviewed here). The genre? New York No Wave! Fingers crossed that it stays in print! Buy is well worth... uh, buying for the one song "Contort Yourself". Totally unbridled angular art jazz skronk sax no wave madness! Soooo good! If you have purchased anything current (i.e, last five years - on Troubleman Unlimited, etc) that falls under the banner 'no wave', buy this immediately and find out that 'no wave' was invented, defined and has yet to be bettered by anyone using the James Chance formula found on Buy The Contortions.
MPEG Stream: "Design To Kill"
MPEG Stream: "Contort Yourself"

CILIO, LUCIANO Dell'Universo Assente (Die Schachtel) cd 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We'd never heard of Luciano Cilio before, but of course Jim O'Rourke has. The ubiquitious O'Rourke (Wilco/Sonic Youth/you name it) contributes liner notes to this beautifully presented deluxe digipack cd reissue of what amounts to the collected works of Cilio, an Italian avantgarde composer from the '70s whose music is indeed experimental but less academic than you might expect. But even without O'Rourke's endorsement, a listen to the cd should reveal to you that Cilio was exquisitely talented, and maybe something of a genius. This disc is a simply fantastic document of what we might consider a hybrid of 20th century classical, minimalist psych-prog, and folk music, not entirely of this world. The all-white cover perfectly echoes Cilio's lovely, quietly haunting compositions for acoustic guitar, cello, piano and flute, sometimes visited by wordless female vocals. Achingly melancholic, immensely deep, truly beautiful. Limited to 500 copies, this cd consists of Cilio's sole album, Dialoghi del Presente, originally released on EMI in 1977, along with several previously unreleased tracks. Apparently he more or less abandoned music after the album's release, and sadly committed suicide in 1983. Allan's favorite new long-lost reissue after the Flamen Dialis disc reviewed on list #194...
MPEG Stream: "Primo Quadro..."
MPEG Stream: "Interludio..."

CIRCLE Forest (Ektro) cd 14.98
It's incredible how AQ's Finnish faves n' friends Circle always manage to maintain their trademark sound -- repetitive, hypnotic post-prog grooves -- even as they produce new albums with such distinct, different identities. Their latest disc, Forest, is another great, unique Circle effort. This time around, they've gone semi-acoustic, kinda folky. Also spooky and sinisterly-synthed. In a way, Forest is perhaps Circle's most "hippie" album. We know Jussi's a big Dead fan after all. And the krautrock stuff they've obviously always been inspired by was hippie rock too. But there's a back-to-the-land, pot smokin' jam vibe here, although night-shrouded and mysterious, NOT rainbow-colored and dippy. This a Forest of nightmares, with whispering and groaning in the trees. Maybe Jussi and Co. have been listening to the likes of Kalacakra and Siloah and Amon Duul... and Goblin, and early Tangerine Dream... For sure it seems that the four lengthy tracks on here (shortest six+ minutes, one nine, the other two in the double digits) owe a lot to Can (maybe moreso than other Circle albums do) and also to...the blues! That's the biggest shock. Vocalist Mika Ratto's love 'em or hate 'em operatic vocals are shucked in favor of a mumbling, moaning, singin' the blues style. And, equally shocking, he's singing in English this time! Not that you can make sense of much of what's coming out of his mouth. And of course most of the time Forest is all-instrumental, spacious, suspenseful, grooved-out, darkness. The final, longest track dabbles in ambient, experimental witch-project drone before those Circle rhythms return and Mika moans his last. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Havuportti"
MPEG Stream: "Luikertelevat Lahoavat"

CLINIC Winchester Cathedral (Domino) cd 14.98
Their third full-length album, Winchester Cathedral offers a cohesion of the Clinic formula encouraging fan fidelity with their terrifically taut rhythm section (in the vein of This Heat) with North England-style folk arrangement and instrumentation and of course, Ade Blackburn's Liverpudlian-ly sexy vocals. Clinic seems to have honed their sound to a level of maturity and self-confidence that turns down a little of the art-angst heard in previous releases. Can't wait to see where they go from here!
MPEG Stream: "Country Mile"
MPEG Stream: "Circle of Fifths"

COCTAILS Popcorn Box (Carrot Top) 3cd 42.00
We sort of forgot how much we loved indie rock, but recently, there've been a handful of re-issues that definitely remind us what was so fucking great about that whole early nineties / college rock / DIY / indie rock scene. Most importantly the bands were just amazing. And they actually wrote amazing songs. Pavement, Guided By Voices and of course the Coctails. The Coctails had all the makings of a joke band, goofy instrumentation, a definite love of all things kitsch, they even performed in the beginning in cheesy yellow tuxedos as if they were the house band in some Catskills resort. The sound was sort of jazz, sort of lounge, a little bit pop. But the Coctails were unbelievably talented songwriters AND players. So whatever type of music they tackled, it sounded great, and eventually sounded like the Coctails and nobody else. Their 'sound' definitely leaned heavily in the jazz direction, but as they progressed, they became quite the pop songsmiths, and not the sort of pop you would always expect from a goofy bunch of dudes in a band called the Coctails, no, more a moody, brooding, dark and warm pop. Not that they couldn't goof it up and whip out some of the funniest silliest stuff you've ever heard, but they were capable of bringing a room of jaded indie rockers to their emotional knees if the mood suited them. Those of you who have never heard the Coctails, might remember a handful of amazing records by a guy named Archer Prewitt. Well Mr. Prewitt just so happened to spend his formative years in those very same Coctails. His sweetly melancholic sunny pop definitely had its roots in the Coctails later years. This box set is really well done. Collecting loads of tracks from their out of print albums, as well as ALL of their singles, compliation tracks (of which there were many) and even their contribution to They Might Be Giants's monthly cd club from way back when. The Coctails tended to experiment more when they weren't making albums, so the singles tracks tend toward the more goofy and fun and flat out silly, but the album cuts balance those out perfectly, with their dark melancholia and sunny jazzy hopefulness. Plus the booklet is immense, with all sorts of amazing art and Coctails ephemera (they had to be one of the best merchandised bands ever, they even had cloth dolls of each band member! And purchasers of this here box are offered the chance to order the whole set!!) including extensive notes on each track from the band. Comes in a cool popcorn box like slip-cover.
MPEG Stream: "Steam"
MPEG Stream: "Monkeys And Seals"
MPEG Stream: "Penguin / Powerhouse"
MPEG Stream: "Woodbee"
MPEG Stream: "Working Holiday"

COELACANTH The Glass Sponge (23five) cd 12.98
Second release from this droning duo. Coelacanth is our very own Jim Haynes and AQ pal Loren Chasse (Jewelled Antler, Blithe Sons, Thuja, Franciscan Hobbies, Id Battery et al). Four extended tracks of gorgeous space-y drone-y almost-ambience. Forests of cricket-like chirps are blurred into smeary ambient washes of cool greys and pale whites, beneath smatterings of clinking clicking clatter. Keening, indistinct moaning tones sound like distant foghorns, reflected from the slowly shifting terrain. Underwatery warped sonic shudders billow outward as vague melodies drift and float, chiming and reverberating, eventually dissipating into misty clusters of ethereal almost transparent notes. Hissing, fuzzy high end buzz whirs machinelike over industrial clatter that has been smoothed out into pulsing, barely-there rhythms. So so nice. All of the sounds were collected from various public and private Coelacanth performances over the last couple years, before being assembled into the Glass Sponge. Released by local sound art nonprofit 23five.
MPEG Stream: "The Electric Hydrometer"
MPEG Stream: "The Hexactinellidae"
MPEG Stream: "The Violet Shell and Its Raft"

COMSAT ANGELS It's History (Nano ) 4cd 27.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Our first experience with the Comsat Angels was on an old old Silkworm record. Silkworm covered the Angels' brilliant "Our Secret" and it immediately became out favorite song on the record. And of course hearing that cover sent us on a mad quest to find some actual Comsat Angels records. Ended up that records by these Sheffield, England post-punks were pretty damn hard to come by. Managed to find some later era stuff but it just wasn't the same. So we were super excited by this 4 cd collection that compiles their first 3 albums, Waiting For A Miracle (1980), Sleep No More (1981), and Fiction (1982) all with extra tracks and B sides, as well as a fourth disc of unreleased rarities! So what do they sound like you ask? Well, think early eighties post punk / new wave, with lots of jangly guitar, chiming harmonics, super effected drums, fuzzy fafisa organs, reverbed vocals, but with lots of Factory records gloom and doom. Dark and bass heavy, minor key and melancholy, grey and overcast and so goddamn good. The songs sort of meander and build, with vocals over simple bass and drum passages, flecked with fuzzed out keyboards and punctuated by occasional guitar skronk and spacy swoosh. Repetitive and hypnotic and ultra moody. The vocals are rich and full reminding us of bands like the Fixx or Modern English, but they take on a whole different cast when nestled in the Angels' depressive and dark-skied sonic world. Sometimes they sound like a suicidal Elvis Costello on quaaludes or maybe the Jam if they recorded for Factory. Or a slightly more upbeat / punk rock Joy Division. All you folks who have been getting way into this resurgence of eighties musical culture: industrial, electro, death disco, Factory, DFA, whatever, should definitely check these guys out. You can hear so much of that stuff in these guys, but it's so much darker and grittier and genuine, and the songs are so depressing and intense and catchy. Been listening to this non-stop since we got it in!
Packaged in a weird (but kind of cool) plastic DVD style case, and pressed on black cds (which we originally assumed to be cd-r's but have been assured that they are indeed cds) and limited to 2000 copies worldwide, so we're not sure how long we'll have these and how many more we'll be able to get!
MPEG Stream: "Our Secret"
MPEG Stream: "Missing In Action"
MPEG Stream: "Total War"
MPEG Stream: "Eye Dance"
MPEG Stream: "Sleep No More"

CRAMPS Live At Napa State Mental Hospital (MVD) dvd 19.98
Hot damn! Finally more readily available and on dvd no less, this video documenting one of the most unhinged rock spectacles ever -- the legendary free Cramps concert for the patients at the State Mental Hospital back in 1978 -- has been circulating in increasingly poor quality vhs copies for ages! If you've seen it, you'll know what a cause for 'celebration' this is. If you've yet to see it, Cramps fan or not, you're in for a helluva blisterin', jaw-droppin' time in front of your television. No, the quality's still not all that great, but that only adds to the wild grittiness of the viewing experience. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy are in top down'n'dirty form. During the course of the performance, the lines between patient and band are swiftly blurred and eventually obliterated. This is as punk as it gets!

CREBAIN / LEVIATHAN split (tUMULt) cd 13.98
The black cloud over sunny California grows and grows, with each addition to its dark army and each new missive from one of its elite! Black metal has found a strong foothold in this unlikely location. Xasthur, Leviathan, Draugar, Crebain and a small dark likeminded legion lurk in the shadows, far away from the fun and the sun, unleashing some of the most raw and uncompromisng black metal we've ever heard.
AQ pal Wrest and his genius one man avant black metal outfit Leviathan return with what may quite possibly be his best, most intensely weird material to date. We just can't get enough of his dark and violent, totally skewed take on grim frosty black metal. And for this release he teams up with relative newcomer Ancalagon The Black and his outfit Crebain. Not quite as weird as Leviathan, Crebain channels his darkness through a more thrashing Darkthrone/Mutiilation style.
On this split, Wrest takes his ultra distorted inhuman vocals, pummelling hyperspeed blasts, and violent riffery to a whole 'nother dimension, and moves even further away from his contemporaries, both in terms of sound and concept. There are certain sonic similarities for sure, but Leviathan has such a personal and undiluted take on the black sounds that so obviously flow through is veins. For every blast beat and every buzzing riff, there's some stuttery, fucked up breakdown, or extended blissed out ambient soundscape, or rhythmic mathrock workout, or strummy clean guitar jangle, or weird production with all sorts of glitches and strange sounds. The ambient parts here are definitely some of the most beautifully creepy we've ever heard, from a metal band or otherwise. And the metal, well, by now you should know few can touch Leviathan when it comes to black metal brilliance. And the thing is, Wrest doesn't think any of this is weird. He just makes the sounds he hears in his head, and they sound right to him. And they are right, but in such a beautifully weird way. Can't wait for the upcoming full length Tentacles Of Whorror. His half of the split ends with a straight ahead and super necro cover of cult early '90s San Francisco metallers Von's "Blood Angel." Nice.
The other half of this is Crebain's first offical cd release, having previously only released a super limited cd-r demo last year, and it's just as good as that demo led us to hope. This is as raw and buzzing and blazing as it gets. Where Wrest is a master of arranging, creating moods and ambience, Ancalagon is a master of the riff. An unbelievably good guitarist, these riffs are lightning fast and swarm into your ears like a plague of locusts. Thrashing and chaotic, Crebain is a furious no-nonsense metallic onslaught. Programmed drums allow the rhythms to keep up with the madness inducing riffery. Occasionally things slow down to midtempo, and then it becomes quite obvious that Crebain is actually writing catchy songs, not just an insane series of parts. Melodies and almost-groovy riffs propel loping hypnotic dirges towards their eventual obliteration via hyperspeed blasts and that blurry Crebain riffery. Fucking great.
This split is another nail in the coffin containing the corpses of the Nordic metal elite, as black metal's Calfiornia contigent threatens to thaw their frosty corpses with the soul shearing rays of its black sun! Aieeee! Limited to only 666 copies!
MPEG Stream: CREBAIN "Retribution"
MPEG Stream: CREBAIN "The Burden Of My Despair"
MPEG Stream: LEVIATHAN "Ruminating In Hatemagick"

CRIME San Francisco's Still Doomed (Swami) cd 14.98
Kudos to John Reis' Swami label for finally making this long-awaited reissue a reality! San Francisco's Doomed was originally a bootleg of Crime demos from '78 and '79 that first saw the light of day a decade or so ago, and now is remastered and reissued with two bonus tracks and liner notes and photos and all that. So thanks to Swami, SF's *still* doomed. (It's been a good year for "holy grail" punk cd reissues: first Metal Urbain, now Crime!)
I guess there's three sorts of people reading this review: there's the folks who already know this band and have been waiting and waiting for something on cd and will be down here in, like, two seconds to buy a copy. Then there's those of you who have heard *of* Crime but never really heard them, who are curious if they really were as important, essential, kick ass of a punk band as you've been told... well, they are! So get down here now too. Finally, there's those of you for whom Crime is just another name, maybe you've heard of maybe not, but it's got no special significance. For you, the history lesson (in brief): Crime released their first single in '76, proclaiming themselves to be San Francisco's "First and Only Rock and Roll Band". That hyperbole of course ain't quite true but indicates the level of punk attitude you're in for here. Hard rocking, fast, and snotty, Crime were violent and stylish -- they kicked out the jams in SFPD uniforms and shades! This definitely belongs on the same shelf with your Iggy & the Stooges and Dead Boys discs...
This reissue includes 2 alternate-take bonus tracks from the same '76 session as their debut single (btw, a Crime singles comp is forthcoming someday on Revenant, we're told). Very recommended, punk fans! And, like Jim Jocoy's photo book We're Desperate, a reminder of when living in SF was actually probably pretty cool... not that it's not cool to be here now...but there ain't no freakin' bands like Crime prowling the city anymore these days, no sir!!
MPEG Stream: "San Francisco's Doomed"
MPEG Stream: "Feel The Beat"

CRIME San Francisco's Still Doomed (Swami) lp 10.98
Kudos to John Reis' Swami label for finally making this long-awaited reissue a reality! San Francisco's Doomed was originally a bootleg of Crime demos from '78 and '79 that first saw the light of day a decade or so ago, and now is remastered and reissued with two bonus tracks and liner notes and photos and all that. So thanks to Swami, SF's *still* doomed. (It's been a good year for "holy grail" punk cd reissues: first Metal Urbain, now Crime!)
I guess there's three sorts of people reading this review: there's the folks who already know this band and have been waiting and waiting for something on cd and will be down here in, like, two seconds to buy a copy. Then there's those of you who have heard *of* Crime but never really heard them, who are curious if they really were as important, essential, kick ass of a punk band as you've been told... well, they are! So get down here now too. Finally, there's those of you for whom Crime is just another name, maybe you've heard of maybe not, but it's got no special significance. For you, the history lesson (in brief): Crime released their first single in '76, proclaiming themselves to be San Francisco's "First and Only Rock and Roll Band". That hyperbole of course ain't quite true but indicates the level of punk attitude you're in for here. Hard rocking, fast, and snotty, Crime were violent and stylish -- they kicked out the jams in SFPD uniforms and shades! This definitely belongs on the same shelf with your Iggy & the Stooges and Dead Boys discs...
This reissue includes 2 alternate-take bonus tracks from the same '76 session as their debut single (btw, a Crime singles comp is forthcoming someday on Revenant, we're told). Very recommended, punk fans! And, like Jim Jocoy's photo book We're Desperate, a reminder of when living in SF was actually probably pretty cool... not that it's not cool to be here now...but there ain't no freakin' bands like Crime prowling the city anymore these days, no sir!!
MPEG Stream: "San Francisco's Doomed"
MPEG Stream: "Feel The Beat"

CRIME IN CHOIR The Hoop (Frenetic) cd 13.98
Leaps and bounds from their already impressive self-titled debut from a couple of years ago, Crime In Choir's second full length reveals sharper chops both in composition and musicianship. They've adapted a much more prog aspect into their post rock instrumental sound with definite shades of Goblin. A sophomore success from this mathy, Moogy San Fran quartet, who now have replaced drummer Zach Hill of Hella with drummer Jay Pellici of Dilute and 31 Knots. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Strong Beautiful Suspicious Horse"
MPEG Stream: "Magnetotail"

DE MASI, FRANCESCO India (OST) (Hexacord) cd 16.98
"India" was a documentary produced for Italian TV in 1966, and the music on this disc was the audio interpretation composed to accompany it by composer Francesco De Masi. That's the straight forward, factual explanation of this disc. However, the music itself is not what most of us would probably expect to find accompanying such a documentary. We have to give Francesco De Masi some credit for his creative license though. After all, it was 1966 and Ravi Shankar was yet to become a household name. I imagine that the director gave Francesco a silent print for him to view and score the compositions for the film. Having never been to India and having no concept of what the music there sounded like and additionally being encouraged to come up with something as exotic and mysterious as the images on the screen, he did the best he could. The results: fucking brilliant! De Masi definitely has skills as a scorer of soundtracks. He not only has a gift for writing evocative melodic motifs, but also in arranging and rearranging the motifs with different instrumentation, tempos, and even musical genres -- something essential to all classic soundtracks. His execution in these areas is superb. And yet, when we listen to this soundtrack today and try to imagine it accompanying a documentary about India, we sense that something is not quite right. Listening to this score with no prior information about the film it supports one might more likely guess that it was for a classic Western fused with Cold War intrigue film (though there is one giddy fife & drum reel that must have slipped in from another project on the American Revolution!) I imagine Michael Caine as an English spy in America trying to infiltrate the Navajo nation and falling in love with a beautiful Native American woman along the way. Many of the arrangements here are reminiscent of the gems of paranoid cinema (think The Ipcress File, or The Parallax View, but also Mutual of Omaha's Wild World of Animals) while also sounding like the most cliched Native American war path tune ripped from a John Wayne flick. Seems like Francesco, like Christopher Columbus before him, got his Indians mixed up. This soundtrack has it all: tension, suspense, romantic instrumentals, pensive reflections and jazzy uptempo workouts. It really is an amazing soundtrack that, were it to have been attached to a feature length film, may have been a classic by now. Not only is it fully orchestrated and creatively arranged with vibes, guitars, keyboards, flutes, horns, strings and assorted percussion, but it features sitar playing by Italian guitar and whistle virtuoso (and Ennio Morricone right hand man) Alessandro Alessandroni -- who'd apparantly never played the instrument before. Beautifully recorded and excellently remastered, this is an absolute must for all soundtrack buffs!
MPEG Stream: "In Nome di Maometto"
MPEG Stream: "Budda"
MPEG Stream: "La Carestia"

DEATHPROD Box Set (Rune Grammofon) 4cd 49.00
Deathprod is the solo experimental audio project from Supersilent and Motorpsycho member Helge Sten of Oslo, Norway. Previously the only work by Deathprod we stocked here at Aquarius was the split cd with Biosphere on Rune Grammofon in which the two artists reworked fellow Norwegian Arne Nordheim's electronic compositions. Having enjoyed that disc very much, we were pretty excited about the mysterious looking matte black four CD box by Deathprod that arrived at our laboratory recently. If the black box was evocative enough to pique our interest, the music the music contained within surely did not betray our hopes. Working with old magnetic tape recorders, hand made delay and sundry other electronic devices, Helge Sten manipulates fragments of sound -- such as a two note melodic interval or a final orchestral cadence -- into brooding dark soundscapes, rich with overtones from feedback and often overlaid with guest performances from fellow Supersilent members. Often it is the very limitations of the equipment that Sten uses that become the sources for the beautiful timbres he produces: an oversaturated tape input, a primitive sampler that never reproduces the same note the same way twice, or the uneven decay from primitive tape delays. The tracks on these four discs were recorded between 1991 and 2000, and while some of the material was released by Sten on cassette through his own label (also titled Deathprod), much of it is previously unreleased or was super limited in number. Two tracks in particular, a six minute narration from American born Oslo resident Matt Burt and a couple tracks of an organ, vibes and drum trio not unlike Sagor & Swing stick out in this four disc set. More typical are tracks which blossom out from a single cell of an idea: one chord, or one blast of noise. At times Deathprod sounds almost like an attempt at recreating Thomas Koner's soundscapes using the audio palette of Mauricio Bianchi. On Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha, Sten went so far as to record tracks on a Nagra deck, transfer them to wax cylinders and then transfer them once more to digital media. The result are authenticly old and decaying tracks which are hauntingly beautiful as well. Other tracks feature deteriorating blasts of what sounds almost like a fog horn progressively decaying into grinding metal; throbbing drones and eerie female chorus -- a la Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna" from 2001 -- building with layers of feedbacky washes of sound. The four tracks that make up Sten's most recent album on the set -- Morals And Dogma -- are possibly his best works yet: icey, bleak soundscapes of drones. Any of the tracks here would make an excellent soundtrack. On "Dead People's Things", the most sorrowful of melodies is played on a theremin over a foundation of delicate, scratchy bowing of violin and a deep bass throbbing drone. "Orgone Donor" consists of a slowly shifting chordal drone of whispy violins, harmonium and saw, with each instrument leading and then resolving the chord in turn.
MPEG Stream: "A Shortcut To the Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Reference Frequencies #8"
MPEG Stream: "Treetop Drive 3"
MPEG Stream: "Stony Beach"
MPEG Stream: "The Contraceptive Briefcase II"
MPEG Stream: "Orgone Donor"
MPEG Stream: "Cloudchamber"

DEATHSPELL OMEGA Si Monvmentvm Reqvires Circvmspice (Norma Evangelium Diaboli) cd 14.98
The only way to find out about the best bands, has always been to check out who the other best bands are listening to. So when the black metal elite (including our own West Coast wing, Leviathan, Crebain, Draugar, etc) are all singing the praises of a band, then you know you need to check them out. Such is the case with mysterious black metal horde Deathspell Omega. With a handful of impossible to find releases in the past, Si Monvmentvm Reqvires Circvmspice is the first DO record with any sort of wide distribution. It's about time too. Deathspell Omega occupy an unholy sonic space somewhere between Burzum, Mutiilation, Leviathan and Xasthur. Droning mostly midtempo black metal (with occasional blast beats), infused with strange arpeggiated minor key guitars, melancholy riffing, super hypnotic ultra memorable songwriting, compex song structures, grim affected vocals, and all sorts of hauntingly beautiful ambient interludes / intros, with martial percussion, litugical chants and subtle drones, very dark and intensely affecting. Sonically, DO sound a bit like older Enslaved, or early Emperor, but with a strong penchant for unlikely melodies (that subtly surface even in the harshest of musical moments) and hypnotic trance like repetition. One of our favorite new black metal records.
MPEG Stream: "First Prayer"
MPEG Stream: "Sola Fide I & II"

DELAY, VLADISLAV Demo(n) Tracks (Huume) cd 16.98
The latest from Finnish minimalist electronic dub technician Vladisav Delay is not in fact a record of demos as the title might lead you to believe, but is actually the first release on his own Huume label, and is easily the most exciting thing he's ever done. Still dabbling in dub, but just barely, this is spare and haunting, with massive expanses of shimmering sound, reverbed emanations that ripple endlessly to the fuzzy grey of the horizon. Industrial clatter is stretched and reshaped into rhythmic echoes, never coalescing enough to constitute an actual beat, but more a series of random pulses and throbs, providing a skeletal support for Delay's blurry indistinct map of abstract dub. Imagine the first groundbreaking Pole record, played through rusty loudspeakers, mounted on unsteady supports, spread throughout a bombed out and wasted urban landscape, the sound waves reflecting from jagged, toppled masonry, shattered windows, and rubble strewn alleys. But then somehow, imbue this murky otherworldy ambience with a distant warm glow, a sort of slight hopefulness, minor keys distantly mirrored by subtle major keys, a single shaft of sunlight filtered through dust choked atmosphere and filthy weather worn windows. Just enough to allow for some slight rosy shading to the otherwise grey sheets of sonic shimmer. At once totally soothing and hypnotically dreamy, but also a deep and darkly challenging listen.
MPEG Stream: "Kohmeessa"
MPEG Stream: "Kohmeessa Alt."
MPEG Stream: "Ledi"

DELGADOS, THE Universal Audio (Chemikal Underground) cd 14.98
We weren't expecting a new album yet from these Scottish lovelies. It came right outta the blue, but what a delicious surprise it is!
What do you do when you reach the highest of glorious heights in dreamy popdom two albums in a row? Well if you're the Delgados, it seems you give the candy bag a shake to uncover fresh aural delights. They've traded out their longtime producer, the kickass Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev, et al) for the equally distinguished producer/engineer and fellow Scotsman Tony Doogan (Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Mountain Goats among many others) -- taking a step back from Fridmann's trademark dizzying studio wizardry and towards more stripped down, back to basics production and song structures. Never fear, there are still plenty of lovely embellishments, but they're not the kind characterized by overblown-to-the-point-of-distortion clouds of reverb and epic orchestral tidal waves. The most noticeable result of this crisp new direction is thatthere's more space for the vocals to breathe. And who doesn't want Ms Emma's heartmelting vocals more upfront and center?! Oddly enough this 'new' direction sorta brings the band full circle back to their early rough'n'tumble lower fi garage-y sound and plants it next to their more recent slower, more polished introspective sweet-tarts. A prime example of this comes early in the album. The third song "Everybody Come Down" is a peppy pop tune and the next "Come Undone" brings things way down into their more recent gauzy, wistful tempo. On Universal Audio, the beloved Delgados have truly achieved a faithful balance of their old and new selves. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Everybody Come Down"
MPEG Stream: "Come Undone"

DRAUGAR From Which Hatred Grows (tUMULt) cd 13.98
Who knew so much pure evil lurked deep in the depths of (supposedly) sunny California, especially right here in San Francisco. The legendary Weakling (R.I.P.), the ungodly blackened evil of Leviathan, the blazing, bleak torment of Crebain (also coming soon on tUMULt), and now the grim, funereal, majestic savagery of Draugar's From Which Hatred Grows.
Haunting and atmospheric, brutal and buzzing, blighted and black. Fingerpicked acoustic guitars explode into roaring, soul-shearing riffs, pounding drums demarcate hazy blackened soundscapes of misanthropic brutality and gorgeously melodic impurity, damaged and demented arrangements underpin hellish profane howls of utter anguish. Yeah, black metal at its best with nary a glacier or fjord in sight. Yet, as Burzumically brutal as it all is, you could be listening to this and suddenly forget and mistakenly think you've got some fucked up experiment in lo-fi ambient drone psychedelia on your stereo instead. Keyboards warble WAY above the mix, drums and vocals and guitars are whipped into Merzbow-ic blasts of white noise, blast beats are obliterated into gentle expanses of delicate acoustic guitars and droning ambient hum, the whole thing a gorgously perplexing blast of bizarre blackened sonic experimentation. Much like the infamous Benighted Leams confused and astounded us once upon a time with its outsider genius, Draugar transcends black metal musical norms, making truly abnormal, artistic sound with unknown boundaries. Like Leviathan and our other favorite California black metal act Xasthur, it's the one-man-alone, far from the "scene" aspect that seems to foster a creativity beyond that of many ordinary black metal bands. From Which Hatred Grows is one of those rare metal records that manages to be true and grim, buzzing and black, but also a truly unique sonic vision that should find its way into the collection of every adventurous music lover.
MPEG Stream: "Intro / Uncontrollable Despair"
MPEG Stream: "Born"
MPEG Stream: "Dust Chains Idiots"

DRAUGAR Weathering The Curse (Moribund) cd 14.98
The black ice continues to spread, a grim black metal glacier slowly enveloping all with ears to hear. The West Coast black metal contingent's influence grows steadily, until one day hell walks the earth. Sorry, getting carried away. If the above scene had some sort of hierarchy, Leviathan would undoubtedly be the king. Xasthur would be a prince, or perhaps another king vying for supreme power. Crebain would be a knight, sent to slay all who shall dare oppose, and then Draugar, well Draugar would be the kings ex-vizier, locked in a dark dank dungeon, insane and murderous and demented, from years of no light, eating bugs, lack of sleep, and staring endlessly into blackness. Draugar is definitely the black sheep of this already black family, imbuing his home recorded evil, with the grim buzz of classic black metal, but with a healthy dollop of damged brilliance a la Benighted Leams, Lurker Of Chalice, or Striborg. Buzzy and black, droning and depressive, Draugar more than holds his own amidst the blackened elite, but somehow, everything he touches turns to what-the-fuck? Gentle clean arpeggiated clean guitar melodies are way up in the mix, layed atop a sluggish stream of indistinct guitar fuzz and Whitehouse-ish vocals. Sounding a little like somebody taped Darkthrone over a Slint record on an old C90 that had been in their back pocket for a month. Loping midtempo buzz over buried angelic choruses, like Morricone's The Mission performed by Graveland. Occasional ambient breaks, where guitar melodies wander aimlessly across barren soundscapes of distant rumble and creepy shimmer. Sometimes the riff seems to just splinter apart and what was moments earlier a galloping black metal juggernaut, has become a seasick drone. contructed from fuzzy almost melodies and vocals so distorted and so affected they sound like bursts of radio static. As always, heavy and grim and completely fucked!
MPEG Stream: "Warrior Without War"
MPEG Stream: "Infernal Existence / Grey Horizons"

DUNCAN, JOHN & EDVARD GRAHAM LEWIS Presence (All Questions) cd 21.00
The bulk of John Duncan's exceptional catalogue of sonic provocation and sublime post-minimalism has been collaborations. CM Von Hausswolff, Francisco Lopez, Bernhard Gunter, Asmus Tietchens, Peter Fleur, Max Springer, Giuliana Stefani, and Elliott Sharp have all worked with Duncan in recent years; yet at the same time, each of those collaborations exhibits the inescapable gravitational pull of Duncan's conceptual and aesthetic agendas. This collaboration with Edvard Graham Lewis is no exception. Lewis, of course, is the legendary bassist / vocalist from Wire and has often ventured into the netherworlds of the avant-garde with fellow Wireman Bruce Gilbert in various guises. Like Duncan, Lewis is quite comfortable with the role of collaborator.
The human voice has been the springboard for a number of Duncan's records including the recent collaborations with Tietchens and Sharp. Not surprising, the most obvious contributions that Lewis makes on Presence are a few choice spoken word bits highlighting his elegantly sinister baritone voice (which in my opinion is more interesting than Colin Newman's). Broken into variable streams of timestretched anxiety during the album's introduction, Lewis' voice slips away beyond recognizablility, falling into an abyss of shortwave hum and crackle that have long been the divining rod for Duncan's epistomological inquistions. The centerpiece of the album is a 30 minute piece fusing those same gray timbers of shortwave with monochromatic vocal compositions, presumably birthed from Lewis' lips and later manipulated by Duncan. Even if Lewis did have a greater hand in the mix, Presence sounds much like Duncan's masterpieces Phantom Broadcast and Palace of Mind, which is not a bad thing at all. The album ends with Lewis' unmistakable voice offering a naked piece of advice:"Take a step forward and tell the truth." As narcotizing as the album becomes, this whispered text booms out of the speakers as a startling conclusion to this excellent album.
MPEG Stream: "Purpose Stimulated"
MPEG Stream: "Fall"

