HARVEY MILK My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be (Relapse) cd 13.98
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. What an awesome title. And the record cover, a bull and a rooster and an ornate candle, the words Harvey Milk in tiny blue type over the rooster. On the cd, the text: "Harvey Milk is Cronos, Mantis, Abadon". Song titles like "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", "The Anvil Will Fall" and "Merlin Is Magic". By now most avid AQ customers are very familiar with the mysterious sludge rock power trio Harvey Milk, but when we first laid hands on this disc, back in 1994, we had no idea what to think. As if the artwork wasn't enough to have us scratching our heads, the music inside was even more willfully difficult. And still is. Obviously borne of some serious Melvins worship, Harvey Milk, took the already difficult sound of the Melvins to new heights, or depths, crafting lengthy sludge jams, packed with as much space as riffs, long expanses of spastic John Bonham like drumming, vocals a whiskey soaked gravelly bellow, guitars thick black sheets. This was without a doubt some of the strangest music we had ever heard. But at the same time, somehow the most beautiful. The sound of Harvey Milk was some impossible blend of noise rock, math rock, post rock, punk rock, twentieth century composition and METAL. All tangled into one huge gnarled black hole of sound. A sound that crawls more than it rocks, but when it does rock, it blows away pretty much any other band in the land. 
Lots of you no doubt already own Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men, arguably one of the greatest records EVER, heavy, sludgy or otherwise. If you don't you need to stop reading for a second and go buy it right now. We'll wait...........
Okay, Courtesy was HM record number two, and found the band 'tightening' up their sound, taking the chaos of My Love, and crafting it into, well, more chaos. It's hard to say how they changed between these two records. My Love is a tiny bit faster. The best way to describe it is like this: My Love is to Courtesy, the way Nirvana's Bleach is to Nevermind, more immediate and raw, but with some of the best songs the band ever wrote, and like Bleach, it's a record that tons of fans continue to insist is the best thing they've ever done. And while we are of the mind that Courtesy is in fact the best Harvey Milk record ever (unless you ask Allan, who would probably say The Pleaser, the -other- HM reissue this week, a killer disc of Harvey Milked ZZ Top worship) returning to My Love has us maybe reconsidering. We can't actually decide. There are so many amazing songs on My Love that we had forgotten about, as good as anything on Courtesy. It would probably be more realistic to proclaim My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be / Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men as the ultimate math-sludge-slow-motion-dirge-doom-whatever one-two punch EVER. Maybe the greatest first and second record combo of all time. Needless to say, if you're at all into the current crop of slow motion doom mongers, and have somehow missed out on these records, you will lose your fucking mind (and odds are loads of you have never heard My Love as it's been out of print for ages). It's no exaggeration when we say every song on My Love is darn near perfect. But a few of our favorites:
"A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" was the absolute first peep we ever heard out of HM, and it's brutal and beautiful, so utterly confusing and unlike anything ever. A frustratingly obtuse abstract jam, even calling it a jam is stretching the definition of the word jam, there's LOTS of space, the track begins with a minute of weird electronic noodling, a huge wash of cymbals and guitar scrape, a killer BIG drum fill, and then... nothing... a weird barely there buzz, some cymbal dings, a moaning cello.... How amazing is that?!?!? It isn't until halfway through the song before the riff finally kicks in, and even then, it's like pulling teeth to get these guys to let loose and rock. In fact, it's not until the last two minutes that the band really go for it. And it was worth the wait, but before you know it comes "Women Dig it", slowing everything waaaaaaaaay back down. A super drawn out exercise in tension and release, with long stretches of just drums, big Zeppelin style drums, accompanied by mewled vocal, but which features one of the most awesome riffs EVER, so much so, that when it kicks in, it makes you want to rock the fuck out, which you could do if it wasn't just played once every couple minutes.... oh the glorious frustration!!! It's the sort of riff most bands would not only kill for, but that most bands would repeat over and over and over and base a whole song  around, whereas the Milk kick out that riff maybe twenty times, in the whole song, and all clumped together, with the rest of the song spent plodding and drifting and doing anything but locking into a killer groove. But that's what makes Harvey Milk so great, when that riff DOES drop, it's a ridiculous release, like an orgasm, this unbelievable rock-out relief, but like with most things it's the wait, the build up, that is the best part. Or at least the 'other' best part.
Another classic Milk track is "The Anvil Will Fall", a moody drifting whispery ballad, peppered by huge bursts of downtuned pummel, when out of nowhere, in come the strings, some patriotic hymn, an almost recognizable tune that Creston sings along too in his warbly raspy croon, even kicking it up into a wicked falsetto, before petering back out into the original hushed crawl, eventually launching into a super moving moody goddamned ANTHEM. The sort of song that should have sludge fans teary eyed with hat in hand, and hand over heart. And finally...
"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", besides being the best song title maybe EVER, it's also one of the greatest songs ever, a really really fucking weird song, howled tortured vocals over a relentless tribal drum fill with occasional bursts of Zeppelin like riffage, before the guitar transforms into a static rumbling drone, and the drums just sort of do whatever the hell they want, for ever it feels like... and then the band launches back into it and it's some relentless bastardized groovy Southern sludge jam, but like all HM songs, they stop not long after to just sort of wander, and plod and wait, and pause, before doing it all over again....
We could go one and on, and get all mushy and fanboy about every single song on My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be, but you get the drift. This record is magical. Majestic. Freaked out. Furious. Heavy as anything you've ever heard. Strangely pretty. Mind meltingly difficult. Crushing. Confusing. Baffling. Brutal. And pretty much one of our favorite records ever...
MPEG Stream: "A Small Turn Of Human Kindness"
MPEG Stream: "Women Dig It"
MPEG Stream: "The Anvil Will Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I"

HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (Relapse) cd 13.98
It's official Harvey Milk week here at AQ. Like another '90s epitome of heaviness, Earth, they're a band underappreciated the first time 'round, now a long last deservedly revered -and- better yet, back among us!!
Andee's already gone over a bit of the backstory of this amazing band in his review of their -other- Record Of The Week this week, the reissue of My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. That one HAD to be a Record Of The Week, heck it's one of Andee's all time favorites, a Harvey Milk album almost he loves nearly as much as the one that got a release on his own tUMULt label, Courtesy And Goodwill Towards Men. Now, along with reissuing their crucial debut, Relapse has also simultaneously reissued what (until recently, with the release of another AQ ROTW, Harvey Milk's reunion album Special Wishes) was HM's swansong, their 1997 album The Pleaser. And since The Pleaser happens to be Allan's very favorite Harvey Milk, it too had to be a ROTW, just to be fair (the idea being, get 'em both... but we'll go on with this review just a bit more).
This one has always stuck out as, uh, different, in the brief but utterly ruling Harvey Milk discography. Mindblowingly different. On The Pleaser, these dirgey, heavier-than-thou arty post-rockers decided to really rock out with their cocks out, to put it crudely. It's the surprise Harvey Milk for headbangers, a beer-foaming behemoth of explosive rock n' roll riffola! No more holding back for 20 minutes at a time, they'd had it with that. From song one, riff one, this is pure RAWK, inspired by Motorhead, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top. (Again, a bit of a parallel with Earth, whose last '90s album Pentastar also featured badass, muscle car, classic rock motifs.) And that would be enough for us to love it. Yet, 'cause it's Harvey Milk, there's more to it than that. They do the rawk thing with Harvey Milk style -- even though it's unusually uptempo for them, their weird avant-artistry is still at play. Song structures aren't so straightforward as they seem, that throaty Harvey Milk howl is still there, and strange chord progressions abound... and of course it's way HEAVIER than the hesher beloved bands that inspired it. And possessed of unexpected flashes of beauty, also in the Harvey Milk tradition.
Listening to this, you can imagine what the kind of band playing this music would look like: long hair, beards, jean jackets, maybe a backwards baseball cap or two, the bassist perhaps wielding an axe that's shaped like a Jack Daniel's bottle. Sweaty and hairy and throwing the devil horns, leering at the girls. But... that they're actually more like nerdy indie rock dudes (a la The Champs) might cause some confusion and/or consternation. And admittedly the very last track, "Rock And Roll Party Tonight" reveals some indie irony at work, tongues planted in cheek. But try to find the humor in the likes of "Shame" and "Misery". Or the slow, bluesy, balladic "Lay My Head Down". No, this is as serious as they ever were, just expressed in a far rock-ier mode.
They slow down to the turgid doomy pace of My Love Is Higher and Courtesy And Goodwill only occasionally ("Red As The Day Is Long" being one such example), instead preferring a more energetic attack, packed with shred guitar solos, catchy hooks, and hoarse but melodic vocals. Shorthand summation: it's kinda like the Melvins meets Tad meets Thee Speaking Canaries (the Van Halen influenced indie mathrockers), playing a wild kegger for a drunken crowd of revelers, the smarter few of whom realize they're witnessing something really amazing and weird and subversive of the party vibe, but ALL of them having a great time. It can't be denied, this is the Harvey Milk we put on when it's Miller Time, Allan definitely finding himself giving this more spins-per-decade than a lot of their other, equally awesome but much more spacious and difficult-to-grok output.
And wait, that's not all! There's more: this reissue comes with a bonus disc of the previously cd-r only live-on-the-radio set Live Pleaser, value added for fans picking this up for the first -or- second time. It's got kickass versions of all the tracks from The Pleaser -- plus a cover of "Deuce" by KISS, that fits in with songs from The Pleaser just perfectly like they wrote it themselves!
MPEG Stream: "Down"
MPEG Stream: "Get It Up & Get It On"
MPEG Stream: "Lay My Head Down"
MPEG Stream: "Shame (Live)"

SEBADOH The Freed Man (Domino) cd 14.98
As much as we all love Sebadoh, most of their records predate the aQuarius list, so other than the recent reissue of III, and this one right here, we have never been able to truly sing the praises of one of our favorite indie rock bands of all time. They were one of the few bands who took indie rock and did whatever the fuck they wanted to with it. Bakesale, Bubble And Scrape, Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock, Sebadoh Vs. Helmet, all over the map, but all distinctly Sebadoh. Much of it had to do with the genius popsmithery of Lou Barlow, ground zero for lonely sadboy bedroom folk. A one man lo-fi revolution. But much of it had to do with his choice in collaborators. Specifically, Eric Gaffney, Lou's perfect foil, personally, musically, in every way. Where Lou was introverted and shy, Eric was outspoken and spastic. Where Lou penned soft whispery ballads, Gaffney's songs were disjointed angular folk, or blasts of off kilter acoustic weirdness, together, the two forged the perfect balance between romantic longing and snotty punk rock rebellion. Never was this more evident than on their very first record, The Freed Man. 
Back in the nineties, there was a disc called the Freed Weed (you might remember in our review of III, we pleaded for someone to re-release it) which was the cd version of a record called Weed Forestin', a record written and recorded entirely by Lou, jam packed with classic pop, including a handful of tracks that would be reworked later and turned into classic electric Sebadoh numbers. Well, to fill out the cd, they tacked on a handful of tracks from The Freed Man...
The Freed Weed was our introduction to what would become the whole bedroom folk movement. We didn't know what the hell it was, other than it was like nothing we had ever heard, sad and intense, funny and fucked up, super personal and intimate, with bursts of total what the fuck weirdness scattered throughout and some of the prettiest songs we had ever heard. And we were not looking  for soft folky sadness, we wanted heaviness and noisiness, but these songs were just too good to not fall in love with... We played the shit out of the Weed Forestin' side, the prettier Lou songs.
but later, when we had played it to death, we dug deeper into the more difficult songs from the Freed Man, and discovered a whole new world of deliriously damaged fractured folk...
So here we have the Freed Man in its entirety. With tons of extra songs, alternate versions, all culled from the original recordings... and it's just as amazing, as far out, as sweetly sorrowful as we remember. 
The Freed Man was the 'first' actual Sebadoh release, originally released in 1989, and in the early days, sold for 99 cents in local record stores. It was split pretty evenly between Lou's soft bedroom folk, and Eric's damaged whatthefuck lo-fi freakouts  and raggedy strum and croon, with tons of random shit mixed in, radio soundbites, old records, primitive tape recorder experiments, all sorts of weird found sounds scattered throughout.
The sound now is quite familiar, every kid with an old beat up guitar and a 4 track has taken a stab at the whole lone bedroom troubadour thing, but at the time, this was seriously mindblowing, murky hiss drenched acoustic guitar, gorgeously melancholy, with Lou's sadboy vocals, and lilting melodies, heartfelt, yet slightly tweaked lyrics, bursts of staticky chaos, cool weird tape loops... and the thing is, even after a million imitators, this STILL sounds special and fresh, and yeah, mind blowing. So much so that it's hard to pick out particular songs, the whole thing is so perfectly realized, it's almost like some insane lo-fi, bedroom folk DJ mix, the songs all flow into each other, stumbling over one another, woven together with random sound effects or manipulated tapes... Single songs don't get stuck in your head as much as whole suites, chunks of distinctly different songs that are so inexorably linked, they almost sound like multi part mini epics.
Some of our favorite tracks though: the all time classic emo indie boy anthem "Soulmate", with the legendary line "I'll probably have to have sex with a lot of girls before my soulmate reveals herself to me..." and a chorus to die for, Gaffney doing his best Barlow on "Level Anything", still sad and folky, but with way more buzz and off kilter melody, the super distorted hiss drenched beauty that is Barlow's "Close Enough", Lou's "True Hardcore"  with the spoken intro "this is a complete rip off of every other song i've ever done" which launches into a song that is anything but hardcore, instead a gorgeous slab of lush heavily strummed sadboy folk with a KILLER hook / chorus, "Wrists" another gorgeous off kilter folk dirge from Eric, minor key and rife with lush guitars and killer melodies, "Bolder" which hints at the pop genius that Barlow would blossom into, it's easy to imagine this track fully electrified and super rocking on some later Sebadoh record, "Jealous Evil", yet another classic Barlow track, moody and miserable, with brooding guitars, and subtle but moving melodies, and some gorgeous vocal melodies, same with "Pig" slow burning and melancholy, "Punch In The Nose", and an old track with Lou's sister accompanying him on trumpet, and the record finishes off with a Doc Watson cover that ends up sounding like the Frogs which is a very good thing. It's a mess and a jumble, but it's just so goddamn immediate and personal, weird and wonderful. Eric's songs sound like Lou's only doused in acid and pot and slightly -more- out of tune but they are the perfect balance for Lou's earnestness...
The Freed Man is in no way perfect, there are plenty of tracks that are noisy or fucked up and here and there plain embarrassing, but those only add to the record's charm, and tend to never last more than a minute. There's the super noisy cover of "Yellow Submarine" and the super embarrassing "Lou Rap" complete with goofy childhood recordings, both of which we used to skip, but now, are too much a part of the whole to not enjoy as part of the bigger Sebadoh picture. 
There are of course tons of extras, some awesome rarities, redone tracks from the Freed Weed, unreleased songs, tracks from the amazing and long out of print Magic Ribbons 7" boxset and a handful of splits and singles, includes liner notes by both Eric and Lou, each offering their own take on the early years of the band, with lots of artwork from the original cassette and the Freed Weed cd.
Like the recent reissue of Sebadoh III, The Freed Man is gorgeously packaged, with a huge booklet, tons of art, all housed in a swank slipcase, with the original cover reproduced, but with all the text in metallic silver...
MPEG Stream: "Healthy Sick"
MPEG Stream: "Soulmate"
MPEG Stream: "True Hardcore"
MPEG Stream: "Jealous Evil"
MPEG Stream: "Pig"

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AIR CONDITIONING / VEGAS MARTYRS / COUGHS / THE NEW FLESH Tiger Tongue Pussy Cactus: Terminal Fantasies For Malefic Youth (Hospital Productions) lp 14.98
An awesome 4 band pile up, the state of modern black noise, or blackened noise rock, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. This stuff is fierce and heavy and demented and so great. From the same label that brought us the primitive black metal of Malkuth (reviewed elsewhere on this list), the raw black fury of Bone Awl, those killer Akitsa reissues and a recent MB reissue, comes this killer 4 band anvil to the head. Up first is the Vegas Martyrs, featuring Hospital head honcho and Prurient mastermind Dom Fernow, and just like the recently reviewed lp, it's another gloriously blown out and beautiful slab of blackened pop flecked noise rock. In the red and on the verge of destroying your speakers, VM offer up a killer Maiden-like riff over super distorted drums, garbled FX drenched vocals, super hypnotic and repetitive, all wrapped up in a crumbling stereo killing production, finishing off with several minutes of glitchy grinding murky noise...
Up next is Air Conditioning, who sculpt their noise into something sorta pretty, huge swaths of blown out buzz over blurred buried melodies, layer upon layer upon layer, all shifting and shimmering, it almost sounds like a super charged noiserock Tim Hecker. Abrasive but surprisingly lovely. Up third is The New Flesh, show kick out the jams, ultra lo-fi style, a noisy practice space sounding garage rock sludge jam, all downtuned guitars, distorted trash can drums, and a weirdly deep voiced vocalist, who occasionally let's loose with a glass gargling screech. Dirgey, grimey, almost like some long lost Swans rehearsal tape. Finally, finishing things up are the Coughs, who weave some strange drone-y dirge with skronky sax and buzzy bass, fuzz guitar, all in short sharp bursts, creating a weirdly spacious plod, looped and cyclical, until the wild female vocals come in, and suddenly the Coughs sound like they're channeling old school Riot Grrl through new school noise. Out of nowhere comes a blast of spastic drum freakout before returning to that gorgeously relentless sludge-y pulse...
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Packaged in a thick black on green paper sleeve, printed inside and out, pressed on clear green vinyl.

ARTHUR & YU In Camera (Hardly Art) cd 11.98
Yeay! We have a new pop crush on our hands. Arthur & Yu come from the Pacific Northwest and offer up some delicious and classy timeless tunes that are so perfect and summery. Arthur & Yu is actually the work of Grant Olsen and Sonya Westcott. Together they follow in the footsteps of such luminous duos as Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra, making beautiful music both breezy and subtle. Like the more twee and dreamy early moments of Belle & Sebastian or the smart sweetness of Camera Obscura covering a Vetiver song, Arthur & Yu have found themselves a perfect place alongside pop's elite with this debut. We'll be sitting on the porch sipping fresh lemonade for the rest of summer with this one spinning on the stereo. So nice!
MPEG Stream: "There Are So Many Birds"
MPEG Stream: "Lion's Mouth"
MPEG Stream: "Absurd Heroes Manifestos"

BAKER, AIDAN I Will Always And Forever Hold You In My Heart And Mind (Small Doses) cd-r 8.98
Another slab of blissed out dreaminess from AQ fave Aidan Baker. His umpteenth release this year, every single one of them fantastic. This one, titled like a Damien Hirst piece, I Will Always And Forever Hold You In My Heart And Mind, is one single 50+ minute piece, separated into 12 parts, one for each word of the title, all woven into a single expansive whole.
The opener took us right back to Oval's Diskont 94, a shuffling shimmering underwater swirl, but instead of skipping cds as source material, Baker seems to be using some sort of loping Three Mile Pilot like bass, chopped and looped and smeared over a wash of drawn out synth drones, totally tranquil and dreamlike, but with that bass, lending the track a bit of subtle forward momentum. In fact the whole disc seems to be rooted in the interplay between droning synths and that processed bass. It's a bit krautrocky at times, a little bit Popol Vuh, ambient and abstract but propulsive at the same time. Some of the tracks are more layered, with strange muted bits of percussion, or more distinct melodies (also muted), while others get more and more distorted threatening to crumble to pieces, and still others, remain austere and minimal, throwing a shimmering sonic cloak over the hypnotic circular melodies and slow shifting sonic swells.
What more to say? As always, totally beautiful and completely hypnotic. Another perfect late night soundtrack for spacing out and drifting off...
LIMITED TO ONLY 156 COPIES, so you know what that means, each hand numbered, packaged in a super elaborate die cut sleeve, with a two sided insert, the disc, and the insert all visible around the custom cut outer sleeve. quite striking.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "Will"
MPEG Stream: "Always"

BEAR BONES LAY LOW Djid Hums (Gipsy Sphinx) lp 17.98
We know close to nothing about this band, other than it's the work of an 18 year old Venezuelan kid who lives in Belgium (and is now a member of Silvester Anfang) and who in addition to having a cool and mysterious name, has managed to whip up a pretty seriously blissed out and beautiful record of gorgeous psych-drone.
Two sidelong krautrock drone jams, mining similar territory as fellow noisemakers like Astral Social Club, Hototogisu and Burning Star Core. The first side begins with glistening streaks of fuzzed out synths and decaying tape loops, all wrapped in smeared clouds of blissy FX, but it quickly transforms into a very SUNNO)))-like low end dirge, bombarded on all sides by hiss and glitch and crumbling effects before building into a fuzzed out epic, a wall of rich, thick, subtly shifting sound, droney, dreamlike and sort of cinematic.
The flipside is another slow building epic, this time a wash of fuzzy warble and layered drones, voices and melodic fragments all processed and blurred into a gorgeous abstract soundscape, peppered with bits of percussion and all sorts of swirling sonics. Eventually, the track begins to fall apart, until all that is left is a strange chaotic swirl of percussion, hissy and buzzy and murky, while a ghostlike super distorted melody drifts and sways in the foreground.
LIMITED TO 525 COPIES! Each cover is signed and hand numbered. Super striking paste on covers, SUPER thick sleeve, pressed on 180 gram vinyl, with a photocopied insert.

