CORRUPTED El Mundo Frio (HG Fact) cd 28.00
Boris may be the drone dirge darlings right now, but we've always had a soft spot for their more obscure countrymen Corrupted. Where Boris revel in cartoonish imagery, seventies kitsch, eighties heavy metal, bell bottoms, double neck guitars, and balls out rock and roll, Corrupted lurk in the shadows, sullen and distanced, weary and wary, crusty and curmudgeonly, wrapped in mystery, each record printed in stark black and white, a Japanese band singing exclusively in Spanish strangely enough, who are obliquely political, and much more grim and gloomy than Boris at their droniest. Every record a massive plodding slab of depressive doom, epic and monstrously heavy, but with stretches of delicate beauty. Rumors have been floating around of a triple cd, single three hour song, Corrupted release, but until that truly materializes, El Mundo Frio will probably remain the heaviest, creepiest, most beautiful, epic, expansive slab of slowcore doom drone you will ever hear. Ever. One hour and twelve minutes. A cloud of shimmering drone underpins hazy, haunting piano and warm chordal swells, plucked harps and simple finger picked guitars. For almost ten minutes, Corrupted creep along dreamily, stepping lightly, drifting lazily through a stark ambient soundfield, before the heavens collapse and the sky begins to fall in huge crushing chunks, and massive stabs of super distorted guitars swell and crumble into an abstract pounding rhythm. Completely heavy, but strangely lovely at the same time. A lilting melody is hidden somewhere beneath all that buzz and rumble. Eventually the stabs slowly mutate into a creeping, loping post rock rhythm, with minor key strums, simple shuffling drumming and growled semi-spoken vocals, before the whole thing fades to almost nothingness, revisiting the delicate shimmer of the beginning of the record. The last twenty five minutes are mostly ambient with snatches of that hypnotic post rock, and a brief but furious explosion of soul crushing heaviness with the same vocals delivered now in a glass gargling gurgle, and then the track drifts off into ten plus minutes of barely there dreaminess, mostly single notes on the harp drifting like snow flakes against a black night sky. So lovely. Easily the most fully realized 'doom' or 'dirge' track ever wethinks. So emotionally charged, so effortlessly complex and yet so utterly and beautifully simple. Somehow it's the perfect blend of Boris's Flood (our favorite Boris!), the doleful slowcore of Low, the abstract dirge of Harvey Milk, the epic expansiveness of Godspeed You Black Emperor, the metallic post rock of Pelican, the downtuned ultradoom of Skepticism, and the majestic dreaminess of Growing.
Mighty expensive but well worth it. Comes packaged in an extravagant hardcover book style digipak, with a gorgeous booklet, lots of abstract black and white landscapes, printed on vellum and overlaid other images. So nice!
MPEG Stream: "El Mundo Frio"

DREAMIES s/t (2006 Special Edition) (Wilmington Studios) cd 17.98
Hmm, it's 2005 and we've got the 2006 edition of a record that originally came out in 1973! And it's an album that we first encountered five years ago via a previous (and now out of print and obsolete) compact disc edition released in 2000. But much more important than all these dates and whatnot, is that this is such a great record that we at AQ have loved for a long time, and are super duper happy to have back in again in this improved, special edition!! As you may know, we're also long time fans of the band Olivia Tremor Control, and when we first heard the Dreamies we were struck by the similarities. Indeed, our original review of this made much of the seeming OTC/Dreamies connection. And we still promise that you could totally mistake this for an OTC record...a *great* OTC record! (And come to think of it, it also reminds us a bit of another AQ fave band, When). But it was recorded over three decades ago by a fellow from Delaware named Bill Holt, who, nearing 30 years of age in the early '70s, dropped out of his corporate job working for a Fortune 500 company to reinvent himself as a singer-songwriter, despite having little in the way of prior musical experience! Holt invested in an early Moog Sonic Six synthesizer and set up a recording studio in his basement, where he created this lost classic, an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of '60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful... and definitely dreamy. Never was a name so well-chosen!
Like the Olivias, Bill Holt is obviously a huge fan of the Beatles. That's pretty clear. Sgt. Peppers definitely. And, he must really have liked the White Album's notorious "Revolution Number 9"!! With two side-long songs called (hmm) "Program Ten" and "Program Eleven", the Dreamies album is a similar venture into psych-pop meets musique concrete territory, an elaborate tapestry of samples -- and this is from long before anyone called them samples, and before there was such a thing as samplers and sequencers, which means Holt used the old fashioned, labor intensive tape n' razor blade splicing method, working at home on his beloved TEAC Model 3340 reel-to-reel four-track recorder. Densely woven into his otherwise highly laid back and melodic mix, you'll hear clocks ticking, chattering machine guns in Vietnam combat, JFK speeches, crickets, frogs, NASA transmissions, and ominous but unidentifiable minimalist pulses of electronic/industrial white noise. Or even samples of the Beatles themselves! (Bits of "All You Need Is Love" and others are buried in Holt's sonic collage.) It's both unsettling and soothing at the same time, like surfing through shortwave transmissions from the late '60s psyche. And along with all the sound bites/effects, he also weaves together what must have originally been several different, distinct, enchanting songs he'd written for his voice and acoustic guitar. It's one man and his melodies alone amidst the chaos of the times. Unfortunately, the Dreamies album didn't end up leading to a career in music for Bill Holt, so sadly he was forced to return to the straight moneymaking world of 9-to-5 work. But his venture into the realm of hippy psychedelic rock music concrete lives on. And happily he's proud of his creation, leading to this "special edition", remastered by Holt himself from the original LP, claiming "better stereo sound" and "enhanced audio detail". It certainly sounds good to us. It also boasts liner notes, lyrics and photos in the cd booklet, while the cd itself for the first time divides the two original 26-minute LP tracks into thirteen more convenient parts, although really you should still listen to 'em all the way through in one sitting.
By the way, we for some reason we always used to think that this record was titled Auralgraphic Entertainment: An Incredible Mental Experience, but it seems that that was just descriptive front-cover copy, not the actual title. It is, however, a fairly accurate statement! We're so happy that this has come out again, giving us the chance to get reacquainted with an old fave. And recommended it to anyone who missed it before (or who wants to upgrade their old edition).
MPEG Stream: "Program Ten Part Five"
MPEG Stream: "Program Ten Part Six"
MPEG Stream: "Program Eleven Part Three"

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4 LEVELS OF EXISTENCE, THE s/t (Lion Productions) cd 15.98
Gosh. We're just constantly amazed at the wealth of obscure psych/prog "buried treasure" from all over the world that's continually being unearthed by all the industrious reissue labels out there. Lion Productions in particular has a darn good track record, we'd say (they blew us away earlier this year with the Classical M disc, amongst other cool reissues). Here's a great example, as out of the blue they present us the lone album by a Greek band called The 4 Levels Of Existence, originally released as a (now very rare and expensive) private press LP in 1976. And while a few of our far-gone record collector geek friends knew about this already, we sure hadn't ever heard of it before, but we're glad to get introduced to it now! It's a real folk-flavored fuzz monster, full of wailing guitar leads, melancholic lyrics (sung in their native Greek), majestic melodies, acoustic interludes, and did we say FUZZ? With all the fuzz this is fairly hard and heavy, but in a '60s garage band sorta way (despite being from the mid-'70s, this sounds earlier). Pretty much exactly what you'd hope a bunch of young, basement dwelling longhairs from an Athens suburb would create if they spent all their time jamming, studying philosophy, and drinking ouzo, as we can pretty much assume was the case here. Prog-laced and imbued with traditional folk melody, in a lot of ways this has got a similar vibe to the many awesome '60s and '70s Turkish psych bands we dig, even though Turkey and Greece have been far from friendly neighbors historically.
This legendary record (as we now know it to be) certainly is one of the coolest things we've heard from Greece from back when, alongside Socrates Drank The Conium and Aphrodite's Child. And as we've come to expect from Lion, this reish is no shoddy package. It comes with a thick booklet of liner notes (scribed by 4 Levels' rhythm/acoustic guitarist Athanasios Alatas), lyrics (in both Greek and translated into English too), and photos. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Wilderness"
MPEG Stream: "Someday In Athens"

CHALK, ANDREW The River That Flows Into The Sand (Faraway Press) cd 22.00
Yup, it appears that Andrew Chalk has retained the impressive workload he and Christoph Heemann had managed for their now defunct project Mirror. The River That Flows Into The Sand is the second album in as many months to emerge from Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press. Like it's predecessor Shadows From The Album Skies, this album is a reissue of a cd-r originally released in a very small edition. However, Chalk has decided to truly develop Faraway Press into a viable cottage industry, encasing all of his work in elaborately hand-packaged constructions, that rival the original Zoviet France assemblages in terms of innovative design. How he managed to print these is a bit of a mystery, although Cup and Jim think it to be a form of decalcomania, in which an image is delicately transferred from one surface to another. Regardless, it doesn't hurt that Chalk again has produced an immaculate drone album housed within the beautiful packaging.
For many years now, the guitar has been the instrument of choice for Chalk's minimalist explorations; and here on The River, he's tightroping between the ghostly impressionism of Keiji Haino's Nijumu project from many moons ago, the narcoleptic atmospheres of Maeror Tri / Troum, the oceanic ambience of Boris' Flood, and the time-reversal qualities of Eliane Radigue. Undulations of extended sounds cascade from his guitar, occasionally rippling with beautiful half melodies. This is a a drop dead gorgeous album, and may even be better than the aforementioned Shadows From The Album Skies. We can't recommend this album enough!
MPEG Stream: "One "
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

COBRA VERDE Copycat Killers (Scat) cd 14.98
Not sure what happened to Cobra Verde, but whatever it is we like it. We always remembered Cobra Verde as being the Scat Records house band, just a pretty good rock band, not as popular as Guided By Voices, not as depressingly mysterious as My Dad Is Dead, just a pretty cool band (we also figured that a Scat employee was probably in CV as well). But it seems like at some point, the guys in Cobra Verde got weird, and we mean weird in a good way. Started taking lots of crazy drugs, practicing with only the black light on, trading in their jeans and t-shirts for leather pants and feather boas, cowboy hats and sequined shirts. Their midwest rock and roll started mutating into a druggy spacey fucked up glam rock and suddenly they are a super cool weirdly messed up band who are suddenly way more exciting than their labelmates. This here newest Cobra Verde record is all covers, and a bizarre selection of covers at that. Some of the choices make perfect sense, in light of CV's new drug-space-glam sound, but some make absolutely no sense at all, which makes them all the more perfect. How about a hazy, drone-y drugged out version of Pink's "Get The Party Started"? Sounds way better than it sounds if you know what we mean. Lurching and hypnotic, a jangle guitar loop, mumbled vocals and all sorts of spaced out guitar FX. Or how about a murky, fuzzed out propulsive take on Donna Summer's "I Feel Love", all distorted drums, surf guitar and squiggly synths? It's a dizzying ride from there on out. Messed up and messed with versions of tracks by New Order, Hawkwind, the Troggs, the Rolling Stones, the Undertones, the Flamin' Groovies, The Fall, Leonard Cohen, Mott The Hoople and the Easter Monkeys.
MPEG Stream: "Get The Party Started"
MPEG Stream: "I Feel Love"
MPEG Stream: "Play With Fire"

DARK AGES Twilight Of Europe (Supernal) cd 15.98
What would you expect from a band called Dark Ages? With cover art from some Hieronymous Bosch style painting depciting hell and misery and war and famine? With song titles like "Breath Of The Black Plague" and "Birth Of The Antichrist" and "Formulas Written In Blood"? A disc released on Supernal, the label that brought us Benighted Leams, Drudkh, Meads Of Asphodel, Hate Forest and the rest? What would you expect? Well, definitely not this. Dark Ages are not metal, are not even heavy actually, instead they offer up a series of dark ambient medieval dronescapes, beautifully creepy, dark and haunting and endlessly mesmerizing. There are definite sonic similarities to our favorite drone artists: Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Maeror Tri and the like, but Twilight Of Europe has a sort of looped hypnotic quality lending the sound a much more Jeck, Basinski vibe. But always cloaked in the tattered black cloak of the dark ages, a lonely sonic stroll through the ruins of a long gone Rennaisance Faire, a stroll that slowly shifts to an actual wander through a ruined post plague, European village, of grey stone walls, lit blue by the moonlight, casting shadows that dart and dance in the glow of torchlight, the blackened remains of fires long since burnt out, colorful tents faded by the sun now lay in ruined heaps, the stench of death and decay in the air. The sound is rich with resonant church organs, bells and buzzing strings, haunting chant like vocals all wrapped in gauzy fuzzy drones and subterranean rumbles, each track a dreamy repetition of a haunting, ghostly medieval loop. Over and over and over as you drift off, as the city around you crumbles and the sky above you darkens.
MPEG Stream: "Breath Of The Black Plague"
MPEG Stream: "Birth Of The Antichrist"
MPEG Stream: "Dungeons"

EARLY MAN Closing In (Matador) cd 14.98
These guys hit us last year with a three-song ace to the face taster of their very VERY heavy metal music, and we've been waiting to get hurt with more ever since. Now is the time. That utterly ass-kicking demo (released as a cdep on Monitor) led to this NYC based duo getting signed to Matador, who have just released their debut full-length album. It's already in our mental list of top ten metal discs of the year and we recommend these eleven songs (including one, "Death Is The Answer", reprised from that ep) to everybody and everybody with a headbanging bone in their body. But of course, the fact that these guys, despite totally looking the part of long-haired heshers (and, more importantly, sounding like it), are on an indie rock label and used to have indie scene notable Dave Pajo (Slint/Tortoise/Aerial M) holding down the bass position, might cause some metal purists to question their cred. Not to mention that this disc was produced by Matt Sweeney (of Chavez and more recently Superwolf with Will Oldham fame) and he threw some of his own six string action on there. But whatever. Suspect poserdom all you want, but the fact remains, this band rules. These songs are just so darn heavy and aggressive and catchy, with real vocals, sing-along refrains, and plenty of energetic, killer riffs. Can't argue with the riffs. Simply classic stuff.
Our pal Josh holds that music is never really "about" anything, other than music itself, referencing and commenting upon prior musical forms and examples (he should know, having been the guitarist for The Fucking Champs, who've always been very upfront about admitting and celebrating the influences they synthesized into their own distinctive sound). This notion certainly seems to apply to the music of Early Man, big time. And perhaps it could act as a defense against those who will accuse Early Man of sounding too much like certain other bands. Which it can't be denied that they do -- Early Man makes it easy to spot their influences, as was already made plain by that ep release last year. You'd have to be deaf, or I guess really old, not to hear the Metallica and the Black Sabbath in there. But hey, what's wrong with that? Metallica's NWOBHM influences (a la "Am I Evil") have also trickled down to Early Man for sure. So, if you dig the Sabs and the 'tallicatz and the NWOBHM (don't you??), you should definitely give Early Man a listen. Likewise if you're into such current bands as Wolf, High On Fire, The Champs, and Sheavy who keep the '70s and '80s metal spirit alive. Packaged in a digipak, with a nice stencil included so you can more easily spraypaint Early Man graffitti all over your neighborhood.
MPEG Stream: "Four Walls"
MPEG Stream: "Like A Goddamn Rat"