DUNGEN Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds) cd 16.98
Back in stock! There was quite a run on these recently after Pitchfork gave this a rave review...hey didn't anyone read *our* review of this some months before? Anyway, we've got a few more (at a slightly better price, the label repressed 'em and made 'em cheaper too) and here's what we said about it before: Like fellow Swede and AQ-fave Bjorn Olsson, Gustav Ejstes is a brillant timewarped melody-maker. Though, his "solo" project Dungen sounds more like a band than Olsson's albums do. Wunderkind Ejstes is certainly enamored of '60s/'70s psych-pop and his obsession has borne some fabulous fruit. This is his third album to date (the first being a vinyl-only affair we have yet to hear, the second being the now-hard-to-find Stadsvandringar cd that Allan raved about on our list two years ago). So we were pleased to hear about the release of Ta Det Lugnt. It rocks more than the last one, being brasher, with more in the way of electric guitar frenzies in a Hendrix kinda style. But otherwise it's pretty similar, with Ejstes singing his hook-filled songs in the same somewhat nasal, Swedish langage voice as before. There's jazz jamming, folk frolics, and plenty of fuzz. A retro trip indeed from searing electric rippage to spaced-out, sentimental melodicism.
MPEG Stream: "Panda"
MPEG Stream: "Ta Det Lugnt"
MPEG Stream: "Sluta Folja Efter"

DUNGEN Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds) 2lp 27.00
Now -- briefly -- on VINYL. Like it should be, with these retro sounds. We only got a few, and when they're gone, that's it they're gone. What we said about the cd version of this fave of AQ and everyone else:
There was quite a run on this recently after Pitchfork gave this a rave review...hey didn't anyone read *our* review of this some months before? Anyway, we've got a few more (at a slightly better price, the label repressed 'em and made 'em cheaper too) and here's what we said about it before: Like fellow Swede and AQ-fave Bjorn Olsson, Gustav Ejstes is a brillant timewarped melody-maker. Though, his "solo" project Dungen sounds more like a band than Olsson's albums do. Wunderkind Ejstes is certainly enamored of '60s/'70s psych-pop and his obsession has borne some fabulous fruit. This is his third album to date (the first being a vinyl-only affair we have yet to hear, the second being the now-hard-to-find Stadsvandringar cd that Allan raved about on our list two years ago). So we were pleased to hear about the release of Ta Det Lugnt. It rocks more than the last one, being brasher, with more in the way of electric guitar frenzies in a Hendrix kinda style. But otherwise it's pretty similar, with Ejstes singing his hook-filled songs in the same somewhat nasal, Swedish langage voice as before. There's jazz jamming, folk frolics, and plenty of fuzz. A retro trip indeed from searing electric rippage to spaced-out, sentimental melodicism.
MPEG Stream: "Panda"
MPEG Stream: "Ta Det Lugnt"
MPEG Stream: "Sluta Folja Efter"

EIKENSKADEN 665.999 (tUMULt) cd 13.98
Andee's label tUMULt is a lot of things. From country dirge (Souled American) to avant-prog (Guapo) to experimental indie-pop (Iran). And then there's a black, leathery wing of tUMULt devoted to the art and science of black metal, with several examples drawn from the fertile local San Francisco scene (Weakling, Leviathan, Draugar) and one outlier from France (Diamatregon).
And now Eikenskaden, who also happen to hail from France. Andee and Allan here at Aquarius had been fans of Eikenskaden and related band Mystic Forest for some time, we've raved about 'em before. As it turned out, they happened to be fans of tUMULt in turn. Strange how things work out. So here's a new Eikenskaden on tUMULt! Like tUMULt's other black metal releases (or other releases, period), you can be assured that Eikenskaden is not quite the norm for its genre, which is a genre where norms are oft-perverted anyways. There's something just a little bit fucked about their approach, the extreme combo of nasty distortion and neo-classical melody perhaps?
Yup, you can say a lot about how this band (or guy, it's one dude, Mr. Stefan Kozak) revels in the wall-of-fuzz sound of Norwegian black metal primitivists like Burzum. But then he takes it and merges it with freakin' Beethoven! Not only that, but like the best metal (from Iron Maiden to Katatonia) he doesn't forget this is rock music and it's gotta have a pop element. There are simply just some great SONGS here beneath all the distortion and violence. We couldn't be happier -- not only did tUMULt get to put out an Eikenskaden album, but it lived up to all our expectations. Which means that even if you've never heard of Eikenskaden before, we'd recommend checking this out.
MPEG Stream: "Sharp Edged Iron Trees"
MPEG Stream: "Absolute Zero"

EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN Kalte Sterne - Early Recordings (Mute) cd 16.98
Do you like early Einsturzende Neubauten (Kollaps, Strategies Against Architecture)? Yeah? Great; then you don't want to miss Kalte Sterne, the new collection of Einsturzende Neubauten's early 7"s, surrounded by many previously unreleased recordings. Most of these were impossible to find the first time around, and represent the beginning of the brilliant German group's (literally) metallic, Dadaist anti-music. Thirteen tracks of scraping atonal genius by the group arguably most responsible for connecting the ideas of 20th century avant-garde composers and '-isms' with the underground art-rock audience. Kalte Sterne reveals a dub sense not readily apparent on the first full length albums, as well as surprisingly well formed looks at their trademark post-Faust, homemade musique concrete. Early Einsturzende Neubauten is iconclastic, ubiquitous and absolutely unique. If you've ever wished for more early-style Einsturzende Neubauten, before they mellowed considerably and became more like 'regular music', here it is. Kalte Sterne is 'noise' in the truest and best sense, for every adventurous ear.
MPEG Stream: "Kalte Sterne"
MPEG Stream: "Tan-Ze-Dub"

ELF POWER Walking With The Beggar Boys (Orange Twin) cd 14.98
Many of the Elephant 6 crafty retro pop experimental collective members have been resurfacing as of late. Not only have AQ faves the Olivia Tremor Control's albums been reissued, but many of the bands in the E6's second tier are stepping forward with new albums too! As soon as you press 'play' on Walking With The Beggar Boys, Elf Power are bursting from your speakers with their particular tasty blend of jubilant retro folk pop. Much less psychedelic than previous releases, instead it's very "Up With People" and filled with lyrics of wide-eyed innocence like "God is cool". It's not all sunshine and daffodils though, there are somber moments on this album. They just take a little time to materialize (how 'bout the sixth song "The Cracks"?). As per most E6 projects, this album features members (and ex-members) of other E6 bands, namely Laura Carter of Neutral Milk Hotel and Eric Harris of OTC. An additional highlight is the unmistakable voice of Vic Chesnutt! Yup, he sings on the title track.
MPEG Stream: "Never Believe"
MPEG Stream: "The Cracks"

ELOPE The No Name Record (Gravitation) cd 15.98
We get A LOT of records coming through here, as you might imagine, many of them great -- but very few that I (Allan) have listened to as many times upon acquisition as this one. I just can't stop spinning it. It's one of those special cases, the new purchase that actually achieves "heavy rotation" in my home. The Elope trio hail from Sweden and are on the same label, Gravitation, that's been bringing us those lovely Bjorn Olsson albums. They're a current, contemporary band but you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise 'cause this record sure sounds like it was recorded no later than 1973, if it was yesterday. They've captured a long-ago, classic rock, heavily Beatles-influenced vibe, and written songs with pop brilliance to match. They're retro but not self-consciously, calculatedly so. I mean, the album cover suggests indie rock along the lines of Death Cab For Cutie or Modest Mouse or something like that, way more than it does what the band actually sounds like. Which is the Beatles, Neil Young (they cover his "Bad Fog Of Loneliness"), a little country-Stones, a little Pink Floyd, maybe the Pretty Things circa their Parachute LP, and some Wings (or more Beatles). More obscurely, I'd say a lot of this has the same magical effect on me as do the albums by early '70s Peruvian Paul McCartney worshippers We All Together. (Some of you might be familiar with those guys, we used to stock the reissues of their two albums when we could get 'em). Relaxed, super melodic, stick in your head songwriting. Another kinda obscure comparison would be to the quieter, acoustic side of heavy British '70s rockers Budgie (!) who also were devoted Paul McCartney fans I'm sure. And, additionally, this has a restrained-but-effective hard/psych rock side to it that also could relate to the riffing of Budgie (a lot of critics apparently say Cream, but I don't hear that as much). Like the guy from Budgie doing their more sensitive songs, the intimate, gentle vocals here have an air of wistful melancholy I always find hard to resist. Pretty, exquisitely crafted songs that are so very seventies but also evoke the current folky indie-pop of, say, Belle & Sebastian. I wasn't entirely surprised to find out that Elope apparently includes some member(s) of stoner rock band Lowrider. Indeed, Elope had a release (a split with a band called Backbiter) on the defunct Man's Ruin label some time ago, and have been called "possibly the mellowest stoner rock band ever", although they certainly are capable of rocking out, as on the track "Pride Approaching". They do it rarely but they do it well. But unlike a lot of 'stoner rock' bands, whatever inclinations they have towards psychedelic guitar jamming are balanced by the melodic/structural needs of the song at hand. So good. I know I'll keep spinning this for some time to come. Quite possibly top ten 2004 material as far as I'm concerned!
MPEG Stream: "Anyone"
MPEG Stream: "Oh Patchouli"

ENO, BRIAN Another Green World (EMI) cd 16.98
We didn't review Another Green World with the other Eno reissues featured a couple weeks back 'cuz they turned out to have some weird defect, but that's been fixed now and so here you go: Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection.
What remains to be said about one of the all-time classic art-rock records? Here we find Brian Peter George St. John Le Baptiste De La Salle Eno (yes, that's his full name!) leaving behind the song structures of the preceding albums, and jumping straight into inventing the mood-driven, almost-snippits-but-too-composed-to-be-just-parts style of atmospheric 'songs'. A melding of his ambient sides with occasional vocals. "Sombre Reptiles", "I'll Come Running", "St. Elmo's Fire"... MAN, JUST TOO GOOD. If you've never heard this record, buy it and live with it for a few years. It'll getcha eventually... Really, just a flat-out model and inspiration for everything synthetic / experimental / art / punk / pop from Bowie's Low album to Talking Heads to I Am Spoonbender (Cup admits that IAS often uses a set of Eno's 'Oblique Strategies' cards during sessions, just like those mentioned in the liner notes to this essential release. FYI: they were a small black box containing a deck of cards imprinted with an assortment of open-to-interpretation statements... an oracle of sorts that you could refer to in times of creative blocks).
MPEG Stream: "St. Elmo's Fire"
MPEG Stream: "I'll Come Running"

ENO, BRIAN Here Come The Warm Jets (EMI) cd 16.98
Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection.
"My baby's on fiyaaaaaaa!"... so good. Eno's first solo album after leaving Roxy Music finds him in 'proto-everything' territory, pre-dating art-pop, punk and indie rock with his Dada-esque lyrics and a fresh 'non-musician' approach (those are his words, although a bit misleading -- it's not like he was a gardener before he walked into the studio!) to avant garde songs. Glammy, brooding, and exploratory. This, along with his mood-masterpiece Another Green World, comprise the essential bits of pre-ambient Eno.
MPEG Stream: "Needles In The Camel's Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Baby's On Fire"

ENO, BRIAN Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (EMI) cd 16.98
Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection.
One of Eno's best songs kicks off TTM(BS), the ubiquitous and lovely "Burning Airlines Gives You So Much More", with a gorgeous post-Beatles melody and snaky harmonized guitar (an Eno trademark, often played by Robert Fripp on these releases). From there on out, TTM(BS) expands upon -- but doesn't often better -- the ideas that began with Here Come The Warm Jets. Slightly more introspective. It's also less sneering. Of course, Bauhaus resonated with Eno's idea of absurdist / glam / experimental pop, later covering this album's sixth song "Third Uncle". Really, this often sounds like Chairs Missing era Wire in spots, and we all know that's a good thing!
MPEG Stream: "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More"
MPEG Stream: "Third Uncle"

ESOTERIC Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
There was once The Pernicious Enigma. There was also Epistomological Despondency. Soon after there was Metamorphogenesis. And now, finally, there is the Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum. What the f**k are we talking about you might be wondering? Just the UK's ultimate doom band ESOTERIC. And we do mean ultimate. And we most certainly mean doom. Esoteric started off as a totally drug addled, musically damaged, slow motion, psych-doom band, releasing epic double cds, with 15+ minute tracks of almost-ambient, not-quite-metal abstract dirges. Steeped in pseudo spiritualityand packaged in retardedly trippy black and white geometric art, early Esoteric was an ultra lo-fi attempt at classic doom, but filtered through the band's massive intake of drugs, extreme hate for humanity, and their obvious love of effects, the result -was- truly amazing, but in that Benighted Leams, it's-so-retarded-it's-the-best-thing-ever way. Move forward a few years to 1999's Metamorphogenesis, and this self described "dark, vicarious, pernicious, sinister, hateful, drug influenced, tortured, philosophical, and barbaric doom" outfit had finally hit their stride, with improved songwriting, and more importantly a newly massive and crushingly heavy production that we had all been hoping and waiting for. The result was easily the best Esoteric to date. Still psychedelic and weird, but so heavy and dark. And now after 5 years, we have the Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum, a record that is so good, it's sort of hard to know how to describe it without resorting to hyperbole. But what can you do? This just may quite possibly be the greatest funereal doom record we have ever heard. Seriously. Thergothon? Skepticism? This outdoes them all. Hard to believe but it's true. The production is so massive. This is the way doom was meant to be. Slow and suffocating, crushing and overwhelming. But it's not just the sound. Esoteric have written some amazing songs. You may think dynamics have no place in doom, but this record is rife with them. Four tracks, fifty minues, an epic journey, bleak and soul stirring, and musically complex. Just cause it's slow doesn't mean it's gotta be simple. Melodies? Some moments on this record are so melodic and so achingly mournful, they could almost make you cry. That is if they weren't falling into mile wide black hole riffs, and being crushed by two ton sledgehammer drumming. Not sure what else to say. There hasn't been a metal record, doom or otherwise, that sounded this good, or that had such emotional resonance in forever. Best metal record this year so far hands down says Andee. And maybe one of the best doom records EVER!
MPEG Stream: "The Blood Of The Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "Grey Day"

ESPERS s/t (Locust) cd 14.98
Usually, when a friend of yours slowly begins to sink into a druggy oblivion, you do everything in your power to help them, and keep them from that fate. But when that druggy oblivion is musical and that friend is Greg Weeks, you wait anxiously for the descent to bear musical fruit. Thus we have the Espers. A modern classic of shimmery psychedelia and seventies inspired pagan folk (and the drugs are sonic, not narcotic, so fear not Mr. and Mrs. Weeks). Sweet and melodic, but with a subtly dark and utterly creepy underbelly. The sound is heavy on the Incredible String Band, Pentangle, Fairport Convention and hippy folk of that era, but with elements of the sweet pop ballad and with a dash of Comus, that's right, Comus! And we don't invoke the name of Comus lightly. But don't let all this talk of folk and prog put you off. Espers beautifully tread paths of indie rock shimmer just as deftly, offering much to love for fans of Windy And Carl, Landing, and all things Ptolemaic Terrascope. Sweetly angelic female vocals float and hover alongside Weeks' warm sweet croon, over spare lilting folk, woven from delicately plucked steel string guitars, haunting violins and cellos, sweet swirling flutes, and the distinctive zing of dulcimers. Occasionally distorted guitar leaps wildly from the haze (two members are credited with "acid leads" after all!) lending the whole thing an acid soaked vibe. Weeks' last full length solo record was an AQ Record of the Week way back in 2001 with its mournful introspection, fuzzed out melodies and dreamy cloudy ambience. Espers follow a similar path, a lonely, meandering, path through the ancient forest, sunlight filtering faintly through the canopy. Travelling minstrels sing sadly, softly, offering sweet sounds to seek safety in those darkened, timeless glades.
MPEG Stream: "Flowery Noontide"
MPEG Stream: "Meadow"
MPEG Stream: "Riding"

EVAPORATORS, THEE Ripple Rock (Alternative Tentacles) cd 14.98
Who are Thee Evaporators? And who is this Nardwuar The Human Serviette who leads their charge?! To most in the college radio / indie music scene he needs no introduction... and his legions of admirers / worshippers continues to grow by the minute. Man of many hats (preferably knit or tartan): tenacious interviewer, loose cannon tv and radio host, obsessive Canadian historian (and not just about music, check out the mining story behind the title track!), and irrepressible band leader of Thee Evaporators. He cannot be stopped -- not even by a mysterious brain hemorrhage a few years back! -- and unlike many other recent seemingly similar guerrilla interviewers, he's not out to simply fuck with people. His enthusiasm is genuine. His research can be fascinating and unbelievably thorough. Who's been placed under the Nardwuar microscope/microphone? The list is mind-blowing. Here's just a sampling: Politicians Mikhael Gorbachev, Gerald Ford, former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and ahem, Dan Quayle, self-help impressarios Tony Robbins and Tom Vu, hard rockers Gene Simmons, Thor, Sebastian Bach, Alice Cooper, Kevin Dubrow and Slayer, hip hop artists Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes, alt-gods the Strokes, Blur, Beck, Bright Eyes, White Stripes and Sonic Youth, punk legends D.O.A., The Damned, Sex Pistols' Paul Cook, TV personalities Jimmie Walker, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Bob Denver (aka Gilligan), TV evangelist Earnest Angley, child stars Jerry Mathers, Eve Plumb, and Corey Feldman... the list goes on and on!
His band's music is by no means as eclectic, however it can be just as entertaining and educational. On the surface it comes across as pretty straightforward garage pop/rock, but you just might discover a little nugget in each song that sets it apart from the rest. It certainly helps heaps that he's got a solid band backing him up to boot. They are longtime friends bassist John Collins from the New Pornographers, his JC/DC recording studio partner and kickass guitarist Dave Carswell (also of Vancouver garage rawk vets The Smugglers as well as a former touring member of Zumpano) and drummer/grpahic artist Scott Livingstone. Infectious hooks and uplifting choruses grace such tunes as the cryptically titled "I.D.N.M.F.T.T.M.W.M.F.A." (translation: I Don't Need My Friends To Tell Me Who My Friends Are!). However, please be forewarned, the vocals may be an acquired taste. They often sound as though he's been hitting the helium tank... hard, but they do make a perfect foil for the occasional noodly '60s Farfisa organ. As well, The Evaps song titles and lyrics frequently tend to lean heavily on the silly button. You might be put off by titles such as "Addicted To Cheese" and "Shittin' Party", but the songs themselves are mighty hard to resist... particularly if you're a garage pop fan.
A side note: It's notable that this album finds itself on Jello Biafra's label (albeit licensed from longtime Nardwuar supporters Mint) for Mr. Biafra has been a worthy interview combatant for over a decade.
Extras: Interspersed with the music are a couple of interview snippits with Snoop Doggy Dogg and Rahzel (for more you'll just have to visit his humungous website). Plus you also get a handful of bonus tracks by Thee Dublins (the alter ego of the Evaporators' alter ego Thee Goblins).
MPEG Stream: "I.D.N.M.F.T.T.M.W.M.F.A."
MPEG Stream: "Shittin' Party "

FEATHERS, CHARLIE Get With It: Essential Recordings (1954-69) (Revenant) 2cd 29.00
Here is a 2 cd retrospective collection of the often underrated, and totally amazing rockabilly, country great Charlie Feathers. We have carried this before, now it is reissued in fancy packaging. Charlie grew up tending his parents farm. He sang in church and listened to the Grand Ole Opry. A local sharecropper named Junior Kimbrough taught him how to play guitar. He reminds me at times of Hank Williams, Eddie Arnold, and even Hasil Adkins. Feathers wrote "Can't Hardly Stand It" which was later covered by the Cramps. He has the talent of mixing the best elements of blues, country, bluegrass and rockabilly in an original and inventive way. Some songs are slow lazy sad country, and then some are rockin' and tough. As this collection proves he was hard working and eclectic in the mid '50s, but it was during the '70s resurgence of rockabilly in Europe that he was revered and appreciated. Many country and rock n rollers credit Feathers for inspiration (Johnny Cash for one). Dispite horrible health problems he persevered till the end recording and touring, mostly in Europe. Charlie Feathers died August 29, 1998 of complications following a stroke; he was 66. Here are all his Sun, Flip, King, Meteor, Kay, WalMay and Holiday Inn sides, plus rare, unissued tracks including Sun demos, alternate takes and early home recordings with the likes of Junior Kimbrough. You also get a fancy detailed 48 page book.
RealAudio clip: "One Hand Loose"
RealAudio clip: "Can't Hardly Stand It"
RealAudio clip: "Everybody's Lovin' My Baby"

FEATHERS, CHARLIE Get With It: Essential Recordings (1954-69) (Revenant) 3lp 36.00
Now available on vinyl! A massive trible lp in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve. Here's what we had to say about the cd:
A retrospective collection of the often underrated, and totally amazing rockabilly, country great Charlie Feathers. Charlie grew up tending his parents farm. He sang in church and listened to the Grand Ole Opry. A local sharecropper named Junior Kimbrough taught him how to play guitar. He reminds me at times of Hank Williams, Eddie Arnold, and even Hasil Adkins. Feathers wrote "Can't Hardly Stand It" which was later covered by the Cramps. He has the talent of mixing the best elements of blues, country, bluegrass and rockabilly in an original and inventive way. Some songs are slow lazy sad country, and then some are rockin' and tough. As this collection proves he was hard working and eclectic in the mid '50s, but it was during the '70s resurgence of rockabilly in Europe that he was revered and appreciated. Many country and rock n rollers credit Feathers for inspiration (Johnny Cash for one). Dispite horrible health problems he persevered till the end recording and touring, mostly in Europe. Charlie Feathers died August 29, 1998 of complications following a stroke; he was 66. Here are all his Sun, Flip, King, Meteor, Kay, WalMay and Holiday Inn sides, plus rare, unissued tracks including Sun demos, alternate takes and early home recordings with the likes of Junior Kimbrough. Massive batch of super informative liner notes!
RealAudio clip: "One Hand Loose"
RealAudio clip: "Can't Hardly Stand It"
RealAudio clip: "Everybody's Lovin' My Baby"

FLAMEN DIALIS Symptome - Dei (Mio) cd 16.98
We've been doing this long enough to know that there's certain types of AQ customers we can rely upon. One catagory being those into the weird, obscure '70s prog-psych stuff. Folks who know what the Nurse With Wound list is (heck maybe even have it memorized), and can't help but be more excited about lost treasures from 30 years ago being reissued on cd than they are about the latest indie-rock or electronica gem (though chances are you might dig those too). Well if you're one of those folks, or maybe just feel especially sonically adventurous today, we've got another reissue for ya: Flamen Dialis. Which is, we're told, the ancient Roman name for the high priest of Jupiter, and is a suitably archaic name for an quite arcane sounding band. Like Magma (and some of our favorite previous MIO reissues, Jean-Cohen Solal and Birge-Gorge-Shirac) this group hailed from France, and indeed this has a bit of that cosmic Magma vibe to it. They released this now very rare record, their sole album, in 1979, and there's also a 7" Flamen Dialis single from 1978 included on this cd reissue too. The music they made was progressive and psychedelic, but not exactly rock. It's weird and atmospheric, soundtracky stuff, very ritualistic and repetitive in nature. With chants and whispers, martial drums and zinging synths, vibraphone and Mellotron, flutes and even some brief blues guitar licks and what sounds like a rhythm machine, this is quite otherwordly and dreamlike -- not exactly dreamy (or nightmarish either) just strange. Both eerie and a little goofy too... Like a soundtrack (or a dream), themes are revisted, and the album drifts smoothly from Medieval European to Eastern sounding exoticism. We're reminded a bit of that Musique de la Grece Antique album of pseudo-ancient Greek music by the Atrium Musicae de Madrid (an AQ perennial) and Igor Wakhevitch and Franco Battiato and Magical Power Mako and, well, if you're with us this far you *are* one of the AQ customers mentioned above and maybe should just trust us when we say you ought to check this out!
MPEG Stream: "Dernier Croisade"
MPEG Stream: "Decouverte"

V/A Rough Trade Shops Indiepop Vol. 1 (Rough Trade) 2cd 25.00
This compilation has one of the bestest, most irresistible garage pop songs ever!!! So sayeth Cup. It's one of her all time faves, and it's been pretty much impossible to find for years . The song? "I Could Be In Heaven" by The Flatmates. Yaaaay! No, on its own it's not necessarily worth the full price of this double cd, but it is a pretty good start (well, it's not really a 'start' per se 'cause it's #18 on the second disc)! This compilation is bursting with such awesome indie pop delights it can brighten the darkest days! Other than the Flatmates you'll be treated to a whopping 46 songs by the old familiar faves like The Pastels, Marine Girls, Lush, Magnetic Fields (one of the best from their early days "100,000 Fireflies"), Beat Happening (their classic "Indian Summer"), Modesty Blaise, the Vaselines ("Molly's Lips"), Mary Lou Lord ("Jingle Jangle Morning"), Bis, My Bloody Valentine, the Pooh Sticks, Jesus & Mary Chain, Talulah Gosh (their theme song!), the Velvet Crush, Television Personalities, A.R. Kane, Eggs, the Darling Buds, Primal Scream, the Field Mice, Camera Obscura, Felt, the Monochrome Set and many many more. Sooooooooooooo good!
MPEG Stream: FLATMATES "I Could Be In Heaven"
MPEG Stream: TALULAH GOSH "Talulah Gosh"

FOUNTAIN, JUDSON Completely In The Dark (Innova) cd-r 14.98
Oh man. If you are a faithful Aquarius list reader and lover of musical oddities, just stop right here, and push the buy button because you need this record. Judson Fountain was born in 1952 and was obsessed with radio dramas since he was old enough to talk. In fact as soon as he was able to talk he began doing impressions of cackling hags, wicked witches and all sorts of animals. All of which would come to play a big part in these radio dramas right here. Recorded between the ages of 17 and 22, these eight dramas are only a drop in the bucket of the hundreds of radio plays Judson wrote and performed. All of them primitive and simple, but amazingly creative and entertaining, and all featuring Judson's unique vocalisations along with his partner/foil Sandor Weisberger. But there's no way to describe them, you just have to hear them. Judson has a crazy East Coast accent, and he talks like a hyper school boy who thinks faster than he can get the words out, which you can hear in a handful of interviews preceding some of the radio dramas. Using crude sound effects and sometimes painfully deliberate plot exposition, these dramas all rely on Judson and Sandor's crazy array of voices, from Irish Brogue, to old Thai man, to teenage gangster to tuneless singing grandma, to British detective to various witches and demonic women, all with distinctly hysterical and completely bizarre cackles. The plots are all very simple, good vs. Evil, haunted houses and witches and stuff. But they are all done so sort-of-professionally and so earnestly that they're just completely irresistable. Listen to "Garbage Can From Thailand" and you'll immediately know what we mean. Judson is just so cute. And so is Sandor who introduces each drama (which he pronounces drahmmer) and also reads the credits afterwards. I've had a Judson Fountain cassette for years now thanks to AQ pal Jay Lesser so you can imagine how excited we were that some of this stuff was actually finally getting released. Our only complaint is why did Innova make it a cd-r??! It's got a professionally printed booklet and everything, so how hard would it have been to press up real cds?! It costs as much as a real cd after all. Cd-r or not, this is so good, and so funny, and so cute, and so weirdly brilliant, that it definitely needs to be in your collection!
MPEG Stream: "The Garbage Can From Thailand"
MPEG Stream: "Two Boys In A Haunted House"

FURSAXA Mandrake (Eclipse) lp 14.98

FURZE Necromanzee Cogent (Apocalyptic Empire) cd 11.98
We've been trying to track down music from this mysterious Norweigian black metal one man band for ages now and finally managed to get enough to list. We're constantly extolling the virtues of retarded / damaged / fucked / outsider black metal (see the Benighted Leams review elsewhere on this list) and we're always on the lookout for more. And Furze definitely fits the bill. In fact, we've been touting Benighted Leams as "perhaps the most retarded black metal band ever" for years now, but it seems like Furze might be just sneak in and steal that 'honor' for themselves. Let's talk about the packaging first. The cover is all black except for some weeds laid out next to each other. The back is all white (!) with a photo of what appears to be two young trick or treaters, one dressed like a witch, the other like a ghost. The Furze logo on the back is printed over three witches brooms. the back of the booklet has a very South Park-like painting of a white sign under a blood dripping sky, The sign reads: "Come, come sit listen to our cogent black metal necrosis". Inside the booklet, Mr Furze is carrying a lantern through a snowy forest.
While Necromanzee Cogent is black metal, sonically it sounds way more like a doom record, slow doomy riffs, one track even sounds exactly Black Sabbath, but played by a grade school music class. The whole record starts off with haunting Jandekian mumbling before erupting into clumsy, mid tempo doooooom. Totally random drumming, fuzzed out atonal organ melodies and anguished heavily reverbed moaning, not really metal so much as some strange Scott Walker / Jandek / Nick Cave caterwaul occasionally whispering ominously but more often gurgling and squealing and yelping. There are occasional blasts of -actual- black metal, but it's almost as if he can't manage to play that fast for that long and is forced to slow down and often abandon song structure all together, resulting in lots of creepy ambient bits, with scraping reverbed guitar strings and all sort of weird sounds. Most of the record is a sludgy doomy, plodding thud rock, almost like some long lost Amrep band, but filtered through the frosty blackened mind of some Norwegian black metal troll. Also, somewhat surprisingly there are some really gorgeous blissed out post-rocky guitar ambience, keening guitar melodies suspended in a massive blackened emptiness. Everything up until this point has only served to get you ready for the massive 20+ minute final track "Sathanas' Megalomania". From high end chiming shimmer, to slow building droning creepiness, to church-like organ and plodding drum with deep chanting and scary demonic screeches, to full on epic black metal with REALLY loud monster vocals, to haunting funereal doom until the end of the song where levels and song structure and vocals all seem to go haywire. As the metal maelstrom dissipates, the song becomes a chaotic swirl of weird sped up disembodied voices, snippets of crappy AM radio, snatches of distorted orchestra, squealing feedback and groaning downtuned guitars. Phew. Yikes. After listening to this record we feel like we've been dragged naked over rocks and thistles, through a snowy forest, into a fiery pit where we were quickly eaten by a huge demon, and promptly shat out. You know what we're talking about: tired, filthy, demoralized, violated, bruised and battered. But surprisingly really really good.
MPEG Stream: "Seance"
MPEG Stream: "Necrosaint Black Metal"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Starlight"

GESSESSE, TLAHOUN Ethiopiques Vol. 17 (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
Okay, I know that the general consensus from people seems to be that the Mulatu Astatke disc (Ethiopiques #4) is the best in the Ethiopiques series. And yeah, it's a great disc. But to really experience the zenith of Ethiopian popular music from the golden era you really gotta have the vocals. The workouts these singers put their vocal chords through are as unbelievable as they are beautiful. Case in point is Tlahoun Gessesse. And we are thankfully blessed with a full CD of his passionately yodelled Ethiopian funk groove. Gesesse was the most popular Ethiopian singer of the times -- bigger than Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete or any other singers. So great was his vocal stature that he was dubbed "The Voice". Pretty much says it all. And well applied the title is; his vocal control is insane, wavering vibrato all over the place and melisma stacked upon melisma. To boot he's backed by the best in the business: the Body Guard Band, All Star Band, Exhibition Band and Army Band. The usual arrangements of guitar, bass, drums, percussion, horns, piano and incredibly strange organs play the most haunting accompaniment to Gessesse's impassioned vocals. And for what its worth, several of the tracks here were even arranged by Mulatu Astatke. Though Gessesse's career dates back to the fifties, the recordings included here are all from the early seventies. Included is a 30 page booklet with biographical notes, photos (including a two page spread of 45 jackets) and lyrics. This one comes highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Aykedashem Lebe"
MPEG Stream: "Sethed Seketelet"

GET UP KIDS Something To Write Home About (Vagrant) cd 13.98
Probably one of the best emo-pop records ever! So kick ass and catchy, lyrically heartbreaking, dreamily hummable, completely rocking. Total driving across country, favorite mix tape, bouncing around all sweaty in the pit, pining for your far away love, everything-emo-should-be record!