BEE GEES Idea (Reprise) 2cd 25.00
Third times the charm for the Bee Gees, as we finally get around to reviewing the third double-disc remastered deluxe reissue in a series, this one of their 1968 third record, Idea. And it's not because this is our least favorite release, but quite the contrary, it's become the album we revisit the most frequently. Often letting it play in the store repeatedly through both stereo and mono versions.
A slight departure from the baroque arrangements and epic songwriting of 1st and Horizontal (but which they will return to in full form on 1969's Odessa), Idea focuses more on the band as an integrated rock combo rather than a harmony-pop group with accompaniment. The orchestra arrangements take a back seat in the mix, while the group utilizes a more upbeat hook-laden rocking sound in the vein of other seminal (and underrated at the time) albums of the era such as Something Else By The Kinks, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, and Headquarters by The Monkees (and influencing such later bands as Elf Power, Beachwood Sparks and Vetiver). Spotlighting electric guitar, 12-string acoustic, harmonicas and organ, as evidenced on the title track, "Kitty Can", "Indian Gin and Whisky Dry" and "Such A Shame", which stands out due to fact that it's the only song on the record not written by the Gibbs, but by then lead guitarist Vince Melouney.
But of course, this wouldn't be a classic Bee Gees album without some melancholic orchestral balladry which they were more known for, so we assume that is why opener, "Let There Be Love" with its piano and harp arpeggios, "I Started A Joke" and "I've Got To Get A Message To You" were pegged as the standout singles. All great songs surely, yet for us the lesser known songs are the real treats. Definitely one of the bands most underrated recordings and one which we hope this reissue will garner many new fans. Features both Stereo and Mono mixes and a bonus disc of alternate versions, unreleased tracks and even a couple of radio spots for Coca-Cola! Highly Recommended!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Such A Shame"
MPEG Stream: "Idea"
MPEG Stream: "Kilburn Towers"

BLACK FUNERAL Waters Of Weeping (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
The last Black Funeral record, Ordog, was one of our favorite black metal records of last year. We already liked the band quite a bit previously, but with Ordog, the buzzing blackness was transformed into some sort of experimental black noise metal, reminding us of bands like Spektr and Blut Aus Nord and Phobos, a sort of processed industrial vibe, lots of drones and ambient interludes peppered with machine like riffing and all sorts of black atmosphere. We should be used to it by now, but while we were blown away, much of the BM community shied away, not at all digging Black Funeral's new damaged direction. 
So we were pretty psyched to finally hear Waters of Weeping, the brand new record, to see where they took their black sounds next. And as much as we were secretly hoping they would do something super radical, WoW is actually more of a straight ahead black metal record, but then it's all relative. This is still plenty weird, just compared to Ordog, it's a bit more traditionally black and buzzy.
The sound and the vibe are very reminiscent of Xasthur and Leviathan and the like, the new wave of depressive black buzz-ers, with long drawn out minor key dirges, dense clouds of washed out buzz, loping blackened dirges, dense convoluted song structures, lots of creeped out ambience, but thankfully, here and there lurk some of that crumbling industrial blackness left over from Ordog. In fact, those are probably our favorite moments, like track 4, "Sha'arimrath, The Eighth Hell ­ HOD (Smal/Adramalech) ­ Mercury", an almost Godflesh worthy ultradistorted industrial dirge, with strange processed alien growls and pounding percussion, all wrapped up in buzzing synths and FX drenched guitars. But then the next track is a classic, old school sounding slab of relentless black metal buzz. But before you know it, we're on to track 6, and back to Ordog territory, "Lord Of The Dead ­ Tiphereth (Belphegor/Paimon) Tagahrim" another slowed down, black industrial buzz drenched plod that is SO fucking dismal and bleak and amazing. The more we listen to this disc, the more it all sounds so perfect. More and more and more like some meticulously assembled black artifact. The buzzing blackness spilling into the industrial pound, long streaks of minor key dirge wrapping inky tendrils around bursts of relentless black blasts... It's hard to explain exactly, but any of these tracks, take on their own, sounds pretty dang great, but taken together, as a sort of hellish suite, an extended ritual, they mesh into a grim and black, buzzy and blown out, haunting and soul wrenching sonic journey...
MPEG Stream: "Nehemoth ­ Malkuth (NAMVTh) - Earth"
MPEG Stream: "Sha'arimrath, The Eighth Hell ­ HOD (Smal/Adramalech) ­ Mercury"

BLACK SEAS OF INFINITY Amrita - The Quintessence (Autumn Wind Productions) cd 11.98
We first heard from Salt Lake City black ambient technicians Black Seas Of Infinity on The Trinity Of Non Being, a killer three way split with Kaniba and Ugegi Aoiveae A Aer, released on Autumn Wind, the same label that brought us multiple releases from AQ faves Vomit Orchestra. All three bands' contributions were amazing, bleak and barren, dark and drone-y, since then we'd been on the lookout for any other releases by all three. Amrita - The Quintessence is the latest full length from one man band Black Seas Of Infinity, and the brief glimpses we got of his dark universe on that split are allowed to sprawl here, to spread way out, an inky black cloud of roiling industrial whir and crumbling abstract drones wrapping everything within earshot in dense swaths of sonic shadow. 
Every track here is a dark missive from some lost world, a barren soundscape of deep resonant swells, of epic cinematic ambience and strange percussive glitch and rumble. Like the best ambient music, the sounds here are not sonic or simple, instead, constantly shifting and changing shape, tonal color, rhythms surface like flotsam on some mysterious sea of sound, disembodied voices drift like ghosts, melodies are broken into fragments, the bits and pieces tossed into the abyss and carried like dead leaves on some vile black wind, crumbling shards of buzzing synth intertwine with strange found sounds and bits of simple percussion, massive billowing sonic ripples spread slowly out, shimmering in greys and blacks...
Think Wolf Eyes, Nordvargr, Vomit Orchestra, Lustmord, Anenzephalia, Wolfskin, MZ412, Hlidolf, Ruhr Hunter and the like... another ultra intense trawl through the mysterious blackened underworld, lurking beneath, around and behind all things pretty and happy...
MPEG Stream: "Devourment"
MPEG Stream: "AIShtLa"

BLACKSHAW, JAMES Waking Into Sleep - Goteborg 27.05.06 (Kning Disc) cd 14.98
AT LAST REPRESSED, BACK IN STOCK... but still probably quite limited (Kning Discs are usually not long for this world!) live release from AQ fave UK guitarist James Blackshaw. Recorded in Goteborg, Sweden at the end of May this year, Blackshaw's live performance of the best of his catalog (Sunshrine, Celeste, and two songs from O True Believers) does not disappoint. For those who are not familiar with Blackshaw's majestic 12-string finger picking abilities (O True Believers was record of the week, a few lists back), this live document is a true testament to his amazing skills. Not a note is out of place and the sound quality is breathtaking. Don't miss out, we may or may not be able to get any more of these when we run out...
MPEG Stream: "Sunshrine"
MPEG Stream: "Spiralling Skeleton Memorial"

BUNKUR Bludgeon ( From Beyond / Displeased) 2lp 16.98
We've sold tons of this Bunkur record on cd. And rightfully so. It's another disc of ultimate dooooooooooom divinity. We're sold out again as we speak, but more are on the way. But as a small handful of you probably realized, there was an lp version too. As all things like this seem to be, it was outrageously limited, and we only had 5 or 6 copies when we listed it. Of course they flew out of here and were gone before we knew it. But here it is, several years later, and we managed to get a final batch of these lps direct from the band, and it's almost worth buying on lp even if you have the cd, cuz it includes a bonus track, a fucking mind blowing doom-ed cover of Burzum's "Erblicket Die Tochter Des Firmaments", originally released on a hyper limited split cd-r with UK doomlords Moss. If you haven't yet checked out Bunkur, and are into the slow and low, for chrissakes, pick this up (and keep your eyes peeled for a brand new full length coming soon on Andee's tUMULt label!)!
The vinyl is gorgeous, gatefold sleeve, hand numbered, all that jazz... We got a little less than 20 of these, so again, these probably won't last long... here's what we had to say about the rest of the record when we first reviewed it a while back:
What is wrong with the world today? The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, babies are coo-ing, breezes are blowing, waves are lapping, clouds are drifting happily across a bright blue sky, but all everybody wants to listen to is hateful evil grim brutal downtuned miserable soul crushing anguished slow motion funereal death drone ultra doom. Not that we're complaining, but it is curious. There's been recent renewed interest in slow motion metal masters Earth, as well asa a growing obsession with self admitted Earth worshippers SUNNO))), the massive ambient-metal explorations of Japan's Corrupted, the stomping garage psych meets doom drone of the mighty Boris, and a constantly growing roster of similar sonic sickos: Esoteric, Khanate, Asva, Fleshpress, Dot [.], Marzuraan, Ox, Rigor Sardonicus, Skepticism, Whitehorse, Planet Aids and now Bunkur. We've been trying to track down this cd for ages, and somehow ended up listing and reviewing the Planet Aids cd, a Bunkur side project, before we had even received the Bunkur discs. Well, now they're here and you won't be sorry. This Dutch outfit traffics in massive, miserable, impossibly lugubrious doom metal. This is a single 65 minute track, drenched in reverb and crackling amp buzz, crumbling distorted guitars howled vocals, very loose and spread out, the riffs exist in huge expanses of SPACE, a blackened vacuum of buzz and echo and the occasional trailing off of a vocal growl or a slowly dissipating feedback vapor trial. The kicker here though, and the thing that makes Bunkur so weird (and cool) is the drumming, stumbling lo-fi tripped out rhythms, that drift from plodding caveman pound, to spacious barely there accents, but most surprisingly hover in some strange alternate world of dub. Yep, you heard us, DUB. The drums often demarcate wide open spaces with a strange dubbed out, instantly recognizable: BAP BAP Bap bap bap bp bp bp bp.... a single snare hit that repeats, stuttering into oblivion. Giving the whole thing a weird hellish doom-dub vibe. Like Khanate recording with Lee Perry maybe? Okay, maybe not quite as extreme as that, but the dub is definitely there, whether purposeful or not. And it's really cool. Fans of dismal doom death drone and all things slow and sick will find this absolutely essential. The artwork is suitably bleak and abstract, super cryptic metallic grey and black packaging with extensive liner notes in a completely unreadable rune font!
MPEG Stream: "Bludgeon (excerpt)"

BURNT HILLS Cloud Nine (Tape Drift) cd-r 8.98
Another glorious blast of blown out bong smoke free rock dope jams the way only these Burnt Hills cats can do it. We won't bother going into too much detail as this puppy is limited to 50 COPIES, we got a bunch, but they won't last long. 
Burnt Hills, on this particular evening in May of 2007 consisted of NINE members, seven guitars, five drummers, one bass, folks obviously swapping back and forth, and it sounds like it. A super fluid, chaotic confluence of sound. Like some lost subterranean Crash Worship Drum jam wrapped in thick sheets of Haino-like guitar skree, everything enveloped in thick clouds of smoky FX, like some musical opium den. The bass and the guitars are thick and slippery, swooping amidst the relentless percussion, and the wild squalls of psychedelic freakout. At times it almost sounds like some DJ rocking multiple turntables, playing several different No Neck and Sunburned Hand records as the same time, a blurry, drugged out free folk tribal mash up... Awesome. 
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Each disc hand numbered. Full color artwork in a mini cd sized dvd-style clamshell case, inside a sticker and printed vellum insert. 
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Nine 1"
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Nine 2"

DEATHSPELL OMEGA Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum (Ajna / Southern Lord) cd 15.98
FINALLY! The long awaited brand new release from mysterious French post-black metal horde Deathspell Omega. There are very few bands that instill the sort of worship and awe that these guys do, but it's well deserved. Deathspell Omega have tread a solitary path, twisting the sounds of black metal into decidedly unlikely shapes, culminating in their last record, the classic Kenose, almost more of a post rock record with bits of black metal mixed in. 
We had no idea what to expect from this new record, to be honest, we had a slight feeling, that they might abandon metal all together, or at least push even farther into avant rock territory, more sparse and moody meandering postrockscapes, and less full on blackness, but as we should have expected, DSO ended up doing the last thing we expected, and made a sort of slight return to their sound of old. 
Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum is WAY more aggressive, relentless and pummeling. Those post rock elements are still very much evident, but the meat of these songs is a dizzying chaotic squall of black blasts, tangled obtuse guitars, minor key melodies, hateful howls and a super 'live' sounding BIG production, making everything sound even more intense and brutal. 
The record opens and closes with strange soundscapes of tinkling piano, regal horns, martial percussion, what sounds like some sort of medieval court music, big booming drums, muter trumpets, huge masses of choral chants, almost like an ultra blackened Arvo Part score, or maybe even a strangely melodic piece by Hermann Nitsch.
But then the band launch into some of the most furious, most chaotic material we've heard from them in ages. A churning pit of dizzyingly technical blackness, the guitars are everywhere, buzzing, grinding, the vocals growled and ultra low, but it's the drums that truly destroy. Unlike most black metal records, the drums don't just flip flop between blasts and midtempo jams, they are spastic and wild, fills all over the place, the drums stumbling and scrambling over every spare inch of space, like a continuous drum solo, but every beat, every flurry of kick drums, is somehow perfectly tangled up with some bit of guitar or some convoluted arrangement. The riffs are slippery and swoop wildly within the different parts, the drums pelting them from all sides with a never ending hailstorm of blown out battery. It's the sort of metal that has you gasping for breath between songs. In the store it sometimes sounds like a blur, but with headphones, it's much easier to hear everything that is going on below the surface. Ultra complex, hyper mathy, but strangely hooky too. Little trills of high end guitar pepper the blurry buzz, each song broken into about a hundred different parts. 
Most of the tracks have some sort of stripped down bridge, where the metal pulls back to reveal a lonely loping interlude, all clean minor key guitar and simple propulsive drumming, usually wrapped in all manner of sinister black ambience. A post rock meander through some dark forest or across some barren alien landscape before being swallowed up by DSO's massive wall of black sound. 
A few tracks definitely remind us of Kenose, the distinctly nineties sounding math rock intro to "A Chore For The Lost" could just as easily be the Dazzling Killmen, with it's guitar harmonics, angular riffage and crushing beats, or the sort of dissonant slowcore opening to "The Repellent Scars Of Abandon And Election", but both of those are just that, merely intros, that soon transform into spiky black beasts, crushing and burning and trampling everything in their path. 
The sound of Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum is so chaotic and so schizophrenic, it almost seems like it would just be way too much for the typical black metalhead, it's certainly grim and black and buzzy, but it's also dense and fucked up and obtuse and really really weird.... But if you're anything like us, which we think you are, then that all pretty much perfectly describes what could very well end up black metal record of the year.
MPEG Stream: "The Shrine Of Mad Laughter"
MPEG Stream: "Bread Of Bitterness"
MPEG Stream: "A Chore For The Lost"

ENCOMIAST Transit Bed (Gears Of Sand) cd-r 11.98
The problem with cd-r's, especially super limited editions, is that folks who are late to the party, usually through no fault of their own, end up missing out on so much amazing music. The other problem is that there really is no good reason for cd-r's to be limited, or to EVER go out of print. Because you can always make more! That was supposedly the whole draw of the cd-r, no need to press up 1000 or 2000 copies that may end up sitting forever in boxes in your house. Just make the discs as people order them. Sure, that doesn't play into the limited edition collector frenzy, and discs maybe seem more special if there are only 100 copies made. And sure we can understand wanting to move on and work on other projects, but as far as we're concerned, that shouldn't keep you from making more copies for folks who are dying to hear your music. After all, that's part of why we make music, for other people to hear, and enjoy. 
Anyway, the whole point of all this is, we've reviewed three different titles by Encomiast, all of them amazing, and unfortunately all of them no longer available. So now we've finally got a brand new disc, also a limited cd-r, that's just as gorgeous as any of those other now unavailable titles, we got a bunch but we have no idea how long they'll last, so if you're an Encomiast fan already you'll definitely want to grab one of these pronto, and if you've yet to experience the dark drifting beauty of Encomiast, well, then now here's your chance. And as the saying goes, you snooze, you lose...
Transit Bed is a glistening wide open expanse of interwoven low tones, spacious epic ambience, peppered with super reverbed percussion, and warm resonant swells. Besides the usual mysterious sounds, there are samples of a live performance, bits of flute and prepared piano, but those too are smeared into fuzzy indistinct shapes, left to float and flutter dreamlike amidst all manner of rumbles and whirs. Dark and dense, warm and so gorgeous. Highly highly recommended. And as always, it's highly recommended that you grab one of these sooner rather than later...
MPEG Stream: "Rains Pass By"
MPEG Stream: "Not The Time To Be Inarticulate"

EXPO 70 Illusive Landscaping (Diagnosis... Don't!) 3" cd-r 8.98
We've sort of been inundated with dreamy new sounds from this one man drugblissdrone krautrock revivalist outfit. We're definitely not complaining though. We absolutely can NOT get enough of Expo 70's drawn out guitarscapes, extended spaced out kraut raga drones, churning and pulsing and throbbing, spacey synths and thick rumbling guitars all tangled into haunting sonic transmissions. We're just sort of scrambling to get them all reviewed. So we figured we'd start with this one, the latest, a two track missive that is so dense and layered it might as well be two HUNDRED tracks. Especially since we find ourselves setting the cd player to repeat and just drifting off...
The two tracks here are further examples of Expo 70's washed out space rock SUNNO))) sound, both tracks begin as soft swirls of synth and FX, tripped out and abstract, keening high end, rumbling low end, guitars wiggle and squiggle, all very chaotic but still drone-y and meditative, the first track doesn't deviate too much, the guitars are warm throbs, underpinned by a thick wash of buzzing synth, eventually sloughing off all the FX, leaving just a gorgeous Niblock like minimal drone. But the second track, is quickly subsumed by huge walls of crumbling fuzzed out slow motion riffage, super processed though, so instead of sounding downtuned or even heavy, it just sounds even MORE spacey, and thick and warm and druggy, a single riff, pulled apart and looped over and over and over, super mesmerizing, droning and drifting along through a field of distant fuzz and buzz and warm swaths of subtle synth, eventually fading out leaving nothing but tolling bells... So great.
Packaged in thick textured blue paper mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi.
And as always, these are of course SUPER LIMITED -- just a mere 100 copies, of which we got a majority share! -- and will most likely fly out of here...
MPEG Stream: "Chrome Cobras"
MPEG Stream: "Blissful Morning"