EARLY MAN Closing In (Matador) lp 11.98
These guys hit us last year with a three-song ace to the face taster of their very VERY heavy metal music, and we've been waiting to get hurt with more ever since. Now is the time. That utterly ass-kicking demo (released as a cdep on Monitor) led to this NYC based duo getting signed to Matador, who have just released their debut full-length album. It's already in our mental list of top ten metal discs of the year and we recommend these eleven songs (including one, "Death Is The Answer", reprised from that ep) to everybody and everybody with a headbanging bone in their body. But of course, the fact that these guys, despite totally looking the part of long-haired heshers (and, more importantly, sounding like it), are on an indie rock label and used to have indie scene notable Dave Pajo (Slint/Tortoise/Aerial M) holding down the bass position, might cause some metal purists to question their cred. Not to mention that this disc was produced by Matt Sweeney (of Chavez and more recently Superwolf with Will Oldham fame) and he threw some of his own six string action on there. But whatever. Suspect poserdom all you want, but the fact remains, this band rules. These songs are just so darn heavy and aggressive and catchy, with real vocals, sing-along refrains, and plenty of energetic, killer riffs. Can't argue with the riffs. Simply classic stuff.
Our pal Josh holds that music is never really "about" anything, other than music itself, referencing and commenting upon prior musical forms and examples (he should know, having been the guitarist for The Fucking Champs, who've always been very upfront about admitting and celebrating the influences they synthesized into their own distinctive sound). This notion certainly seems to apply to the music of Early Man, big time. And perhaps it could act as a defense against those who will accuse Early Man of sounding too much like certain other bands. Which it can't be denied that they do -- Early Man makes it easy to spot their influences, as was already made plain by that ep release last year. You'd have to be deaf, or I guess really old, not to hear the Metallica and the Black Sabbath in there. But hey, what's wrong with that? Metallica's NWOBHM influences (a la "Am I Evil") have also trickled down to Early Man for sure. So, if you dig the Sabs and the 'tallicatz and the NWOBHM (don't you??), you should definitely give Early Man a listen. Likewise if you're into such current bands as Wolf, High On Fire, The Champs, and Sheavy who keep the '70s and '80s metal spirit alive. Packaged in a digipak, with a nice stencil included so you can more easily spraypaint Early Man graffitti all over your neighborhood.
MPEG Stream: "Four Walls"
MPEG Stream: "Like A Goddamn Rat"

FM3 Buddha Machine (Staalplaat) Buddha Machine battery powered soundbox 26.00
NOTE: This is temporarily out of stock, but DEFINITELY DO GO AHEAD AND ORDER IT if you want one, as we will for sure be getting more around the third week of November, but we're only getting a limited amount!
Oooooh, we got all in a tizzy when we saw this. As it seems did every one else. We're told The Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! The first 'pressing' sold out in no time, and when we heard there was a second pressing, we got as many as we could so we could actually list it and give all of our like minded customers a chance to snatch up one of these amazing little machines before they were gone. Basically, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. The ultimate record nerd, collector geek, outsider music fetish object. SO COOL. We all bought one (except Allan, but he won't be able to resist much longer!) and it seems like these will not last long at all. FM3 is Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, and they are just the first group in what is meant to be a new series of different artists composing music specifically for these tiny handheld soundboxes. Each Buddha Machine comes with two batteries, and comes sealed in a very generic looking box that doesn't even begin to hint at the joyous drones contained inside! Each Buddha Machine comes in a different color, purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow. Since the boxes are sealed, the color you get will be completely random.

INDIAN The Unquiet Sky (Seventh Rule) cd 13.98
When someone just walks in off the street and hands you a 7" and tells you to "check it out, you'll probably dig it," odds are that's not always necessarily true. But a ways back, someone did just that, and handed over an Indian 7", and we were completely blown away. Super heavy and sludge-y stonery doom from a band who we had never heard of and by all rights should have been up there rocking along side bands like Pelican and Isis and Mastodon. So we played our 7"s to bits, just biding our time for a full length, cuz let's face it, super droney stretched out druggy stoner doom doesn't really have the space on a 7" to unwind and trudge through epic 10 minute plus songs the way that music was meant to. It's almost cruel keeping that sort of band confined to a 7". Like keeping a wooly mammoth in a tiny enclosure at the zoo. Before long those steel bars will be gone and there will be plenty of blood and gore and folks trampled under foot. And we can't imagine a more apt description of the finally unveiled Indian full length. The first track is a glacial Earth / SUNNO))) like drone, thick guitars squirming and slithering in a big tangly cloud of feedback, but that's only to ease you into the mighty ass kicking you're about to receive. Massive, lumbering, feedback soaked, groove flecked stoned and drugged out space sludge of the highest order. A bit like Eyehategod mixed with Kyuss, this is bile spewing evil stuff, maybe even a bit like Khanate if they decided to 'rock' and get some girls to like their band. Then there's the vocals, instead of a Kyuss-y raspy growl or an EHG sort of bellow / howl, the vocals here are a grim icy demonic screech, each track an unholy union, equal parts stoner sludge and frosty black metal invocation. Fucking awesome. Fans of the new breed of post rock / metal hybrid (Pelican, Isis, Tides, Conifer), and the sludge-y doom of bands like EHG, Khanate, Sleep, Electric Wizard, SUNNO))) as well as ALL things drone sludge shriek buzz and blur, might as well just get the rusty razor out right now and carve INDIAN right there on your scarred and tattooed forearm along side the rest of 'em! Killer crown-of-thorned-monkey cover art too!!
MPEG Stream: "No Able Fires"
MPEG Stream: "Ration"

LET GO s/t (The Militia Group) cd 14.98
We've made no bones about out love of the POP. We love the fuzzed out black metal too, and the sludge-y dirge sure, and of course the beautiful blissed out drones, but sometimes nothing does it for us like pop. Pop. POP! Be it delicate lo-fi 4-track bedroom pop, jangly indie pop, or big guitar hook drenched POWER pop. Sometime you just need to fill your head with hooks, bounce around, air guitar, sing along, you know. And no recent band did it for us quite as much as The Stereo, who wrote unbelievably catchy songs, wrapped in HUGE chugging guitars, amazing drumming and gorgeous harmony vocals. The Stereo broke up last year which really bummed us out (The Stereo being one of the few bands EVER than Andee has ever written a fan letter to!) but we soon discovered 2/3 of The Stereo had regrouped as Let Go. In fact when Andee and Allan went to CMJ, one of the only shows they really wanted to see was Let Go at CBGB's (which they didn't, goldarnit, since the show was WAY sold out) but upon their return to SF, the Let Go record was out and as if it were even possible, it might be even better than the Stereo. It basically sounds like the next Stereo record would have, bigger hooks, catchier songs, even more clever arrangements, more elaborate harmonies, and like the last Stereo record, it's definitely a grower, as all great records are. On first listen, we were mildly disappointed, but now we can't stop listening to it over and over again. Even has a sticker on the front of the cd featuring testemonials from other current pop bands (including Fallout Boy) going on and on about how good the Let Go are and how their bands wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Let Go and the Stereo and maybe the most accurate: "Let Go is your new favorite band." Indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Spotlights"
MPEG Stream: "Paper-Cuts"
MPEG Stream: "Illuminati"

OLSSON, BJORN s/t (Lobster) (Gravitation) cd 15.98
Ooooh. The fifth self-titled album of achingly melodic, wide-open spaces atmospheric, instrumental music from Sweden's Bjorn Olsson is here! And that makes us very very happy, although we must admit that what we've come to call his "seafood series" sure is confusing, and not just 'cause (aside from the cover art) we have any idea what it has to do with seafood. Probably nothing. However, each of his last four albums so far, including this one, have had some manner of delicous sea-creature depicted on the cover. Apparently this one's lobster, but y'see we thought that the second disc in the series was lobster. Turns out that was actually crawfish. Duh! Make a note of it. So, after shrimp, crawfish and crab comes lobster. Don't care for seafood? Well what about pasta? 'Cause it's Spaghetti Westerns that this music most reminds us of... 'Cause as you may know, soundtrack maestro Ennio Morricone is definitely one of the most obvious influences on Bjorn Olsson, and he brilliantly recreates the Morricone sound here, including bringing back the wonderful whistling that we so loved on the disc that we now know as Olsson's self-titled (crawfish) album. Along with that haunting whistling, this moody high plains drifter music has got all the hallmarks of a Morricone composition: lonesome acoustic guitar, snappy militaristic snare, and the elegiac hum of a wordless choir. You can definitely imagine Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef squaring off to a soundtrack like this, cigars clenched in teeth, sun beating down, dust and desperation heavy in the air. Which is to say, it's goddamn gorgeous. There's eight tracks, the eighth being almost one full hour in length, incorporating and expanding upon melodies visited earlier in the disc, much in the manner of a soundtrack, where themes are often reprised. Compared to Olsson's last album, the one with the crab on the cover, this is much less gritty and lo-fi, and without the hints of '60s psych-rock guitar. But no less recommended. Is this the best Bjorn yet? Andee, for one, thinks so. Of course, we do like 'em all... this one, though, may be the cleanest sounding, and perhaps the most Morricone.
MPEG Stream: "Melodi i H-moll"
MPEG Stream: "Lang lat i A-dur"

QUEENADREENA The Butcher And The Butterfly (One Little Indian) cd 16.98
Queen Adreena is everything PJ Harvey should have been. Could have been. And sort of was, for a brief spell there. Groundbreaking, threatening, inspiring, empowering, controversial. Unfortunately for us Americans, Queen Adreena has remained a barely heard, mostly unattainable, always incredibly expensive mystery, until now. Imagine PJ Harvey, if she were a filthy, waifish, sexed up firebrand, with a mop of tangled blonde curls and dressed in tattered doll like dresses, with a voice that swings from a sultry croon to a glass shattering Bjorkish squeal to a raspy wail, all in a single line, fronting a motley groop spitting out a pill popping, gas huffing, crazily chaotic, swaggering, smoldering sexrock with LOUD fuzz guitars pounding tribal drumming and wild and unhinged and insanely sexy vocals. Some sort of bastard spawn of PJ Harvey, Bow Wow Wow, Kate Bush, heavy metal and seventies glam rock. Lots of grinding guitars, breathy breakdowns, slithering seedy sexiness, and some unbeleivably killer songs. Often maligned as the "sleaze-metal PJ Harvey" in the UK press, but that's actually a pretty darn good description if you ask us. And if someone told us about some band that sounded like that we'd be all over it in a second. This is one of those records we've been listening to so much it's hard to put into words exactly what it is about it that drive us so crazy. Just listen to the sound samples and you'll immediately hear how ferocious and fucking amazing this record is.
MPEG Stream: "In Red"
MPEG Stream: "Princess Carwash"
MPEG Stream: "Suck"

ROGUE WAVE Descended Like Vultures (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
Hooooray! Here's the second album from Bay Area pop dreamies Rogue Wave. No sophomore slumps here. No way! Hearing Descended Like Vultures in many ways reminds me of hearing Death Cab For Cutie's first album Something About Airplanes for the first time. Descended Like Vultures is soft, sweet and immediately endearing with its melted ice cream boyish vocals and lush pop arrangements. Mainman Zach Rogue is one dandy songwriter and composer with an overflowing treasure chest of irresistibly dreamy hooks and melodies. Very reminiscent of The Beatles, Raspberries, Bread and the abovementioned Ben Gibbard and co. You can bet yer boots that popcraft as splendid as this certainly comes highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Bird On A Wire"
MPEG Stream: "Publish My Love"
MPEG Stream: "Salesman At The Day Of The Parade"

ROGUE WAVE Descended Like Vultures (Sub Pop) lp 12.98
Hooooray! Here's the second album from Bay Area pop dreamies Rogue Wave. No sophomore slumps here. No way! Hearing Descended Like Vultures in many ways reminds me of hearing Death Cab For Cutie's first album Something About Airplanes for the first time. Descended Like Vultures is soft, sweet and immediately endearing with its melted ice cream boyish vocals and lush pop arrangements. Mainman Zach Rogue is one dandy songwriter and composer with an overflowing treasure chest of irresistibly dreamy hooks and melodies. Very reminiscent of The Beatles, Raspberries, Bread and the abovementioned Ben Gibbard and co. You can bet yer boots that popcraft as splendid as this certainly comes highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Bird On A Wire"
MPEG Stream: "Publish My Love"
MPEG Stream: "Salesman At The Day Of The Parade"

SUNN O))) Black One (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
ATTENTION: the limited edition 2cd version of this is totally gone, this is the single disc version!
As you may have noticed, the aQ speakers have been quite clogged of late with the black sonic tar of glacial doom and slow motion sludge, molten flows of downtuned guitars, rumbling bowel churning drones, impossibly slow and primordially plodding drumming, all tangled up in huge squirming, blackened riffs, like mammoths struggling to loose themselves from pits of black tar. We've also been quite obsessed with the more virulent strains of buzzing, bizarre black metal. Leviathan, Xasthur, Benighted Leams, Blackdeath, Deathspell Omega, Furze, Lurker Of Chalice and the like. But just imagine for a moment, if that river of sludge we love so much ran right through the darkened Nordic forest, or if you took all that buzz and fuzz and held it under a thick layer of black pitch, while it struggled desperately for breath, or if you took the bombinating blur of Burzum and slowed it waaaaay doooooooown, or better yet, what if Dylan Carlson of Earth grew up listening to Darkthrone and Mayhem instead of Hendrix and the Mentors. Well you'd probably get something like Black One. To be honest, what forms the basis of Black One is really not all that different than other SUNNO))) records. It's still a series of 16 rpm metal riffs, morphed beautifully into plodding hypnotic smears of metallic ambience. The blackness here comes from several sources: the art and the imagery for one, a very metal looking cover drawing, olde English fonts, O'Malley and Anderson have adopted properly metal monickers for the instruments used: axe subs, icy inverted crosswinds upon four string zamboni, grail, glacial winds, calls from beyond the grave! Then there is the presence of two current BM legends, Malefic from Xasthur and Wrest from Leviathan. That said, there are moments, where SUNNO)))'s immediately recognizable sludge does twist itself into more black metal shapes, and it's those moments that Black One truly taps into a direct line to the fiery abyss. Imagine listening to Immortal through some sort of time warp, where Blizzard Beasts is stretched into a single icy contrail spread out over 666 years, a hazy black cloud swallowing everything in its path. Add some truly frosty and fucked up vocals and ghostly guitars from Wrest and Malefic, all manner of gorgeous sonic filigree from Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi and noise guru John Weise, some text by Seldon Hunt, and that oh so familiar Sunn-y O'Malleyïartwork, lyrics via Dead (from Mayhem), Malefic, Wrest and Abbath (of Immortal) and you might just be looking at a truly and utterly black one indeed.
MPEG Stream: "It Took The Night To Believe"
MPEG Stream: "Cursed Realms (Of The Winterdemons)"
MPEG Stream: "Orthodox Caveman"

V/A Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up (Numero Group) cd 17.98
Wow. In the span of a couple years, the Numero Group label has become the most exciting reissue label around. From the haunting electronic samba Young Marble Giants worship of Antena, to the long lost soul of the Capsoul label, the missing funk of the Bandit label, the creepy country beauty of Fern Jones to the amazing Yellow Pills power pop combination. Makes us dizzy just thinking about it.
So here we have what might possibly be the first collection of funk-soul-calypso-reggae from Belize. And it's a rollicking joyous non stop party. The influence of American R&B and soul is everywhere, and of course, so is Jamaican reggae. But with any comp like this, it's not the influences, it's what you do with them. So the tracks here run the gamut from, super emotive soulful crooning over warm warbly organs and wavery horns, full on dubbed out reggae rave ups, down and dirty gritty funky workouts, reverb drenched fifties sounding rock and roll, total Shaft / theme from some seventies sitcom slap bass disco funk and on and on. All infused with the spirt of the city and the era in which they were created. Joyful and hopeful, fun and spirited and lively and just a total blast. We've been listening to this nonstop, and everytime we play it in the store, somebody buys one!
MPEG Stream: LORD RHABURN "Disco Connection"
MPEG Stream: HARMONETTES "Can't Go Halfway"
MPEG Stream: JESUS ACOSTA & THE PROFESSIONALS "Guajida"