GO! TEAM, THE Thunder, Lightning, Strike (Memphis Industries) cd 17.98
Heads up people! It's a surging candy-coated fountain of perky, ultra funky euro pop sweeping up everyone in its path! When Cup played it the other day, she had three customers ask about it in quick succession. Pretty darn irresistible, The Go! Team cook up lots of hyper-energetic, ass-slappin', toe-shakin' party jams! Sorta like a bubbly, brightly-hued blend of Bis and Stereototal.
MPEG Stream: "Panther Dash"
MPEG Stream: "Ladyflash "

GO-BETWEENS 16 Lovers Lane (Jetset) 2cd 21.00
It's time for much revelry, Go-Betweens fans! Jetset Records has reissued another batch of Go-Betweens albums on cd. This time it's three of the band's finest, most beloved works -- 16 Lovers Lane, Tallulah, and Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express. Perhaps it's time for you to replace your well-worn copies of these totally classic albums?! Each comes with a bonus disc overflowing with a variety of rarities and videos. Such a treat for pop music lovers! And if you've somehow yet to experience the refined splendor of the Go-Betweens music, now is the time to get with the program! Seriously folks, this band was (and is) graced with not just one, but two of the most formidable songwriting forces around, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. Consistently head and shoulders above their comtemporaries, their unmistakable and unforgettable songs speak to both the heart and the mind, and we'd venture to say that 1988's 16 Lovers Lane does so the best of them all. It's the album they released just prior to disbanding for a decade (they reformed in '99), and they 'ended' things on a glowingly resonant high note. It's quite possibly their best work of their career (and a particular favorite of Cup and Andee's). This reissue includes videos for "Streets Of Your Town" (two versions) and "Was There Anything I Could Do?" plus ten stellar bonus tracks. Not to be missed. Sooo recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Love Goes On!"
MPEG Stream: "Wait Until June"

GREENLIGHT THE BOMBERS American Executive (Pencil Neck) cd 4.98
From the streets of SF comes this powerhouse of a rock outfit. Tighter than a squadron of B-52s in formation, Greenlight the Bombers deliver five tracks of seamless post-hardcore with angular guitar lines, loud-to-quiet dynamics and sinister basslines in the classic vein of bands like Drive Like Jehu, Quicksand, Fugazi and Shellac. Title track "American Executive" is a stand-out with a wickedly haunting vocal chant over menacing bass and drums that kicks into a solid heavy churn before dissipating into some sparse June of 44 type spaciness and then coming back with the rock in the end. Definitely one of the better new upcoming bands in this city, and do these guys have the coolest band name or what?
MPEG Stream: "Satchel"
MPEG Stream: "Perfect Cake"

GUIDED BY VOICES Bee Thousand (Scat) cd 13.98
It's official. Guided By Voices are no more. But what a streak. Hundreds of songs, dozens of releases, almost all of them awesome! That's a pretty good record by anyones standards. But if forced to pick THE record that best exemplifies what made Guided By Voices so special, it would have to be Bee Thousand. Originally released in 1994, Bee Thousand perfectly captured both sides of GBV, the frustratingly experimental fragmentary side, with short 30 second bursts of pop brilliance that burnt out before making it out of the first verse, exhausting in under a minute, the sort of hook other bands would kill for and would most likely repeat 50 times in a song if they had come up with it, and classic pop songsmithery, with gorgeously hooky, jangly pop gems, cobbled together from bits of the Beatles and the Kinks and other pop stalwarts, all filtered through GBV frontman Bob Pollard's non-sequiter flecked lyrcal flights of fancy and a distinctly drunken desire to ROCK! It's impossible to describe exactly what makes this record so great. The songs sure, but also the way they are recorded, and the sequencing, and the way some songs are butted up right against each other, and some songs just cut off and trample all over the end of another songs. It's absolutely perfect. One of those rare records where the spaces between songs and the random bits of sonic detritus are jus as catchy as the songs themselves. Sort of like the way you would find yourself humming the drum fills in Nirvana songs, GBV records were a single dense collection of sounds and songs and parts and pauses and chunks of rock and pop assembled in a seemingly haphazzard arrangement, but on closer inspection, it couldn't be any other way, and most certainly couldn't be played by any other band. The first ten minutes of Bee Thousand is perhaps the finest opening salvo in musical history. "Hardcore UFO's", "Buzzards And Dreadful Crows", "Tractor Rape Chain", "The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory". A 1-2-3-4 punch! And while the record is basically solid, no filler to be found, there are a handful of POP CLASSICS scattered throughout: "Echoes Myron", "Goldstar For Robot Boy", "Awful Bliss", "I Am A Scientist" and more... This record is definitely one of the best indie rock records of all time. Fuck Slanted And Enchanted. Sure that's a great record, but it's irony-heavy and too cool. Bee Thousand is just a regular bunch of beer drinking yokels from Ohio who love pop music, love to rock and somehow struck gold. If you don't own this record, for fuck's sake GET IT!
MPEG Stream: "Hardcore UFO's"
MPEG Stream: "Buzzards And Dreadful Crows"
MPEG Stream: "Gold Star For Robot Boy"
MPEG Stream: "Awful Bliss"

GUIDED BY VOICES Bee Thousand (The Director's Cut) (Scat) 3lp 27.00
Tenth anniversary 2lp release of this all time indie rock / pop classic. There were originally five different versions assembled and abandoned before the final version. A total of 65 songs were considered for the record before it was trimmed down to its current sequence. For this vinyl only reissue the first four sides recreate an early 2lp sequence originally titled Instructions to the Rusty Time Machine. Side five contains songs from the final version of Bee Thousand plus some unreleased tracks from other versions. Side six collects The Grand Hour And I Am A Scientist ep's, as well as a new version of "My Valuable Hunting Knife". 55 songs, 13 never been issued on vinyl, and 7 previously unreleased. Packaged in a deluxe gatefold sleeve! Here's more about the original cd which we also have in stock:
It's official. Guided By Voices are no more. But what a streak. Hundreds of songs, dozens of releases, almost all of them awesome! That's a pretty good record by anyones standards. But if forced to pick THE record that best exemplifies what made Guided By Voices so special, it would have to be Bee Thousand. Originally released in 1994, Bee Thousand perfectly captured both sides of GBV, the frustratingly experimental fragmentary side, with short 30 second bursts of pop brilliance that burnt out before making it out of the first verse, exhausting in under a minute, the sort of hook other bands would kill for and would most likely repeat 50 times in a song if they had come up with it, and classic pop songsmithery, with gorgeously hooky, jangly pop gems, cobbled together from bits of the Beatles and the Kinks and other pop stalwarts, all filtered through GBV frontman Bob Pollard's non-sequiter flecked lyrcal flights of fancy and a distinctly drunken desire to ROCK! It's impossible to describe exactly what makes this record so great. The songs sure, but also the way they are recorded, and the sequencing, and the way some songs are butted up right against each other, and some songs just cut off and trample all over the end of another songs. It's absolutely perfect. One of those rare records where the spaces between songs and the random bits of sonic detritus are jus as catchy as the songs themselves. Sort of like the way you would find yourself humming the drum fills in Nirvana songs, GBV records were a single dense collection of sounds and songs and parts and pauses and chunks of rock and pop assembled in a seemingly haphazzard arrangement, but on closer inspection, it couldn't be any other way, and most certainly couldn't be played by any other band. The first ten minutes of Bee Thousand is perhaps the finest opening salvo in musical history. "Hardcore UFO's", "Buzzards And Dreadful Crows", "Tractor Rape Chain", "The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory". A 1-2-3-4 punch! And while the record is basically solid, no filler to be found, there are a handful of POP CLASSICS scattered throughout: "Echoes Myron", "Goldstar For Robot Boy", "Awful Bliss", "I Am A Scientist" and more... This record is definitely one of the best indie rock records of all time. Fuck Slanted And Enchanted. Sure that's a great record, but it's irony-heavy and too cool. Bee Thousand is just a regular bunch of beer drinking yokels from Ohio who love pop music, love to rock and somehow struck gold. If you don't own this record, for fuck's sake GET IT!
MPEG Stream: "Hardcore UFO's"
MPEG Stream: "Buzzards And Dreadful Crows"
MPEG Stream: "Gold Star For Robot Boy"
MPEG Stream: "Awful Bliss"

GUIDED BY VOICES Hardcore UFOs (Matador) 5cd + dvd 49.00
Figured that since we were listing the FINAL Guided By Voices album we'd relist the amazing Hardcore UFO's box that is at once a greatest hits, a rarities collection, a super introduction to the band and so much more. Check it out:
Not sure how much needs to be said about this monstrosity, Guided By Voices' THIRD BOXSET! That's if we're counting correctly. And even if we're not, HOLY CRAP! And that's on top of 40 albums and 800 singles and 3000 side projects. How do they do it? But the thing is, they do it. And do it well. Even after all that, they're still writing great songs! For some reason we never get tired of it. Fans will obviously need this. If you're new to Guided By Voices though, odds are you're not going to want to spend $50 to get acquainted, although it would be the perfect introduction, greatest hits, rarities and b-sides, live performances, a documentary. But then again that might be a bit overwhelming. As if a band with thousands of songs, many less than a minute long, wasn't overwhelming enough. Anyway, if you're curious, but feeling thrifty, you can pick up the greatest hits disc by itself elsewhere on this list. But for the more brave among you, let's dig a little deeper. Five cds, a DVD and an 80 page book with photos and liner notes and all sorts of extra stuff! Disc one is 32 of Guided By Voices greatest hits, for a more complete rundown on this see the review elsewhere on this list. Needless to say, it's chock full of that stumbling, rocking, jangly, lo-fi inhumanly catchy indie rock that GBV do so well. The second disc is a collection of out of print singles and B-sides and is quite a testament to GBV's pop acumen as it plays like an alternate greatest hits. A lot of the glaring omissions from the actual Greatest Hits show up here. Disc three is all unreleased recordings, including a handful of unfinished tracks, some so good you wonder why they never saw the light of day until now. Some not. The fourth disc is a collection of live recordings spanning the band's whole career, and demonstrating the band's knack for rocking out, and getting unbelievably drunk. Disc five is the first appearance on cd of GBV's 1986 debut Forever Since Breakfast. And finally, the DVD is the Watch Me Jumpstart documentary (that yours truly, Andee, has a line of dialogue in! Three words, see if you can find em!) which is really entertaining and funny. For the DVD reissue, they tacked on ALL of the bands music videos, some extra short films, and a bunch of live footage. Wow. It may seem overwhelming, but once you get your feet wet, you'll be up to your neck before you know it. And loving it.
MPEG Stream: "14 Cheerleader Coldfront"
MPEG Stream: "Bulldog Skin"
MPEG Stream: "Shocker In Gloomtown"

HAFLER TRIO, THE How To Slice A Loaf Of Bread (lengthwise) (Phonometrography) 3cd 48.00
It's ridiculous. Yet, by know you should know if you need to own this or not. This is the second 3cd set from the Hafler Trio in the How To Slice A Loaf Of Bread series. The packaging is as elaborate and beautiful as the Fluxus art editions from the '60s, but be warned, this is incredibly fragile! Musically, fragments spiral into enigmatic drones and psychologically profound atmospheres. We only have a couple of these in stock, and considering that there's only 500 in print, there's little use in waxing poetic as found elsewhere on these Aquarius reviews. Buy it now or spend five or six times this already hefty pricetag on eBay in a couple of months.
As always, there can be no Hafler Trio MP3s. The aeons have cursed us once.

HAFLER TRIO, THE Kill The King (Korm Plastics) cd 21.00
In the ever expanding catalog of the Hafler Trio, Kill The King may be the Hafler Trio's masterpiece. Originally released back in 1991 as a co-production between Staalplaat and Silent Records, Kill The King suffered the fate of many records pressed up at that time: digital bit-rot. In fact much of the Silent stock had to be destroyed; but thankfully Frans De Waard, who had been instrumental in the European half of the co-production, has now arranged for the reissue of this fantastic album on his Korm Plastics label.
Housed in the same oversized folio that came with the original, Andrew McKenzie -- currently the only member of the Trio, although Kill The King features some collaborative work with John Duncan and Zbigniew Karkowski -- wrapped this version in an extra vellum sleeve covered with his signature enigmatic texts. The sound program for Kill The King begins with a crackly, muffled recording of an unknown woman with a thick Northern European accent reciting a complex text in English. Her intentional monotone gives hints at the records theme: difficulties in communication; but as with all Hafler Trio narratives, they are not easily discerned. The voice is buried in hiss. Her accented monotone doesn't help matters, either. That said, this is a quintessential Hafler Trio strategy in setting the stage for the rest of the album. An influx of oxygenated drones usurps the voice and majestically claims the stereofield, resembling the same timbres of Jonathan Coleclough and Andrew Chalk's Sumac. Yet, the pacing of Kill The King is far more active than Sumac and thus more than the recent Halfer Trio productions, deftly shifting the stage to gravelly textures, data-crunched noises, dental drills, and cryptic voices run in reverse, all underpinned by various tones.
Kill The King is a difficult album to reduce to a few words, and with the band's no-mp3-samples policy, you can only take our word for it that this is one of his greatest works.

HAFLER TRIO, THE Where Are You? The Partial Results of An Investigation By... (Phonometrography) cd 33.00
In the early 80s, Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio had developed a friendship with David Tibet, around the same time that Tibet was beginning the ideas that formed Current 93. As a result, the two had planned on a collaboration which was supposedly to be called Dogs Blood Rising, which Tibet later used as both a one-off live project as well as the title for one of the most chilling Current 93 records. The press releases cite that this project never materialized beyond a few works in progress "due to never explained circumstances." Yeah, it's the Hafler Trio, so the mysterious termination of this project has to go unexplained. Well, over twenty years go by and McKenzie resurrects the tapes in the form of Where Are You? within a Halfer Trio series based on voice, language, and what McKenzie qualifies as essense. Like Normally, the first in the h3o voice series, McKenzie stretches Tibet's voice into a beautifully crystalline drone. Sorry no MP3 samples, and this is limited to 500 copies.

HAINO, KEIJI 'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape (Swordfish) cd 21.00
I know this is gonna sound dorky, but I (Allan) sometimes feel blessed to be in the presence, even via recorded media, of Keiji Haino. Yeah I'm a pretty devout fan of the 51 year old Japanese psychedelic shaman-in-black. It's a shame that outside of the realm of indie/underground/Japanophile music geeks, Haino is not better known. As far as I'm concerned, he's a 20th (now 21st) century artistic genius deserving of recognition and reverence from the wider world's institutions of high culture. Why? Well as my roommate likes to put it, his shit's just so tight. He can make harrowing, dark, cosmic, soul-bearing music out of anything: his trusty guitar and feedback, a tambourine, his own voice... But even fans like me might have found his last solo release on PSF, the all-acoustic guitar workout Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki, tough going. But THIS new disc is one I'd wholeheartedly recommend even to the uninitiated. According to the label it "sees him developing themes on from his last PSF release." I think by that they're not referring to Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki but to his previous PSF disc, the 'grey album' Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka. That was an incredible, hypnotic document of Haino in a gentle, ghostly mood, recording at home presumably, accompanying himself via overdubs on a 4-track, quite unlike his more typical live, over-amped, no-overdubs method. Now on 'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape, Haino again experiments with overdubbing. However his guitar sound on this tends towards the harsher electric tones of 'classic Haino' (solo and with his band Fushitsusha), much less 'jazzy' than on Mazu Wa... the grey is gone and he's back to the blackness. The six tracks found here all feature layers of electric guitar and vocal overdubs, a multitude of Keiji's playing together. To some this may sound chaotic and confused, but careful listening will reveal the ways in which Haino has carefully constructed these pieces. On the more guitar-heavy tracks his web of sound builds and builds in density, becoming a narcotic drone not unlike some Skullflower stuff, while other tracks are based more around Haino's vocal parts -- there's one I thought was gonna be all acapella until his guitar appeared a few minutes in -- raw and repetitious, almost Reynolisan. The album ends with a final descent into the abyss, a 26 minute trip that gets so seriously spooky that you suspect the overdubbing is Haino's way of not feeling so alone... Definitely Keiji Haino (and this album) is not for everybody, but it's worth finding out if he's for you because your life will be better for it, if you find his art speaks to you the way it does to me.
MPEG Stream: "Surely Here too There Is Something"
MPEG Stream: "A Secret"

HALA STRANA These Villages (Soft Abuse) cd 13.98
Every time we get in a new album from Steven R. Smith's Hala Strana it's as if we've been magically, mystically transported to one of the Olde World vistas with which he always adorns his cd covers (this one comes from the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493). He's an Eastern European influenced, drone-folk one-man-band, crafting gorgeous, mesmerizing, sometimes melancholic instrumental compositions in his home studio, incorporating sundry ethnic instruments and tapes and field recordings, in a manner quite in keeping with that of his Jewelled Antler brethren (instrument-builder Smith is an alumnus of Thuja, you might know). Only three of the songs here are authentic traditional tunes (from Latvia, Hungary, and the Caucasus), but all the rest of them also seem to derive from an ancient, far-off land of Smith's imaginings...organic, rustic, autumnal...music for meandering along a trickling stream, lazing in a meadow, peering at distant crags through a morning mist, or drinking in a ruined old tavern at night. Harmonium drones and gently plucked strings and wheezing accordion and keening hurdy gurdy (and more) are all woven by Smith into the medieval tapestry of Hala Strana's music. Ah, we love it. These Villages is Hala Strana's fourth release -- we can't say it's the best yet, only because the others were also so superlative too. Quite recommended.
MPEG Stream: "October"
MPEG Stream: "Nepdal Tarogaton"

HARVEY MILK The Kelly Sessions (Crowd Control Activities / Escape Artist) cd 15.98
Anyone who has been paying even a lick of attention to the AQ list, or to Andee's tUMULt label, or hell, to heavy music in general, will all feel a little collective shiver when we utter the words...Harvey Milk. And that shiver will most likely turn into some sort of serious convulsion when we mention that this is a brand new release, collecting a lost rare recording from the heaviest, slowest, most fucked up, most brilliant and most criminally overlooked band EVER! EVER!!!!! Harvey Milk took the Melvins at their slowest and most damaged, and then somehow did even more damage and slowed things down even more! A band that spit out gorgeously lugubrious tarpit dirges that stretched to ten minutes or more and often consisted of the same figure repeated for eight of those ten minutes, a band who would follow a song of planet crushing intensity with a Leonard Cohen ballad, spare and acoustic with howled anguished vocals on the verge of cracking. Speaking of vocals. Creston, the leader of Harvey Milk, has a voice that sounds exactly like the sound in movies where someone is howling in pain, but the whole thing is in slow motion, even the sound. So amazing. And then there's the guitars, the Milk's guitars are tuned so low that it sounds like your speakers are literally crumbling to pieces as you listen! The Kelly Sessions have been circulating for years as a bootleg tape/cd-r and have only now been cleaned up and properly released. Most of these songs are on other Harvey Milk records (only one of which, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men, on Andee's tUMULt label, is still actually available), but we'll bet most of you haven't heard the majority of these songs, and the ones you have heard are pretty different. There are also an amazing amount of leads! Really good, ripping leads, which would surface later on in their more ROCK phase, but which sound so great forced into unlikely cooperation with the older, sludgier, less leads-likely sound. This recording perfectly captures the transition from impossibly and brilliantly frustrating slow motion what-the-fuck rock to their later incarnation as ZZ Top worshipping rock and rollers on their final album, The Pleaser (also out of print). Although thankfully the sound here, except for a few accelerated tunes, definitely tends toward the tarpit black hole end of the sonic spectrum. Which is good thing. A VERY GOOD THING!
MPEG Stream: "Dating Pressures"
MPEG Stream: "Blackbeard"

HILSINGER, DOUG / CAROLEEN BEATTY Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (DBK Works) cd 15.98
What apparently began as a lark has absolutely snowballed... and with what is quite possibly the (unintentional) best timing ever! Indeed it seems the planets have aligned in the most fortuitous fashion for devoted Brian Eno fan Doug Hilsinger (presently in SF band Waycross, and formerly in Bomb and Gifthorse) and his bandmate Caroleen Beatty. Initially planning to record covers of just two of the songs from TTM(BS) for their own enjoyment, they got caught up in the inspired swing of things and progressed right on through the rest. Hilsinger has emphasized that this was not intended to be some grand transformation nor interpretation of Eno's original. This is simply their celebration of a great album, with the hopes of drawing attention back to the original. And it certainly does just that, but it also bears the mark of an immensely talented duo in their own right. If you dig this, be sure to check out Waycross too. Now, we're probably going to catch some flack for this, but we'll dare to say that he improves on a few of the originals. C'mon all of you Eno fanatics who're screaming "Impossible!", it's not all that hard to fathom. Consider the following: back when Eno recorded the album, these songs were fresh and new to him. They tingle with the electricity of experimentation and spontaneity, but there are moments that are perhaps not fully realized. On the other hand, Hilsinger has lived and loved these songs for thirty years! He knows them like the back of his hand. With the exception of the lead vocals which were the domain of Beatty, Hilsinger played and produced all that you hear. With a full command of each instrument and the aforementioned inside'n'out knowledge of the songs, his performance and the recordings are breathtaking. The interplay between the instruments captures the subtle dynamics of a kickass full band playing together live. You'd never know it was laid down track by track, piece by piece. Heck, the prerequisite organizational skills alone are daunting. Completing this loving, enthusiastic tribute in the best possible way, Beatty's languid voice winds its way around the slinking arrangements, delivering Eno's words in a most seductive, heavily lidded fashion. Highlights include a great carnivalesque rendition of "Back In Judy's Jungle" transitioning it into a pint-raising singalong, as well as their slowed-to-half-time, intoxicating version of the originally near-punk, Wire-ish, propulsive "Third Uncle". The winding chorused guitars and textural wheeze are rich and effective while the vocals add to the air of subtle unease. Splendid!
So back to the magical tale of good timing... The pair completed the work right around November 2003 which just happened to coincide with a special lecture that Brian Eno was giving here in SF. Of course Hilsinger was in attendance, and personally delivered a copy into Eno's hands. The very next day he received an enthusiastic phone call from Eno giving it his mighty stamp of approval. He even wrote the liner notes! To boot, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the album, and four titles from Eno's back catalogue are at long last receiving their much needed reissue. We've got 'em as well as Hilsinger's Gifthorse and Waycross cds.
MPEG Stream: "Third Uncle"
MPEG Stream: "Back In Judy's Jungle"

HOT SNAKES Audit In Progress (Swami) cd 13.98
Hot Snakes' second release on Swami Records is finger lickin' good! Yow! Rick and John (both ex-Drive Like Jehu) have enlisted a new drummer, Mario Rubalcaba (ex-pro-skateboarder and ex-Clickitat Ikatowi) since former drummer Jason left for the Burning Brides. Hot Snakes also now feature San Diego rock luminary Gar Wood (Beehive and the Barracudas) on bass. Man this band totally kicks ass!!! What else can we say? Imagine the Godlike Drive Like Jehu, but stripped down to its garage rock bare bones, but sacrificing none of the fury or intensity or musical chops. Raw and catchy and makes you want to just jump up and down and bang your head and wiggle like crazy. The recording of Audit In Progress awesomely captures their fired-up energy and offers an accurate taste of their live show. I saw them recently here in San Francisco -- all types of new HS fans and older Jehu fans were going totally bananas. This album and their live show will kick you in your face and you'll be begging for more! Plus it's always nice when bands actually produce their own artwork instead of just stealing someone else's, or hiring some crappy graphic designer. Rick Froberg, HS's singer/illustrator/animator is an incredibly talented and respected artist in addition to being a wicked rock frontman. The last Hot Snakes record was so perfect who would have thought the ante could be upped. But upped it has been...it's been upped...well, you know what we're saying. This record rules! And this band just keeps getting better and better. Buy this now!
MPEG Stream: "Braintrust"
MPEG Stream: "Hi-Lites"

HOT SNAKES Audit In Progress (Swami) lp 10.98
Hot Snakes' second release on Swami Records is finger lickin' good! Yow! Rick and John (both ex-Drive Like Jehu) have enlisted a new drummer, Mario Rubalcaba (ex-pro-skateboarder and ex-Clickitat Ikatowi) since former drummer Jason left for the Burning Brides. Hot Snakes also now feature San Diego rock luminary Gar Wood (Beehive and the Barracudas) on bass. Man this band totally kicks ass!!! What else can we say? Imagine the Godlike Drive Like Jehu, but stripped down to its garage rock bare bones, but sacrificing none of the fury or intensity or musical chops. Raw and catchy and makes you want to just jump up and down and bang your head and wiggle like crazy. The recording of Audit In Progress awesomely captures their fired-up energy and offers an accurate taste of their live show. I saw them recently here in San Francisco -- all types of new HS fans and older Jehu fans were going totally bananas. This album and their live show will kick you in your face and you'll be begging for more! Plus it's always nice when bands actually produce their own artwork instead of just stealing someone else's, or hiring some crappy graphic designer. Rick Froberg, HS's singer/illustrator/animator is an incredibly talented and respected artist in addition to being a wicked rock frontman. The last Hot Snakes record was so perfect who would have thought the ante could be upped. But upped it has been...it's been upped...well, you know what we're saying. This record rules! And this band just keeps getting better and better. Buy this now!
MPEG Stream: "Braintrust"
MPEG Stream: "Hi-Lites"

HOTEL ALEXIS, THE The Shining Example is Lying On The Floor (Broken Sparrow) cd 14.98
It's always frustrating when we get an amazing cd-r, that we all buy, and then later have to buy again when it comes out as a proper cd. We try to make sure we know about those sort of impending plans before listing limited cd-r's. But sometimes it just happens, not much you can do. And in the case of a record as fantastic as this one, all we can do is be grateful that it is finally getting properly released, and urge all of you who missed out last time to buy it now! And as a consolation for those of us who already own the first version, the new packaging may be quite spiffy, but it's not as sweetly and nicely handmade as the cd-r's.
This is the first solo record from Sidney Linder, who plays in AQ faves Golden Hotel (with his brother Cayce) and fronts the hauntingly gorgeous Torrez. We've raved about both Golden Hotel and Torrez in the past, both bands exploring the dark and mysterious corners of ambient folk, druggy psychedelia, alt country and dreamy slowcore. So we had an idea of what to expect from Sidney's first solo effort, but there was little to prepare us for just how goshdarn breathtaking this record is.
Pefectly recorded, intimate and crystal clear, with steel string guitars, shuffling brushed drums, shimmery vibes, haunting slide guitar, hushed raspy vocals (sounding quite a bit like Jeff Tweedy of Wilco at times, and Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse at others), and perfectly melancholy melodies. This record is just so completely beautiful and utterly heartbreaking, it's a little hard to know how to describe it in a way that does it justice. Everytime we put this on, it sucks us into another world, sepia toned and twighlit, dark and dusty, lonely and mysterious. This is the kind of record that is SO evocative, that really does make you feel the music in your heart and soul. You can hear some Sparklehorse, some Court And Spark, some Wilco, some Souled American, some of Sidney's other bands, but it all sounds so personal and intimate, filtered through Sidney's psyche, his triumphs and failures, his hopes and dreams, his loves and his heartbreaks. So so so good it just kills us.
MPEG Stream: "The Season For Working"
MPEG Stream: "An Indian Doctor"
MPEG Stream: "It's Obvious Now"

INTERPOL Antics (Matador) cd 14.98
Sophmore records are so tricky. Especially when they follow the HUGE BREAKTHROUGH MASSIVE HIT RECORD. What can a band do? Why do you think there are so many amazing debut records? It's because the band has been waiting their whole life to release that record. Years and years to work on those songs. Years and years of playing those songs, until they are perfect and tight. The second album is cursed by the fact that it has to be written and conceived beneath the fallout of the first, often written on tour, in hotels and on buses which for most bands is not at all how they are used to writing songs. Such is the case with Interpol. Their debut, Turn On The Bright Lights, was perfect. Dark and catchy and funny and gloomy and chock full of perfect post-punk post-new wave pop classics. Everyone we know loved that record. Metalheads, punk rockers, whatever. It didn't matter. It was that good. So then the question is how did Interpol weather the sophmore slump. Disappointment is inevitable right? Well, track one definitely threw us off, a slow maudlin tail dragger, a lot like our least favorite track on Bright Lights. The next track "Evil" was definitely a return to form, but there was still something a little off, not as good maybe? We couldn't put our finger on it. We were all a little bit bummed. Sure it sounded pretty good. The whole record did, but we were all disappointed and sort of wrote it off as an 'oh well' and figured we'd just go back to Bright Lights. But a funny thing happened. We all kept putting Antics back on the stereo, all of us. And gradually we all came to the realization that Antics is a fucking amazing record!! Maybe more subtle, a little darker, not so immediately catchy, but isn't that what a second record should be? No one wants to hear the same record again, and lord knows the band doesn't want to play those songs over again. So yeah, this record is awesome. As good as Bright Lights, just different. Which is a good thing. A great thing actually. It takes some growing, but all great records do. "Evil" is punky and funky and about as upbeat as Interpol get, with sing songy, over ennunciated vocals, super reverbed guitar and a irresistable rhythmic bounce. And once you get to track five "Slow Hands", the single, you're definitely sold. "Slow Hands" definitely sounds like it could have come straight off Bright Lights, but with a decidedly more Strokes-like jangle that gives way to classic Interpol minor key chug and haunting reverbed piano chorus. After that you might as well just give in and admit that this is probably going to be one of the best records of the year. Antics has quickly turned into one of those rare records (New Pornographers, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc.) that we have to -force- ourselves not to listen to so we won't burn out on it! So good!
MPEG Stream: "Evil"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Not Even Jail"

INTERPOL Antics (Matador) lp 11.98
Sophmore records are so tricky. Especially when they follow the HUGE BREAKTHROUGH MASSIVE HIT RECORD. What can a band do? Why do you think there are so many amazing debut records? It's because the band has been waiting their whole life to release that record. Years and years to work on those songs. Years and years of playing those songs, until they are perfect and tight. The second album is cursed by the fact that it has to be written and conceived beneath the fallout of the first, often written on tour, in hotels and on buses which for most bands is not at all how they are used to writing songs. Such is the case with Interpol. Their debut, Turn On The Bright Lights, was perfect. Dark and catchy and funny and gloomy and chock full of perfect post-punk post-new wave pop classics. Everyone we know loved that record. Metalheads, punk rockers, whatever. It didn't matter. It was that good. So then the question is how did Interpol weather the sophmore slump. Disappointment is inevitable right? Well, track one definitely threw us off, a slow maudlin tail dragger, a lot like our least favorite track on Bright Lights. The next track "Evil" was definitely a return to form, but there was still something a little off, not as good maybe? We couldn't put our finger on it. We were all a little bit bummed. Sure it sounded pretty good. The whole record did, but we were all disappointed and sort of wrote it off as an 'oh well' and figured we'd just go back to Bright Lights. But a funny thing happened. We all kept putting Antics back on the stereo, all of us. And gradually we all came to the realization that Antics is a fucking amazing record!! Maybe more subtle, a little darker, not so immediately catchy, but isn't that what a second record should be? No one wants to hear the same record again, and lord knows the band doesn't want to play those songs over again. So yeah, this record is awesome. As good as Bright Lights, just different. Which is a good thing. A great thing actually. It takes some growing, but all great records do. "Evil" is punky and funky and about as upbeat as Interpol get, with sing songy, over ennunciated vocals, super reverbed guitar and a irresistable rhythmic bounce. And once you get to track five "Slow Hands", the single, you're definitely sold. "Slow Hands" definitely sounds like it could have come straight off Bright Lights, but with a decidedly more Strokes-like jangle that gives way to classic Interpol minor key chug and haunting reverbed piano chorus. After that you might as well just give in and admit that this is probably going to be one of the best records of the year. Antics has quickly turned into one of those rare records (New Pornographers, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc.) that we have to -force- ourselves not to listen to so we won't burn out on it! So good!
MPEG Stream: "Evil"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Not Even Jail"