FIRE WITCH Live At The Townie 2004 (We Empty Rooms) cd 9.98
An oldie but a goodie (well oldie as in 2004) from Aussie low end sludge doom terrorists Fire Witch. Recorded live at a hotel in Melbourne, in, you guessed it, 2004, this set shows more sides of the band than we've seen. Very little of this is actually sludgy and slow motion, instead it's dense and chaotic and mathy, convoluted and HEAVY. The opener is a two minute burst of bass heavy groove, with a killer staccato break down, all machine gun snare and swooping crumbling bass. After that, the band stretch out and channel a bit of Lightning Bolt through their drums vs. low end arsenal. The drums a constant splatter, tribal and intense, fills everywhere, pound and pummel relentlessly while various chunks of bass throb and grind, all three players in some vicious fight to the death. 
Unlike the usual breed of modern doomlords, the vibe here is way more math rock and Amphetamine Reptile than SUNNO))) or Boris. A super sludgy, groovy and convoluted mathdoom workout, slathered in low end and sent careening into the sweaty crowd. As is the case with most bands like this it's all about the drummer, and Jem Fire Witch is a demon behind the kit alternating between simple propulsive pound and wild off kilter chaos, but never losing sight of what the two basses are doing. A few of the tracks slow way down, and the band begins to sound like some strange bass heavy doomed version of the Necks.... which we shouldn't have to tell you is a very good thing indeed. 
Should definitely hit that math-doom-post-spazz-psych-bass-power-trio-sludge-metal spot, assuming you have a spot like that... We sure as heck do!
Packaged in a super swank fold out card stock digipak.
MPEG Stream: "What A Ball Tearer"
MPEG Stream: "Rat"

FLASKAVSAE Philosophies (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 8.98
Another blast of unblack metal, from the heartland, the Midwest, where it seems most of these unblack hordes reside. A glowing white beacon of buzzing brutality, amidst a sea of evil and blackness. This is the first full length from the one man band Flaskavsae, and like much of the unblack stuff we've been obsessed with, it's not so much about just making black metal Christian, as it is totally twisting the sounds of black metal into something entirely new. And so far, Flaskavsae, the man and the band, have pushed this unblack sound to it's furthest reaches. 
Where many of the other bands, particularly Light Shall Prevail, demonstrate a similarly varied, and gorgeously obscured sonic palette, it often seems that those particularly obfuscated sounds are more a result or recording limitations than an actual sonic vision. Of course, it's obvious that those other bands embrace the strange production and all over the map sonics, but Flaskavsae seems more like a daring sonic adventurer, using black metal merely as a jumping off point. Like Wold for instance, the root sounds are buzzing guitars, and blasting drums, but it's how those sounds are twisted and colored that make all the difference. 
From the first track, it's easy to tell this is so much more than (un)black metal. A dense, roiling staticky wash of crumbling downtuned guitars, and drifting mournful melodies, buried beneath layers of hiss and fuzz, with all sorts of tape dropouts and recording inconsistencies that make it sounds like some black metal Basinski piece, constantly throbbing and changing pitch, cutting out and warbling unsteadily, all the while weaving a super dark and emotional landscape of sound. This is the sort of black metal that fans of Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck and Basinski could easily get into. 
On some tracks, the drums are more pronounced, and thus, the sound is slightly more traditionally (un)black, but even then, the buzz and pummel is bombarded on all sides by thick swaths of fuzzed out sound, hissy static like the sound of some sonic downpour, while way back in the distance, streaks of high end drift by, offering brief glimpses of the mournful melodies underneath. This may be heavy, and brutal and grim or whatever, but it's hard to tell as everything is just dripping with tons of FX and wrapped in dense clouds of swirling murk and blurred shimmer, which ends up making it sound dark and sad and so so beautiful instead.
MPEG Stream: "Twilight Reminiscent Of Slumber"
MPEG Stream: "Parallels To Nothing"
MPEG Stream: "Eating Light"

HANNU Worms In My Piano (Osaka) cd 17.98
Oh, how we were hoping this record would actually sound like worms crawling around inside a piano. Besides being a super evocative image, it also would have been the easiest review EVER. "Hannu's Worms In My Piano actually sounds like worms inside a piano..." or whatever. And to be honest, there are a few moments, where maybe it doesn't quite sound like regular worms, but possibly some sort of effervescent alien glowworms slithering up and down gently vibrating strings, like beads of water on one of those weird water lamps your grandma had...
Speaking of your grandma, a lot of this is soft and shimmery, spacey and so relaxed and laid back, not entirely unlike  a more hip Lawrence Welk were he still alive and signed to Type or Carpark. This is most definitely easy listening. So so so so easy... Everything warm and soft, shimmering and glimmering and sparkling like stars in the night sky. Delicate melodies drifting from mysterious music boxes, little prismatic bubbles floating above some space aged ballroom, a tiny toy orchestra playing dreamy lullabies, a last dance on a moonlit dancefloor perched on the edge of a glistening galaxy, the world's slowest and dreamiest post rock band spinning dark drifting soft focus epics, that drift and dissipate like wisps of smoke. 
So dark and delicate and utterly lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Haapevesi"
MPEG Stream: "Junassa"
MPEG Stream: "Sumu"
MPEG Stream: "Suruista Suurin"

HOOR-PAAR-KRAAT The Huntington Chapters (Small Doses) 3" cd-r 5.98
A brief burst of mysterious musical abstraction, from one of our favorite purveyors of strange sound and minimal dronemusic. Two tracks, clocking in at about 18 minutes total, this is another gorgeously abstract and spacious drift through some lost alien soundscape .
Thee first track is all tinkling melodies, glistening high end, strange rumbling fluctuations way off in the distance, bits of creak and scrape, everything bathed in foggy reverb and warm wet swirls of tape hiss and atmospheric whir. Melodies creep in and out, as do bits of field recordings, it all feels like some cinematic bleary eyed wander through a hazy druggy flashback, a washed out world of lost memories and fragmented dreams. Here and there guitars grind and reverberate, and strange percussive sonic events drift into earshot, like an even more abstract Wolf Eyes maybe. Quite gorgeous and dreamlike.
The second track starts out the same, a smear of high end shimmer, but instead of spreading out into languid pools of blurry sound, things get decidedly more abrasive, the high end becomes sharper, the percussion is more clattery and jarring, a disembodied voice intones some creepy monologue over the top, effects swirl and swoop, deconstructed riffs chug and churn, everything dizzying and disorienting, like the nightmare analogue to the opening track's dream. Cool cool stuff.
Limited to 153 copies! Packaged in a super deluxe mini sleeve. A die cut two sided thick colored paper sleeve, screen printed, folded around a full color vellum inner sleeve, the cd face, the vellum inner sleeve, and the outer sleeve all visible in a super striking layered affect, so nice.
MPEG Stream: "Welcomed, Fell The Imprisoned Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Species Of Angelic Possession"

JUSTICE (cross) (Vice / Ed Banger) cd 14.98
Holy waters of Nazareth! There's still a faint ringing in our ears after listening to this debut disco-metal machine of an album, whose title is simply a cross, by the much talked about French duo, Justice, on the French electro imprint, Ed Banger Records. No electronic group has received as much hype and hysteria (mainly via internet music blogs and much remixed material by big name producers and DJs) in so little time as Justice, and Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, the men of Justice, more than meet expectations with all barrels blazing dishing out 48 minutes of a near-perfect, sinister beats 'n' synths face-off. We must admit, with all the long drawn out hype and remixing of their first few singles within the last two years, "Waters of Nazareth" (more or less the jump start for Ed Banger Records all together), their smash collaboraton with Simian, "We Are Your Friends" (which you probably would have heard everywhere in Europe in 2006), and their more recent single "D.A.N.C.E.", the two slowly began to drift out of our interest, especially with the 18+ months it's taken "Waters of Nazareth" to make it from French 12" to worldwide CD. But of course after hearing the debut, we were sucked right back in.
The opener, "Genesis", takes the electro cake, with a super theatrical intro building up to mysteriously cranky synth lines, slicing, over-compressed drums, and frazzled disco trills, reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" but with a sonic twist. "Let There Be Light" is dirty disco pop with hints of Daft Punk-esque melodies and bass riffs. Justice thrill most when using old sputtering analogue synth sounds over momentous rhythms as in "Waters of Nazareth" and "Phantom" parts 1 and 2. "Stress" is a heavy beast of a track with it's chaotic string arrangements, backing sirens, and random abrasive sweeping glitch effects throughout the drums and bass. We ran like four red lights on our bike listening to this one (dangerous, kids don't try this at home). But there's an apparent balance within the album with sweeter numbers like "Valentine" with it's melodic electric piano, the popular recent single "D.A.N.C.E." voiced by the London Children's Choir, and the mashed-up funk of "New Jack" in which human voices are cut up and recycled into new arrangements.
As a whole, this album is filled with squelchy sound textures and wild arrogant dance patterns and rhythms.
In the last year everyone has been basically hoping Justice would release the equivalent to any of Daft Punk's epics, "Homework" or "Discovery", assuming Justice would emerge as the next big French electronic leaders. Though the comparisons to Daft Punk are inevitable, the album proves that Justice can stand on their own just fine without borrowing too much from their predecessor. Overall... a full on aural assault. A pulsing and shimmering piece of electronic music standing at the forefront of the current rock'n'rave collision.
MPEG Stream: "Genesis"
MPEG Stream: "Phantom"
MPEG Stream: "Waters Of Nazareth"

JUSTICE (cross) (Vice / Ed Banger) 2lp 27.00
Holy waters of Nazareth! There's still a faint ringing in our ears after listening to this debut disco-metal machine of an album, whose title is simply a cross, by the much talked about French duo, Justice, on the French electro imprint, Ed Banger Records. No electronic group has received as much hype and hysteria (mainly via internet music blogs and much remixed material by big name producers and DJs) in so little time as Justice, and Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, the men of Justice, more than meet expectations with all barrels blazing dishing out 48 minutes of a near-perfect, sinister beats 'n' synths face-off. We must admit, with all the long drawn out hype and remixing of their first few singles within the last two years, "Waters of Nazareth" (more or less the jump start for Ed Banger Records all together), their smash collaboraton with Simian, "We Are Your Friends" (which you probably would have heard everywhere in Europe in 2006), and their more recent single "D.A.N.C.E.", the two slowly began to drift out of our interest, especially with the 18+ months it's taken "Waters of Nazareth" to make it from French 12" to worldwide CD. But of course after hearing the debut, we were sucked right back in.
The opener, "Genesis", takes the electro cake, with a super theatrical intro building up to mysteriously cranky synth lines, slicing, over-compressed drums, and frazzled disco trills, reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" but with a sonic twist. "Let There Be Light" is dirty disco pop with hints of Daft Punk-esque melodies and bass riffs. Justice thrill most when using old sputtering analogue synth sounds over momentous rhythms as in "Waters of Nazareth" and "Phantom" parts 1 and 2. "Stress" is a heavy beast of a track with it's chaotic string arrangements, backing sirens, and random abrasive sweeping glitch effects throughout the drums and bass. We ran like four red lights on our bike listening to this one (dangerous, kids don't try this at home). But there's an apparent balance within the album with sweeter numbers like "Valentine" with it's melodic electric piano, the popular recent single "D.A.N.C.E." voiced by the London Children's Choir, and the mashed-up funk of "New Jack" in which human voices are cut up and recycled into new arrangements.
As a whole, this album is filled with squelchy sound textures and wild arrogant dance patterns and rhythms.
In the last year everyone has been basically hoping Justice would release the equivalent to any of Daft Punk's epics, "Homework" or "Discovery", assuming Justice would emerge as the next big French electronic leaders. Though the comparisons to Daft Punk are inevitable, the album proves that Justice can stand on their own just fine without borrowing too much from their predecessor. Overall... a full on aural assault. A pulsing and shimmering piece of electronic music standing at the forefront of the current rock'n'rave collision.
MPEG Stream: "Genesis"
MPEG Stream: "Phantom"
MPEG Stream: "Waters Of Nazareth"

KAWABATA MAKOTO Osaka Loop Line (AMT) cd 17.98
If it wasn't enough that this hairy hippy rock guru, leader of Japan's prolific Acid Mothers Temple, is busy releasing NEW music at a frantic pace, now he's begun digging through his closet to find old stuff he made years and years ago and is re-releasing that as well. No complaints though, if the "Kawabata Makoto's Early Works" series turns up more material as enjoyable as this, originally released in 1981 on (Kawabata's own?) Revolutionary Extrication Project cassette-label, now reissued on cd in a limited edition of 500 copies.
Osaka Loop Line's title is suggestive of trains, and indeed the two long (22-23 minute) tracks here, parts one and two of the same extended piece, can be heard as chug-chugging (if not choo-chooing) along, a droning but active, abstract soundscape-in-motion composed of electronic hum and mechanical pulse. It's a bit different from the amped up and/or blissed out psych guitar explorations we're used to hearing from Kawabata, indeed we don't even know if he's playing guitar at all on here (he's simply credited with "all instruments and voice"). The Eastern ethnic elements found in much of his later AMT and solo work aren't so much in evidence, as this seems to be primarily influenced by '70s German "kosmische" electronics and proto-industrial experimentation, we'd guess. At the same time, it's not like he was making skinny tie New Wave punk or mimicking Journey or doing rockabilly covers or something -- this music does fit in logically with the krauty psychedelia we hear from the man today. Not bad at all for a youngster -- check out the cute photo on the sleeve of a youthful, beardless Kawabata!
Now the question is, how many Early Works are there? If he was as prolific back then as he & his cohorts are now, then from 1981-199? whenever we first encountered AMT, there's got to be a lot more cool Kawabata musical history to hear...!
MPEG Stream: "Osaka Loop Line Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Osaka Loop Line Part 2"

KAWAHARA, MASAMI & THE EXOTIC SOUNDS Kokotsu / Ecstasy (Tiliqua) cd 24.00
It's ben a wild, weird and sexy ride through the strange world of sixties and seventies Japanese sonic erotica (serotica?) courtesy of the fine folks at Japan's Tiliqua label. And it isn't over yet! We were led to believe that number five, recently reviewed right here, the amazing and bizarre Girlfriend - Baby Doll by Petite M'Amie would be the last, but no, we were just resting, catching our breath, recharging as it were, and now it's time to plunge right back in...
What the heck are we talking about? It's Tiliqua's Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of Japanese erotic music from the sixties and seventies chronicling the criminally under-documented sounds of Iroke Kayoyoku, a sort of loungy exotica, equal parts Les Baxter and Ennio Morricone, a bastardized version of a more popular Asian music of the time, a funky, groovy, soulful soundtrack music, but sexed up with chanteuse like crooning, and most important of all, an amazing array of moaning and groaning and cooing and giggling, very playful and silly and sexy. The first five volumes were all fantastic, fun and funny and funky and far out, and unfortunately now all out of print, discs from Japanese sexy action heroine Ike Reiko, Japanese "Play Girl" Kuwabara Yukiko, seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani, legendary porn actress Taguchi Kumi, and most recently what could quite possibly be the first Iroke disc (and thus the rarest), from sexy Lolita, Petite M'Amie, aka Mari Keiko.
We also considered Keiko's contribution to the series to be the strangest by far, and while it was pretty weird, it sounds downright tame when compared to this, the latest in the series, Kokotsu/ Ecstasy by Masami Kuwahara & The Exotic Sounds, originally released in 1970, but practically forgotten and lost until now.
Unlike the other titles in the series, this one is not the recording of a particular vixen, instead, it's the work of composer and arranger (and future husband of Ike Reiko, Masami Kuwahara, who was responsible for many of the Iroke recordings, including Reiko's and this one right here. A Latin, late night Tiki mamba exotica lounge jazz mash up...
The opening track sets the tone, smoldering and sultry, with moaning late night muted trumpet, marimba and jungle drums, a sweaty sweltering vibe, with lots of Les Baxter like sonic filigree, while as is the style of Iroke, a lusty lady giggles and and coos, moans and groans, as if she is alternately being pleasured, tickled or spanked. In fact after a brief burst of furious congas and horns beneath the sounds of what definitely sounds like actual love making, comes the creepy third track, all fluttering flutes and tribal percussion, wherein another lady gets slapped or spanked, and squeals and squeaks appreciatively. You can even hear the man's grunts, his exertion and passion evident as he sexily slaps his woman, ummm, okay. Well, it was a different time, but that one definitely sounds more freaky than sexy, but the music, ohhh man, gorgeous flutes, and a minor key full moon marimba melody, the perfect soundtrack for a night of masochistic fun. Then the next track, things are off again, the drums wild and frenzied, the females rapid breathing and sounds of passion mirroring the intensity of the music.
The whole record sort of swings back and forth, from languid late night crawls, all warm and humid and romantic, to blown out blasts of intense sexy freaked out flesh and frenzy. Might be the first record in the series that is less 'gimmick' and more music, with every track steering well clear of the sort of Lawrence Welk meets Morricone smooth jazz of the other discs in the series and offering up some seriously bad ass Latin lounge-y exotica.
The final track, another of the slow sultry numbers, peters out, leaving one of the ladies to moan passionately, obviously in the throes of post coital bliss, seemingly as exhausted as we are from these nearly forty minutes of sexy sonics...
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, extra saucy nude photos of Kawahara on the cover, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese including an interview with the lady herself!
ULTRA LIMITED!!! Like most of the others in this series, this one is a one time only limited pressing of only 1000 copies, and is already pretty much sold out. There's a good chance once these are gone we will be unable to get more...
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

MALKUTH Mutus Liber (Hospital Productions) lp 14.98
As if those guys in No Neck Blues Band weren't prolific enough, we've now got the mighty Malkuth to contend with, a killer grim black metal combo featuring a couple of No Necks in their ranks. And this is not a case of NY hipsters slumming, this is the real deal, grim and buzzing, classic sounding old school blackness. Think Moonblood, Beherit, that sort of thing... Dense slabs of primitive buzz, simple and mostly midtempo, guitars murky and muddy, the drums buried in the mix, but peppered with soaring epic classic metal melodies. Occasionally the band will burst into full on blackness, but even at their fastest, it's still more of a lurching punk rock sort of blast, thrashy and on the verge of collapse. The vocals are super distorted and buried way down in the mix. Everything super lo-fi, a definite demo-tape style production that just adds to the grim / kvlt vibe, this really sounds like it could be some Norwegian or Finnish basement recording from the nineties.
From pounding punky blasts, to loping midtempo buzz to epic minor key doom, everything dripping in blackness, distorted and buzzing and fucking awesome.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Packaged in super thick black on grey heavy cardstock sleeves, with cool cryptic artwork.