V/A Welsh Rare Beat (Finders Keepers) cd 21.00
Compilations of long-lost '60s and '70s psych/pop/rock gems dug up from the far corners of the world by dedicated crate-digging record collectors are always considered a good thing here at AQ. We can just point to the Hava Narghile, Cambodian Rocks, Love Peace & Poetry and Thai Beat comps for some easy examples. But while we've been stoked on all sorts of stuff from Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, South Africa, and elsewhere, there's always room for more, and for new unexplored territories to freak out about. For instance, what about Welsh psych/prog/folk??? Aha, that's what Welsh Rare Beat is devoted to, as you've already surmised. The 25 tracks here, all of 'em pretty fantastic, were selected from the vaults of the home-grown Welsh indie record label Sain, which could easily be (as this comp argues) the coolest record label you've never heard of before. As the liner notes put it: "You like prog-rock with blueprint trip-hop beats? So did Sain. You like ethereal girl groups with mystical acid folk overtones? So did Sain. You like psychedelic rock operas based on druidism and witchcraft? So did Sain..." And they're not kidding. Psyche-Celtic hoe-downs, dreamy folk singing, Cymru pride protest rock, and incredible grooves abound. These songs are all sung in Welsh (a pleasing tongue we trust you'll find), and due to the language barrier (and doubtless related cultural/political issues) these artists are pretty much unknown outside their own land, despite being just as good as a lot of better known folks from elsewhere in the UK. Really, looking at the names here, we'd only ever heard of Meic Stevens before. Never Bran, Heather Jones, Endaf Emlyn, Y Tebot Piws, or Yr Atgyfodiad, let alone Y Dyniadon Ynfyd Hirfelyn Tesog! But that's what's so great about discs like this, getting turned on to the denizens of a whole new realm of record-collector fantasy. The cd booklet helps mightily in that department, featuring a great deal of text -- there's very detailed track-by-track info plus a lengthy essay that treats this music scene in a political/historical context. VERY thorough indeed. And it even includes an annotated map of Wales. This really well put-together labor of love was compiled by Andy Votel (so recently responsible for the fab Vertigo Mixed comp), Dom Thomas, and Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals who of course hail from Wales, and is released on the same label, Finders Keepers, that also brought us those equally obscure and awesome Jean Claude Vannier and Yamasuki discs.
MPEG Stream: BRAN "Y Gwylwyr"
MPEG Stream: HEATHER JONES "Nos Ddu"
MPEG Stream: ELERI LLWYD "O Gymru"

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----* tUMULt Redux :
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We realize that lots of folks might have only recently discovered aQuarius, and may have missed out on lots of past favorites we consider essential listening. Many of those same people may not realize that our very own Andee runs the tUMULt label, on which some of our all time favorite records have been released. So check it out:

IRAN s/t (tUMULt) cd 13.98
Another new release from tUMULt laboratories, finds our coworker Andee's label dipping its toes into pop, and recoiling in horror, as it pulls its feet back covered in muck and crud. Iran take 'Indie rock' and bury it in fuzz and hiss, taking ultra catchy pop, and dragging it through the detritus of lo-fi noise rock, picking up an ungodly assortment of buzz and blur and scuzz. Imagine a Pavement record on Siltbreeze. Or Sebadoh, if Lou Barlow was a jaded fuck instead of a sappy romantic. Or old Smog covering Skullflower. Or Harry Pussy playing Built To Spill. A beautifully cacophonous mess. Iran play damaged folk music, bombarded on all sides by a wild assortment of squeals and shrieks, static and hiss, and speaker clogging grit. Huge and slowly shifting, dronescapes that evolve into perfect little pop songs and then explode into jagged shards of high end skree. Iran are psychedelic and textural and noisey and totally catchy, hardcore, hook-filled low fidelity un-pop noise. Pop. Plus fucking wicked 'tiger' cover art.
MPEG Stream: "Pick Up/Stillborn"
MPEG Stream: "San Diego"

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ADKINS, HASIL Moon Over Madison (Norton) cd 14.98
Hurrah! Norton Records has reissued two more awesome albums from the true holy terror of the rockabilly and garage world, the late Hasil Adkins. Both of them are compiled from the home recordings of the man himself circa 1958-1963. Needless to say... amazing documents of his early years! Each presents a very very different Adkins -- one a wildman hellbent on rawk fury, the other a considerably more sedate, damp-spirited country crooner. This one offers the latter, subtitled The Lonesome And Blue Sounds Of Hasil Adkins, was first released back in 1990 by Norton on LP only. This time around it's on LP and CD with an additional four bonus previously unreleased tunes sandwiched between the sixteen original warbly raw tunes.
MPEG Stream: "I Had A Dream About You"
MPEG Stream: "Somebody Help Me"

ADKINS, HASIL Peanut Butter Rock and Roll (Norton) cd 14.98
Hurrah! Norton Records has reissued two more awesome albums from the true holy terror of the rockabilly and garage world, the late Hasil Adkins. Both of them are compiled from the home recordings of the man himself circa 1958-1963. Needless to say... amazing documents of his early years! Each presents a very different Adkins -- one a wildman hellbent on rawk fury, the other a considerably more sedate, damp-spirited country crooner. This one offers the former, and it's fuckin' great! Ultra dirty, murky and strange. Drums sound like wellworn cardboard boxes, pots and pans. Vocals distort as he howls the high notes, and his loosely tuned, feverishly strummed guitar keeps 'em company. It was first released back in 1990 by Norton on LP only. This time around it's on LP and CD with an additional four bonus tunes (two previously unreleased in the U.S. and two previously unreleased anywhere) sandwiched between the sixteen original raw'n'blistered tunes.
MPEG Stream: "Blue Suede Shoes"
MPEG Stream: "Come On And Do The Shake With Me"

AKIYAMA, MITCHELL Mort Aux Vaches (Staalplaat) cd 21.00
We loved the dreamy yet glitchy album Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep from earlier this year by Montreal electro-acoustic composer Mitchell Akiyama, as did quite a few of you...so here's something new from him that may be of interest. Akiyama's entry into Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series of cds documenting live-on-the-air performances for the Dutch radio station VPRO. For this 44 minute recording, Akiyama digitally processed his own live guitar playing (no pre-recorded samples were utilized). What you'll hear are placid, ambient guitar melodies given a scratchy, static-y scrubbing, making this sound a bit like one of the loops from Philip Jeck's turntable, or the result of shortwave radio interference. In fact, it's kinda funny that this was meant for a radio broadcast, since any listeners not up to speed with the standards of "experimental" music-making might just think that they had really bad reception! This is mostly quite gentle, but with a bleeding edge of sonic overload that now and then builds to near-painful levels of distortion before subsiding and again letting the melancholic guitar wash and clicking rhythms soothe your ears. Really beautiful.
Packaged in a thin, folded sheet of embossed copper! Watch you don't cut yrself on it...
MPEG Stream: "untitled [excerpt]"

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS The Love That Whirrs (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98
BACK IN STOCK. The UK's Ashtray Navigations (aka Phil Todd) has been spitting out cd after cd after tape after tape after cd-r after cd-r for years now. Close to twenty would be our guess. If not more even. Which is pretty dang impressive. So here we are twenty years down the line and Todd is still kicking up the sort of glorious din that shames most of the other free noise outifts out there. Billowing clouds of thick chordal bliss, washes of high end feedback and layer after layer of sonic skree, all shifting and swirling and drifting with subtle acustic guitars in the background as well as whining reeds unfurling melancholy Eastern melodies. The closest comparison would have to be Sunroof! or Vibracathedral Orchestra, who just so happen to occupy the same sonic scene as Todd and his Ashtray Navigations. From pixilated clouds of abstract tinkle and glimmer to dense supernovas of roiling sonic fury, The Love That Whirrs is totally essential listening (like all things Sunroof!, VCO, Pelt, Skullflower, Jazzfinger, etc.) for all you freeambientdronedrifters out there!
MPEG Stream: "The Soul Of Man Under Socialism"
MPEG Stream: "Darwin's Seal, Animal Tracks And Bones"

BAD DUDES s/t (Brain Burger) cd 12.98
Oh man, these Bad Dudes will for sure push all your smart alecky, manic prog, fuzzy synth, indie pop, angular art metal buttons and then some. Imagine the Champs, Upsilon Acrux, XRBXR, Zebulon Pike, Pinback, and Behold The Arctopus, in a dark alley, ready to rumble, armed only with synths, drum machines, gameboys, dayglo metal guitars, lots of zippers and wristbands, and of course vocoders. The resulting bloodshed sounds a bit like Rob Crow fronting Mr. Bungle, while they hold a new wave dance competition in the room next door. Wild and weird and fun and funny and a little bit confusing but in a good way!
MPEG Stream: "Megasquid"
MPEG Stream: "Xombie"
MPEG Stream: "Rum Siero"

BOATS, THE We Made It For You (Baked Goods) cd 16.98
Almost exactly a year later, The Boats (featuring members of Hood and The Remote Viewer) pick right up from where they left off on their previous full length Songs By the Sea... soothing, fluid loveliness albeit minus that album's veil of female vocals. If you're seeking a totally relaxing listen, please take the album's title as the truth. This was made for you... even if your name isn't one of the many that make up the track titles. Delicate shimmery glitches and dreamy melodic piano phrases echo through the slowly undulating ripples of bass tones. A stay inside with a good book on a rainy day kind of album.
MPEG Stream: "Jumble"
MPEG Stream: "Mum And Dad"

BONUS Gosurorri (Jyrk) cd-r 7.98
We bet the guys in bonus regret their choice of band names. You know: Is this that Bonus disc? Did you get the Bonus cd? What Bonus cd? The NEW Bonus cd. WHAT BONUS CD? Hee hee. You could get a serious noise rock Who's On First going. Anyway, this is actually pretty darn fantastic, and as with all Jyrk cd-r's it seems, SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, and we have the last 30. So again, act fast if you want one of these.
Slow buliding otherworldly shimmer, the sort of gorgeously delicate drone you want to go on forever and ever. Not rumbly or subsonic, or keening high end, this is warm and rich and dense and wraps your head in a big pillow of soft shimmering sound. So lovely. Comes in a sharp looking had painted sleeve. And again, when these are gone, they are gone for good!
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

BROKAW, CHRIS Incredible Love (12XU) cd 14.98
Unlike former Come and Codeine member Chris Brokaw's early solo recordings that were sans singing, on Incredible Love he's opened his mouth to sing his angstful heart right out, including only one instrumental amid his ten vocal songs. That's fine with us, as he's mighty well versed with voice and without. Also although this is far less postrock-y than his past work, and considerably more country rock oriented, he's stacked his decks with many of his old postrock comrades. Bedhead's Matt Kadane, Jeff Godard formerly of Karate, Rodan's Kevin Coultas to name just three. Extra treats includes a cover of Suicide's "I Remember" and a thick insert booklet containing lyrics and accompanying photos for each song which allows you to more thoroughly appreciate Brokaw's skillful way with words (check out the aching tale of "The Information Age").
MPEG Stream: "The Information Age"
MPEG Stream: "I Remember"

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE s/t (Arts & Crafts) cd 16.98
You know 'em, and (a lot of) you love 'em! Aah, those Canadians! Yup, finally here's a new studio album from Broken Social Scene... almost doesn't need an introduction, does it? But for those who want one... If what you've loved about Broken Social Scene was their jumbled musical allsorts that comprised their 'breakthrough' album You Forgot It In People, hope it doesn't disappoint you to discover that this comes across as a more clearly defined album. It's certainly poppier and more energetic too, like one of the BSS offshoot band Metric. That said, as we've come to expect from the shape-shiftin' BSS, as you listen to this album you'll still be continuously reminded of numerous beloved ol' '90s college rock bands like Dinosaur Jr. Seems to be pretty intentional though, especially if you consider many of the song titles -- for instance, the second song titled "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement" sounds just like, uhh... Pavement, the third one "7/4 (Shoreline)" could easily be a Tsunami tune, etc. A nice way of describing this would be "pleasant in a warm, nostalgic sort of way... like an indie rock quilt". A somewhat harsher way of doing so would be "indie rock muzak". Ouch. Which will it be for you?
MPEG Stream: "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement"
MPEG Stream: "Swimmers"

BUNYAN, VASHTI Lookaftering (DiCristina Stair Builders) cd 14.98
An absolutely timeless ageless folk music beauty!
If you fell in love with Ms Bunyan's Just Another Day album from 1970 (reissued recently on cd and lp!) as we did, you've probably been tingling with anticipation over the news that over three decades later she'd returned to the recording studio. Really, it's almost as though she never left. It's almost spooky! We caught a brief, but oh-so-pleasing glimpse of the present-day Vashti when she did an unexpected collaboration with Animal Collective earlier this year (the resulting recordings were released as a cdep titled "Prospect Hummer"). Now we get a full album's worth of her wonderfulness and she's joined by some youngsters named Joanna and Devendra. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Lately"
MPEG Stream: "Feet Of Clay"

CADAVER EYES The Acquisition Of Power Over Fire / No Time To Haste (Heart & Crossbone) cd-r 12.98
We listed an amazing record a while back from a band called Barabara, from Israel, who sounded to us a bit like a black metal Hella! So here we have the newest record from a band called Cadaver Eyes, which just happens to be the solo project of Barbara drummer David Opp, who in Cadaver Eyes also plays drums, but the twist here is the drums trigger samples, so it's a seriously self contained one man band, just one guy singing and whipping up a huge grinding metallic shitstorm with his drums. Pretty impressive. Sounds like some of the samples must be crusty Napalm death / Carcass style guitar riffs, while others are rumbling super distorted bass. The end result is a sludge-y grinding thrash attack that would be right at home on Earache or Peaceville circa late '80's. All sung in Hebrew, with some songs peppered with random bits of found snippets, traditional Israeli folk songs, media bites and other random sonic interference. This should also hit the spot for folks into the grind-sludge of Burmese, UK crusties Doom, Texas scuzz merchants Rusted Shut as well as anyone into crushing spastic chaotic musical mayhem!
MPEG Stream: "Dive Into The Abyss"
MPEG Stream: "Scandal Shaaruriyah"
MPEG Stream: "Powerless Emperor"

CASTANETS First Light's Freeze (Asthmatic Kitty) cd 14.98
Shhhh! The subdued hush of San Diego's Castanets' latest contemplative folk album can be ever so easily drowned out by the sounds of the city, but if you can find yourself a quiet time and place to listen to First Light's Freeze you'll be pleasantly rewarded. In songs such as "A Song Is Not The Song Of The World", the sensitive boy vocals at times bring to mind those of Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock, Built To Spill's Doug Martsch or Mountain Goats' John Darnielle. Now imagine those vocals atop some slightly off-kilter and psych-tinged which brings them into company with current abstract folk groups such as Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice. Nice!
MPEG Stream: "A Song Is Not The Song Of The World"
MPEG Stream: "Good Friend, Yr. Hunger"

CELEBRATION s/t (4AD) cd 13.98
Celebration features former members of Baltimore's anguished depressives Love Life who've brought an ample dose of volatile darkness to their new band. Although their more rollicking paced songs may bring them within spitting distance of current bands such as Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, methinks this heady band would like to lead you down a very different path than those predominantly 'up' sounding bands. Definitely more sinister and far less of a 'good time'. Slightly unhinged and perhaps intoxicated by some mysterious elixirs (Not boozily drunk, mind you! If that's what you're seeking, you should check out the latest Silver Jews album). If you like the formidable but sadly defunct band Pleasure Forever (or their predecessors Slaves and VSS), you're probably already familiar with these folks as they've shared plenty of stages... and if you're not, well, you should be! Jagged post-punk guitars and propulsive drumbeats slash through squalls from the organ and saxophone while lead singer Katrina Ford's howls, moans and slurs her blood-red vocals. Yeah, it's pretty darn great!
MPEG Stream: "War"
MPEG Stream: "Stars"

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH s/t (self-released) cd 14.98
Eccentric, folksy, retro-tinged pop is all around us these days. Following in the footsteps of fine bands such as Hidden Cameras, Frog Eyes, Architecture In Helsinki and Arcade Fire, here's one of the latest bands to be causing a minor ruckus (and for once, it's not a Canadian band! haha!). This release hasn't been easy to get a hold of. Folks have been feverishly requesting it for weeks, but we've only just recently been able to track down the self-released, very sparsely distributed and not so readily available cd. So what's the fuss all about? We shrug. While we can certainly see the appeal in their very 'now' sound, when we put the disc on for a spin, our reaction was nothing short of tepid (there were even some groans). In the first couple of tracks, there's some very Television styled, emotively yelped vocals, but overall, it's as if Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah randomly picked the Talking Heads and The Violent Femmes from the pool of '80s bands, and fused the voices of David Byrne and Gordon Gano into that ubiquitous clunked-art-dance-punk sound. We'd recommend first visiting the music of the far superior bands mentioned above before heading in the direction of CYHSY.
MPEG Stream: "Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away"
MPEG Stream: "Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood"