IRON & WINE Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop) cd 14.98
So here we go again! Iron And Wine's The Creek Drank The Cradle was an AQ record of the week last year, was a unanimous staff favorite, and made most of our top ten lists for the year. Rightfully so we might add. A more beautiful and perfect record we hadn't heard in forever. And a lot of times we try not to make another record by the same band a record of the week, since usually it's hard for a band to deliver another record as good as THAT record, the one that blew us away and convinced us it had to be record of the week. But of course sometimes we do, and sometimes a band does, and this new Iron And Wine just happens to be that record. Sam Beam, who pretty much IS Iron And Wine has upped the ante, somehow navigating the precarious course of trying to progress and grow and explore, without ruining what was already basically perfect. And somehow he's done it. All of the things we loved so much about the first record are still present: gently fingerpicked guitar, sweetly breathy vocals, gorgeous harmonies, melancholy melodies, twangy banjo, slippery slide guitar, wistful and cryptic lyrics amd songs. The songs! So perfectly sweet and instantly classic. Songs that you find yourself humming to yourself even after only one listen. So what is it about this new record that makes it worthy of record of the week status? Hard to say. In fact we weren't sure if this record was actually better, or if we were just so excited to have more Iron And Wine! Because on first listen, Our Endless Numbered Days sounds like the perfect part two of The Creek Drank The Cradle. Which is a good thing. A very good thing in fact. We were all wishing The Creek was twice as long or even ten times as long. One of those records you want to never end. But the more we listened to Our Endless Numbered Days, the more it revealed itself as an entirely new record. But subtly so. It's a little more aggressive, and propulsive, the drums play a bigger part, and there are some distinctly intense bits, where the guitars are rough and the drums kind of rock. But only kind of. The core of the record is still Beam's perfect pop songs, twangy and folky, but sweet and lush, with melodies that while totally memorable and unforgettable, are so unique and fresh to your ears that you just have to sit and listen and let the sounds and songs envelop you. Some obvious reference points are Elliott Smith, America, Bread, Palace, Songs:Ohia, but the more you listen, and the more we hear from Iron And Wine, the more we realise that Beam occupies a singular place in popular music, referencing all sort of other musics, but existing totally and completely in his own sonic space. It's a rare performer who can pull that off, especially nowdays drawing from a century of recorded music.
MPEG Stream: "On Your Wings"
MPEG Stream: "Naked As We Came"
MPEG Stream: "Cinder And Smoke"

IRON & WINE Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop) cd + cd ep 14.98
THIS VERSION W/ BONUS DISC IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. REGULAR SINGLE CD VERSION IS AVAILABLE.
So here we go again! Iron And Wine's The Creek Drank The Cradle was an AQ record of the week last year, was a unanimous staff favorite, and made most of our top ten lists for the year. Rightfully so we might add. A more beautiful and perfect record we hadn't heard in forever. And a lot of times we try not to make another record by the same band a record of the week, since usually it's hard for a band to deliver another record as good as THAT record, the one that blew us away and convinced us it had to be record of the week. But of course sometimes we do, and sometimes a band does, and this new Iron And Wine just happens to be that record. Sam Beam, who pretty much IS Iron And Wine has upped the ante, somehow navigating the precarious course of trying to progress and grow and explore, without ruining what was already basically perfect. And somehow he's done it. All of the things we loved so much about the first record are still present: gently fingerpicked guitar, sweetly breathy vocals, gorgeous harmonies, melancholy melodies, twangy banjo, slippery slide guitar, wistful and cryptic lyrics amd songs. The songs! So perfectly sweet and instantly classic. Songs that you find yourself humming to yourself even after only one listen. So what is it about this new record that makes it worthy of record of the week status? Hard to say. In fact we weren't sure if this record was actually better, or if we were just so excited to have more Iron And Wine! Because on first listen, Our Endless Numbered Days sounds like the perfect part two of The Creek Drank The Cradle. Which is a good thing. A very good thing in fact. We were all wishing The Creek was twice as long or even ten times as long. One of those records you want to never end. But the more we listened to Our Endless Numbered Days, the more it revealed itself as an entirely new record. But subtly so. It's a little more aggressive, and propulsive, the drums play a bigger part, and there are some distinctly intense bits, where the guitars are rough and the drums kind of rock. But only kind of. The core of the record is still Beam's perfect pop songs, twangy and folky, but sweet and lush, with melodies that while totally memorable and unforgettable, are so unique and fresh to your ears that you just have to sit and listen and let the sounds and songs envelop you. Some obvious reference points are Elliott Smith, America, Bread, Palace, Songs:Ohia, but the more you listen, and the more we hear from Iron And Wine, the more we realise that Beam occupies a singular place in popular music, referencing all sort of other musics, but existing totally and completely in his own sonic space. It's a rare performer who can pull that off, especially nowdays drawing from a century of recorded music. The only complaint we have, and it may not bother you if you don't mind buying the same record twice, is that both formats, cd and lp, come with different extra music. The cd comes with a bonus disc that includes two demo versions and two unreleased tracks. The lp comes with a bonus 7" with two entirely different bonus tracks. Argh. So to get it all, you have to buy both, but if you had to buy one record twice, it might as well be one as good as this!
MPEG Stream: "On Your Wings"
MPEG Stream: "Naked As We Came"
MPEG Stream: "Cinder And Smoke"

IRON & WINE Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop) lp + 7" 13.98
So here we go again! Iron And Wine's The Creek Drank The Cradle was an AQ record of the week last year, was a unanimous staff favorite, and made most of our top ten lists for the year. Rightfully so we might add. A more beautiful and perfect record we hadn't heard in forever. And a lot of times we try not to make another record by the same band a record of the week, since usually it's hard for a band to deliver another record as good as THAT record, the one that blew us away and convinced us it had to be record of the week. But of course sometimes we do, and sometimes a band does, and this new Iron And Wine just happens to be that record. Sam Beam, who pretty much IS Iron And Wine has upped the ante, somehow navigating the precarious course of trying to progress and grow and explore, without ruining what was already basically perfect. And somehow he's done it. All of the things we loved so much about the first record are still present: gently fingerpicked guitar, sweetly breathy vocals, gorgeous harmonies, melancholy melodies, twangy banjo, slippery slide guitar, wistful and cryptic lyrics amd songs. The songs! So perfectly sweet and instantly classic. Songs that you find yourself humming to yourself even after only one listen. So what is it about this new record that makes it worthy of record of the week status? Hard to say. In fact we weren't sure if this record was actually better, or if we were just so excited to have more Iron And Wine! Because on first listen, Our Endless Numbered Days sounds like the perfect part two of The Creek Drank The Cradle. Which is a good thing. A very good thing in fact. We were all wishing The Creek was twice as long or even ten times as long. One of those records you want to never end. But the more we listened to Our Endless Numbered Days, the more it revealed itself as an entirely new record. But subtly so. It's a little more aggressive, and propulsive, the drums play a bigger part, and there are some distinctly intense bits, where the guitars are rough and the drums kind of rock. But only kind of. The core of the record is still Beam's perfect pop songs, twangy and folky, but sweet and lush, with melodies that while totally memorable and unforgettable, are so unique and fresh to your ears that you just have to sit and listen and let the sounds and songs envelop you. Some obvious reference points are Elliott Smith, America, Bread, Palace, Songs:Ohia, but the more you listen, and the more we hear from Iron And Wine, the more we realise that Beam occupies a singular place in popular music, referencing all sort of other musics, but existing totally and completely in his own sonic space. It's a rare performer who can pull that off, especially nowdays drawing from a century of recorded music. The only complaint we have, and it may not bother you if you don't mind buying the same record twice, is that both formats, cd and lp, come with different extra music. The cd comes with a bonus disc that includes two demo versions and two unreleased tracks. The lp comes with a bonus 7" with two entirely different bonus tracks. Argh. So to get it all, you have to buy both, but if you had to buy one record twice, it might as well be one as good as this!
MPEG Stream: "On Your Wings"
MPEG Stream: "Naked As We Came"
MPEG Stream: "Cinder And Smoke"

IRR. APP. (EXT.) Ozeanische Gefuhle (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 14.98
If anyone has the ability to carry the post-Surrealist torch of Nurse With Wound, it would have to be Matt Waldron through his irr. app. (ext.) project. Like Nurse With Wound's eccentric genius Stapleton, Waldron would never qualify himself as a Surrealist, but it's a good jumping off point to describe their respective works. With Ozeanische Gefuhle, Waldron establishes irr. app. (ext.) establishes himself as one of the most gifted sound-sculptors whose work have passed through the doors of Aquarius. If you've ever picked up any drone / minimalist / ambient records or even just anything that Andee has poetically described as 'completely fucked', then you owe it yourself to pick up Ozeanische Gefuhle. This review could ramble on and on, but let's cut to the chase and state the obvious, this album is brilliant.
Strangely enough, Ozeanische Gefuhle -- as great as it is -- almost disappeared into the ether, as it was slated for release a few years back on another label who just sat on it for years, much to the chagrin of Mr. Waldron. Fortunately, the good people at the Helen Scarsdale Agency rectified the situation and made sure this album got its due recognition.
The title itself is an allusion to Wilhelm Reich, who used the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it. Such ideas in lesser hands would result in limp idylltronica with New Age sentimentality; but this is not the case for irr. app. (ext.), who solidly grounds this record upon a fundamental drone, which slinks its way through numerous field recordings and performative gestures. Waldron's masterpiece emerges as a tidal current of electronic sound, rumbling through blackened spaces and soaring with divine expressivity. As good if not better than anything by Nurse With Wound, Organum, :zoviet france:, Phill Niblock, and the Hafler Trio. Yeah, it's that good!
MPEG Stream: "Ozeanische Gefuhle (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Ozeanische Gefuhle (excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "The Demiurge's Presumption"

JARRE, JEAN-MICHEL Les Granges Brulees (OST) (Dreyfus) cd 11.98
Somewhere right now Thom Yorke is blushing, now that this 1973 soundtrack has been reissued. Well, that's our speculation anyway, 'cause the main theme sounds SO MUCH like a Radiohead song (which one, we haven't quite figured out. Not "Paranoid Android" but close.) At any rate, this was either a big inspiration to Radiohead or it's just a marvellous coincidence. You'll hear it for yourself we're sure. Thom certainly needs to hear this if he hasn't already (as we suspect). And it's not just the melody of this soundtrack's main leit motif, but the singing voice itself. A French female doing wordless ah ah ahs -- play it back to back with Radiohead and you'll swear it's Mr. Yorke's famous falsetto. But that's only part of the reason this soundtrack is so fascinating. It's also a very very early electronica effort by a young Jean-Michel Jarre, later in the '80s to become well-known as a New Age superstar famed for spectacular multi-media shows. In the seventies, though, his output could be considered credible electronica pioneering. 1977's Oxygene is a pretty cool album after all. But this was before even that, and it's way more extreme. Truly jarring electronic sound that's hard to reconcile with the idea of "background" music in film! And Les Granges Brulees was not, as far as we're aware, a horror or science fiction flick where such might make sense. As far as we can tell, this Jean Chapot directed movie was a mystery / romance (staring Alain Delon btw). Certainly the vocals are romantic, and much of the rest of Jarre's crankier-than-Kraftwerk electronics are suspenseful, a la Goblin. One track breaks the mood a little bit -- "Zig-zag" must be from a scene where the characters visit a circus or something, as it's got that Jean-Jacques Perrey zaniness to it. But most of this is interplay between the haunting theme and freaky electronic fx. A very cool, out of the blue reissue, forshadowing Kid A some thirty years ago!
MPEG Stream: "La Chanson Des Granges Brulees"
MPEG Stream: "Une Morte Dans La Neige"

KHOLD Morke Gravers Kammer (Candlelight) cd 15.98
The first riff on this record is a killer. It's THE riff. The kind of riff bands spend their whole life trying to come up with. Huge and catchy and churning and heavy. The best riff that should have been on Nirvana's Bleach. That good. And if you weren't paying attention you might forget that what you were listening to was a grim and frosty Norwegian black metal record. Fear not, you only have to wait a minute or two before the familiar strains of buzzing thrashy black metal comes rampaging through your speakers. And such is the joy of Khold. Burzumic black metal mayhem one second, grooving riffy grunge the next. That's right. I said grunge AND groove. What's that sort of stuff have to do with black metal? Well, normally nothing, but that's what makes Khold so fucking good. Without their unlikely grooviness and knack for super catchy riffs, they would just be your run of the mill, generic (albeit kick ass) black metal band. But add that component and you've got something pretty weird and definitely unique. Obviously the true, elite, cult black metal underground hate Khold, but so what? This stuff is so awesome. The minute you're sort of black metalled out, the band shifts gears and unfurls a lazy Kyuss/Nirvana style fuzzed out riff. And by the same token if you are hankering for something more hard and heavy, wait a few minutes and you'll be bulldozed by some brutal blastbeats and buzzsaw guitaring. Plus the vocalist has the coolest corpsepaint we've ever seen. Top half of his head is white, eyes blacked out, but the bottom half of his head is all black, and scarred and dirty and -really- dead looking. Plus live, he wears huge fur pants and a black turtleneck that makes him look like a huge blackwraith with just the top of his skull showing!
MPEG Stream: "Atselgraver"
MPEG Stream: "Dod"

KILL THE CLIENT Wage Slave (Counter) cd 10.98
This is it, far as I'm concerned. The only record I think tops the mighty Pig Destroyer's masterpiece "Terrifyer" this year. This is absolute technical grind perfection, and one of the fastest and most intense 15 minutes of music ever committed to tape. No song on here breaks the hundred-second mark and yet you feel utterly beaten by disc's end -- the pace is relentless, the riffs ever-changing and the intensity exhausting as this Texas quartet blaze through 11 tracks of politically-charged grind. Imagine a cross between the manic controlled chaos of classic Brutal Truth and the technical off-time wizardry of Cryptopsy and then speed everything up tenfold and you're beginning to approach the full-on assault that this band delivers.
Individual playing is just stunning here -- the singer is positively monstrous, sounding like a dead ringer for Brutal Truth's Kevin Sharp and espousing refreshingly thoughtful and original political lyrics on such topics as the Russian mafia, economics, JFK conspiracy theories and even food dyes. The guitars are razor-sharp -- it makes sense that Jody of criminally-underrated tech-metal juggernauts Kalibas was in the band for a while -- both bands demand a proficiency from their players that belie the simplicity usually associated with genre. And then there's the drumming! You knew this was coming -- this guy is fucking insane! Some of the fastest playing ever. On some songs, the blast beat is the SLOW part, I shit you not. For anyone even remotely interested in metal and grind, I simply can not recommend this record enough. Once you allow the wash of noise to bury you into submission, there's a good amount of complexity and memorable moments to wrap your head around. But really the music presented here far surpasses the constraints of the usual metal and grind conventions and summates to a sublime aural ferocity that pushes the very limits of human playing abilities. Yes, it's that good.
MPEG Stream: "Suka Voina"
MPEG Stream: "America...Sold!"

KILLWHITNEYDEAD Never Good Enough For You (Tribunal) cd 12.98
When we first heard about this band we though they were called Kill WHITEY Dead which seemed like a pretty provocative name. And initially when we realized it was actually Killwhitneydead, we were a little bummed. Yet another stupid band name. But after listening to this record, a furious grind metal hate letter, presumably to a woman named Whitney, it all makes sense. The fury and bile of a man scorned, channelled into one of the meanest heaviest records we've heard in a while.
Imagine one of the best metal/grind bands you've ever heard, unbelievably complex, stop start arrangements, weird Iron Maiden-y guitar melodies, huge chugging riffery, with totally almost black metallish demonic vocals, and blasts of grinding melodic hard rock, leads all over the place, almost like some eighties metal band strapped into the electric chair and supercharged into a flesh eating, city destroying grind metal monster. Then imagine a second vocalist, who isn't a vocalist at all but a sampler spitting out clips from every violent / weird / cool movie from the last 20 years. But not just like samples over music, KWD take samples and literally use them like another vocalist, with the music edited and the songs written and arranged around the movie clips. It's been done in the past, but never so perfectly. Misanthropic, and pummelling and chillingly hateful. If I was Whitney I'd actually be pretty flattered that I was able to illicit the kind of passion it must have taken to birth this kind of musical monster. The clips are from Unfaithful, Buffalo 66, Harry Potter, Platoon, Wall Street, Black Rain, Natural Born Killers, Se7en, Lord Of The Rings, Memento, Aliens, Road To Perdition, The Longest Yard, House Of 1000 Corpses, Kiss The Girls, The Crow, Tenacious D, The Breakfast Club, The Usual Suspects and about a million more.
The insane thing is they actually list them all and got permission to use every single one of them. Wow.
MPEG Stream: "I Didn't Know "I Love You" Came With A Knife In The Back"
MPEG Stream: "Duct Tape And Death Threats"
MPEG Stream: "The Fine And Subtle Art Of Deception"
MPEG Stream: "Love Is Like A Mouthful Of Broken Glass"

KINKS, THE Are The Village Preservation Society (Sanctuary) 3cd 29.00
This total Kinks classic from 1968 receives the deluxe remastered reissue treatment... and deservingly so! Such an utterly expansive, deeply influential work that has more than stood the test of time. It's a whopping three discs -- the first is the album in stereo with four bonus tracks, the second is the album in mono with six bonus tracks, and the third is filled with 22 rarities (alternate versions, BBC sessions, etc). As an added treat, the liner note booklet includes interviews with the Davies brothers. 'Nuf said!
MPEG Stream: "Village Green (Orchestral Overdub)"
MPEG Stream: "Animal Farm (BBC Session Remix)"

KLIMEK Milk & Honey (Kompakt) cd 15.98
None of us here really like "techno" all that much. That's why we were always so attracted to the mutant strains of techno that manage to turn what often to us seems to be vapid, plastic dance music into cool and creepy, murky weirdness. Chain Reaction's brand of so-called "heroin house" for one. And of course Kompakt's beloved minimal thump. That German label's output was however always really close to being just straight up four on the floor house music, but somehow they always found a way to be sonically creative enough to turn their techno into something new and exciting. And then something weird started happening. The folks at Kompakt called it "pop ambient", a new strain of techno that removed the beat from the equation entirely, relying more on thick organic swells and crystalline melodies than beats. Occasionally, those melodies would fragment and shift and loop and form abstract almost-rhythms, but more often than not, notes and chords would just hover, suspended in an ambient ether, humming and vibrating, shimmering and buzzing. Such is the case with this new Klimek record (an artist who had a track on the Pop Ambient 2004 compilation we also made Record Of The Week a little while back). Spare and sparse and elegently gorgeous. The source material sounds like it must be a guitar. But it's as if the notes were extracted one at a time from the guitar. No strumming or fingerpicking. Just the timbre of a steel string vibrating and disturbing the molecules around it. Removed from its natural setting, these notes sound completely alien, althought they remain rich and organic. Klimek takes these notes and drops them delicately into a warm sonic bath, letting them settle next to complimentary notes, some notes dissolving into nothingness, or disturbing the tranquil stillness, sending off gradually decaying sonic ripples. Imagine the abstract glitch-guitar technique of Fennesz, the underwater ambience of Oval, the quiet parts by your favorite post-rock band, all stretched out, melodies pulled apart until, the notes are almost far enough apart that the melody that birthed it is just a shadowy memeory, a sonic trace, leaving a gorgeous and shimmery landscape of sonorous languor.
MPEG Stream: "Milk (edit)"
MPEG Stream: "Honey (edit)"
MPEG Stream: "(Sun)rise (edit)"

LEVIATHAN Tentacles of Whorror (Moribund) cd 14.98
Summer may just have begun here in San Francisco, but with the release of this new album from local one-man black metal act Leviathan, it sure seems like winter time (plus you all know what Mark Twain said about summer in San Francisco anyway). Brrr. The frosty riffs and blood freezing atmospheres are warmed only by the blasting drums... But you know what, Leviathan hardly needs our attempts at cliched black metal hyperbole to stand proud amid the clutter of corpse-painted pretenders. Leave aside all that and listen: this is keenly crafted, weirdly artful, utterly uncompromising metal. From mathy mayhem to slow, doomy dirge, Leviathan displays unfettered creativity, immense musical skill, and intense emotional involvement in his art (those being dark emotions, if you have to ask). In the evolution of Leviathan, this brings in a torrent of old-school riffage (i.e. Celtic Frost and Slayer) and wired-for-Destruction song constructs while also slowing down more than even before to bathe in ambient weirdness and melody. Vocally, Leviathan's exhalations are like exhumations, the bringing forth of seemingly wordless death (though in fact, Leviathan has lyrics and they're so interestingly twisted). More proof, if any was needed, why Leviathan is in absolute fact one of not only our favorite black metal acts (enough so that Andee released the debut Verratter on his tUMULt label) but also considered so by many others across the globe. And is that some amazing Comus-ish cover art or what? It's by Dan Higgs of Lungfish, and its stark, disturbed violence and eccentricity perfectly captures this album's whorror.
MPEG Stream: "Heir To The House Of The Ghoul"
MPEG Stream: "Tentacles Of Whorror"

LOOP ORCHESTRA Not Overtly Orchestral (Quecksilber) cd 15.98
Attention Philip Jeck fans! This is right up your alley! The Loop Orchestra have been around for over 20 years now, and this is really only their third release in the last 15 years! Which is a shame because this is absolutely amazing and essential for anyone into looped hypnotic droney experimental music. Utilising ONLY reel to reel tape machines (NO computers) and chopped and spliced analog tape, the Loop Orchestra construct completely mesmerising, utterly sublime soundscapes of pulsing ambience, rumbling space-y backdrops beneath muted percussion, chimes and woodblocks, with reverbed faraway percussion, shimmery clouds of chordal whir, occasional melodies pulled from the ether, clinking and clattering, and lots of space and drone. Occasionally the loops get shorter and the sound becomes almost like a Raster style techno track, but for the most part, these extended pieces are blissfully droney and mesmeric. The second track is a tribute to the BBC Radiophonic Worskshop, and the final piece incorporates field recordings, the sound of water, birds, chopped up voices, and weirdly percussive little glitches. Hard not to picture a huge post apocalyptic building, burnt and gutted, the inside surprisingly alive with old battered analog reel to reel tape machines in each room, endless lengths of tape connecting all the machines, running the length of the hallways, and up and down the stairs, criss crossing the entire interior with miles of shimmery strips of plastic, all slowly making their way from machine to machine, like some decrepit Rube Goldberg invention, left to run forever into eternity, emiting a lonely hypnotic rumble.
MPEG Stream: "Son Of Not Overtly Orchestral"
MPEG Stream: "Radiophony"

LOVE SONGS s/t (Impatience or Indifference) cd 5.98
Love Songs is Craig from local bandana thrashers What Happens Next. But this has way more in common with his old band, Your Mother. Funny and fast, catchy and sorta goofy punk rock of the Descendents 'girls-don't-like-me-and-I'm-so-sad' variety. Pretty cool.

LYNN, LORETTA Van Lear Rose (Interscope) cd 15.98
Hot damn, does Meg White have reason to be jealous?! This is Loretta Lynn's first album in four years (we're not quite sure exactly what number it is in her discography... we lost count around fifty!), and it's got huge Lynn fan Jack White of The White Stripes in the producer and arranger's seat. Their vocal duet "Portland Oregon" (which will surely draw truckloads of White Stripes worshipping Loretta Lynn neophytes to this album) is hardly this excellent album's highlight. On the other hand, White's gritty guitars are a perfect foil for Lynn's feisty singing on songs such as "Have Mercy". Some may think that some of this, if you listen close, actually sounds like White Stripes songwriting, but it's more likely a case of Lynn's formidable influence on White coming full circle. Regardless, Van Lear Rose is all about the singular wonder that is Loretta Lynn and White has done a fine job of ensuring just that. Her voice is in top notch form. Her range is absolutely smokin' whether she's breakin' honky tonk hearts or baring her own or simply givin' everyone what-for. Mid-album she fires thing up for the rousing gospel stomp of "High On A Mountain Top" and then takes it down a few notches for the spoken story-song "Little Red Shoes". Wonderful! A vibrant, rich, and organic album. All hail Loretta Lynn!
MPEG Stream: "Have Mercy"
MPEG Stream: "High On A Mountain Top"

MADVILLAIN Madvillainy (Stones Throw) cd 15.98
I know, we were just raving about that Jaylib record (Madlib and Jay Dee from Slum Village) from a few months back. I think we even pulled out the ol' hip hop record of the year championship belt thinking the contest was OVER. But here it is a matter of weeks later and Madlib is back and dang if he hasn't outdone himself again! Doesn't hurt that he decided to team up with MF Doom (Viktor Vaughn, KMD, etc) and the combo is unbeatable. Madlib is in full effect, pulling out all the sonic stops. Of course, there's fat lazy beats, throbbing basslines and groovy jazzy samples, but that ain't all! Madlib's hip hopscapes are so dense and multilayered it's almost overwhelming. Hawaiian slide guitars slip and slide over syrupy funk bass lines, clipped bouncy funk glitched out and fuzzed up, human beat box butted up to jangly wah guitar, string sections soar and James Bond horns blare in the background, warbly movie theater pipe organs over disintegrating loops of old soundtracks, chopped up calypsos, groovy acid jazz electric piano, regular funk loops cut and snipped and rearranged into stuttery spastic alien funk, fluttering flutes, percussive pounding piano low end, all the while. clips from old B movies, sound effects and found sounds careen from ear to ear in a serious display of extreme stereo panning. And that's just the music. MF Doom (formerly of the godlike KMD and about a million other nom de plumes) is all over the record too, adding his laconic, idosyncratic flow to the mix, spitting rhymes that sound lazy and off the cuff, delivered in a just-woken-up mouthful-of-marbles mumble, but are just way too clever and funny and biting to be freestyled. His smooth, raspy delivery perfectly compliments Madlib's scratchy, muffled and mysterious groovescapes. And to add to the chaos, there are loads of guest MC's (a bunch of which just happen to be MF Doom alteregos!), Viktor Vaughn, Quasimoto (rhyming in his helium/chipmunks sped-up falsetto), Wildchild, and M.E.D. Also, the cd contains possibly the best video we've ever seen, done old Marvel comics style, but so cleverly edited and so perfectly synced to the song and with all sorts of clever animations and weird special effects. It like being a kid and being able to walk right into a comic book, travelling not just through the story, but the ads for selling seeds and magazines as well. So cool! And so weird. Definitely hip hop record of the year! Barring of course any sort of Madlib / MF Doom / Jay Dee / Doseone / Jay-Z / Ludacris / Method Man supergroup match-up! In that case we'll happily reconsider our vote! But for now, BUY THIS RECORD!
MPEG Stream: "The Illest Villains"
MPEG Stream: "Accordian"
MPEG Stream: "Meat Grinder"
MPEG Stream: "All Caps"

MADVILLAIN Madvillainy (Stones Throw) lp 16.98
I know, we were just raving about that Jaylib record (Madlib and Jay Dee from Slum Village) from a few months back. I think we even pulled out the ol' hip hop record of the year championship belt thinking the contest was OVER. But here it is a matter of weeks later and Madlib is back and dang if he hasn't outdone himself again! Doesn't hurt that he decided to team up with MF Doom (Viktor Vaughn, KMD, etc) and the combo is unbeatable. Madlib is in full effect, pulling out all the sonic stops. Of course there's fat lazy beats, throbbing basslines and groovy jazzy samples, but that ain't all! Madlib's hip hopscapes are so dense and multilayered it's almost overwhelming. Hawaiian slide guitars slip and slide over syrupy funk bass lines, clipped bouncy funk glitched out and fuzzed up, human beat box butted up to jangly wah guitar, string sections soar and James Bond horns blare in the background, warbly movie theater pipe organs over disintegrating loops of old soundtracks, chopped up calypsos, groovy acid jazz electric piano, regular funk loops cut and snipped and rearranged into stuttery spastic alien funk, fluttering flutes, percussive pounding piano low end. And all the while clips from old B movies, sound effects and found sounds careen from ear to ear in a serious display of extreme stereo panning. And that's just the music. MF Doom is all over the record too, adding his laconic, idosyncratic flow to the mix, spitting rhymes that sound lazy and off the cuff, delivered in a just-woken-up mouthful-of-marbles mumble, but are just way too clever and funny and biting to be freestyled. His smooth, raspy delivery perfectly compliments Madlib's scratchy, muffled and mysterious groovescapes. And to add to the chaos, there are loads of guest MC's (a bunch of which just happen to be MF Doom alteregos!): Viktor Vaughn, Quasimoto (rhyming in his helium/chipmunks sped-up falsetto), Wildchild, and M.E.D. Also, the cd contains possibly the best video we've ever seen, done old Marvel comics style, but so cleverly edited and so perfectly synced to the song and with all sorts of clever animations and weird special effects. It like being a kid and being able to walk right into a comic book, travelling not just through the story, but the ads for selling seeds and magazines as well. So cool! And so weird. Definitely hip hop record of the year! Barring of course any sort of Madlib / MF Doom / Jay Dee / Doseone / Jay-Z / Ludacris / Method Man supergroup match-up! In that case we'll happily reconsider our vote! But for now, BUY THIS RECORD!
MPEG Stream: "The Illest Villains"
MPEG Stream: "Accordian"
MPEG Stream: "Meat Grinder"
MPEG Stream: "All Caps"

MAGYAR POSSE Kings Of Time (Verdura) cd 14.98
Finnish post-rock heavyweights Magyar Posse return with a second, even better, album. Like their first, We Will Carry You Over The Mountains, Kings of Time will appeal first and foremost to fans of God Speed You Black Emperor and/or Mogwai. And while these comparisons may be a double-edged sword for Magyar Posse, the blade that cuts closest -- that of being seen as derivative -- might as well be a butter knife. Truthfully, Magyar Posse outdo what others have done before them. They're like the Alban Berg or Anton Webern of post-rock to Tortoise or GSYBE's Arnold Schoenberg. Kings of Time is an instrumental concept album on par with Pink Floyd, or an epic soundtrack worthy of Ennio Morricone's tip of the hat. Using a plethora of instrumental variations, from sparse reverb laden guitar to full blown orchestral arrangements of epic proportions -- all modern recording studio wizardry, Magyar Posse recontextualize leit motifs, and develop melodies like no one else in the post rock camp can. Reminiscent at times of Morricone's spaghetti western soundtracks they incorporate cooing wordless vocals into the mix with the utmost in subtlety. If some filmmaker doesn't snatch this band up to write a soundtrack to their film soon, we'll be really surprised. Completely amazing.
MPEG Stream: "Kings of Time, Track 2"
MPEG Stream: "Kings of Time, Track 5"

MCGREGOR, DION The Further Somniloquies Of... (Torpor Vigil Industries) cd 14.98
Everybody's favorite sleeptalker is back and we're really fucking excited! Dreams Again, the previous release on Tzadik, is one of our most loved and consistently selling "spoken word" CDs, and with reason. Most of us who talk in our sleep tend to say maybe a couple words or phrases at best, often mumbled so quietly that it's hard to even catch the words they're saying -- if you even happen to be awake and close enough to hear it. Well imagine someone that regularly, throughout his entire life, recited entire dreams in a clear voice. And imagine every one of those dreams being the most ridiculous and surreal dreams imaginable. That's Dion McGregor. The story goes that in 1961 Dion McGregor -- a born again freeloader, chronic couch-surfer and quasi-successful song writer -- was discovered to be a verbose sleeptalker by the friend whose house he was currently crashing at. The friend, a director of porn films, attempted to jot down the dreams, but McGregor's speech was just too fast. With some mild coercion (free rent must have been involved) a mutual friend and song writer, Michael Barr, agreed to allow McGregor to sleep at his apartment in return for being allowed to record his dreams. Barr set up a microphone at the head of Dion's bed and for seven years recorded everything he could. Apparently Dion's vocalizations tended to begin just before waking in the morning, so there was a bit of predictability they could count on. Playing the tapes to the right people at the right time eventually resulted in an LP released on Decca in 1964 entitled the Dream World of Dion McGregor (and in 1999 Tzadik released a cd of additional material also recorded by Barr). While there must be enough tapes of McGregor's ramblings to cover several more volumes (Barr claims to have recorded upwards of 500 dreams), we'll have to settle for these 80 more minutes for the time being. Listening to these bizarre tales it's hard to believe that these are coming from a man who's genuinely asleep. The way McGregor recites them sounds almost conversational, describing the events he's undergoing. At the same time Mcgregor is both the director of his dreams: telling us to all get ready for the scavenger hunt (reciting off a myriad of strange objects that must be located), but also a participant: confessing to us that he'll never be able to locate said objects in such short time. And, it must be added, he almost invariably ends each transmission with horrified screaming. No matter how mild or whimsical a dream may be when it starts, it always seems to end in either tragedy or just plain shrieking madness. But the theory that McGregor made up and performed these monologues, fully conscious, is even harder to imagine. He would have had to have been quite a writer and a performer to achieve such results, and to allow it to remain archived in obscuity for eternity. No matter, even if these were faked they still add up to an impressive collection of the most fucked up, hilarious and down right amazing monologues this side of Kenneth Patchen. An absolute must for all lovers of the more disturbing aspects of the human psyche!
MPEG Stream: "The Scavenger Hunt"
MPEG Stream: "It's All Over Evelyn"