OTOMO YOSHIHIDE'S NEW JAZZ ORCHESTRA (ONJO) LIVE Vol. 1 series circuit (Doubtmusic) 2cd 22.00
Ooooh. Here we have the first of two volumes (both of 'em double discs) of live material being released this summer by Japan's Doubtmusic from ONJO. That's the unusual "jazz orchestra" led by turntablist/guitarist Otomo Yoshihide (who could be considered the Japanese John Zorn, his old band Ground Zero being the analog to Zorn's Naked City, though that doesn't do either of them justice, really). In jazz speak, ONJO's music wanders both inside and outside, it's avantgarde yet lush and listenable, full of melody and melancholy. Electronic textures intrude upon jazz standards, whispy vocals drift amidst gentle drones, and aggressive bouts of noisy improv burst forth to keep them far out of cocktail lounge territory.
Recorded on several dates in Berlin, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagoya, the ten tracks here were performed by five varied ONJO lineups, featuring a large number of talented musicians, familiar among them vocalist Kahimi Karie and sinewavist (?) Sachiko M, and a host of Japanese jazz cats and "onkyo" experimenters. The Berlin dates see the ONJO joined by Europeans like reed player Alfred Harth and trumpeter Axel Dorner. It's mostly all Otomo's own compositions, with a couple by cult Japanese '60s/'70s TV soundtrack composer Yamashita Takeo, as well as required readings of Eric Dolphy's "Out To Lunch", "Straight Up And Down", and "Hat And Beard".
These discs are packaged in the typical deluxe Doubtmusic style, with thick cardboard gatefold sleeves, and include lengthy, very personal liner notes from Otomo himself, going in depth about the ideas behind this music, the evolution of his "jazz" composition post-Ground Zero, as his feelings about the legacy of his former teacher, the late Japanese jazz giant Masayuki Takayangi evolved. He discusses his simultaneous immersion in both the quiet electronic improv scene called "onkyo" and also the resurgence of his interest in traditional jazz sounds, seemingly contradictory musical directions that he meshes brilliantly -- as can be heard here. Essential for all Otomo fans (especially those who love his ONJO album Plays Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch!!).
MPEG Stream: "Lost In The Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Climbers High Opening"
MPEG Stream: "Double Command 1"

OXBOW The Narcotic Story (Hydra Head) cd 13.98
Finally! What, five years in the making? It's been that long since San Francisco's unhinged avantgarde-hardcore-blues-metal artistes the one and only Oxbow last lashed an explosive new full-length recording to our heads and pulled the pin, way back in 2002 with An Evil Heat. Yeah, last year's "live and rare" cd+dvd collection Love That's Last was great for fans and newcomers alike, but also whetted our appetite to hear some actual new dementia from this unique outfit. But Oxbow have always done things at their own leisure, having been around for long enough to now be selling records to metalcore kids who were probably not even born when Oxbow's first album, Fuckfest, came out in 1989. This is only their sixth studio album since then, but when you make music this intense, this cathartic, this disturbed, deviant, raw, heavy, fucked up, etc. etc. (to use a bunch of the usual words to appropriately describe Oxbow) it's not like you could, or should, make that many albums. It wouldn't be healthy!
Over the years, Oxbow has inevitably changed, grown, matured. The mania of early albums like Fuckfest and King Of The Jews has been relaxed (though always ready to erupt), and there's been more in the way of beauty crammed into their complex compositions to contrast with the ugly stuff. Even as they find more and more of a "metal" audience with releases on Neurot and now Hydra Head, their music is sweetened with strings and piano... But The Narcotic Story still brutalizes with the Oxbow basics: sinewy slide guitar riffage, moody soft-loud dynamics, mathrock tightness, and of course the psychotic vocals & lyrics of singer-you-wouldn't-want-to-fuck-with Eugene Robinson. His delivery is sometimes like a mewling baby, sometimes like a crotchety grandpa, usually both at the same time, Robinson his own multi-tracked schizoid choir. Here, his homeless-man mumbling and primal screams are joined by more coherent singing. But you'll still have to listen hard to figure out what he's on about -- if you dare. Just like at an Oxbow show, it's dangerous to get too close.
Definitely, Robinson is an essential part of the Oxbow equation (one that will make or break the band for the uninitiated), but his naked displays of verbal and non-verbal (again, go see 'em live!) nihilism wouldn't carry the same weight without the sparse tension, technical precision, and dramatic, damaged melodicism provided by the instrument-equipped band members. The Narcotic Story finds them keeping up their end as well. "Frankly Frank" is a classic, swampy Oxbow creepy-crawl, "She's A Find" a lovely, lush dirge. These tracks and all the rest here are the Oxbow fix old addicts like us want and need, and ought to hook a few unsuspecting, previously clean-living youths as well, for whom Isis and Neurosis were the gateway drugs...
FYI, we hear that someday Hydra Head has plans to release a deluxe edition of this cd, in some sort of special packaging, a hardback book apparently... dunno when though.
MPEG Stream: "The Geometry Of Business"
MPEG Stream: "She's A Find"
MPEG Stream: "Frankly Frank"

PEOPLE Ceremony - Buddha Meet Rock (Teichiku) cd 17.98
1971 strikes again! Here's a new cd reish of this beautifully freaky album by a Japanese "Buddhist-psych" band called People, featuring guitarist Kimio Mizutani (who played with Love Live Life + 1, Hiro Yanagida, and others, and did a solo album called A Path Through Haze). There's monk-like chanting and resounding gongs, field recordings of birds and street sounds, and even, strangely enough, samples from soulful psych-funk producer David Axelrod's classic 1968 album Song Of Innocence. And of course heavy wah wah guitar action. The album is a real 'trip', much of it indeed very ceremonial-sounding, venturing from blissful grooves with tick-tock rhythms ("Shomyo Part 2") and placid, lovely droniness ("Prayer Part 1") to sheer pounding electric fuzz riffage laced with screams of orgasmic ecstasy ("Prayer Part 2"). The puzzling use of those lush, orchestral Axelrod samples on the first and last tracks just helps to make this somehow both very much of its time and also way ahead of it (since Axelrod is heavily sampled by folks today as well!). Quite recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Flower Strewing "
MPEG Stream: "Prayer Part 2"

PESTE NOIRE FolkFuck Folie (De Profundis / Rosenkrantz) cd 13.98
We have been totally obsessed with French black metallers Amesoeurs, from the second we first heard their debut ep (and only proper release), Ruines Humaines, absolutely one of our favorite black metal records ever, a disc of glistening, My Bloody Valentine like buzz rife with strangely melodic indie rock jangle and occasional female vocals, all wrapped in sonic spikes and buzzing guitars and blasting beats, a bliss pop disc in black metal clothing if there ever was one. In reviewing that disc we mentioned that there were various other related bands we were feverishly trying to track down, one was the even less metal, and more blissed out Alcest (whose debut cd is out of print, but whose brand new full length should be out soon) and the super demented, slightly more typically black metal Peste Noire. Now, when we say "slightly more typically black metal", it's all relative, by any other standards, and compared to any other BM bands, Peste Noire is anything but typical, but compared to the relative poppiness of Alcest and Amesoeurs, this stuff is as black as it gets.
We had been trying to track down their debut for ages, but since it took so long, a brand new full length dropped in the meantime, this disc right here, so we figured we oughta start with this and work our way back. We do have the first record in stock, and it's just as amazing and fucked up and freaked out and absolutely recommended as essential, so if you want this one, odds are you're gonna need that one too (so just ask), but just so you know what you're getting into, let's investigate the bizarre soundworld of France's Peste Noire....
The problem is, it's really hard to describe just what the heck Peste Noire sounds like. They are definitely black metal, but the arrangements are so bizarre, and often not very black, everything is fuzzy and off kilter and distorted, dizzying and haunting and creepy, stumbling and whatthefuck as often as heavy or buzzing.
Take the opening track, some sort of crumbling distorted soundscape, lots of fuzz and hiss, plenty of reverb and druggy murk, industrial percussion and washed out ambience, some super beautiful clean guitar, that fragments into fractured weirdness over which harsh blackened vocals howl and shriek, the guitars eventually growing more and more distorted and FX drenched, while all around swirl strange sounds and demonic voices. But then the second track kicks in and things settle down for the most part. A relentless black buzz, but not typical in any way, a sort of old school thrash, but all twisted and tangled, the guitars are all over the place, the background is a constant wash of fuzzy roar, while up front, the main riff is sharp and angular. The vocals are a hateful hissy howl, the drums a stumbling blast, but amidst all this chaos are bits of perfect poppiness, killer melodies, amazing (and unlikely grooves), super hooky and catchy, but in a way that seems impossible. Within three minutes, Peste Noire go from buzzy blast, to dreamy melodic drift to midtempo groove to lumbering doom, but always imbued with a strange pop sensibility and always wrapped in all manner of fucked up sounds and damaged production.
Some bands are obviously 'fucked', the drums a crumbling mess, the recording quality ultra shitty, the mix all over the map with LOUD drums or super inaudible guitars, we love that stuff, but Peste Noire is fucked in a completely different way, listening to this, you can tell these guys are amazing musicians, and have an absolutely solid idea of what they're trying to do, It's just that what they're trying to do would never occur to anyone in their right mind, Which is exactly what makes their music so compelling and so totally mind blowingly bizarre.
As with all music, metal in particular, it's all about the riffs, and thus the guitars, and the guitars here are fucking amazing, sometimes spun into crystalline melodies, delicate and sparkling, other times super dense downtuned buzz, occasionally weird and angular and super mathy, the quality of the guitar sound too is ridiculously varied, from clean and clear, to muddy and murky, often at the same time, and always in the same song. At some points it almost sounds like these guys were mad musical alchemists who took two different records and crammed them together creating some unholy sonic beast, poppy and catchy, but bleak and brutal and demented, an unnatural blackened buzzing freakshow of sound, but always as beautiful as it is fucked up.
The whole record is peppered with non musical weirdness too. The extended intro of "Maleicon", an extended rant in French, growled and spat out over a backdrop of moans and drones, or the brief "Extrait Radiophonique", which sounds like a crackly record of maniacal screams, tolling bells, and all sorts of slamming and banging, but somehow even those parts all essential to the demented and damaged vision that is FolkFuck Folie.
Definitely another contender for black metal record of the year!!
Includes a bonus track from a long out of print split with Finnish black metallers Horna, which is way more black than the rest of the record, but is just as weird and amazing. Packaged with a huge booklet of lyrics, photos, liner notes, drawings and plenty of other strangeness.
MPEG Stream: "L'envol Du Grabataire (Ode A Famine)"
MPEG Stream: "Chute Pour Une Culbute"
MPEG Stream: "La Fin Del Secle"
MPEG Stream: "Paysage Mauvais"

SONIC YOUTH Goo - Deluxe Edition (Geffen) 2cd 31.00
With the deluxe reissue and recent performance of Daydream Nation here in town just a week ago Sonic Youth has been on our minds quite a bit. So we figured we would list the deluxe version of their major-label debut Goo which came out a while back too.....
The year punk broke? Depends on who you ask and if you care. But the documentary sporting that title centers around Sonic Youth and their tour after their first major label record came out, Goo, in 1990. In many ways this was the record that would shape the course of the indie-rock revolution of the 1990's. As it was more often then not Sonic Youth using their new found major label clout to help other bands get more exposure or even deals of their own (i.e. Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney, Nirvana, etc.). Following up Daydream Nation must have been quite a daunting task and signing with a major label at that time was often the kiss of death for any self respecting band who had roots in the punk rock community. Yet somehow Sonic Youth found a way to forge a new road and rewrite all the rules. While Goo might be one of their more accessible albums it was by no means at all a sellout. SY had always had a pop element in their music and this record let them explore it much more deeply. While not their most critically acclaimed record, we've always had a huge soft spot for Goo, in fact it's Andee's favorite SY record ever! It was the record where SY got to let down their hair and have some fun. There is a playfulness and charisma to Goo that still kicks our ass. And odds are you probably already know and love a bunch of these Goo-tunes. Of all the deluxe SY reissues so far this is the one whose bonus material is the most rewarding. The proper album is on one disc followed by 5 tracks of out-takes and b-sides (including a Neon-Boys cover) and the second disc has some totally great 8-track demos as well as a killer cover of the Beach Boys' "I Know There Is An Answer" a good decade before it became all the rage to love The Beach Boys again. Aw Goo, a record that would help Sonic Youth reach the masses as it gave them a wider audience than previous albums. Goo launched a decade that would see so many bands flourish taking much inspiration from Sonic Youth. Everyone from Pavement to Sleater-Kinney, Unwound to Blonde Redhead. Seventeen years later and Goo still sounds so rocking and charming. One of the few bands who have made great records over the course of three decades!
MPEG Stream: "Dirty Boots"
MPEG Stream: "Kool Thing"
MPEG Stream: "Can Song"
MPEG Stream: "Number One (Disappearer/8 Track Demo)"

STUMM / LOINEN split (Kult Of Nihilow) lp 22.00
It says right there on the sleeve: "100% Sludge". They had us at 100% sludge. Ummm, anyway, two of Finland's sludge rock heavyweights team up, each taking a side of this here 12", and each, surprisingly, doing something new and unique with their bit of sludge. Not that we wouldn't have loved another slab of slow motion dirgery, but we're even more psyched to see what weird shapes, some of this sludgedoomdrone can get twisted into.
Up first is Loinen, whose lp we totally flipped over a while back. They of the crushing doom with Scott Walker style vocals. Yep! You remember now? Well, here they try another something, also completely different, their side begins with a super distorted bass riff, spread way out, allowing for lots and lots of space, and in those spaces, there are strange chanted choral vocals, female, repeating the same pattern over and over, inexorably tangled up with the plodding riff. It's all very mysterious and hypnotic and continues on for nearly three quarters of the side, at which point the vocals finally come in, a strangled alien croon, alternately growling and sort of moaning, and it's not until nearly the end of the side when the drums finally kick in, and for the first time it begins to resemble the aforementioned 100% sludge. A lurching doom trudge with now croaking vocals all wrapped around that relentless distorted bass line. Finally, right at the very end, the track explodes in a frenzy of freaked out chaos, drums everywhere, feedback squealing and shrieking, the track dissolving in a blast of blown out brutality. Weird and quite cool.
So how do fellow countrymen, and masters of their own particular brand of sludginess, Stumm, respond? With yet another strange take on sludge, there's, at least for this lp side, is downright pretty. Thick swaths of washed out guitar rumble and soaring streaks of feedback all tangled and up like some gorgeous alien melody, not harsh at all really, more just strange sounding, and really quite beautiful, the first time we've heard feedback so skillfully sculpted, underneath, drums are simple and spare, it's more about atmosphere and mood it seems, a thick heavy dreamy drift. Right in the middle there's a brief burst where the guitars get more jagged and angular, and some howling shrieking vocals swoop in, but before you know it, they've swooped right back out, and the track is again drifting darkly, a strangely soft sludge shimmer. So great.
LIMITED TO 265 COPIES!!! These are the only copies we can get. Once they are gone, they are gone for good. Packaged like the Loinen 12", in a similar eye melting black and white high-school-binder tweeker pen and ink cover, with crazy art by Loinen member G.G., a tripped out world of strange figures and weird text and upside down crosses, and squiggles and creatures and who knows what else...

SUN RA Strange Strings (El Saturn) cd 15.98
Strange is right! And it's not just the strings. This 1966 recording by out-jazz pioneer Sun Ra and his adventurous Astro Infinity Arkestra is strange all over. This could SO totally be a current day improv psych cd-r from some of our Finnish friends, for instance... if it weren't recorded 40 years ago by one of the foremost geniuses of 20th century American jazz (and Afro-Outer-Space art). The idea here is that alongside the horns and flutes and bass all the usual instrumentation of the Arkestra, they're improvising on a collection of completely unfamiliar instruments -- the sundry "strange strings" of the title. Odd, exotic stringed instruments possibly including: Chinese lute, "moon-guitar" (?), mandolin, banjo, koto, bandura, ukelin (a zither type instrument), and others yet to be identified. Directed only by loose gestures from Sun Ra, the band expresses themselves freely on these strange strings... and the results must rank among the weirdest and most abstract sounds in Sun Ra's vast catalog, an unhinged tangle of sputtering pluckery and string-scrape. In addition, some sort of percussion adds thunderous rumbling metallic drones (this is presumably the "lightning drum" with which Ra is also credited, along with electronic piano). It could be a sheet of metal, or even a metal musical sculpture, as this reissue's extensive and investigative liner notes postulate. Another sonic element making the proceedings even stranger is the wordless, otherworldly "space vocal" of Art Jenkins aka Thlan Aldridge.
There's three tracks here from the rare original Saturn-label release, plus a fourth bonus cut. "Worlds Approaching" starts things off with a 10+ minutes of woozy Wurlitzer, clonky horn burble, and percussive clatter. Then the shambolic strange strings orgy begins with "Strings Strange" (12:47) and continues through to the epic "Strange Strange" (20:53). Log drums pulse beneath the reverbed apeshit freeform freakout of strings, space vocals, and metallic crashes.
And, after all that, there's the ten and a half minute bonus track. Which believe it or not, is probably the strangest (there's that word again) thing on here! It's called "Door Squeak" and YES that's right, it's actually Sun Ra "playing" a squeaky, creaky door. Which is exactly what it so spookily sounds like. Pretty cool we think, a nice simple coda to the preceding mayhem, celebrating a pure love of sound, whatever the source, and its mysterious power over our imaginations.
Good grief, it's astonishing that even with so many Sun Ra reissues already out, there's STILL amazing stuff like this to be unearthed.
MPEG Stream: "Strings Strange"
MPEG Stream: "Strange Strange"
MPEG Stream: "Door Squeak"

V/A A Visit To The Spaceship Factory (Psychic Circle) cd 16.98
Remember that rad White Lace And Strange compilation we highlighted not long ago? Some killer late sixties, early seventies psych rock from the USA, garage bands gettin' "heavy". Well this disc, on the same Nick Saloman-affiliated label Psychic Circle, is in some ways a sequel, featuring similar bands of the era from the UK (and one Israeli band that recorded in London, to be perfectly accurate). With the subtitle "20 Gems From The Early Years Of Prog", it's billed as a collection of obscure "progressive rock" tracks... but the stress is on the rock. After all, Black Sabbath was once considered a "prog" band too. Sure, there might be some keyboards, but there's lots of raw, raucous energy here, both singers and guitarists wailing away in full fuzzed-out psychedelic proto-metal glory, when they didn't know from headbanging but knew how to boogie! Being a comp, of course some of this is better 'n the rest, but quality control is pretty high. Some faves include the punkish Helter Skelter (ex-Crushed Butler), the powerful axe-action of Israel's Jericho, and the heavy blues thud of early UFO, among other treats here to be heard from these bands (some we already knew, some new to us): Treetops, Mousetrap, Deadwood, Fuzzy Duck, Incredible Hog, Mouse, Beggars Opera, Kingdom Come, Little Big Horn, Strange Fox, Onyx, Spontaneous Combustion, Sheephouse, Pussy, Axe, Sunchariot, and Kansas Hook. The liner notes provide interesting tidbits on each artist (ferinstance, if you're as much of a proto metal geek as Allan, you'll be excited to get the track by Pussy, a later incarnation of one-album wonders Jerusalem).
MPEG Stream: JERICHO "So Come On"
MPEG Stream: HELTER SKELTER "I Need You"
MPEG Stream: KANSAS HOOK "Nervous Shakin'"

V/A Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label (Numero) cd 17.98
The Numero Group's "Eccentric Soul" series lives up to its name with this new entry, lucky number seven in the series, which also lives up to the high expectations all its bumpin' predecessors have created for it -- Capsoul, Bandit, Deep City, all the rest, some better liked here than others but all pretty great when you get down to it... and get down to it is what you will, what this shit's all about. Long lost soul/funk/r&b gems from back in the day, regional obscurities that never had the breakout hit they deserved. Dunno why such soul men as Eddie Ray and Marion Black, heard here, didn't become stars. Wasn't for lack of talent.
Ranging from Stax style soul, to chicken scratch geetar funk in a right-on JB's vein, and even to some funked psychedelic instrumental wailing, this disc features 19 killer tracks, eight of them previously unreleased (demos and even finished masters recently discovered at an estate sale!), recorded circa 1969-1973 for the obscure Columbus, Ohio based label Prix. Yes, more amazing stuff from the same town that supported the Capsoul label documented on the very first Numero Eccentric Soul comp. If you like soul and funk from the era, you owe it to yourself to take a listen, and then you'll owe thanks to Numero for digging these tracks up. A great comp in a great series.
MPEG Stream: MITCHELL MITCHELL & GENE KING "Never Walk Out On You"
MPEG Stream: EDDIE RAY "Wait A Minute"
MPEG Stream: OFS UNLIMITED "Mystic"

V/A Sitar Beat! Indian Style Heavy Funk Vol. II (Guerrilla Reissues) cd 14.98
We all know that very often sequels pale in comparison to the originals. But leave it to the irresistible Sitar Beat series to throw that convention out the window. The first volume of Sitar Beat brought together their previously vinyl only releases on one cd and it became one of our most played and favorite cds of last year! Volume two keeps the fire going with 16 more totally perfect, sitar fueled, groovy 'n heavy Indian funk delights. Pulled mostly from obscure soundtracks, most of these tracks we had never heard before but we've already lost count of how many times we've listened to this since it arrived in the store a week ago and now most of them have become all time AQ faves just like that! All the obvious names are represented: R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Kalyanji Anandji, etc. While the tracks with vocals are all great (how could they not be with folks like Bhosle and Mangeshkar singing) but Sitar Beat is truly about the smokin' funk jam instrumentals. It just doesn't get more funky and fun than this! But it's not just kitschy fun, these are some seriously rocking jams, totally mind blowing music that reminds us once again that music can be strange and inventive yet immediate and exciting at the same time. AQ pal John Dwyer said it best when he came in while this was playing "Damn, this is hot!"
MPEG Stream: KALYANJI ANANDFI W/ LATA MANGESHKAR, ASHA BHOSLE & MAHENDRA KAPOOR "Pyar Zindagi Hai"
MPEG Stream: R.D. BURMAN "Freakout Music"
MPEG Stream: USHA KHANNA "Tera Jasia Pyara Koi Nahin"