COHEN-SOLAL, JEAN Flutes Libres (MIO Records) cd 16.98
BACK IN STOCK, last ever copies however as the MIO label has sadly chosen to close up shop! So we grabbed a few of our faves (this and the Flamen Dialis). Here's our review from when we first listed this:
The time has come. That very special time, that only comes once in a long, long while. Open the gates! Unfurl the red carpet! Prepare thyselves! It's time to induct yet another record, into the elite and exclusive pantheon of Andee's favorite flute records. The Pantheon currently looks about like this: Phill Niblock's Four Full Flutes, Eberhard Blum's Berlin To Buffalo, Comus' First Utterance, Koukiji Kougezan's The Live [11th] Final Hyakusenmansyuuraku, Byard Lancaster's It's Not Up To Us, the first four Osanna records, Za Frumi, Alan Silva, Jethro Tull and pretty much all Roland Kirk and Eric Dolphy. Well, you can now add French flautist/double bassist Jean Cohen-Solal to that list. Flute Libres & Captain Tarthopom collects Cohen-Solal's first two ridiculously rare albums originally released in 1971 and 1973, on one cd. Long considered progressive rock masterpieces, these two records feature Cohen-Solal's ultra personal take on classical, jazz and avant garde, even mixing in some psychedelic rock and ambient minimalism to the mix. The disc starts off with a jazzy psych rock workout, sort of funky, with a boppy rhythm and wailing flutes, very catchy and cool. But from that point on, the record travels down a much darker path, as the jazz and funk and rock dissipate into spacy, shimmery soundscapes, reminiscent of Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd or even Taj Mahal Travellers, with warm melodic swells, shimmery washes of cymbals and gongs, and lonely notes, flute and double bass, swathed in reverb or wah, and sent to drift through the ether. Things rev up later on, adding shuffling jazz rhythms, dizzying flute melodies and faraway freakout guitars, channelling Magma and Focus, weaving meandering, propulsive and progressive, spacerock and jazzrock mantras. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Concerto Cyclique"
MPEG Stream: "Raga Du Matin"
MPEG Stream: "Matiere"

COPTIC LIGHT s/t (No Quarter) cd 14.98
Andee and Allan just saw these guys play at CMJ in New York, on an amazing bill with Khanate, Psychic Paramount, Mouthus and Circle! It was an intense show and Coptic Light were an appropriate opener.
If you're into tricksy, mad-as-a-hatter yet quite arty instrumental post rock along the lines of Battles, Storm And Stress, Don Cab, and maybe Hella, you ought to hear this band. It's really no surprise that the Coptic Light trio in fact features the drummer formerly of Storm & Stress (admittedly not one of our favorite bands, we like Coptic Light a lot more), alongside ex- Bitch Magnet guitarist Jon Fine and bassist Jeff Winterberg (whose Rat A Tat Tat Birds indie rock photo book you might have seen). They specialize in complex, caffinated guitar/bass/drum entanglement, a very controlled chaos, all very precise and mathematical, with lots of tension being built up and rarely released. There's got to be a lot of internal counting going on in these musicians' heads, but the technical progness of it all is balanced by the textural zones the band makes room in their music to explore.
This debut cd consists of three songs, each respectively running to 14, 10 and 19 minutes or thereabouts. These songs (songs? should we call 'em that? maybe "tracks" or "pieces" would be better) are long enough that you kinda lose yourself in 'em, forgetting how they started and unconcerned about when or how they'll end, letting your ears be blissfully battered by the frenzies and Fripperies on offer, as the tracks veer from hectic bombast to quiet ambience, drifting off while threatening further percussive fury. It's a whole lotta clatter AND atmosphere. Definitely a good fit on No Quarter with the likes of Circle and Psychic Paramount.
Also we're pretty sure that "Eat It High School" is a great song title.
MPEG Stream: "Mix The Races"
MPEG Stream: "Eat It High School"

DEADLY SNAKES, THE Porcella (In The Red) cd 13.98
The Deadly Snakes' Porcella rides the line between authenticity and irony like a mechanical bull. It's like the cover art...you've got some Van Gogh-like paint dabs in a lovely shade of sunrise pink, but flip to the back cover and hello, what's this? A severed pigs head! Scary! The pig/meat theme continues (hence, "Porcella") on the inside artwork as well.
Our first impression of this album was that these guys sound like they are playing their first gig in the coolest college bar in a 5-people-short-of-an-official-city town and ROCKIN' the place. We were all set to paint this band as as a slightly tipsy southern bar rock outfit (though they're from Toronto originally), but then on tracks four and five this late '60s jangle and pipes and a triumphant horn sneak in and things go sort-of Elephant 6-ish. The variety comes from the switch back and forth between a couple of different songwriters and vocalists, primarily Andre Ethier and Age of Danger (that's his name). The mix of
rambunctious, bluesy, modern cowboy boot rock and best-on-a-record-player pop is a little weird to get adjusted to, but these guys do bring something nice (meat, apparently) to the indie rock table.
MPEG Stream: "High Prices Going Down"

DEFTONES B-sides & Rarities (Maverick) cd + dvd 25.00
We love the Deftones. They always seem to get lumped in with all that jockish Warp Tour nu-metal, but sort of like with Tool, there's no good reason and it's so completely off the mark. So try to approach this band, and specifically this record, without all that baggage, and you will be blown away. The Deftones take churning slow burning metal pummel and stir in a healthy dose of Depeche Mode and Cure obsessed brooding moody gloom, and it's such a perfect mix. Check out their record White Pony and you'll know exactly what we mean. This one might be more for already fans, but folks into moody heaviness might really dig this. Especially as the majority of the cd is covers, and they're the sort of covers that will have your high school / outcast goth / smoking section / mixtape self all in a froth. Covers include: Cocteau Twins' "Wax And Wane", the Smiths' "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want", Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur", the Cure's "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep", Sade's "No Ordinary Love", Helmet's "Sinatra", Lynrd Skynrd's "Simple Man", Jawbox's "Savory" as well as a handful of re-recorded originals. So amazing! Also includes a DVD of all the videos as well as a bunch of live stuff and weird old rare footage. Packaged in a gorgeous hardcover book-style sleeve, with tons of liner notes and photos.
MPEG Stream: "Savory"
MPEG Stream: "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
MPEG Stream: "The Chauffeur"

DELAUGHTER, TIM / POLYPHONIC SPREE Thumbsucker (OST) (Sony) cd 17.98
OK folks, here it is, the soundtrack to the indie flick all the kids are talkin' 'bout. The film score was written by Tim Delaughter and performed by The Polyphonic Spree (who are sounding more and more like a children's choir with each passing day) which is a treat unto itself, but scattered throughout are three songs by the late Elliott Smith which only make the proceedings that much more heartbreaking (two previously unreleased covers of Big Star's "Thirteen" and Cat Stevens' "Trouble" as well as the track "Let's Get Lost" from Smith's last album From A Basement On A Hill). Somehow none of us have seen the film yet, but we can confirm that the soundtrack on its own swings you from carefree'n'feelgood to to dreamily contemplative to heartaches'n'bummers and back again. It all culminates in a lengthy (30-minute long) pastoral instrumental and finally a joyous reprise of Polyphonic's "Move Away And Shine".
MPEG Stream: SMITH, ELLIOTT "Thirteen"
MPEG Stream: POLYPHONIC SPREE "Move Away And Shine"

DELAY, VLADISLAV The Four Quarters (Huume) cd 16.98
Vladislav Delay has long been regarded as one of the most astute electronic producers, having successfully investigated a Chain Reaction morass of heroin house percolating with dubbed out granular synthetic bleep and bloop, then making quite a splash with numerous bona fide club anthems under the Luomo moniker. The Four Quarters marks the first record in quite some time as Vladislav Delay; like his electrifying Chain Reaction recordings, The Four Quarters is a submersive experience albeit a far more downtempo excursion with plodding breakbeats and super slow-motion ambient wash and synth vibrations, all smothered in a frigid digital dub.
MPEG Stream: "The First Quarter"
MPEG Stream: "The Fourth Quarter"

DRIFT, THE Noumena ( Temporary Residence Ltd.) cd 14.98
This SF quartet gets things rolling on their first album Noumena, introducing themselves with some moody, brassy horn abstractions that settle into a more straight-forward Chicago-style post-rock affair. While as we mentioned this is the band's debut full length release, the bandmembers are certainly not newcomers and their experience definitely shows in these dynamic compositions. Drummer Rich Douthit plays in Halifax Pier and guitar and keyboard player Danny Grody is also a member of Tarentel. In fact this band started out as a side project for him and his Tarentel bandmate Trevor Montgomery who then pursued his solo endeavors as Lazarus. Rounding out the line-up are bassist Safa Shoukrai and trumpeteer Jeff Jacobs. Speaking of which, bask leisurely in the warming glow of his trumpet and flugelhorn which take centerstage on the first track "Gardening, Not Architecture". Next up, Shoukrai's cyclical stand-up bass sets the pace for the more groovin' "Invisible Cities". Guitars soon join in, while the horn blasts and some hazy electronic elements add texture and atmosphere. The Drift keep their jazz-inflected sounds varied and movin' right through to the final track. Oh and keep in mind that although there's 'only' six tracks, they sprawl out over the course of 55 minutes.
MPEG Stream: "Gardening, Not Architecture"
MPEG Stream: "Inconsistency Principle"

DRIFT, THE Noumena ( Temporary Residence Ltd.) lp 17.98
This SF quartet gets things rolling on their first album Noumena, introducing themselves with some moody, brassy horn abstractions that settle into a more straight-forward Chicago-style post-rock affair. While as we mentioned this is the band's debut full length release, the bandmembers are certainly not newcomers and their experience definitely shows in these dynamic compositions. Drummer Rich Douthit plays in Halifax Pier and guitar and keyboard player Danny Grody is also a member of Tarentel. In fact this band started out as a side project for him and his Tarentel bandmate Trevor Montgomery who then pursued his solo endeavors as Lazarus. Rounding out the line-up are bassist Safa Shoukrai and trumpeteer Jeff Jacobs. Speaking of which, bask leisurely in the warming glow of his trumpet and flugelhorn which take centerstage on the first track "Gardening, Not Architecture". Next up, Shoukrai's cyclical stand-up bass sets the pace for the more groovin' "Invisible Cities". Guitars soon join in, while the horn blasts and some hazy electronic elements add texture and atmosphere. The Drift keep their jazz-inflected sounds varied and movin' right through to the final track. Oh and keep in mind that although there's 'only' six tracks, they sprawl out over the course of 55 minutes.
MPEG Stream: "Gardening, Not Architecture"
MPEG Stream: "Inconsistency Principle"

DUCHESS s/t (Blackball) cd 13.98
A new dark pop gem! Check out this great self-titled debut from L.A. duo Duchess (namely Christy Schnabel formerly of Ugly Beauty and Jerry DiRienzo formerly of Cell). This kind of brooding sounds like it should be coming from New York or Boston circa 1992 (think Come or Versus) rather than Los Angeles circa now. It immediately seems familiar and singalong-able. Smolderingly heady yet catchy at the same time. Many songs conjure images of a stormy night occupied by much distraught handwringing and perhaps even some murderous thoughts. Schnabel's vocals are the key here, reminiscent of the deeply potent voices of Nathalie Merchant and Versus' Fontaine Toups. This cd was released on Adam Pfahler's (ex-Jawbreaker) label and it definitely fits well alongside the moodily dynamic air of his own band Whysall Lane which also features Richard Balayut (formerly of the abovementioned Versus) and whose own debut album should be out any day now too!
MPEG Stream: "Diamond Ring"
MPEG Stream: "Let Me Gain"

DUNGEN Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds) 2lp 27.00
NOW ON VINYL! And about time, since a) Dungen is so hugely popular and b) they're so wonderfully retro that their music sure does belong on that "vintage" format. Here's some of what we said when this came out on cd originally:
The album proper got this review from us before, let's revisit that review with some updates:
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 self-titled LP since reissued on cd in expanded form, the second being the now-hard-to-find Stadsvandringar cd that Allan raved about on our list three years ago, soon to be reissued too we're told). Ta Det Lugnt 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. Hard not to love, we've found.
Now, you may know that the domestic version of Ta Det Lugnt came on cd with an extra, bonus disc. That material is not to be found on this vinyl edition. BUT, Subliminal Sounds has also just released a 12" entitled Tyst Minut, listed nearby, that features those tracks.
MPEG Stream: "Panda"
MPEG Stream: "Ta Det Lugnt"
MPEG Stream: "Sluta Folja Efter"

DUNGEN Tyst Minut 12" (Subliminal Sounds) 12" 14.98
The extra tracks from the extra disc that came with the domestic cd version of Dungen's Ta Det Lugnt now makes it to vinyl, in addition to the album itself (the double LP version of which is listed nearby). Five songs here, all of 'em awesome. Sorry it's a not-cheap import but if you're dedicated to your turntable then here you go.

EITZEL, MARK Candy Ass (Cooking Vinyl) cd 17.98
Mark Eitzel presents two of his very distinct musical personalities on his latest solo outing (which goes by the odd, somewhat ill-fitting title Candy Ass) -- his trademark somber Americana sound of his full band American Music Club and his less familiar, but just as moody, Radiohead-ish atmospheric electronic tracks. Really, it's a bit boggling that he chose to combine the two when he could easily have released two separate totally cohesive solid albums. When played in the store, it had folks asking, "Is this still the Mark Eitzel?!" Each song unto itself is pretty darn gorgeous, but mixing 'em up like this only makes it difficult for the listener to immerse him/herself in either. Of course, maybe that's what Eitzel intended (i.e, to journey through various different 'places'), but his chosen running order just leads you in one direction only to leave you hangin'. Perhaps, you won't find this detail as distracting as we did.
MPEG Stream: "My Pet Rat St Michael"
MPEG Stream: "A Loving Tribute To My City"

ELECTRELANE Rock It to the Moon (Too Pure) cd 10.98
Originally released on queer-punk label Mr. Lady Records, Electrelane's debut album Rock It To The Moon gets a reissuing courtesy of their current label Too Pure, and at a slightly nicer price too! Here's what we said about it the first time around, and it seems we were presciently right about it:
A smouldering, spaced-out, farfisa organ-fueled sonic journey which suitably befits its title Rock It To The Moon. Quite a bit like a more garage-y version of the heady, repetitive jams often found within the Too Pure roster (especially Th' Faith Healers, Moonshake, and bits of Stereolab).
MPEG Stream: "Film Music"
MPEG Stream: "Le Song"

FILM SCHOOL On & On (Beggars Banquet) cd ep 4.98
Here's a hint of what's to come in Film School land! These New Yorkers found a new label home at Beggars Banquet and have a new full length slated for January of next year. From the very '80s British influenced sounds of these new songs, it's gonna be a perfect fit. We've gotta say that it's probably unlikely that Robert Smith is gonna be retiring as lead vocalist of The Cure any time soon, but if he did (or even if he called in sick or wanted to play hooky one day), Film School's lead singer Krayg Burton could step right in at the wink of an eye. Oddly enough the last time we heard from these guys was their Harmed 7" earlier this year, and back then his vocals were more along the lines of Pinback's Rob Crow. Anyhoo, On & On blends a romantic vocal angst (a la mid-period Cure) with fuzzy, swirling shoegazer guitars like those of Slowdive, Ride or The Church. Note: the cd version features one additional tune "February".
MPEG Stream: "On & On"
MPEG Stream: "Plus One"

FILM SCHOOL On & On (Matador) 7" 4.98
Here's a hint of what's to come in Film School land! These New Yorkers found a new label home at Beggars Banquet and have a new full length slated for January of next year. From the very '80s British influenced sounds of these new songs, it's gonna be a perfect fit. We've gotta say that it's probably unlikely that Robert Smith is gonna be retiring as lead vocalist of The Cure any time soon, but if he did (or even if he called in sick or wanted to play hooky one day), Film School's lead singer Krayg Burton could step right in at the wink of an eye. Oddly enough the last time we heard from these guys was their Harmed 7" earlier this year, and back then his vocals were more along the lines of Pinback's Rob Crow. Anyhoo, On & On blends a romantic vocal angst (a la mid-period Cure) with fuzzy, swirling shoegazer guitars like those of Slowdive, Ride or The Church. Note: the cd version features one additional tune "February".
MPEG Stream: "On & On"
MPEG Stream: "Plus One"