MEGADETH Rust In Peace (Capitol) cd 15.98
During the summer of 1990, while enjoying a three month holiday in Oslo, Norway, I (Elliott) came across a magazine that would be of untold influence to my thirteen-year old ears -- the 1990 Metal Hammer "Thrash Spectacular". This would serve to be my introduction to an obsession with extreme bands that would consume an unhealthy amount of my time and interest throughout middle and high school -- bands such as Exodus, Sepultura, Pungent Stench, Testament, Sacred Reich, and on and on. But the centerpiece of the issue was four articles on what Metal Hammer referred to as the "Big Four" of thrash, namely: Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth.
And now we have a re-mastered re-issue of Megadeth's Rust in Peace, originally released coincidentally enough, within weeks of my return from the land of fjords. Why is this significant? Well, because with the very notable exception of Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss, Rust in the Peace was arguably the last great album of the great '80s thrash bands. Sure most, if not all, of these bands continued to release albums up to the present, but really -- which of them would you seriously consider to be on par with their '80s predecessors? Exodus, Testament, Slayer, Anthraxit's like 1990 was an impenetrable divide that dictated, "No decent thrash may pass". And let's not even discuss the Black album. Anyway, the release of Rust in Peace heralded the end of an era, and did so with august aplomb, the group topping even their own previously great achievements. It was as if all bands of the ilk recognized that nothing more could be done within the confines of what was considered thrash. Thrash had, as they say, "jumped the shark".
But most importantly, Rust in Peace is simply a magnificent album, harkening back to a time when metal records were still collections of great songs. Every song on here is unique and there's not a bit of filler to be found. Take a look at the tracks: you get the MTV-friendly alien conspiracy hit single "Hangar 18"; the sheer aggression of "Take No Prisoners," one of their heaviest songs ever; the eerie occultism of "Five Magics"; the upbeat, almost poppy quality of "Poison Was The Cure"; the coke-sweating solipsism of "Lucretia"; the forlorn desolation of "Tornado Of Souls"; the austere drum and bass death march creepiness of "Dawn Patrol," (where you get to hear Dave's hilarious affected British accent) all book-ended by two of the finest thrash epics ever recorded -- the relentless juggernaut of an opener, "Holy WarsThe Punishment Due," and the apocalyptic groove of the closing title track. Rust in Peace also showcases the finest musicianship of their career, featuring the relentless guitar dueling between Mustaine and newly recruited Shrapnel recording artist Marty Friedman. Very rarely has such guitar-shop wankery been harnessed into such tastefully well-crafted songs -- the intro to "Holy Wars" alone is a must-hear. As for the vocals -- some have been at worst annoyed and at best amused by Dave's whining snarl but when you hear him scream "Paid by the alliance, to slay all the giants" I think you'll agree his delivery is perfectly fitting.
Like Black Sabbath's Volume 4 or Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales or Iron Maiden's Killers, Rust in Peace is a milestone of metallic perfection and one which you are doing your metal collection a grave disservice to be without. If you have any genuine interest in metal, any whatsoever -- a single Century Media sampler in your collection, even -- you MUST own this record. Do yourself a favor, hear one of the absolute pinnacles of thrash. It was the last of its era, setting a standard that the genre as a whole would be unable to match again. And don't just take my word for it...Allan's backing me up on this one too: Rust In Peace is a metal essential. This reissue is remixed and remastered, with four bonus tracks (3 demos of album tracks featuring original 'Deth guitarist Chris Poland and the unfinished, unreleased "My Creation").
MPEG Stream: "Holy Wars...The Punishment Due"
MPEG Stream: "Tornado Of Souls"

MESHUGGAH I (Fractured Transmitter) cd 10.98
If I was in a technical death metal band, or a technical band of any sort, I think I would absolutely shit my pants every time Meshuggah released a new record. Or played live. Or even walked by me on the street. These guys are so good. And so heavy. It's really scary. Ultra precise riffing, drumming that makes the rest of us drummers wither up and run home to practice, shredding leads that sound like a quadruple neck guitar played by a four armed guitarist, and song structures that require a degree in calculus to unravel. So what do you do when you have out-tech'ed every band in the world? Well, you write a 20 minute song, that is so complex and technical, it's like the death metal version of 40 Agoraphobic Nosebleed songs strung together. But it's not just technical for technical's sake. No, this is definitely a song, granted a long song, with melodies and hooks, and catchy bits. They just all happen to be draped perilously over the churning jagged musical machinery of these Swedish shredders. So fucking good.
MPEG Stream: "I (excerpt)"

MF DOOM MM..Food? (Rhymesayers) cd 14.98
The return of the masked mad villain AKA Viktor Vaughn, Xev Love X, and the first proper MF Doom record since Operation Doomsday. The recent Madvillain record, which paired Doom with Madlib, was one of the hip hop records of 2004 and hipped the public at large to what the hip hop world already knew, MF Doom was the ultimate hip hop arch villain. Lethal with the mic and always armed with a mouthful of weird wisdom. And Doom, like all great super villains, has a new obsession or plan for world domination. This time, it's food. Yep, FOOD! Not many folks could pull that off with out it turning into an unfunny joke, but Doom is obviously not your typical hip hop villain.
If you liked the Madvillain record you NEED this. The sound is not quite as dense and comic book-y, but it's still weird and wonderful, snippets of movie themes looped into hiccuppy groovescapes, lots and lots of dialogue from cartoons (even the Herculoids!!!) and movies, most about superheroes vs. supervillains or of course, food, simple bumping beats, and funky jazzy riffs, all very playful and humorous (occasionally even laugh out loud funny). But as always it's all about Doom's flow, a lazy, mumbly drawl, sort of stoned, sort of sleepy, but always sharp tongued and rife with alliteration, ridiculous metaphor, and dazzling wordplay.
Some of the best tracks though are the crazy sonic collages, with no rapping, entirely built from triumphant superhero soundtrack loops underscoring ridiculous sort-of-coversations about food and foes, cobbled together from various film clips and sonic snippets.
The cover is amazing as well, rendered comic book / grafitti style by artist Jason Jagel featuring Doom eating cereal with little marshmallow Doom masks, petting a murderous kitty while smoking a cigar, and of course eating food!
This could very well have been the hip hop record of 2004 if that Madvillain record hadn't also come out this year!
MPEG Stream: "Beef Rapp"
MPEG Stream: "Hoe Cakes"
MPEG Stream: "Potholderz"

MF DOOM MM..Food? (Rhymesayers) lp 14.98
The return of the masked mad villain AKA Viktor Vaughn, Xev Love X, and the first proper MF Doom record since Operation Doomsday. The recent Madvillain record, which paired Doom with Madlib, was one of the hip hop records of 2004 and hipped the public at large to what the hip hop world already knew, MF Doom was the ultimate hip hop arch villain. Lethal with the mic and always armed with a mouthful of weird wisdom. And Doom, like all great super villains, has a new obsession or plan for world domination. This time, it's food. Yep, FOOD!
Not many folks could pull that off with out it turning into an unfunny joke, but Doom is obviously not your typical hip hop villain.
If you liked the Madvillain record you NEED this. The sound is not quite as dense and comic book-y, but it's still weird and wonderful, snippets of movie themes looped into hiccuppy groovescapes, lots and lots of dialogue from cartoons (even the Herculoids!!!) and movies, most about superheroes vs. supervillains or of course, food, simple bumping beats, and funky jazzy riffs, all very playful and humorous (occasionally even laugh out loud). But as always it's all about Doom's flow, a lazy, mumbly drawl, sort of stoned, sort of sleepy, but always sharp tongued and rife with alliteration, ridiculous metaphor, and dazzling wordplay.
Some of the best tracks though are the crazy sonic collages, with no rapping, entirely built from triumphant superhero soundtrack loops underscoring ridiculous sort-of-coversations about food and foes, cobbled together from various film clips and sonic snippets.
The cover is amazing as well, with Doom rendered comic book / grafitti style by artist Jason Jagel featuring Doom eating cereal with little marshmallow Doom masks, petting a murderous kitty while smoking a cigar, and of course eating food!
This could very well have been the hip hop record of the year if that Madvillain record hadn't also come out this year!
MPEG Stream: "Beef Rapp"
MPEG Stream: "Hoe Cakes"
MPEG Stream: "Potholderz"

MIKEY DREAD African Anthem: The Mikey Dread Show (Auralux) cd 17.98
Mikey Dread is one of those cats from the history of Jamaican music that, while not as big a name as some, is about as responsible for bringing reggae to a greater world audience as anyone. In his early days Mikey Dread was a hero through his night job as the first DJ to broadcast reggae over the radio on JBC. He got the gig by convincing the station manager to let him start DJ'ing on the station (where he was working at the time) at 12am, when they normally would shut off the transmitter anyway. Due to some weird draconian regulation Mikey wasn't allowed to speak on his own show. Instead a women with a sexy voice, who was an authorized radio personality, would do all the introductions and song disclosures. Apparently she wouldn't stay the entire length of his show (which went until 4:30 in the morning) so Mr. Dread would record his own jingles and sound effects to break up the monotony of just playing endless tracks. Eventually Mikey began working more and more with the likes of Lee Perry, King Tubby, Joe Gibbs and other heavy hitters on the island and began recording tracks with them as well. We're all familiar with the World War III album from 1981 (AQ list #143), but he also put together a collection of his own tracks that he recorded over the years edited together to play like one of his radio shows and called Dread At The Controls. This collection is the dub equivalent of that set and features exclusive mixes by and for Mikey Dread that were recorded at Channel One, Joe Gibbs', Treasure Isle, and King Tubby's. Interspersed throughout are some of Mikey's jingles and promos and mixed into the tracks themselves are all of his crazy sound effects. This is very much a crucial dub record to own, up there with Pick A Dub and the Impact All Stars albums. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Saturday Night Style"
MPEG Stream: "Resignation Dub"
MPEG Stream: "Pre Dawn Dub"

MIKEY DREAD African Anthem: The Mikey Dread Show (Auralux) 2lp 26.00
Mikey Dread is one of those cats from the history of Jamaican music that, while not as big a name as some, is about as responsible for bringing reggae to a greater world audience as anyone. In his early days Mikey Dread was a hero through his night job as the first DJ to broadcast reggae over the radio on JBC. He got the gig by convincing the station manager to let him start DJ'ing on the station (where he was working at the time) at 12am, when they normally would shut off the transmitter anyway. Due to some weird draconian regulation Mikey wasn't allowed to speak on his own show. Instead a women with a sexy voice, who was an authorized radio personality, would do all the introductions and song disclosures. Apparently she wouldn't stay the entire length of his show (which went until 4:30 in the morning) so Mr. Dread would record his own jingles and sound effects to break up the monotony of just playing endless tracks. Eventually Mikey began working more and more with the likes of Lee Perry, King Tubby, Joe Gibbs and other heavy hitters on the island and began recording tracks with them as well. We're all familiar with the World War III album from 1981 (AQ list #143), but he also put together a collection of his own tracks that he recorded over the years edited together to play like one of his radio shows and called Dread At The Controls. This collection is the dub equivalent of that set and features exclusive mixes by and for Mikey Dread that were recorded at Channel One, Joe Gibbs', Treasure Isle, and King Tubby's. Interspersed throughout are some of Mikey's jingles and promos and mixed into the tracks themselves are all of his crazy sound effects. This is very much a crucial dub record to own, up there with Pick A Dub and the Impact All Stars albums. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Saturday Night Style"
MPEG Stream: "Resignation Dub"
MPEG Stream: "Pre Dawn Dub"

NARROWS Alligator (Wantage / Tapes) cd 11.98
There's something about Bellingham Washington. Not sure what it is. But bands from there seem to always be really really strange sounding. But strange in this completely undefinable way. It's like they have the same influences as the rest of us, listen to the same music, but when it comes time to get down and rock, what comes out is totally twisted and unique. There's the Reeks And Wrecks, whose twisted take on indie rock comes out sounding more like a New Orleans funeral march, and now the Narrows, who seem to be rooted in early nineties math rock / slowcore a la Codeine, Seam and stuff like that, but somehow the sound they produce is a chugging, metallic, emotionally supercharged blast of minimal minor key moodiness. Hard to explain just why this stuff resonates so intensely but it does. Could be that the band used to be faster, but a horrific tour accident/injury and months of songwriting on pain killers morphed them into this chugging super dynamic behemoth, or again, it could just be Bellingham. Seriously, this band is so good they actually got Andee to leave the house and go to a show! Ask anybody who knows Andee, that's a major accomplishment.
Alligator is a reissue of the Narrows' first two releases, Days Are Numbered from 2000, and Six Ten from 2001. Seven tracks, the shortest clocking in at a fairly substantial 7 minutes, the longest a massive 17 minutes. All the songs are total epics, with moody stretched out verses, mumbled vocals, loping rhythms, and fuzzed out melancholy melodies -- and then crushing pummelling pounding choruses, massive distorted slabs of heartbreaking intensity with wailed anguished vocals. This is the kind of stuff you wish you had back in your good old mixtape days to let that girl/guy know just how completely fucked up and miserable they made you feel. So fucking great.
The 2lp version comes in an amazing gatefold with a pop up alligator and liner notes!
MPEG Stream: "Does It Sting Your Eyes?"
MPEG Stream: "October's Problem"

NARROWS Alligator (Wantage / Tapes) 2lp 11.98
There's something about Bellingham Washington. Not sure what it is. But bands from there seem to always be really really strange sounding. But strange in this completely undefinable way. It's like they have the same influences as the rest of us, listen to the same music, but when it comes time to get down and rock, what comes out is totally twisted and unique. There's the Reeks And Wrecks, whose twisted take on indie rock comes out sounding more like a New Orleans funeral march, and now the Narrows, who seem to be rooted in early nineties math rock / slowcore a la Codeine, Seam and stuff like that, but somehow the sound they produce is a chugging, metallic, emotionally supercharged blast of minimal minor key moodiness. Hard to explain just why this stuff resonates so intensely but it does. Could be that the band used to be faster, but a horrific tour accident/injury and months of songwriting on pain killers morphed them into this chugging super dynamic behemoth, or again, it could just be Bellingham. Seriously, this band is so good they actually got Andee to leave the house and go to a show! Ask anybody who knows Andee, that's a major accomplishment.
Alligator is a reissue of the Narrows' first two releases, Days Are Numbered from 2000, and Six Ten from 2001. Seven tracks, the shortest clocking in at a fairly substantial 7 minutes, the longest a massive 17 minutes. All the songs are total epics, with moody stretched out verses, mumbled vocals, loping rhythms, and fuzzed out melancholy melodies -- and then crushing pummelling pounding choruses, massive distorted slabs of heartbreaking intensity with wailed anguished vocals. This is the kind of stuff you wish you had back in your good old mixtape days to let that girl/guy know just how completely fucked up and miserable they made you feel. So fucking great.
The 2lp version comes in an amazing gatefold with a pop up alligator and liner notes!
MPEG Stream: "Does It Sting Your Eyes?"
MPEG Stream: "October's Problem"

NEGURA BUNGET CD Box (Bestial) 3cd 32.00
Finally re-pressed and back in stock but not sure for how long!!!
We sold SO many of the last Negura Bunget album 'N Crug Bradului and for good reason. It was one of the coolest weirdest black metal records we had ever heard. So when we found out about this triple cd set collecting all of their earlier long out of print releases we knew we had to haveit (and figured you probably did too)! We described Negura Bunget so well the first time around, I'm not sure how we could do it any better. So here's what we said about this mysterious Romanian black metal band:
"Dark, ambient rumbles evoke the spirits of the forest before the music kicks in sounding a bit like Don Cab, with spastic drums, way up in the mix while grainy guitars saw wildly away. Eventually BIGGER riffs come tumbling down like a black metal avalanche and the whole thing becomes a swirling, bloodied whirlpool of octopus-armed drumming, possessed keyboards and buzzing mosquito riffs. Occasionally the metallic fury abates allowing gently strummed acoustic guitars and field recordings to weave simple melodic soundscapes in the lulls. While there are moments of black metal familiarity here and there, there's just so much strangeness, even just in the way instruments sound or how they play certain parts. Some seriously twisted, rhythmically bizarre, completely damaged, grandiose and melancholy black metal supposedly inspired by 'Romanian mysticism'."
Wow! They sound pretty good huh? Well, they ARE that good. This box compiles the first three Negura Bunget albums dating from 1995 to 2000, including their first demo from when they were still called Wiccan Rede. The albums are: Sala Molska, Zirnindu-Sa, and Maiastru Sfetnic, each in a jewel case and all bundled in a cardboard slipcover, all with amazing new artwork. The sound on these earlier recordings isn't quite as polished and fully realized as on 'N Crug Bradului, it's actually a lot rougher and simplistic, but perhaps because of that, it's also a whole lot weirder, grim and creepy but damaged and freaked out. Keyboards play a much bigger part, huge swaths of buzzing melody laid over the thrashing metallic onslaught. Probably the most interesting aspect is how much Negura Bunget sometimes sounded like SF black metal legends Weakling. Whether it's the agonisingly wailed vocals, or the epic droning riffage, you know that sounding even remotely like Weakling is a REALLY good thing. We get these direct from Romania and as always we can't be sure how long they'll be available so don't miss out on these again!
MPEG Stream: "Vremea Locului Sortit"
MPEG Stream: "In-Zvicnirea Apusului"

NEUROSIS The Eye Of Every Storm (Neurot ) cd 14.98
Another great Neurosis opus! They've pretty much perfected the combination of massive drone-metal devastation and quietly drifting, melodic gloom. Heavy guitars, roaring voices and industrial-ized drumming give way to desperate melancholic balladry, sung-spoke in a weary, careworn male voice that's a dead ringer for that of Mark Lanegan. As with their recent collaboration with Jarboe of the Swans, or their previous full-length A Sun That Never Sets, you get both dark and light here...really a twilight I guess. Dusk-infused art from a powerful yet mature band. Neurosis fans may find this to be one of their best yet, and anyone not already a Neurosis fan ought to lend an ear (to this record for sure, not to mention all their other excellent releases).
MPEG Stream: "Burn"
MPEG Stream: "A Season In The Sky"

NEUROSIS The Eye Of Every Storm (Neurot ) lp 21.00
Another great Neurosis opus! They've pretty much perfected the combination of massive drone-metal devastation and quietly drifting, melodic gloom. Heavy guitars, roaring voices and industrial-ized drumming give way to desperate melancholic balladry, sung-spoke in a weary, careworn male voice that's a dead ringer for that of Mark Lanegan. As with their recent collaboration with Jarboe of the Swans, or their previous full-length A Sun That Never Sets, you get both dark and light here...really a twilight I guess. Dusk-infused art from a powerful yet mature band. Neurosis fans may find this to be one of their best yet, and anyone not already a Neurosis fan ought to lend an ear (to this record for sure, not to mention all their other excellent releases).
MPEG Stream: "Burn"
MPEG Stream: "A Season In The Sky"

NEWMAN, A.C. The Slow Wonder (Matador) cd 14.98
New Pornographers (and former Zumpano) bandleader Carl Newman strikes out on his own with a new solo album, though you'd hardly know it wasn't just a new New Pornographers record when you slap it on. And we say this with the utmost esteem -- this man wears some huge songwriting shoes. Probably most distinguishable from the New Pornographers sound is the slower tempo on most of the tracks here, and maybe just a teeny bit less bouncy on the tunes with faster tempos. Like his work with Zumpano, and more recently The New Pornographers, Newman is not only the consummate songwriter, but arranger as well. His penchant for extracting the history of 70's pop and finessing it into his own sound is truly remarkable. Where others may come in with a cleaver and coarsely chop away with musical references and irony filled homages, Newman subtly infuses his work such that you find yourself constantly asking "what band is this reminding me of?" (almost the same effect that Bjorn Olsson's instrumental nuggets seem to have on us). Though if there's one group that we can definitely point to and say confidently that Mr. Newman has been listening to a great deal it's ELO -- throughout, Newman uses the trademark high choruses (we were even convinced that Ms. Neko Case had snuck into a recording session or two). So in lieu of the next New Pornographers (or that fabled lost third Zumpano record), we can highly recommend this tight, fat free collection of clean, wholesome, kick-ass rock n' roll to be your summer soundtrack.
MPEG Stream: "Miracle Drug"
MPEG Stream: "On The Table"
MPEG Stream: "Better Than Most"

NIRVANA With The Lights Out (DGC) 3cd+dvd 57.00
Been trying to figure out what to write about this for a while now. Every time I sit down to write it, I feel like I'm trying to write a euology for an old friend. Which should speak volumes. We knew this was coming. And man, were we excited. And it is not a disappointment in any way. If anything, it's more than we could have hoped for. See, everyone loves Nirvana. Everyone. Those of you who say you don't are just trying to be c'ool'. Sort of like the people who talk about how the Beatles suck. The Beatles did not suck. They wrote more perfect pop songs than any band in the history of rock and roll. Nirvana also don't suck. And are also responsible for some of the best songs ever. It's not cool to pretend you don't like Nirvana. Not at all. In fact, it's unbelievably UNCOOL. Why deny yourself some of the most important, visceral music of the last 15 years? Because it gets played on MTV? Because jocks blast "Smells Like Teen Spirit" after the big game? Nope, sorry. Not good enough.
Nirvana were one of those bands we could all love. Heavy enough to appeal to headbangers, raucous enough to still be punk, but equipped with a pop sense unrivalled, and thus able to whip out the most beautifu pop song in the world without a second thought -- usually sandwiched between two swirling snarling blasts of stage destroying chaotic rrroooaaaar. But that's part of what was so charming about Nirvana. Even when they were huge, they acted like you or me. Stupid jokes, smashing guitars, unlikely covers, ripped jeans and t-shirts and greasy long hair. It was like your pal or your older brother was snatched out of your suburban hellhole of a life and made a rock star. And how could you not love that (once you got over wishing it was you)? Which also goes to why it was such a blow when Kurt Cobain died. I literally cried. At the time I remember thinking "Why the fuck am I crying." I mean, it's not like he was a friend of mine or something. But he was something special. To me. To everyone I know. And Nirvana was something special. Our generation's Beatles? Maybe. But definitely the most important band of the nineties. Responsible for reshaping popular music, killing off hair metal, and giving us music that would be the soundtrack to our lives: breakups, mixtapes, road trips, broken hearts, life and death, fucking and fighting. Sounds like hyperbole but it's really not. This band was and is really important to me, and millions of other folks. Which is pretty remarkable. After the death of Cobain, and after getting over the sheer sadness and loss, one could not help but think about all the amazing music and the songs that would now never be written. Callous maybe, but the music is what made us love him/them. Their recent greatest hits disc offered us the unreleased "You Know You're Right", which was at the time the greatest thing we could've heard, a song as good as any of their others, seemingly pulled from the ether. And now we have this. A collection of what is supposedly everything. or at least everything worth releasing. And it is absolutely fantastic. I literally got all teary listeing to this, and the DVD had me all choked up as well. Can't remember the last time a record did that to me.
So, what's on it? If you're like me, it hardly matters. Just knowing that it's stuffed to the gills with rare and unreleased Nirvana songs and I'm sold. If you need more than that, here goes. Don't sell back your greatest hits though, "You Know You're Right" only appears here as a solo acoustic recording from 1994. This version may not rock as hard, but it is a lot more intense and personal. The box is basically in chronological order, so disc one is definitely gonna hit the spot for those of us (like Allan) who loved Bleach the best. Demos and acoustic tracks and live on the radio, this is all Holy Grail sort of stuff. Live versions of Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" and "Moby Dick" done in suitably ramshackle chaotic Nirvana style. Live versions and demos of tracks that would show up on Bleach. But by far the most exciting tracks are the unreleased songs. "White Lace And Strange", "Help Me I'm Hungry", "Mrs. Butterworth", "Grey Goose", "Token Eastern Song" and more. Disc two has less unreleased tracks but lots of alternate versions of tracks from future records, as well as loads of b-sides (their split with the Jesus Lizard, maybe one of the best Nirvana songs ever) and covers (Wipers!) and a big ol' chunk of solo acoustic versions of classic tracks that sound even more intense and harrowing performed sans band. Disc three brings us close to the end. A handful of demos and more solo acoustic versions of songs you already know and love. Highlights include the track "Sappy" which was a secret track on a benefit compliation and was originally titled "Verse Chorus Verse" and is another of their best curiously relegated to being hidden uncredited at the end of a random comp ("Train In Vain" anyone?). Also "Marigold", the only Nirvana song sung by Dave Grohl, an obscure b-side, that hints at Grohl's Foo Fighter future. A sweet and jangly Vaselines cover and more. The set ends with a solo acoustic version of "All Apologies" and if you hadn't gotten all emotional yet, this one will definitely do it to you.
The DVD is pretty amazing as well and adds to the whole feeling of Kurt being an old friend who passed away. Mostly home movies, the first chunk is a party / rehearsal in Krist's mom's house and features the band rocking out in a panelled, carpeted basement, while various rockers sit around drinking beer. Cute and sad, and funny and sort of remarkable how amazing they were as a band even so early on. The rest of the DVD is made up of various tracks filmed live in various locations, from small clubs to huge arenas. Lots of hilarious onstage banter, lots of drum kit destroying, and lots of powerfully off kilter versions of all of the best Nirvana songs.
Beautifully packaged in an oversized hardcover book, on the front an embossed metal plate featuring the band in their Sunday best, as if they were at a funeral. Or a wake. Because as sad as this is, and as much as this makes us miss someone we felt we knew as well as our best friend, and a band who meant more to us than almost any in our memory, under the circumstances, we couldn't be happier.
MPEG Stream: "Blandest (Demo 1998)"
MPEG Stream: "Token Eastern Song (Demo 1989)"
MPEG Stream: "Opinion (Solo Acoustic 1990)"
MPEG Stream: "Oh The Guilt (B Side 1992)"
MPEG Stream: "Marigold (B Side 1993)"
MPEG Stream: "You Know You're Right (Solo Acoustic 1994)"

OLD MAN GLOOM Christmas (Tortuga) cd 14.98
Best band ever?!?! How could they not be? Crushing dirge metal! Check. Drones drones drones! Check. And MONKEYS!!!! Double check. Holy crap! That should be enough right there for chrissakes! Well then, how about "Features members of Isis, Cave In and Converge"! Anyway, all of us here at AQ have been waiting anxiously for the return of the Simian Alien Defense League aka Old Man Gloom and their totally unique blend of pulverising downtuned heaviosity and as well as their surprisingly deft hand at minimal dronology. Two great tastes for sure. Did we mention their obsession with monkeys?
Totally epic and intense Neurosis like metallic sludge, occasional thrashing post-punk rock fury, all imbued with weirdly emotional minor key melodies, and always returning to some sort of dark and rumbling, dreamy and shimmering dronescape, before bursting into another spate of crushing metallic fury. On Christmas, OMG expand their musical palette even further with gorgeously hypnotic steel string guitars, even more bizarre found sounds, and a much richer, and way more dense sonic arsenal for constructing the extensive ambient passages. The biggest surprise is the track "Volcano", an almost Interpol style sort of post punk new wave workout that is dotted with bursts of gut wrenching guitars and crushing drums! The final track is the epic 16 minute "Christmas Eve, Parts I, II and III", an extended and expanded version of a track that was on their recent Christmas Eve 3" cd, a massive meandering acoustic folk dirge-drone, with epic majestic sonic swells underpinning strummed steel string guitars and half mumbled / half sung vocals, while all sorts of random sonic debris and swirling melodies drift in and out of the haze and occasional waves of slow motion distortion creep over the proceedings like a black fog. So fucking intense, and so so so good.
MPEG Stream: "Gift"
MPEG Stream: "Something For The Mrs."
MPEG Stream: "Sleeping With Snakes"

OLSSON, BJORN s/t (crab) (Gravitation) cd 15.98
Whoohoo! Another Bjorn Olsson album, that always makes us happy here at Aquarius. So far the Swedish composer/multi-instrumentalist has yet to disappoint. This is his fourth album, the third in what seems to be a seafood-themed series, this one with a crab on the cover. Like his previous discs, this one begs the question: what would Bjorn Olsson do without spaghetti westerns? I don't know if we'll ever find out and that's ok. However, while the spaghetti western style whistling that was so prominent on his last album (one of the best whistling records EVER) is still present, it takes a back seat to Bjorn's guitar. This is his most guitar-centric disc to date, and it means that the melodies with which he's so marvellous seem here seem to possess a definite rock lineage. Certain tracks will seemingly contain echoes of some Beatles, Stones or Stooges song into which it seems Bjorn's guitar strum will soon coalesce, but instead his instrumentals always drift off into a looser, more droned-out zone. Yet the tunes seem so totally familiar, that's his knack. You think you kinda know these songs already, but can't quite place your finger on 'em. Brilliant, 'cause he obviously owes so much to certain other composers (Ennio Morricone!!) yet makes something that you can't really hear anywhere else than on a Bjorn Olsson album. Though, listening to this we can make tenuous connections to such disparate artists as the Sun City Girls (hints of their more garagey folk style), the desert instrumentals of Calexico, and the drone ragas of Henry Flynt. A lot of that has to do with the grimy, dusty quality of the recording. We suspect that Bjorn's tape recorder slowly falling apart, as each album he makes gets more and more lo fi -- which is a good thing! This one's got all kinds of hiss and hum and drop outs and grit that make his music all the more dream-like. Wonderful!
MPEG Stream: "track 2"
MPEG Stream: "track 8"

THE ONE Guardian's Inhuman (Total Holocaust Records) cd 14.98
Another blast of insane black metal chaos, this time from an entity known simply as...THE ONE. And chaos it is. Sure it has all the hallmarks of grim fucking black metal, but this is so weird and sloppy and punishing and weird weird weird. Everything (drums, vocals, guitars) is drenched in reverb, so that when things get going, I mean really going, it turns into one intensely hellish blur, that sounds almost like Merzbow with only the occasional cymbal crash to help you keep your bearings. The drumming, when not lost in a dense cloud of impenatratable bllllleeaarrgghhh, is a weirdly stumbling beast, stuttering through arrhythmic fills and continually fluctuating blast beats. And then there's the vocals. Some of the most insane ridiculous vocals ever, heavily distorted and reverbed monster growls that threaten to overtake everything they're so high in the mix! And tempo changes and new parts are occasionally demarcated by a very loud grunt that is reverbed through the roof or some maniacal sinister laughter also drenched in effects. There are also all sorts of bizarre sounds underneath the frosty onslaught: what sounds like jaw harps on track four and the hoofbeats of horses elsewhere. But at it's core, like Graveland or Nargaroth, The One takes black metal into the almost static realm, creating totally buzzing blurry drones, assembled from super distorted riffs and rumbling basslines smeared into endless washes of hypnotic sound. So totally mesmerising but completely insane and absurd at the same time. Highly recommended for fans of black metal weirdness/insanity a la Necrofrost, Abruptum, Vondur as well as the grim black metal blur of Nargaroth and Graveland.
MPEG Stream: "This Means War"
MPEG Stream: "Undying"

ORGAN, THE Grab That Gun (Mint / 604) cd 14.98
These Young Canadian gals are hitting that '80s wonderfully dour British rock pop sound (The Smiths, The Cure and The Church... oops, they're Australian) right on the mark. And I (Cup) totally love it! No, it's probably not anything you haven't heard before, but it is very very good... particularly notable and impressive when you find out that the five gals are only in their early twenties. Yes, they do indeed have a big ol' Hammond organ as one of their instruments, however the guitars and vocals are what defines the band's retro sound. Lead vocalist Katie Sketch possesses a depth of expression that's much broader, seeming much older, wiser and world-wearier than her years. So strong and emotive, think a young female Morrissey. And as a fitting counterpart, Debora Cohen's lanky guitar tone is straight-up Johnny Marr. Hindered only by some rather stiff drumming (unfortunately not quite on par with the rest of the band's level of composure), Grab The Sun is packed with moody, yet super infectious songs like the lead-off track "Brother" with its punchy, youthful girl gang sing-a-long chorus, "Sinking Hearts", the very Smiths-y "A Sudden Death" and the great album-closer "Memorize The City". Oh yeah, and FYI: If this band already seems familiar to you (apart from their decidedly retro sound), it might be because you saw them a couple of years ago opening for their Mint Records labelmates New Pornographers.
MPEG Stream: "Brother"
MPEG Stream: "Memorize The City"