V/A Sitar Beat! Indian Style Heavy Funk Vol. II (Guerrilla Reissues) lp 16.98
We all know that very often sequels pale in comparison to the originals. But leave it to the irresistible Sitar Beat series to throw that convention out the window. The first volume of Sitar Beat brought together their previously vinyl only releases on one cd and it became one of our most played and favorite cds of last year! Volume two keeps the fire going with 16 more totally perfect, sitar fueled, groovy 'n heavy Indian funk delights. Pulled mostly from obscure soundtracks, most of these tracks we had never heard before but we've already lost count of how many times we've listened to this since it arrived in the store a week ago and now most of them have become all time AQ faves just like that! All the obvious names are represented: R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Kalyanji Anandji, etc. While the tracks with vocals are all great (how could they not be with folks like Bhosle and Mangeshkar singing) but Sitar Beat is truly about the smokin' funk jam instrumentals. It just doesn't get more funky and fun than this! But it's not just kitschy fun, these are some seriously rocking jams, totally mind blowing music that reminds us once again that music can be strange and inventive yet immediate and exciting at the same time. AQ pal John Dwyer said it best when he came in while this was playing "Damn, this is hot!"
MPEG Stream: KALYANJI ANANDFI W/ LATA MANGESHKAR, ASHA BHOSLE & MAHENDRA KAPOOR "Pyar Zindagi Hai"
MPEG Stream: R.D. BURMAN "Freakout Music"
MPEG Stream: USHA KHANNA "Tera Jasia Pyara Koi Nahin"

V/A Tokyo Flashback 6 (Modern Music / PSF) cd 16.98
The venerable compilation series devoted to sampling the dark and demented delights of the Tokyo psychedelic underground returns! While the previous Tokyo Flashback number five (from 2005) included both quite a few veteran artists (Keiji Haino, Marble Sheep, Overhang Party, Kyoaku No Intention, White Out) as well as several hitherto unknown to us up-and-comers (Aural Fit, Hisato Higuchi, Suishou No Fune, etc.), this installment has only one or two acts among the dozen featured that we'd heard of before, so it's arguably all the more underground. Certainly the discerning folks at PSF must have done the rounds of the more obscure practice spaces and performance venues of Tokyo to find all these bands (or endured a lot of cd-r demo submissions).
First up is the quartet Ahousen, who, with dramatic vocals and agitated saxophone, sound something like a like a freaked out Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Next, things get a bit calmer and prettier with the accordion and trombone laced "The World Of Mirror" by Hanaoyouni, a outfit who like Ahousen have female vocals but use them in a more melodious fashion. Then, someone named Onna does the melancholic guitar/voice folk troubadour thing in the vein of Kan Mikami. That's followed by the spooky-but-lovely droning instrumental soundscape of the mysterious Yamashirube, entitled "Under Young Moon.Lost.". The next piece comes from a duo called S.A.R.O.D. (Safeness Audio Resource Of Dominant), featuring one of the guys from Aural Fit doing some heavy-duty "tone bending" alongside a drummer, and if you've heard Aural Fit, that we're telling you that is noisy, loud and grinding will be no surprise. Following that, there's a group called Retolt Mandala, who play a loose, skittering, abstract sort of psych-improv, and are a lot quieter than the S.A.R.O.D. guys. Next, the raggedly distorted guitar/guitar/drums trio Ainotamenishis lets loose with "Bad Dreams" and we can immediately hear the reason why they have an LP due out later this year on the Holy Mountain label, as they give us a Tokyo Flashback flashback. That brings us to something completely different: the plucking, squeaking, neo no wave of The Kinky Pigeon, who ask us to "EAT SHIT!!" as politely and artily as they can. Back into the more expected Flashback zone, the mellow (but for some serious bursts of distortion) sixties-ish psych-rock of the trio Yakouchu is quite nice, taking us on an extended 8 and a half minute trip... Ogikubo Connection are next, a "free style folk duo" with the Fukuoka Rinji of Overhang Party strumming and singing in anguished fashion accompanied by alto sax of Mochizuki Harutaka, doing a cover version of a song called "Staring At Blood" by the late Kaneko Jutok of Kousokuya. Then we get this disc's perhaps most properly Rallizes-y rockin' moment, with a blast from motorpsycho guitarist Kawaguchi Masami (ex-Miminokoto) and his power trio the New Rock Syndicate, called "Oblivion". And then finally this Flashback winds up with the gorgeous, plaintive acoustic folk track "A Moonlight Night" by singer/guitarist Genshi. Wow. Something here for everyone (well, everyone who would consider buying a Tokyo Flashback disc that is)! We imagine we'll be hearing more from many of these artists, and looking forward to it too.
As with all Tokyo Flashbacks, we're pretty sure all the tracks are exclusive to this disc. Info/photos/web addresses and suchlike stuff is included in the cd booklet for each artist.
MPEG Stream: AINOTAMENISHIS "Bad Dreams"
MPEG Stream: YAMASHIRUBE "Under Young Moon.Lost."
MPEG Stream: YAKOUCHU "Mugen"

WEXLER, MIKE Sun Wheel (Amish) cd 15.98
Even if you think you've heard enough of the new weird acid folk underground to last you for a spell, you should check out this full-length debut from Brooklyn's Mike Wexler, a singer-songwriter who (with a little help from his friends, members of Psychic Ills and The Occasion) has recorded a remarkable song-cycle in the form of Sun Wheel. It's set apart from others in this burgeoning genre by the immediately noticeable, uniquely affected nature of Wexler's voice. Ok, maybe that makes him a male Joanna Newsom... and of course Devendra Banhardt too has a distinctive manner of singing. But Wexler sounds like neither, and once you get used to his nasal exhalations, his intentionally elongated enunciations, you may find his singing to be curiously compelling, complementing the crystalline guitar picking and gentle piano motifs of his melodic, majestic prog-folk music quite well. And Wexler's vocal style is also indicative of a very personal, seemingly spiritual lyrical vision, fixated on sun, shadow, paradise, lots of lines like "Sun shadow dilating in the eye" and "Falling through the sunshine's ray in a dream of water". It's gorgeous, moody yet strangely uplifting stuff, glowing with lightbeams amidst its shadows. Something that fans of P.G. Six, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Robert Wyatt could find of eerie interest for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Pneuma"
MPEG Stream: "Sun Wheel"

WOLF EYES Black Wing Over The Sand (Kning Disk) cd 14.98
We had this on lp a while back and couldn't keep it in stock, it's one of our favorite Wolf Eyes recordings yet (and there's a lot of 'em!. It's out of print and tons of people were left wanting. Thankfully it's now available on cd, probably still limited, but for now, much more widely available. Same music but with slightly expanded artwork, so anyone who missed out on this the first time around should absolutely pick this up. A massive slow shifting slab of corrosive Throbbing Gristle worship, an unintentional homage to the bleak beauty of MB....
Not sure exactly what this is, tough to keep track of all the cd-r's and limited lps and everything, but it does appear to be a brand new full length, although, previously vinyl only, now finally on cd. Apparently one single track (split in half for the lp), Black Wing Over The Sand continues to display Wolf Eyes' developing musicality, while managing to not lose a single bit of brutality, which is quite a feat. This is another dark slab of beautiful malevolence, equal parts corrosive rumble and shimmery drone, creepy dark ambience and intense industrial clatter. What was side one on the lp, the first movement, begins with grinding guitars, blown out streaks of spacey effects, huge synth swells and jagged bits of percussion, occasionally overwhelmed by massive waves of low end buzz that somehow manage to swallow everything else up. Near the end of side one, the record winds down into what could only be described as some sort of Wolf Eyes dub, lots and lots of space, a lurching non-rhythm spread waaaaay out, crashing crumbling bursts scattered throughout. Really cool. Wouldn't mind hearing a whole record of that...
The second half returns to more familiar Wolf Eyes territory, upping the buzz and the industrial clatter. still creeping along, everything wrapped in a black cloak of fuzz and rumble, but much more aggressive, intense, thicker, with layer after layer of constantly shifting sound. Intense, but still managing to be surprisingly musical and listenable. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Black Wing Over The Sand (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Black Wing Over The Sand (excerpt 2)"

YELDHAM, JUSTICE Cicatrix (Sweatlung) cd 13.98
What initially sounds like a super distorted overblown recording of Hendrix playing his wild "Star Spangled Banner", or a super grinding fuzz drenched synth noise psych rock blow out, or some insane ultra processed Japanese psychedelic solo guitar freakout, is in fact, a 40 something man, covered in blood, holding a huge piece of contact mic'ed broken glass in his mouth. Huh?
Such is the musical world of Mr. Justice Yeldham. We weren't sure what to expect actually, conceptually we were definitely intrigued. A guy who records himself smashing his face against panes of glass, moaning and humming into the glass resulting in all sorts of bizarre alien sounds, and often ending up with the glass shattering and much blood being shed. He had us at glass and blood. The cd sleeve is even a patchwork of bloodied band-aids (euwww).
But when we finally got the disc, the sounds were just as amazing, maybe even more so than the process, which is definitely a rare occurrence. How many records have we gotten, where the story of the recording was way more fascinating that the resulting music? Way too many. The thing with this Yeldham disc, is it's actually quite listenable as well. Ostensibly a noise record, the sounds here are anything but run of the mill noise, they range from strange fuzzy drones, wailing streaks of coruscating feedback, crumbling synth like blasts (parts of this almost sound like samples from the Justice record!), grinding gnarled squalls of super distorted buzz and every strange fuzzy buzzy stop in between. And every once in a while you have to remind yourself that THIS IS A GUY WITH HIS FACE PRESSED UP AGAINST A PIECE OF GLASS! A piece of glass that just may shatter at any second. And the more feverish and frenzied the sounds become, the more strain is placed on the glass, and the more imminent shatter and bloodshed becomes. So weird, and so goddamn awesome. 
Comes in a cool velour lined cd sleeve, adorned with images of band-aids and blood, inside a full color booklet with tons of photos of Yeldham performing live, amazing and intense, some weird, some strangely beautiful, some super disturbing, most of them really bloody!!
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"
MPEG Stream: "4"

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

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----* Selected New Arrivals :
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ALLIEN, ELLEN Fabric 34 (Fabric Records) cd 16.98
I (Sally) loooooove Ellen Allien. When I bought her album Thrills a coupla years ago, I was busting out dance moves for weeks in my bedroom that I didn't even know existed inside of me. When I'm at a dance party/club, I can catapult the DJ from all right to great (in my head) in a matter of seconds if they throw on Ellen. Her presence was a gift to collaborator Apparat on "Orchestra of Bubbles." Her music is electronic perfection as far as I'm concerned -- seemingly simple, yet complicated and hella sexy. Though all of Allien's records are incredible throughout, I've found that there are always one or two songs I could listen to on repeat for days. On Thrills it was "Magma" and "The Brain Is Lost," and on Orchestra of Bubbles I couldn't get enough of "Way Out." Following suit with Fabric 34, a remix record, "Harrowdown Hill" (Thom Yorke) alone makes this record worth every cent. Allien has achieved exactly what you hope for in a remix -- she's taken a nearly perfect song and pushed it over the edge to absolute perfection. Overall, Fabric 34 tends to be a bit more ultra-loungy than her previous works, but she manages to still throw in the special stuff that really makes her music stand out.
MPEG Stream: "The Sun Can't Compare (Remix)"
MPEG Stream: "Harrowdown Hill (Remix)"

ARCADE FIRE Intervention (Merge) 7" 4.98
Arcade Fire fans, we're sure you're more than familiar with the song "Intervention" from the band's most recent full length. It's a dandy, right? But do you also recall another tune from the same album, the one with the awesome horn section (otherwise known as the Calexico brass)? Yeah, you know the one... "Ocean Of Noise" (which we consider the aural equivalent of a peanut butter cup)! It's definitely one of Neon Bible's highlights. Well, Calexico went and recorded their very own rendition of the song, and no surprise, it's a splendid, somber, shimmering wonder! So, for the latest Arcade Fire single, Merge Records wisely included Tucson's finest on the flip side. It is THE reason you need this (whether you dig Arcade Fire or Calexico, both or neither). So good!

BAD BRAINS Build A Nation (Oscilloscope) cd 14.98
We really didn't have very expectations for this one as most big time punk reunion records have been pretty dismal and depressing. But we're happy to report that this is not bad at all, in fact it's pretty damn good! With the original lineup together and Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys on production duties, Build A Nation was recorded like the good old days, right to tape. Of course nothing Bad Brains could do will ever replicate the fire and intensity of their legendary ROIR debut, but this is for sure better then any of their releases in the '90s. Going back to their roots the record finds a nice balance of punk rock songs and HR's love of roots reggae and offers up a much less metallic slant then their last several discs. You can tell that Adam Yauch put a lot of love and care into recording his heroes and he really was able to get a sound from the band that represents so much of the best parts of who they are. Any self-respecting punk/punk-lover knows that Bad Brains are one of the most important bands in the history of American Hardcore so it's very nice to hear a new record from them that kicks serious ass...
MPEG Stream: "Build A Nation"
MPEG Stream: "Jah Love"

BEACH BOYS Friends / 20/20 (Capitol) cd 14.98
We've been enjoying quite a nice run of summer fever here in SF. Lots of outdoor adventures, picnics in the park, trips to the beach, fresh fruit to eat, naps with the windows open. So we thought while we've been indulging in all of summer's glory we would take the time to actually list one of our all time favorite Beach Boys records, even though its not a new reissue or anything. In fact it's two albums on one cd. While of course Pet Sounds always gets lauded as the Beach Boys' masterpiece, we think that Friends might be a contender for one of their greatest records as well. Every single track on Friends is pure pop perfection! You can hear the next several decades of smart pop music foreshadowed in the songs on Friends. "Busy Doin' Nothin" is like the sweet and quirky song Beck is still trying to make, "Little Bird" sounds like one of Yo La Tengo's most bittersweet numbers and the amazing instrumental "Diamond Head" with its reverb and ocean wave sounds provides the sonic blueprint for one of our favorite records of the last year, Panda Bear's Person Pitch. Not one clunker in the batch, Friends is truly one of the greatest pop records of all time!
While it would be worth it just for Friends, this two-for-one cd also contains 20/20, the Beach Boys' last album of the '60s. It's got a couple misses but wow are there some amazing musical moments to be found. You can definitely hear some bits and pieces that would end up as part of the soon-to-come masterpiece Smile, as well as some of the best songs Dennis Wilson wrote and sang for the band. It's also the album that features an uncredited (for obvious reasons) contribution from Charles Manson. He and Dennis Wilson had become friends before the Tate / LaBianca killings and as a gift he gave Dennis a song "Never Learn Not To Love" which was simply credited to Dennis after the Mason murders went down. The collection also includes 5 bonus tracks and really nice track by track commentaries in the liner notes.
The perfect music to make this an endless summer (as is, umm, well, probably the BB's Endless Summer too). If you don't have these Beach Boys albums we can't recommend these enough. Pop perfection!
MPEG Stream: "Friends"
MPEG Stream: "Diamond Head"
MPEG Stream: "I Went To Sleep"
MPEG Stream: "Never Learn Not To Love"

BIRDS & BATTERIES I'll Never Sleep Again (self released) cd 12.98
Birds & Batteries kick off their debut album with a solid cover of Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold". It's a bit of an odd decision, but we guess it serves to illustrate an inspiration jumping off point for this SF band. Similar to that unpredictable Canadian singer/songwriter, B&B main man Mike Sempert has crafted a comfy blend of pop, traditional acoustic folk and country rock that is not without its share of gentle non-traditional twists. He seems to favor the latter a little more so here than on the previous Birds & Batteries cd-r release Nature Vs. Nature which interwove a rootsy singer/songwriter perspective with electronica and post rock elements. It's far more composed and cohesive. Nonetheless he keeps us on our toes, fleshing out and deepening some of the songs' timeless earthy folk atmospheres and melodies with occasional synth keyboard lines and textures. Sempert's songwriting is confident and engaging with lyrics drifting from the daydream-y contemplative to the yearningly melancholic. Highlights include the instrumental "Jungles (Oceans)" as well as "Star Clusters" and "Soft Surveillance".
MPEG Stream: "Jungles (Oceans)"
RealAudio clip: "Soft Surveillance"

BLACK MAGIC DISCO s/t (Important) cd 14.98
This experimental supergroup, comprised of Tom Greenwood of Jackie O Motherfucker, the Opalia brothers from My Cat Is An Alien and frequent MCIAA collaborator, Ramona Ponzini, recorded these 4 untitled long-form improvisations live during a two month 2005 European tour. Sounding at times like early Ash Ra Tempel or Cosmic Jokers, the acid-y and druggily unhinged early krautrock influence is more apparent in this live setting than on previous studio-recorded outings from either camp, showcasing an immediate onstage chemistry that is refreshingly engaging!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 3"

BLACK STROBE Burn Your Own Church (Play Louder) cd 14.98
In recent years we've had a geyser of dance punk, dance pop and dance rock, but dance metal? Naw, not really. The record label's description of this French duo gave us cause to brace ourselves. Mentions of Norwegian black metal fascinations, song titles like "Brenn Di Ega Kjerke" (Norwegian to English translation: burn your own church), acid house, '80s synth pop and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless piqued our twisted interest. However, dance metal it's not. Although heavy axe wielding machismo and well-oiled flexing do factor in throughout the album, this is more akin to the fevered techno industrial stomp of Primal Scream. More metallic than metal per se. And making just as strong an impression are the gentler moments when they fall more in step with the suave dramatics of Jarvis Cocker and Pulp. They also borrow a bit of lewd swagger from garage rawk trashies like The Cramps, the glammy bloat of Gary Glitter and Sigue Sigue Sputnik and the over the top vocal intonations of Laibach. No, it's nothing really new, in fact a lot of this sounds absolutely dated, but it sure is fun and a bit silly in an Andrew W.K. kind of way... but French.
MPEG Stream: "Brenn Di Ega Kjerke"
MPEG Stream: "I'm A Man"

BOLA Kroungrine (Skald) cd 15.98
Three years have passed since we have last heard from Daryl Fitton and his Bola project. It seems that many of his contemporaries in the IDM community have also been enjoying lengthy sabbaticals. Boards Of Canada and Autechre have both been laying low for the last couple years, and Aphex Twin has kept a low profile too, well at least as Aphex Twin. Needless to say, after a hiatus as long as three years we could surely expect some noticable changes to the seemingly stalwart Bola sound; and yes, the dark veneers of jetblack melodies, spiralling electronic algorithims, and midtempo breakbeats do lighten up considerably. Fitton has always stated that his origins stand as a jazz drummer; and perhaps more than any of the other records do those jazz sensibilities express themselves here. The electronica grooves of Kroungrine have a jaunty spring to their collective step, and the mood is much more playful than before. A very nice listen through and through.
MPEG Stream: "Zoft Broiled Ed"
MPEG Stream: "Waknuts"

CARIBOU Melody Day (Merge) cd ep 3.98
Here's a glimpse of what's to come on Caribou's new full length set to be released on Merge Records next month! The Canadian one man band Caribou has always equally embraced indie pop and electronica in his music making. His latest ep marks a bit of a shift in the balance. Melody Day is the least electronica and most indie pop of any if his recordings to date. Still very soft and pretty, but this time Dan Snaith has opted for Flaming Lips meets Polyphonic Spree swirling luscious pop stylings. Particularly the latter with the title track's sweet, angelic group vocals that sound like a children's chorus. Oddly enough the next track, a remix of "Melody Day" by Four Tet, sounds more like Caribou! Easily fits in with the dreamy pop on Slumberland and Sarah Records as well as the abovementioned artists. Also includes the non-album track "Zoe".
MPEG Stream: "Melody Day (Four Tet Remix)"