FINEST DEAREST Pacemaker EP (self-released) cd 4.98
These new SF band proudly let it be known that they in fact are spring chickens (their bio says that they "were born in the '80s, raised by the '90s"), and their youth definitely shows in Pacemaker's punchy energy level and wide-eyed vocal sweetness, but the band also shows some pop smarts beyond their years. Influences that they cite include Pavement, Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead and Cursive, and the impact of those bands is clearly evident. However, they fortunately haven't fallen into the easy trap of simply mocking their idols. They're not just a soundalike. Theirs is solid guitar driven indie pop defined by some interesting postrock-ish twists and graced by the swoonsome female vocals of Ms Carly Schneider (whose soft voice you might've also heard on the equally well-received debut release from another Bay Area band Empty Rooms). This EP fits well alongside fellow Bay Area smart pop upstarts Tartufi, and also recalls acclaimed 90's indie bands such as PEE and Velocity Girl. A very promising debut!
MPEG Stream: "Sleep Until The Weekend"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Going"

FLAMEN DIALIS Symptome - Dei (MIO Records) cd 16.98
BACK IN STOCK, last ever copies however as the MIO label has sadly chosen to close up shop! So we grabbed a few of our faves (this and the Jean Cohen-Solal). Here's our review from when we first listed this:
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"

GIRTH Living In Truth (Hector Stentor) cd 9.98
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK!
Wow! This is one for all of you always seeking out the ultimate mathy heaviness. Girth are a guitar and drums duo from up Seattle way, and they dish out some seriously deranged, detailed, devastating instrumental mayhem here. There's a dozen songs on this 42 minute debut and they're all hella herky and jerky and heavy. Did we just say Hella? Well that'd be one comparison, along with Bozart and Breadwinner, though Girth are way more of a metal-riffed monster that those bands, something of which we totally approve. Girth's spazzy string-strangulation and amazing octopoidal drumming is balanced by their crushing low-end chunk and high-tension rocka rolla, and there's even some nice, calming interludes of post-rockish near melody. It's sorta like Crom-Tech or Orthrelm, but just a bit less maddening, more musical. At times this could be the Melvins, playing Black Flag's Process Of Weeding Out while on a caffine binge, throwing in some Entombed or Eyehategod riffs while they're at it. Or the Fucking Champs and Slayer as possessor demons doing battle for control of the same host body. The most important point is, that as hectic and heavy as this can be, it manages to be super listenable as well, something that we don't always get from the math core crowd. We like it. A lot. An impressive debut for sure, packaged with some suitably beautifully chaotic yet precise Stephen O'Malley designed graphics.
MPEG Stream: "Defaced By Her Unconscious"
MPEG Stream: "Discreet Rendezvous"
MPEG Stream: "Monopolizing The Pleasure Dome"

GOBLIN COCK Bagged And Boarded (Absolutely Kosher) cd 12.98
By now you must realize we're total suckers for a ridiculous band name. Bathtub Shitter, Fuck, I'm Dead, Lurker Of Chalice, Goat Thrower, we could go one and on. But when faced with a band name like Goblin Cock. Well as far as we're concerned we're pretty much sold already. Then incorporate some classic fantasy art depicting a goblin, seated upon a throne, surrounded by fire, with his lengthy member protruding from his voluminous robes, like a sleeping serpent (and while we're at it, why not put a huge gold hoop through the tip?!), and then add some band photos, cloaked in mist, the band members be-robed skeletons, all crowded around and cradling a glowing metal skull. Okay, enough already! We love it. Well the surprising thing here, is that this is not in fact some crazy metal band, or some troop of weird metal ironists, no Goblin Cock is actually the latest group masterminded by Mr. Rob Crow, who you may know better as a member of Pinback, or Thingy, or Heavy Vegetable. And while this was purported to be Rob Crow's metal record (Heavy Metal Vegetable?), it's not all that far removed from the complex and off kilter pop we've come to expect. The guitars are definitely heavier, lots of distorted chug, and there's all sorts of metallic pounding drummage and plenty of very 'metal' moments, but the songs are still catchy, ridiculously so sometimes, and Rob's voice is killer as always, every song a twisted snarl of buzzing guitars, rich harmonies, strange arrangements and hooks galore, albeit wrapped snugly in leather and denim and spikes and blackened hoods! Probably not metal enough to get Goblin Cock a slot on Ozzfest, but just heavy enough to supply your indie rock collection with a much needed dose of heavy metal thunder. Sort of. And if you're not sold already, check this out:
http://www.wormwoodfilms.com/movies/goblin_cock_2.mpg
MPEG Stream: "Stumped"
MPEG Stream: "The Crusher"
MPEG Stream: "Ichiro's Dilemma"
MPEG Stream: "The Revenge Of Snufalufagus"

GOBLIN COCK Bagged And Boarded (Absolutely Kosher) picture disc lp 9.98
By now you must realize we're total suckers for a ridiculous band name. Bathtub Shitter, Fuck, I'm Dead, Lurker Of Chalice, Goat Thrower, we could go one and on. But when faced with a band name like Goblin Cock. Well as far as we're concerned we're pretty much sold already. Then incorporate some classic fantasy art depicting a goblin, seated upon a throne, surrounded by fire, with his lengthy member protruding from his voluminous robes, like a sleeping serpent (and while we're at it, why not put a huge gold hoop through the tip?!), and then add some band photos, cloaked in mist, the band members be-robed skeletons, all crowded around and cradling a glowing metal skull. Okay, enough already! We love it. Well the surprising thing here, is that this is not in fact some crazy metal band, or some troop of weird metal ironists, no Goblin Cock is actually the latest group masterminded by Mr. Rob Crow, who you may know better as a member of Pinback, or Thingy, or Heavy Vegetable. And while this was purported to be Rob Crow's metal record (Heavy Metal Vegetable?), it's not all that far removed from the complex and off kilter pop we've come to expect. The guitars are definitely heavier, lots of distorted chug, and there's all sorts of metallic pounding drummage and plenty of very 'metal' moments, but the songs are still catchy, ridiculously so sometimes, and Rob's voice is killer as always, every song a twisted snarl of buzzing guitars, rich harmonies, strange arrangements and hooks galore, albeit wrapped snugly in leather and denim and spikes and blackened hoods! Probably not metal enough to get Goblin Cock a slot on Ozzfest, but just heavy enough to supply your indie rock collection with a much needed dose of heavy metal thunder. Sort of. And if you're not sold already, check this out:
http://www.wormwoodfilms.com/movies/goblin_cock_2.mpg
MPEG Stream: "Stumped"
MPEG Stream: "The Crusher"
MPEG Stream: "Ichiro's Dilemma"
MPEG Stream: "The Revenge Of Snufalufagus"

GOD Anti-Sex, Anti-Wiretapping (Made In Taiwan) (Jyrk) cd 9.98
The first offical cd (not cd-r) release from the Yellow Swan's label Jyrk and it's a doozy. A 45 minute spin through a dizzying collage of electronic fuckery, white noise, chopped static, all sorts of percussive amp buzz and cable jiggle, swooping sheets of feedback and chaotically controlled drones. High end sine wave lazer beams, all sorts of crickety glitchery and warm warbly woosh. Definitely for fans of Yellow Swans, Wolf Eyes, Hair Police, Double Leopards, Burning Star Core and all that lovely noisy goodness. Packaged in a super sweet hand screened, multi-colored wallpaper style sleeve. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Anti-Sex, Anti-Wiretapping (Made In Taiwan)"

GROWING His Return (Megablade) lp 11.98
Now on vinyl!
Growing may be a rock band, but they're the sort of rock band that seems to just set the music in motion, letting it blossom and build, only intervening when necessary, allowing bass and guitar and vocals to interact organically, creating dense soundscapes, equal parts shimmery space rock, reverb drenched slow core, and dark rumbling drone. Three lengthy tracks, almost thirty minutes of space-y drone-y bliss. The first track is made up of warm snarls of distorted guitar, woven into huge expanses of thick ambient swirl, beneath majestic swaths of keening melody and subtle shuffling rattlesnake percussion. A strangely otherworldly tribal space drone, almost folky at times, with the melodies sounding like some alien bagpipe, but always lush and dense and druggy. Track two, "Freedom Towards Death" is the shortest and most song-like, with dreamy deadpan vocals buried beneath a chaotic smear of multi-tracked guitars and layer after layer of throbbing sludge and space-y swoosh. Sounds a bit like a good old fashioned pop song dipped in some Hawkwind and sprinkled with some Sunroof! The final track is a massive fifteen minute epic of slow growing, pulsing guitars, so incredibly thick and dense it sort of resonates right through your ears, through your whole body and into your soul. The kind of song we wish would go on forever. Like floating in the clouds, or drifting underwater, or sinking slowly through a million mile thick slab of billowy guitars. The track ends (sadly) amazingly with the sound becoming more and more blown out and distorted, until the guitar starts to fall apart, becoming cracked and crumbly until it sort of sputters out in a brief flicker of static and crackle. WOW.
MPEG Stream: "In The Shadow Of The Mountain"
MPEG Stream: "Freedom Towards Death"

HUNTER, JANA Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom (Gnomonsong) cd 13.98
We caught a fleeting introductory glimpse of Ms Jana Hunter recently when she appeared on a split LP with Mr. Devendra Banhart. We were immediately struck by just how much her voice bore a striking resemblance to his. In fact, we had to double-check to make sure it was indeed her singing. Now on her own on this full length collection of her music from the past ten years (but still in the company of Banhart in other ways, this was released on the new label he runs with Andy Cabic of Vetiver), does that still hold true or was it simply a proximity issue? Well, we can say that although Ms Jana Hunter does occasionally affect a peculiarly familiar, charming lilt when she sings, she does sound quite a bit different (from both Banhart and herself on that split release), but not incongruously so. The first song "All The Best Wishes" has an aged recording sound that brings her closer to Jolie Holland in old tymey feel (this haunted, echo-y feel resurfaces later on in the tenth song "The Angle"), but her actual performance also recalls Cat Power's Chan Marshall in its achingly personal intimacy. Quite a first impression. Not at all unexpectedly, Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom nestles in well alongside the neo-folk works of Banhart, Holland, Vetiver, Cocorosie and Joanna Newsom... and Cat Power too. Be sure to stick around for the closing track "K". It's a casiotone-y sweetie!
MPEG Stream: "All The Best Wishes"
MPEG Stream: "K"

IMMACULATE MACHINE Ones and Zeros (Mint) cd 13.98
This young Canadian band has been tagged with the selling point that lead vocalist Kathryn Calder is the long-lost niece of New Pornographers' Carl Newman, and that she sings and tours with that band -- a wise move on her uncle's part 'cause she's mighty talented. A great way to get a lot of attention from Canadian pop-loving folks, that's for sure! That said, Immaculate Machine's music sounds nothing like those dear NPs and stands on its own merits. Indeed, the Victoria, BC trio have set the bar high on their first outting and they've done so with such solid songwriting and an ease and composure that so many bands' many times their age haven't been able to grasp. Their fully fleshed out arrangements bring together the hard'n'crunchy and soft'n'pretty. Although the core of their sound is indisputably pop, it's a pop of a different flavour. More feverish and punchy. The first song has a retro feel that brings to mind their labelmates The Organ. In fact in keeping with the family theme here, imagine them as a peppier cousin of said band. On the other hand the male lead vocals on the fourth song "Phone No." are a deadringer for Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields. Overall, their sound recalls the early edgy energy of '70s/'80s British bands such as XTC and Gang Of Four, but not the trademark sounds of either of those bands which have been plundered and regurgitated to death recently by many other young bands. A remarkably robust debut!
MPEG Stream: "Two Places"
MPEG Stream: "Phone No. "

INCA ORE A Knit of My Own Fibers / When You Are Sleeping I Tell You Secrets (Jyrk) cd-r 7.98
Another super limited cd-r from the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label, this time, a solo record from frequent YS collaborator Eva, who on her own can weave delicate drones with the best of em! Two lengthy tracks, thirty minutes of slow shifting, lazily drifting otherworldy shimmer, all constructed from Eva's voice run through effects and wrapped in gossamer layers of reverb and delay. Very reminiscent of the recent Lichens record on Kranky, where 90 Day Men's Rob Lowe created a whole record using mostly vocals, but Inca Ore is much more ghostly and feminine and ethereal. Comes in a nice hand painted sleeve. As with all Jyrk cd-r's it seems, SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, and we have the last 30. So again, act fast if you want one of these. Once they are gone they are gone for good.
MPEG Stream: "When You Are Sleeping I Tell You Secrets"

JESU Heartache (Dry Run) cd 13.98
This debut ep from Justin Broadrick's (of Godflesh) new outift Jesu has been a bit tough to keep in stock, and since when we originally had it we loved it so much we made it Record Of The Week, and since we finally managed to get more, we figured we'd relist it so those of you who missed out the first time can get another crack. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week recently, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
MPEG Stream: "Heart Ache"
MPEG Stream: "Ruined"

LAMBCHOP & HANDS OFF CUBA CoLAB (Merge) cd ep 10.98
Genre cross-pollination has been happening a lot lately, hasn't it? And here it goes again! This four-song cdep brings together Lambchop's country twang and Hands Off Cuba's electronica. The results? Well, the first song "Prepared" is softer than a goosedown pillow, cozier than a giant hearth, and lazydays-ier than a giant hammock. The most familiarly Lambchop sounding track of the four, it's a gently glistening combo of guitars, piano and deep male vocals. Then, the second track "Blur" introduces CoLAB's programmed stuttery rhythms, strings and twinkling melodies which carry on through the final two tracks. Nice!
MPEG Stream: "Prepared"
MPEG Stream: "Blur"

MANILLA ROAD Gates Of Fire (Battle Cry ) cd 15.98
Wichita's wizards of true, epic, eccentric heavy metal are back with their umpteenth album! You know a band is CULT when the last thing we reviewed by them, earlier this year, was a reissue of their debut album from way back in 1980, and months later here we are with a review of a brand new disc, heavier than ever! Most metal fans outside of Greece, Germany and maybe Kansas have never heard of 'em, yet they've been at it for over two and half decades now. Of course, Mark "The Shark" Shelton is the only remaining original member, but since his (shall we say) unusual vocal stylings, undeniably great guitar playing, and storytelling songwriting are Manilla Road's main attractions, that's no matter. And indeed Gates Of Fire has got all you'd want from a Manilla Road opus. Literary themes both pulp and classical, prog-length song suites, and plenty of raw metal mastery in the guitar dep't. It's all here. Unique and anachronistic, Manilla Road exist for the true few who aren't too cool for the old school -- and indeed want to take advanced classes, under the tutelage of a teacher (Shelton) who has designed his own weird lesson plans.
MPEG Stream: "The Frost Giant's Daughter: When Giants Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Out Of The Ashes: Imperious Rise"

MERZBOW Dust Of Dreams (A Thisco) cd 14.98
Merzbow's Dust Of Dreams is another bludgeoning record of scalding noise for all of those raw nerve endings that need to be damaged just a little bit more. Compared to the almost jubilantly rhythmic Senmaida (one of many Merzbow records alongside this one to hit the stores in the early fall of 2005), Dust Of Dreams is a far more dour recording, with the rasping haze of mechanical wasps constantly swarming above seasick marching rhythms. If you've always been confused when Merzbow is pegged as being psychedelic, Dust Of Dreams will only perpetuate that confusion as the kaleidoscopes of swirling noise are of a leaden grey, as opposed to dozens of other Merzbow records which explode with a molten synaesthesia of nauseating flourescence. Nonetheless, Dust Of Dreams is still miles above almost every other recording of the globe's massive population of Merzbow wannabes.
MPEG Stream: "1339"
MPEG Stream: "Dust Of Dreams"