OSWALT, PATTON 222 Live & Uncut (Chunklet) 2cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
222... Two mints in one? Nope. Codeine? Nope. Nope. Nope. This double disc is BETTER -- packed with two and a half hours of comedian Patton Oswalt recorded live at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA. What more could you possibly want or need in your life? The man is fuckin' hiiiiilllaaarrriiiioouuss! Aaah, you might know him from the TV show King Of Queens, or you might've spotted him in the movie Taxi (or the soon to be released Blade 3... what the f'?!), or you might've heard his voice on Crank Yankers, or you might know him from one of his stand-up performances (he just finished a brief tour with Maria Bamford and Mr. Show alumni Brian Posehn). Now we know this isn't a competition, but dare we say, he frequently kicks his pal David Cross' ass? Yes, as a matter of fact we do dare. Much like Cross, he draws much inspiration from the late great Bill Hicks who pushed the renegade stand-up envelope hard and far in a very short period of time (if you dig current comedians such as Oswalt, Cross and Dave Attell, do yourself a favor and seek out any/all videos and cds of Hicks... seriously!). Fueled by a steady fountain of red wine, Oswalt holds court unleashing his often jaw-dropping, astute observations about the telling signs of the apocalypse and other stuff -- more specifically Dubya, zombies, celebrities, midgets, liquor ads, babies, hair metal videos, open mic nites, hippies, comic books and steakhouses. We won't attempt to re-enact any of his jokes here. There's no way we could accurately replicate his comedic 'nuances'. Hell, what are you waiting for? Just give those audioclips a spin. As he gets more inebriated instead of getting sloppier in his delivery, he somehow gets even more blistering. It's not until the last twenty minutes that things start to get noticeably, uhh, affected by the copious amount of vino consumed. He goes off on a bizarre rant beginning with a comment about shaving a back with a rusty tuna fish can. Hoo boy. If laughing appeals to you, buy this immediately. You won't know what hit you. Squibilleee flabilleee dooo!!! Brought to you by the kind folks at Chunklet Magazine / Records.
Warning #1: This is definitely not for the dainty eared nor for the faint of heart nor for the humorless.
Warning #2: Remember folks, this is a completely unedited recording, so the laffs aren't as rapid fire as on other comedy albums that have been nipped and tucked for maximum hilarity. This is two and a half hours of real-time stand-up with many drinking pauses, muffled banter with the audience and even a break when Oswalt takes a photo of his photographer who himself is drunk too.
And most importantly, Warning #3: This is a very very very limited tour only release that we've been fortunate enough to snag a few copies of, so please don't dilly-dally.
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1 [we won]"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 2 [dubya]"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 3 [pride]"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 4 [chipmunks]"

PADDEN, DANIEL (THE ONE ENSEMBLE OF) The Owl Of Fives (Textile) cd 16.98
As much as we dig UK musical experimentalists Volcano The Bear and their disjointed sonic surrealism, VtB member Daniel Padden has always managed to take that sound of theirs even further, somewhere else entirely, to a place where his juxtapositions coalesce into a dark and highly personal, mostly instrumental melancholia. Meandering and thoughtful, like a twilight walk through a musical forest, just wandering, laying down on the ground when the mood strikes you, gazing at patches of sky through the dense canopy of leaves, feeling the wet earth soak through your clothes, shivering as small insects crawl all over you tickling your skin, squinting as you're blinded by a brilliant shaft of sunlight that breaks through the trees, then melts into the forest floor beneath while you're sprinkled with a fine mist as the wind looses the condensation from the branches. This not-so-precise effect is achieved with reverby pianos in vast expanses of space, slippery slide guitar, plinkety plonk keyboards, soaring minor key strings, Appalachian guitar picking over squirming beds of bombinating drones. Padden's dense buzzing ragas are all dreamy and melancholy and super intimate and personal sounding, but somehow at the same time are grandiose and epic, with occasional waltz-like marches, like chamber music for some outer space / otherworldly king and his court. Occasionally delicate and haunting, occasionally rambunctious and a little chaotic. But always totally beautiful and mesmerising and truly mysterious. Think somewhere between Eyvind Kang, the Sun City Girls, Kronos Quartet, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Jack Rose. All that and more is filtered through Padden's slightly skewed musical mind's eye.
MPEG Stream: "Farewell My Porcupine"
MPEG Stream: "Gong Farm"
MPEG Stream: "Singing Norway To Sleep"

PADDEN, DANIEL (THE ONE ENSEMBLE OF) The Owl Of Fives (Textile) lp 16.98
As much as we dig UK musical experimentalists Volcano The Bear and their disjointed sonic surrealism, VtB member Daniel Padden has always managed to take that sound of theirs even further, somewhere else entirely, to a place where his juxtapositions coalesce into a dark and highly personal, mostly instrumental melancholia. Meandering and thoughtful, like a twilight walk through a musical forest, just wandering, laying down on the ground when the mood strikes you, gazing at patches of sky through the dense canopy of leaves, feeling the wet earth soak through your clothes, shivering as small insects crawl all over you tickling your skin, squinting as you're blinded by a brilliant shaft of sunlight that breaks through the trees, then melts into the forest floor beneath while you're sprinkled with a fine mist as the wind looses the condensation from the branches. This not-so-precise effect is achieved with reverby pianos in vast expanses of space, slippery slide guitar, plinkety plonk keyboards, soaring minor key strings, Appalachian guitar picking over squirming beds of bombinating drones. Padden's dense buzzing ragas are all dreamy and melancholy and super intimate and personal sounding, but somehow at the same time are grandiose and epic, with occasional waltz-like marches, like chamber music for some outer space / otherworldly king and his court. Occasionally delicate and haunting, occasionally rambunctious and a little chaotic. But always totally beautiful and mesmerising and truly mysterious. Think somewhere between Eyvind Kang, the Sun City Girls, Kronos Quartet, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Jack Rose. All that and more is filtered through Padden's slightly skewed musical mind's eye.
MPEG Stream: "Farewell My Porcupine"
MPEG Stream: "Gong Farm"
MPEG Stream: "Singing Norway To Sleep"

PIG DESTROYER Terrifyer (Relapse) cd 14.98
Pig Destroyer's 2002 album "Prowler in the Yard" was called by some the best grindcore album since Brutal Truth's '94 masterpiece "Need to Control" and anyone who heard it knew that honor was not undeserved. Thus having some big gore-soaked rubber boots to fill for their follow-up, Pig Destroyer has still somehow managed to not only meet but surpass their own vaunted standards. I don't know if it's the blood-red album art, creating the same sinister synesthetic effect as Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss, but everything about Terrifyer is just grander, heavier, darker, more deadly. The production on this is positively devastating -- it's unimaginable that just three individuals, with NO bass guitar could make music this crushingly heavy, but anyone who's seen them live knows this is no mere studio trickery. Scott Hull, undisputed king of grindcore guitar has pushed his playing and song-writing abilities to new peaks of riffing alchemy -- it's busier, more complex, catchier, and yes, somehow EVEN FASTER, occasionally adopting tornado-like Discordance Axis-style cyclical riffs for maximum effect. It goes without saying that the drumming is simply inhuman, but it's the guitars that make Pig Destroyer such a standout band, especially in the realm of grind. Most bands these days have supersonic blast beats, but it's often a criticism of grind that the guitars are too simplistic and tune-less, and this presumption Pig Destroyer positively blows apart.
And then there's "Natasha", the single 32-minute doom track that comprises disc 2 (oddly on an audio-only DVD, available in stereo or surround-sound). Rumored to have originally been intended for a two-part split with the similarly godlike Creation is Crucifixion which never materialized, "Natasha" is possibly the single strangest and greatest effort yet from these psychopaths. Extrapolating on the previous love-scorned dementia lyrical themes from "Prowler", "Natasha" is a hallucinogenic half-hour nightmare of epic proportions. Heavy, plodding sonorous drums (and finally a bass guitar!) crash like thunder as ominous feedback echoes off the graven landscape of lyricist JR Hayes's surreal acid-trip of uncomfortable adolescent obsession gone horribly awry, complete with an accompanying 6-page short story in the booklet. The piece metamorphoses through several states, from long quiet ambient passages to keyboard dirges to full-on metallic surges before finally dissolving into the audio equivalent of the gnashing jaws of the song's eponymous protagonist. Absolutely stunningly majestically heavy and downright, dare I say, beautiful -- like a psylocybin-striated amalgam of Corrupted, Boris, Godflesh, Buried at Sea, Old Man Gloom and Neurosis. This song is a must-hear and together with the unbridled aggression of disc 1, makes Terrifyer a very difficult release to beat for heavy album of the year and places Pig Destroyer at the very fore of extreme music innovation.
MPEG Stream: "Pretty In Casts"
MPEG Stream: "Boy Constrictor"
MPEG Stream: "Scarlet Hourglass"
MPEG Stream: "Thumbsucker"

PINBACK Summer In Abaddon (Touch & Go) cd 14.98
Heirs to the indierock throne? We certainly think there's an argument in support of it. Once again Zac and Rob don't disappoint on Summer In Abbadon, their first major-independent label release. They continue to efforlessly write songs that can take the best elements of say, Modest Mouse at their zenith -- we're talking catchy hooks -- but with a finer tuned sense of lyricism, a smoother rhythmmic flow and, well, some damn fine finger picked melodic bass lines from Zac. As on their previous releases, Zac and Rob write and record all the songs themselves. And while this might be a count against some artists, both the musicianship and recording skills of this pair is beyond reproach. In fact, their years of woodshedding together has turned them into a veritable sonic unit, effortlessly harmonizing with one another like an indiepop equivalent to the Louvin Brothers channeling the teen angst mopeyness of Tears For Fears. It's no wonder the Pinback army grows stronger with every release.
MPEG Stream: "Sender"
MPEG Stream: "Fortress"
MPEG Stream: "AFK"

PINBACK Summer In Abaddon (Touch & Go) lp 14.98
Heirs to the indierock throne? We certainly think there's an argument in support of it. Once again Zac and Rob don't disappoint on Summer In Abbadon, their first major-independent label release. They continue to efforlessly write songs that can take the best elements of say, Modest Mouse at their zenith -- we're talking catchy hooks -- but with a finer tuned sense of lyricism, a smoother rhythmmic flow and, well, some damn fine finger picked melodic bass lines from Zac. As on their previous releases, Zac and Rob write and record all the songs themselves. And while this might be a count against some artists, both the musicianship and recording skills of this pair is beyond reproach. In fact, their years of woodshedding together has turned them into a veritable sonic unit, effortlessly harmonizing with one another like an indiepop equivalent to the Louvin Brothers channeling the teen angst mopeyness of Tears For Fears. It's no wonder the Pinback army grows stronger with every release.
MPEG Stream: "Sender"
MPEG Stream: "Fortress"
MPEG Stream: "AFK"

PROFESSOR Academizer E.P. (tUMULt) 3" cd 5.98
On a European tour about ten years ago, a curious 7" was unearthed in a used record store. It had an amazing black and white cover, a painting of Golgotha, with the cross lost in a cloudy haze and surrounded by watercolored trees. The band was called Professor, their logo in splattery hand drawn Olde English. And the record was called The Academizer ep. One of the tracks was "Into The Auditorium". Suddenly thoughts of an evil black metal band made up entirely of doctoral scholars leapt to mind. Sort of the whole Carcass medical student thing, but with academia. This was just getting better and better. The record sat unplayed until returning to the States, where it finally made it onto the turntable. And holy shit! It was as good as the cover suggested it could be. A sloppy noisy blackened slab of Carcass worship. Blast beats and grinding guitars, howled gutteral vocals, and crushing heaviness. Over the course of the next decade, several more copies were discovered and hoarded like the treasure they were. Until a random series of circumstances led to tUMULt discovering the man behind Professor and the quest to make that amazing, out of print 7" available to a wider, turntable-less audience.
What happened, was that an unsolicited package was sent to tUMULt HQ, with some new music for the tUMULt overlord to check out, but the sender also included a cdr of his old bands. A cursory listen was blasted to an immediate halt, when the hauntingly familiar strains of Professor came screeching from the speakers. Oh shit. Is it possible? Could it be? And what do you know? The sender was none other than a real live living member of Professor. After much convincing and cajoling, he agreed to let tUMULt re-release the Academizer ep. And even now, a decade later, this shit is so good. Fierce and furious, stumbling and blasting drunkenly like a grinding blackened metallic juggernaut. Four tracks of crushing grind, pummelling crush and grinding pummel. Heavy and noisy and fucking great! Rumour was, that Professor was maybe a joke. But if that's true, this is some sick joke. Fans of Carcass, Drop Dead, grindcore, black metal, and all things heavy owe it to themselves to enter the auditorium, and bow before the Professor!! In the form of a 3" cd packaged in a mini jewel case.
MPEG Stream: "Professor"
MPEG Stream: "Immatriculation"

PUSHING UP DAISIES s/t (self-released) cd 10.98
Besides having an awesome name for a metal band, Pushing Up Daisies is also an eight piece. A goddamn EIGHT PIECE! Vocalist, keyboardist, bassist, TWO drummers and THREE guitarists! And it shows. The guitars are everywhere, serpentine and slithery, jagged and ear peircing, downtuned and crushing. The dual drum attack is a pummelling unstoppable force. But it's not just about the instrumentation. Pushing Up Daisies are a fierce metal hybrid, equal parts screamo, metalcore and even a dash of black metal, with brain bendingly complex arrangements leaning WAY towards the prog end of things and plenty of weird breakdowns, from super reverbed dubbed out space rock to strangely loping Three Mile Pilot like bass driven melodic passages, to James Gang wah-guitar funk, but always bookended by crushing hook filled METAL. Lots of stops and starts, high end guitar melodies weaving in and out, punctuated by massive and muffled three-downtuned-guitar chugs that rattle your fillings they hit so hard. Lots of two guitar bands don't take advantage of their extra axe and waste it by having both guitarists play the same thing, but Pushing Up Daisies utilise their triple threat to full effect and it really adds a unique edge to everything with all sorts of slippery intertwining melodies, strangely haunting guitar harmonies and layer upon layer of sonic weirdness. One of our favorite new metal records!
MPEG Stream: "Bus Ride"
MPEG Stream: "Clipping Cupid's Wings Pt. A"

RABELAIS, AKIRA Spellewauerynsherde (Samadhisound) cd 22.00
The tongue-twistingly titled Spellewauerynsherde is another hauntingly beautiful record from the enigmatic electronic composer Akira Rabelais. As with his previous albums, Rabelais offers a labyrinth of elliptical allegories, subtle chance operations, and impressionistic romanticism as an accompaniment for his elegant sound constructions. Given the incredible amount of semantic engineering that went into this record, it is certainly possible that Rabelais deliberately arranged to have this album released at the same time as Bjork's Medula. You see, the source for Snellewauerynsherde is a collection of traditional Icelandic accapella songs recorded in the late 1960s or early 1970s on Ampex tapes and then forgotten about. The first few tracks of Snellewauerynsherde present the raw recordings Icelandic songs, sanitized of their tape hiss and debris. The content may remain foreign to our ears, but the songs' existential sadness transcends any language barriers. When he actually processes these sources, he extracts a mournful etherialism that he stretches into a gracefully solemn minimalism that falls between Steven Stapleton's production of Current 93's A Little Menstrual Night Music, Eliane Radigue's evocative timbral compositions, and Arvo Part's late period chorale pieces. Rabelais continues to distance himself from the clicks 'n' cuts electronica of his contemporaries and situate himself as an artist with a complex mythology, that given the right marketing climate, could be as important as Matthew Barney's.
MPEG Stream: "Wyclif Gen. ii 7"
MPEG Stream: "Glower Conf. II 20"

RESIDENTS, THE Commercial Album (Cryptic / Mute) cd 20.00
Probably the second most talked about Residents album, and some would argue their last great effort, is the brilliant Commercial Album. The concept was to craft 40 pop gems (in true Residents fashion) each spanning exactly 60 seconds (to match the time of the average television commercial in 1980). With the help of some of their friends: Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Andy Partridge and of course Nessie Lessons and Snakefinger, the Residents crafted some truly beautiful, surreal and poignant tunes; each one completely trimmed of any excess fat. A classic Residents album wouldn't be complete without a jab at the Beatles, included here as the "Simple Song". Other songs take on psycho-sexual topics, dream-like narratives twisted love songs and down right non sequiturs. This special edition comes packaged in a hardcover booklet with lyrics to the songs and new images from videos the Residents have been working on to complete the entire song cycle of videos they started in the eighties.
MPEG Stream: "Die In Terror"
MPEG Stream: "Loss of Innocence"
MPEG Stream: "Moisture"

RESIDENTS, THE Eskimo (Cryptic / Euro Ralph) cd 15.98
If there's one Residents record that is the one Residents record that people who aren't necessarily Residents fans own it is Eskimo (their sixth release, from 1979). There's good reason for this album being in so many libraries, if for no other reason than that it's one hell of a concept album. And if there's one thing the Residents do well it's concept albums. For Eskimo the Residents partially impersonate a Folkways ethnomusicological document from the 60's and a Firesign Theater record. The album is presented as a recreation of "not only the Eskimo ceremonial music, but also a living context for its existence". And so included is a booklet of stories illustrating the daily life and ceremonies of the Eskimo with which you can read and follow along with the music. The music is a combination of likely, but miscellaneous percussion instruments (Chris Cutler of Pere Ubu, Art Bears, Henry Cow fame is credited for his "precision drumming" here), analog synths, and chanted vocals. It's all about as convincing as genuine Eskimo music as you can imagine coming from the eyeballed wonders, and that's definitely part of its charm. The vocals themselves you can take as non-sensical made up words, or listen closely and you might be able to hear some familiar phrases here and there: "Coca Cola adds life" and "we want Coke, oh yeah!" are definitely in here. How much other subliminal marketing the Residents slipped in here is up for debate. Some people hear more than others. This handsome digipack edition comes with the original cover art; a classic image of the Residents on wearing tuxes, tails and eyeballs on a deco stage setup out of the 40's.
MPEG Stream: " The Walrus Hunt"
MPEG Stream: "The Angry Angkok"

RESIDENTS, THE Meet The Residents (Cryptic / Euro Ralph) cd 15.98
Meet The Residents, a truly fucked up psychedelic masterpiece if ever there was one, was originally released in 1974. As a recording, half of it sounds like it was taken from cassettes that had been baking in a thrift store window display for several years before being dubbed to multi-track with overdubbed toy pianos. The deranged arrangements are impossible to decrypt. There's obviously some good players involved here, but there's a great deal of clumsy, high school band dropout playing as well -- and that's what really makes this album intriguing. The album kicks off with a quite intentionally terrible version of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made For Walking" with the previously mentioned "high school band" playing accompaniment, but we're fortunately left off the hook from receiving an abused cover and instead the song loops over the final phrase of the chorus before degenerating altogether. The balance of the album is a reflection of this degeneration, with songs knit together by shifting from one small repeated element into entirely new pieces. Meet The Residents is noisy, rough and brutal. Full of fucked up tangos, jerky rumbas and twisted waltzes. This is very much not the same band that produced God In Three Persons some 13 years later. These Residents had never even heard of a synthesizer, let alone a sequencer; every instrument on here is painfully detuned by hand. This is garbage psychedelia at its best and an absolutely essential album for anyone who walks that crooked line between fucked up experiemental noise and pop music!
MPEG Stream: "Numb Erone / Guylum Bardot / Breath And Length "
MPEG Stream: "Rest Aria"
MPEG Stream: "Seasoned Greetings"

ROGEFELDT, PUGH Ja, da a da! (Metronome / Warner Sweden) cd 16.98
Here's something definitely for fans (like us) of Sweden's Dungen -- you know, the retro-pop-sike wunderkind whose Ta Det Lugnt cd has been flying out the door here of late. Well, we're pretty sure that seventies Swedish psych-folk singer/songwriter Pugh Rogefeldt was a big influence on Dungen's Gustav Ejstes. We just got in this brand new import reissue of Pugh's 1969 classic debut, and quite a bit of it sure sounds a lot like what Dungen does, although overall it's somewhat folkier and more eccentric. Like the Dungen album, this is total ear candy for anyone into somewhat rustic psychedelic sixities pop. And oh yeah, Janne Karlsson of Hansson and Karlsson fame plays drums! And we should note that along with folks who like Dungen, DJ Shadow fans will also find this of interest, 'cause you ought to recognize the very first sounds you hear on this album as the (uncredited) intro to "Mutual Slump" from SJ Shadow's Endtroducing. One of those "so that's where that comes from!" moments, and more evidence of Shadow's excellent taste...
MPEG Stream: "Love, Love, Love"
MPEG Stream: "Har Kommer Natten"

SCHNAUSS, ULRICH A Strangely Isolated Place (City Center Offices) cd 15.98

SCHNAUSS, ULRICH A Strangely Isolated Place (Domino) cd 14.98
Mr. Schnauss builds swells of swishy guitar washs, processed vocals and melting glacial keyboard lines that bring to mind the wintry, atmospheric electronic rock likes of Mum, Magyar Posse and the Notwist, not to mention Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine (particularly on tracks such as the very shoegazey "Clear Day"). A Strangely Isolated Place is super dreamy, yet beneath Schnauss' many fuzzy, effects laden blankets lie both solid melodies and programmed rhythms that keep a steady shuffling beat for you to either just bob your head to or if you feel so inclined, twirl about like you're chasing butterflies. Schnauss fits perfectly among his blissed out Domino label brethren. Fans of the abovementioned bands should definitely give Schnauss a spin. Woozy lovely goodness!
MPEG Stream: "A Letter From Home"
MPEG Stream: "Clear Day"

SECRET CHIEFS 3 Book Of Horizons (Web of Mimicry) cd 13.98
The Book Of Horizons is another sonic tome scribed by these occult chieftans, destined for the same library as outre literary works like the Principia Discordia and the sanity-blasting Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. (This just goes in the audio section of said library.) To the uninitiated, we should explain that Secret Chiefs 3 is the arcane alter ego of Mr. Bungle's Trey Spruance and others from the same axis of absurdity. Almost all instrumental, imagine some sort of technically insane Middle Eastern surf music, a collision between the Sun City Girls and Fantomas, or a John Zorn-scored soundtrack to some desert epic. Italian horror film music, black metal, and even turntables all enter the mix. In the liner notes, Trey finds it necessary to state: "What you hear is music, not samples"! As always, impressive and inscrutable, even if the mood is occasionally broken by the more incongrous elements. Fans can spend their time listening to this, also attempting to decipher the meaning of the SC3's cryptic Kabbalistic computer graphics and song titles. A five star sequel to the band's previous opus Book M.
MPEG Stream: "The 4 (Great Ishraqi Sun)"
MPEG Stream: "Exterminating Angel"

SHAGAN, MAZHAR Ragas Au Penjab (Harmonia Mundi) cd 17.98
Not only is Mazhar Shagan a modern master of Hindustani classical music, he is also fairly non-traditional in the fact that he perfoms these gorgeously drone-y, age-old ragas on the very Western mandolin! Like much classical Indian music, these are epic and shimmering, long form drones, steel strings buzzing, weaving a lush nest of sonic overtones, underpinning emotionally rich melodies, weaving hypnotically through the thick sonic miasma. The sound of the mandolin is distinctly non-Eastern, and gives the proceedings an almost country feel, making Ragas Au Penjab sound like early twentieth century Appalachian folk music filtered through Indian classical music. So, so nice. Definitely for fans of modern practitioners of the (American Primitive) raga like Jack Rose, Pelt, Fahey etc, as well of course, as fans of Indian classical music.
MPEG Stream: "Raga Desh"

SINATRA, NANCY s/t (Sanctuary) cd 16.98
A prediction: we'll soon be reading an abundance of reviews of Nancy Sinatra's album referencing her '60s pop hit. Y'know, phrases like "forty years later her boots still keep walkin'". Oops, and now I'm guilty of it too!
Anyways, is this woman some sort of freak of nature or what?! Holy shit, she just popped back up over thirty years after her last release (1971's This Is Nancy Sinatra) and sounds *exactly* the same. Her voice is absolutely ageless, and she's made her music pretty timeless too. Joined by a diverse bunch of younger jaunty musical suitors such as Morrissey, Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, Jon Spencer, Thurston Moore, Stevie Van Zandt, U2, Pete Yorn and Calexico, she covers such a broad pop palette that she can't be pinned down. As a result this album may appeal to virtually all ages and all walks. The album begins in the best possible way with Sinatra singing the Joey Burns-penned tune "Burnin' Down The Spark" with Calexico as her backing band! It's a fantastic inspired match (oops, no pun intended). The second song "Ain't No Easy Way" recalls her wonderful old duets with Lee Hazlewood. Aah, her ladylike vocals contrasted with the kinda strange'n'creepy male ones (on this one, it's Spencer who assumes the Hazlewood role). Have to say though I'm not so sure about his exclamation of what sounds like "sock it to me!" halfway through. Yikes! Further on, Sinatra proves she's got the spookiness in her too on the eery fifth song "Momma's Boy" penned by Moore. Among the eleven songs there's also smoky ballads, perky energetic numbers and more with Sinatra and all the boys rising to the occasion. Go Nancy!!
MPEG Stream: "Burnin Down The Spark"
MPEG Stream: "Ain't No Easy Way"

SKYGREEN LEOPARDS One Thousand Bird Ceremony (Soft Abuse) cd 13.98
We often wonder...can those Jewelled Antler guys do no wrong? Naw, so far, it seems not. Once you're hooked, you're hooked, and we can't help but sing the praises of pretty much all the releases to emanate from this inspired Bay Area "collective" of nature-loving, often-improvising, uber-prolific music-lovers, whether they be cd-r releases on their own Jewelled Antler imprint or one of the many spun-off to other like-minded labels. Like this one, on Soft Abuse. It's the second album from Skygreen Leopards, the duo of Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Mirza, The Birdtree, etc.) and Donovan Quinn (Verdure), and they sort of align with the other Jewelled Antler "pop/vocal" duos Blithe Sons (also with Donaldson) and Child Readers. But unlike those two, the Skygreen Leopards' songs are actually composed and rehearsed, less products of the moment than good ol' songcraft. Not that they went into any fancy studio to make this or anything, indeed the field recording that opens this disc situates the duo out in a pasture somewhere, seemingly serenading a bovine audience with their achingly lovely, loosely structured psych-folk-pop music. Gentle, whispy vocals sing songs with mythical lyrics, full of both melanchoic sadness and hope. Such song titles as "All Our Plagues Were Rainbows" and "Let Me Grow In Your Meadow" are good indications of what their music evokes. With a vast array of instrumentation (in common with most Jewelled Antler projects) including 6 & 12 string guitars, dulcimer, portable turntable, 5 string banjo, bouzouki, Hammond, chord organ, tamborines, mandolin, penny whistle, and echoplex, Glenn and Donovan conjure some quite beautiful nap-time music, sleepy and serene. Their songs should, obviously, be of great appeal to the whole Ptolemaic Terrascope/Broken Face crowd, with echoes of Elephant 6 (a little Olivia Tremor Control I'm hearing), early Tyrannosaurus Rex, Richard Youngs' folkier stuff. Resplendent in one of Glenn's crude but colourful collages, populated as always by mysterious bird-headed figures, One Thousand Bird Ceremony is an album that captures the la la las of fluffy clouds passing overhead, as the Skygreen Leopards say "Hello To All Your Rain" (track 7).
MPEG Stream: "Summer Alchemy"
MPEG Stream: "Walk With The Golden Cross"

SLOAN Action Pact (Koch / Two Minutes For Music) cd 16.98
Highly anticipated around these parts (well at least here at AQ!), this is the domestic release of the newest album from one of our favorite Canadian bands. Cup nabbed an import copy for Andee a couple of months back, so he's already more than acquainted with it. As has been the case with each Sloan album, after the first couple of listens we're initially apprehensive... not quite sure if they've successfully worked their pop rock magic again. However, by the third, fourth and fifth listen, we're hooked! Action Pact is no exception.
Sloan fans know very well how the four fellows usually split up songwriting/singing duties fairly evenly. Well, depending on who your fave Sloan member is, you may be pleased or disappointed to hear that Action Pact seems more Patrick and Chris heavy than Andrew and Jay. Can't tell you for sure 'cause all of their songs are simply credited to "Sloan", but that's what it sounds like to us.
They've got some good lines on this one (like "One thing I know about the rest of my life / I know I'll be living it in Canada"), but their lyrics can sometimes be their weak spot. Good thing they're singing in Canadian! There's a distinct almost wide-eyed innocence that surfaces in their lyric writing -- often this is a endearing, positive thing, while other times it can be a bit cringable (is that a word?!), falling in the too-clever / cheesy pun department. But it's all part and parcel of why we love Sloan so much. Goofy and fun summery jangly perfect pop, sometimes dumb, but always so damn catchy! Perfect for cruisin' in your Camaro! Sloan rule, that's just a fact.
Note: this domestic release includes a couple of dandy bonus tracks (which may even entice any of you who already got the import)!
MPEG Stream: "Gimme That"
MPEG Stream: "Rest Of My Life"

SMITH, ELLIOTT From A Basement On A Hill (Anti) cd 15.98
Man, it's hard to review this record. No matter how good it is or isn't, it's just really really sad. Elliott Smith was one of those musicians everybody liked. You wouldn't be at all surprised to find his records in your metal friends' collections, and for sure no indie / emo / post rock collection was complete without EVERY one of his records. Some folks were disappointed with Smith's later musical trajectory, abandoning his whispery vocals and barely-there hushed acoustic back drops in favor of big production and strings and pianos and pop bombast. But at the root of it all, Smith was always a gifted songwriter, capturing all the confusions and regrets of his life in a way that we could all relate to in our own way. We may not have struggled with addiction but an Elliott Smith song about addiction would be just as likely to end up on a mix tape for the love of your life than helping you through your struggle with smack. And that's quite a gift, turning a specific subject into a universal fear or hope. And somehow Smith managed to do just that for us. It's always sad losing someone like that. Like Kurt Cobain. When Cobain died we were all crushed. It was like losing one of our own. The same with Elliott Smith. None of us really knew him. He played at Aquarius once a long time ago. He was really quiet, and super nice. But you could tell he was just deeply deeply sad. His set was stunning, leaving several AQ staffers in tears. That was how powerful his music was. And still is. From A Basement On A Hill is a bit of a dodgy proposition. An unfinished record, completed by friends and family after his death. I guess the real question is just how unfinished the record was. Sonically this is definitely along the lines of XO or Figure 8, big Beatles-esque pop, swooning, swaying, all lush and gorgeous of course, with the occasional, ultra stripped down number, with just Smith's vocals and a guitar. Pretty intense. It all sounds a bit raw in places, but that's to be expected. And it's hard not to read too much into the songs knowing the sort of emotional turmoil that helped shape them, but ultimately it doesn't really matter. This is a great Elliott Smith record. Like they all are. And everyone will take what they want or need from it. Simply a great pop record, a glimpse into the tortured soul of an artist that is sorely missed, or a record full of personal and private thoughts, hopes, dreams, and revelations that we can all understand or try to understand in our own way. More likely all of those and more. A sad and beautful and strangely hopeful musical treasure.
MPEG Stream: "Coast To Coast"
MPEG Stream: "Pretty (Ugly Before)"

SMITH, ELLIOTT From A Basement On A Hill (Anti) 2lp 14.98
Man, it's hard to review this record. No matter how good it is or isn't, it's just really really sad. Elliott Smith was one of those musicians everybody liked. You wouldn't be at all surprised to find his records in your metal friends' collections, and for sure no indie / emo / post rock collection was complete without EVERY one of his records. Some folks were disappointed with Smith's later musical trajectory, abandoning his whispery vocals and barely-there hushed acoustic back drops in favor of big production and strings and pianos and pop bombast. But at the root of it all, Smith was always a gifted songwriter, capturing all the confusions and regrets of his life in a way that we could all relate to in our own way. We may not have struggled with addiction but an Elliott Smith song about addiction would be just as likely to end up on a mix tape for the love of your life than helping you through your struggle with smack. And that's quite a gift, turning a specific subject into a universal fear or hope. And somehow Smith managed to do just that for us. It's always sad losing someone like that. Like Kurt Cobain. When Cobain died we were all crushed. It was like losing one of our own. The same with Elliott Smith. None of us really knew him. He played at Aquarius once a long time ago. He was really quiet, and super nice. But you could tell he was just deeply deeply sad. His set was stunning, leaving several AQ staffers in tears. That was how powerful his music was. And still is. From A Basement On A Hill is a bit of a dodgy proposition. An unfinished record, completed by friends and family after his death. I guess the real question is just how unfinished the record was. Sonically this is definitely along the lines of XO or Figure 8, big Beatles-esque pop, swooning, swaying, all lush and gorgeous of course, with the occasional, ultra stripped down number, with just Smith's vocals and a guitar. Pretty intense. It all sounds a bit raw in places, but that's to be expected. And it's hard not to read too much into the songs knowing the sort of emotional turmoil that helped shape them, but ultimately it doesn't really matter. This is a great Elliott Smith record. Like they all are. And everyone will take what they want or need from it. Simply a great pop record, a glimpse into the tortured soul of an artist that is sorely missed, or a record full of personal and private thoughts, hopes, dreams, and revelations that we can all understand or try to understand in our own way. More likely all of those and more. A sad and beautful and strangely hopeful musical treasure.
MPEG Stream: "Coast To Coast"
MPEG Stream: "Pretty (Ugly Before)"