CHOIR PRACTICE, THE s/t (Mint) cd 16.98
Ahhhh, here's one you can take home to mom. Heck, you could even play it at grandma's house too! The Choir Practice are ten Vancouverite voices raised in song. Their debut album on Mint Records sounds like equal parts highschool vocal class, The Free Design and maybe a bit of Langley Schools Music Project too. While there are indeed some luminaries of the city's indie music scene gussying up the roster -- namely choir leader Coco Culbertson (The Gay, A.C. Newman Band), Kurt Dahle (New Pornographers) and Larissa Loyva (P:ano) -- there are also some dulcet-piped members whose resumes do not boast anything of the tuneful sort. There's a fashion designer, a radio producer, a photographer, a filmmaker, and a florist even! We all know that Canadian songstresses and songsmiths have a history of abundant earnestness that can inadvertently dribble into syrup territory (maple-flavored?), and The Choir Practice are unabashedly miquetoast. But for the most part, their soft pop sleigh ride glides gracefully through the Rockies... as if the peaks were frosted with vanilla buttercream instead of snow. The group's sweet sense of naivete strikes notes of endearment rather than saccharine ickiness. Their debut album's highs soar up into the fluffy cloud laced baby blue sky ("Failsafe"). The few falterings however almost seem comical. Seriously, when you hear the lyrics to songs such as "Loose Lips" (yes, they "sink ships"), you can't believe they're singing with straight faces. Leaves you wondering if the lyricist has a serious irony addiction or what? Nonetheless if you like Lavender Diamond or perhaps are seeking a less energetic Polyphonic Spree, this is soooo for you!
MPEG Stream: "Failsafe"
MPEG Stream: "Loose Lips"

CHROMEO Fancy Footwork (Vice) cd 14.98
Much like the vibrant clothes of eras past that twenty-somethings are currently sporting to wild nights at dive bar dance parties, the soundtrack to those dance parties has become vibrant and '80s-esque, with a '00s spin. It's what you could call synth-wave with a digital flare. In fact, Chromeo's Fancy Footwork is the third ultra-Moogy album we've reviewed for this list -- check out our reviews of Justice and Digitalism... While those two tip their hats to the '80s with uber-synths and samples, they also combine more modern sounds (Daft Punk, Faint, and Fatboy Slim come to mind) to give an overall feel that the Deathstar has just descended on the sweaty dance party. Chromeo, however, has taken a more pure approach in their nod to the '80s, and it isn't the '80s that never stopped being 'cool' (Cure, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, etc). Oh no, Chromeo have managed to create the the sound of Don Johnson walking into the room and eyein' your girlfriend, that kind of '80s vibe in the year 2007. We're talking Rockwell and Ray Parker Jr. kind of '80s folks. We figure this balls-to-the-wall synth resurgence might go as fast as it's come, but will no doubt shape what comes next and will be remembered fondly by many as they look back when the decade has passed reflecting fondly on the raging party they attended when the world was so close to the edge.
MPEG Stream: "Fancy Footwork"
MPEG Stream: "Call Me Up"

CLINE, NELS SINGERS Draw Breath (Cryptogramaphone) cd 16.98
We are glad to report that Nels Cline hasn't let his high profile gig as guitarist for Wilco get in the way of his prolific output. Before he got the gig with Wilco, Cline was one of the most respected avant guitarists in the country. He continues to work within the improv, jazz and avant garde worlds demonstrating that for once that you in fact can have your cake and keep it true too. Draw Breath is classic Nels Cline showing both his introspective moody playing alongside his more charged and out-jazz leanings. His group on this outing is Scott Amendola on drums, percussion & electronics, Devin Hoff on contrabass and his Wilco cohort Glenn Kotche adds some percussion and glockenspiel on one track as well. Good stuff!
MPEG Stream: "Caved In Heart"
MPEG Stream: "Recognize II"

CROW, ROB I Hate You, Rob Crow (Temporary Residence) cd ep 3.98
"I Hate You, Rob Crow" isn't just a song from his latest solo album, it's also a super goofy music video. You get both on this cdep plus a couple other songs too! They are the non-album tracks "Sea Sawn" and "Slick" (which is the highlight here, aside from the vid). Short and sweet as it is, this release accurately captures the many facets of Mr. Crow.
MPEG Stream: "Slick"

CROW, ROB Living Well (Temporary Residence) lp 11.98
Now on vinyl!
Mr. Rob Crow is one very swell, very talented, very varied and very prolific chap. His awesome projects past and present include Pinback, The Ladies, Heavy Vegetable, Thingy, Optiganally Yours, and oh yes, Goblin Cock too! All of them bear the unmistakable crafty clever catchy stamp of Mr. Crow. His latest solo outing is no exception. All the good stuff that we love about this songsmith is here in spades -- time signature twists, endearing dreamy boy vocals, noodle-oodly guitar lines, and the catchiest hooks. He keeps a lot of the tunes short and sweet, getting right to the heart of the matter and movin' on. Most of the fourteen songs stroll along at a drowsy pace. It's like taking a wonderfully leisurely stroll or bike ride in the warm afternoon sun. As prolific as he is, it could be easy to take Mr. Crow for granted but how could we when he's for sure one of the best songwriters around! Need we say more? Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Over Your Heart"
MPEG Stream: "No Sun"

CSS Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above (Remixes) (Sub Pop) 12" 5.98
Three remixes of what just might be everyone's current fave tune from the band who just might be everyone's current fave band from Brazil! Who's doing the deed? Simian Mobile Disco, Calvin Harris, and Hot Chip! Yeah, loosen up, hot stuff! This saucy space robot funk electro disco punk is beckoning you back to the dancefloor.

DELAY, VLADISLAV Whistleblower (Huume) cd 16.98
With the exception of the Huume label's reissue of Vladislav Delay's Multila album, it's been a while since we heard from that masterfully skilled Finnish practitioner of minimal glitch-y techno, dub and house (aka Sasu Ripatti). Whistleblower is his new album, the follow-up to 2005's Four Quarters. It very well might be his most subdued work to date. A slow spreading presence of synth washes, melting drones and deeep basslines seeps out of your speakers. Anything resembling beats is muted into gentle pulses, sputters and stutters. Beautiful and understated.
MPEG Stream: "Whistleblower"
MPEG Stream: "Stop Talking"

DIGITALISM Idealism (Astralwerks) cd 14.98
The debut album from this German crunchy synth-rock duo fuses lots of analog keyboard, fuzzy guitar, open/closed post-punk hi-hat repetition, mantric vocoder vocals, and a pretty killer remixed "Fire In Cairo" (Cure) sample. Most songs build at a calculated pace giving listeners an overall sense that the circuit board is about to explode. Idealism is a really impressive first album that is highly recommended for fans of The Faint, Justice, M83, New Order, Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim, and The Rapture.
MPEG Stream: "Idealistic"
MPEG Stream: "Moonlight"

DRAKE, NICK Family Tree (Tsunami Label Group) cd 15.98
In hopefully what will be the last attempt to squeeze blood from the Nick Drake stone, we get this CD of 28 early home recordings that showcase the raw beginning of Drake's brilliant songcraft and the previously unacknowledged influence Drake's family, particularly his mother and sister, had on his musical upbringing. It's a pretty interesting (but not entirely essential) collection of lo-fi recordings some of which were sketches for songs that would appear later on Pink Moon and Five Leaves Left, and there are one or two tracks that were originally released on the Time of No Reply anthology. The highlights include a duet with sister Gabrielle called "All My Trials" that we wish there was more of, and "They're Leaving Me Behind" which sounds like an early version of "Parasite" from Pink Moon with different lyrics. Occasional classical pieces by The Family Trio and a couple of old songs sung by his mother Molly are nice but act as little more than interludes rather than the indelible familial influences the compilers claim them to be. Like the pitfalls that befell the Nick Drake documentary, A Skin Too Few, the slimness of Drake's output and life is stretched so thin in order to supposedly reveal the minutest new insights into a mysterious figure, that we forget that the enigmatic mystery is the reason his work is so compelling in the first place. Revealing every tiny sketch of an artist's process and claiming them important only gives fodder to the backlash campaign that has started ever since "Pink Moon" was featured in a VW ad. Which is unfortunate for an artist who has never had any say or control over his own legacy, save for three brilliant records, which should be plenty enough for anyone.
MPEG Stream: "They're Leaving Me Behind"
MPEG Stream: "All My Trials"
MPEG Stream: "Tomorrow Is A Long Time"

EXTRADITION Hush (Guerssen) lp 29.00
Now On Vinyl!! Here's what we said about the cd: Extradition were an obscure early seventies Australian psych-folk group very much influenced by the British Folk revival, in particular, Fairport Convention and Pentangle. (They later regrouped into the band Tully, whose Surf film soundtrack, Sea Of Joy, we raved about last list.) Fronted by singer, Shayna Karlin, whose high timbre voice falls somewhere between Pentangle's Jaqui McShee and June Tabor, and multi-instrumentalist and sometimes singer Colin Campbell, who wrote most of the bands material. What sets them apart is how they shade their haunting and graceful compositions with an adventurous use of natural elements as instruments including leaves, branches, water, sticks and stones along with more exotic instrumentation of Chinese and Turkish gongs, harmonium, harpsichord, tablas and a Lebanese bell tree. This creates a more alchemical binding of music and nature that transports us to another place rather than grounding us in a traditional past. Beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Original Whim"
MPEG Stream: "Minuet"
MPEG Stream: "A Moonsong"

GARRICK, MICHAEL TRIO Moonscape (Trunk) lp 16.98
Also available on vinyl!
British pianist and bandleader Michael Garrick is probably not too well known in these parts, but his 1964 debut, Moonscape is still something of a legend in England. Released as a 10" record in a run of 100 copies, it's probably one of the most collectable British Jazz records ever made and for good reason. Sprightly and pastoral, yet tightly wound and at times completely unhinged, the piano melodies, reminiscent of the best Vince Guaraldi albums, wrap swimmingly around your head while the drums and bass propel your body with mad-dog intensity. Perplexing titles like, "Music for Shattering Supermarkets" and "Man, Have You Ever Heard" coupled with the enigmatic titular cover art lend an intriguing figure to the sounds inside. Not quite cosmic, yet anything but pedestrian. Since this was originally a 10" record (and we're perplexed why the LP wasn't reissued as a 10" as well), this is rather a short set, clocking in about 22 minutes. We suggest you put your player on repeat, because it's worth hearing all day.
MPEG Stream: "Music For Shattering Supermarkets"
MPEG Stream: "Sketches of Israel"

GOGOL BORDELLO Super Taranta! (Side One Dummy) cd 14.98
You might've noticed the recent flurry of Eastern European inspired bands -- for instance the dreamy rural acoustic sounds of Beirut, A Hawk And A Hacksaw and the Bay Area's own Karpov. Since 1999, New Yorkers Gogol Bordello have been taking similar influences into a decidedly more urban setting and whipping it up into an art punked gypsy-fied frenzy. Indeed, on their latest album, they opt for blinding neon brights versus the abovementioned groups' warm earthy hues. Leader of the pack Eugene Hutz might maybe have true Slavic roots but we thinks that this is not without a healthy dose of irony. At times Super Taranta! charges head first into a pirate-ish many bottles of rum drunken traipsing of the plank. Not ones for the subtle nor the soft, theirs is a garish, sweaty, loud and loose vaudevillian circus which the hipster scene has been all over for years. It screams 'New York' at the top of its lungs! This is the kind of wild, tawdry partying where glasses are smashed, clothing gets torn, and everything else gets trampled in its path. Good times? Fuck yeah!
MPEG Stream: "Wonderlust King"
MPEG Stream: "Forces Of Victory"

IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables (Mint) cd 16.98
No sophomore slump for this terrific band of Canucks with genuine familial ties to The New Pornographers. Lead singer and keyboardist Kathryn Calder has certainly honed her craft touring and recording with her Uncle Carl's band. She's certainly come into her own since her band's debut Ones And Zeros only a couple of years ago. As a whole unit Immaculate Machine have advanced in leaps and bounds, bursting with confidence and a healthy dose of spunkiness. Where it is perhaps most noticeable is in the vocal department. Calder sings ever so sweet'n'strong, while Brooke Gallupe's voice has developed into a remarkably deep and smoothly expressive charmer that at times draws comparisons to Jarvis Cocker (as opposed to the drollness of Stephin Merritt on the last album). On Fables, they've tempered the brooding with the bright-eyed, the perky with the pensive. It's at once punchy and slouchy, sorta like a female-fronted Strokes. A great summer in the city album!
MPEG Stream: "Jarhand"
MPEG Stream: "Roman Statues"

KILLING JOKE Inside Extremities: Mixes, Rehearsals And Live (Candlelight USA) 2cd 14.98
We have mixed feelings about dvds and cds that come with bonus material that are primarily comprised of demos, alternate versions, etc... amounting to a mountain of stuff that was rejected for the album or movie proper in the first place. In one hand we have the "More is better, isn't it?" argument and in the other we have the "It wasn't intended to be heard by the public, was it?" debate. More often than not the extras and bonus material serve as nothing more than filler.
Enter Killing Joke's new double disc compilation titled Inside Extremities: Mixes, Rehearsals And Live -- a standalone release which in its entirety is a bit of a convulsive listen, but an electrifying document of the band circa 1990-91. Simply stated, with a band like Killing Joke virtually everything is invaluable, nothing is extraneous.
For fans and recording geeks (like us!), the first disc of rehearsal recordings is a fascinating peek behind the curtain of this mighty band's process in preparation for the recording of their 1990 album Extremities, Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions. It features undeniably the band's finest, most potent lineup: Geordie Walker's massive guitars snake and roam, but are never ever aimless; Paul Raven's bass is a dirty molten boil; Martin Atkins' drums with a precise yet thunderous tribal pummel; and Jaz Coleman's bracing vocals slice through anything in its path. Even with the (we assume) one microphone room recordings on a lot of these tracks, Killing Joke's raw ideas and raw performances are riveting and filled with conviction.
Oh yes, and let's not forget that there's a second disc too which is a recording of a 1991 live concert in France. The band's performance is blistering, a phenomenal rock maelstrom. Actually we were surprised that it wasn't made the central focus of the release. The disc of rehearsal recordings could easily have been made the bonus accompaniment to the live cd (or to the forthcoming reissue of the album proper for that matter). A strange decision, but nevertheless, as a whole this makes for perfect preparation for the imminent reissue of the Extremities, Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions.
MPEG Stream: "Money Is Not Our God (rehearsal)"
MPEG Stream: "Intravenous (live)"

KNELL Last Ten Meters (Utech) cd 14.98
Knell comes from the same mold that has shaped the work of Jasper TX and Machinefabriek. While it remains to be seen if Knell will take the course of cd-r infinitude as both of the aforementioned artists have, it's clear from this debut recording that Knell (aka Johannes Buff) has the chops to pull off that expressive blur between art-drone soundsmear and elliptical patterns of darkened songwriting broken and stretched into lengthy constructs. Piano and harmonizing echoes set a shadowy stage at the onset of Last Ten Meters which Buff flushes out with unsettling squishes of sound as if aquatic creatures were unduly having their contents squeezed out of their pores. Eventually, a singular detuned guitar strum begins a melancholy dirge which steadily doubles and interweaves into a minor-key crescendo that all together falls somewhere between Larsen's post-rock hypnosis and the molten, subharmonic doom of Corrupted. After one of these smoldering peaks of downer rock riffs burns out in distant washes of distortion, the pools of metallic drone begin to coalesce once again and a fragmented song emerges once again. Yeah, Knell really does conjure the grim yet beautiful atmospheres as found in the best work of Jasper TX and Machinefabriek; hopefully, Buff will continue on with the Knell recordings in same exemplary fashion as his aesthetic contemporaries.
MPEG Stream: "Extract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"

LONG BLONDES, THE Someone To Drive You Home (Rough Trade) cd 14.98
The Long Blondes are neither lengthy tressed nor flaxen haired, but we won't hold the false advertising against them. Ha ha! They are mighty hip and cute tho'! These three gals and two fellas from Sheffield, UK are raring to go go go with their high octane kicky punchy tunes. Their bio offers influential touchstones Human League, ABC and Pulp, but after hearing their debut album Someone To Drive You Home we'd bet their record collections are also heavy with '80s lipgloss'd goddesses Blondie, Kim Wilde and Pat Benetar. Super pop good times with more than a little sassy edge.
MPEG Stream: "Lust In The Movies"
MPEG Stream: "In The Company Of Women"

MANN, JAKE Daytime Ghost (Crossbill Records) cd 10.98
Here's the debut solo album by singer/songwriter Jake Mann formerly of Bay Area band The Zim-Zims (you might recall he stepped out on his own for the cdr release Solo Electric EP). If you dig indie rock'n'pop, this gent's your ears' new best buddy! The super fuzzed out guitar lines on songs like "Satellite In Bloomington" could easily be mistaken for something comin' from Sam Coombes and Quasi. Mann keeps his pop tunes' buoyancy weighted down by minor chords and charming hushed vocals. Later in the album, "Mudflat" perks things up a bit, offering sounds akin to the bright, slightly tweaked pop of Olivia Tremor Control. Nicely varied, low-key popcraft.
MPEG Stream: "Satellite In Bloomington"
MPEG Stream: "Mudflat"

MANNING, BARBARA Super Scissors (Rainfall Records) 3cd 23.00
Lately I Keep Scissors... One Perfect Green Blanket... do these phrases conjure warm fuzzies in your pop luvvin' heart? They do? Then you know that they're the titles of two early albums by the lovely one-time Bay Area songstress Barbara Manning. The former was her debut album originally released in 1988 and the latter was a collection of compilation and flexidisc tracks which came out in 1991 (both on the Heyday indie record label). And you might also like to know that today's a happy day 'cause they've been remastered and reissued along with a third cd of previously unreleased material.
They simply don't make indie pop like this any more. Unassuming, sweet and smart poignant songs in league with those of singer/songwriters Grant McLennan, David Kilgour, Lois Maffeo, and Lida Husik.
The three discs are packaged together in a box with a booklet filled with snapshots, reviews and personal accounts from a bunch of her friends. Snuggle up.
MPEG Stream: "Talk All Night"
MPEG Stream: "Sympathy Wreath"

MENCHE, DANIEL Wolf's Milk (Utech) cd 14.98
Across his prolific catalog over the past 12 years or so, Daniel Menche's recordings have been almost synonymous with scalding noise and boldly masculine aggression, much in the same way that you know what to expect when you pick up a Merzbow record. Yet, there are a couple of exceptions to the Menche confrontational agenda. The most notable recordings in the lesser known, Menche drone sound would be October's Larynx, Crawling Toward The Sun, and now Wolf's Milk. All of these recordings hold a golden shimmer which steadily changes from a somnolent ambience into a smoldering drone of compacted static, rasping vibrations, and even a few distant hints of the mangled electronics of his noise persona. Each of the three lengthy tracks on Wolf's Milk ramps up to the immersive atmospheres and steadily deflates back down to a stately dronefield, which all together recalls BJ Nilson and even Phill Niblock. A really nice record, in the usual nice Utech packaging!
MPEG Stream: "Wolf's Milk 1"
MPEG Stream: "Wolf's Milk 3"

MILTNER, KRISTIN Grains (Praemedia) cd 11.98
Kristin Miltner is one of many very talented electronic musicians from the Bay Area who has gone through Mills College with a deft understanding of Max/MSP language and how to apply that understanding to a post-techno framework of electronica. While she has collaborated in a couple of other recorded projects, Grains stands as her solo debut, and it's quite a gem of twinkling glitch-based electronica and crunchy rhythmic skitter. Fragmenting tiny snippets of her own voice and splicing it all back together with all of the digital threads exposed, Miltner builds looping melodies that hold the same languid sensibility found on those beloved Colleen records, but with the additional pixel smear patina from the likes of Tim Hecker and Fennesz. Using these melodies as the building blocks to her pop-song length pieces, Miltner stacks these sounds with increasing density and jagged drum machines, all the while maintaining the basic tune of the melody. Grains emerges as a short and sweet reprisal of the classic Autechre use of melody with plenty of technological tricks up its sleeve to keep it charming, fresh, and unique. Very nicely done.
MPEG Stream: "Grains Need Water And Sunlight"
MPEG Stream: "Stunned Light"