MERZBOW Senmaida (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98
I really don't need to listen to any more Merzbow records in my life, as several years back I (Jim) took the task of enduring the entire Merzbox (all 50 CDs of monstrous, punishing noise.) Yet month after month, Masami Akita continues to churn out extraordinary records from his battery of noise machines. With the roll of the die cast in my direction, I strap myself in for some raw aural brutality. Senmaida stands out immediately with its galloping drum machine breakbeat that precedes the virulant boils of his signature seering noise, giving Merzbow a legitimate noise grooviness previously held by Christine 23 Onna and Aufgehoben No Process. The beat itself starts out a little stiff, which is not surprising as Akita-san is not really known to get down and boogie; but when the noise machines begin to explode with their volcanic psychedelia of molten noise, the breakbeat takes a step back and actually forms an excellent counterpoint to the noise. Out of this rhythm (which come to think of it really does sound like a Garage Band preset, ha!), our noise hero lays down several lumbering industrial loops of a percolated squiggle alternated with a menacing plod, out of which comes the shredding noise and a post-Neubauten metal bashed rhythm. And oh, yeah there's a track built out of a sample of a sheep's bleating which oozes with the danse macabre of Alec Empire. Be prepared to be impressed by Senmaida!
MPEG Stream: "Tract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Tract 3"

METRIC Live It Out (Last Gang) cd 14.98
You might've heard of this Canadian band 'cuz of their ties to Broken Social Scene (Haines is a member), but as we've mentioned before they're nothing like that Northern indie rock dynamo (although from the sounds of the 'Scene's latest self-titled album they might be moving more in the direction of Metric - some kind of metric conversion? hahaha!). However, if you're not yet familiar with Metric, imagine a 'modern day' incarnation of punchy crunchy girl fronted pop bands such as Veruca Salt, Elastica and maybe even Transvision Vamp. Frontwoman/keyboardist Emily Haines' saucy, cooed vocals alternate between coy'n'girlish and world-weary'n'womanly. Apart from the very last year electro-clash-y coverart, this is a great follow-up to last year's Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
MPEG Stream: "Empty"
MPEG Stream: "Patriarch On A Vespa"

MILDEW Flat On The Face (Heart & Crossbone) cd-r 12.98
Another cd-r release from Heart and Crossbone, the label that brought us records from Israeli blackened spazz rock duo Barbara and one man thrash-grind band Cadaver Eyes (reviewed elsewhere on this list). This Mildew cd-r is a bit high concept. The idea is that you download a script and the piece will play at random pre-determined starting points, making the songs a bit different every time. Or something like that. Cool, huh? Musically this is a lot different that anything we've yet heard from Heart and Crossbone. All electronic, spastic programmed drums, squelching synths, occasional sampled metal guitars, jagged pounding industrial rhythms, moaning minor key melodies, brief spurts of drill and bass, some full on metal riffing sliced and diced, martial percussion, some blissed out dubbiness. Really cool. Definitely for fans of Aphex Twin, stuff on Planet Mu, or any of the more out there electronic stuff on the Jester label.
MPEG Stream: "Flat On The Face 1"
MPEG Stream: "Flat On The Face 2"

MONO / PELICAN split (Hydra Head Industries) lp 11.98
As some of you already probably know, this limited 12" is a split release on both NYC based post rock label Temprorary Residence, and L.A. based "thinking man's metal" label Hydra Head. Accordingly there are multiple versions, different colored vinyl, some on Hydra Head, some on TRL, some with different colored labels, etc. But you know what? That's just tough. We have to draw the line somewhere, and it's now right here. We sold out of the Temporary Residence version, which is now out of print. We now have about 25 copies of the Hydra Head version, which we would imagine is also out of print by now. We have all different colors: white, green, gold, and black. We have so few that these are limited to one per customer, and it will be totally random which color you get (we'll go through the colored vinyl copies first). This collectable vinyl business is beginning to obscure the whole reason we all buy records, because we love music, and we love to hear amazing music, and this record is absolutely fantastic. So try to stop worrying about the color of the vinyl or the number pressed or any of that stuff and just pick this up because it's so damn beautiful. Pelican deliver a massive slice of gorgeously grandiose post rock, sweeping and emotional, melancholy and but weirdly hopeful with its minor key arrangement. Not a trace of 'metal' to be found here. Which is fine by us. Imagine a slightly heavier version of the song that plays during the final scene at the end of the movie, after the boy has gotten the girl and we finally realize everything is going to be okay. It sounds a little like that. Really beautiful. The second track makes up for it though, as James Plotkin (Khanate, Joy of Disease) takes Pelican at their dirgiest / sludgiest and adds tons of extra grind and grit and grrr and effects and crumbling distortion and malfunctioning electronics. Like your favorite Pelican song dipped in blood and rolled in the dirt. Wow.
Mono, who are often touted as being metal, stick closer to their mighty epic post rock sound with a sidelong track that is as Godspeed You Black Emperor as a non-Godspeed band is likely to get. Brooding and melancholy, building to a huge explosive coda, before drifting back into a creeping maudlin dirge, that sort of drifts and fades into the dark. So nice. And as we mentioned before, far too limited.

MOST SERENE REPUBLIC, THE Underwater Cinematographer (Arts & Crafts) cd 15.98
Meet the new kids on the block at this Canadian label home to Broken Social Scene and their Torontonian kin Apostle Of Hustle and Stars. The Most Serene Republic are just a hop, skip and a jump away, based in the small town of Milton on the western outskirts of the greater Toronto area. Due to the bands' proximity both geographically and label-wise, comparisons are definitely gonna flourish, and what can we say? They aren't unfounded. Once you hear Underwater Cinematographer, we're sure you'll agree. In many ways The Most Serene Republic's music does resemble the rest of the Arts & Crafts' roster, but with lead vocals that also remind us of Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie/Postal Service. This is not a bad thing! No, drawing from such an exuberant mish mash of influences and styles, their album fits in well between You Forgot It In People and Set Yourself On Fire. Actually with their subtle eccentricities scurrying out here and there, The Most Serene Republic's music brings to mind BSS and Frog Eyes having a low-key get-together... which is a mighty pleasing thought, indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Proposition 61"
MPEG Stream: "Where Cedar Nouns And Adverbs Walk"

MY MORNING JACKET Z (ATO) cd 15.98
On their latest, already very warmly received full length Z, My Morning Jacket have fallen even closer in line with the David Fridmann produced grand pop theatrics of groups such as Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse and Mercury Rev. Their sound has become more sumptuous and far less distinctly 'rock' or 'country' than on their past releases, almost as though they'd set a soft focus lens on the proceedings. Still very shadowy and deeply melancholic though. Although John Leckie and MMJ's mainman Jim James have done a fine job mixing and producing these ten songs, it's hard not to try imagining what they'd sound like with Fridmann in the producer's seat. Beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "What A Wonderful Man"
MPEG Stream: "Into The Woods"

QUINTRON & MISS PUSSYCAT Swamp Tech / Electric Swamp (Tigerbeat6) cd + dvd 14.98
Whether or not they actually plan it that way, Quintron albums seem to have a habit of materializing just in time for Halloween. You might recall The Frog Tape CD reissue around this time last year. Those very vocal froggie made for some unexpectedly great spooky party sounds! This album's maybe less creepy and strange than that, but it sure ain't short on the party side of things. Heck, that's something you can always count on from Quintron & Miss Pussycat! Totally frantic lo-fi madness! Eagle-eared Andee thought that the eighth song sounded like a Kiss song, and indeed it is! Quintron covers "God Of Thunder", and what signals party more than a Kiss song? Quintron lets loose a medusa head of cheez-organ noodles while the organ's internal drum machine keeps tickety-tock time and the duo sings songs like "Swamp Buggy Baddass", "Love Is Like A Blob", Fly Like A Rat" and oh yes, "Tea Time".
And lest we forget, this CD comes with a DVD too! The liner notes kindly offer this synopsis... "An alligator from New Orleans named Cinnamon finds herself cursed with formosan termites (voiced by Disco Donny) after they visit her sno-ball stand. Then Cinnamon and her friend Lolly Crawfish are on an adventure... aboard a ship with Captain Dreamweaver, visiting the Mother-In-Law Lounge to see Ernie & Antoinette K-Doe (voiced by the real Mre. K-Doe), and even sneaking into the secret world of termite raves! Written and directed by Miss Pussycat". And yes, it is as gleefully entertaining as that sounds!
MPEG Stream: "Swamp Buggy Baddass"
MPEG Stream: "God Of Thunder"

RABELAIS, AKIRA EN/OF 031 - limited edition autographed 12" (Bottrop -Boy) 12" 30.00
The Bottrop -Boy label has been releasing ultra limited musician / artist collaborations in a series called EN/OF. Participants have included Ekkehard Ehlers, Heimir Bjorgulfsson, Stephan Mathieu, Jan Jelinek, TV Pow, the Rip-Off Artist, Tarentel, Pan American, David Grubbs, Nobukazu Takemura, Steve Roden, Merzbow, Tim Hecker, Jazzkammer, His Name Is Alive and Akira Rabelais. Each one teamed up with a photographer, and the result is a vinyl 12", signed and numbered, featuring original music, and an original photgraph, limited to 100 copies and ridiculously expensive. So expensive and limited in fact that we have yet to actually get any of these. However, AQ pal Akira Rabelais, got a dozen copies of his 12", minus the artowrk, the 12" ONLY, no photo, or fancy sleeve, just the 12" (pressed on ultra thick vinyl) in a plain black sleeve signed by Rabelais in silver marker. And he nicely allowed us to have all 12 to sell to folks who can't afford or weren't quick enough to get one of those 100 copies. And it's all about the music anyway right? And the music here is awesome. Side A is an Austin radio station blasting some sort of Tex Mex, that is quickly subsumed by radio static and is slowly smeared into a warm fuzzy whir, with minimal melodies, chirping crickets, haunting viola, all very dreamy and indistinct, like Jeck or Basinski. Side B features an L.A. radio station, already manipiulated beyond recognition, a fuzzy dreamscape of ahunting barely discernable melodies, chiming in the distance like ghosts, all over layers of white noise smoothed into a warm bed of static and crackle. Lovely. And yeah, it's still expensive, but hell, that's how much they cost us and it's limited to 12 COPIES!!!

RAMASES Space Hymns (Vertigo / Repertoire) cd 19.98
A few weeks back we made Andy Votel's amazing mix of prog/funk/jazz/acid rock from the Vertigo vaults our Record Of The Week. Now we're reviewing this, a recently-reissued-on-cd Vertigo album from, ta-da, 1971 that (we don't think) made it onto Votel's disc, thereby demonstrating that even by cramming dozens of little snippets of songs into a mix, he certainly couldn't fully encompass everything awesome that was ever released on Vertigo! This one's not heavy rock, nor is it freaky jazz fusion. Rather, Ramases was a unique one-album-only obscurity playing a kind of mystical pop-prog. I guess it reminds us just a little bit of Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come albums. But it's definitely its own thing, as you might expect from a mysterious psychedelic visionary from South Africa who (perhaps) believed himself to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian pharaoh, who performed these Space Hymns together with his wife Sel, and the assistance of others, including production and guitar licks (and sitar and Moog) courtesy of 10cc's Godley and Creme. The results are really rather catchy and quite strange. Maybe what the second Comus album would have sounded like, if it was a lot better than it was!
This new reish in Repertoire's Vertigo series (we hope to bring you some other titles soon) is nicely deluxe, packaged in a gatefold digipack cd jacket, adorned with Roger Dean's great church steeple/rocketship cover art. It boasts four bonus tracks as well (alternate mixes and b-sides). Recommended if you want to check out some unclassifiable cult tuneage, weird and folkish and electronically Eno-arty, with sci-fi hippy themes perhaps worth puzzling over.
MPEG Stream: "Life Child"
MPEG Stream: "Balloon"

SILVER JEWS Tanglewood Numbers (Drag City) cd 14.98
The first thing that caught our eye when we saw the cover photo on this new Silver Jews album was the big ol' Canadian Club whiskey plaque on the barroom wall. And whad'ya know the first words we hear comin' out of singer David Berman's mouth in the lead-off song "Punks In The Beerlight" are, "Where's the paper bag that holds the liquor? Just in case I feel the need to puke." As Mischa aptly commented, "I think they have been drinking!" Ah, Tanglewood Numbers is filled with the stench of cigarette butts soakin' in ten day old beer. Miserable tales of hard livin' performed by a cast of indie rock superstars including Steve Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich, Bobby Bare Jr., Duane Denison, and Will Oldham.
MPEG Stream: "Punks In The Beerlight"
MPEG Stream: "K-Hole"

SLOAN Navy Blues (Koch) cd 15.98
Newly reissued! The four guys in Sloan have always had distinct songwriting styles, but the differences seem much more pronounced on 1998's Navy Blues. And its not as even a split of songs between the four this time -- although there's plenty of tunes penned by Chris Murphy and Patrick Pentland (both solo and in tandem), this album disappointingly has only two Jay Ferguson songs, but surprisingly three written and one co-written by the usually more elusive Andrew Scott. The overall sound though is still very Beatles and Big Star influenced, but filtered through '70s freewheelin' rock. Chris Murphy conjures the glammy rock flamboyance of Kiss on the album's lead-off track "She Says What She Means". Jay Ferguson follows that up with a drastically contrast in the shape of his candy-hued perky number "C'mon C'mon", then Patrick Pentland tumbles right in between the two with "Iggy & Angus" complete with Thin Lizzy sounding guitars. Andrew Scott shifts the band's gears into a more 'grown-up' (Chicago-ish?) feel with funky keyboards and horns... and that's all in the span of the first four songs!
MPEG Stream: "C'mon C'mon (We're Gonna Get It Started)"
MPEG Stream: "Money City Maniacs"

SLOAN Smeared (Koch) cd 15.98
Reissued 1993 debut from a fave band of ours! A brief synopsis of 'way back when': in grunge rock's heydays these then slightly grungey four Canadian lads got signed to Nirvana's label DGC. To put it mildly, back then their music butted heads with the grunge scene and with the label's expectations/demands, and continued to do so as time went on. Long story short, they got dropped from the label. Much to the chagrin of their non-Canadian fans and the misfortune of their potential new fans, this effectively putting a deadbolt on their stateside catalog... until now. Yes folks, it's time to restart you Sloan engines, and get 'em revvin' and rollin' all over again. This is *the* album which contains *the* stand-out song ("Underwhelmed") that started it all for these Canadian power pop/rock dynamos. The very Sonic Youth-y Smeared offers just a glimpse of the clever lyrical twists, fantastic pop hooks and harmonies that were to come.
MPEG Stream: "Underwhelmed"

SMITH, STEVEN R. Kohl (Emperor Jones) lp 13.98
Released three years ago as an ultra limited cd-r on the Jewelled Antler label, this amazing recording has just been reissued on vinyl, albeit in yet another totallly limited run (only 400 copies!). Beautifully packaged in a hand screened sleeve, and contains a gorgeous booklet with illustrations, woodcuts, tiny packets of dirt and seeds (the same as was included with the original cd-r) as well as a lovely woodcut. We only got 30 copies so act fast.
Steven R. Smith's Kohl is a relative departure from his typical output of repeated motifs stretched into cinematic psychedelia; instead, on Kohl, Smith delves wholeheartedly into meandering improvisations for dreamy, echoplexed guitar not all that far from the impressionistic work of Loren Mazzacane Connors or The Dirty Three. Steven R. Smith is also, of course, a former member of psych rock explorers Mirza and way-out psychedelic improvisers Thuja, and records Eastern European influenced drone-folk under the name Hala Strana. Most recently, we listed his droningly beauteous Crown Of Marches solo cd as well. Pretty much you can't go wrong with a Steven R. Smith project, basically!