STEREO, THE No Traffic (Fueled By Ramen) cd 13.98
This is easily the best pop record we've heard in a while. Super commercial and catchy, but still crunchy and a little punk rock. When I was in Europe a few months ago, I kept hearing this band over and over again played randomly in punk rock mixtapes and over club P.A.s and couldn't for the life of me understand why all these punk rockers were digging this ultra commercial pop. Maybe it's because they're on the punk rock label Feuled By Ramen? Not that I'm complaining, it just seems a bit strange. Allan and Jeff both think it sounds like Journey, but they both listen to it incessantly. I think it sounds like Y&T, but that probably doesn't mean much to anyone but me. Imagine super glossy production (courtesy of Jawbox's J. Robbins) and unbearably catchy songs. The slow(ish) ones sound like Weezer or Sloan. The fast ones sound like pop punk, but without most of the punk. The new record No Traffic is a lot more glossy and FM radio, VERY Weezer, but I think the one right before it, Three Hundred is better, a little more raw and really rocking. Just buy them both.
RealAudio clip: "New Tokyo Is Calling"
RealAudio clip: "Get Set For Sound"
RealAudio clip: "You've Got Some Nerve (from 'Three Hundred')"
RealAudio clip: "She Would Never (from 'Three Hundred')"

STEREO, THE Rewind + Record (Fueled By Ramen) cd 13.98
We have been so excited for the release of this record. We were kind of late discovering the Stereo, but it took no time at all for their last two records to instantly become way too played, in the store, at home, in the car. Perfect kick ass power pop. Just the right balance of cheesy seventies FM radio catchiness and thick guitars, amazing harmonies, and hooks galore! So I have to admit to being a little bummed when I first heard this. It seemed much less catchy, and a LOT more Journey/REO Speedwagon. And while a few other Aquarians still feel that way, I wasn't about to give up that easily. And boy, was I ever rewarded for my tenacity. This has to be THE pop record of the year. You know how some records immediately hook you and you play the shit out of them until you almost can't stand to hear them anymore? And then there's some records (like the most recent Anniversary for instance) where on first listen, there's not the obvious hooks to hang onto so you sort of dismiss it as 'not as good' as their other records. But often when you return, you realise that albums like that often slowly reveal themselves to be the sort of records that become totally essential, and end up getting listened to way more than those immediately catchy ones. So what I'm getting at here, is that this is definitely the best Stereo record yet, and quite possibly the best pop record this year. The songs are more complex and more subtle, butthey still rock, and still have amazing hooks! And this time around there's all sorts of extra unexpected additions: weird production, strange synthesizers and crazy drum programming. But those new elements only add to the pop brilliance these pop punkers can conjure up at the drop of a hat. I swear I have not gone a day without blasting this record since it came out. Think the Posies, Jellyfish, the Anniversary, the Get Up Kids, Superchunk, Weezer, Redd Kross, Silver Sun, Sloan. Totally good time, big guitar, clap along, driving with the top down, mix tape for that girl you like PEFECT POP. Buy this or you'll make Andee very sad.
RealAudio clip: "Pay No Attention"
RealAudio clip: "You Better Believe It"
RealAudio clip: "Tell Your Football Dad No"
RealAudio clip: "Have I Paid My Debt To Mpls?"
RealAudio clip: "Turn Off Your TV"

RODEN, STEVE Speak No More About the Leaves (SIRR) cd 14.98
Steve Roden's Speak No more About The Leaves has been Allan's favorite going-to-sleep record of the past little while, its whispery drones reminding him distantly of everything from a deconstructed Richard Youngs to a dessicated Bohren & Der Club of Gore. There's a bunch of academic concepts and references that went into the making of this record (discussed below) but that's less important than the fact that it sounds so nice. This lovely record deserved a lovely review, so we asked our pal Loren Chasse, friend and fan of LA experimentalist Steve Roden, to take a stab at it, as follows:
Steve Roden has been given shit by the soundart world for being "experimentally incorrect". Perhaps this is because the concepts behind Roden's work are never so "conceptual"Ì or self-important that they become the reason why the music is supposed to be interesting, good or enjoyable. Roden's conceptual practice seems to be more of a private strategy for going about his creative work -- for providing the compositional process with specific possibilities and limitiations -- than it is a purposeful means for earning validation from the experimental art/music world.
Take Speak No More About The Leaves...a sort of threeway meta-collaboration with composer Arnold Schoenberg and poet Stefan George in which Roden happens upon Schoenberg's use of George's verse for some lyrics to a piece of music titled "The book of the Hanging Gardens", transplants a cutting from this and cultivates a whole new life from it in his own work. The life of this record, indeed, comes so much from Roden's own mouth as he sings syllables taken from the original text and creates not so much a work of high fallutin' conceptual art as he does a beautiful song that might leave us wondering if Mr. Roden hasn't also been listening to Eyeless in Gaza somewhere along the way?
If you like the title of the record and appreciate the poetic impulses at its origins you're already on your way to liking the music. Roden's voice is extremely intimate as it sits in the edge of the speakers (seeming as if it might be coming out of the phone you forgot to hang up), chanting into the room as shining slivers of sound effervesce, chime and fall around it. It's a world you can't quite place, probably because you haven't been so small that you could ever fit inside the terrarium that contains it, yet you will intuit something comforting and familiar as you use this record as a sort of stethoscope for listening in on the processes of tiny lives taking root as old ones decay and all but disappear.
MPEG Stream: "Airria (Hanging Garden) second version"
MPEG Stream: "Speak No More About The Leaves "

STILLUPPSTEYPA s/t (Atak) cd 16.98
We may shooting ourselves in the foot by listing this record, as we only have a handful of the records and are not too sure about the possibility of restocking it. But what the hell, it's another great Stilluppsteypa album... so we'll list it, but if you want one act fast!
While certainly not by design, the Icelandic duo of Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson have kept a relatively low profile as Stilluppsteypa during the past couple of years. Sigmarsson kept himself busy with his own solo projects of likeminded isolationist spectroscopy and grandiose electronic absurdities, but Stilluppsteypa have only managed two albums since 2002 including The Immediate Past Is Of No Interest To Us and this eponymous album from 2004 on the obscure Japanese label Atak. The simple fact that Thorsson has been living in Amsterdam and Sigmarsson has been continuing his studies in Hannover helps explain the slow working process of the two these days. Nevertheless, when they do manage to get together to fire off another raygun blast of high-voltage rhythms crossed with clinical dronescaping, it's always amazing.
On this album, Stilluppsteypa pick up where they left off with The Immediate Past and their 2001 masterpiece Stories Part Five. Mechanical whirlings and abrasively tense drones steadily build into giddy episodes for electo-bossanova beats and carnivalesque melodies. Where most of Stilluppsteypa's contemporaries would treat such source materials with fart jokes and a purile disregard for quality, Stilluppsteypa take a considerable amount of pride in scripting inventive electronica juxtapositions with remarkable technique and theatrical panache. In many ways, Sigmarsson and Thorsson are emerging as the equals of B.C. Gilbert and Graham Lewis in all of their extra-cirricular activities outside of Wire. Great stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Track 5"
MPEG Stream: "Track 12"
MPEG Stream: "Track 16"

STINKING LIZAVETA Caught Between Worlds (At A Loss) cd 13.98
Is there any other band that's SO GOOD live that I (Allan) would actually plan a trip somewhere thousands of miles away almost entirely on the basis of getting to see 'em play? 'Cause that's what I'm doing for Halloween -- flying to New Orleans, which would be fun anyways but is gonna be extra-awesome 'cause this Philly-based, all-instrumental power trio will be tearing down the house at Checkpoint Charlie's on the edge of the French Quarter, as they apparently do every Halloween. And as if to pile on the excitement, what shows up at Aquarius this week but a brand new Stinking Lizaveta opus? Yay! Their fourth album finds 'em doing what they do best, adhering to their math rock + jazz + exotic flourishes + sheer rock and roll exuberance formula, with perhaps a little bit more stoner rock added to the equation this time around. Imagine an instrumental Spirit Caravan melded with The Fucking Champs and Gone...something like that. Heavy, sinuous, emotive, grandiose, intimate, anguished, epic, melodic, HEAVY. It's not a perfect album, though -- the drum sound could be better (or at least the drums could be not so loud) sez Andee, and it suffers as all Stinking Lizaveta records do in comparison to their spectacular live performances. Basically, they are SUCH a good live band that it's just hard for them to ever make an album that's nearly as good as they are in person. I love their records, but they really don't compare to the band on stage. Their intense playing, telepathic interplay, and sheer energy are all there...but not as much as you get live. That they're such a formidable proposition live works against their recordings in another way: they probably just assume that if they just go in the studio and kick ass like they do on stage, they'll make the best album ever. Of course, it's not quite that easy. Still, Caught Between Worlds is worlds above almost everything else in the post/math/instro/stoner rock realm... Recommended -- get this and also don't miss 'em if you get the chance, they're on tour right now!
MPEG Stream: "I Denounce The Government"
MPEG Stream: "Beyond The Shadows"
MPEG Stream: "Last Wish"

STRAY s/t (Walhalla) cd 21.00
Here's yet another one of those bands that we'd vaguely heard of (or perhaps not) but never really encountered actual records by, and now that we have we can't figure out why they weren't a bigger deal! I think I first became aware of 'em via the thanks/influences list on a Pentagram album. Kinda always assumed they were your basic British blues rock but on the evidence of this, their 1970 debut they were something a little different than the Cream/Zep sort of thing I'd imagined. They're rather more like a '60s psych-pop singles band, of the garagey/Nuggetsy variety, with the fuzz factor and sheer guitar heaviness cranked way up toward proto-metallic levels. More psych than prog, more pop than blues. Kinda punk too. Very kick ass and energetic, catchy and rockin', venturing from the paisley-painted pop melodicism of "Around The World In Eighty Days" to the slamming punkish "Only What You Make It" to a number of extended fuzz guitar workouts... but first and foremost it's good old-fashioned hard rock. Think Thin Lizzy. Or Dust, or Budgie. Or even early, early Rush (one song here always puts Byram in mind of "Working Man"). But as mentioned it's got a poppy '60s garage vibe unlike a lot of those acts... And there's enough proggier, psychier elements loaded in here to pique the interest of a wider audience than just the hard rock lovers among us. The guitar parts especially are full of odd harmonies and melodic richness that bring to mind Amon Duul II, if Amon Duul II could have managed to fit their open ended song structures into a tighter blues rock straight jacket. What makes Stray's music work so well is their attention to structure: keeping their compositions on a tight leash and avoiding the esoteric meanderings that can be a pitfall to many prog rockers. This and their sense of dynamics, knowing just how and when to throw the switch and rip the seat of your pants, is what must have made them a seriously kick ass live band (and apparently they were super popular as such in and around their London, England turf, but unfortunately never managed to cash in on the hard rock success like some of their contempories). They recorded numerous albums, of which this first one is likely their best (though their second LP Suicide is a good one too, and we're just not that familiar with the rest of their '70s output), but their biggest claim to fame might be that Iron Maiden covered one of their songs on a b-side ("All In Your Mind", the very first track on this disc). Stray's version was way better btw.
MPEG Stream: "All In Your Mind"
MPEG Stream: "Time Machine"

SUZUKI, AKIO Odds & Ends (Horen) 2cd 26.00
Legendary Japanese musician / inventor / instrument builder / visionary Akio Suzuki is most likely unknown to most of you. But the more we discover, and the more of his music we hear, the more it seems like everyone needs to hear / experience his genius. Those of you who bought the recently re-listed Kogezan Kosugi double cd, a gorgeous ambient happening in a temple, surrounded by rain, have heard Suzuki performing on an ancient stone flute. And while the sound and spirit of the performance captured the tone and purpose of Suzuki's life and work, he is much more than just a stone flautist. Suzuki has been performing and building and teaching for 30+ years, exploring nature and how natural sounds can be captured and then set free, how one can get lost in the sounds all around us, and how music and creation and beauty exist always and everywhere. These tracks, as the titles suggests, are bits and pieces culled from the last 3 decades and reveal a spiritual pre-cursor to the Jewelled Antler collective, modern sound art and sound art exploration. Home made echo machines create throbbing, hypnotic voicescapes, warm and soft and naturally unique. Dancers' movements are translated into hand positions on a piano creating wild and unpredictable jumbles of notes. Hand made brick walls interact with wind and weather and expose their hidden emotions as haunting tones and subtle drones. Sounds are shuffled between multiple cassette decks creating insext symphonies of high end whir and distant chirps. Long glass tubes are struck and rubbed and bowed mimicking the sound of bird calls. Multiple turntables are used as the 'plates' in a musical game of plate juggling. Microphones are placed in rolled up tubes of paper, recording the phase shifts of people moving around the room and the sounds of the papers shifting. Roughly cut bamboo flutes accompanying the sound of a distant waterfall and the songs of birds. Suzuki's music is pure and zen, dreamy and uncluttered by the rules and worries of most modern music making. The liner notes are littered with effusive adulation from folks like Jim O'rourke ("All you have to do is listen"), David Toop ("I think of Akio Suzuki as a kind of magician") Yamatsuka Eye ("Hearing this music, I remember many things, including playing in a puddle as a tiny kid") and more. Suzuki reflects fondly on the recordings and offers us a glimpse into the soul of a shaman, truly in touch with himself and the sounds the earth has to offer. If we only know how, and where, to look.
MPEG Stream: "Analapos '70"
MPEG Stream: "Als-Ob"
MPEG Stream: "Ta Yu Ta I #2"

TARAB Surfacedrift (Naturestrip) cd 16.98
Eamon Sprod (aka Tarab) is a name you don't come across everyday; and I (Jim) swear that I've heard something by this Australian sound artist somewhere along the way. While I could be remembering a track on some obscure Australian compilation, I am probably mistaken as Surfacedrift is his debut recording. Given the high quality of this record, I should have been listening to Sprod's work for many years along with all of those Hazard, Francisco Lopez, and Loren Chasse records that I constantly return to. This unfortunate lapse of memory could also be the result of wandering through Sprod's psychogeographic soundfields. Surfacedrift is a disorienting album, which implodes the perspectives of sound by amplifying the miniscule and softening the impact from environmental recordings. Sprod massages richly textured passages from crumpled leaves, spilled water, and tumbling rocks; he couples these haptic events with field recordings. As everything is so seemless, it's hard to tell if Sprod had actually recorded these rock garden symphonies out of doors (a la Blithe Sons), or if there's a fair amount of production work synthesizing the field recordings with the performative elements. An very impressive debut to say the least!
MPEG Stream: "Surface"
MPEG Stream: "Leaf"

TV ON THE RADIO Desperate Youth, Blood Thisty Babes (Touch & Go) cd 14.98
Excellent! TV On The Radio's sophomore release (and debut full length!) is a passionate, captivating, artful work, with languid bass grooves and simmering guitars. Atmospheric tensions take shape, gradually build, deepen and close in. The album's second song "Staring At The Sun" is quite something to behold -- a brooding stunner. The vocalist reminds us of Peter Gabriel so much sometimes that it is unnerving. But in a good way. Kind of like classic Genesis filtered through the depressive brood of modern slowcore mope rock. But with lots of studio sheen and ambient fuckery. Dark and delirious, dreamy and moody and oh so good!
MPEG Stream: "Staring At The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "King Eternal"

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA s/t (Sundazed) cd 15.98
United States Of America is quite a politically charged monicker these days, what with the whole country / world divided over the war in Iraq and our President and gay marriage and everything else under the sun. Probably wasn't a whole lot less volatile 36 years ago, in the midst of the Vietnam War, when this record was first released. Which was precisely the point.
USoA mastermind Joseph Byrd was a long time devotee of twentieth century composition and minimalism, studying and/or studying with LaMonte Young, John Cage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Charles Ives and the rest. While at UCLA, Byrd helped organise the New Music Workshop and eventually arranged an elaborate set of concerts which culminated in a Lamonte Young piece that involved the inflation of a giant hot air balloon. Fearful that the less sophisticated members of the audience would get bored and leave, Byrd formed a blues band to play during that part of the performance and convinced his pal Linda Rondstadt to sing. Thus came the realisation that a rock band would give Byrd access to a much bigger audience, and so began his quest to start a psychedelic rock band, which would eventually be realized as United States Of America. Made up of Byrd's friends from academia and ethnomusicology and his ex-girlfriend, and born from his frustration with the war and his leaving UCLA, USoA became a politically charged experimental psychedelic rock combo unlike any that had come before. Utilising a not exactly standard bass /drums /guitar /violin lineup, their sound was further augmented by ring modulators, organ, harpsichord, and calliope. The end result was a sixties rock band, drenched in psychedelic filligree, swooping electronic trippiness, all sorts of circus-y weirdness, bizarre editing and song structures, but never losing sight of great songs.
And a lot of these songs are indeed great. Probably the best track on the record is "The Garden Of Earthly Delights", a super rocking Stereolab meets Jefferson Airplane number, that would not sound at all out of place on Emperor Tomato Ketchup, if it weren't for the gritty sixties rock chorus (with a hook to die for) and the storm of buzzing and bleeping, overloaded affects and tripped out swooping and soaring bleeps and bloops. And then there's the final track, a three part experimental montage / coda, all ambient jangle and ethereal ambience, with snippets and samples from the rest of the tracks on the record, resulting in a super damaged art-rock musical acid trip. And the rest of the record veers from countryish campfire stomps, to smoke-y sultry ballads, to freaked out psych jams and everything in between. All blessed by the absolutely gorgeous vocals of Dorothy Moskowitz.This record may be a psychedelic country pop rock record, but boy is it more than that. Reminds us quite a bit of recent AQ record of the week Euphoria, with it's complicated and bizarre arrangements and its unlikely melding of country rock, lush baroque pop and acid fried guitar leads. Imagine a Frankensteinian sonic monster constructed from Euphoria, Stereolab, Fifty Foot Hose, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds...then make said monster do some coursework in twentieth century compostion and experimental minimalism, and let it experiment with a suitcase full of homemade sound generators and you'd still have trouble imagining how great this record is. As always Sundazed does the reissue right, with extensive liner notes from Joseph Byrd, and interview with Dorothy Moskowitz and TEN bonus tracks, almost all of them unreleased, and most of them as good as anything on the album proper!
MPEG Stream: "The Garden Of Earthly Delights"
MPEG Stream: "Hard Coming Love"
MPEG Stream: "The American Metaphysical Circus"
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Song"

UP-TIGHT Lucrezia (Alchemy) cd 21.00
Dark, heavy Japanese guitar psych!! We love it. If you do too -- we're talking bands like Fushitsusha, White Heaven, Kousokuya, Shizuka, and grandaddies of 'em all, the deservedly-legendary, decades-old Les Rallizes Denudes -- then this new release on the Alchemy label by Tokyo's Up-Tight comes highly recommended. We reviewed their US debut release, the aptly titled Five Psychedelic Pieces, just a few months back, and have been looking forward to this new album, a Japanese import, ever since. It doesn't disappoint. If anything, a lot of this has got an even heavier, dronier edge than what we heard on the last one. Super fuzzed guitars, sad ballads, grinding distorto epics. Not to be messed with. Along with that other great up-and-coming Tokyo psych outfit with an admittedly better name whom you probably also dig, LSD-march, these guys are the heirs to Les Rallizes' black-clad, acid-fried, downer dirge throne. Drop the (figurative, laser) needle on this and soon you'll be transported to the cloudy peak of their majestic solid rock night-black mountain, where maybe you'll find a guru willing to show you how to conquer your fears and walk on those clouds... Five tracks, four in the 8-10 minute range, culminating in a final 23 minute tour de force.
MPEG Stream: "Song For Lucrezia I"
MPEG Stream: "Daydream Believer"
MPEG Stream: THE COCKTAILS "First Snowfall"

VAUGHN, VIKTOR Venomous Villain (Insomniac Music) cd 13.98
Joint number two from the venomous villain Viktor Vaughn, aka MF Doom, King Geedorah, and way back when, Zev Love X from the legendary KMD. Of all the different incarantions, his Viktor Vaughn persona is easily the most effective, both lyrically AND musically. A dark and delirious ride through some weird sepia toned musical Metropolis, a sonic comic book land where Viktor Vaughn rules with an iron mic, from his island hideout, where he spits rhymes packed with head scratching non-sequiters and ultra clever turns of phrase delivered in a slurry, super relaxed drawl over some of the most weirdly original hip hop scapes ever. Damaged ambience woven from stuttery samples of
old movie clips, shimmering strings, blues guitar licks, skipping records, fuzzy synths, dramatically soaring string sections, distant drones, hiccupping horns, head nodding loops, all over stuttering, almost un-funky, glitched out beats. At its root, this is a classic hip hop record, but VV (or one of his evil musical henchmen) is obviously into all sorts of avant abstract music, as every element of this record is slightly skewed and beautifully damaged, whether it be through super experimental production, unlikely beats more minimal techno than old skool hip hop, or dizzyingly plunderphonic soundscapes. Kool Keith guests on one track too!
MPEG Stream: "Back End"
MPEG Stream: "Doper Skiller feat. Kool Keith"

CHESNUTT, VIC Little (New West) cd 16.98
Vic Chesnutt's early albums have always been a bit hard to come by... especially this one from 1990. Fingers are crossed that New West keeps these reissues in print!
This is the album that started it all, and it's the one that's nearest and dearest to Cup (Andee on the other hand hugs Chesnutt's Is The Actor Happy? album). Unlike his later albums which infused pop elements into the foundation of his rootsy blues-folk, Little features some of his most barebones, raw acoustic guitar work. This starkness provides an all the more effective backdrop for one of the most expressive sourpuss voices around singing some of the most gnawingly bleak songs around. Bleary and skewed, his words tumble unapologetically from his lips -- emotional scars and verbal barbs all completely out in the open. Produced by Michael Stipe who took a shine to Chesnutt early on and helped bring him to college radio eyes and ears. Includes five previously unreleased tracks.
MPEG Stream: "Isadora Duncan"
MPEG Stream: "Independence Day"

VIRGIN PRUNES A New Form Of Beauty (Mute) cd 21.00
In the mid '70s, three disaffected Irish kids named Derek Rowen, Paul Hewson, and Fionan Hanvey devloped the idea of the Lypton Village, which was something of a clubhouse of likeminded miscreants. Within these friendly confines, the three encouraged each other's preternatural attraction to the absurd in renaming everything around them in accordance with a Dadaist logic. Rowen became Guggi, after the way that his faced looked while hiccupping, Hanvey transformed into the gender-bending dandy Gavin Friday, and Hewson emerged as Bono after the Bonavox hearing aid shop, which Guggi insisted he looked like.
While Bono obviously went onto world domination thanks to U2, Guggi and Gavin developed a far more bizarre form of artpunk through their band The Virgin Prunes. The origin of the band's name is a little vague, possibly being Irish slang for mastubation or somebody with a sexual hang-up. Either way, the band developed a reputation for being madmen as their transgressive performances and freakish attire came close to reincarnating Antonin Artaud's Theatre of the Absurd. In many ways, The Virgin Prunes were much more art than punk especially in their thematic inversions of religion, beauty, and language; but at the same time, their ability to provoke and threaten was unmatched, with the notable exception of Throbbing Gristle (another band named for jerking off).
A New Form Of Beauty was a very early conceptual project for the Prunes, originally conceived in seven chapters: a 7", a 10", a 12", a cassette, an installation, a book, and a movie. This double disc set comprises all of the audio works in that series; with the installation completed back in 1981 at a gallery in Dublin, and the book and film still unreleased. Despite their initial connection with Bono and company, The Virgin Prunes have very little in common with the musical sensibility of U2. In fact, their wildly imaginative and unorthodox style has very few accurate comparisons, although they had often been uncritically pegged a Goth band, I guess because they wore black eyeliner. Admittedly, A New Form Of Beauty is a gloomy and claustrophobic affair spun with a peculiar delirium. As on the propulsive "Come To Daddy," Gavin and Guggi twist their neo-babble duets into demented screams alongside air-raid siren guitars and metronomic rhythms; but on "Sad World," they dissolve a maudlin piano driven ballad into a oblique drone for the vocalists' empathic miserablism. Idiosyncratic and bloodied with scars, A New Form of Beauty revels in the poetry of abjection.
For many years, I (Jim) have treasured the few separate components that I've been able to find from this series, and I'm delighted that all of the audio components have been collected onto one disc. And yeah, it still sounds incredible after all these years...
MPEG Stream: "Come To Daddy"
MPEG Stream: "Sad World"
MPEG Stream: "Beast"

WITCHCRAFT s/t (The Music Cartel) cd 14.98
PERHAPS THEE BEST '70s-INSPIRED DOOM ALBUM EVER. Can't put it any plainer. This is sooo authentically old sounding, and sooo good. Sweden's Witchcraft have delved into the past through seemingly mystical means and come up with a masterpiece that sounds like it was recorded by some genius yet unknown downer-rock contemporary of Black Sabbath or Pentagram back in 1972. In a blindfold test, anyone into '70s heavy rock would be fooled for sure. Doomy retro-proto-metal full of heart-wrenching atmosphere, killer riffs, and melodic hooks galore. The mastermind behind Witchcraft, guitarist/vocalist Magnus Pellander, is obviously HUGELY into heavy '70s psych/prog rock. Doubtless he's got an extensive record collection with well-worn albums by Sabbath and a host of more obscure bands like Dust, Captain Beyond, November, Toad, Jerusalem, etc... But unlike so many other record collectors, instead of spending his time making want lists and grading LPs, Magnus *listened* to 'em, then went into the studio and wrote songs as good or BETTER than pretty much anything on those collector's platters. Literally, inspired stuff. As modern-day but '70s sounding records go, maybe only that Elope record we reviewed recently could compare in convincing us it was recorded thirty years ago -- imagine that album with heavier, fuzzier guitars and more melancholic vibrations. (Another one would be The Want album Southern Lord released a few years ago).
So we were super thrilled to hear that this band was putting out a full-length. And apparently other folks were too, 'cuz we've already sold a bunch of these in the store before even reviewing it! Kinda weird, since their only previous release, a 7" single paying tribute to two of Witchcraft main man Magnus Pelander's big heroes, Roky Erickson of the 13th Floor Elevators and Pentagram's Bobby Liebling, was a hard to find, import-only release (both tracks from which are included here, along with an obscure Pentagram cover making Witchcraft's love of Liebling even more obvious). On the strength of that single, though (and the few singles and compilation tracks recorded by Magnus's previous band, Norrsken), our anticipation for Witchcraft's debut album ran high. Well, as you've already gathered, we're even more thrilled to say that it more than lives up to our expectations! We have a handful of copies of the import vinyl as well, which includes a bonus track (another Pentagram cover).
MPEG Stream: "No Angel Or Demon"
MPEG Stream: "I Want You To Know"

WITCHCRAFT s/t (Rise Above Records) lp 21.00
PERHAPS THEE BEST '70s-INSPIRED DOOM ALBUM EVER. Can't put it any plainer. This is sooo authentically old sounding, and sooo good. Sweden's Witchcraft have delved into the past through seemingly mystical means and come up with a masterpiece that sounds like it was recorded by some genius yet unknown downer-rock contemporary of Black Sabbath or Pentagram back in 1972. In a blindfold test, anyone into '70s heavy rock would be fooled for sure. Doomy retro-proto-metal full of heart-wrenching atmosphere, killer riffs, and melodic hooks galore. The mastermind behind Witchcraft, guitarist/vocalist Magnus Pellander, is obviously HUGELY into heavy '70s psych/prog rock. Doubtless he's got an extensive record collection with well-worn albums by Sabbath and a host of more obscure bands like Dust, Captain Beyond, November, Toad, Jerusalem, etc... But unlike so many other record collectors, instead of spending his time making want lists and grading LPs, Magnus *listened* to 'em, then went into the studio and wrote songs as good or BETTER than pretty much anything on those collector's platters. Literally, inspired stuff. As modern-day but '70s sounding records go, maybe only that Elope record we reviewed recently could compare in convincing us it was recorded thirty years ago -- imagine that album with heavier, fuzzier guitars and more melancholic vibrations. (Another one would be The Want album Southern Lord released a few years ago).
So we were super thrilled to hear that this band was putting out a full-length. And apparently other folks were too, 'cuz we've already sold a bunch of these in the store before even reviewing it! Kinda weird, since their only previous release, a 7" single paying tribute to two of Witchcraft main man Magnus Pelander's big heroes, Roky Erickson and Pentagram's Bobby Liebling, was a hard to find, import-only release (both tracks from which are included here, along with an obscure Pentagram cover making Witchcraft's love of Liebling even more obvious). On the strength of that single, though (and the few singles and compilation tracks recorded by Magnus's previous band, Norrsken), our anticipation for Witchcraft's debut album ran high. Well, as you've already gathered, we're even more thrilled to say that it more than lives up to our expectations! We have a handful of copies of the import vinyl as well, which includes a bonus track (another Pentagram cover).
MPEG Stream: "No Angel Or Demon"
MPEG Stream: "I Want You To Know"

WOVEN HAND Consider The Birds (Soundsfamilyre) cd 14.98
So far, we've reviewed two Woven Hand records, and each time, we invariably slipped completely out of objectivity and giddily gushed about the sheer brilliance of this band, and we hate to break it to you, but this time is going to be no different. In fact, it's bound to be way worse (or better) because if you can believe it, this record is even better, and darker, and more suffocatingly apocalyptic, more biblically brutal, more overtly religious, more instrumentally obstuse, more sonically unpredictable, more soul-shearingly heart-breaking and quite possibly the best record of the year.
Woven Hand is David Eugene Edwards, who fronts the equally brilliant Sixteen Horsepower, a dark and doomy swamp folk outfit that peddles gorgeously dreary ballads of death and destruction. Woven Hand takes the sound of Sixteen Horsepower even further down that dark and seldom travelled path. Tales of an angry God, fire and brimstone, confusion and misery, the coming Rapture, lost souls, death and misery and the long hard road to salvation, all set inside mini epics of biblical proportions, acoustic guitars, mournful piano, throbbing upright bass, shuffling drums, weeping strings, creepy fuzzy ambience, and Edwards' gorgeous throaty moan of a wail. But it's not just pretty and sad and creepy, it's absolutely menacing, and intense and as heavy as a band like this can be. Imagine the Swans playing country ballads or a born again Nick Cave with a bayou pick up band forced to play the devil for their souls.
Not sure what else to say about this record. It's just so goddamn good. And so utterly soulful and important. It's everything music should be. You don't need toagree with his spiritual bent, or even understand what he's on about. This is passionate and pure and heartfelt and disturbingly personal and is thus more important than 90 percent of the music that gets made these days. Listening to the Woven Hand, you can't help but imagine them playing atop a crumbling mount, as the cities below them lay in ruin, flames and famine, death and pestilence ravaging the land, while the band, suffused with a heavenly glow, plays one last dirge, a skeletal ode to death, a bittersweet funereal lament, as the human race sinks into oblivion and the world prepares to begin anew.
MPEG Stream: "Bleary Eyed Duty"
MPEG Stream: "To Make A Ring"
MPEG Stream: "Oil On Panel"