MONOLITH, THE Meet You At The Monolith (self-released) cd 11.98
Oh the yummy pop power of The Monolith! They continue to dish it out in heaping spoonfuls on this their second album. This terrific Bay Area foursome take the standard pop band instrumentation of vocals, guitar, bass and drums, and plush it up so nicely with horns, keyboards and strings. The Monolith sound is alternately reminiscent of Quasi, Apples In Stereo, Big Star, Beatles, Beach Boys, maybe even a bit of Bread too -- y'know, all the best popsters! Bright, bouncy, harmony filled sweetness. Meet you there? You bet!
MPEG Stream: "Fallout Sunset"
MPEG Stream: "Sunday Keeps Returning"

NORTT Graven (Red Stream) cd 11.98
Finally available again, one of our favorite slabs of doomy black buzz. Remastered, reissued and on a new label! Here's the review from when we first got this in:
Our doomiest customer, "Rick from Thrasher", came in the other day to ask about an album he saw on www.doom-metal.com, some band called Nortt who were supposed to be amazing; so good in fact that according to that website, Nortt's label was almost justified in charging about thirty euros for their cd (an astronomical amount, like US$40)! We didn't of course have that absurdly-expensive opus, but we actually did have this, Nortt's previous album released for a much more reasonable price on a different label. And it is pretty darn good, if you're in the mood for some "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" as it says on the back cover. Nortt are a one-man band from Denmark in the black metal tradition (complete with corpse paint and everything), but their fuzzing, buzzing music is sloooowww and full of despairing piano intonations and distorted minor-key laments. The vocals and the guitars both sound like last breaths, dying gasps, exhalant spirits... It's a drone-hiss of massive, gothic proportions. Nortt definitely inhabit the same gloomy petrified forest as AQ-faves Skepticism!! Perhaps if you get this and it succeeds in bringing your most suicidal thoughts to the fore, you can make it through life a little longer by trying to search out that other incredibly expensive Nortt album... (By the way, that www.doom-metal.com website is pretty cool one, for doom-fans only of course, with info on hundreds of doom acts!)
MPEG Stream: "Gravfred"
MPEG Stream: "Sorgesalmen"

NOVALIS s/t (Revisited) cd 17.98
Now domestically available, another cool Krautrock reish from Revisited! Their recent cd-ifications of Eroc, Klaus Schulze, Embryo, and Amon Duul II, among others, have been in heavy rotation here at AQ, and this one joins the gang. Revisited appear to be reissuing titles from the legendary & collectable green-labelled 1000-series by the seminal krautrock label Brain, and this too is one of those "green Brain" records. Produced by AQ fave Achim Reichel, Novalis' 1975 self-titled release was the 2nd album from these keyboard-dominated, synthed-out "romantic" space rockers from Hamburg, and is a proggy, groovy, classical gas indeed. Imagine a krauty mixture of E.L.P., and Trans Am, perhaps.
Keyboard whiz Lutz Rahn doesn't stint on the symphonic synths, and Novalis seem to specialize in taking both folk and classical motifs from the past and using them in a "futuristic" rock context. There's also plenty of guitar here too (with two guitarists in the band). The very first track, the sprightly "Sonnengefecht", starts things off with something of a '70s TV cop-show vibe, but one that fans of Zombi should dig. Further cuts reveal Novalis to be flamboyant, yet moody. Energetic, epic, erudite. Some of their lyrics were derived from the 18th century poetry of Karl Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis, the band's namesake. Others are their own, as on one of this album's highlights, "Impressionen", which makes good use of themes borrowed from the 5th Symphony of Anton Bruckner.
Like many of the other Revisited reissues, this includes bonus material not found on the original vinyl. Here you get a ten and a half minute, live in '75 version of "Impressionen". As usual as well, this is nicely presented in a digipack, with color photos in the cd booklet, and liner notes in both German and English. Keep 'em coming, Revisited -- there's quite a few other "Green Brain" albums we'd like to have on cd!!
MPEG Stream: "Sonnengefecht"
MPEG Stream: "Impressionen"

NURSE WITH WOUND Stereo Wastelands (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 26.00
"A collection of musical debris from the original Who Can I Turn To Stereo session" is all that Beta-Lactam provides in terms of information about this album. Along with Rock 'N' Roll Station released a few years earlier, the 1996 album Who Can I Turn To Stereo could be seen as one of the few gateway albums into the hermetic sonic realm of Nurse With Wound. While NWW's Steven Stapleton has made no bones about the albums that have influenced his project (and in many ways, the Nurse With Wound LIST of influences which was included in the first album has become a collector's checklist of terminally out-there kosmiche rock and psychedelic electronics), the combination of those influences have defined one of the most singularly unique voices in all of music history. So when it comes to a NWW album with 'crossover appeal,' don't expect Stapleton to make it easy on the ears. Who Can I Turn To Stereo found Stapleton deeply mired in his infatuation with bizarre exotica records and the mambo sounds of Perez Prado; and the three lengthy cuts of "debris" from those sessions are thoroughly abstracted variations that occasionally ground themselves upon a bongo loop which had developed into a signature for NWW throughout the '90s. The tracks weave with eerie smoke and dopplereffected shadow. Jittery rhythms co-habitate alongside the bongo loops and march on one occasion with a jagged guitar whose spindly sounds harken all the way back to the NWW album A Chance Meeting Between An Umbrella And a Sewing Machine. Sadly, the original version of Who Can I Turn To Stereo is no longer in print; and it has to be said that the original mixes probably work better than what you'll find here, although Nurse With Wound outtakes still sound pretty damn great no matter how you slice it.
MPEG Stream: "Stereo Wastelands 1"
MPEG Stream: "Stereo Wastelands 3"

PETRONELLA, ANGELO Sintesi Da Un Diario (Die Schachtel) cd 18.98
Another Italian experimental composer (in league with the likes of Christa Pfangen, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, and Giuseppe Ielasi, who mastered this disc) presents an album on the always-intriguing Die Schachtel label. This belongs to their "Zeit" series documenting contemporary sonic artists and is packaged in a typically handsome digipack (thick matte cardboard, embossed cover design). The title Sintesi Da Un Diario means "abstract from a diary" and that does describe this somewhat: Petronella's music is certainly quite abstract (to use a different sense of the word), and his extensive use of everyday "field recordings" is suggestive of the "diary" angle. It's a detailed, mysterious sound bath indeed, featuring much in the way of rustlings and rumblings, electronic bleep and shimmer, tinkling percussion, obscured talking voices, children playing, clicks and crackle, and more... Petronella is credited with "acousmatics", a term that a little research tells us was coined long, long ago by Greek philosopher Pythagoras to mean "sound hidden from its visual source". Several 20th century composers in electroacoustics and musique concrete, like Pierre Schaeffer and Francois Bayle, have since talked of their work being "acousmatic", and the definition has developed in several directions, one of them having to do with the concept of "reduced listening", wherein the listener processes sound without making any mental/visual references as to the actual source, allowing that sound to exist in and of itself, heard only as timbre, texture, etc.... hmmm all very interesting. We'd have to say that while you certainly can't always tell what's making the sounds found on this particular disc, it's hard to keep your brain from trying to supply some ideas. We need more reduced listening practice! This would certainly be a pleasant way to go about that... or heck just go ahead and use your imagination to make pictures from these sounds, that's fun too.
MPEG Stream: "Voce E Macchina"
MPEG Stream: "Tratto 1"

RADHAKRISHNAN, PRASANT East Facing (Lotus Music) cd 14.98
When it comes to specific musical instruments it's definitely tough for us to be won over by the alto sax. It's an instrument that all too often employed by those who have no business using it (think Kenny G, bad '80s pop rock, etc.) It's questionable use has made it so that even in respected jazz we almost cringe at its use unless its by one of the very few sax masters. So we knew immediately that this record by Carnatic player Prasant Radhakrishnan was something very special when it began with the sounds of alto sax. Part of it was the fact that the sax was being played in a way we had never really heard the instrument used before. Radhakrishnan's ability to bring together the disciplines of Classical South Indian music with Jazz is something he does grace and style. Equally influenced by John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins as much as D.K. Jayaraman and his guru Kadri Gopalnath, Radhakrishnan essentially uses the Sax to play ragas while his group adds violin and traditional Carnatic percussion to round out the sound. Now living right here in San Francisco, Radhakrishnan has found a perfect place to share his transcendent sounds with lots of open minds and ears.
MPEG Stream: "Varnam"
MPEG Stream: "Kshinamai"

ROCK-A-ROLLA Issue 10 - Jul/Aug 2007 magazine 10.98
Another killer issue of this UK modern music mag, with a seriously heavy bent, and a focus that is right in line with AQ's! On the cover, AGAIN, are doomlords SUNNO))), inside, features on Mike Patton and his Tomahawk, KTL, Pelican, Neurot recordings, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and an ever expanding record review section, featuring tons of reviews by Kevin McCaighy, the man behind kick ass magazine Salt (where's the new issue?!?!), a whole bunch of live show reviews, news, and on the back page, the One Minute Interview with The Liars!

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (BEE GEES) OST (Warner) cd 19.98
Oooooh, yes! Remastered and reissued on cd!
Blinded by the pearly white teeth, blown away by the skin-tight polyester disco boogie... that's what many of us were after seeing Saturday Night Fever way back in 1977. Seems like a whole 'nother lifetime. These days John Travolta's moving in a different kind of polyester crowd, and the seventies fashions we thought were gone for good have more than made a comeback. Oh, the more things change....
Such is also the case with the central musical force on this soundtrack. When you think of the Bee Gees, isn't this what springs to mind? Such a different musical beast from the band who just a few years earlier made the immensely Beatles influence drenched albums 1st, Idea and Horizontal (fyi: all three were recently reissued as deluxe 2cd editions, one of which was our Record Of The Week back in January!). Overflowing with delectable falsetto harmonies as only the Brothers Gibb could dish out, we love this album! Yes, there are ample top 40 moments and many dripping with cheese ("A Fifth Of Beethoven" anyone?), but don't be mistaken! This isn't just a "so bad it's good" trip. Nostalgia, yes. Irony, no.
And lest we forget film score dynamo David Shire's presence. His disco-fication of the classical composition "Night On Bald Mountain" (retitled "Night On Disco Mountain") is mighty wonder unto itself! Yeah, you know how to do it!
MPEG Stream: SHIRE, DAVID "Night On Disco Mountain"
MPEG Stream: BEE GEES "Night Fever"

SKYSCRAPER MAGAZINE Issue No. 25 magazine 4.99
The Bottomley brothers (Andrew and Peter) along with graphic designer Justin Wright (aka Expo 70!) have been publishing this fine music magazine for almost a decade now. Consistently well written, insightful, creative, and chockful of interviews, reviews and articles on all the artists we love, a new Skyscraper is always a welcome sight. Issue No. 25 is no exception. It features the likes of Grails, The Locust, Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle, Wooden Wand, Art Brut, Low, Shellac, Burning Star Core, Tim Green, Dinosaur Jr, Dungen and many more. 112 pages.

SMASHING PUMPKINS Zeitgeist (Martha's Music / Reprise) cd 17.98
The Smashing Pumpkins are back. Well at least Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin. You probably know where you stand on the Pumpkins by this point, and while some of us here have never been fans and a few who never made it past Gish (which still ruleez says Andee!) there are a few of us here who aren't ashamed one bit to let it be known that we have always had a big ol' soft spot in our hearts for the Smashing Pumpkins. If you came of age in the '90s it's pretty much impossible not to have some nostalgia for how perfect their angst sounded in our poster decked teenage bedrooms. And love him or hate him Billy Corgan is one great guitar player who's managed to write some of the most memorable songs of the last couple decades. That being said they do leave lots of room for criticism and this new outing probably won't be the one to convert you if you've never been a big fan. But for those of you with that aforementioned soft spot, we think you should check this out and play it for a few times before you make your mind up as we've found this one to be a serious grower with repeated listens.
MPEG Stream: "7 Shades Of Black"
MPEG Stream: "Neverlost"

SONIC YOUTH Daydream Nation (Goofin) 4lp box 34.00
ALSO ON VINYL, WHOOHOO!
Still boggles the mind that this underground New York art rock band somehow were permitted into the mainstream... y'know the big leagues, but it's that mammoth wealth of resources that allows the release of special reissue editions such as this one.
So, what's your fave Sonic Youth album? If you took a poll around here, chances are you'd hear the names of a select few of their early albums come up repeatedly -- Bad Moon Rising, Evol, Goo, Sister maybe -- but none may be quite as beloved as Daydream Nation. Simply put, in pretty much every aspect -- album art, title, song sequence and the songs themselves -- Sonic Youth nails it. It's a superbly realized art rock album that balances melodicism and dissonance, traditional song structures and soundscapes.
The extras that make this version deluxe include a home demo version of "Eric's Trip" and an entire disc of unreleased live tracks from the Daydream era as well as some great covers of Kraftwerk, Mudhoney, The Beatles and Captain Beefheart.
MPEG Stream: "Teenage Riot"
MPEG Stream: "Kissability (Live)"
MPEG Stream: "Within You Without You"

SPLINT! Moro (Lampse) cd 17.98
We were a bit thrown for a loop when we first heard this Lampse release by Splint! We've been digging everything Lampse has been putting out (Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, Gultskra Artikler) all of which are more on the noisy, murky, crackly and mysterious side of things. Splint! however has a sound way different then any of their labelmates, but we're always happy to when a label mixes things up and shows us they aren't just a one trick pony. Splint! are a quartet who merge electronics with trumpet, synthesizer, guitar and percussion to create a rich and moody sound that is influenced equally by exploratory jazz (think Bill Laswell's reconstruction of Miles Davis) as it is the sonic explorations of Delia Derbyshire and the archives of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. We weren't grabbed at first, but as the record progresses, it builds and expands, unveiling a more engaging and compelling sound that unfolds blossoming-flower-like after the first couple tracks. In fact there are even moments that make us think of what a group on Rune Grammofon covering later Coil might sound like. So while on the surface this is much different sounding then anything else on Lampse, it still shares those intangible qualities of mystery and suspense that has made Lampse one of our favorite new labels.
MPEG Stream: "Fooj"
MPEG Stream: "Sintjom"
MPEG Stream: "Bommosytsy"

STARCHASER NETWORK s/t (Tarot Productions) cd 14.98
'80s retro sci-fi sexiness from these would-be Teutonic (actually Texan) clubgoin' droids known as Starchaser Network... two thirds of whom (Equitant and Proscriptor) are also key members of cult black metal thrash masters Absu!!! Actually that's not so strange, really, since we're already familiar with other Absu side projects that displayed far-from-black-metal tendencies. Absu drummer Proscriptor's solo recordings had their art-rock and new wave elements -- he even did covers of both Flock Of Seagulls and the Art Bears! There also has been two unusual offerings of Electro pastiche from Absu guitarist Equitant. Definitely if you dug those Equitant discs, you should check out Starchaser Network, whose influences are similar: Eno, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Pet Shop Boys, Egyptian Lover, Detroit Techno, etc.... yeah, apparently these guys were listening to more than just thrash back in the '80s. Thus all the darkly poppy, spacey-synthy, computer-grooved stuff here, with its decadent/deviant discotheque vibe.
We'd recommend skipping track one, "Sintro", though, as it is by far the weakest, mainly due to some unfortunately cringeworthy vocals. They should have left it off, rather than putting it first! The rest of the disc is better, and while much of this may quite well be a bit tongue-in-cheek, only on that first track does it seem like "the joke's on them". We wish that they would have included instead their rumored cover version of the theme from the the '80s TV show Knight Rider (which should give you some idea about where they're coming from conceptually!).
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Prowl"
MPEG Stream: "Nachricht"

TURNER, MICK / TREN BROTHERS Blue Trees (Drag City) cd 14.98
We have always loved The Dirty Three, and Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner has another little outfit we love just as much, The Tren Brothers. Problem was it was always pretty hard to get a hold of Tren Brothers records as they were usually only released as limited edition 7"s, But it was well worth the effort as the Tren Brothers' songs are just as gorgeous and breathtaking. Luckily Turner and Jim White (the amazing drummer for both outfits) have decided to make a proper full length together and we're so glad they did! Take the melancholy of Dirty Three, subtract the violins, add some more pastoral elements and thus you have the gorgeous world of Mick Turner / Tren Brothers. Turner music has always been so intense and emotional. And the music here transports us everytime we hear it. Blue Trees is such the perfect weekend record, pretty enough to keep you reminiscing and filled with enough longing and sadness to remind you how much you don't want Monday to come. Beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Angel Number One"
MPEG Stream: "The Beach That Leads To Your Shore"

WAREIKA HILL SOUNDS s/t (Honest Jons) lp 19.98
Now available on vinyl!!!
Our Reggae section is by no means gigantic but we like to think that what we lack in quantity we make up in quality. But one thing that is apparent about our reggae section is that it's all about the classics and it's very rare that we hear newly recorded reggae that sounds as good to our ears as the old stuff. Sadly most new reggae (even by those who once delivered the good stuff) is riddled with cheesy keyboards and ultra-slick production while most newer dub is plagued by a generic paint-by-numbers ambience that lacks the grit and guts of what makes roots reggae and classic dub so special. So we were super psyched to find out that this Wareika Hill Sounds record we've been falling in love with was not some classic reissue as we first thought because of its totally warm and authentic sound, but is in fact a brand new recording by Calvin Cameron, who has played with the likes of Count Ossie's Mystic Revelation and Light of Saba. Smoking dubwise roots reggae that can not be denied! With an element of afrobeat in the fold (Tony Allen even makes an appearance!), there is a warmth and strength in these songs that has kept us coming back to this record over and over again. By far our favorite new reggae recording in a long time!
MPEG Stream: "Coconut Head Special"
MPEG Stream: "Uhuru Pujama"
MPEG Stream: "One People"

WIRE, THE #282 August 2007 magazine 9.98
Another fascinating issue of this British music magazine... this ish: techno minimalist Ricardo Villalobos on the cover, also Whitehouse, Laurie Anderson, Matthew Dear, Axolotl, an Invisible Jukebox with composer Jonathan Harvey, a Primer on British psych-folk (Sandy Denny, Pentangle, Trees, Comus...), tons o' reviews, and in the last-page Epiphanies section, thoughts The Velvet Underground And Nico from Bruce Russell of the Dead C.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Is Is (Interscope) cd ep 5.98
Is Is is the follow-up to Yeah Yeah Yeahs' startlingly different Show Your Bones album. If you happen to think that it in turn sounds starkly different from that album, and more like the hot'n'bothered YYYs of old, well... good ears, my friend! These songs were actually written back in 2004 while the band was on tour in support of their Fever To Tell album. Four of the five were previously available on the Tell Me What Rockers To Swallow dvd (the exception is the track "Isis"). That explains things a bit, doesn't it? On this ep the trio sounds downright wild, loose and furious... a lot of what we thought was sorely missing from SYB. Karen O rocks and rages at the top of her lungs. You almost expect a fist to burst through your speakers. On those few moments when she calms down a little (on the song "Down Boy"), her voice glints with her more familiar, and very Siouxsie-esque throaty inflections. Guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase are right there with her throwing a bunch of their own rawk punches left, right and center. Raw art-punky good.
MPEG Stream: "Rocker To Swallow"
MPEG Stream: "Isis"

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----* Compilations :
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V/A Women Take Back The Noise (Ubi Ubi) 3cd+pouch 30.00
Curated and published by Ninah Pixie of the Bay Area neo-Dada ensemble Big City Orchestra, Women Take Back The Noise is a triple cd compilation that's long overdue, standing as an almanac for the ladies out there wandering through the nether regions of experimental music. It should be noted that the 'noise' which the title refers to is more of a convenient placeholder for glitchey-droned-electroacoustic-field-recordings-and-a-smattering-of-volcanic-noise, as the compilation has a pretty wide assortment of aesthetics and strategies. The big names include Cosey Fanni Tutti, Fe-Mail, Blevin Blectum, Jessica Rylan, and Maggi Payne; and there are some lesser known women who we here at Aquarius have long been fans of such as Kadet and Cheryl E. Leonard. The three discs revolve around distinct themes, whose orbits often cross and mingle. The first disc leans toward the drone based electronics, highlights including Aedria Hughes' spectral guitar drones and long-stringed scrapes, Kadet's fizzing granular synthesis dappled with viola squiggle, and Maggi Payne's recontextualized household appliances transformed into oblique soundsmears with haunted aspirations. The second disc sports a bit more of a post-industrial agenda, with bouts of looping syncopation, malcontent electronics, and shadowy atmospheres. The highlights on this disc include Analog Tara's droned chorus for vibrating organs, the grey phase pattern shifts of Choronzon, and Cosey's mechanical rhythms and divebomb guitar riffs that harken back more to Throbbing Gristle circa 1978. If any of the three discs on Women Take Back The Noise embody the noise of the title than it's the third disc, with Jessica Rylan's 8-bit tirade of squiggle and bleep, further circuit-bending assaults from CJ Reaven Borosque, and the unholy cacophony of Fe-Mail that obliterates most everything in its path.
The three discs come packaged in an oversized plastic pouch and sports a circuit-bending flower through which anybody -- woman, man, girl, boy, dog, cat -- can make their own damn noise record! There's only a handful of these in stock, and it's hard to say if we'll be able to keep this around for long. So act fast!
MPEG Stream: COSEY FANNI TUTTI "Wired"
MPEG Stream: FE-MAIL "They Look As Innocent As Newborn Lambs..."
MPEG Stream: CHORONZON "Current"
MPEG Stream: MAGGI PAYNE "ReCycle"

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----* New DVD's :
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DEERHOOF / NORTH HAVEN COMMUNITY SCHOOL Deerhoof's Milk Man - A Ballet dvd 13.98
BACK IN STOCK! Whoa, who has the hippest teachers in the universe? North Haven Community School! This sure wasn't a part of normal elementary school curriculum back when we were all whipper snappers, was it? Last year out in Maine, the kids at this small kindergarten to grade 12 school presented a ballet set to the music of Deerhoof's Milk Man album! Music and drama teacher Courtney Naliboff came up with the idea and transcribed the music and conducted the orchestra, while art and P.E. teacher Ken Jones took care of the choreography (which involves a rolling bowling ball among other things). Yes, it's adorable. Yes, the music is perfect for this age group. And yes, please allow a loose definition of the term 'ballet'. Think: more freely interpretive body movements than en pointe, plies and pirouettes. What an amazing way to take inspiration from the endlessly creative sounds of one of our favorite bands. Delightful for kids of all ages! This dvd is professionally shot and edited (or looks like it), looks great, sounds great, and is definitely fun to watch. The folks in Deerhoof must have been waaay stoked when they first saw this!!