TENHORNEDBEAST Woe To You, O Earth And Sea (NOTHingness REcords) cd-r 11.98
One day we got an email from one of our mailorder customers who mentioned he was currently listening to a band called Tenhornedbeast. Just the name had us frothing at the mouth. Then when we asked him what it sounded like, his response "epic sprawling primitive doom/drone" had us on the internet in seconds flat trying to track down copies for the store. Well, the good news is that we did manage to get some for the store. The bad news, as is often the case, is that it was incredibly limited, is already out of print, and we got the very last 20. So be prepared to be disappointed if you're not super quick on the buy button trigger.
Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the heart of this beast. Tenhornedbeast, a band that does indeed traffic in an epic sprawling primitive doom / drone. The do have a drummer too, but he mostly offers up little cymbal flourishes here and there, a big snare splat every long once in a while, the meat of the beast though is obviously the churning squirm of downtuned guitars, riff upon riff, all dirty and scuzzy and lo-fi and gorgeously doomy and drone-y and dirge-y. That sound we can't seem to get enough of. And again, VERY LIMITED. WE HAVE 20 COPIES. ONCE THEY ARE GONE THEY ARE REALLY GONE FOR GOOD.
MPEG Stream: "Silver Horses Brought Us Here"
MPEG Stream: "Come And Make Me Holy Again"

THE WIRE #261 November 2005 magazine 7.50
Latest issue of everyone's favorite UK modern music mag. On the cover, and covering many pages inside, a look at 60 cover songs, with indepth reviews by various Wire scribes. Also inside, Invisible Jukebox with Steve Reich, a chat with countrified doomsters Earth. Also Rolf Julius, Oren Marshall, Mazen Kerbaj, Jackson And His Computer Band and Alan Cummings takes a look at the birth of Japanese free music. Of course as usual. loads of book reviews, show reviews (Byron Coley reviews Arthurfest) and record reviews (inlcuding a page of outer limits reviews from our own Jim Haynes).

TIMES NEW VIKING Dig Yourself (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98
We're obviously not graphic designers, or even all that computer savvy considering it took us a little too long to get the band name joke (hint: it's a font, sort of). Anyway, this newest release on the always impeccable SIltbreeze comes in the form of this here crusty noisy blast of aggro garage scuzz. Maybe the best part is how they got signed to Siltbreeze. A found cassingle, lodged in some sort of street shrine discovered according to the label "on a street corner during our annual litter crusade. Inside the cassette's handmade case was scrawled 'This am band. Good band!' Next to that was a crude drawing of what appeared to be three people playing instruments. It smelled musty and had a real creepy, cultish vibe to it."
I mean, c'mon, how could it not be great? And it sounds exactly how you think it would after that sort of story. Straight from the gutter, to a practice space, some fried mics and a blown out 4-track, and then slapped on a cd. Fuzzy superdistorted guitars, wheezing blasts of organ, splattery drumming, shouted male female vocals, all buried in tape his and amp buzz. Mostly noisy and ramshackle and stumbling through a minefield of Dead C outtakes and broken GBV cassettes, but once in a while, like on "Skull Versus Wizard", they'll whip out a veritable pop gem, a little slice of Pavement, beaten and bloodied and rolled in the mud, but still a sparkling pop gem under all that grit. Speaking of "Skull Versus Wizard", they have other killer song titles too: "Lions And Oil", "Fuck Books", "Fashion To Talk About The Moon", "We Got Rocket" and more. At times it almost sounds like a not-annoying Kim Gordon fronting Gate or the Dead C while they try to record popular indie rock favorites. Fans of the Bunnybrains, Icky Boyfriends, Liquorball and grimey gritty scummy noise pop rejoice!
MPEG Stream: "Lion & Oil"
MPEG Stream: "Skull Versus Wizard"
MPEG Stream: "Fuck Books"

TIMES NEW VIKING Dig Yourself (Siltbreeze) lp 14.98
We're obviously not graphic designers, or even all that computer savvy considering it took us a little too long to get the band name joke (hint: it's a font, sort of). Anyway, this newest release on the always impeccable SIltbreeze comes in the form of this here crusty noisy blast of aggro garage scuzz. Maybe the best part is how they got signed to Siltbreeze. A found cassingle, lodged in some sort of street shrine discovered according to the label "on a street corner during our annual litter crusade. Inside the cassette's handmade case was scrawled 'This am band. Good band!' Next to that was a crude drawing of what appeared to be three people playing instruments. It smelled musty and had a real creepy, cultish vibe to it."
I mean, c'mon, how could it not be great? And it sounds exactly how you think it would after that sort of story. Straight from the gutter, to a practice space, some fried mics and a blown out 4-track, and then slapped on a cd. Fuzzy superdistorted guitars, wheezing blasts of organ, splattery drumming, shouted male female vocals, all buried in tape his and amp buzz. Mostly noisy and ramshackle and stumbling through a minefield of Dead C outtakes and broken GBV cassettes, but once in a while, like on "Skull Versus Wizard", they'll whip out a veritable pop gem, a little slice of Pavement, beaten and bloodied and rolled in the mud, but still a sparkling pop gem under all that grit. Speaking of "Skull Versus Wizard", they have other killer song titles too: "Lions And Oil", "Fuck Books", "Fashion To Talk About The Moon", "We Got Rocket" and more. At times it almost sounds like a not-annoying Kim Gordon fronting Gate or the Dead C while they try to record popular indie rock favorites. Fans of the Bunnybrains, Icky Boyfriends, Liquorball and grimey gritty scummy noise pop rejoice! The lp is super limited and comes packaged in a nice hand screened sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Lion & Oil"
MPEG Stream: "Skull Versus Wizard"
MPEG Stream: "Fuck Books"

URDOG s/t (self released) cd-r 9.98
We've been huge fans of Urdog since we first heard them a couple years back. Their shambolic, rambling folky krautrockishness pretty much pushed every weird music button we posess! We raved about both of their full lengths on Secret Eye (one of which is out of print for now) and everyone was so into them we finally managed to track down their first cd-r, which flew out of here and has been out of print ever since. Well, when Andee and Allan were in NYC for CMJ, they ran into one of the Urdogs and he happened to mention that he had a stash of the very last 30 copies of the Urdog demo, we grabbed all of 'em and got 'em here for you, the VERY last copies ever. Here's our review from when we first had this in last September:
Everybody dug the Urdog record we listed a few lists back so when the band got in touch and let us know they had an earlier cd-r, we figured we oughta get that too. And we're glad we did 'cause it's just as good. Another rambling ramshackle collection of propulsive, fuzzed out psychedelic drone / krautrock. Super saturated keyboards, rumbling riffery and tribal drumming. A mix of Jewelled Antler foresty folk, Tarantula Hawk proggy pummel, and lots of druggy psychedelic filigree. Packged in a beautifully silkscreened sleeve with an extensive set of liner notes folded up and pacakged in a little hand stamped envelope. So nice.
MPEG Stream: "DMZ"
MPEG Stream: "Long Shadows"

WACO BROTHERS Freedom And Weep (Bloodshot) cd 14.98
Although this band is made up of Jon Langford, Steve Goulding, Alan Doughty, Deano, Tracey Dear, and Marc Durnate... aka members of Mekons, Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Graham Parker & The Rumour, Jesus Jones, Dollar Store, Wreck and KMFDM (!), more that a few folks around here have commented about just how much this actually sounds like ol' AQ faves Uncle Tupelo. It really does!! The contrasting male lead vocals even resemble those of U.T.'s Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar. Midway through the proceedings though they veer towards Social Distortion goes honky tonk (about which we're not quite sure how feel). Either way, we're sure some stiff shots of whisky, a string of broken hearts and many pairs of well-worn cowboy boots were involved.
MPEG Stream: "Nothing At All"
MPEG Stream: "Join The Club"

WAX POETICS #14 Fall 2005 magazine 7.99
You love music or you wouldn't be reading our list, and it's probably pretty likely that you love the records that music comes on, too. (Or used to, and still does, some of the time). Well then Wax Poetics is the magazine for you. Lots of in-depth reading here on subjects that could be of interest to anyone into DJ/vinyl culture, this issue featuring stuff on David Axelrod, Mulatu of Ethiopia, Danger Doom, Blowfly, Jazzy Jay, early '80s Bronx hip-hop club Disco Fever, '70s Brooklyn Afro-jazz organization the East, and lots more. And there's plenty of what we especially love: full-color reproductions of record covers to look at, all set to stoke the imagination of your ears. And although it says Hip-Hop, Jazz, Funk, & Soul on the cover, that doesn't stop 'em from, for instance, sneaking in a Charalambides album amidst considerations of reggae, rap, and soul/gospel classics.

WINTER Into Darkness / Eternal Frost (Nuclear Blast) cd 13.98
We've always wanted to list this, it's been one of our favorite records for years, always on the iPod, and never far from the stereos of those of us into the DOOOOM. This reissue first came out way back in 1999, but it hasn't been easy to get lately, so when we found a distro that had a bunch we jumped on 'em. And it's especially timely now considering the renewed interest in all things doomy and sludgy. We bet there's even some folks out there who don't realize there was any doom pre- Corrupted / Boris / Earth / SUNNO))). Well let's go all the way back to the very early nineties, head out to Long Island and re-discover the pummelling majesty of the mighty Winter. There's not a doom band worth its stripes who wouldn't cite Winter as an influence, and one listen proves why. Crusty, downtuned sludge metal, but unlike the current crop of ultra doomsters, Winter's roots were in much more traditional thrash and doom metal as well as crusty punk. Often described as a slowed down Celtic Frost, due in no small part to the vocal delivery, Winter managed to mix elements of Black Sabbath (obviously, what doom band doesn't), Hellhammer, diSEMBOWELMENT and UK political crust band Doom into a slithery, creeping, suffocatingly dense blast of chugging guitar, pounding drums and creepy growled vocals. On closser listening their are also strange bits of organ and found sounds and bizarre vocal snippets scattered throughout and buried here and there. There are even guitar solos!! But no normal solos, no these are all spikey and twisted and serpentine, chaotic squalls of prickly squealing freakout that fit perfectly into Winter's desolate doomscapes. And speaking of guitar, this reissue also contains Winter's Eternal Frost ep, which features the bizarre (and prescient, considering the current state of ambient drone doom metal) bonus track "Manifestations 1", an extended psychedelic soundscape constructed wholly from guitar and manipulated effects. So cool. The other thing worth mentioning is the lyrics, which at the time got them a lot of attention / flak, quite cryptic for sure, but they seem to focus on saving the environment, anti-pollution, anti-technology, ecological awareness (Exit-13 anyone?) displaying their crusty roots there for sure! Fans of the new crop of doom and ultra doom would do well to take a peek at a band who truly was ahead of their time, a band who helped lay the groundwork for the sonic pummelling provided to you on a daily basis by bands like Skepticism, Esoteric, Rigor Sardonicous, Moss, Bunkur, and even Electric Wizard and Sleep, who might not even exist were it not for Winter.
MPEG Stream: "Servants Of The Warsmen"
MPEG Stream: "Goden"

WOLF PARADE Apologies To The Queen Mary (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
Wolf Parade's Apologies To The Queen Mary are far from prim and proper. Yes, they are Canadian, so they're prolly quite polite, but this band's debut album is not about sitting with your hands folded in your lap, timidly tapping your toe. Just get a load of those ultra punchy hooks and super emotive vocals! They're meant for movin'. Wolf Parade is like a super pop incarnation of fellow Canucks Arcade Fire with a youthful David Bowie singing the lead vocals. Definitely the flavour of the day. Sound yummy to you?
MPEG Stream: "Fancy Claps"
MPEG Stream: "This Heart's On Fire"

WOLF PARADE Apologies To The Queen Mary (Sub Pop) lp 11.98
Wolf Parade's Apologies To The Queen Mary are far from prim and proper. Yes, they are Canadian, so they're prolly quite polite, but this band's debut album is not about sitting with your hands folded in your lap, timidly tapping your toe. Just get a load of those ultra punchy hooks and super emotive vocals! They're meant for movin'. Wolf Parade is like a super pop incarnation of fellow Canucks Arcade Fire with a youthful David Bowie singing the lead vocals. Definitely the flavour of the day. Sound yummy to you?
MPEG Stream: "Fancy Claps"
MPEG Stream: "This Heart's On Fire"

WOODEN WAND AND THE VANISHING VOICE Sunset Sleeves ( Weird Forest) lp 11.98
... And another Wooden Wand release materializes here at AQ. To be completely frank, we've dug each one so far! So how does Sunset Sleeves measure up? Quite wonderfully, thank you very much. Imagine faint, drifting psych-folk abstractions performed by a band of drowsy gypsies. Nice! 'Nuf said!

YELLOW SWANS & AXOLOTL Collaboration (Jyrk) cd-r 7.98
Recorded at the same time as the recently listed (and now out of print) collaboration between the YS, Axolotl and Gerritt, this disc treads much of the same sonic space, glistening high end feedback, distant crumbling drones, smears of sparkling glitchery, burbling underwater cd skipping, grinding industrial whir. Not jagged or harsh at all, not what you would expect from these noiseniks. Quite dreamy and soothing, all the harsh bits have the edges smoothed into a slow flowing dronee bliss-scape. Comes with a photocopied copy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech and comes in a gorgeous hand painted sleeve. As with all Jyrk cd-r's it seems, SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, and we have the last 30. So again, act fast if you want one of these. Once they are gone they are gone for good.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

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----* Compilations :
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V/A Imaginational Anthem (Tompkins Square / Fontana) cd 15.98
Dang, we've got a good one here for followers of the whole "Wooden Guitar" crowd -- Wooden Guitar being the name of another compilation on another label, devoted to guitarists doing acoustic solos in the tradition of John Fahey and the other folky folks on his classic Takoma label roster. That's more or less the idea here too, except that in addition to contemporary flame-keepers of the form like Pelt's Jack Rose and Cul de Sac's Glenn Jones, this comp features quite a few veteran string pickers who were part of the '60s scene -- some of 'em just recently been coaxed out of retirement. There's a few archival cuts dating from decades back, but a lot of this is newly recorded, and much of it is as yet otherwise unreleased, live and studio tracks both. Not all the names are familiar but when you hear 'em you'll want to hear more. The line-up includes the aforementioned Rose and Jones, along with Sandy Bull, John Fahey, Harry Taussig, Harris Newman, Brad Barr, Bern Nix, Steve Mann, Janet Smith, Terry Riley and his son Gyan, Suni McGrath, Bob Hadley, Kaki King, and Max Ochs (whose Fahey-dedicated track "Inspirational Anthem" gives this collection its title, and appears here twice, once in a version recorded in '69 and another from just last year). Moods and techniques vary, from the more old timey to the Eastern-tinged to the jazz-flecked. But it's all totally entrancing, hypnotic, transportational music. Several generations of adventurous American acoustic guitarists are represented here and it's nice to know that this musical movement looks to be going on strong into the future. A fine comp indeed!
MPEG Stream: SUNI MCGRATH "Train Z"
MPEG Stream: HARRIS NEWMAN "Lake Shore Drive (Slight Return)"

V/A OHM+: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music: 1948-1980 Special Edition (Ellipsis Arts) 3CD + DVD 42.00
BACK IN PRINT! And now augmented with an additional dvd disc!! We just got these in so we haven't been able to watch the DVD yet, but it contains over two hours of rare never before seen performances, interviews, animation and experimental video!
This box (sans the DVD) was originally released five years ago and hasn't been available for some time now. Here's what we said about the audio portion of this, previously:
Following hot on the heels of the Early Modulations compilation from a while back, the OHM box takes the same general idea; a brief and cursory overview of the whole of experimental electronic music, and attempts to give it a little more depth. And it does, to a certain degree. But such a massive undertaking could fill 10 cds, or 20. So what we have here, is 3 cds, 42 tracks, from a who's who of electronic music in the last 32 years: Clara Rockmore, Oliver Messien, John Cage, Edgard Varese, Stockhausen, La Monte Young, Xenakis, Luc Ferrari, Terry Riley, David Tudor, Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Raymond Scott, Brian Eno, Robert Ashley, Bernard Parmegiani and a bunch more. A pretty great assortment, for sure, and definitely the best 20th century/avant electronica primer to come along. The only frustration is that a great number of the pieces are edits, often 5 or 6 minutes from a 20 or 30 minute piece, rendering some slow building gradual shifting works a bit limp. But other than that, this OHM compilation is pretty excellent, packaged impeccably in a triple digipak, housed in a cool silkscreened transparent slipcase, with a fairly well researched book and some spot on musical choices. Definitely a great place to start.

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----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed :
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If you want to order one of these, just cut and paste the info into the comments area on the order form, or just email mailorder@aquariusrecords.org.