WOVEN HAND Consider The Birds (Soundsfamilyre) lp 13.98
So far, we've reviewed two Woven Hand records, and each time, we invariably slipped completely out of objectivity and giddily gushed about the sheer brilliance of this band, and we hate to break it to you, but this time is going to be no different. In fact, it's bound to be way worse (or better) because if you can believe it, this record is even better, and darker, and more suffocatingly apocalyptic, more biblically brutal, more overtly religious, more instrumentally obstuse, more sonically unpredictable, more soul-shearingly heart-breaking and quite possibly the best record of the year.
Woven Hand is David Eugene Edwards, who fronts the equally brilliant Sixteen Horsepower, a dark and doomy swamp folk outfit that peddles gorgeously dreary ballads of death and destruction. Woven Hand takes the sound of Sixteen Horsepower even further down that dark and seldom travelled path. Tales of an angry God, fire and brimstone, confusion and misery, the coming Rapture, lost souls, death and misery and the long hard road to salvation, all set inside mini epics of biblical proportions, acoustic guitars, mournful piano, throbbing upright bass, shuffling drums, weeping strings, creepy fuzzy ambience, and Edwards' gorgeous throaty moan of a wail. But it's not just pretty and sad and creepy, it's absolutely menacing, and intense and as heavy as a band like this can be. Imagine the Swans playing country ballads or a born again Nick Cave with a bayou pick up band forced to play the devil for their souls.
Not sure what else to say about this record. It's just so goddamn good. And so utterly soulful and important. It's everything music should be. You don't need to agree with his spiritual bent, or even understand what he's on about. This is passionate and pure and heartfelt and disturbingly personal and is thus more important than 90 percent of the music that gets made these days. Listening to the Woven Hand, you can't help but imagine them playing atop a crumbling mount, as the cities below them lay in ruin, flames and famine, death and pestilence ravaging the land, while the band, suffused with a heavenly glow, plays one last dirge, a skeletal ode to death, a bittersweet funereal lament, as the human race sinks into oblivion and the world prepares to begin anew.
MPEG Stream: "Bleary Eyed Duty"
MPEG Stream: "To Make A Ring"
MPEG Stream: "Oil On Panel"

YOB The Illusion Of Motion (Metal Blade) cd 10.98
DOOoooooooOOOOM! We're not gonna stint on the O's in doom 'cuz this here's the third* album from the mighty Yob, who are Portland, Oregon's masters of massive doom-sludge. Think an unholy melding of Electric Wizard, Corrupted, Dead Meadow, and Ufomammut. Slow and low uber-heavy guitar and bass riffage, psychedelic space-out song structures, pummelling drums of doom, all perfectly topped by vocals that take to the skies like a heavily effected** hybrid of Ozzy and Geddy Lee, with the occasional descent into hellish death metal gutteralisms. Their previous album Catharsis was progtastically, trance-inducingly awesome, but The Illusion of Motion (their debut for unlikely new label Metal Blade!) may even be better. More dynamics, shifts of mood and tempo than before, and no slack on the heavosity scale. Yessir, they've become one of our favorite doom ensembles. And they're really nice guys too, as we discovered when we met them after the trio played in SF recently. Yes, we were lucky enough to witness Yob live for the first time at the 3 Days Of Darkness festival here in San Francisco last month. Despite some initial technical difficulties, once they got going they were unstoppable. And even the tech problems proved them to be true doom masters. Anyone with any doom/stoner rock cred knows about Orange amplification and how cool it is. And also the even rarer Green amps. But Yob not only was using Orange AND Green amps, but also Black. And when gremlims took out the Black amp, Yob then brought out... a White amp! Wow. But due to time constraints brought on by the aforementioned amp-switcheroo, they didn't get to play the new 26 minute epic that closes out this lengthy-but-only-four-song album (that's just one more than on Catharsis), so I hope they come back soon!
*if you're wondering, Yob's first album is out of print but soon due for a repress, we'll get 'em in when that happens of course.
**they don't sound anything like Jane's Addiction of course, but those vocals seem to use the Perry Farrell effect if you know what I mean.
MPEG Stream: "Ball Of Molten Lead"
MPEG Stream: "Exorcism Of The Host"

YOUNG & SEXY Life Through One Speaker (Mint) cd 14.98
Okay, we admit that we cringed slightly at their chosen band name (again, what is it with Canadian -- or more specifically Vancouver -- band name choices?!), but their glorious pop tunes are pretty darn hard to resist. Really, unless you're a complete stone-hearted curmudgeon, Young & Sexy's second full length will have your spirits lifted in no time! Each song has been lovingly polished to a wonderful warm glow with delicious multi-part harmonies and lush instrumentation. The third song "Herculean Bellboy" is a definite highlight. Come to think of it, have ya noticed Canada's stronghold on the swoonsome pop these days?! AQ superfaves New Pornographers, Destroyer, Broken Social Scene, P:Ano, The Gay, Metric... and now Young & Sexy! You may have been lucky enough to see them on tour recently opening for their Mint Records brethren and fellow Vancouverites the New Pornographers. And actually, they're sort of like the mellow side of the NPs and Zumpano melded with the honeydrop girl group vocal sweetness of UK bands such as Broadcast, Belle & Sebastian or Camera Obscura. We sell at least one of these each time it's played in the store!
MPEG Stream: "Herculean Bellboy"
MPEG Stream: "In This Atmosphere"

ZOLAR X Timeless (Alternative Tentacles) cd 14.98
Wow. A while back a friend of ours at Alternative Tentacles told us that Jello Biafra was all keen on reissuing some ultra-obscure '70s LA punk/glam band who apparently dressed up like space aliens and pretended they were from another planet (it helped that all the band members happened to be fairly short). Sounds, uh, interesting we said, we'll be curious to hear it... Well now we've heard that band -- this band, Zolar X -- and we've gotta say, Jello, thank you! This is freakin' awesome!
Brimming with extra-terrestrial energy, this collection compiles twenty tracks (fewer on the LP version) from three different recording sessions and Zolar X line-ups. Memphis 1976, LA 1979 and San Francisco 1980. All are great. Jello considers Zolar X to be "the missing link between Chrome and the Stooges"...and indeed some of this has that vibe, sorta like Simply Saucer. But the '60s pop background and Bowie-worship of Zolar X's prime movers Zory Zenith and Ygarr Ygarrist Lazor really results in something that was both more bubblegum and yet more metal too. Zolar X's collision of punk and glam, though totally underground, had definite classic, commerical rock pretensions...the vocals sound just a little bit like Geddy Lee of Rush, and the arena-rock guitars and epic songwriting remind us of Thin Lizzy, Queen, and Blue Oyster Cult as well. You'll even hear a little "Cat Scratch Fever" in their song "Moonbeams" we think...and the Beatles in "Blues On Blue".
Now, tongue in cheek it all may be: what to make of a song (a great song!) entitled "I Pulled My Helmet Off (I'm Going To Love Her)"? The lyrics are worthy of Jack Black/Tenacious D! Or a 19-minute rock opera called "Plutonian Elf Story" (this disc's final, amazing track)?? Well you gotta stop thinking like an Earthling and get with the Zolar X program! Yeah, costume-rock bands normally invite skepticism as to their musical worth -- I mean, would you wear spacesuits and Martian antennae if you had *songs*? KISS may or may not be a good counter example, but Zolar X sure is. Silly haircuts, outfits and names aside, they ROCKED. I think the secret is, that they seemed to take themselves seriously. This was no joke band. At least, not outwardly. Reportedly, they even stayed in character when off-stage. Seeing them live must have been incredible, if the color photos in the cd booklet -- and the stories told in the lengthy liner notes -- are anything to go by. It's hard to tell why they never "made it". You'd have thought that the old "take me to your leader" routine would have worked. Oh well. They picked the wrong planet I guess.
And as a side note, we're proud that our record store actually played some small, entirely random part in getting this reissued, as Jello mentions in his liner notes that he bought his first copy of the Zolar X LP out of the bargain bin here at Aquarius, doubtless years and years ago. Maybe we weren't recommending it then, but we sure are now! Timeless indeed. Shoulda been huge. It's time now though...get this!!
MPEG Stream: "Energize Me"
MPEG Stream: "I Pulled My Helmet Off (I'm Going To Love Her)"
MPEG Stream: "Nativity"

ZOLAR X Timeless (Alternative Tentacles) lp 10.98
Wow. A while back a friend of ours at Alternative Tentacles told us that Jello Biafra was all keen on reissuing some ultra-obscure '70s LA punk/glam band who apparently dressed up like space aliens and pretended they were from another planet (it helped that all the band members happened to be fairly short). Sounds, uh, interesting we said, we'll be curious to hear it... Well now we've heard that band -- this band, Zolar X -- and we've gotta say, Jello, thank you! This is freakin' awesome!
Brimming with extra-terrestrial energy, this collection compiles twenty tracks (fewer on the LP version) from three different recording sessions and Zolar X line-ups. Memphis 1976, LA 1979 and San Francisco 1980. All are great. Jello considers Zolar X to be "the missing link between Chrome and the Stooges"...and indeed some of this has that vibe, sorta like Simply Saucer. But the '60s pop background and Bowie-worship of Zolar X's prime movers Zory Zenith and Ygarr Ygarrist Lazor really results in something that was both more bubblegum and yet more metal too. Zolar X's collision of punk and glam, though totally underground, had definite classic, commerical rock pretensions...the vocals sound just a little bit like Geddy Lee of Rush, and the arena-rock guitars and epic songwriting remind us of Thin Lizzy, Queen, and Blue Oyster Cult as well. You'll even hear a little "Cat Scratch Fever" in their song "Moonbeams" we think...and the Beatles in "Blues On Blue".
Now, tongue in cheek it all may be: what to make of a song (a great song!) entitled "I Pulled My Helmet Off (I'm Going To Love Her)"? The lyrics are worthy of Jack Black/Tenacious D! Or a 19-minute rock opera called "Plutonian Elf Story" (this disc's final, amazing track)?? Well you gotta stop thinking like an Earthling and get with the Zolar X program! Yeah, costume-rock bands normally invite skepticism as to their musical worth -- I mean, would you wear spacesuits and Martian antennae if you had *songs*? KISS may or may not be a good counter example, but Zolar X sure is. Silly haircuts, outfits and names aside, they ROCKED. I think the secret is, that they seemed to take themselves seriously. This was no joke band. At least, not outwardly. Reportedly, they even stayed in character when off-stage. Seeing them live must have been incredible, if the color photos in the cd booklet -- and the stories told in the lengthy liner notes -- are anything to go by. It's hard to tell why they never "made it". You'd have thought that the old "take me to your leader" routine would have worked. Oh well. They picked the wrong planet I guess.
And as a side note, we're proud that our record store actually played some small, entirely random part in getting this reissued, as Jello mentions in his liner notes that he bought his first copy of the Zolar X LP out of the bargain bin here at Aquarius, doubtless years and years ago. Maybe we weren't recommending it then, but we sure are now! Timeless indeed. Shoulda been huge. It's time now though...get this!!
MPEG Stream: "Energize Me"
MPEG Stream: "I Pulled My Helmet Off (I'm Going To Love Her)"
MPEG Stream: "Nativity"

V/A Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk & Pop Music Vol. 1 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
What? Another collection of Cambodian pop? But you just listed two volumes of Cambodian Rocks? (And, get ready for two more in that series!) It's true, Cambodian music seems to be the flavor of the moment on the obscure world music scene. But bear with us, as this one deserves all the attention afforded the Cambodian Rocks series... and then some. The history of Cambodia's flourishing and rich music scene was -- like the greater culture and society of the country in general -- cruelly severed in the early seventies by the Khmer Rouge during their "cleansing" program. All our favorite performers, anonymous until Khmer Rocks' own collections were recently released, were undoubtedly victims of the Khmer Rouge during this period. In the following years Cambodians who fled the country set up communities around the globe and among the other parts of their culture they treasured, the music of these lost performers was not forgotten. Throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties the scattered communities set up recording studios and continued to produce music just as amazing as those lost golden years. Enter Mark Gergis (of Neung Phak / Mono Pause and the man who brought us I Remember Syria). From 1999 to 2004 Mark diligently scoured the Asian branch of the Oakland Public Library, checking out each and every Cassette of Cambodian music produced in the period from the early seventies to the present. Many of the cassettes were unfortunately unlistenable; not merely because they'd been played thousands of times, or left on hot car dashboards, but because they were being slowly bulk erased by the library employees themselves as they would unwittingly pass them over the magnetic security system used to prevent book theft. Even with the best intentions of the public library as a repository for culture, Cambodian music was slowly being erased one cassette at a time. Of course there was no public outcry, at this point people had moved on to the newest thing (no doubt something recorded by one person with an electronic keyboard and other MIDI gear). It seems to happen everywhere: recent history is wiped clean for whatever happens to be hot at the moment. So it was that Mark culled together a collection of songs that are as amazing as they are rare. One thing particularly striking about many of the tracks is that, unlike what you'll hear on the Cambodian Rocks collections (all of which were actually recorded in Cambodia), they include both traditional Cambodian instruments alongside western instruments. There are tracks with Khan (the inimitable mouth organ of Southeast Asia) playing alongside electric guitar (which is often times being played in the style of a traditional Cambodian stringed instrument), saxophone, drums, electric bass and organ. Some of the combinations and bizarre genre bends are truly off the wall -- such as the track, unfortunately to remain untitled for now, a proto-metal Cambodian pop ditty featuring echoey and brash female vocals and a Queen-era guitar solo. While there are a few of the more modern pop tunes -- of the primarily keyboards and drum machine variety -- here, none are of the overly westernized Asian pop that is so ubiquitous these days. There are also 6 tracks of older tunes that were recorded in Phnom Penh between the mid-1960's and the early 70's (one of which was overdubbed by an American operated studio with a drum machine beat!) This is a truly amazing collection, certainly the best disc to be released by Sublime Frequencies to date, and Byram's top pick for 2004 thus far. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Blue Basket"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown [track 12]"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown [track 15]"

V/A Cambodian Rocks Vol 1 (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98
While most record stores might include Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a mainstay album, consistently moving units from its initial release on up to the present, the original Cambodian Rocks collection has been for us a mainstay in its own right. We may not be able to boast the quantities that a larger store might for a staple, but Cambodian Rocks has got to be one of the most universally loved albums here at aQ. So you can imagine we were pretty damn excited when we found out that the collection was being released with full disclosure of musicians, vocalists, recording dates, song titles and lyrics (translated into English!) And if that isn't enough, Khmer Rocks has expanded their version of the collection to two discs! Even better, for all of you owners of the original collection, between these two discs and the original release on Parallel World there are only 5 songs total that overlap! So now you're wondering what the connection is between Khmer Rocks and Parallel World. Well, as far as we can tell, there is absolutely no connection. Seems like Khmer Rocks titled their two discs to capitalize off the original's popularity. And to their credit, they seem a bit more legit, having gone through the trouble of tracking down artists' names and song titles to give credit where credit is due. Not to be too harsh on Parallel World -- their collection is a fucking great compilation, always will be -- but the Khmer Rocks folk seem to be more genuinely indebted to these artists and it shows in their aformentioned efforts. And like Parallel World's collection, all the tracks on these two discs are absolutely great. It would be hard to leave a track out of your iPod if you were short on space. You might just have toget rid of something else. The artists here are all absolute geniuses in their abilities to absorb American rock and roll and tweak it to local tastes. In a lot of ways these bands are like South East Asian versions of the Sun City Girls -- picking up foreign radio transmissions (shortwave radio broadcasts to American military personnel) and subverting them to their own likeness. Some of our favorites are tracks like Meas Samoun's "The Engagement", a completely dirty take on the Santana sound (a lot of these Cambodian rockers seemed to really dig Santana) with an organ (or is it some ridiculously fucked up early seventies guitar processing?) solo that will kill you. Others, like Ros Sereyosthea take an American song part and parcel -- in this case CCR's "Rolling On A River" -- merely inserting their own lyrics and twisting the arrangement. Other twisted renditions sound an awful lot like "Hey Jude", "If You're Going To San Francisco", and "Whiter Shade Of Pale". But more often than not the tracks tend to be originals with a deeply modified American twang and sound less like the cover versions mentioned above. In all cases, the rock on these recordings has an energy of absolute immediacy and urgency that's unlike any of their psychedelic counterparts the globe round.
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "Quando My Love"
MPEG Stream: MEAS SAMOUN "The Engagement"
MPEG Stream: YOL AULARONG "Whiskey Whiskey"

V/A Cambodian Rocks Vol 2 (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98
While most record stores might include Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a mainstay album, consistently moving units from its initial release on up to the present, the original Cambodian Rocks collection has been for us a mainstay in its own right. We may not be able to boast the quantities that a larger store might for a staple, but Cambodian Rocks has got to be one of the most universally loved albums here at aQ. So you can imagine we were pretty damn excited when we found out that the collection was being released with full disclosure of musicians, vocalists, recording dates, song titles and lyrics (translated into English!) And if that isn't enough, Khmer Rocks has expanded their version of the collection to two discs! Even better, for all of you owners of the original collection, between these two discs and the original release on Parallel World there are only 5 songs total that overlap! So now you're wondering what the connection is between Khmer Rocks and Parallel World. Well, as far as we can tell, there is absolutely no connection. Seems like Khmer Rocks titled their two discs to capitalize off the original's popularity. And to their credit, they seem a bit more legit, having gone through the trouble of tracking down artists' names and song titles to give credit where credit is due. Not to be too harsh on Parallel World -- their collection is a fucking great compilation, always will be -- but the Khmer Rocks folk seem to be more genuinely indebted to these artists and it shows in their aformentioned efforts. And like Parallel World's collection, all the tracks on these two discs are absolutely great. It would be hard to leave a track out of your iPod if you were short on space. You might just have to get rid of something else. The artists here are all absolute geniuses in their abilities to absorb American rock and roll and tweak it to local tastes. In a lot of ways these bands are like South East Asian versions of the Sun City Girls -- picking up foreign radio transmissions (shortwave radio broadcasts to American military personnel) and subverting them to their own likeness. Some of our favorites are tracks like Meas Samoun's "The Engagement", a completely dirty take on the Santana sound (a lot of these Cambodian rockers seemed to really dig Santana) with an organ (or is it some ridiculously fucked up early seventies guitar processing?) solo that will kill you. Others, like Ros Sereyosthea take an American song part and parcel -- in this case CCR's "Rolling On A River" -- merely inserting their own lyrics and twisting the arrangement. Other twisted renditions sound an awful lot like "Hey Jude", "If You're Going To San Francisco", and "Whiter Shade Of Pale". But more often than not the tracks tend to be originals with a deeply modified American twang and sound less like the cover versions mentioned above. In all cases, the rock on these recordings has an energy of absolute immediacy and urgency that's unlike any of their psychedelic counterparts the globe round.
MPEG Stream: PAN RON "Hippie Men"
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "Missing Tender Care"
MPEG Stream: ROS SEREYSOTHEA "Haircut"

V/A Cambodian Rocks Vol. 3: All Psyched Up (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98
It would appear that the Khmer Rocks label is slowly rendering the original Cambodian Rocks compilation on Parallel World obsolete. With each volume of their version of the beloved series there are a smattering of those tracks included -- now better served with full disclosure of the artists' names, song titles and even lyrics! With volume 3 there are three more, leaving you with 16 completely new tracks. We figure that by volume 7 or 8 of the Khmer Rocks series we'll all be able to trade in the original. As a bonus, Khmer Rocks has included two tracks at the end of volume 3 of "Romvong Songs", or Cambodian circle dance songs. It's the label's way of turning on all the garage psychsters to some traditional Cambodian music. The first track is actually a lot like the tracks on the Cambodian rocks discs, but with a bit more swing. The second, by Cambodian superstar Sinn Sisamouth, replaces guitar and bass with flute and clarinet along with traditional Cambodian instruments, but it still has the same intensity of those rock tracks. What can we say? Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "A Diamond Ring"
MPEG Stream: YOL AULARONG "Number One"
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "The Kickboxer"

V/A Eccentric Soul: The Bandit Label (Numero Group) cd 16.98
If you've ever read any Iceberg Slim (Afro-Noir books), set in 70's south side Chicago, you'll get a pretty good feel for Bandit Label's founder, Arrow Brown. Keeping a harem of his "daughters", Brown ruled over his consortium with an iron-fist while striving for, what he imagined to be, a ghetto entertainment conglomerate. Much ghetto-glamorous drama ensued in the Bandit compound during its years of operation. Though no real "hits" emerged, this compilation is a document of the undeniably real soul that existed in the hearts of his artists. While you'll find some truly moving demos here (they had acted as rehearsal tapes), many songs have some pretty scrappy vocals that are also absolutely endearing. So despite the rich tales spun from real events at the Bandit studio, we're left with true soul-driven songs in this chapter of the beautifully packaged Eccentric Soul series. Well allriigghhhtttah!
MPEG Stream: THE MAJESTIC ARROWS "One More Time Around"
MPEG Stream: THE MAJESTIC ARROWS "If I Had A Little Love"

V/A I Remember Syria (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
That it's the first double disc in the Sublime Frequencies series says something about I Remember Syria. Recorded by Mark Gergis (Monopause / Neung Phak, Porest) in 1998 and 2000, I Remember Syria is an impressive collection of sounds, interviews and music from a country that's essentially unknown to the western world. Vilified by Bush, Rumsfeld et al. There's really no access to the wonderful culture of Syria. Gergis successfully attempts to alleviate that with the two plus hours presented here. Recorded using a stereo mic. and minidisc recorder, and subsidized with excerpts from television and radio. Disc one focuses on the city of Damascus, while disc two features recordings from throughout Syria. Along with recordings of street musicians, wedding processions, prayers, mosque interiors and open air markets are brief interviews with Syrian citizens reflecting on the US Govt. and the west in general. I Remember Syria is an impressive and unique audio documentary of a country that deserves more positive exposure.
MPEG Stream: I REMEMBER SYRIA "Multi-Interior"
MPEG Stream: I REMEMBER SYRIA "Debis"
MPEG Stream: I REMEMBER SYRIA "Homo Aleppo"
MPEG Stream: I REMEMBER SYRIA "Youth Radio of the Syrian Arab Republic"

V/A Matador At Fifteen (Matador) 3cd 14.98
It's a Matador Records 15th birthday fest, and the party favors are two cds and a dvd containing highlights from 1999 through 2004, the years since their tenth birthday compilation!
The dvd features a dozen videos by the likes of Pavement, Mogwai, Wisdom Of Harry, New Pornographers, Mary Timony, Stephen Malkmus, Interpol, Cat Power, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Matmos and Cornelius. On the audio side of things, one disc compiles eighteen 'greatest hits' by artists such as Guided By Voices, Interpol, the New Pornographers, Yo La Tengo, Matmos, Bardo Pond, Dead Meadow, Belle & Sabastian, Mogwai, Cat Power, Mission Of Burma among others. The second disc is the crowd pleaser tho' with sixteen rare and previously unreleased songs kicking off with the compilation's best track "Graceland" by the New Pornographers -- totally great! it's worth buying this comp for this song alone! -- plus Stephen Malkmus live in Spain, Mission Of Burma live in Boston, Yo La Tengo live acoustic in Australia as well as remixes of Mogwai and Preston School of Industry... oh yeah, and did we mention the New Pornographers' "Graceland"? We did!
MPEG Stream: NEW PORNOGRAPHERS "Graceland"
MPEG Stream: YO LA TENGO "Deeper Into Movies"

V/A Pop Ambient 2004 (Kompakt) cd 17.98
We were never all that into techno. Especially house music. But then along came the Chain Reaction label, and removed everything from the house music equation -except- for the beat and some leftover sonic detritus. And suddenly we found ourselves digging this new sort-of-house music. So now along comes Kompakt, and this time, they strip away all the -beats-, leaving just dreamy soundscapes, swirling eddies of sound, lonely chords, melodies drifitng lazily into space
with no beats left to keep them earthbound. The result is a gorgeous, shimmery ambient music, angelic and ethereal, eschewing all of its techno roots, instead positioning itself somewhere between the late night chill out of the Orb, and that sort of barely-there music for meditation. New Age? As much as classic Tangerine Dream was new age, which is to say, a little certainly. But these Pop Ambient compilations manage to be soothing and shimmery without crossing the line into Windham Hill / Yoga tape schmaltz. Think AQ faves Gas with the beats stripped away completely. Or think an even more blissed out, less glitchy Oval. Gently strummed guitar chords, spaced far enough apart that you can almost hear the notes dissipate into the ether, gradually mutating melodies are stretched over a vast expanse of pastoral hum, shrouded in clouds of whir, subtle sonic swells create 10 bpm rhythms that don't sound like rhythms at all, tinlking chimes create shimmery waves that move slowly outward forever like ripples in a pond. So good. Perfectly dreamy and relaxing. Impossible not to love, this is volume four in Kompakt's Pop Ambient series and they just keep getting better. And more ambient. At this rate by volume 6 or 7 there may not be any sound left at all, just gentle whispers and inaudible drones. Can't wait. (fyi, the cd has one more track than the vinyl.)
MPEG Stream: ANDREW THOMAS "Fearsome Jewel (3)"
MPEG Stream: KLIMEK "Standing On The Beach (Gun In My Hand Mix)"
MPEG Stream: ULF LOHMANN "Audrey"

V/A Pop Ambient 2004 (Kompakt) lp 14.98
We were never all that into techno. Especially house music. But then along came the Chain Reaction label, and removed everything from the house music equation -except- for the beat and some leftover sonic detritus. And suddenly we found ourselves digging this new sort-of-house music. So now along comes Kompakt, and this time, they strip away all the -beats-, leaving just dreamy soundscapes, swirling eddies of sound, lonely chords, melodies drifitng lazily into space
with no beats left to keep them earthbound. The result is a gorgeous, shimmery ambient music, angelic and ethereal, eschewing all of its techno roots, instead positioning itself somewhere between the late night chill out of the Orb, and that sort of barely-there music for meditation. New Age? As much as classic Tangerine Dream was new age, which is to say, a little certainly. But these Pop Ambient compilations manage to be soothing and shimmery without crossing the line into Windham Hill / Yoga tape schmaltz. Think AQ faves Gas with the beats stripped away completely. Or think an even more blissed out, less glitchy Oval. Gently strummed guitar chords, spaced far enough apart that you can almost hear the notes dissipate into the ether, gradually mutating melodies are stretched over a vast expanse of pastoral hum, shrouded in clouds of whir, subtle sonic swells create 10 bpm rhythms that don't sound like rhythms at all, tinlking chimes create shimmery waves that move slowly outward forever like ripples in a pond. So good. Perfectly dreamy and relaxing. Impossible not to love, this is volume four in Kompakt's Pop Ambient series and they just keep getting better. And more ambient. At this rate by volume 6 or 7 there may not be any sound left at all, just gentle whispers and inaudible drones. Can't wait. (fyi, the cd has one more track than the vinyl.)
MPEG Stream: ANDREW THOMAS "Fearsome Jewel (3)"
MPEG Stream: KLIMEK "Standing On The Beach (Gun In My Hand Mix)"
MPEG Stream: ULF LOHMANN "Audrey"

V/A Princess Nicotine: Folk & Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) Vol. 1 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
If you have the Sublime Frequencies Nat Pwe DVD reviewed a few months back, then you at least have a rough idea of what you're getting yourself into here. But even if you're familiar with Burmese music, you'll find this compilation truly weird and wonderful. Unlike the handful of Burmese releases on Shanachie, this is a completely raw and unfettered, whole grain Burmese sonic assault. In other words: it's absolutely manic! At its most insane, it's akin to taking your standard off the wall Bollywood arrangement and running it through a prog rock or free jazz filter. Nasal double reed instruments parallel vocal lines, clashing cymbals emphasize every beat, while the pat wain (a set of rice paste tuned drums which encircle the performer) smacks out its own melody like a set of out of tune roto-toms. On the mellower side of things there's strange hallucinogenic Appalachia featuring sudden bursts of piano, interjecting banjo, violin, flute, horn and most oddly: sultry female vocals offset by distorted male vocals. There's also hazy semi-Hawaiian psychedelia, with piano and keyboards pounding out the occasional random chord progression. If you have to chose just one record to blow your mind this year, definitely make it this one!
MPEG Stream: MAR MAR AYE "Beautiful Town"
MPEG Stream: YANGON SEIN KYI MOE "The Tune of the Second Entertainment"
MPEG Stream: NI NI WIN SHWE "My Darling's Love Arrow"

V/A Shockout (Tigerbeat6) cd 14.98
Alright all you hard ragga nuts, pick this fucker up! Damn, seems like it's been a while since we've got some real crazy shit in here that we could get really excited about and adamantly recommend to customers with complete confidence. Many of the tracks here have already appeared as 12"s and 7"s on Tigerbeat6's Shockout imprint. But those of us lacking turntables or too lazy to lift those heavy slabs for a mere 3 minutes of pleasure have been left out of the game... until now. Looking for some DJ Rupture? Looking for The Bug? Looking for something to replace those worn copies of DJ Scud's Murder Sound or yearning for a return of Panacea circa Low Profile Darkness? You'll find your fix embedded here in the digital pits of this here humble aluminum disc. Brutal two-step cut ups with gut churning bass, brain rattling hardcore ragga jungle and levelled off with some of the most phlegm inducing, distorted and gruff toasting you'll ever hear. Along with some of the heaviest singles in the Shockout series thus far by the likes of The Bug, Ove-Naxx, Soundmurderer & SK-1, Timeblind, Kid606, and Eight Frozen Modules, there are exclusive tracks from DJ Rupture, Com A. and Guislain Poirier (nice to hear some French in the mix for once). Plus this Shockout comp also includes the original "Killer" single by Rootsman and He-Man that The Bug remixed, which sounds like a madman trying to burp his way through a vocal dub. Verbally slobbering over this collection wouldn't be complete without mentioning the exceptionally great track sequencing. The comp kicks off with Strategy's mellow "Dunes Dub", a springy dub track with a Fela Kuti-esque keyboard line, and slowly works its way up in ferocity through the the next several tracks. Strategy bookends the collection in fact, with the A-side to their Shockout 12" "Going Street Dub" finishing things off. In flow, Shockout reminds us of DJ Rupture's now classic Minesweeper Suite. Everyone who loves those Ward 21 albums, DJ Rupture, The Bug's new ragga incarnation or the Kid (as in 606) should pluck this sucker up post haste. Highly fucking recommended!
MPEG Stream: ROOTSMAN / HE-MAN "Killer"
MPEG Stream: THE BUG VS. ROOTSMAN / MEXICAN "WWW - Kid606 Remix"
MPEG Stream: OVE-NAXX / WAYNE LONESOME "Come Back Wicked - A Fear Of Sengiri Mix"

V/A Boyd Rice Presents Music For Pussycats (Soleilmoon) cd 11.98
Since we seem to no longer be able to get a hold of that fantastic '60s french girl group Ultra Chicks series, we're delighted to finally get a bunch of this just-reissued collection of girl group tunes compiled, strangely enough, by controversial industrial culture icon Boyd Rice. No, they're not the highly sought French ye ye girls, but they are very much in the same perky vibe as the abovementioned comps. Rice has selected nine lesser known (or quite unknown) artists to showcase: solo singers Diane Ray, Bernadette Castro, Bernadette Caroll, Susan Rafey, Priscilla Paris, Robbie Winston, and Lori Burton as well as the suitably named groups The Love Exchange and Honey Ltd. The songs range from squeaky clean and girlish like Patty Duke to the more worldly and womanly like Petula Clark and Shirley Bassey. The second tune by Ms Castro sounds like something Le Tigre studied thoroughly. Very cool!
MPEG Stream: BERNADETTE CASTRO "Get Rid Of Him"
MPEG Stream: PRISCILLA PARIS "My Window"

V/A A John Waters' Christmas (New Line Records) cd 16.98
This cd stinks like an ornament filled with dog-poo. Which is a good thing, if you love John Waters as much as we do! "Have a merry, rotten, scary, sexy, bi-racial, ludicrous, happy little Christmas," declares legendary B-movie director John Waters with this Christmas compilation. A truly amazing gathering of songs to help you survive the holiday season with a sinful smile. Starting out this compact disc is "Fat Daddy", sung by Baltimore's one-time coolest rhythm and blues DJ and source of inspiration for Motor Mouth Maybelle in Waters' film "Hairspray". We hear some very off-kilter and, you guessed it, crude numbers leading up to "Sleigh Ride" by Alvin And The Chipmunks, followed by "First Snowfall" by The Coctails (featuring that most wonderous instrument, the theremin), and we wish the disc wouldn't end, but sadly, it does -- and with none other than "Santa Is A Black Man". Waters suggests, "wrap this cd as a gift to yourself, pretend you forgot what it is and act surprised when you open it." We suggest you do that too. How else could you possibly survive the friggin holidaze?!
MPEG Stream: FAT DADDY "Fat Daddy"

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