UMBRELLAS IN THE SUN A Crepuscule / Factory Benelux DVD 1979-1987 (LTM) dvd 28.00
A two hour plus anthology of rare digitally remastered studio clips and live footage by various groups from the archives of Factory Records, Factory Benelux, Les Disques du Crepuscle between 1979 and 1987. Featuring Antena, A Certain Ratio, Josef K, Caberet Voltaire, Section 25, Durutti Column, New Order, Crispy Ambulance, Tuxedomoon, Paul Haig, Quando Quango and many, many others.






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----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed :
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If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart!

( R ) "In Pink" (Important) cd 14.98
16 BITCH PILE-UP / MIKE SHIFLET "Split" (Ecstatic Peace) 12" 13.98
3 INCHES OF BLOOD "Fire Up The Blades" (Roadrunner) cd 13.98
ABIGOR "Fractal Possession" (End All Life Productions) cd 15.98
ALCEST "Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde" (Profound Lore Records) cd 14.98
ALOG "Amateur" (Rune Grammofon) cd/2lp 16.98/27.00
ANAL CUNT "Defenders Of The Hate" (Menace To Sobriety) cd 14.98
ANTIGAMA "Resonance" (Relapse) cd 14.98
ANTIGAMA / DRUGS OF FAITH "split" (Selfmadegod) cd 10.98
APPELQVIST, HANS "Sifantin Och Morkret" (Hapna) cd 16.98
AREA C "Trick With A Knife" (Trensmat) lathe cut 7" + cd-r 12.98
ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB "Neon Pibroch" (Important) cd 14.98
ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB "Super Grease" (Important) lp 16.98
BAD PLUS, THE "Prog" (Heads Up) cd 17.98
BAD RELIGION "New Maps Of Hell" (Epitath) cd/cd 13.98/14.98
BARONESS / UNPERSONS "A Grey Sigh In A Flower" (At A Loss) cd 13.98
BASINSKI, WILLIAM "El Camino Real" (Musex International) cd 14.98
BIRDS OF AVALON "Bazaar Bazaar" (Volcom) cd 14.98
BLOSSOM TOES "If Only For A Moment" (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
BLOSSOM TOES "We Are Ever So Clean" (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
BORBETOMAGUS & HIJOKAIDAN "Both Noises End Burning" (Victo) cd 15.98
BOXCUTTER "Brood VIP" (Abucus) 12" 12.98
BROOM DUSTERS "Sound From The Bottom Of The Tokyo Underground" (Siwa) lp 24.00
BURNING BRIDES "Hang Love" (ModArt) cd 14.98
CARAVAN "If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over With You" (Eclectic Discs) cd 17.98
CARAVAN "In The Land Of Grey And Pink" (Eclectic Discs) cd 17.98
CEPHALIC CARNAGE "Xenosapien" (Relapse) cd 14.98
CHANCE, JAMES AND THE CONTORTIONS "Soul Exorcism Redux" (Roir) cd 14.98
COBALT "Eater Of Birds" (Profound Lore) cd 14.98
CUB "Betti-Cola" (Mint) cd 15.98
CUB "Come Out Come Out" (Mint) cd 15.98
DEADBEAT "Journeyman's Annual" (Scape) cd 16.98
DEATH AMBIENT "Drunken Forest" (Tzadik) cd 16.98
DEMBELE, DACUDA "s/t" (Yaala Yaala) cd 14.98
DIZA STAR & THE PINK LADIES "Featuring Mani Neumeier" (Fractal) cd 23.00
DIZA STAR & THE PINK LADIES BLUES "3" (Fractal) lp 31.00
DODHEIMSGARD "Supervillain Outcast" (Moonfog) cd 13.98
DOPPLEREFFEKT "Calabi Yau Space" (Rephlex) cd/2lp 16.98/19.98
DORMANT "Beneath The Mighty Oak" (God Is Myth) cd 10.98
DREXCIYA "Grava 4" (Clone) cd 14.98
ELEGI "Sistereis" (Miasmah) cd 17.98
EMBRYO "Steig Aus" (Revisited) cd 17.98
EROC "Eroc 2 (Zwei)" (Revisited) cd 17.98
EXCEPTER "Streams 01" (Fusetron) cd 15.98
EXIAS-J "Live Document 2003-2005" (P.S.F.) dvd 27.00
EXPO '70 "Audio Archive 001 - Music From Inaudible Depths" (Kill Shaman) cd-r 5.98
EXPO '70 "Audio Archive 002" (Kill Shaman) cd-r 5.98
FOR CARNATION, THE "Promised Works" (Touch & Go) cd 12.98
FORGOTTEN TOMB "Negative Megalomania" (Avantgarde) cd 14.98
FORGOTTEN WOODS "Race Of Cain" (20 Buck Spin) cd 12.98
GALAX "Never Ending Space Trackin'" (aRCHIVE) cd 13.98
GOAT WITCH "Blind" (We Empty Rooms) cd 13.98
HAIR POLICE "Blind Kingdom" (Ultra Eczema) lp 29.00
JESUS LIZARD, THE "Live" (MVD Visual) dvd 16.98
JOHANSSON, JERRY "Next Door Conversation" (Kning Disk) cd 14.98
KAMMERFLIMMER KOLLEKTIEF "Jinx" (Staubgold) cd/lp 15.98/15.98
KELLY, WALT WITH NORMAN MONATH "Songs Of The Pogo" (Reaction Recordings) cd 14.98
KENGE KENGE "African Living Traditions - Acoustic Roots Of Kenyan Benga" (Introducing / World Music Network) cd 12.98
LAS MALAS AMISTADES "Patio Bonito" (Honest Jons) cd 25.00
LEVAN, LARRY "Journey Into Paradise" (Rhino) 2cd 22.00
LICHENS "Omns" (Kranky) cd + dvd 16.98
LIFE ON EARTH "Look!! There Is Life On Earth!" (Subliminal Sounds) cd 16.98
MANSON, CHARLES "The Summer Of Hate - The '67 Sessions" (Arte Lupo) cd 15.98
MARDUK "Rom 5:12" (Regain) cd 14.98
MARGINAL CONSORT "s/t" (Improvised Music From Japan) 4cd 79.00
MEKURYA, GETATCHEW & THE EX "Moa Anbessa" (Terp) cd 18.98
MODERN SHIT "Modern Shit: The Stories Told By Record Covers" (Alga Marghen) book+cd 70.00
MONKEES, THE "Headquarters - Collector's Edition" (Rhino) 2cd 25.00
MONKEES, THE "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. - Collector's Edition" (Rhino) 2cd 23.00
NARROWS, THE "Benjamin" (Wantage USA) cd 12.98
NATHAMUNI BROTHERS "Madras 1974" (Fire Musem) cd 14.98
NAUGHTIEST GIRL WAS A MONITOR, THE "s/t" (Vinyl On Demand) lp 26.00
NEED MORE SOURCES "Shed" (Moteer) cd 15.98
NEGATIVE PLANE "Et In Saecula Saeculorum" (AJNA) 2lp 27.00
NILE "Ithyphallic" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98
NORDVARGR "In Oceans Abandoned By Life I Drown... To Live Again As A Servent Of Darkness" (Essence) cd 15.98
NOSTALGIA 77 "Everything Under The Sun" (Ubiquity) cd 16.98
NOSTRADAMOS "S/T" (World Psychedelia) cd 17.98
OBSCURUS ADVOCAM "Verbia Daemonicus" (Battle Kommand) cd 14.98
OS MUNDI "43 Minuten" (Revisited) cd 17.98
OUGENWEIDE "Ungezwungen" (Bear Family) cd 22.00
PAGAN ALTAR "Lords Of Hypocrisy" (Oracle Records) cd 21.00
PENTANGLE "The Time Has Come 1967-1973" (Sanctuary) 3cd 57.00
PESTE NOIRE "K.P.N. / La Sanie Des Siecles - Panegyrique De La Degenerescence" (De Profundis / Rosenkrantz) cd 13.98
PIG DESTROYER "Phantom Limb" (Relapse) cd/lp 14.98/16.98
PRIESTBIRD "In Your Time" (Kemado) cd 13.98
PRINCE "Planet Earth" (NPG) cd 16.98
PULSEFEAR "Perichroresis" (Profound Lore) cd 10.98
PUMICE "Pebbles" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
QUETZOCOATL "Living" (Leaf Trail) cd-r 11.98
R. CRUMB "R. Crumb's Heroes Of Blues, Jazz & Country" (Abrams) book + cd 19.95
RA "Ev.Panic Redone" (Planet Mu) cd 10.98
RAMESES "Misanthropic Alchemy" (Feto) cd 14.98
ROBBERS ON HIGH STREET "Grand Animals" (New Line) cd 14.98
ROKY ERICKSON "You're Gonna Miss Me" (Palm / Manga) dvd 33.00
RUNEMAGICK / OCEAN CHIEF "The Northern Lights" (Chapter 53) cd 14.98
SAXON "s/t" (EMI) cd 12.98
SAXON "Strong Arm Of The Law" (EMI) cd 12.98
SAXON "Wheels Of Steel" (EMI) cd 12.98
SCORPIONS "Lonesome Crow" (Brain) cd 17.98
SHIRE, DAVID "The Hindenberg (OST)" (Intrada) cd 30.00
SOLSTICE "Halcyon" (Cyclone Empire) cd 16.98
SOLSTICE "Lamentations" (Candlelight) cd 16.98
SOUVENIR'S YOUNG AMERICA "An Ocean Without Water" (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
SPOOKY, DJ "System Error. Al-Yamamah Mix" (Horus) cd 17.98
ST. VINCENT "Marry Me" (Beggers Banquet) cd 13.98
STEVENS, MEIC "Sackcloth and Ashes: The EPs Vol. 2" (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
STINY PLAMENU "Odpadni Galerie" (NAGA) cd 14.98
STORMCROW / SANCTUM "split" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
STRAWBERRY PATH "When The Raven Has Come To Earth" (Universal Japan) cd 22.00
STRIBORG "Nocturnal Emissions / Nyctophobia" (Displeased) cd 14.98
STRIBORG "Spiritual Catharsis" (Displeased) cd 14.98
TARWATER "Spider Smile" (Morr Music) cd 16.98
TAYLOR, MIKE QUARTET "Pendulum" (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
TEGAN AND SARA "The Con" (Vapor / Sire) cd 14.98
THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS "The Else" (Idlewild) cd 16.98
THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS "Venue Songs" (Idlewild) dvd+cd
TORSO / UNICORN "split" (Divorce) cd 8.98
TRANSMISSION 0 "Memory Of A Dream" (Candlelight) cd 13.98
TULSA DRONE "Songs From A Mean Season" (The Perpetual Motion Machine) cd 10.98
TUSS, THE "Confederation Trough EP" (Rephlex) cd ep 11.98
TUSS, THE "Rushup Edge" (Rephlex) cd 16.98
UFFIE "First Love" (Ed Banger) 12" 13.98
UFO "Force It" (EMI) cd 12.98
UFO "Phenomenon" (EMI) cd 12.98
ULTRALYD "Conditions For A Piece Of Music" (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98
UNKLE "War Stories" (Surrender All) cd 13.98
UPSILON ACRUX "Galapagos Momentum" (Cuneiform) cd 16.98
V/A "Crows Of The World" (Last Visible Dog) 2cd 16.98
V/A "Glastonbury Fayre Festival" (Akarma) 2cd+dvd 60.00
V/A "Reactions To Raaijmakers" (Basta) cd 21.00
V/A "Searchin' For Shakes" (Amigo) cd 17.98
V/A "Silver Monk Time: A Tribute To The Monks" (Play Loud) 2cd 21.00
VAN ZANDT, TOWNES "Delta Momma Blues" (Fat Possum) cd 14.98
VAN ZANDT, TOWNES "Flying Shoes" (Fat Possum) cd 14.98
VAN ZANDT, TOWNES "Our Mother The Mountain" (Fat Possum) cd 14.98
VAN ZANDT, TOWNES "Townes Van Zandt" (Fat Possum) cd 14.98
VANDERSLICE, JOHN "Emerald City" (Barsuk) cd 13.98
VENETIAN SNARES "Pink + Green" (Sublight) cd 15.98
VEX'D "Degenerate" (Planet Mu) 2cd 14.98
VILE CHERUBS "The Man Who Has No Eats Has No Sweats" (Afterburn) cd 13.98
VIRUS SYNDICATE "Present: Contagious Vol. 1" (Tyke) cd 17.98
VIRUS SYNDICATE "The Wasted EP" (Tyke / Planet Mu) 12" 12.98
VOLCANO THE BEAR "Egg And Two Books" (VIVO) cd 14.98
WEEDEATER "God Luck And Good Speed" (Southern Lord) cd 15.98
WHITE STRIPES, THE "Icky Thump" (Warner Bros.) cd 16.98
WIJLEN WIJ "s/t" (Aesthetic Death) cd 15.98
WILDILDLIFE "Peas Feast" (Chicas De Hoy) cd-r 4.98
YAALAII, BOUGOUNI "s/t" (Yaala Yaala) cd 14.98
YESTERDAYS NEW QUINTET (MADLIB) "Yesterday's Universe" (Stones Throw) cd/lp 14.98/16.98
YOUNGS, RICHARD & ALEX NEILSON "Electric Lotus LP & Lotus Editions CD" (VHF) lp+cd 15.98
ZOMBI "S/T" (Wabana) lp 23.00
ZOMBI "Twilight Sentinel" (Wabana) lp 24.00
ZWEINSTEIN "Trip / Flip Out / Meditation" (Captain Trip) 3cd 88.00


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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

----} July 31st
Common "Finding Forever" cd
Z-Trip "All Pro" cd
Tony Naima & The Bitters "Dismember" cd (Swedish country-folk covers of death metallers Dismember!)
Maceo & All The Kings Men "Doing Their Own Thing" cd reissue on Snapper

----} also coming up real soon
Circle "Arkades" 2cd version (reissue of vinyl + bonus live disc) on Fourth Dimension
Nordvargr / Drakh "The Betrayal Of Light" cd on tUMULt

----} August 8th
v/a "Thai Pop Spectacular: 1960s-1980s" cd on Sublime Frequencies
v/a "Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan Vol.2" cd on Sublime Frequencies
Magnolia Electric Co. "Sojourner" 4cd+dvd
Architecture In Helsinki "Places Like This" cd
Kevin Drumm & Daniel Menche "Gauntlet" cd on Editions Mego
Flight Of The Conchords ep on Sub Pop

----} August 21st
New Pornographers "Challengers" cd on Matador
Kinski "Down Below It's Chaos" cd/2lp on Sub Pop
M.I.A. "Kala" cd
Kanye West "Graduation" cd
ONJO "Live V.2: Parallel Circuit" 2cd on Doubtmusic
Caribou "Andora" cd
Baby Grandmothers "s/t" 2lp on Subliminal Sounds
Life On Earth! "Look!! There is..." lp on Subliminal Sounds

----} August 28th
Aesop Rock "None Shall Pass" cd
Liars "s/t" cd
Concentrick "Aluminum Lake" cd on Drag City
The Howling Hex "XI" cd/lp on Drag City
Mick Turner/Tren Brothers "Blue Trees" cd on Drag City

----} September 11th
The Go! Team "Proof Of Youth" cd/lp on Sub Pop
Hot Hot Heat "Happiness Ltd." cd
Wiley "Playtime Is Over" cd
Film School "Hideout" cd

----} September 18th
Chamillionaire "Ultimate Victory" cd
Thurston Moore "Trees Outside The Academy" cd

----} September 25th
Iron & Wine "The Shepherd's Dog" cd/lp on Sub Pop
v/a "Music Of Nat Pwe: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) Vol. 3" cd on Sublime Frequencies
Jose Gonzalez "In Our Nature" cd
Foo Fighters "Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace" cd
Fennesz "Hotel Parallel" cd reissue on Editions Mego

----} October 9th
Beirut "The Flying Club Cup" cd
Robert Wyatt "Comicopera" cd
Fiery Furnaces "Widow City" cd

----} also upcoming sooner (maybe real soon) or later (possibly much later)
Tarentel "Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun" 2cd on Temporary Residence Ltd.
Karen Dalton "Cotton Eyed Joe" 2cd+dvd on Delmore
White Heaven "Levitation" cd edition on Farside
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
ESG "South Bronx Story 2" cd/2lp on Soul Jazz
Signal "Robotron" cd on Raster Music
Bobb Trimble "Harvest Of Dreams" and "Iron Curtain Innocence" reissues on cd and lp on Secretly Canadian
Larsen & Friends "Abeceda" cd w/ dvd on Important
Boris w/ Kurihara "Rainbow" LP version on Inoxia
Orthodox "Amanecer en Puerta Oscura" cd on Alone Records
Baroness cd on Relapse
Black Cobra "Feather & Stone" cd/lp on At A Loss
Powers Court "The Red Mist Of Endenmore" cd on Dragonheart
Buried At Sea posthumous release on Neurot
Skeletonwitch new album on Prosthetic (this fall)
The Heads tba 2cd 'best of' on Leafhound
Grey Daturas "Dead In The Woods" remastered, repackaged cd reissue on Crucial Blast
16-17 "Gyatso" cd reissue on Savage Land
PJ Harvey "White Chalk" cd
Crebain "Night Of Stormcrow" cd with bonus tracks on tUMULt

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Dead Channels Film Festival presents:

David Cronenberg's CRIMES OF THE FUTURE on 35mm
Live score composed and performed by SPOONBENDER 1.1.1
Roxie Theater, San Francisco
Saturday August 11th 2007, 9pm.

Word on the street has it that director David Cronenberg could be in attendance, so get your tickets now at DEAD CHANNELS!


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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanLaurenAshleyPamChristineIrwinMattScottSally and Antaeus