ABSOLUTUS "Ostendit Quam Nihil Sumus" (Goatowarex) cd 14.98
ADAMS, JOHN LUTHER "Strange and Sacred Noise" (Mode) cd 16.98
AGUATO, MATIAS "Are You Really Lost" (Kompakt) cd 15.98
ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS "You Are My Sister" (Secretly Canadian) cd ep 5.98
APPLE, FIONA "Extraordinary Machine" (Epic) dualdisc 19.98
ARPANET "Quantum Transposition" (Rephlex) cd 15.98
ASHES "Hymn To A Grey Sky" (Supernal) cd 15.98
ATHEIST "Elements" (Relapse) cd 13.98
ATHEIST "Piece Of Time" (Relapse) cd 13.98
ATHEIST "Unquestionable Presence" (Relapse) cd 13.98
BAD PLUS "Suspicious Activity?" (Columbia) cd 17.98
BASTRO "Antlers" (Drag City) cd 14.98
BEWITCHED "Unveiling Zion" (Supernal) cd 15.98
BLACK DICE "Smiling Off" (Astralwerks) cd ep/2x12" 8.98/11.98
BLACK TAJ "s/t" (Amish) cd 14.98
BOARDS OF CANADA "Hi-Scores" (Skam) cd ep 8.98
BOARDS OF CANADA "The Campfire Headphase" (Warp) cd/lp 15.98/21.00
BODY, THE "Cop Killer Dead Cops" (Corleone) 7" 3.98
BORBETOMAGUS "Barbed Wire Maggots" (Agaric) cd 15.98
BORFUL TANG "Root" (Snurp) cd 9.98
BROTZMANN, PETER & HAN BENNINK "Schwarzwaldfahrt" (Atavistic / Unheard Music Series) 2cd 21.00
BURR, ANTHONY & SKULI SVERRISON "A Thousand Incidents Arise" (The Worker's Insititute) cd 14.98
BUSH CHEMISTS "Raw Raw Dub" (Roir) cd 15.98
CAGE "Hell's Winter" (Definitive Jux) cd 16.98
CATHEDRAL "The Garden Of Unearthly Delights" (Nuclear Blast) cd 14.98
CAVE-IN "Perfect Pitch Black" (Hydra Head) cd 11.98
CHESSMACHINE "Live In Los Angeles" (Line) cd 14.98
CHEVREUIL "Sport" (Sickroom) cd 13.98
CHILDREN OF BODOM "Are You Dead Yet?" (Spinefarm) cd 14.98
CHIODOS "All's Well That Ends Well" (Equal Vision) cd 13.98
CIRCULUS "The Lick On The Tip Of An Envelope Yet To Be Sent" (Candlelight) cd 14.98
CLINE, PATSY "Walking and Dreaming" (Masked Weasel) cd 14.98
CLUSTER & ENO "s/t" (Water) cd 15.98
CODE "Nouveau Gloaming" (Spikefarm) cd 16.98
COFFIN LIDS "Round Midnight" (Bomp) cd 13.98
COHEED AND CAMBRIA "Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV Vol.I" (Sony / BMG) cd 16.98
CRYPTOPSY "Once Was Not" (Century Media) cd 16.98
DANGER DOOM "Sofa King / Mince Meat" (Epitaph) 12" 6.98
DAVKA "Live" (Tzadik) cd 15.98
DEPECHE MODE "Playing The Angel" (Sire) cd 17.98
DIAMOND NIGHTS "Popsicle" (Kemado) cd 13.98
DRIVER, TOBY "In the L..L..Library Loft" (Tzadik) cd 15.98
DRONES, THE "Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By" (All Tomorrow's Parties) cd 15.98
DRUDKH "Autumn Aurora" (Supernal) cd 15.98
DRUDKH "Forgotten Legends" (Supernal) cd 15.98
DRUDKH "Lebedynyi Shlyakh" (Supernal) cd 15.98
EARLIES, THE "These Were..." (Secretly Canadian) cd 14.98
FIREBALL "Blessed Be" (High Roller) 12" 12.98
FOLKSTORM "Folkmusik" (Old Europa Cafe) cd + 3"cd 24.00
FORREST, JASON "Shamelessly Exciting" (Sonig) cd 14.98
FUZZTONES "LSD 25" (Get Back) cd + dvd 26.00
GRIMFIST "10 Steps To Hell" (Candlelight) cd 15.98
GUERRERO, TOMMY "Year of the Monkey" (Galaxia) cd 10.98
GUITAR WOLF "Golden Black" (Narnack) cd 14.98
HARVESTMAN "Lashing The Rye" (Neurot) cd 14.98
HORSE THE BAND "The Mechanical Hand" (Combat Records) cd 13.98
KANE, JONATHAN "February" (Table Of The Elements) cd/lp 14.98/14.98
KELLY, R. "TP.3 Reloaded" (Jive) cd + dvd 17.98
LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR "Cannibal Massacre" (Southern Lord) 3" cd 8.98
LANGENUS, COLIN "Living With The Rock" (Corleone) cd 13.98
LAPPETITES, THE "Before The Libretto" (Quecksilber) cd 15.98
LARSEN "HMKE" (Important) cd 10.98
LEAF HOUND "Growers Of Mushroom" (Repertoire) cd 19.98
LOGH "A Sunset Panorama" (Hydra Head) cd 14.98
MAGNETOPHONE "The Man Who Ate The Man" (4AD) cd 13.98
MCPHEE, JOE & JOHN SNYDER "Pieces of Light" (Atavistic) cd 14.98
MEN'S RECOVERY PROJECT "The Very Best Of" (5RC) cd 14.98
MERZBOW "Merzbuta" (Important) cd 14.98
MINDFLAYER "Expedition To The Hairier Peaks" (Corleone) cd 11.98
MOONDOG "The Viking of Sixth Avenue" (Honest Jon's) 2lp 27.00
MUGISON "Mugimama Is This Monkey Music?" (Ipecac) cd 16.98
MUM "Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today Is Ok" (Morr) cd 14.98
MV / EE & THE BUMMER ROAD "We Offer You Guru" (Child Of Microtones) cd 15.98
MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / CHRISTINA CARTER & ANDREW MACGREGOR (Very Friendly) cd 14.98
NADJA "Truth Becomes Death" (Alien 8) cd 14.98
NERVE NET NOISE "Radio Life" (Staalplaat) cd 19.98
NI HAO! "Gorgeous" (Tzadik) cd 15.98
NURSE WITH WOUND "Livin' Fear Of James Last" (Castle) cd 17.98
OCEAN "Here Where Nothing Grows" (Important) cd PARTON, DOLLY "Those Were The Days" (Sugar Hill) cd 17.98
PAUL, SEAN "The Trinity" (VP) cd 17.98
PHAIR, LIZ "Somebody's Miracle" (Capitol) cd 17.98
PINETOP SEVEN "The Night's Bloom" (Barbary Coast) cd 14.98
POISON IDEA "Pajama Party" (Abstract USA) cd 13.98
POISON IDEA "The Early Years" (Abstract USA) cd 13.98
POISON IDEA "War All The Time" (Abstract USA) cd 13.98
ROBERT POLLARD "Music For 'Bubble'" (Needmore Songs) cd 5.98
RUMPELSTILTSKIN GRINDER "Buried In The Front Yard" (Relapse) cd 13.98
SANDERS, PHAROAH "Elevation" (Impulse) cd 13.98
SHANKAR, ANANDA "s/t" (Collector's Choice) cd 14.98
SHEAVY "Republic?" (Candlelight) cd 14.98
SKYGREEN LEOPARDS, THE "Jehovah Surrender" (Jagjaguwar) cd 9.98
SONDHEIM, ALAN / RITUAL ALL 770 "The Songs" (Fire Museum) cd 13.98
STOLTZ, KELLY "The Sun Comes Through" (Sub Pop) cd ep 5.98
SUSUMU YOKOTA & ROTHKO "Distant Sounds Of Summer" (Lo Recordings) cd 14.98
TAAKE "Helnorsk Sbartmetall" (Karisma) cd 14.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Action Direct" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 33.00
TALL DWARVES "Weeville" (Cloud Recordings) cd 14.98
TALL DWARVES "Fork Songs" (Cloud Recordings) cd 14.98
TAPE "Mort Aux Vaches" (Staalplaat) cd 21.00
TRIBES OF NEUROT "Meridian" (Neurot) cd 14.98
TURN ME ON DEAD MAN "Technicolourmother" (Galaxy Groove) cd 11.98
UP-TIGHT & MAKOTO KAWABATA "s/t" (Galactic Zoo) cd 14.98
V/A "For A Decade Of Sin: 11 Years Of Bloodshot Records" (Bloodshot) 2cd V/A "Maan Matoset" (Pohjoisten Kukkaisten Aanet) cd 14.98
V/A "This Bird Has Flown: A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul" (Razor & Tie) cd 17.98
V/A "Time Machine: A Vertigo Retrospective" (Vertigo) 3cd 38.00
VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR "H To He Who Am The Only One" (EMI) cd 15.98
VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR "Pawn Hearts" (EMI) cd 15.98
VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR "The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other" (EMI) cd 15.98
VOIVOD "DVOD 1" (Music Video Distributors) dvd 14.98
VOLTAGE "Building The Bas Castle 1" (Flameshovel) cd 13.98
WU-TANG "Think Differently Music: Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture" (Babygrande) cd 16.98
YOUNG BLEED "Rise Thru Da Ranks" (West Coast Mafia) cd 16.98
YURA YURA TEIKOKU "na.ma.shi.bi.re.na.ma.me.ma.i" (Mesh-Key) cd 11.98
ZOMBI "The Zombi Anthology" (VCO) cd 14.98

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ABOUT MAILORDER


Please place your order via our website.

[1] We will contact you to verify your order and let you know when it will be shipped. Please note that occasionally it may take a day or two for us to reply. We are not a faceless bunch of computers replying to your order -- we are human beings!

[2] If we are out of some of your items and we think we will get them within the same week, we can wait to ship. Or... If it's going to be more than a few days to complete your order, we will ship what we have and then will contact you as the remainders arrive.

[ note ] Due to the everchanging nature of the independent record business, we are not responsible for listed price changes (due to supplier price changes) and often cannot update our site fast enough to reflect these changes, but we will always try to let you know of any differences.


DOMESTIC SHIPPING :
--------------------------------
1-2 items $4.50 USPS Priority Mail
3+ items $6.50 UPS Ground

Further Explanation (Please Read!):
Within the USA, an order of 3 or more items will be shipped via UPS ground for a flat fee of $6.50. These packages are automatically insured and trackable.

However, if your package contains just 1 or 2 items, we will ship your order via USPS Priority Mail, and charge you $4.50 for shipping. These packages are NOT insured or trackable, sorry. So if you desire those safeguards, please request UPS delivery at the $6.50 rate. You must mention this in the comments field of our online order form.

Also, please note that UPS will not ship to PO Boxes. If you only have a PO Box, we can ship packages of 3+ items via US Postal Service and charge you by weight according to their rates. Special shipping needs (e.g. UPS Next Day) are also do-able, just ask.

Another important note: box sets DON'T (usually) count as one item. Sorry. A box set will generally bump you up into the "three or more items" category. Y'know, they're big. Boxes.


INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING :
-------------------------------- For foreign customers we ship via US AIRMAIL ("Letterpost"). Your price is based on the actual cost of shipping plus $1. You can check the US Postal Service international rate calculator: http://ircalc.usps.gov/. (Use the "Package, No Correspondence" category and see the price for "Letterpost". 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound.)


We highly recommend insurance for your international package, but it is very expensive! You can check the US Postal Service international rate calculator: http://ircalc.usps.gov/. (Use the "Package, No Correspondence" category and see the price for "Parcel Post". 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound.)


INTERNATIONAL INSURANCE :
-------------------------------- You are hereby forewarned that Aquarius is not responsible if your international package gets lost in the mail. Insurance is your only recourse if your records never show up. Since the terrible events of 9/11, mail service has been slow and undependable... and while we haven't experienced any *confirmed* permanently lost mail, insurance might provide some additional piece of mind in this time of upheaval. We strongly recommend it. But yes, it is very expensive. It's your choice. Again: Aquarius is not responsible for lost mail, so if you aren't willing to take a (slight but real) risk, please buy the insurance.

International insurance is very expensive! In fact often the insurance costs more than the value of your package, in which case it obviously does not make sense to insure it. You can check the US Postal Service international rate calculator: http://ircalc.usps.gov/. (Use the "Package, No Correspondence" category and see the price for "Parcel Post", which is the way insured packages are sent. 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound.)

For example: for a one-pound package worth $18 going to England, shipping without insurance is about $8. But with insurance, the shipping / insurance total is over $16!

It is your reponsibility to check the international rate calculator in order to determine whether or not you want international insurance. If you tell us you want international insurance, we will add it to your order no matter how much it costs!


PAYMENT :
-------------------------------- Payment is via credit card: Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex. Money orders are accepted only from customers within the USA. If you must pay by money order, you have to confirm the order with us through email or phone BEFORE you send any payment. We cannot take personal checks for mailorder, sorry!


QUESTION?
-------------------------------- Email the mailorder department: mailorder@aquariusrecords.org

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SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} real soon
v/a "Prog Is Not A Four-Letter Word" cd comp on Delay 68
Watchmaker "Erased From The Memory Of Man" cd on Willowtip
Arsis "A Diamond For Disease" cdep on Willowtip
Earthride "Vampire Circus" cd on Southern Lord

----} November 8th
No Neck Blues Band "Qvaris" cd on 5RC
Hella "Concentration Face w/ Homeboy" cd/dvd on 5RC
Spoon "Sister Jack" cd single on Merge
Jarboe "The Men" 2cd on Atavistic
Zu "The Way of the Animal Powers" cd on Xeng
Zu vs. Mats Gustafsson "How To Raise An Ox" cd on Atavistic
v/a "The In-Kraut: Hip Shaking Grooves Made in Germany 1966-1974" cd/lp on Marina

----} November 15th
Bathtub Shitter "Brown Santa" 3" cd on tUMULt
Earth "Hex" 2lp black vinyl

----} November 22nd
v/a "Love, Peace & Poetry - Turkish Psychedelic Music" cd/lp on Shadoks
Pierre Bastien "Pop" cd/2lp on Rephlex
Ayuo "Aoi No Ue" cd on Tzadik
v/a "Fonotone Records (1956-1969)" 5cd box on Dust To Digital
v/a "Pop Ambient 2006" cd/lp on Kompakt
Buckethead "Kaleidoscalp" cd on Tzadik
Electric Masada "At The Mountains Of Madness - Live In Europe" cd on Tzadik
Speedy West "Guitar Spectacular" cd reissue on Sundazed

----} November 29th
Morricone "Crime & Dissonance" 2cd on Ipecac

----} also in November
Kemialliset YstÉvÉt "Taju" live cassette on Pohjoisten Kukkaisten

----} December 6th
KK Null/Chris Watson/Z'ev "Number One" cd on Touch

----} also upcoming, sooner or later
Simon Finn "Pass The Distance" LP on Beatball
Jeff Mangum "Live at Jittery Joe's" LP on Isota
STRAWBERRY PATH: When the Raven Has Come to the Earth cd on Radioactive
Einsturzende Neubauten "Liebeslieder" dvd on K7
Slint "tba" DVD on Touch And Go
Bloc Party "Helicopter" cdep on Dim Mak
Bonnie Prince Billy and Tortoise "The Brave And Bold" cd/lp on Overcoat
Gossip "Standing In The Way Of Control" cd/lp on KRS
The Meads Of Asphodel "Damascus Steel" cd on Supernal
Solar Anus "Skull Alcoholic" 2cd on tUMULt
Glenn Branca "Indeterminate Activity of Resultant..." cd on Atavistic
Sonic Youth with Brigitte Fontaine and Areski cd on SYR/Goofin
Cerberus Shoal on Young God
Oxbow "Love That's Last" cd+dvd on Hydrahead
David Kilgour "Here Come The Cars" cd reissue on Merge
David Kilgour "Sugar Mouth" cd reissue on Merge
Haemoth "Kontamination" cdep on Southern Lord
Craft "Fuck The Universe" cd on Southern Lord

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PeaceOUT!!!!

The 5th Annual PeaceOUT World Gay Hip Hop Festival

October 28, 29 and 30, 2005

All shows at:

21 Grand
416 26th @ Broadway
downtown Oakland, CA

Tickets are $10 each night at the door.

More info:
PEACE OUT

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanAlisonMischaKerryLaurenand Jason