MAMMAL Lonesome Drifter (Animal Disguise) cd 12.98
We never really ever dug Mammal that much. We wanted to, but it just never hit us. A sort of sub Wolf Eyes abject electronic brutality, not noise so much as noisy, very Midwestern, filthy, homebrewed... just typing that has us thinking, well why the fuck didn't we? That's the sort of stuff we'd write about a record we love. Well, now we are, writing that, about a record we love, and it's kind of weird that it's a Mammal record, but it definitely has us reconsidering our verdict on past Mammal releases because this one is an absolute killer. Some sort of electronic flecked nihilist loner doom. Or something. This is most definitely filthy, noisy, and homebrewed, a doomed abject outsider electronic folk record, but with crushing guitars and drum machine. If you're not sold already, there must be something very wrong with you, but what the heck, let's just keep going.
The opener "Repulsion" is utter minimal metallic brilliance. A simple, super processed rhythm, relentless and repetitive, beneath a similarly monochromatic downtuned guitar riff, that occasionally is joined by another even heavier, crumblingly distorted guitar. And that's it. It just loops endlessly, the riffs cycling through some barely there melody, it's more about texture and timbre and groove, it sounds like a super slow motion robotic instrumental My Dad Is Dead, or even a little like Big Black at 16 rpm. It's totally gorgeous in its spare simplicity, and it somehow manages to convey all sorts of emotion through a single riff and a single rhythm. And as we've said about other tracks in the past, as far as we're concerned, that track could have been an hour long and been the only track on the record.
But the record's not instrumental, in fact most of the songs have vocals, a sort of mumbled deadpan drawl, the lyrics, super personal and intimate, a sort of abstract downer folk, the guitar wrapped delicately around the vocals, except for the inevitable crumbling doom guitar that comes in to drape a little filth and misery on the proceedings.
The rest of the record is a slow sick crawl, the drum machine spitting out a simple somehow stumbling beat, over slow corrosive swells of guitar, the vocals more like shadows, some of the songs are so skeletal they almost seem like sketches, which only serves to make them seem that much more fragile and intimate. The misleadingly named "Incinerator Ballad" is a 4 minute burst of white noise wrapped around a churning industrial pulse, a wall of hiss and static and blown out distortion, followed by the whispered buzz of "Lower Depths", a stretched out soundscape of tinny distorted guitar, detuned chords, whooshing ambience, and more stoned crooning. The record closes with the 15+ minute "Cremation", a gorgeous and super intense, super creepy synthscape, the synth buzzing and warbling, minor key melodies spread out into slabs of murky buzz, while way off in the distance, bits of guitar streak and soar, a psychedelic light show, barely visible against the grey sky of dusk, the synth eventually locking into a loop, and suddenly the sound is some fucked up lo-fi Tangerine Dream, but performed on thrift store keyboards and recorded on a microcassette recorder, eventually fading out, leaving just the sounds of night, crickets, other insects, wind, distant trains, mysterious voices, and single guitar, still moaning way off in the distance...
Absolutely unexpected and totally gorgeous. Features amazing and super intense black and white pencilled artwork by the Mammal himself.
So so so utterly recommended. Definite contender for record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Repulsion"
MPEG Stream: "Fatherlands"
MPEG Stream: "Cremation"

MAMMAL Lonesome Drifter (Animal Disguise) lp 23.00
We never really ever dug Mammal that much. We wanted to, but it just never hit us. A sort of sub Wolf Eyes abject electronic brutality, not noise so much as noisy, very Midwestern, filthy, homebrewed... just typing that has us thinking, well why the fuck didn't we? That's the sort of stuff we'd write about a record we love. Well, now we are, writing that, about a record we love, and it's kind of weird that it's a Mammal record, but it definitely has us reconsidering our verdict on past Mammal releases because this one is an absolute killer. Some sort of electronic flecked nihilist loner doom. Or something. This is most definitely filthy, noisy, and homebrewed, a doomed abject outsider electronic folk record, but with crushing guitars and drum machine. If you're not sold already, there must be something very wrong with you, but what the heck, let's just keep going.
The opener "Repulsion" is utter minimal metallic brilliance. A simple, super processed rhythm, relentless and repetitive, beneath a similarly monochromatic downtuned guitar riff, that occasionally is joined by another even heavier, crumblingly distorted guitar. And that's it. It just loops endlessly, the riffs cycling through some barely there melody, it's more about texture and timbre and groove, it sounds like a super slow motion robotic instrumental My Dad Is Dead, or even a little like Big Black at 16 rpm. It's totally gorgeous in its spare simplicity, and it somehow manages to convey all sorts of emotion through a single riff and a single rhythm. And as we've said about other tracks in the past, as far as we're concerned, that track could have been an hour long and been the only track on the record.
But the record's not instrumental, in fact most of the songs have vocals, a sort of mumbled deadpan drawl, the lyrics, super personal and intimate, a sort of abstract downer folk, the guitar wrapped delicately around the vocals, except for the inevitable crumbling doom guitar that comes in to drape a little filth and misery on the proceedings.
The rest of the record is a slow sick crawl, the drum machine spitting out a simple somehow stumbling beat, over slow corrosive swells of guitar, the vocals more like shadows, some of the songs are so skeletal they almost seem like sketches, which only serves to make them seem that much more fragile and intimate. The misleadingly named "Incinerator Ballad" is a 4 minute burst of white noise wrapped around a churning industrial pulse, a wall of hiss and static and blown out distortion, followed by the whispered buzz of "Lower Depths", a stretched out soundscape of tinny distorted guitar, detuned chords, whooshing ambience, and more stoned crooning. The record closes with the 15+ minute "Cremation", a gorgeous and super intense, super creepy synthscape, the synth buzzing and warbling, minor key melodies spread out into slabs of murky buzz, while way off in the distance, bits of guitar streak and soar, a psychedelic light show, barely visible against the grey sky of dusk, the synth eventually locking into a loop, and suddenly the sound is some fucked up lo-fi Tangerine Dream, but performed on thrift store keyboards and recorded on a microcassette recorder, eventually fading out, leaving just the sounds of night, crickets, other insects, wind, distant trains, mysterious voices, and single guitar, still moaning way off in the distance...
Absolutely unexpected and totally gorgeous. Features amazing and super intense black and white pencilled artwork by the Mammal himself.
So so so utterly recommended. Definite contender for record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Repulsion"
MPEG Stream: "Fatherlands"
MPEG Stream: "Cremation"

REVERIES, THE Live In Bologna (Rat-Drifting) cd 14.98
Like some dusty old 78, left in the basement for 20 or 30 years, wet and warped, gritty and scratched up, thrown onto the ol' Victrola as is, and allowed to unfurl a warped and warbly, rickety detuned slow motion blues crawl. That's exactly what this latest disc from the Reveries sounds like. Recorded live in Italy in 2004, the Reveries, fronted by Eric Chenaux (who for those of you up on your nineties indie math rock, fronted Toronto's godlike Phleg Camp), magically create this sound from another time. But there's more to it than that, the sound is strangely damaged, alien even, and for good reason. The band employ a technique as bizarre as it is brilliant. Each player, in addition to wielding guitar, harmonica, bass, saw, nose-flute and thumb-reeds (!?), holds a tiny cell phone speaker IN THEIR MOUTHS!!! WHILE THEY PLAY!! OR EVEN SING!! So each of the instruments is sent first to the speaker in the mouth of another player, who much like a Jew's harp, is able to shape and warp the sound with the shape of his mouth. So you're hearing guitar come out of the bass players mouth, the bass coming out of the guitar player's mouth, the flute through another player's mouth, and on and on...
Then there's the singing, which all three members do, and as you might imagine, it's pretty difficult to sing with a speaker in your mouth, and a speaker cable trailing out of your mouth to an amp or a bandmate's mouth. The result is a mumbled and warbly, mush mouthed drawl, fuzzy falsettos, a garbled croon, often sounding like a toothless old Nina Simone, but just as often, like some strange buzzing growl, perfectly complimenting the band's detuned twang flecked scrawl.
It's almost like the Starfuckers playing Django Reinhardt at 16 rpm, with a countrified Derek Bailey on guitar. Cracking, wheezing and skeletal, a demented yet lovely underwater slow motion Western Swing, plenty of downtuned buzz, scraping and shuffling, whispering and whistling, seasick and gorgeously woozy. There are stretches of garbled instrumental chaos here and there, but the majority of the set is spent slithering and shimmering, meandering drunkenly through some strange sonic haze, an old timey radio broadcast, from some strange musical alternate reality, bits of classic blues and jazz muted and smeared pulled apart and tangled up into haunting and perplexing shapes. So gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "You've Changed"
MPEG Stream: "Gone With The Wind"

----*
----* Highlights :
----*

AMBARCHI, OREN Pendulum's Embrace (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Space... tones... space. A bass note now and again, and whispering hissssss. A guitar string plucked, muffled by effects, droning into silence. And repeat. Doom paced (as per much on the Southern Lord label, home to SUNNO))) after all), but not "heavy" like doom metal. Talk about slooooooooooooooow though. Soporific this is, in a nice nice dreamy way. Warm and pretty and so, so sad sounding. There's three long tracks here that do indeed wrap you in their embrace, and proceed with the reassuring steadiness of a pendulum's swing. Aussie experimentalist Oren Ambarchi (known for many collaborations, projects, and solo albums, including 2004's wonderful Grapes From The Estate to which this is perhaps offered as sequel) utilizes sounds both fragile and foreboding, from instrumentation including glass harmonica, bells, piano, percussion, and of course guitars. The opening track "Fever, A Warm Poison" sleepwalks glacially, as per the first few sentences of this review. Ambarchi orchestrates the swell of strings, or what could be an accordion's wheeze, into this album's soundworld on the second track, "Inamorata". Utterly gentle & melancholic. As is the 17 minute finale, "Trailing Moss In Mystic Glow", which while blissfully relaxed, might be the "busiest" track of the disc on account of the presence of some quiet, spectral vocals, indistinct but still a suggestion of songiness towards the end of the piece. The guitar melodies are denser here, and there's a hint of glitch. It's gorgeous at any rate. This cd should appeal to fans of Earth's Hex, and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, and even Boris's gentler moments, as if held under a microscope, volume hushed. Also this very list, we've reviewed the new release from another Ambarchi act, Sun. This could be that Sun album, left out to melt in the (actual) sun, to droop and drip, pooling into a limpid, low-key loveliness...
MPEG Stream: "Fever, A Warm Poison"
MPEG Stream: "Trailing Moss In Mystic Glow"

ANENZEPHALIA Ephemeral Dawn (Tesco) cd 17.98
It's pretty difficult to avoid being forever obsessed with a band whose debut record we described as "quite possibly one of the scariest records we have ever heard." And we weren't kidding. We were barely even engaging in hyperbole. Noehaem by Anenzephalia is literally a collection of sounds as terrifying as is physically possible. The sonic representation of utter horror and hopelessness. But beautiful and entrancing in its absolute musical negativity. And thus we haven't avoided it, not in the least. We have remained obsessed. Waiting patiently for some new transmission from whatever hellish pit this band or person called Anenzephalia calls home. And finally our patience has been rewarded.
Not a new record, but archival recordings from 1992-1995, but just as gorgeously malevolent and hatefully dark as the records proper. For those of you who have yet to bear witness to the bleak abject sonic doom of Anenzephalia's Noehaem record, or either of the other two full lengths we've reviewed here in the past, the liner notes to Ephemeral Dawn should definitely set the tone:
Here the Dream Dies!
Dominated by obsession of power and lust, led by unwritten rules from clinical birth to clinical death.
Ask the epithet of God! It still is deception.
No ideology, no progress;
NO THING.
The world smothered in absurdity.
Then how about the booklet of photos, a crucifix, Sadam Hussein, a decomposed skull, a man being set on fire, the same crucifix invertedŠ as visually dark and creepy as the music inside.
And the music inside is indeed gloriously insidious. A world of crawling pitch black drones, of smeared slabs of grinding industrial whir, of disembodied voices, clouds of hiss, bits of warble and muted chimes, weird grit and abstract distortion, dense fields of clanging clattery machinery, machinelike rhythms, thick swarms of insect like static, robotic vocals, crumbling distorted melodies, murky black pools of delay drenched sound fragments, collaged voices and melodies, all churned into an unrecognizable black mass (pun intended), viscous and caustic, slow moving and glacialŠ
Black ambience is probably the neatest descriptor for the world Anenzephalia has conjured up from the dark, but in the act of conjuring these sonic spirits it becomes so much more than ambient music. There is some internal propulsion, sometimes rendered in actual beats, other times, in a subtle yet impossible to resist forward momentum, as if some dark force was dragging you to your doom.
A gorgeously dreary, and epically miserablist world of blackened industrial drones, muted martial beats, abstract shimmer and drift, corrosive grind and soft focus low end flutter, all woven into a divine end of the world threnody for the black hearted and soulless.
MPEG Stream: "Beneath The Shroud"
MPEG Stream: "Regime"
MPEG Stream: "Kachexie"

ANGANTYR / NASHEIM split (Northern Silence) cd 14.98
Those unfamiliar with the Danish black metal band Angantyr, might be surprised to find out that the man responsible for Angantyr, is the very same man who sonically slit his wrists and bled out the brilliantly depressive Make A ChangeŠ Kill Yourself discs, as well as being the dark soul who conjures up the grim old school buzz of Holmgang.
And while our black and broken hearts may belong to Make A ChangeŠ Kill Yourself, out head banging, spike encrusted, grim kvlt souls bow before the buzzing black Lord Angantyr. Here, Angantyr forms a sinister sonic alliance with mysterious Swedish duo Nasheim, and the two offer up some seriously awesome blasting and frosty grimnessŠ
Angantyr offer up three tracks, nearly a half hour of classic Scandinavian style old school black metal, furious bursts of scalding blackness, as well as loping midtempo Burzumic dirges, massive swaths of washed out buzz, harsh howled vocals, mournful minor key melodies draped over spikey blackened crags, plenty of MACKY's miserablism finds its way into Angantyr's mysterious black world which is a very good thing. The final track is live, and super lo-fi, but ultra intense, thrashing and brutal, you can almost hear the sweat and blood, and fire and brimstone. So great.
Nasheim counter with a single 25 minute track, an epic journey through a buzzing black soundworld, beginning with simple swooning folky strum, the tranquility shattered by a black wall of sound, a thrashing buzzing burst of gnarled guitars, hyperspeed drumming, and strange strangled howls, before retreating once again to a gentle little sonic glade, which is immediately laid flat by a colossal riff and an avalanche of pounding drum crunch, which gives way to a killer extended blackpsych jam, sounding almost like Opeth, with arpeggiated acoustic guitar under a relentless buzz, a killer melodic lead, and a loping waltz-like tempo. The rest of the record veers back and forth between variations of both, lurching at one point into a strange, almost Amrep sounding part, before resuming its epic journey, all soaring majestic guitar harmonies and chaotic drumming, finishing off with a stretch of almost Viking sounding blackness. It's sort of hard to describe such a massive and sprawling slab of sound in such a small space, needless to say, the black and buzz obsessed will not be disappointed. So many parts, so many styles and various shades of black, all deftly arranged into a single symphony of depressive buzz.
MPEG Stream: ANGANTYR "Arngrims Haevn"
MPEG Stream: NASHEIM "Sovande Mjod Vill Jag Tomma"

ANGELIC PROCESS, THE Weighing Souls With Sand (Profound Lore) cd 12.98
What can we say that we haven't already said about this dynamic dronedirgedoom duo? Seriously, have a look at any of the other reviews we've written about The Angelic Process, and see us gush like crazy, what's not to love? Gorgeous swirling black ambience, massive crushing metallic pummel, soaring majestic melodies, the sound somehow heavy and brutal, but washed out and gauzy, a thick My Bloody Valentine haze draped over everything, voices drift amidst the buzz like paper angels dropped into a roaring fire. Everything glistening and sparkling, glimmering and shimmering, then roaring and grinding and washing over you like some suffocating black tide. 
All of their records are fantastic, each feels and sounds like a continuation of the one before it. As if they were all movements in some metallic black hole symphony, with each record, each movement, offering up its own subtle twist on the AP's black buzzing sound world. This latest might be the most sonically varied of the bunch. It's been out for a while now, but we had been working our way through the older titles first.
The overall sound like the others is warped and warbly, a slow crawl though an alien world, like every note and melody is being twisted and bent, tangled up into shapes that confuse and confound, the distortion so thick and viscous it seems to be able to alter the natural order, to use gravity as just another effect, ton-of-bricks downtuned guitars don't fall forward like an avalanche, they seem to drift like billowy black clouds somehow, slabs of low end fall upward, guitars slither in reverse, vocals twist inside out, a gorgeous multidimensional swirl of sound, that occasionally coalesces into a roiling propulsive thunderstorm of blissed out doom. Songs grow from whispers into roars, a black doom Godspeed, but the heavy parts aren't just heavy, they're unearthly, unreal, melodies are pulled apart into sparkling notes that spin and soar, dancing atop a churning miasma of crush and crunch. The sound is an impossible blend of light and dark, evil and good, beauty and utter and complete horror. Like Katatonia broadcast through a wall of clothes dryers, doom metal performed by a symphony of leaf blowers tuned to drop-D, pop songs composed using cement mixers filled with gold bricks, a DJ spinning My Bloody Valentine over diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter remixed by Tim Hecker, all nestled amidst dreamy drifts of hushed shimmer and soft focus ambience.
We could go on and on and on and on and on and on.... needless to say, an absolutely essential slab of blissed out dreamdronedoooooooooooooooooooooooooom...
MPEG Stream: "The Promise Of Snakes"
MPEG Stream: "Million Year Summer"
MPEG Stream: "The Resonance Of Goodbye"

ANGER, KENNETH The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume Two (Fantoma) dvd 27.00
As varied as they can be, Kenneth Anger's films are pretty unmistakable. This Volume Two dvd set is just as stunning as its predecessor. The restorations are immaculate, the soundtrack vibrant. Details pop out that we were never able to distinguish on our old grainy vhs dubs. From the seemingly random assemblage of the Technicolor hued magickal aesthetics as seen in 1969's Invocation Of My Demon Brother (which incorporated pieces of an aborted version of his film Lucifer Rising as well as footage of a staged ritual deeply inspired by Anger's hero Aleister Crowley and featuring a cameo by Anton LaVey and a Moog synth soundtrack by Mick Jagger) to the pastel powder puffed homoerotic hotrod dream of 1965's Kustom Kar Kommandos to the bikers'n'black leather homoerotic motorcycle club dream of 1964's Scorpio Rising (shot like a documentary, it captures the period's dark visceral energies, the cultural and consciousness explosion, the social rebellion -- arguably the beginnings of protopunk); from the fiery Egyptian golden luminescence of 1981's Lucifer Rising (complete with soundtrack composed and recorded by Bobby Beausoliel in his prison cell) to the 1979 version of Rabbit Moon with its unexpectedly well-suited rock song soundtrack (an earlier version appeared on Vol.1)... Really, what's not to drool over? Through Anger's gaze objects, symbols, songs and people are fetishized to an intoxicating state. Even to those without an interest in avantgarde film, a schooling in esoteric knowledge, or an affinity with fringe communities, the images are nothing short of spellbinding, especially taking into consideration the time period in which they were made. The lone disappointment we found was in Anger's commentaries which come across as surprisingly uninspired, often vague and less than informative. Best to let the films speak for themselves -- a delicious visual feast!

APOPTOSE Blutopfer (Tesco) cd 17.98
This disc by the one man dark ambient drum ensemble Apoptose has long been a favorite around these parts, but as it was a few years old, we were never able to get enough to list. And eventually it just went out of print completely. We were thrilled recently to discover however, that it had just been reissued, and thus, now all can share in our mass musical obsession with this amazing slab of percussive overload.
In a small village in Spain called Calanda, the villages gather each year during the holy week of the Christian Easter festival. The villages, clad in purple robes, are all carrying drums, of various shapes and sizes and sounds. The villages all stand completely still, in near silence, until all at once, the whole lot erupt in a frenzy of wild drumming, which continues practically nonstop for 36 hours, the rhythms of the thousands of drums finding their way into every corner of daily life, mundane activities are suddenly performed to some hypnotic rhythm, many of the players enter some sort of fugue state, a trancelike stupor, many passing out, some oblivious to their hands being rubbed raw and beginning to bleed.
The festival is nearly 100 years old, and predates its current Christian orientation, with heathen roots in a tradition of warning of danger outside the cities walls. Sounds almost like A Hermann Nitcsh action. And it must sound like it as well.
Blutopfer is a tribute, a musical homage, an impression of what that festival might sound like. Filtered through a distinctly dark ambient lens, but still dense and complex and hyper rhythmic.
The opening track begins with a low droning hum, as if to imitate the opening hush of the actual ceremony, a dark smoky swirl, which hardly prepares you for the massive crush of a million snare drums, all tangled and intertwined, various distinct rhythms surfacing amongst the dense drum line cacophony. It's so dense in fact, that the drums almost begin to resemble radio static. But unlike the actual festival, there are all sorts of other sounds, huge throbbing bass melodies, rumbling pulses, the drums locked into a super hypnotic martial rhythm, while the buzzing bass propels it forward. So epic and heavy and majestic and dense with drums!
The sound is almost like LUSTMORD JAMMING WITH A MARCHING BAND DRUM LINE, which we shouldn't have to tell you sounds AMAZING.
While that first track is ultra heavy, and rhythmically fucking fierce, much of the rest of the record is more skeletal, more spare, with long stretched out black ambience, slowly unfurling barely there melodies, all beneath totally intense, completely mesmerizing drumming. A relentless militaristic drum corps, weaving killer complex snare rolls. At it's darkest and most intense, it sounds like some drum heavy Toroidh or Folkstorm track, a teutonic industrial throb, the snares just adding to the intensity, but most of the record, it really does sound like a drum line transported to some wasted bleak doomscape, their insistent rhythms just barely keeping the blackness at bay. SO GODDAMN GOOD.
All new packaging, a dark purple, six panel, thick card stock folded sleeve, with liner notes detailing the Spanish festival that inspired this record.
MPEG Stream: "Apotropaion"
MPEG Stream: "Blutopfer"
MPEG Stream: "Calanda"

ASH POOL World Turns On Its Hinge (Paragon) lp 16.98
Now on vinyl, the amazing debut full length from these NY based, ultra sick, primitive black metal noise merchants. Everything we've heard so far we've dug like crazy, a single and a tape, each filthy and dripping with blown out black buzz and pounding punkish riffing. This full length is more of the same, and if anything ups the ante sonically. 
Meaner, heavier, thrashier, filthier, more raw and primitive and blown out, and like the other records, still poppy and weirdly catchy. This is most definitely black metal, but a crushing primitive D-beat style BM, following a similar sonic path as fellow black hordes Bone Awl, Ancestors, Akitsa, Malveillance and the like. 
Ash Pool is one part blacknoise outfit Prurient, so you knew there was gonna be noise, but the noise here is deftly harnessed into roiling black riffs and blasting beats, woozy, dizzying seasick blasts of relentless pound, furious and fierce, the production thick and blown out, in the red, crumbling distortion and murky reverb everywhere. 
But this isn't just the same song over and over, set the instruments to blast and let the record play out. No these songs are varied and bizarre, occasionally epic and dramatic, sometimes so fast and brutal it borders on pure noise, sometimes a Brainbombs style caveman pound, sometimes a weird minor key mathrock jam, always appropriately blown out and noisy, but now and then the songs veer into strange, creepy, almost pretty territory, a slow and loping doomic lurch, with minor key melodies that manage to be mournful and funereal but still jagged and buzzy. Winding melancholic lopes that just sort of meander and chug abstractly. But it's never long before the tracks splinter into jagged shards, with the song exploding into another stretch of raw toxic pummel, the vocals doused in FX and convulsing wildly atop the relentless riffage. And every once in a while, the band lock into some crazy melodic groove, and for a brief moment you almost forget you're listening to some harsh and hateful black noise outfit. 
Hard to explain how great this stuff is, it all manages to be so visceral and intense, emotional and depressive, melodic with losing it's flesh-peeling edge, so sonically varied without losing its focus, the slow songs are perfect bridges between the speaker shredding streaks of black brutality, but even when things are chaotic and on the verge of collapse, the songs still manage to be catchy and melodic and heavy as fuck. 
The lp version includes super striking new artwork and an lp sized insert!
MPEG Stream: "Sin Of Life"
MPEG Stream: "Crucifixion Fantasy"
MPEG Stream: "Vices Triumph Over Wisdom"

ASKEW, ED Little Eyes (De Stijl) cd 13.98
In a matter of weeks, The De Stijl label has knocked us out twice in a row, with reissues of two psychedelic folk albums from the misty past that we'd otherwise never have known about. Both surprises by already-AQ-fave artists, as well! We just listed De Stijl's cd reish of the long-lost 1974 Michael Yonkers album Grimwood, and now here's a previously unreleased, long-rumoured 1970 recording entitled Little Eyes from NYC acid folk troubadour Ed Askew, whose 1969 ESP-Disk album Ask The Unicorn we'd all agree is a highlight on that multifarious and mindblowing outsider jazz/improv/folk/protest rock label. If you liked that one, you'll definitely like this!
As established on Ask The Unicorn, Ed Askew's music here is intimate and eccentric, gentle and rambling. Just one sorta high, nasally voiced guy and his guitar (and harmonica too), singing his own timeless, twisted, lonely songs of love and loss, roughly hewn and bleeding with emotion. As we've said before, he's like a weirder, rawer Bobby Z. (and a thirty years ago and then some precursor to Devy B. for sure). We're talking about Bob Dylan and Devendra Banhart there, for those of you (like Andee) not hip to those diminutives.
In addition to the ten songs ("transferred from acetate, with flaws intact") recorded for Askew's never ('til now) released follow-up to his ESP debut, De Stijl has also included six more tracks, taken from live radio performances done by Askew circa 1970-'71, which fit right in, as the Little Eyes studio sessions were done more or less live anyway, mostly single takes, no edits or overdubs, with flaws intact as well... flaws? not to our minds... In a digipak, with a couple vintage b&w pics of the bearded, bushy haired Askew, and liner notes by Byron Coley.
MPEG Stream: "Songs For Pilots"
MPEG Stream: "City Of Glass"

BAKER, AIDAN Exoskeleton Heart (Crucial Bliss) cd-r 8.98
Another in the recent trilogy of new releases (along with Light Of Shipwreck and Luasa Raelon reviewed elsewhere on this list) from one of our favorite labels, Crucial Bliss, a dronier driftier offshoot of the Crucial Blast label. And as the names should make obvious, the stuff on Crucial Blast -blasts-, and the stuff on Crucial Bliss, is, wellŠ blissed out.
So here we have yet another release from the man who does not sleep. Ever. He couldn't possibly, he must spend every minute of every day and night doing nothing but recording gorgeous spaced out driftscapes (under his own name) and crushing slow motion pummel (as Nadja). This is release number ten in just about a year, and that's not even counting all the microreleases and limited editions that slipped by us completely. But as we've mentioned time and time again, it's all good. Really good. Great in fact. So as folks trying to review all this stuff, we definitely get overwhelmed, but for the listener, who in their right mind would complain about more amazing and mysterious soundsŠ
This new one, is all electric guitar, recorded live, and manages to merge Baker's two sonic sides. The dense and the airy, the heavy and the pretty, the delicate and the intense. Two half hour epics, the first track is a roiling swirl of deep reverberant whirring and soft buzzing, sometimes thickening into an almost SUNNO)))-y wall of sound, but just as often shimmering dreamily, peppered with some super chaotic stretches, where things get really intense, bordering on straight up noise, sounding almost like Total, massive ur-drone, speaker melting white noise, but somehow twisted into something pretty.
The second track is much grittier, the sound more raw and lo-fi, very industrial at the outset, but as the track progresses, strange melodies drift up from below, the sound gets smoother and more washed out, and then somehow, even as it gets prettier and prettier, it also gets heavier, the sound getting louder and more blown out, culminating in a gloriously blurred blast of in-the-red, white hot, blissed out buzz, the aural equivalent of staring into the sun. So nice.
As with all Crucial Bliss releases, the packaging is super swank, an oversized fold over thick cardstock sleeve, full color inside and out, the cd attached to a plastic hub affixed to the sleeve.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Interior"
MPEG Stream: "Anterior"

BIXOBAL Number 1 October 2007 zine 2.00
Basically, if you're into the more experimental, droney, improv-y, internationally adventurous, whatever side of the stuff we feature here at AQ, and you like to read which of course you do, and you've got a lousy two bucks, you should pick this up!! Edited by Eric Lanzillotta (of Anomalous records fame), this new 'zine is devoted to all sorts of interestin' music n' stuff, this debut issue featuring Robert Millis waxing nostalgic about his favorite Korean 78 rpm record, an interview with ESP-Disk experimentalist Alan Sondheim, an article about the books of number one Fug Tuli Kupferberg, an Indian travelogue from Sun City Girl Sir Richard Bishop, and a no-holds-barred interview with Dave Nuss of the No Neck Blues Band (which gets into some interesting, open-minded discussion about what might be bullshit or not about NNCK's music!!). A great read. Plus there's a plethora of reviews and other 'zine-ish goodness. 56 pages, digest-sized. Looking forward to issue 2!

BLUT AUS NORD / BLOODOLINE / REVERENCE / KARRAS Dissociated Human Junction (Panik Terror Musik) cd 16.98
It's only been a year, but it feels like forever since we've heard from beloved French black metal weirdos Blut Aus Nord, so we were super psyched to discover this 4 way split with 3 unreleased BaN tracks, and even though the tracks aren't brand new (they're from a super limited 2004 10"), they definitely hit the spot. In a big way.
But besides the BaN tracks, this comp also features a new Blut Aus Nord side project called Karras that totally destroys as well. And as if that all weren't enough the other two bands are just as amazing and fucked up if not more so.
Let's start with the Blut Aus Nord tracks, what else do you need to know, three tracks, you've never heard em, they are gorgeously twisted and blackened, the guitars slithery and spidery, everything wrapped in a warm cocoon of prickly buzz, long stretches of bleak black ambience, haunted rumblings, mysterious warbles, epic blasts of buzzing blackness, swaths of seasick synths, creepy minor key melodies, very dark and depressive, mournful and almost cinematic, definitely ranks up there with some of our favorite Blut Aus Nord stuff ever.
The Karras track, an massive 11 minute blast of confusional chaos, takes the already damaged and demented sound of Blut Aus Nord eve further, everything more twisted and convoluted, the drums a blasting splatter, guitars swirling everywhere, thick sheets of buzz, creepy processed vocals gurgling and growling, twisted squiggly melodies all over the place, the guitars buzzy, but also murky and muddy and thick like tar, this roiling black madhouse, peppered with long stretches of totally tranquil near static ambient shimmer. But that's not all, huge chunks of industrial pummel, more vocals croaking and mewling, the drums a never ending torrent of spastic beats, blasting and pounding, finally breaking into a funeral doom dirge right near the end before spinning off into a cloud of black hiss. Holy shit. We NEED to hear more Karras. A totally mindblowing and physically exhausting schizophrenic doomed and damaged black metal assault.
Like we said before, that would most definitely be enough, but there are two other bands to dig into. First, blackened Spaniards Bloodoline, whose blasting blackness is peppered with awesome moaning string bends and slippery riffage, that makes their tracks sound all funhouse mirrored and weirdly warped, especially the first track "Voyage Till Death". The beginning of their second song even sounds a bit like Chavez, with dual tangled highend guitar melodies, eventually exploding into a relentless keening crush. The third just seals the deal with another black hole slab of black mayhem, but with a strangely melancholy and poppy undercurrent.
Finally, there's another French outfit, who appropriately shared that abovementioned 2004 10" with Blut Aus Nord. Their sound is more in line with BaN's modern metallic melancholic murk. Slightly industrial tinged, mournful with lots of blurred buzz. Plenty of black metal riffing, but the sound is washed out and near ambient, huge expanses of doomic misery, bookended by gnarled black riffs, much of the two tracks spent drifting through a black haze, or plodding machinelike through some abject blackened sonic wasteland. Creepy growled and chanted vocals, thick swaths of chordal fuzzŠ
Way recommended obviously, as we think would be anything else that can be tracked down by all four of these bands (and fear not, you know we're already working on itŠ)
MPEG Stream: BLOODOLINE "Voyage Till Death"
MPEG Stream: BLUT AUS NORD "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: KARRAS "Xenoglossy"

CANTU-LEDESMA, JEFRE Phantom Harp (Root Strata) 3" cd-r 5.98
A brand new, brief and lovely missive from Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, frontman of Tarentel, member of The Alps, The Holy See, Two Suns, head honcho of the Root Strata label and a pretty handy drone alchemist on his own, this little 3" is no different.
Utilizing a borrowed autoharp and a handful of electronics, Phantom Harp is all glistening glimmering solar flares, shimmering sunlight filtered through green fields sparkling with dewdrops, a gorgeous soft focus glacial drift, an otherworldly, slowed down Appalachia, the chords slowly drifting apart, notes carried skyward like leaves on a summer breeze, sleep, bleary eyed dreaminess, which all gives way to a washed out, lugubrious lowercase smear of fluttering drones, and creeping moonlit fog, hushed and dreamy, an oceanic seascape of twinkling muted melody and near static shimmer. All arranged into a single twenty minute track, multiple movements woven into an epic organic constantly evolving sonic dreamscape. Gorgeous.
Packaged in a beautiful black on black fold over thick paper sleeve, inside a 3" cd in a tiny plastic jacket, and a printed insert.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "The Phantom Harp (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "The Phantom Harp (excerpt 2)"

CANTU-LEDESMA, JEFRE Shining Skull Breath (Students Of Decay) cd-r 7.98
Another super limited sonic transmission from right here in the Bay Area, from AQ fave Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the man behind Tarentel, and the Root Strata label. Those familiar with Cantu-Ledesma's music, knows that he usually speakers in hushed whispers, breathy and breathless, soft sonic shimmers allowed to drift like billowy clouds into your ears. But here, CL is no longer whispering, instead he's breathing fire, his guitar a newly minted incendiary device. A sonic flame thrower, each track a layered assemblage of thick peals of sound, glowing tongues of distorted flame. A sonic assault more similar to Total or Sunroof! Than CL's usual output. Makes sense that the first song is dedicated to Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans (who also mastered it).
But all of this talk of fire and flame shouldn't scare you off, there is still plenty of delicate beauty to be had, it's just wrapped in thick sheets of sonic napalm, the guitar effulgent and glowing white hot, the chords washed out and the distortion crumbling. Melodies are jagged and dripping with hissy buzz, each track a glacial guitarscape turning your speakers to ash.
There are a few tracks, almost half of the 8 here, that drift in a soporific haze, and hew closer to CL's usual aesthetic, but here, they sound less like individual pieces, and more like interludes, brief moments of tranquility, a chance to catch your breath, let your ears heal, allow time for your speakers to re-solidify, before launching the next buzzing crumbling divinely distorted salvo of gorgeous blown out guitar bliss.
Fans of stuff like Nadja, the Yellow Swans, Tim Hecker, the Angelic Process, Fear Falls Burning, will be quite pleased with Cantu-Ledesma's visit to the sonic dark side.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in full color cardboard sleeves, with printed inserts.
MPEG Stream: "Distant Star (For Pete Swanson)"
MPEG Stream: "Shining Skull Breath"

CIRCLE Sunrise (No Quarter) cd 15.98
YAY! The No Quarter label, fresh from releasing Circle's latest album Katapult, have now done a domestic reissue of another Circle cd, the long-time-fave, and long-out-of-print, Ektro release Sunrise. If you saw 'em play on their recent US tour, chances are you rocked out to a tune or two from this record.
Here's our review from when we first freaked out about this back on list 143, which still applies (the new version is the same but for slightly altered, snazzed up graphics), except that we'd no longer say it's such a departure for them:
Brilliant, shockingly brilliant! Herewith we present to you what we can only say is the headbangingest record yet from our Finnish friends Circle (containing also, paradoxically, a couple of their most gentle numbers). The Circle concept is one of repetition, and while ALL their records are in fact great, one can find some of them to be a lot like another. So it's nice that this new Circle really goes out on a limb, with so much success, while totally managing to remain Circle to the core. How do they do it?
The album opens with "Nopeuskuningas", seemingly Circle's answer to Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law"! Down and dirty hard rock riffing (cyclic and repetitive in the trademark Circle way, of course) with keyboardist/vocalist Mika Ratto -- a relatively recent, and significant, addition to Circle's lineup on their past three or four discs -- simultaneously channeling screechy metal gods Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Klaus Meine (Scorpions), and Brian Johnson (AC/DC), but in an indecipherable, or Finnish at least, babble. It stretches to nearly eight minutes after the space-rock effects and swirly keys kick in. But then, when you think this is going to be The Heavy Metal Circle album, track two gets all mellow and pretty and folked-out, even MORE unlike any previous Circle we've ever heard. Acoustic guitar, and lots of la la la's from Mika. Unbelievable -- and lovely. But then the next song triggers the dormant motorik Circle drum pulse, overlaid with heavy guitars and vocal histrionics akin to the opening track. Plus new wavey/Axel F keyboards. Hit material here! Following that, track four, "Vaanen Valtiatar", heads back to the forest glade where Circle do that hippy jamming again a la track two, but more plugged-in, turning into a spacey jam session. And then, as you might now expect, it's back to the mosh pit for the monstrous rifferama of the next song, "Kylan Suurin Miekka". Evil stuff. This is True Circular Metal indeed. From then on the album maintains the heaviness, getting spacier and spacier though, culminating in the droning fifteen-minute "Lokki".
Wow. An amazing album, making effective use of Mika's unusual/unique vocals -- he's developed some sort of exotic (Middle Eastern? American Indian?) meets metal style, delivered in a manner as over-the-top as the most insane Italian prog of the '70s. Throw in some violin and Moog and of course all the heavy metal moves, and you've got a bizarre blend of, uh, Yoko Ono, Hawkwind, Judas Priest, and of course Circle's krautrock forerunners Neu! and Can.
While Sunrise is in many ways a departure for Circle, it can also be seen as an album harking back to their hard-rockin' roots (they've nodded that way on the guitar-heavy Prospekt and Jussi's Kyuss-ish Pharaoh Overlord side project, but you've got to also remember that the very first Circle album, Meronia, drew quite a few comparisons to Helmet at the time). Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Nopeuskuningas"
MPEG Stream: "Vaanen Valtiatar"
MPEG Stream: "Kylan Suurin Miekka"

COPE, JULIAN Japrocksampler (Bloomsbury) book 30.00
One of the best album covers ever, for the Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 debut LP Anywhere, a photo of that band as naked Japanese hippy freak outlaw bikers ridin' free, adorns the cover of this book. Good choice! If that doesn't look cool to you, you don't need this volume. If it does, then queue up! The subtitle: "How The Post-War Japanese Blew Their Minds On Rock 'N' Roll" is perfectly illustrated by that cover picture.
Let's back up, though. British author Julian Cope, originally best-known as something of a rock star (with The Teardrop Explodes in the '80s and his subsequent solo career) has also long been entertaining and informing us all as a writer, an expert on the heavy and the ancient: both the stone circles of Megalithic Europe, and the stoned rock n' roll of the psychedelic/progressive variety, yesterday and today. His happenin' website, Head Heritage (www.headheritage.co.uk) should be bookmarked by everyone who looks at OUR site. Way back when, over a decade ago, Julian Cope published a slim little paperback volume called the Krautrocksampler, one fan's obsessive, opinionated look back at the wondrous krautrock scene of the '70s. If you've got one, you're lucky, they're out of print and hard to come by these days, going for $$$ on eBay (er, anyone with a spare copy, please contact Allan at the store, he foolishly never bought it when we used to sell 'em and has regretted it ever since, maybe we can work out a deal...). Another reason to pick up this new Japrocksampler while you can!
It's about the same approximate dimensions as the Krautrocksampler, but thicker (over 300 pages!) and hardcover, with color plates depicting various rare album covers in the center of the book, and black and white graphics throughout. Nicely done, the paper stock and binding bringing back memories of a particular type of book we used to have in school.
And, as you have probably figured out, it's the Japanese '70s rock companion to Cope's krautrock treatise. But because the Japanese underground music scene of the same era is comparatively a lot more obscure over here in the West, Cope had to do a lot more in-depth research to give us all a real history lesson, starting off all the way back in the aftermath of WWII. Moving forward, he devotes much attention to the experimental composers of the sixties, like Toshi Ichiyanagi, and (for a time) his wife, Yoko Ono. All sorts of radical "actions" and conceptual sound art get their due. Other early chapters include include investigations of the homegrown "Eleki" scene (Japanese surf music, sort of) and the "Group Sounds" phenomenon (Japan's reaction to the British Invasion). Then Heavy Rock hits, with freaks and festivals, and Cope digs with utmost detail into the behind-the-music stories of such artists as cover stars Flower Travellin Band, Speed, Glue & Shinki, and, perhaps most crucially ('cause they're so mysterious and influential), Les Rallizes Denudes. In all cases, he reveals lots of stuff we didn't know. Regarding Les Rallizes, ferinstance, apparently their original bass player was involved in a JAL jetliner highjacking back in 1970, which lead to innocent Rallizes leader Takeshi Mizutani being trailed by CIA agents, which may help explain his legendary reclusiveness!
The Japrocksampler also provides plenty of info about important intersection between the avant-garde theater scene and rock n' roll in the early '70s, with a chapter on the brilliant J.A. Caesar. There's also pages and pages on the Taj Mahal Travellers, Far East Family Band, the Tokyo Kid Brothers, and much much more. It's exhaustive, impressively connecting all kinds of dots. Probably equally obsessed fanboys will have facts to check and nits to pick (we're thinking of our pal JW in particular) but really, where else are you gonna find all this info in English?? And so entertainingly written? Nowhere. Anyone who's read the Krautrocksampler, or visited Head Heritage, knows that Cope's got a knack for writing that's both enthused and erudite, a bit like Lester Bangs with footnotes. You don't even really have to know (or have heard) what he's talking about to fall under his spell, which is helpful 'cause the one big drawback to reading the Japrocksampler is the frustration most folks are gonna have trying to track down and listen to a lot of the music being discussed. We do our best to stock a good selection of '70s Japanese psych/prog/experimental reissues, whatever we can get by bands like the Taj Mahal Travellers and Flower Travellin' Band, but even we had to cry when looking over the section of the book devoted to lengthy reviews of Cope's top 50 favorite Japrock albums. Some we've got, others... someday we hope! Maybe this book will spur some more reissue action.
Can't come up with too many criticisms, other than that he slams some records we like (Foodbrain!), seemingly omits Flied Egg, and we guess we're not sure exactly how politically correct the term "Japrock" is, though it's not any worse than saying "krautrock" when you think about it...
Basically, this is a fascinating read for anyone curious about the effects of rock n' roll on the artsy underbelly of an "alien" culture. A must have if you're already into this stuff, of course, but also totally recommended if you're just a little bit curious about this "secret history" 'cause of being exposed to all the wild, freaky sounds currently being made in Japan by bands like the Boredoms, Boris, and Acid Mothers Temple.

DALTON, KAREN Cotton Eyed-Joe: The Loop Tapes Live in Boulder 1962 (Megaphone) 2cd + dvd 27.00
We have been waiting with baited breath for this since we first heard rumor of its impending release. 2 cds of newly discovered and previously unreleased live recordings by enigmatic folk legend Karen Dalton! Recorded in 1962 by Joe Loop, a musician who owned and managed an influential night spot in Boulder, Colorado called "The Attic", these intimate recordings capture the raw talent of Dalton's smoky delivery and sparse 12-string guitar and banjo arrangements. While not as solid a set as her debut recording released 7 years later, these sessions offer us a feel of what it was like for traveling folk musicians during the heyday of the folk revival, who literally had to sing for their supper. Working out unique arrangements of tunes by Fred Neil ("Blues On The Ceiling" and "Red Are The Flowers"), Ray Charles ("It's Alright", "Blackjack") and traditional folk blues such as "In The Evening" and "Pallet On Your Floor", this is a shining example of an artist in her element, lost in the delicate emotive possibilities of performing songs so close to her heart. Includes a DVD of early film footage of Dalton performing, some of which was on the last import reissue of It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best, but in a friendlier format than before. It also includes home movie footage from when she lived in Summerville Colorado most likely around the same time these sessions were recorded. So Beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Red Are The Flowers"
MPEG Stream: "Pallett On Your Floor"
MPEG Stream: "Katie Cruel"

DORMANT Beneath The Mighty Oak (God Is Myth) cd 10.98
From the man who runs the amazing God Is Myth label, responsible for recent AQ faves like Godheadscope, Caina and Procer Veneficus, and who used to record as Uvall, comes the new 'group' Dormant, which takes the more traditional black metal sound of Uvall and abandons it almost entirely, focusing more on mood and melancholia, texture and timbre, songs as much as sonics, a sort of orchestral dark doom pop sound, run through with streaks of buzzing blackness, and plenty of dark dark ambience.
With some help from folks like Caina and Celestiial, Dormant weaves an unlikely blackened sonic brew, gloomy and dark, but strangely pretty and poppy, epic and almost orchestral at points, there are brief moments of grim buzz and blasting black fury, but they are relatively few and far between, instead most of the record drifts delicately, mournful strummed steel string guitars, moaning drones off in the distance, deep baritone, near spoken vocals. Sounding very much like Swans or Angels of Light. Even the heavier songs spend much of their time moping mournfully, shimmery clean guitar twang, reverbed soft focus riffage, sometimes eventually transforming into midtempo black metal, but still suffused with that distinctly pop element, occasionally even turning pitchblack and offering up some buzzing riffs and harsh vocals, but only briefly, usually slipping back into a lilting dreamy dark folk, or a strange loping industrial dirge, or a haunting expanse of barely there drone.
Definitely for the super adventurous blackmetalheads out there, or for darkfolk freaks who don't mind bits of buzz and blast peppering their spacey jangle, moody gothic miserablism and abstract late night drift.
The first 200 copies of this cd come housed in a hand screened digipak with an insert and a sticker. We have about a dozen of those. Once we run out, we'll have copies from the rest of the pressing, a version that comes in a DVD case instead.
MPEG Stream: "Black Ashes"
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Wind On The Horizon"
MPEG Stream: "Sighs"

FORGOTTEN WOODS Forgotten Woods / Through The Woods (No Colours) picture disc lp 18.98
This recent essential black metal reissue is now available on vinyl for a limited time! And not just vinyl, a super swank picture disc!!
For a band we had thought at one point to be dead and buried, Norway's legendary black metal weirdos Forgotten Woods have been pretty high profile lately, with an unexpected (and unexpectedly amazing) new album, a bunch of reissues, the ever popular 3cd box set Baklengs Mot Stupet, and now this, the first time on cd for both FW's 1993 demos, the self titled Forgotten Woods and the follow up Through The Woods, both primo slabs of ultra grim and kvlt lo fidelity buzz. 
It's easy to see, even in the early stages of the band, that they were one seriously cracked bunch, the sound not just lo-fi, but damaged and bizarre, the riffing is simple and old school, but super low in the mix, with the crashing thrashing pounding drums way more prominent, but not nearly as much as the croaked blackened growls, the strange Gollum-like growls, some seriously harsh and alien vocals, perfectly suited to the crumbling blackness in the background. Going from stumbling chaotic buzz, to lurching doomy pound, Forgotten Woods conjure up some seriously fucked up and freaked out black atmospheres...
The self titled demo is the more brittle of the two, all high end hiss and soul shearing buzz, whereas Through The Woods ups the production values just a bit, and the sound is definitely heavier, but also murkier and muddier, which again suits their skewed vision. Also things seem to get way weirder (if that were even possible), hinting once again at the bizarre blackened beast they were soon to become, with angular atonal melodies, damaged off kilter leads and even weirder vocals, from shrieks to shouts, all tangled up into dense black squalls of sound.
MPEG Stream: "Winterly Battle Over Northland"
MPEG Stream: "Inside The Witches Cave"

GALLHAMMER Ill Innocence (Peaceville) cd 16.98
Ok, hopefully all of you into dooooooooooooooooom have heeded our recommendations in the past ("best band EVER" we may have said, in a moment of infatuation) and are already well acquainted with this cult Japanese band who exude a magnificently miserable mixture of slow, atmospheric doominess and crusty black metal thrashing, inspired by the likes of Celtic Frost/Hellhammer (natch), Amebix, and Corrupted. This is their 2nd full-length studio album, following 2004's Gloomy Lights debut and last year's The Dawn Of Gallhammer demos n' live cd+dvd collection. That's the one where we busted out the Simpsons Comic Book Guy impersonation in our review, but it's this album that really seals the deal, when it comes to Gallhammer's position in the pantheon of most depressive doom bands ever, anyway. They're up there, no doubt about it, as is proved by this collection of ten tracks, each one of 'em often (but not always) a slow-motion trudge through the depths of emotional bleakness in the form of monotonously massive low-end guitar riffage, wretched cookie monster screams, and simple, gloomy melodies. Several of the song titles are quite indicative of their sound: "Long Scary Dream", "SLOG", "Ripper In The Gloom"... Many of these varied tracks feature a dynamic combination of knock-you-over-with-a-feather soft n' sad prettiness setting you up for some smash-you-with-a-hammer heaviness, or even manage both at the same time. It's the former element, this band's almost post-rock instrumental mesmeric moodiness, for which we think Gallhammer should be best noted. Not that it has any of post-rock's usual complexity, this is raw and primal and ritualistic, perfectly encapsulated by the way the stark, repetitive slowcore acoustic guitar part at the start of "Ripper In The Gloom" suddenly, shockingly gives way to a full-on punk rock assault.
It also seems possible that Gallhammer, along with their interest in underground '80s doom-crust, also shares some of the Velvet Underground fixation displayed by their contemporaries from the Japanese psych-rock scene, like LSD-march and Doodles. Heck, track one, the nearly eight minute "At The Onset Of The Age Of Despair" seems to have echoes of VU's "Venus In Furs"... If one of Gallhammer's songs wound up on a PSF Tokyo Flashback comp someday we'd be surprised, yes, but only a little. Though it sure wouldn't be a track like "Killed By The Queen" or "Blind My Eyes", two of the punked out, filthy metal blitzes on here, the latter of which throws in some uncharacteristic Melt-Banana style yelping, dogwhistle vocals along with the usual guttural grunting and growling.
Hey, we made it all the way to the end of this review without mentioning Gallhammer's major non-musical selling point... we said they're a "cult" band above, but were tempted to say "cute", as this trio just happen to all be attractive young Japanese ladies, their looks further enhanced by the tasteful application of gothy corpsepaint makeup. No this fact doesn't make Gallhammer's music sound any better (or worse) but it's, um, interesting. Happily, though, Peaceville isn't using Gallhammer's sex appeal to sell this album, there's not even any pictures of the band at all included in the classy-lookin' white-and-silver digipack. Recommended nonetheless!
MPEG Stream: "SLOG"
MPEG Stream: "Killed By The Queen"
MPEG Stream: "Ripper In The Gloom"

GLOMP #9 (Boing Being) book 35.00
We're so immersed in Finnish underground music all the time, that we sometimes forget there's probably a whole lot of other amazing underground stuff going on over there as well. Like say, ART ferinstance. Well last year we got a crash course in Finnish underground art with a hefty eye popping tome called Glomp. And it happened to be the eighth Glomp, but the first one we had ever set eyes on and we were smitten, BIG TIME. So were all of you as we couldn't keep it in stock, and it ended up going out of print pretty dang fast.
Thankfully, it's time for another hair raising, eye popping, head spinning, other-body-part-doing-something-else-that-body-part-doesn't-normally-do installment of crazy, gorgeous, funny, sad, poignant, confusing, fantastical and fucked up Finnish underground art in the form of Glomp #9! And just like the first one it's amazing. And even though much of the text is in Finnish, it doesn't detract from the loveliness or far-out-ness or just plain old simple beauty of this amazing artwork. And for all you Finnish music freaks (like us), tons of the artwork here is by folks who do time in bands like Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and loads more. Just like #8, the stuff inside is all over the map, from gorgeous and bizarre photographs, to gorgeous super detailed Renee French like pencil drawings, to super abstract paintings, to garish sculptures, confusing collages, tons of comic strips, most you don't even have to understand Finnish to get (although most of the text is subtitled with English footnotes!). Our favorite is probably the recurring strip by Tommi Musturi, the trials and tribulations of a strange doughy white pill shaped being with pink lips and a tubular nose, who wanders Frank-like through strange and dangerous worlds. But all of it is just so amazing. Finnish freaks will definitely want this, but anyone into cool weird hard to find art books will definitely go crazy for this too. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES WORLDWIDE. Of that thousand we have a super limited amount, and if people go as crazy for this one as they did for the last one, they won't be around for long...

GNAW THEIR TONGUES Reeking Pained And Shuddering (Paradigms) cd 12.98
If for some reason you missed out on the last Gnaw Their Tongues release, a super limited cd-r now unfortunately out of print, and aren't yet as ridiculously obsessed with these guys as we are, we can get you up to speed pretty easily. Beyond the evocative name, there's the record title: Reeking Pained and Shuddering, and how about the song titles: "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Destroying Is Creating" or "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning". And if you still don't have even a rough idea of what you're in for, there's always the music itself, a roiling sonic cesspool of unfettered abject brutality and buzzing murky malevolence. A sort of black metal doom noise hybrid, like Abruptum jamming with Wolf Eyes but slowed way dooooooown, dipped in tar, rolled in dirt and shoved staggering and bloody out of your speakers.
But this isn't just noisy, or heavy or brutal, each song is strangely nuanced, and manages to veer wildly all over the sonic map without losing cohesiveness, each track is like a mini epic, with movements, moods, a convoluted song structure that is tangled and serpentine but that has some alien logic.
Take the 8+ minute opening track "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", which begins with a lurching industrial plod, all lo-fi Godflesh pound and pummel, in a swirling cloud of grey fog FX, but then, the riffs take on some horror movie like cinematic ambience, somehow sounding orchestral and majestic, before falling apart into some strange shuffling skittering krautdoom, peppered with what sounds like horns, snippets of dialogue, and huge booming downtuned crashes, until everything peels back, just leaving a weird smear of rumbling drones and smeared carnival music, beneath a super creepy monologue from some film, appropriately gruesome, the music in the background looping and more and more ominous, eventually building to a near static symphony of vacuum cleaner whir, above a skeletal framework of skittery percussion, and moaning creaking collapsing-building downtuned riffage. And that's just one song.
"Utter Futility Of Creation" begins with super sinister soundtracky strings, before the hammer falls and the record resumes its monstrous lurch, but the strings never go away, they trill and soar and scrape in the background, adding super dramatic tension and furthering the idea that this record might be the soundtrack to the scariest movie ever made. Here and there the band bow out, leaving the strings to weave an ominous swirl of sonic terror and panic, the band pulsing in the background, as if waiting to pounce, again what sound like horns join the fray. It's like what Goblin might have sounded like had they grown up on a steady diet of grindcore and black metal. "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning" begins as another chunk of lost cinematic black ambience with female operatic vocals over a dark black whirl of thrum and throb, before a grinding looped riff surfaces and the band launch into a blasting slab of black metal, but all tangled up with those haunting vocals, and bathed in a fuzz so thick it sounds like it was recorded by Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz, but so much more harsh and harrowing. Much of the rest of the record leans toward the ambient, with the buzzing guitars washed out into dense drones, more fucked up field recordings and samples, processed vocals, whirring alien loops, howled moaned voices, but still with the occasional stretch of pounding percussion, or wall of impossibly detuned guitar, everything crumbling and filthy, frightening and seriously fucked up. Definitely one of our new favorite bands.
Some of this stuff is previously released, mostly on outrageously limited cd-r's and cassette releases, so while some of you collector fiends might have one or two of these tracks, as far as the rest of us are concerned, this fresh musical meat!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Housed in a white dvd case, with full color artwork and printed heavy paper insert.
MPEG Stream: "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch"
MPEG Stream: "Utter Futility Of Creation"
MPEG Stream: "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning"

HARNETTY, BRIAN American Winter (Atavistic) cd 14.98
Darkly resonant and fascinating. The seventeen tracks of Brian Harnetty's American Winter album are like the slowly disintegrating pages of a stranger's scrapbook. Harnetty artfully and respectfully pieced together segments of dialogue, field recordings and radio transmissions among other things which he drew from the vast audio archives of Berea College where he is a member of the Appalachian Music Fellowship Program. Highlights such as "I'll Have To Go Off And Be Gone Tonight" feature fragments of oral histories from Appalachian folks accompanied by the gentle wheeze of what sounds like an accordion and the tinkling of a toy piano. The audio collages slowly drift in and out of focus, and the results are both engaging in the documentary sense and hauntingly spectral. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "I'll Have To Go Off And Be Gone Tonight"
MPEG Stream: "I Was Interested In The Story You Just Told Me About The Funeral"

HARVEY, PJ White Chalk (Universal Island) cd 14.98
The mighty chameleon PJ Harvey returns! In a characteristically bold and predictably unpredictable move, her eighth studio album reveals a new, very different persona. When we heard that White Chalk was going to be composed of primarily just her voice accompanied mostly by (her new instrument!) piano, we were anticipating (some admittedly with trepidation) a sort of Tori Amos transformation. Our fears were allayed as soon as we hit 'play', but y'know what? We might even predict that there'll be a few converts in the Amos fan club. These stark, delicate arrangements are achingly beautiful, immensely moving and unlike anything she's done before. Harvey's newfound voice flitters in a startling higher register, and the effect is precariously brittle and on the brink. Yet, longtime Harvey fans will still recognize the persisting raw nerves and distressed undercurrents of her music. As always, she's a bundle of seeming contradictions -- fragile and strong, pure and tarnished, simple and complex, vulnerable and bold. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Grow Grow Grow"
MPEG Stream: "When Under Ether"
MPEG Stream: "The Piano"

HAZLEWOOD, LEE The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood (Water) cd 15.98
You know it's been a cold and lonely world since Lee Hazlewood left it, not that he wasn't constantly reminding us what a cold and lonely world we live in while he was still alive. But somehow listening to his preternaturally world-weary songs - sung in his trademark wooly baritone; sheathed in their unique, and at times kitschy, baroque country-pop splendor; resigned to epic restlessness, heartbreak, loss, and death; and yet resolutely and often humorously self-defiant ‹ feels even sadder, now that he's gone. His back catalog is huge and for the uninitiated can be difficult to navigate but thankfully Water has reissued his first three MGM recordings from the mid-sixties for the first time separately (the 2002 2cd Big Beat reissue, These Boots Are Made for Walkin': The Complete MGM Recordings compiled all three albums together). Beautifully arranged by Billy Strange and newly remastered, they are the perfect entry point into Lee's left-field western cinematic sound. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the third will be on the next list!
The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood from 1966 is one of his best albums ever. Opening with "For a Moment", a ballad of hurt marked by a wall of phase-shifted strings and a chorus of female back-up singers, we're taken through a set of gloriously arranged ballads and loungey pop numbers including the original versions of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and "Sand" (a duet with Suzy Jane Hokum, that he later recorded with Nancy Sinatra). But it's the centerpiece meditation on dying, "My Autumn's Done Come" that's worth the price of admission. It's hard to say if Scott Walker heard this record before embarking on his own string of baroque balladry the following year, but there are surely definite parallels. R.I.P. Lee!
MPEG Stream: "Sand"
MPEG Stream: "My Autumn's Done Come"
MPEG Stream: "I Move around"

HAZLEWOOD, LEE Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure (Water) cd 15.98
You know it's been a cold and lonely world since Lee Hazlewood left it, not that he wasn't constantly reminding us what a cold and lonely world we live in while he was still alive. But somehow listening to his preternaturally world-weary songs -- sung in his trademark wooly baritone; sheathed in their unique, and at times kitschy, baroque country-pop splendor; resigned to epic restlessness, heartbreak, loss, and death; and yet resolutely and often humorously self-defiant -- feels even sadder, now that he's gone. His back catalog is huge and for the uninitiated can be difficult to navigate but thankfully Water has reissued his first three MGM recordings from the mid-sixties for the first time separately (the 2002 2cd Big Beat reissue, These Boots Are Made for Walkin': The Complete MGM Recordings compiled all three albums together). Beautifully arranged by Billy Strange and newly remastered, they are the perfect entry point into Lee's left-field western cinematic sound. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the third will be on the next list!
Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure from 1967 continues in the same vein as its predecessor (The Very Special World of...) but includes more of his half-spoken / half-sung epic narratives such as "Jose" about a young boy's quest to be a matador, and "The Nights", about the harsh life of a white woman who decides to join a clan of Native Americans. Peppered with more upbeat numbers than ballads, the best of which are "In Our Time" with its Byrds-like 12 string guitar, "The Girls In Paris" and "Dark In My Heart". As with most Hazlewood records, listeners have to deal with some cheese, here most represented by the vaudevillian "Suzy Jane Is Back In Town", but that is grist for the mill when dealing with someone whose sound world maneuvers fearlessly into many of the strangest niches of American popular music. It's best to brave these minor moments than ignore one of the best examples of pop production put to tape. R.I.P. Lee!
MPEG Stream: "The Girls In Paris"
MPEG Stream: "The Nights"
MPEG Stream: "In Our Time"

HEAVY WINGED Feel Inside (aRCHIVE) cd 13.98
We talk about records being heavy, and blown out, and in the red, and super distorted, and being the sort of weird music freaks we are, we're constantly on the hunt for that one record that trumps all others and out heavies and out distorts them all. THE most distorted and THE most blown out and THE HEAVIEST. And every once in a while, a new record does come along, and climbs atop the pile of bloodied and bruised bodies that made up the previous heaviest most distorted bands, and stand tall, prepared to defend the crown with axes held high and an avalanche of drums ready to drop like a ton of bricks on all comers. We'd be hard pressed to find another band that more deserves to sit atop that pile, at least for a while, than bicoastal masters of the psychmetal blowout, Heavy Winged. Now based both in Portland and Brooklyn, these guys just keep getting heavier and heavier, more and more intense and fucked up sounding. We went nuts for their recent Blacc Lust record, but if anything Feel Inside is even better. They are not metal, so comparisons to groups like SUNNO))) and the like would mean nothing. Heavy Winged are basically a psychedelic rock band, who for whatever reason, decided being loud just wasn't enough, and being distorted wasn't enough, and writing songs wasn't enough, so the band gradually transformed into some insane psychedelic noise rock behemoth, creating 10, 20, even 30 minutes soundscapes of repetitive pummel, drums pounding relentlessly, the guitars spewing white hot psych, a gorgeously hypnotic heavy heavy heavy crush. If you can imagine Les Rallizes Denudes and White Heaven crossed with Circle and Can, but mixed by Wolf Eyes and Merzbow, you wouldn't even be close.
The three tracks here begin white hot and only get hotter, sometimes locking into a groove, but more often then not, burying the groove under blistering squalls of feedback and crumbling distortion, the drums played with baseball bats instead of sticks, the whole band shoved down a mile long flight of stairs, deftly turning their chaotic tumble into some sort of psychedelic rock, but the sort of psychrock that has about as much in common with psych than it does with rock. This is freaked out, spaced out, ultra damaged, utterly gorgeous, ear drum destroying, face melting free psych heaviness.
The final track is the standout here, letting lots of space in, the drums doing some complicated dance in an epic expanse of sizzling feedback, and white hot streaks of guitar skree, damaged effects squiggle wildly, chunks of riffs fly off in all directions only to be swallowed by clouds of buzz and rrrooooaaar, there's even the occasional gorgeous warm chordal swells and creepy melodies, but it's the drums driving instead of the guitar, the whole thing surprisingly pretty and melancholy, although you have to brave a mile of prickly fuzz and explosive amp punishment to get there, but then the journey is always the best part...
Another gorgeously and extravagantly packaged release from aRCHIVE, this one comes in a six panel gatefold, decorated with angular designs in shades of black and brown and white, but that six panel gatefold is housed in another 6 panel gatefold, that one printed on vellum, so the various designs mesh into something completely new, the cd affixed to a nub on the middle panel of the inside gatefold.
LIMITED TO 600 COPIES. We probably will NOT be able to get more once these are gone...
MPEG Stream: "The Frozen Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "The Tangled White"

HOTOTOGISU Robed In Verdigris (Nashazphone) lp 27.00
Another vinyl only missive from the dynamic duo that is Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Total, etc.) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Zaimph, GHQ, etc.) and this one's a loud one. Well, they're all loud ones really, but this one is especially intense and aggressive, a serious slab of guitarnoise as only these two seem to do it.
It begins with thick washes of processed strum and grind, looped and layered, guitars and guitars and guitars, thick and viscous, swirling and whirling and eventually building to a Total like fervor, a keening coruscating high end raga, white hot and blown out, a seriously divine chunk of noisy psychedelia for sure. The rest of the record is just as dense and heavy and thick with guitars, but the high end explorations are scaled back, and the duo instead crawl through a swamp of murky muddy thrum and throb, a caustic morass of crumbling distortion and washed out sonics, with the occasional riff surfacing here and there, but never for long, just long enough to establish that it's an actual riff and not just another layer of droning guitar, before it slips away and once again -is- another layer of droning guitar. There are brief solar flares of high end effulgence, but they too flash briefly before being subsumed by the chaotic distorted black sea below.
Skullflower / Total / Bower / Bassett freaks need this bad. Thick vinyl, beautiful full color sleeves. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Supposedly already sold out at the label, so you know what that means...

INQUISITION Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer (No Colours) lp 18.98
Our favorite release from maybe our favorite weird weird black metal band, now on vinyl!! Gatefold sleeve, with lyrics inside, and of course some band photos that are just completely over the top.
Can the No Colours label do no wrong? Inquisition's Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer is definitely Allan's favorite black metal release of the YEAR (2005 is when it came out, but it would be a shoe in for black metal record of the year EVERY year). So grim, so eerie, so very metal, and weird in a weird way. That is, there's nothing else out there quite like this band. They do that thing that the best black metal bands do: they're both totally of their genre (a formulaic genre, to be extra-redundant) yet manage to be utterly their own thing too. Fans of the elite likes of Burzum, Graveland, Mutiilation, Xasthur, and Immortal ought to immediately bow to Inquisition whilst also recognizing just how different a band they are. And it's also the sort of black metal I might spring on an extremity-friendly music fan even if they were unaware of the above mentioned artists.
Although this was the first I'd heard of Inquisiton, it's actually the third album from this American (Seattle-based, but with Colombian connections?) Satanic black metal band. Redundant again? Sure, all black metal by definition is supposed to be Satanic. But these guys are so SERIOUS about it (well, I don't know for sure... the Inquisition duo of Dagon and Incubus do look kinda silly in the cd booklet photos...but I don't think that's intentional). That they go so over-the-top in their Satan worship is part of what moves them beyond mere stylistic formula and into a realm of obsessive uniqueness.
This record works so well 'cause it's simultaneously weird as fuck (hypnotically croaking vocals, the aforementioned Satanically overloaded lyrix, and strange, keening high-end guitar parts that make this the EERIEST black metal I've heard in aeons) while being fully metal with a rock n' roll backbone: slow-to-mid tempos, memorable riffs, and killer old-school fuzz guitar tone. Indeed, were it not for the love of Lucifer they express with every breath, Inquisition could just has easily have opted to call this album The Glorious Magnificence of Fuzz (though a strain of fuzz quite different from the '60s garage fuzz as heralded elsewhere on this week's list in our review of the Plastic Cloud reissue)! Sonically, that's a big part of what satisfies here, a crucial factor in of Inquisition's equation of extremity. It's truly a heavy, buzzing, trance-like blurr.
It's got to mean something when I (Allan) play something over and over and over again, considering how much (too much) music I'm getting every week. But this was -- is -- in heavy rotation in my home and even though I put it on my iPod I still took the cd itself along with me on vacation as a talisman/token/icon/fetish object just to look at... good thing I don't actually believe in Satan! I even had to go and track down their harder-to-find first two albums, also both excellent, though I do think this is their best... and if you want someone to back me up, note that Leviathan's Wrest himself is a big Inquistion fan, partial to their second album but also of the opinion that this one is brilliant too. So, an AQ black metal rave, make no mistake! Mesmerizing, crushing, gloomy, fucked up, beautiful, genius.
Be warned, the sleeves are a little wonky, as if they were glued strangely, and the paper just wasn't thick enough. When they're closed they seem fine, but the weirdness becomes evident when the sleeve is opened. But beyond that little quibble, how can you possibly resist 'touching the magic hoof, ON VINYL!?!?
MPEG Stream: "Under The Black Inverted Pentagram"
MPEG Stream: "Of Blood And Darkness We Are Born"

LAGAN TAPES, THE s/t (Heart & Crossbone) cd-r 10.98
More amazing sonic weirdness from Israel, from the always amazing Heart & Crossbone label, who in the past have given us releases from Barbara, Lietterschpich, Cadaver Eyes, Grave In The Sky and Mildew. Lagan Tapes is the work of a duo who between the two of them are members of most of the above mentioned bands as well as Panda Porn whose disc is reviewed elsewhere on this list. One half of the duo bangs on on stuff, the other half captures it on tape, and the result is really fantastic. Not as noisy and clattery as you might expect, instead, it's rhythmic and hypnotic, a sort of junkyard Gamelan, recorded in Belfast Ireland, while walking across the Lagan River... metallic clank and rapid fire skitter, thumping on fences and garbage cans and anything else within reach, bare hands on metal, a constantly shifting set of rhythms, all captured on a broken cassette recorder, wrapping the rhythms in all sorts of lo-fi hiss and distorted buzz. Some tracks are hissy and high end, a relentless blast of clank and clatter, others are much more subdued, mellow and meandering, some tracks sound like straight up field recordings, chiming bells, the crash of metal fences, others sound like full on blown out lo-fi krautrock jams. Behind the percussive patter, you can hear all sorts of ambient sounds, voices, birds, running water, it's almost like some strange blend of avant percussion and nature recording.
The label compares the sound to MCMS, Crash Worship, Pain Teens, early 80's Sonic Youth, 23 Skidoo, Gamelan Son of Lion, but for us, the most obvious and accurate references are probably Gamelan Son Of Lion and Crash Worship, as this is all about the rhythms, the pound and pulse, the shuffle and skitter, the clang and the clatter. Hyper rhythmic and abstract, intense and mesmerizing, an incredible chunk of experimental percussion, that should of course appeal to the rhythm obsessed, but also manages to sound surprisingly musical.
Packaged in an oversized envelope with the imprint of a cassette tape pressed into the paper, inside, three oversized printed cards with photos and liner notes...
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Three"
MPEG Stream: "Four"

LAMP OF THE UNIVERSE Heru (Astral Projection) cd 14.98
Originally released as a super limited cd-r by the sadly now defunct Barl Fire label, this fantastic slice of tripped out space drone psychedelia is finally available again, now as a real cd, with improved sound and all new artwork...
What we initially took to be a fantastic drone record, is indeed that, but actually becomes something entirely different about halfway through. Lamp Of The Universe is the work of New Zealander Craig Williamson, and is indeed a truly gorgeous drone bliss outfit. Extended wide open expanses of buzzing sitars, swooning synths, simple layered drones, minimal tabla rhythms, very soothing and raga like, slowly swirling soundscapes, dreamily druggy and sleepily spaced out. So lovely. And trust us, that would definitely be enough to get us to set the cd player on repeat and just drift off, but the last 25 minutes, while still being blissful and serene, introduce drums, which changes the whole vibe. Those last three tracks are dark and meandering, a lazily propulsive post rock / krautrock hybrid, druggy and spacey and jammy, with affected guitar noodling over simple shuffling drumming and groovy minimal basslines. Pink Floyd, Band Of Gypsies, Hawkwind, a very very very mellow Acid Mothers Temple, eventually winding down and returning for a brief buzzy free drone coda.
MPEG Stream: "Heru Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "Heru Pt. 2"

LIGHT OF THE SHIPWRECK From The Idle Cylinders (Crucial Bliss) cd-r 8.98
Finally, a new batch of releases from the always kick ass Crucial Bliss label, the limited cd-r experimental ambient sublabel of the mighty Crucial Blast. This first one comes from Light Of Shipwreck, a one man power ambient drone outfit that is the work of Ben Fleury-Steiner who runs the also quite awesome Gears Of Sand label (Aidan Baker, Encomiast, Seconds In Formeldahyde) and who for From The Idle Cylinders has woven guitars, percussion and programming into a darkly organic soundworld. The label compares the sound here to some swirly mix of Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Can, and Earth, which is definitely not that far off the mark, but we also hear some This Heat, some Wolf Eyes and lots of Necks in these extended shimmery and serpentine sprawls.
Haunting super rhythmic industrial soundscapes laced with a propulsive locomotive shuffle of programmed percussion, keening high end and hissing whirs of smeared almost jazziness, looped and cyclical, some sort of disembodied krautrock/spacerock like a more mechanical Necks jamming in a thick cloud of Birchville Cat Motel fug. A groaning creaking percussive framework beneath a sky full of shimmering black clouds.
All three tracks begin all abstract and drifty, the first "I Rode And Am Riding On An Ocean Of Violent Lights", quickly explodes into a fog of jagged edges and swirling squalls of chaotic percussion and overlapping drones, while the second, "I Watched And Am Watching A Cold Dead Sun Rise Then Explode" coalesces into a serious chunk of glorious Ur-kraut, a simple stripped down rhythm spread out over a massive expanse of low end whir and phantom drone drift, gorgeous and mesmerizing, with a dark dreamy melody, both ominous and lovely, think a super mellow druggy Circle, or a slightly more noise rock Necks...
The final track begins with subtle Eastern sounding percussion, before giving way to some Fear Falls Burning massive glacial guitar drone, eventually splintering into glimmering harmonics, the rest of the twenty minute track, a tangle of the two, shuffling skittering rhythms wrapped around slow burning solar flare guitar. So good.
As with all Crucial Bliss releases, the packaging is gorgeous, a dvd sized fold over thick cardstock sleeve, full color inside and out, the cd attached to a plastic hub affixed to the sleeve... and LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "I Rode And Am Riding On An Ocean Of Violent Lights"
MPEG Stream: "I Watched And Am Watching A Cold Dead Sun Rise Then Explode"

LUASA RAELON Into The Void (Crucial Bliss) cd-r 8.98
Along with the Light Of Shipwreck and Aidan Baker discs reviewed elsewhere on this list, Luasa Raelon is the third of three killer new releases from Crucial Bliss, the Crucial Blast sub-label focusing on things equally as crucial, but way more blissful than the mothership label.
Luasa Raelon is the work of David Reed, the same guy responsible for Envenomist (whose Black Bile tape we raved about on the last list, and which we have very few copies ofŠ) and has a similarly bleak and black feel. In fact, the label describes the sound as "Cthulhian ambient death" and who are we to argueŠ
A concept record about a lost expedition left to die in space, the sound is appropriately spacious and massive, buzzing and grim, black and foreboding. Massive swells of billowing buzz, wrapped around slow shifting expanses of near static whir, over the top, thunderous industrial crashes and sputtering shortwave transmissions, distant keening melodies, muted klaxons sending sonic ripples out in the emptiness of space, long stretches of downtuned brutality draped over epic minimal smears of barely there blur. Mournful melodies pulled apart and tangled up with grinding distorted crumbling decaying riffage, everything lumbering and drifting into the bottomless depths of some sonic black hole.
Like Wolf Eyes doing the score for the remake of 2001 A Space Odyssey, a bleak wasteland of tones that grind and buzz and rumble, stretching out into infinity, an epic sonic blackness, from coruscating doomdronedirge to soft shimmery black ambience, the soundtrack to your cold corpse floating through the great black void.
And as with all Crucial Bliss releases, the packaging is super striking, an oversized fold over thick cardstock sleeve, full color inside and out, creepy alien tendril artwork, the cd attached to a plastic hub affixed to the sleeve...
LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Mariners"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Matter"

MANINKARI Psychoide / Participation Mystic (Conspiracy) cd 10.98
Mysterious, quaking, hissing, clattering instrumental post-rock soundscapery, a murky improv, weird and warm, full of shimmering strings slightly dissonant, like something processed from the sounds of a symphony tuning up, building to bombastic dense, droning nirvana. Very cool... What is this? Well, we're always interested in what Belgium's Conspiracy label decides to release (just look 'em up on our website and you'll find a slew of AQ faves, from a bunch of Boris to the recent Sunburned Circle album). Never heard of Paris' Maninkari before, but this debut release of theirs being on Conspiracy gets our attention -- as does the fact that Jesu's Justin Broadrick contributes a remix (as does Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner). That's right, as the title suggests, this disc is just two songs, plus two remixes... it's 42 minutes total, though, so if it's not a full-length album, it's not exactly just an ep either.
Maninkari construct a gorgeous soft cacophony of epic post-rock drift and minimal jazzy shuffle on 8:21 opener "Pyschoide". Dense drumming, frenzied strings, wound into tense soundscapes of slow burning shimmer. Godspeed plays the Dirty Three, or maybe Angus Maclise jamming with Chris Corsano, dark and druggy, some sort of glorious mantra-like minimalist dronejazz, with a super cinematic Phillip Glass like coda... That's followed by "Participation Mystic", a 16 minute track of lilting pizzicato strings, underpinned by deep soft swells of shimmering warmth and distant bits of industrial clatter, a slow burning ambient drift that is eventually joined by a simple motorik rhythm, transforming the pulsing ambience into something jazzy and minimal, propulsive and hypnotic, channeling the spirit of Finnish hypnorockers Circle and minimal dronejazz combo the Necks... and again near the end, everything enveloped by intense swarms of frenetic strings...
The two remixes are different enough from the originals to be quite worthwhile, and stand by themselves, not surprisingly being more "electronic music" sounding, and in the case of Broadrick's remix, more "extreme"!
Limited to 1000 copies. Full-length to follow soon...
MPEG Stream: "Psychoide"
MPEG Stream: "Participation Mystic Remix"

MELVINS / BRIAN WALSBY The Making Love Demos / Manchild 3 cd+book 14.98
It's a comic book! It's a Melvins cd! It's pretty darn cool is what it is. Cartoonist Brian Walsby spoofs and skewers various icons of old school punk/alt rock culture, and puts his own personal family history on the page too ("My Old Man!"). It's mostly subversively funny, sarcastic stuff. Lots of chuckles for those with a bit of nostalgia for the good ol' days of '80s punk rock for sure!! One of our favorite comix in here is "Whatever Happened To You Favorite Eighties Hardcore Mascots" which imagines the DRI "thrash guy" finding a new career as a school crossing guard, and the Black Flag bars being sold to Hank Williams III who "dropped one bar and used the rest for his new logo." Some of the other pieces in this fairly thick book include an illustrated article celebrating TV's SCTV, a Walsby/Melvins 2006 tour diary, a memoir entitled "How I Survived Grunge", "The Rules Of Young Rock Bands" (which include holding the microphone like a glass of wine, and combining two kinds of bad singing: whiny, nasal and hysterical screaming), several comic strips about The Dios (a la The Osbournes), a tribute to Cheap Trick, and much much more. If you like stuff like Peter Bagge's Hate or Chunklet magazine this is for you.
This book makes a perfect team up with Walsby's old pals, wise ass scene vets the Melvins, who contribute a 20+ minute cd to the package, entitled "The Making Love Demos". These eight songs are DIY four-track recordings from back in '87, from the Buzz/Dale/Matt lineup, several of which later wound up in re-recorded form on their classic Ozma album, and some you've never ever heard before. Wow. Melvins fans are gonna be stoked. Heavy grinding nastiness, perfectly filthily home-recorded, that's way more punk than grunge.
MPEG Stream: "Creepy Smell"
MPEG Stream: "Excess Pool"

MUTIILATION Sorrow Galaxies (End All Life) cd 14.98
The unexpected return of one of the most infamous black metal bands of the nineties, French horde Mutiilation (yep, two 'i's), one of the best known of the Black Legions bands (along with Vlad Tepes and Bleketre) even though technically Mutiilation was kicked out of the group early on for abusing drugs (who knew a black metal 'collective' would have such a tough stance on drugs?) although another report replaces drugs with an argument about Meyhna'ch from Mutiilation's childhood molestation by his father, which seems even stranger...
Lots of folks were bummed out on the last two Mutiilation discs, Majestas Leprosus and Rattenkonig, although if you ask us, it might have been more a case, of that cooler than though "oh I only like the old stuff" sort of thing, cuz both those records were pretty fierce and furious, grim and black. But Sorrow Galaxies is definitely an improvement on both of those, being that there's now live drums, and the songs are much more fleshed out, more melodic, longer and more varied, lots of doomy slow parts and half time breakdowns scattered amidst the blasting buzz. It definitely doesn't compare to the first two, since for one, it doesn't sound shitty, er, we mean cvlt, it actually sounds lush and heavy, a seriously great production, and because it's been 12 years since Vampires of Black Imperial Blood, the world has changed and one would assume that so has Mutiilation mainman Meyhna'ch (who also fronts Malicious Secrets, Hell Militia and Gestapo 666).
It seems like most of us were sort of assuming Mutiilation were dead and gone, it had only been 2 years since the last record, but there has been barely a peep about Sorrow Galaxies until it was suddenly out. But the fact that there was a new record was the first surprise, the second was how cool and weird the new record is. Four long tracks, the shortest 9+ minutes, the longest 12+, each one epic and expansive, and as mentioned above, super lush and complex, with the addition of haunting samples, gorgeous melancholy melodies over slow buzz, garbled super effected vocals, creepy ambience, all woven into and around some thick relentless riffing, the guitars buzzy, but not brittle, instead thick and warm, a swirled washed out vibe, that makes the whole record sound even darker and more melancholy, a bit like Xasthur in that respect, but these songs are dense and serpentine, with blurred blasts separated by strange, almost proggy breakdowns, the guitars angular and obtuse, a sort of stumbling mournful doom, but the tracks never veer far from another burst of dense black blur and anguished buzz.
The best track is definitely "The Coffin Of Lost Innocence" with its killer super melodic main riff, and it's almost Black Flag sounding verse, the guitar doing some sort of muffled chug, before slipping back into the haunting fluid minor key melodic refrain, so so pretty and sad sounding, even the fastest and heaviest bits are rife with melancholy, the drums a strange convoluted rhythm beneath, not a blast, a weird shuffle, with some truly intense and moving ambient interludes. Who would have thought a Mutiilation song could be so pretty, and emotional, and still be black and grim. But it really suits them. All four tracks definitely have that vibe, although maybe not to that extent.
"Cesium Syndrome 86" has some strange breakdowns in the middle, and a strangely groovy bridge, peppered with all sorts of strange effects, atonal chords and lots of random bits of dialogue, while the epic closer, "Acceptance Of My Decay" begins with some awesome and unlikely high end guitar lick, that continues on beneath the warm buzzing blast that takes us into the rest of the song. There's also an almost cabaret sounding middle portion, and the end just loops the same minor key riff over and over, before dissolving into a confusional, partially ambient coda, with that strange lick resurfacing, more voices and dialogue, soft synth swells, and what sounds like a distant heartbeat.
Pretty fucking awesome. Not at all what we were expecting, but way better than just a Vampires Of Black Blood part two, although we're sure the grim black hordes might think otherwise...
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Seeds Of Anger And Dimentia"
MPEG Stream: "The Coffin Of Lost Innocence"

N.I.L. s/t (Battle Kommand) cd 14.98
Brand new disc from Imperial, who for the last 12 or so years has been spewing a gorgeously grim and noxious black buzz under the banner of Krieg. As well as contributing his own black brand to BM super group Twilight (along with Wrest from Leviathan, Hildolf from Draugar and Blake from Nachtmystium) We were sort of just expecting more kvlt Kriegish blackness, which would have been fine, we dug the last Krieg big time, and in some ways, much of this does sound like a continuation of Krieg, but in other ways it's definitely a whole 'nother sort of blackened beast.
N.I.L is much more minimal and drone-y, augmenting the usual bass, guitar and drums with some seriously non-black metal instruments like mandolin and Tibetan Singing Bowl, creating slow moving black sonic blurs, reminding us much more of Xasthur than Krieg, each song basically a single riff, repeated mantra-like, smeared into hypnotic and mesmerizing, drawn out and murky doomic black dirges.
There are a few fast tracks, and those definitely sound more like Krieg, blasting and furious, swirling and chaotic, raw, primitive black metal brutality, but it's the slower tracks that make this record so weird and cool, from the haunting opening, wrapped in record crackle, a simple acoustic guitar weaving a mournful and melancholy dark folk melody, to the gorgeously fuzz drenched Burzumic plod of "Here I Found No Shelter" to the depressive miserablist strum of "Serpent Circle" to the gorgeous washed out Xasthur meets Katatonia style black epic that is "Negative Frequency Entity", and let's not forget a killer, and fairly straight, cover of Big Black's "Bad Houses", the only real difference being buzzier guitars, and the growled demonic vocals, but what a classic riff, malevolent and dramatic and so goddamn catchy, and yet somehow it meshes perfectly with the bleak black buzz of the rest of the record...
MPEG Stream: "Plague Doors Rusted Shut"
MPEG Stream: "Here I Found No Shelter"
MPEG Stream: "I Quenched My Thirst With Dust"

OAKHELM Betwixt And Between (Forest Moon Special Products) cd 10.98
If your cover art looks like a lost Unleashed album, sign me up. Portland's Oakhelm arrived at our fortress walls with axes in hand -- both electric guitars and battle weapons, yes. Their debut album, Betwixt & Between, shows these rookie Vikings doing some serious shredding that would easily make it onto Dan Swano's iPod, possibly even Peter Tagtgren's just because of the vocals. That being said, these North-Westerners probably don't think you should be laughing because this ain't no joke, it's a call to arms. What are we fighting? Our best guess is dragons and Christian invaders. But seriously, all of the necessary ephemera is here, while a sense of irony is thankfully conspicuously absent. A very good thing. Now that that debate is over, you're free to embrace everything fantastic and mystical that died out alongside the popularity of many of the classic Century Media bands of the past. This is a die-hard attempt to re-create the glory of mid-'90s Northern-European death/black/Viking metal. We're especially reminded of ol' Viking horde Mithotyn at their most dark and doomful. Go ahead and headbang, but make sure not to fall off your horse. Did we mention that they have members of Fall of Bastards, Wormwood, L'Acephale, Black Queen and Assuck among their ranks?! Well, they do. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Of Wood And Blood"
MPEG Stream: "These Boundaries"

ORTHODOX Amanecer en Puerta Oscura (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
We're probably not the first to say it, but doom metal band Orthodox are *anything but* orthodox on their second offering for the Southern Lord label. Spanish sludge lords with a psychedelic bent, Orthodox's 2006 debut album Gran Poder was a major sensation among connoisseurs of the heavy, being selected as an Album Of The Month on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website, in part for its pagan-Catholic imagery, in part for its monolithic heaviness. What about eagerly anticipated album number two? Though we think it's great, and most likely Mr. Cope does too, this new one will no doubt cause some consternation among the less open minded of doom fanatics, as it's got a lot more going on that sheer sludge-ry. Not that Gran Poder wasn't an eccentric effort either, but this one's extremely so. Extremely eccentric, and eclectic, indeed.
The first track, "Con Sangre De Quien Te Ofenda" could easily be mistaken for a moody piece of instrumental avant-jazz, with that wide-open-desert-spaces feel of Hex-era Earth, baroquely adorned with a shuffling, dramatic drum solo and an almost-joyous improv-blowing session for trumpet and other horns. It actually brings back fond memories of the late great metallic math-rockers Engine Kid, the band that SUNNO))) member and Southern Lord label boss Greg Anderson used to play in back in the day, like when they would get jazzy like Iceburn and cover Coltrane... Minus the horns, that disjointed, free-jazz vibe continues on the second track, the nine-minute "Mesto, Rigido E Ceremoniale", though they heavy it up quite a bit. Imagine a slowed-down, fractured Black Flag instrumental, like something from The Process Of Weeding Out made more abstract, slower and heavier. Entering into the territory of defunct Dutch instro-metallers Gore here! With the third song, though, vocals finally enter the mix, weirdly distressed and wailing chant-like, and the riffing gets more intensely metallic, rigidly clawing through a miasma of chaotic, psychedelic, paranoid jamming. That one, "Solemne Triduo", makes us think of Om mixed with Los Natas at their strangest. And then, just when things are getting loudest and most insane, the album takes an abrupt shift into the quietly windswept, acoustically strummed "Amancer En Puerta Oscura" which flows immediately into the ominous "Puerta Osario", with stark repeated chords, and cruelly plinking piano keys. Though just two minutes minutes long, this is no brief detour like the piano interlude heard in the middle of Gran Poder, as it seamlessly segues into the sedated, suspenseful "Templos" that pulsates for 15 minutes in an darkened dreamworld of eerie clarinet, shimmering cymbals, slow-paced percussion, sparsely echoing bass, sheer moody atmosphere... It's a kind of creeping chamber music, that could be the score from some Italian horror soundtrack, or the sinister cousin to the epic tracks on Circle's mellow and mesmeric Miljard, mixed maybe with the 20th Century style stuff Ghost was experimenting with on their last album, In Stormy Nights.
The seventh and final track, "Parte II. Apogeum", then hits like a ton of bricks, massive doom-riff guitars smashing all before it, as if to say, you want ye olde DOOOOOOM? You got it! This song should shut up any complainers who didn't entirely get what was going on before, it's a doozy of a doom number all right, complete with even frenzied, metallic, acid-fried guitar soloing, and insanely effected alien Ozzy vocals. Closest comparisons would be to Thrones, and Yob and/or Middian, at their most claustrophobically crushing. It's like Orthodox wanted to wrap the album up with one song that in 7 minutes, 54 seconds would utterly satisfy anyone wanting Gran Poder Part II, for whom some of the more mystifying, weirdly proggy stuff elsewhere on this album could just be a bonus. Of course for us it's all good.
Recommended to all unorthodox doom lovers! Art and design by Seldon Hunt, by the way, and as long as we're dropping his name, here's some other names that we should have worked into the review somehow, as we think fans of the following might quite like this: Boris, Comets On Fire, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Ennio Morricone, Dragonauta...
MPEG Stream: "Mesto, Rigido E Ceremoniale"
MPEG Stream: "Solemne Triduo"
MPEG Stream: "Templos"

PANDA PORN Rarities (Woolwung) cd-r + book 14.98
Not sure what we were expecting... With a name like Panda Porn, and the fact that we got these from Heart & Crossbone, who usually supply us with super intense heavy noisy Israeli weirdness... But whatever we were expecting it sure wasn't this.
Five tracks, all very minimal and abstract, mostly glitch and buzz, and hiss and crackle. Much of it sounding like a needle in the run out groove of an lp, and you know how much we love that sound. A fuzzy chunk of muted glitchy static, beneath which strange streaks of low end throb and pulse, barely audible, deep resonant rumbles hum and whir peppered with rhythms crafted from cracks and pops, distant bell-like chimes, glistening high end tones and what sounds like strings glitched and chopped and skipping into stuttery rhythms, a collage of super damaged outsider turntablism. Lots of this sounds like a lo-fi Ryoji Ikeda, while the prettier bits remind us of Phillip Jeck. Really cool, but be warned, it's quite brief, less than 14 minutes, but we do find ourselves listening to it over and over, especially the last track, a jumbled stuttery minor key soundscape made from chopped up voices and hiccuping smears of strings.
The Rarities referred to in the title number 1 to 30. Rarities 1-5 are the five tracks of minimal glitch and buzz, while Rarities 6-30 are images, housed in a gorgeous, mini perfect-bound book. Stark textures, grayscale images, high contrast, simple yet super striking.
The cd is housed in a heavy book-sized cardstock sleeve, also included is a thick card with liner notes and images, the cd sleeve, the book and the card all housed in a printed slip cover, hand numbered on the back.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Rarity 1"
MPEG Stream: "Rarity 2"

PORTAL Outre (Profound Love) cd 14.98
Record number two from these mysterious Australian technical death metal weirdoes, whose sound, as we mentioned in our review of their debut, Seepia, is anything but traditional death metal, instead, the grunted vocals and crushing downtuned riffs and all the traditional death metal tropes are completely subverted, tangled and mangled into damaged and demented squalls of chaotic blackened noize, having plenty in common with a band like labelmates Wold, as well as old school DM legends like Gorguts, Suffocation or ImmolationŠ
The sound on Outre is a murky buzz drenched sonic swamp, riffs buzz and blast, but are so doused in effects, so dripping with muddy distortion, they appear to be nothing but droning streaks of downtuned sound, until once in a while when they surface to chug briefly, offering up some brief dynamics before being swallowed up again by the band's relentless blur. The vocals are a subsonic demonic gurgle, barking, howling, growling and mewling, but again, so buried in fuzz and hiss, it just sounds like another layer of black buzz. The melodies are dark and twisted, like some vile black weed, the production is dense and thick, the sound druggy and seasick, warped and warbly, the whole thing sounding a little like some cross breeding experiment gone wrong. Gorguts, Wold, Black Flag, Faxed Head, all melted down and heated up and then poured into your cd player, a similarly noxious downtuned buzz oozes from your speakers, a distillation of Portal's convoluted and cracked take on death metal, a sound black enough to be black metal, noisy enough to be noise, and fucked up enough to be, well to be anything this fucked up sounding.
Strange swaths of synth, atonal detuned guitars, simple industrial plods, monstrous slow motion doom, blasts of speaker shredding ultranoise, billowing black ambience all pepper the proceedings, but at its heart, the sound of Outre is most definitely blasting brutal death metal, but the sort of death metal we always wanna hear, warped and twisted and damaged and filthy and crusty and noisy and buzzing and blackened and doomy and completely fucked.
Packaged in a super deluxe mini gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeve, and including super intense band photos, each band member (Aphotic Mote, The Curator and Horror Illogium) wearing a black hood (or what appears to be a mangled witches hat pulled all the way over the face), all standing in front of an old piano, each photo faded and sepia tone, one wielding a violin, the other clutching what appears to be the horn from a Victrola, the third empty handed, but with a noose hanging from his neck. Weird.
MPEG Stream: "Abysmill"
MPEG Stream: "Heirships"
MPEG Stream: "Sourlows"

PROCYON-X The Ghost Of Orion (Paradigms) cd 12.98
Originally self released as an ultra-limited cd-r, The Ghost Of Orion, a dreamy slab of haunting spaced out isolationist sound from Dutch dark ambient explorer Procyon-X, gets a proper expanded releases by the fine folks at UK label Paradigms (one of two new Paradigms releases this time around, the other by AQ faves Gnaw Their Tongues, see elsewhere on this list).
Four tracks, clocking in at just under a half hour, each of these mini epics is super evocative, and could very well have drifted on forever. Long spiraling loops of abstract melody uncoiling in weightless slow motion, glimmering and glistening in the glow of distant stars, haunting transmissions from some far away alien civilization, intercepted and spread out like a mysterious sonic map. The sound is expansive and immense, deep resonant smears, wooshing synthesizers, glittering clouds of effects, in the distance, dark sonic swells, ominous and mesmerizing.
Minimal and skeletal dronemusic, with brief sections bordering on the lush, abstract and delicate, very much like drifting alone, surrounded by blackness, millions of miles from home. Total seventies ambient kraut worship for sure, with a bit of Goblin creepiness mixed in. Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, Neptune Towers, Heldon, Eno, you get the drift, but Procyon-X took that krauty ambience and launched it into the deepest regions of the cosmos, into another galaxy, these are the transmissions sent back hundreds of years later. Mysterious and beautiful.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Housed in a white dvd case, with full color artwork and printed heavy paper insert.
MPEG Stream: "Opening Of The Void"
MPEG Stream: "The Ghost Of Orion"

PRURIENT Worm In The Apple (Hospital) 7" 5.98
As most of you well know by now, we're not that into straight up NOISE music. Thus we never really got into Prurient, until the Black Vase record. There was just something about that disc that spun our heads around, and had us yearning for more noise. Other than a few splits we haven't heard too much from Prurient (aka Dominick Fernow, who runs Hospital Productions as well as playing in Ash Pool and the Vegas Martyrs) since then, but this here brand new 7" ep just showed up and it's seriously damaged and brilliant, but maybe not in the way you might think.
The A side begins just how you'd expect, a caustic vitriolic wall of sound, mostly vocals, which immediately sounds like just another dense slab of speaker shredding ultranoise, that is until the vocals drop out, and reveal what is lurking underneath. The vocals are so in the red and blown out that they swallow everything within earshot, so when they pull back, they reveal a crumbling soundscape of smeared melodies and blurred ambience, still noisy for sure, but also haunting and abstract, with fucked samples a bits of dialogue, and the occasional brief blast of white noise fury.
The flipside is even weirder. Some sort of distorted synthpop, like Depeche Mode through a set of blown speakers, then some super creepy processed vocals come in, and the track devolves into another hazy and distorted stretch of obscured beauty, with a fucked up lopped low end outro. Maybe the 'nicest' thing we've heard from Prurient. Probably not noisy enough for the noise crowd, but definitely weird enough that it might just appeal to the Hecker / Fennesz blurred sound crowd, if they can handle a bit of brutality with their beauty...

PTOLEMAIC TERRASCOPE issue #36 mag + cd 9.98
Yay! Ptolemaic Terrascope is back! The newest incarnation of this venerable fanzine (or "illustrated occasional") devoted to the underground folk, psych, and otherwise acid-laced, pagan, pastoral musics of the past and present is published right here in the Bay Area, and thus there's a bit more of a San Fran bent to this issue, with a cover pic featuring quite a few faces we recognize both as musicians and as customers here at Aquarius.
Taking over the reigns from the UK crew (Phil McMullen et. al.) who originated the Ptolemaic Terrascope institution back in the '80s (more than a 'zine, PT has spawned a series of "Terrastock" festivals and helped nurture a whole scene of Terrastockian bands and fans, y'know), is new editor/publisher Pat Thomas, a longtime PT writer, reissue record label guy, and musician himself.
Yes, we'd say Pat's off to a good start with this issue, just look at it: it's got a glossy, full-color cover and perfect binding, a first for the PT. More importantly, what's inside lives up to the PT tradition: interviews with the likes of Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, Vashti Bunyan, Colleen, Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), and Ron Ashton (The Stooges), amongst much else. Also Devendra Banhart is subjected to a blindfold test on British Folk Rock, a la The Wire's "Invisible Jukebox" feature. And there's lots of reviews of course too. Former editor Phil McMullen also makes an appearance, with a column offering his blessings to Pat and talking about what he's up to now himself (including preparing for the upcoming Terrastock 7, to be held in Louisville, KY in 2008).
Oh, and that's not all, you also get a free 20 song cd compilation with rare and/or unreleased material from the likes of Six Organs, Barbara Manning, Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, Kendra Smith, Doug Yule, Fern Knight, Steve Wynn, Ruthann Friedmann, Sean Smith, Colossal Yes, Pat Thomas, and more!

PUSSYGUTT Sea Of Sand (Olde English Spelling Bee) 2lp 29.00
A mysterious duo from Idaho, here expanded to a trio, offer up 4 sidelong tracks of damaged and mysterious outsider doomdrone on the always reliable Olde English Spelling Bee label. We weren't too sure what to expect, and we missed their performance here a few months back unfortunately, but just have a gander at the list of instruments: bass, violin, crystal goblet, tractor, forest samples, clay pots, tubular bells, organ, synth, gong, drums, bowed cymbals, guitar, sound manipulations, electronics, LEAD guitar, amplifiers and feedback. Those last few are your first clue that this isn't just any old drone record. Although the first few minutes had us fooled. A gorgeous expanse of shimmering low end, glistening harmonics, and a soft distant doomic plod, little bits of static and hiss, a slow slithering blackness, which eventually builds to a stumbling groovy doom jam, with big boomy practice space drums, some seriously downtuned riffage and thick swirls of Hawkwind-ed FX, that lopes and lurches until it fades out into a long slowly unwinding smear of softly buzzing bass.
The second side is a sprawling heavy industrial soundscape of collaged sounds, wind, that tractor mentioned above, all looped and layered, clanging percussion, everything constantly shifting and changing shape, a dark meandering journey through a black forest of sound, a bit like Nurse With Wound meets Wolf Eyes, a chunk of surreal dark ambience, haunting and ominous and while not heavy per se, still distinctly doomy...
The second lp begins with creepy gypsy violins (one of the band members is a classically trained violinist) over a back drop of creaks and moans, a sort of haunted house mood music, beneath abstract riff fragments and random bits of effects building into a slowcore crawl, a mellow doom, each note ringing out and drifting off before the next one hits. Doomy, funereal, soft focus, with those strings a constant presence, super dark and emotional, adding a weirdly cinematic element to Pussygutt's sound.
The final side is another doomy crawl, distant drums, massive slow motion slabs of downtuned guitar, very simple and hypnotic, dark and creepy, not so much heavy as moody and intense, finishing off with a harrowing Hitchcockian string outro which gives way to the sounds of the forest, birds and wildlife, all coming to life beneath the full moon...
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES. Each one hand-assembled copies. Packaged in heavy-duty gatefold sleeves with four spraymounted panels that were custom offset-printed on silver stock with two coats of black ink for extra darkness, so much black ink in fact that, it almost makes your eyes water. Maybe a few huffs inside the sleeve will better prepare you for the mind altering weirdness inside...

PYLON Gyrate Plus (DFA) cd 14.98
DFA delves into the past to resurrect a lesser known American post-punk classic, the debut of Athens, Georgia scene-makers Pylon. Less famous than their fellow Athens compatriots, The B-52's or R.E.M., these four University of Georgia art students nevertheless mined a powerful influence. With their jangly angular art pop with dub influences and yelping female vocals, Pylon felt more in line with British bands Gang of Four and Delta 5, than the sixties/eighties retro of the B-52's or R.E.M.'s mumbling verbosity. Gyrate Plus collects their first album and singles from 1980 and listening to it now, it's surprising how timeless it feels, coming across as a precursor to bands like The Yeah Yeah Yeah's and The Gossip. So Good!!
MPEG Stream: "Cool"
MPEG Stream: "Danger!!"

QUETZOLCOATL Living (Leaf Trail) cd-r 11.98
Quickly becoming our go to guy for late night dreamy drones, Tim Hurley, aka Quetzolcoatl, offers up another gorgeous collection of slow burning drifters. Based in Ireland, and also doing time in modern day Taj Mahal Travellers Bonecloud, Hurley's Quetzolcoatl is one of the most consistently satisfying crafters of ethereal dronemusic going these days. Which is definitely saying a whole lot. This latest suite of untitled songs are all drawn from bits of piano, both short and long recorded over the span of several years, although except for a few places here and there you'd be hard pressed to pick out actual piano, instead the sounds have been blurred and smeared, twisted and layered, mixed with other sounds, vocals, field recordings, everything a gorgeously whirling collage of sonic ideas, that Hurley is somehow able to alchemically mold into utterly moving soundscapes, looped and hypnotic, long drawn out stretches of melodic whir, tinkling harmonics, slow smoldering chords pulled apart into long looping notes, stretched out over wide expanses of dark shimmer. Not sure what else to say other than this is absolutely lovely. And thus obviously totally recommended. And you probably couldn't get a better endorsement than the fact that the writer of this review has fallen asleep to this disc the last three nights in a row...
SUPER LIMITED as always. Packaged in an oversized sleeve with a printed insert, and the disc face is hand painted in swirly water colors.
MPEG Stream: "Living I"
MPEG Stream: "Living II"

SIGNAL Robotron (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
The latest chunk of clinical otherworldly, stark white dancefloor anti-funk from the always amazing Raster-Noton label comes from Signal, who we haven't heard from in ages, a sort of modern minimalist supergroup, featuring Frank Bretschneider (Komet), Olaf Bender (Byetone) and label head Carsten Nicolai (aka Noto), and you might think with that many cooks in the sonic kitchen, the result would be dense and messy and chaotic, but anyone even slightly familiar with these guys and this label know that nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, this is just as minimal and stripped down as anything we've heard from any of these guysŠ
But like much of the later Raster-Noton releases, the label's Ikeda-ish trademark super spare high end low end sine wave click and buzz has been tempered with bits of melody, subtle hints of groove, the result a strange alien robot dancemusic.
Beginning with a thick swirl of buzzing synth, almost like an electronic SUNNO))), the buzz quickly gives way to a glorious minimal skeletal funkiness. Where Chain Reaction took minimalism into a fuzzy, grungy underworld and wrapped it in murk and whir, these guys lay the whole thing out in a bright white space, all metallic edges and sanitized surfaces, a gloriously machinelike and propulsive future funk abstraction of techno created in some alien vacuum. The best part about this Signal disc is that in addition to all the stark minimalism and clipped robotic beats, they've also introduced some, well, maybe 'dirty sounds' might be the best way to describe them in this context, some air conditioner hum, some spurts of Geiger counter glitch, bits of blurry fuzz, smears of distortion and crumbling effects, some low end buzz that is chopped up into what almost sounds like metallic riffing. Rather than sounding out of place, they simply add more texture, more grit, make the music sound slightly more human and less alien, they also serve to highlight just how clinical and awesomely austere the beats and sounds are when those bits of buzz and hum drop out, a dramatic sonic shift that almost makes your ears pop. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Ermafa"
MPEG Stream: "Naplafa"
MPEG Stream: "Robotron"

SNARES (VENETIAN SNARES) Sabbath Dubs (Kriss) 10" 12.98
It's pretty impossible to argue with a dubstep version of Black Sabbath, especially when it sounds this good. Who would have thought that Sabbath would sound so right all dubbed out and slowed down? Venetian Snares, that's who. And on this super limited 10", there's no skitter or drill and bass, nope, just pure, simple bass heavy dubstep, wrapped around two classic Sabbath tracks. It sounds so goddamn good it's another one of those records that just makes us wonder why there aren't any bands who actually sound like this?!?
The A side is all slithery echoey beats, dubbed out and laid back, huge low end throbs, buzzing bass lines, Ozzy's reverbed wail draped over the top, a strangely stoned and FX doused version of "Black Sabbath", the guitars looped and stretched out, that tolling church bell all chopped up and sent spinning into the darkness, like a dubby snare, the whole thing just so dark and moody and groovy and amazing sounding.
The flip side starts off sounding like some straight up dubstep, blissed out and druggy, fuzzy and distorted, skeletal and bass heavy until the vocals kick in, and suddenly it's some fucked up and dubbed out take on "Electric Funeral". An absolute and total dancefloor destroyer for sure. Even the metal head wallflowers are tapping their feet and subtly banging their heads...
Pressed on marbled green vinyl, housed in a plain black sleeve, and pretty ridiculously limited.

SPEKTR No Longer Human Senses (aka Et Fugit Interea) (Panik Terror Musik) lp 22.00
Available on vinyl for the first time, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Packaged in a super thick, super striking gatefold sleeve, all super minimal grey on black, and pressed on amazing, white, black and gray splatter vinyl! LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!
Here's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem:
Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite fucked up black metal records ever!
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"
MPEG Stream: "IV"

SUN I'll Be The Same (Staubgold) cd 15.98
The sun is warm, the sun lights the way, the sun brings life... what's in a name? Well, it's certainly no misnomer for this group. It'll Be The Same is the second album from Sun, not to be confused with SUNNO))), although these guys are also a duo (Oren Ambarchi and Chris Townsend) and half of 'em (Mr. Ambarchi) have collaborated with SUNNO))) in the past. This Sun isn't from Southern Lord, but from the southern hemisphere (Australia), and play purely pop music, slow and soft and hushed but nothing doomy or blackened at all... some gentle droniness certainly does creep in, experimental glitch techniques n' textures that are of course what we might expect from Oren Ambarchi, who after all is known for solo albums along those lines (in fact, there's a great new one by him, actually on Southern Lord, reviewed on this list too). There are layers of static and field recordings (Townsend's children's voices, perhaps?) that along with Oren and Chris's own voices and guitar strums are formed into six moodily relaxed, truly sun-dappled, electro-acoustic folky-pop songs... a calm, cryptically detailed setting for lovely, wistful vocals that remind us of the Skygreen Leopards' Glenn Donaldson and Richard Youngs.
We loved Sun's first self-titled album (and extra disc of experimental remixes) back in 2003, and are happy to finally hear this excellent follow-up!
MPEG Stream: "Mosquito"
MPEG Stream: "Help Yerself"

SUN CITY GIRLS Juggernaut (Abduction) cd 16.98
Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls has been the curator of many of the finest Ennio Morricone collections, including the brilliant compilation on Ipecac Crime & Dissonance, despite the John Zorn written liner notes that seemed to suggest that Mike Patton had done the compiling. Needless to say, it makes a lot of sense for the Sun City Girls to find their way into the realm of the soundtrack, given Alan Bishop's love of Morricone; and Juggernaut is one of those Sun City Girls soundtracks. While this soundtrack was originally released on vinyl through Abduction back in 1994, the corresponding film by Mark Roman Bodnar and Kyrill Kazemirovitch Protsenko had never been officially released. That said, it did make an appearance at an Italian film festival in 1997; so, it probably is an actual film, and not some fiction propagated as a strange in-joke by the Sun City Girls. But then again...
Anyway, Juggernaut is a pretty good Sun City Girls album. The band had always been a difficult proposition, as they had thrown every idea (from the great notions of smashing Southeast Asian pop melodies with SoCal skate punk energy to the better-in-theory modes of junkyard gamelan via free jazz) at the audience and let them sort out the mess. Juggernaut follows suit, as an entirely instrumental album with the highlights giving nods to the classic SCG album Torch of the Mystics through lysergic guitar solos splattered across acid-punk jams that could easily ground the work of early Flaming Lips or Thinking Fellers, if those bands were way more fucked up. The semi-focused, stoned ritualism that makes up the rest of the album could have had some atmospheric purpose in the original film although they're not out of character for any given Sun City Girls album.
MPEG Stream: "Gravelhead"
MPEG Stream: "Spatial Retreat"
MPEG Stream: "Among All Flat"

SUN CITY GIRLS Piasa... Devourer Of Men (Abduction) cd 16.98
So the story goes that a young Italian director named Antonio Pomola got in touch with the Sun City Girls in 1993 to score a film about a giant pre-historic flying reptile terrorizing a 19th Century Native American tribe somewhere in the Midwest. According to the Girls, the film was never completed; and the soundtrack is the only document from the film's creative genesis. There doesn't appear to be any further information about the career or even existence to this Pomola character, beyond the fact that the Sun City Girls composed this soundtrack of fragmented interludes, raga instrumentals, and weirdo atmospherics. Needless to say, the Girls self-released this soundtrack in 1994 on vinyl; only to have it disappear from circulation in quick fashion.
Jump a dozen years into the future, and the soundtrack is available again at last with a cd pressing. Composed immediately after their Juggernaut soundtrack (reviewed elsewhere on this list), the Sun City Girls offered a series of edited fragments, which mostly touch on a psychedelic ritualism which foreshadows the Finnish free-folk splatter of Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat, and Kuupuu. Faux-indian raga blues drifts into lumbering plods for plenty of chicken scratch guitar noodles, free-jazz drum stumblings, and glossalaic vocals. At times, the Bishop brothers and Charlie Gocher tease us with a glimpse of their mutant songwriting talents; but more often than not, it's sinister atmospheres for gongs, Tibetan horns, and amorphous guitar pluckery.
MPEG Stream: "Thunderbird"
MPEG Stream: "Wingspan Eclipse Of The Moon"

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN Fire Escape (Smalltown Supersound) cd 17.98
If you've kept up with the prolific and often very limited and hard to track down back catalog of Sunburned Hand Of The Man you'll know that they're always eager to explore new territory and widen their musical horizons. But even so, we still think you'll be thrown for a loop, in the best possible way. In fact this disc has even won over a few of us here who had always been on the fence with these Sunburned fellas in the past.
What's important to know about Fire Escape is that it's just as much of a Four Tet record as it is a Sunburned Hand Of The Man record. Four Tet and Sunburned!? Huh! What?! Sometimes the seemingly oddest pairings produce the most creative and unexpected results. And wow, we've totally been swept away by the magic these two forces have created, each contributing the best of of their respected, yet disparate qualities.
Sunburned got to do what they do, improvising and travelling in all their drugged out and mystifying glory, while Four Tet then collected hours upon hours of their recordings and worked his own magic on them to create a final product that might be the most realized, colorful and immediate Sunburned record yet.
From the opening track, which had us all thinking of 23 Skiddo in all the best ways, and throughout the entire album, you get to hear a band who pride themselves on their improv abilities but with the much more careful and deliberate and musically astute filter of Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, who has proven over the years that he not only makes really great music, but that he understands and appreciates great music in so many shapes and varieties. It's almost as if his recent collaborations with free jazz legend Steve Reid opened him up to the possibility and power of improvisation while still allowing him to retain the great sensitivity to sound that his made him one of the most compelling musicians to emerge out of the electronic scene in the last decade.
It's so exciting and exhilarating to see this kind of creative energy exchanged and brought together by folks from two seemingly different scenes, sharing the common thread of aiming to make transcendental music that transports you to different dimensions and offers up all kinds of unexpected twists and turns. After their recent collaboration with Circle and this totally successful meeting of musical minds with Four Tet we have to say we are loving the collaborative spirit of Sunburned Hand Of The Man more than ever, and while there was all kinds of hype surrounding SHOTM a few years ago, we are happy to report that they just might be only just reaching their most realized moment right now!
MPEG Stream: "Nice Butterfly Mask"
MPEG Stream: "Fire Escape"

TALIBAM! Ordination Of The Globetrotting Conscripts (Azul Discografica) cd 12.98
Besides having one of the best band names ever (exclamation point mandatory!) this trio of noisemaking jazz dissidents and post rock outcasts create what in most cases is practically impossible, a noisy record, heck, a NOISE record, that manages to be totally listenable. And we're not talking listenable like 'on the radio' or 'your Mom might like it', no, your Mom would NOT like this, and the only time you'd hear this on the radio is after a nuclear holocaust, when some survivors hole up in an abandoned radio station, only to realize the transmitter still works, and what better way to fight back against the invaders, than by BLOWING THEIR FUCKING EARDRUMS OUT!
No, this is some unholy spawn of the freest jazz and the most tangled and aggressive of math rocks. Due in no small part to the man behind the drums, Kevin Shea, formerly of Coptic Light and Storm And Stress, although his cohorts aren't so shabby either, Matt Mottel on synth and Ed Bear on sax. Add in some electronics, some banjo, even a little 'singing'. Then toss in a handful of beehives, a bunch of smashed and scratched free jazz records, a couple tapes of aborted Don Cab practice sessions, a few Marshall stacks, wrap the whole thing in raw meat and throw it into the middle of a pack of wild dogs and record the result.
There are a bunch of guests this time around too, contributing stuff like bass, trumpet, piano, upright bass, bass trombone as well as some less recognizable instruments: diddley-bo, mouth-bow, twanger and of course wonder metal. Which makes the sound even more thick and intense and seriously HEAVY. The synth is everywhere, and sounds like one of the Wolf Eyes guys was responsible for its upkeep, a snarling, crackling, grinding spewer of fuzz and buzz and smears of new wave blur, adding tons of texture and melody to proceedings, the sax is of course skronky, but isn't everywhere, but what is everywhere is drums. It's exhausting just listening to Shea spew beats everywhere, it's like a 47 minute drum solo, deftly arranged into convoluted rhythms, and dizzying flurries of fills, but its the drums that propel the songs, all the melodies and notes, textures and tones, are hung on, wrapped around, or just plain tangled up in the confusional and relentless rhythmic onslaught.
There are moments where the chaos and intensity abate just a bit, the twisted, FUCKED UP klezmer of "Lunch Break at Naan", with a horrifying break in the middle with what sounds like scraped strings or a squealing pig, the long slow burn of "A Petroglyphic Massacre", and brief little breathers within the songs, but for the most part, Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts is a bit like sitting in a cement mixer full of ball bearings, set to music.
But then there's the epic 13 minute finale, "The Spectre of Water Wars", maybe the most 'musical' of the bunch, where the synth takes center stage, even nudging the omnipresent drums out of the spotlight, spewing thick swaths of creepy Goblin-esque whir, haunting and weirdly new wave, but super rocking at the same time, crumbling and distorted, twisted and freaked out, a propulsive alien krautrock. Imagine a horror movie in which Six Finger Satellite were dosed and lobotomized and then let loose in guitar center, to fight off a twisted psycho killer with only the instruments on hand. Might sound something like this. Seriously scary, way fucked up, but wild and amazing and weirdly sort of fun too.
MPEG Stream: "Ordination Of The Globetrotting Conscripts"
MPEG Stream: "Guns And Butter"
MPEG Stream: "Revolutionary Bummer Weed And The Syncretic Narcotraffickers"

TONIUTTI, GIANCARLO Ura Itam Taala' Momojmuj Lowajamuj Cooconaja (Ferns) 3" cd 9.98
No one will ever accuse Giancarlo Toniutti of releasing too much music into the world. It has literally been ten years since Toniutti has released any recordings outside of a very rare compilation track here or there. That said, Toniutti is an undeniably intriguing sound artist, who has deeply immersed himself into obscure forms of ethnomusicology and linguistic study, all the while keeping a finely tuned ear to the habits of vangarde composition. His earliest recordings emerged out of the Italian power electronics community of the early '80s whose most well known practitioner was Maurizio Bianchi. Like Bianchi, Toniutti put out a handful of recordings on the seminal British noise label Broken Flag. While bracing, complex, and adventurous in its crunched tape manipulations and sinister synthesis, Toniutti's work stood apart from the signature Broken Flag arc of transgressive noise, due to Toniutti's intellectual rigor. It was this rigor that brought Toniutti to pursue his collaborations with Andrew Chalk and Conrad Schnitzler, and it was probably this rigor that caused the prolonged length between recordings over the past decade.
So, the 20 minute composition that Toniutti produced for Ferns impressive series of 3" discs has been granted a Hopi Indian title based on an ancient song dealing with cunnilingus and bedbugs. I'm sure that Giancarlo has a very particular reason for placing such a text alongside this warbling set of mutated field recordings; but as of yet, it remains something of a mystery. This composition does enjoy a hermetic quality, in spite of Toniutti's explanation that he derived all of the sounds from a field recording he made in Italy involving a mountain, a 10ft tall cross, a metal pylon, and a temple bell. Out of that environment and those objects, Toniutti arrives at a record that might appear somewhat meditative at first, with its constant wash of low frequencies; but upon deeper investigations into the piece, he reveals queasy, off-kilter tonalities which gently vibrate against each other, bristling with quiet textures. His is a pretty unique sound, somewhat like the early electronic work of Xenakis with the diminutive sensibilities of early Bernhard Gunter. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Ura Itam Taala' Momojmuj Lowajamuj Cooconaja"

TOROIDH The Final Testament (Eternal Pride) cd 15.98
It's getting harder and harder to keep up with the many sides of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk. He may be perhaps best known for his blackened ambient combo MZ412, but that's just the beginning. He's released tons of stuff under his own name, sometimes collaborating with his former MZ412 partner-in-noise Drakh for a few records (including the recent Betrayal Of Light album on tUMULt). Then there's his militaristic folk combo Folkstorm, his damaged blackened noise outfit Goatvargr, his blacknoize black metal band Vargr (see elsewhere on this list) his full on noise group Hydra Head 13, and of course, quite possibly our favorite side of this sonic Renaissance man, the epic historical ambience of Toroidh. A sonic trip through the history of the world, told through its wars and atrocities. Some heavy stuff for sure, but the music is suitably powerful, so much so that much of Toroidh plays out like some PBS documentary set to music, heart wrenching at moments, dark and ominous at others, but always completely enthralling.
Testament was originally released on Nordvargr's own 205 Recordings label back in 2003, but has been resurrected here with two bonus tracks as The Final Testament. Split into two lengthy movements, Testament is sweeping and epic, haunting and mysterious, dense and multilayered. Militaristic marches, fanfares and anthems, woven into long stretches of rumbling drone, strident neo folk, strummed acoustic guitars, and swooning synths, Teutonic industrial pummel, ominous martial drumming, thick swaths of black ambience, snippets of operas, soaring super dramatic strings, tolling bells, murky expanses of low end whir, soaring strings and soundtrack like mood music, chanting monk-like vocals, all woven around bits of speeches, radio broadcasts and other wartime soundbites, the whole thing buried beneath a black sonic pall, like thick smoke over a burning city.
The bonus tracks are brief, and are more like a sort of sonic addendum, the first track "The Final Testament", is a propulsive industrial dirge, all tribal drums and thick serpentine synths, deep rumbling low end and tinkling percussion, very neo-folk martial industrial, while the final track, "Hail Wermland II", is a recording of an old scratchy dusty '78, a mournful lament, proud, deep, crooned vocals, and simple minor key melodies, all wrapped in staticky crackle and pop, bookended by brief smears of smoldering drone. So good.
Remastered, and with all new artwork, an eight page booklet with liner notes and lots of appropriately teutonic images.
MPEG Stream: "Part I"
MPEG Stream: "Part II"

TRICLOPS! Cafeteria Brutalia (Sick Room) cd ep 11.98
A savage proggytrippypunkasfuck megablast in the form of Triclops!' Cafeteria Brutalia ep. This four song rager is the perfect blend of post-Jesus Lizardy mathy fucked up punk and spacey effects-riddled shreddyness. Hailing from right here in the bay area, Triclops! featuring John Geek From local punk heros The Fleshies on vocals, piece together a super interesting combination of weird rock elements. One moment angular and furious, while another blissy and tripped the hell out, and still at another just plain super rocking! The vocals are processed and effected, the guitar is furious and fierce, and the rythym section is just about as tight as can be, churrning out an ever-changing, multi-metric pummelfest of pure rock brutality. All the songs on this way too short document are great, to be sure, but the ONE for us is definetly the 10 plus minute epic, "Bug Bomb". Within this track, all the disparate elements that makes this band awesome perfectly coalesce. Super proggy acid-punk to begin with, breaking down into some suprisingly melodic pop, before getting heavy and crazy to round it out. Excellent! Triclops! are also one of the best local live acts we have here in SF, and they seem to play all the rad shows around these parts. In fact, most of us discovered them earlier this month at the killer Circle show at Bottom Of The Hill, which they opened. All in all, a really great ep! For anyone thats been missing that old 90's Touch and Go / Amrep sound, or people that just love proggy flipped out PUNK RAWK, this is definetly recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Bug Bomb"
RealAudio clip: "Salton"

TRICLOPS! Cafeteria Brutalia (Sick Room) picture disc 12" 14.98
A savage proggytrippypunkasfuck megablast in the form of Triclops!' Cafeteria Brutalia ep. This four song rager is the perfect blend of post-Jesus Lizardy mathy fucked up punk and spacey effects-riddled shreddyness. Hailing from right here in the bay area, Triclops! featuring John Geek From local punk heros The Fleshies on vocals, piece together a super interesting combination of weird rock elements. One moment angular and furious, while another blissy and tripped the hell out, and still at another just plain super rocking! The vocals are processed and effected, the guitar is furious and fierce, and the rythym section is just about as tight as can be, churrning out an ever-changing, multi-metric pummelfest of pure rock brutality. All the songs on this way too short document are great, to be sure, but the ONE for us is definetly the 10 plus minute epic, "Bug Bomb". Within this track, all the disparate elements that makes this band awesome perfectly coalesce. Super proggy acid-punk to begin with, breaking down into some suprisingly melodic pop, before getting heavy and crazy to round it out. Excellent! Triclops! are also one of the best local live acts we have here in SF, and they seem to play all the rad shows around these parts. In fact, most of us discovered them earlier this month at the killer Circle show at Bottom Of The Hill, which they opened. All in all, a really great ep! For anyone thats been missing that old 90's Touch and Go / Amrep sound, or people that just love proggy flipped out PUNK RAWK, this is definetly recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Bug Bomb"
RealAudio clip: "Salton"

TUNNELS Cluster Of Rainbows For The Angel Who Announces The End Of Time (JK Tapes) cd-r 7.98
Latest from this one man Portland based psychedelic drone outfit, we blew through the last two cd-r releases (we've got three others in stock we've yet to review, check the in stock not yet reviewed section of this list if you want to buy any of those) and this is the latest, a super micro pressing of only 50 copies, so we won't bother to say too much, as from past experience we know there are WAY more psychdrone obsessives than we got copies of this disc.
Way more active than the first Tunnels cd we listed, and much more varied than the second, Cluster of Rainbows starts at a similar sonic starting point, a slow burning, near static wash of rumbling whirs and distant low end moan, a washed out expanse of shimmering drone, but now there are vocals, disembodied and drifting, chant-like, adding a sort of space rock vibe. The first half of this nearly hour long track is a series of variations on that initial spaced out cosmic drone, various timbres of buzz, layers of whirring sound, chiming harmonics and glistening bell-like tones, all woven into a constantly fluctuating sea of black ambience, the real surprise comes about 30 minutes in, when all of a sudden an acoustic guitar surfaces, gently strummed, delicately picked, a haunting little chunk of Appalachia draped over the smoldering low end, both building in intensity, before fading into a pulsing stream of crackling blackened low end, warm melodic swells, and finishing off with several minutes of near silence, and barely audible conversation.
Packaged in cool dvd style square plastic digipaks, with photocopied covers, and an insert, hand numbered.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! We got half the pressing, after that, these are gone for good.
MPEG Stream: "Cluster Of Rainbows For The Angel Who Announces The End Of Time (excerpt)"

V/A Ethnic Minority Music Of North Vietnam (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
If the usual, corporate "world music" recording is intended for the pleasure and edification of "armchair travellers" who appreciate the comforts of said armchair and, if actually travelling, would prefer the expensive luxuries of Westernized hotels and guided tours in air conditioned buses, then "world music" as documented by the Sun City Girls affiliated Sublime Frequencies field recordings label is for armchair travellers who want to know what it would sound like if they and their armchair were to be picked up, packed into a crate, shipped on the slow boat TO China or wherever, and dumped into the back alleys of a far off land to fend for themselves. No guided tour, more like bumming around amid the teeming human cultures of the third world, ears open to new experiences, to both musical and environmental sounds.
For release number thirty-something in their series, Sublime Frequencies visits North Vietnam, bringing back 15 tracks of wailing horns, keening vocals, twanging Jews harps, wheezing bamboo mouth-organs, and and more, including the sounds of a reed instrument, the piem zat, a sort of oboe played with a circular breathing technique. Singing styles are unique too, as with the layered female chorus on track 10 for instance, where the singers achieve a kind a delay effect, in a style called bao zoo.
The liner notes by recordist/compiler Lauren Jenneau help to explain the musical traditions of the various ethnic minority groups he's encountered here, and how they figure into both their everyday and spiritual lives. As usual with Sublime Frequencies stuff, pretty much a must-have if you want to make your armchair a much more "exotic" place in which to recline... or to inspire you to get off your ass, quit your job and take off on that backpacking trip to South East Asia you've always wanted to take...
MPEG Stream: "track 4: Chungja, jews harp..."
MPEG Stream: "track 7: kheng, mouth organ..."
MPEG Stream: "track 10: Bao zoo..."

V/A Ethnic Minority Music Of Southern Laos (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
Yet another fantastic document from Sublime Frequencies, the avant world music label run by the Sun City Girls, and home to now dozens of releases, all of them fascinating and fantastic. Proving once again that we ain't got nothing on the rest of the world in terms of unique sounds and amazing musics. Ethnic Minority Music Of Southern Laos, is one of two new discs in Sublime Frequencies' series of documents exploring the rich musical histories of displaced minorities in various regions of Southeast Asia. This volume follows the Northeast Cambodia installment in exploring the music of Cambodia, this disc focusing on two distinct musical styles, one incorporating various gongs, the other involving different sorts of mouth harps. As always, the liner notes are dense and informative, but here they are a little bit more difficult to summarize than on past discs, so we'll focus more on the sounds than the story.
All of these tracks were culled from a super limited 4cd set released a few years back, and offer a varied and completely mindblowing sampling of the sounds of musicians in and around Laos, groups of people forced to move from their mountainous villages into temporary and makeshift villages, where all of the things that nature supplied in the mountains (food, water, protection) have now become scarce. And obviously, as with all cultures, the music and art represents the huge shifts and dramatic changes of a people, political, personal, love, worry, sadness, sorrow, death, passion, birth... The music here is just so intense and emotional and definitely reflects the transition and the day to day struggle to just live life.
As mentioned above, there are two distinct musics, the first is based mostly on gongs, with various bits of percussion, and the sound is amazing. Rich and resonant, totally hypnotic and rhythmic, often times just a single gong, but the magic of the music is in the patterns and the subtle overtones, so simple yet so subtly complex, the various subtleties unfold as the tracks progress, not hard to imagine (or hope) that these tracks could go on for hours...
Other tracks are more complex, with deep gongs creating a shimmering backdrop, for clattery cymbals and simple propulsive drumming, a sound that isn't all that different in places than some of the freaky forest folk from Finland we dig so much, or the stoned rhythmic jams of groups like the No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand Of The Man. The sounds of the various gongs are so different, some are low and rumbling, others are high pitched and sharp, and lots of shades in between, muted and muffled or allowed to ring out, struck with something soft or with wood or other metal, the various shades are deftly woven into gorgeous stretches of rhythm and melody.
The other music is based on various mouth harps, and the sound of those harps is remarkable, strange complex chords, complicated alien timbres, wheezing and whirring, lots of overlapping melodies, and various tones all tangled up, a rich bed beneath deep rich crooning, while in the background can be heard chirping birds, crowing roosters, babies crying, many of the tracks pick up random conversations, from the players, or passersby. One of the most amazing organ track is "Jeu Phawn Peng Gawng Ploung Ken" featuring an organ made from 10 bamboo tubes and a single gong. The melody is haunting and minor key, looped and so hypnotic, while two vocalists take turns singing, their voices alternatingly raw and raspy, soaring and clear, one ragged and forlorn, the other wailing and sorrowful, and like the other tracks, you can hear coughing, breathing, feet shuffling in the background, but the music is so dark, and so intense, it's easy to get completely lost.
And while the record is mostly evenly split between the mouth harp tracks and the gong tracks, there are a handful of tracks that don't fit in either camp, some strummy and folky, others abstract and percussive. One of those tracks we love, one that should have been 10 minutes long instead of 24 seconds is "Reum Bang" a killer riff, played on a single string bowed instrument, the sound so primal and raw, the string all muted and stiff, like a distorted rubber band guitar or something, hard not to imagine the drums kicking in and it turning into some strange psychedelic jam.
The whole disc is fantastic, every time a new Sublime Frequencies disc arrives, we find ourselves wanting to proclaim it the best one yet, but all it takes is for us to go back and listen to any of the old ones, for us to realize that, no, THAT one is the best one yet. Can't think of a better recommendation for this disc, and for every disc in the series...
MPEG Stream: "Khen Le Molam"
MPEG Stream: "Gaw Gawng Jing Pe Play"
MPEG Stream: "Thalong Tha Ka-Nying"
MPEG Stream: "Reum Beng"
MPEG Stream: "Jeu PhawnPeng Gawng Ploung Ken"

V/A France (Ruralfaune) 4xcd-r 32.00
A quick look at the listing of groups on this super limited triple cd-r collection of songs from France, or about France, or with some sort of French angle, should have most weird music fans freaking out bigtime. All exclusive tracks from tons of AQ faves, including: The Shitty Listener, Quetzolcoatl, Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, Silvester Anfang, Heavy Winged, Tom Carter, The North Sea, Taiga Remains, Ashtray Navigations, Uton, The Futurians, Mike Tamburo, Tanakh, Black Forest Black Sea, Ben Reynolds, Volcano The Bear, 6majik9, CJA, The Stumps, Gregg Kowalsky, Fursaxa, Seht, Valerio Cosi, Fabi Orsi, Birds Of Delay, Bjerga / Iverson, Robert Horton and more more more. 3+ hours of strange and magical sounds from all over the world, but all centered around France. From the ultra lo-fi barely audible pop genius of The Shitty Listener, the gorgeous mournful steel string Appalachian folk of The North Sea, the washed out murky drift of Quetzolcoatl, some super spare solo electric guitar drift from Tom Carter, a bit of haunting high end tribal buzz from Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, some gorgeous shuffle and twang, slither and creep from Silvester Anfang, an epic druggy slowburning NZ-style krautrockish jam from The Stumps, some whispered crystalline shimmer from Fursaxa and we could go on and on. Varied and expansive, from folk to drone to noise to pound to swirl to buzz to twang...
As with all RuralFaune stuff, meticulously packaged, each one hand assembled, three spray painted discs, rouge, blanc and bleu (the colors of the French flag), housed in a cool textured red and orange wallpaper cover, in a thick vinyl sleeve, with a sticker on the front. Inside is a huge fold out, 2 sided poster insert, with liner notes on one side and a painting on the other, as well as a bunch of other inserts, stickers, a tiny square of paper hand numbered and a "piece of blotting paper impregnated with red wine"!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We will NOT be able to get more...
MPEG Stream: THE SHITTY LISTENER "More Now Girl"
MPEG Stream: THE NORTH SEA "Le Dieu Cerf"
MPEG Stream: TOM CARTER "Reynardine"
MPEG Stream: QUETZOLCOATL "I Dive For Secrets In The Gorge Du Verdon"

VARGHKOGHARGASMAL Carved In Trees / Tanz Der Waldteufel (self released) 7" 8.98
While we patiently await the forthcoming full length on tUMULt, here's a little super limited two song teaser from our favorite (and only) practitioners of Wooden Metal. Which is in fact, not really metal at all, instead it's a sort of folky surfy krautrock, that's maybe a bit blackened around the edges, but for the most part is more loping and stumbling than it is blasting and buzzing. And we love it.
So the A side begins like a classic Varghkoghargasmal track, a clean guitar, some strange off kilter drumming, not distorted or heavy, more sort of hypnotic, the surprise here is the band introduces a weirdly math rock element to their sound, with an arpeggiated main riff and some more complex than usual drumming. There's also some slow creep interludes and some awesomely fucked up rhythms. It's almost like blackened surf rock or a drunken Scenic performing an alternate score for Endless Summer. Only here it's Endless Winter.
If the A side was only -sort of- surf rock, the B side quickly takes care of that sort of business, with a blast of full on grin and frosty surf rock, a relentless Dick Dale style riff, some Wipeout drumming, even a weirdly playful super melodic lead over the top. Still all fuzzy and lo-fi with still more strange struggling drumming, but a total surf vibe that is impossible to deny. So what-the-fuck, but so goddamn awesome, this just might be seven inch of the year!
SUPER LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES. Packaged in super swank hand screened two colored sleeves, each hand numbered.

VARGR Wehrmacht Satanas (Eternal Pride Productions) cd 13.98
The Dark Lord Nordvargr has been threatening us with it for ages, but as the sky blackens, and the thunder rolls in, the air grows thick, the ground rumbles and cracks beneath our feet, it is finally here, the debut from Nordvargr's grim black kvlt alter ego Vargr. And just like it says in the liner notes "Vargr plays True Black Nekronoise Metal exclusively."
We sure don't need to tell you how much we love Black Nekronoise Metal (at least now that we know such a thing exists) and there really is no better way to describe this caustic chaotic brutality here, but we'll give it a tryŠ
Wehrmacht Satanas begins with soft swirls of sound and cold winter winds, dark and drifting and very much like much of the stuff we love from Nordvargr, but then super harsh vocals surface from within the muted drone-y backdrop and are promptly swallowed up by a massive wall of some of the harshest, heaviest, crustiest, most distorted and buzz drenched noise metal chaos we have ever heard.
Riffs are more sort of big prickly downtuned smears, drums (are there actually drums in there?) blast like a hailstorm of hiss and buzz, the vocals hissing and howling, all crumbled into a serious ear shredding rrrooooaaaarŠ.
It actually sounds bit like a Darkthrone record on DHR, imagine Alec Empire, had he grown up on Venom And BathoryŠ Primitive, grim black buzz, but completely blown out and in the red. The riffs are looped and cyclical, totally hypnotic, definitely for fans of the ultra raw BM like Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Beherit, AncestorsŠ "The Crushing Weight Of Sin" is about as hooky as it gets, with an actual melody, and plenty of space, in the context of the rest of the record it's practically a pop song. But it's quickly followed up by "Svavelsjalar" a gorgeously thick washed out blast of blackness, everything so blurred and buzzy that it almost sounds like a black metal Fennesz, until about halfway through when the sound lurches suddenly and transforms into what sounds like a radio station between stations, bits of some super lo-fi live Beherit rehearsal coming through between the jagged shards of static and white noise.
And most of the record sort of straddles that line between blasting black metal and buzzing ambience, much of this disc actually, reminds us of weirdo Canadian black metallers Wold, a twisted convoluted blurred black metal warped and wrapped in layer after layer of distortion, but where Wold was all smeared and soft focus, Vargr sharpens the edges, everything black and glinting, sharp and harshŠ
Later in the record, "Total Cryptic Darkness" is everything the title would lead you to believe. Gorgeously thick and viscous black bottomless sonic pit, a near static sea of low end whir and deeeeeeeeeeeeep dark drones. A bunch of the tracks are super intense, almost techno-like looped shards of hissy crunch, almost like black gabber, while others bliss out big time, like a blackened Total, with epic ur-drones, huge swaths of metallic reverberations and warm washed out skree.
The disc finishes off with a Burzum cover, and weirdly enough it's an ambient number, one that Nordvargr, deftly tweaks into something slightly grittier and more bleak, a gorgeous slab of groaning ambient driftŠ very tidal and hypnotic, the perfect aural balm after the skin flaying sonic assault you've just enduredŠ
Noisy, crushing, harsh, grim, nekro, black, brutal and fucked up. Hail the True Black Nekronoise Metal!!!
MPEG Stream: "Infernal Majesty Triumphant"
MPEG Stream: "The Crushing Weight Of Sin"
MPEG Stream: "Svavelsjalar"
MPEG Stream: "Panzerkrieg - Bofors Mit Uns!"

VXPXC Stoned To Death (Leaf Trail) cd-r 11.98
It's getting harder and harder to review that particular strain of music we love so much, the sort of abstract, meandering foresty folk, the drifting drone and shimmering soundscape. As much as we love it, and can't get enough, unless someone comes out with a whole new thesaurus will all new words, we're not sure what's gonna happen. So we were getting ready to introduce this latest disc from VxPxC with the above lament, when they go and do what we wish everyone would do, blindside us with a whole new sound, with all sorts of unexpected sonic weirdness. That's the true test of a great band, not releasing a million cd-r's a month, but to change your sound, make it new and exciting, every disc an adventure, but without losing the essence of what makes your band distinctly your band.
The opening track on this Stoned To Death is maybe the best thing these guys have done, an acid fried blown out guitar crawl, a simple melody, sort of plucked out on an electric guitar, but so caked in grit and buzz and hiss, it sounds like it's being dragged through a pit full of shortwave radios, the sound crumbling to pieces before our very ears, wrapped in halos of glistening harmonics, and muted melody, but the guitars front and center, rotting and gradually turning to dust. The effect is breathtaking, and as far as we're concerned even if there was only one song on here, if it was this one, it would be well worth the price of admission alone. But lucky for us there's 50 more minutes of cracked and stoned sonics, The rest of the disc is just as evocative, maybe not as immediately gut wrenching as the opener but still warped and damaged, gorgeous and haunting, from a weird swoonsome country sprawl, complete with pitch shifted vocals and all sorts of slippery melodies, to lugubrious low end rumbles, so distorted it's almost like the musical version of what you used to do as a kid where you held a note so long and so slow that it started cracking and making weird rhythms (you know what we're talking about), to distorted dubby jams, to weird eighties disco jams by way of Faxed Head... it's all amazing, and once again proves VxPxC might just be the underdog everyone forgets to watch while they gradually and systematically blow all the other home brewed lo-fi cd-r combos out of the water...
SUPER LIMITED of course. Packaged in an oversized handsewn sleeve with a printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Empty Mall"
MPEG Stream: "Lower Still"

WHITE HILLS Abstractions And Mutations (self-released) cd-r 8.98
The return of White Hills, and their East Coast Hawkwind worshipping Stooges stomp FX blowouts. Every disc has kicked our asses, each one exploring a different side of WH's spaced out psychedelic sound. From the swirling cosmic krautprog of No Game To Play, to the more straight ahead space rock of Glitter Glamour Atrocity to the recent collaboration with Bay Area noisemakers White Pee, a half hour blast of ambient spacenoize. Where does Abstractions And Mutations fall? It falls smack dab in between all of those, but it falls HARD and HEAVY. Easily the fiercest outing yet from Dave W. and his bearded and robed wizards of druggy sonic overload. Beginning with a seriously metallic riff, and some super effected vocals, the band pounds relentlessly, adding tons of melody and a wicked hook, and then a brief space-y shuffle, before the song explodes into three minutes of amp frying psychguitar destruction.
The 15 minute "Left Behind" begins by drifting through some Tangerine Dreamed outer space void, peppered with fluttering drum fills, abstract shards of guitar, and clouds of shimmering FX, before again, exploding into a relentless acid jam, the drums splattering and sputtering, pounding and thrashing, the guitars wailing and howling, everything wrapped in a dense haze of buzz and effects. The rest of the record strikes a balance between the two, the blissed out laid back haze, and the face melting psychedelic freakout, culminating in the super tripped out final track, a sort of disembodied Doors-y jam, slow and spare, vocals drifting, guitars burning in soft swells, the percussion doused in reverb, the pace seriously stoned, before the chaos rains down from above, an intense drum guitar duel, the reverb and delay joining in for good measure, a swirling head spinning blow out.
This was some sort of tour only release, we managed to get most of the remaining copies direct from the band, which means, not only are these crazy limited, but that when we run out, odds are we will NOT be able to get more. Packaged in plain white sleeves, with simple stickers affixed to the front and back...
MPEG Stream: "Eye To Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Left Behind"

WINTERBLUT Das Aas Aller Dinge (End All Life) cd 14.98
When we first got this disc in, we had no idea what it was. We never would have guessed it was the Winterblut as the new Winterblut was supposed to have original cover art by Wrest from Leviathan. But this disc was in a plain all-black slipcover. So we slid out the jewel case, and what do you know? The jewel case was opaque and black as well, with absolutely no text on it anywhere. At this point we still had no idea what the heck it was, until we pulled out the booklet, and lo and behold, there it was, Wrest's artwork, some seriously demented painted shapes grappling, a nude woman, a demon, way too many clawed hands...
It's been four long year since we last heard from Winterblut, and at the time, the album Grund Gelenkkunst had just been released and found Winterblut totally transformed from a grim buzzing Nordic style black metal beast, into a twisted, convoluted SST meets Voivod sort of black prog combo, having more in common with Ved Buens Ende than Darkthrone, with a punk rock production, gnarled Greg Ginn riffage, super strange arrangements and some very un-black metal elements. Which of course meant we dug it like crazy. And played it to death, always expecting to hear more from Winterblut sooner or later.
So it ended up being later, but finally here it is, Das Aas aller Dinge, and while a lot has changed in the last 4 years, much of the prog has been purged, and not all the riffing is angular and obtuse, Winterblut hasn't merely reverted to classic Norwegian style black buzz, although much of Das Aas aller Dinge is more blasting and buzzing than anything on Grund Gelenkkunst, instead it's apparent from the very first riff, that L. Hiver, the man who is Winterblut, still has a distinctly skewed take on black metal, with the tempo firmly set at mid, and plenty of Voivodisms still in place, right down to the vocals, in fact one can almost imagine this is what Dimension Hatross would have sounded like had it been a black metal record, lurching and mathy, woozy and sort of seasick, everything shrouded in reverb and black black distortion a killer groove, complex drumming, the guitars skeletal and spidery as much as buzzy and black. Even the second track sounds like a blackened Voivod, and part way through when it kicks it up into full on blast, the melody and riffing is still haunting and minor key, with a subtle sci-fi edge. The next few tracks are definitely heavier on the buzzing and the blackness, and more old school classic Norwegian style, but still the riffs are completely atypical, gnarled and just a little bit off. In a good way.
It's on "Das Aas (Erloschen)" where the band get all weird again, a super slithery, slippery stop start groove with a main riff that warbles drunkenly up and down the fretboard, with big wide open spaces between chords, the drums a simple framework for the guitars to tangle themselves up in. A track or two later, there's the 15 minute epic "Das Aas (Sehnsuchtig)" a loping waltzy Burzumic dirge, that partway through transforms into a furious blast, and then unwinds into a killer serpentine progscape with impossibly off-kilter drumming, and strange tempos, everything still bathed in black, the vocals a raspy growl, but all strung along a lurching mathrock rhythm, the riffs following suit, a whirling relentless black space prog jam. The record finishes off with "Das Aas (Egnid Rella)" another track that meshes classic black with the twisted riffage and octopoidal rhythms that made us dig Winterblut so much in the first place.
Obviously amazing, and essential, but even considering everything we just wrote, if you're anything like us, it could have been summed up perfectly in 4 simple words: "black metal Dimension Hatross."
As mentioned above, packaged in a black opaque jewel case, in an all black slipcover, the booklet inside and the disc face features killer artwork from Wrest, the booklet also includes some seriously creepy band photos, as well liner notes and lyrics.
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Aller Dinge)"
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Erschjenen)"
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Schauderhalt)"

WINTERBLUT Das Aas Aller Dinge (End All Life) 2lp 18.98
It's been four long year since we last heard from Winterblut, and at the time, the album Grund Gelenkkunst had just been released and found Winterblut totally transformed from a grim buzzing Nordic style black metal beast, into a twisted, convoluted SST meets Voivod sort of black prog combo, having more in common with Ved Buens Ende than Darkthrone, with a punk rock production, gnarled Greg Ginn riffage, super strange arrangements and some very un-black metal elements. Which of course meant we dug it like crazy. And played it to death, always expecting to hear more from Winterblut sooner or later.
So it ended up being later, but finally here it is, Das Aas aller Dinge, and while a lot has changed in the last 4 years, much of the prog has been purged, and not all the riffing is angular and obtuse, Winterblut hasn't merely reverted to classic Norwegian style black buzz, although much of Das Aas aller Dinge is more blasting and buzzing than anything on Grund Gelenkkunst, instead it's apparent from the very first riff, that L. Hiver, the man who is Winterblut, still has a distinctly skewed take on black metal, with the tempo firmly set at mid, and plenty of Voivodisms still in place, right down to the vocals, in fact one can almost imagine this is what Dimension Hatross would have sounded like had it been a black metal record, lurching and mathy, woozy and sort of seasick, everything shrouded in reverb and black black distortion a killer groove, complex drumming, the guitars skeletal and spidery as much as buzzy and black. Even the second track sounds like a blackened Voivod, and part way through when it kicks it up into full on blast, the melody and riffing is still haunting and minor key, with a subtle sci-fi edge. The next few tracks are definitely heavier on the buzzing and the blackness, and more old school classic Norwegian style, but still the riffs are completely atypical, gnarled and just a little bit off. In a good way.
It's on "Das Aas (Erloschen)" where the band get all weird again, a super slithery, slippery stop start groove with a main riff that warbles drunkenly up and down the fretboard, with big wide open spaces between chords, the drums a simple framework for the guitars to tangle themselves up in. A track or two later, there's the 15 minute epic "Das Aas (Sehnsuchtig)" a loping waltzy Burzumic dirge, that partway through transforms into a furious blast, and then unwinds into a killer serpentine progscape with impossibly off-kilter drumming, and strange tempos, everything still bathed in black, the vocals a raspy growl, but all strung along a lurching mathrock rhythm, the riffs following suit, a whirling relentless black space prog jam. The record finishes off with "Das Aas (Egnid Rella)" another track that meshes classic black with the twisted riffage and octopoidal rhythms that made us dig Winterblut so much in the first place.
Obviously amazing, and essential, but even considering everything we just wrote, if you're anything like us, it could have been summed up perfectly in 4 simple words: "black metal Dimension Hatross."
The vinyl is super deluxe, one of the nicest packages we've ever seen. Gone is the all black covering of the cd, and it it's place Wrest's (Leviathan, Lurker Of Chalice) garish painting of shapes grappling, a nude woman, a demon, way too many clawed hands... Over the painting, the Winterblut logo and the album title are printed in reflective clear varnish, the super thick lps are housed in printed inner sleeves, and includes a really big, full color poster of the cover art. So fancy.
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Aller Dinge)"
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Erschjenen)"
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Schauderhalt)"

WOODEN SHJIPS Loose Lips / Start To Dreaming (Sub Pop) 7" 3.98
We shouldn't have to say very much at all about this brand new 7" from beloved local dronerockers Wooden Shjips, considering how many of their recent full length we sold, same with the self released 7" and 10" (which were included as a bonus disc on the first pressing of the Holy Mountain full length, all gone now, sorry). It seems like we could just whisper the words 'Wooden Shjips" into the internet and all of these 7"s would suddenly just disappear, only to re-appear moments later on turntables around the world. Which, when you think about it, is basically what is about to happen right now.
"WoooooooodennnnnnnnssssshhhhhhhhjjjiiiiiipssssssssŠŠ"
The A side is classic Wooden Shjips, taking all of their influences and whipping them into a droney druggy blur. Whooshing distorted riffing, heavy on the phaser (so heavy at times, it sounds like maybe it's not just the guitar, like they ran the whole record through a phaser), some warped Stereolab style organs, simple krautrocky drumming, and those hypnotic Jim Morrison / Nick Drake deep crooning vocals. Think a super psychedelic Sabbath, or a heady mix of Flying Saucer Attack, Spacemen 3 and Loop. Cyclical and hypnotic, with a strange almost new wavey chord change / breakdown smack dab in the middle.
The flipside is way more poppy and less droney, a slow psychpop drift, with serpentine guitars, and a gradually increasing tempo, the guitar getting all tangled up with the whirring organ, the whole thing fuzzy and softly propulsive, but with a surprisingly garage-y vibe, reminding us of a more drugged out Sonics, or a more spaced out Fuzztones, especially in the main melody and the higher than usual vocals. Both new tracks are pretty kick ass and fans will most definitely not bee disappointed. And even though the full length on Holy Mountain has only been out for about two months, these new tracks already have us chomping at the bit for another new full length!

----*
----* Selected New Arrivals :
----*

A TASTE OF RA Morning Of My Life (Hapna) cd 16.98
What a way to start your day... Morning Of My Life begins with what resembles a tuning session for the woodwind section of a pit orchestra. Long, drawn out high pitched whines drill themselves deep into your cranium. Egads. Fortunately they stop, giving way to pleasingly gentle strokes of an acoustic guitar and bows slipping across violin strings. Aaah, so nice! But then it tumbles abruptly into main man Nicolai Dunger's over-emotive vocals (think: a cross between Boz Scaggs and Joe Cocker) and strange jazzy ramblings. This cd's lone 42-minute track is uneven and joltingly varied for sure, but when Dunger's takes a lighter touch, the results are all too fleeting lovely moments of absolute bliss. Definitely a head-scratcher, but not in the dreamily wonderful odd way he's done in the past. We'd recommend maybe treating yourself to his two previous self-titled releases, before venturing this-a-way. This Taste of Ra is an acquired one.
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 2"

ABIGOR Fractal Possession (End All Life Productions) 2lp 18.98
Now available on lp, super heavy vinyl, deluxe gatefold jacket, with printed black and gold metallic inner sleeves, really really nice.
The return of infamous Austrian black metal horde Abigor, after six years of near silence. The band broke up briefly in 2003, but reformed last year, with an almost entirely new lineup, but their sound continues pretty much right where their last full length Satanized left off. Abigor began life as grim epic buzz merchants, channeling the sound of classic Norwegian BM, but mixing it with raw primitivism and forest folkiness, all woven into a sound distinctly their own. Furious and chaotic, most songs blasting blurs of swirling blackness, peppered with confusional arrangements and epic flourishes. But on 2001's Satanized, the band changed direction, their sound becoming  more cold and clinical, more ultra technical and sci-fi, the same old buzz and blast but with a futuristic sheen...
Right out of the gate, Fractal Possession (even the title!) ups the future tech sci-fi blackness ante big time, after a brief industrial soundscape of space FX, and angular guitar, bits of metallic clatter and clang, electronic beats and weird snippets of dialogue, the band lurches into a crazy squiggly blast of super dynamic, tangled guitar squiggles and furious blast beats, like some strange Mick Barr / Orthrelm style guitarist got dropped into a stretch of futuristic black metal buzz. The band soon settles back into a more recognizable pattern of blasting fury and relentless hellish pound, but those angular shred guitars are still everywhere, soaring and slippery, serpentine squiggles in, around, over and under the various riffs and drum blasts. There are also all kinds of ultra brief interludes, short stretches of creepy ambience or some subtle folky strum, that barely have time to leave your speakers before the band buzz back into action, giving the whole sound a super seasick, start/stop ultra dynamic feel. The rest of the record follows a similar pattern, with some songs offering up gothy minor key melodies, Borknagar-like clean vocals, stretches of mathy blackened post rock, damaged chunks of bizarre effects drenched buzz, even some classic old school metal riffing here and there. It's a confusional combination for sure, but it works, it really sounds like it could be the black metal soundtrack to an Alfred Bester novel. Dramatic, mysterious, original, heavy, weird, plenty of awesome what-the-fuck moments, but some unbelievably kick ass riffing as well. Everything just oozing creepy alien otherworldly ambience...
If you can imagine some impossible (and improbable) crossbreeding experiment, where genes were taken from Emperor, Blut Aus Nord, Gorguts, Necrophagist, Orthrelm and Ved Buens Ende, then said genes were launched into space, where they were left to orbit some blackcloud shrouded planet, the genes gestating and mutating in the rays of an alien sun, returning to earth a hulking buzzing blasting blackened alien sonic space creature, only to find the humans gone, the landscape a burning post apocalyptic wasteland of destruction and death, fire and fury, and of course, gloriously dense and complex black metal buzz.
MPEG Stream: "Project Shadow"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Void Choir"
MPEG Stream: "Lair Of Infinite Desperation"

AGENT RIBBONS On Time Travel And Romance (self-released) cd 12.98
It's always nice when a little word of mouth proves fruitful! SF solo troubadour Garrett Pierce (whose own fine musical wares we've stocked a-plenty) recommended these female songstresses to us recently. Agent Ribbons are two gals Natalie Gordon and Lauren Hess who hail from Sacramento, CA. Their folk pop sound is very old tyme-y, down-home-y, with an almost impromptu feel. They sing quirky lyrics atop a Spartan backdrop of strummed electric guitars, accordion and drums. Very light, playful and girly. They name such other female artists as Mirah, Josephine Foster, Faun Fables, Mary Timony, Blossom Dearie, Jolie Holland, Ditty Bops and Dame Darcy as influences, and you can definitely hear it on On Time Travel And Romance. Highlights include the very Holland-y heartfelt "Call Me Margaret" and delightfully dipsy "Chelsea". Fun, warm and welcoming! We think fans of Rilo Kiley will take a shine to this too.
MPEG Stream: "Chelsea, Let's Go Join The Circus"
MPEG Stream: "Call Me Margaret"

BAND OF HORSES Cease To Begin (Sub Pop) cd 14.98
Unlike their last album last year Everything All The Time, Band Of Horses' sophomore full length aligns itself moreso with the buoyancy of Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, and My Morning Jacket than the slow creep of Sparklehorse and Songs:Ohia. They craft the beloved modern yelp-pop that's characterized by warm, rounded jangly pop/rock instrumentation and boyish male vocals that are cling expressively to the upper register. Wistful, autumnal tunes perfect for this time of year!
MPEG Stream: "The First Song"
MPEG Stream: "The Great Salt Lake"

BAND OF HORSES Cease To Begin (Sub Pop) lp 14.98
Unlike their last album last year Everything All The Time, Band Of Horses' sophomore full length aligns itself moreso with the buoyancy of Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, and My Morning Jacket than the slow creep of Sparklehorse and Songs:Ohia. They craft the beloved modern yelp-pop that's characterized by warm, rounded jangly pop/rock instrumentation and boyish male vocals that are cling expressively to the upper register. Wistful, autumnal tunes perfect for this time of year!
MPEG Stream: "The First Song"
MPEG Stream: "The Great Salt Lake"

BIANCHI, MAURIZIO, NOBU KASAHARA & HITOSHI KOJO The Epidemic Symphony No. 9 (Octpia) cd 17.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! We've long championed the work of Maurizio Bianchi, the grim electronic sculptor whose work in the early '80s paralleled the likes of Whitehouse, Ramleh, and Matthew Bower's early power electronics project Total. As much as we would like to ramble on about Bianchi's intriguing musical and existential history in reference to this record, it's almost a moot point as it's really hard to discern any sounds that bear the signature of Mr. Bianchi. Don't let that caveat scare you off from checking out this thoroughly amazing blur of noise, drone, acoustic tumult and electronics; but we have to be completely honest. No, it doesn't sound much like a Bianchi record; instead, the real author of the final mix of The Epidemic Symphony No. 9 is the little known Japanese sound artist Hitosji Kojo (who also records as Spiracle). If there's any justice, Hitoshi / Spiracle shouldn't be "little known" for very long. In fact, he should be heralded as the viable contender to replace David Jackman / Organum as the king of the droning acoustics. And no, none of the guttural drone expressionists who splatter cd-rs with quickly rendered cosmic exasperations come close to the power that Jackman was capable of in the '80s. But Hitoshi Kojo does.
Like Jackman, Hitoshi's work is a dense compounding of layered acoustic textures, each of which are impeccably recorded and carefully positioned within the stereo field. In working with the source material presented by Bianchi and Nobu Kasahara (another obscure Japanese sound artist who has collaborated once before with The New Blockaders, giving some clue as the cacophony he's capable of), Hitoshi continues this strategy of precisely placed sounds which are then given plenty of opportunity to growl, rumble, vibrate, and bristle however they see fit. Where the first lengthy track steadily builds up to a crashing crescendo that abruptly cuts to silence, the second track exhibits some of what may be Bianchi's sounds -- a return to the Sacher Pelz techniques of varispeed tape and crushed turntable clatter which Hitoshi compounds into rippled acoustic shimmer. For the finale, Hitoshi blurs the source material into an industrial chorale marked by a surprisingly elegant two-note melody. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "First Day"
MPEG Stream: "Second Day"
MPEG Stream: "Flaming Rose"

BLOODHORSE s/t (Translation Loss) cd ep 12.98
Pretty darn heavy, pretty darn rockin'. And despite what we heard and had hoped about '70s metal influences (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, mebee even Bloodrock?) this Boston band sounds very much like something of this day and age, though with lots of stoned nodding towards said '70s past. That is, they fit right in with the likes of High On Fire, The Sword and Early Man. A pummelling power trio who play doomy yet rollicking rock with plenty of twists and turns.
Notable notes: Not an instrumental band but could be mistaken for one a lot of the time, jamming away without much thought to lettin' the singer sing (he's busy playing his guitar). Some bright n' happy (yet still heavy) moments. Rhythmically tight, dynamic songwriting that certainly gives the drummer some -- indeed, after a hard rockin' first couple minutes, the track "The Goat" is mostly a very atmospheric *drum solo* setting you up for the reintroduction of the woah-yeah main riff.
This debut "EP" is 6 songs, 36 minutes -- and we'd guess that many of those into heaviness who hear this, are gonna want to hear more.
MPEG Stream: "Son Of Man"
MPEG Stream: "Sparks"

CARTA The Glass Bottom Boat (Resonant) cd 9.98
Carta is the coming together of two music vets, Alexander Kort (also of Subtle) and Jared Matt Greenberg (also of Charles Atlas). The duo make post rock music of the pretty kind, incorporating a bit of shoegazer dreaminess and folky earthiness in there too. While they're not breaking any new ground, they do the tried and true quite well.
The Glass Bottom Boat is their first release, an instrumental album for the most part, the one exception is the album's lengthy title track which is graced with some lilting female vocals. It's a bit of a surprising appearance late in the mostly mellow proceedings as is the sudden burst of dissonance in that very same track. For fans of Hood, Eluvium, Tristeza and Kammerflimmer Kollektief.
MPEG Stream: "Kavan"
MPEG Stream: "Burning Bridges"

CELEBRATION The Modern Tribe (4AD) cd 10.98
Lighter (less savage?) and more varied in tone than their 2005 debut, Celebration's The Modern Tribe possesses the druggy woozy spin of an old carousel planted very ceremoniously in the midst of a wee hours cabaret. The band has definitely honed their chops and their sound. Multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis' saxophones and organ snake their way around Katrina Ford's throatily expressive vocals while David Bergander pounds out a, yes, tribal beat. Highlights include songs like "Hands Off My Gold" which seems deeply inspired by the manic genius escapades of Oingo Boingo. The band seem like they'd be just as at home in veils by a wild bonfire or ensconced in a candlelit bordello. Heck, they'd be at home anywhere alongside their comrades TV On The Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs (whose members make guest appearances here). Tempestuous to say the least!
MPEG Stream: "Tame The Savage"
MPEG Stream: "Hands Off My Gold"

CELEBRATION The Modern Tribe (4AD) lp 13.98
Lighter (less savage?) and more varied in tone than their 2005 debut, Celebration's The Modern Tribe possesses the druggy woozy spin of an old carousel planted very ceremoniously in the midst of a wee hours cabaret. The band has definitely honed their chops and their sound. Multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis' saxophones and organ snake their way around Katrina Ford's throatily expressive vocals while David Bergander pounds out a, yes, tribal beat. Highlights include songs like "Hands Off My Gold" which seems deeply inspired by the manic genius escapades of Oingo Boingo. The band seem like they'd be just as at home in veils by a wild bonfire or ensconced in a candlelit bordello. Heck, they'd be at home anywhere alongside their comrades TV On The Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs (whose members make guest appearances here). Tempestuous to say the least!
MPEG Stream: "Tame The Savage"
MPEG Stream: "Hands Off My Gold"

DARKTHRONE F.O.A.D. (Peaceville) cd 16.98
If metal fans/dilettantes Circle were to actually make a metal album, as opposed to a "metal" album (one that in the end really sounds like Circle), maybe it would come out something like F.O.A.D., the latest (number thirteen, uh oh!) full-length from Norwegian black metal icons Darkthrone. This album, entitled F.O.A.D. (which stands for something Off And Die, you figure it out), is a collection of nine songs, each one of them with a specific inspiration or inspirations that will resonate with all true metal fans, which Darkthrone obviously are. We know this not just 'cause the old school vibe of these songs, retro-riffed and raw and fueled with punkish attitude, but also 'cause Darkthrone drummer Fenriz has kindly provided notes on each track in the photo-illustrated cd booklet. So you can scope snapshots of Darkthrone's summer camping trips whilst reading about how the track "Canadian Metal" is lyrically a tribute to their favorite Canadian metal bands (natch) but musically is inspired more by (non-Canadian bands) DeathStrike, Onslaught, Darkthrone and Motorhead -- and, for the heck of it, is dedicated to their Central American fans! Or learn that the song "The Church of True Metal" is dedicated to Manilla Road and the late singer of another '80s American true metal cult, Omen. Or see that Fenriz claims that "Pervertor Of The 7 Gates" is inspired by "Axegrinder/Darkthrone, Humble Pie (!), Celtic Frost (duh), Impostor... and Poison Idea!". You may have noted how ridiculously, circularly self-referential (reverential?) it is, when several times they cite Darkthrone (themselves!) among a particular track's influences. At least they're being honest!
The cd booklet also includes a shopping list of 20 true metal (mostly, though The Residents are on here too) recommendations from Fenriz and guitarist Nocturno Culto, their suggestions to get your music listening back on the proper, perverse track. Can't argue with any of their picks, and in fact we're gonna be on the lookout for the few we didn't already have, but again it's a funny thing to find in a cd booklet. We guess they're concerned about "the kids" these days not knowing what's what.
But the reason we mentioned Circle above is 'cause this seems to be a very "conceptual" metal album, metal for metal's sake made by fans in a very explicit and nostalgic fashion. There's a metallic version of Comic Book Guy, record-collector nerdism in equal doses with a punk WTF? approach. Circle calls it NWOFHM. Darkthrone's making NWOBHM. No it doesn't compare to any of their past classics like A Blaze In The Northern Sky or Transylvanian Hunger. Less grim, more grins.
This sort of thing tends to demystify what is (was?) one of the seminal, scary bands from the notorious Nordic church-burning, corpse-painted black metal scene. But we've already gotten the idea that Darkthrone don't take themselves too seriously anymore, and maybe never did, nor do they care what other folks think. We realized that long ago when we read an interview with 'em that mainly talked about how much they loved the Simpsons TV show. Also there was the silly message that Andee once got on his answering from Fenriz (thanks to a mutual friend who was over in Norway working on an as-yet-unreleased black metal documentary). And of course not long ago we reviewed the DVD of Nocturno Culto's bewilderingly mundane home movies. The curtain has been pulled back, and what we find are two none-too-serious yet none-more-black dudes from Norway who loooooove metal (and camping). And happen to be fuckin' Darkthrone. So they can say F.O.A.D. then you gotta take it. If it's too crude and dumb and retrogressive and punk for you, fuck off and die. Otherwise, let the headbanging commence.
MPEG Stream: "These Shores Are Damned"
MPEG Stream: "Canadian Metal"

DIRTY PROJECTORS Rise Above (Dead Oceans) cd 14.98
Here we have the second concept record from Dirty Projectors (a.k.a. Dave Longstreth). Many of us here at AQ had high hopes for Rise Above, a reinterpretation of the legendary punk rock album Damaged by Black Flag, having been quite impressed with DP's 2005 reinterpretation of Don Henley's The Getty Address. Plus, it's no secret that many here at AQ are Black Flag super-fans, which only added to the excitement. That said, I (Sally) feel it's important to note here that I may be the only AQ staffer largely unfamiliar with Black Flag's ouvre which is perhaps why in the end I'm writing the review. Since unfortunately, the Black Flag fans weren't all too impressed with Longstreth's re-imagining, and thought it might be interesting to get a clean perspective. So, here goes:
In many ways Dirty Projector's Rise Above sounds, not surprisingly, a lot like a musical - a reinterpretation of a rock album for theatrical presentation perhaps. It bears some similarity in style to the modern musical Rent. That said, we were initially surprised to hear that it's gained so much popularity amongst indie listeners. We don't often think of the people who come through here as having a soft side for musical theater... unless that person is me (*blush*). However, the more we listen, the more we understand. The album contains the briskness, timing, and lush arrangements of recent fave St. Vincent, the choiresque harmonizing of the Polyphonic Spree, vocal stylings that would make Prince weep and most impressively, it's all wrapped up in what could easily be described as a rock opera formula comparable to Queen. So we're not writing this one off just yet. And even some of the Black Flag folks here are beginning to soften their stance... Check out the sound samples to see where you stand... you must be curious by now.
MPEG Stream: "Depression"
MPEG Stream: "Room 13"

DISEMBOWELMENT Discography (Relapse) 2cd 14.98
Since it first came out, we've been selling the limited mailorder triple cd version of this amazing collection, everything every recorded by Australian doomcrust experimentalists diSEMBOWELMENT. The 3cd version finally just went out of print, so we now have the slightly cheaper 2cd version for folks who might have missed out. And while the third disc was pretty cool, packed with alternate versions, even without it, this two disc set is a mindblower. Heavy and freaked out and utterly brilliant.
Just the sight of that immediately recognizable underlined, lower case 'd' logo sends shivers up our spine. Some of you already know exactly what we're talking about, and just reading this far has probably got you all in a tizzy as well. For those of you who are new to the lower case 'd', prepare yourself for diSEMBOWELMENT!! Even the name, replete with mandatory case change, conjures up all sorts of bleak lifeforce snuffing, soul crushing sensations, at least for fans of mysterious otherworldly doom and bizarre slow motion grind!!
diSEMBOWELMENT were but a brief flash in the underground doom metal scene, existing for a scant three years in the early nineties, but in that time, they recorded one of the all time classic HEAVY records ever, Transcendence Into The Peripheral. A mind blowing record that somehow melded extreme brutality with delicate beauty, a record that totally changed the way some of us listened to heavy music. Referring to the music of diSEMBOWELMENT as doom might give folks the wrong impression. This is not regular old doom like Black Sabbath or My Dying Bride, it's not even funereal doom like Skepticism or Esoteric, although it definitely spends most of its time a lot closer to the slow motion sludge end of the spectrum. diSEMBOWELMENT most definitely inhabit their own unique sonic space. It's slow, sure, but not always, bursts of pounding blast beats will erupt from a bleak tranquil soundscape, guttural inhuman grunts, machine like percussion, buzzing riffs, all intertwined into a blazing near-death metal onslaught, but it's not long before big reverb drenched guitar melodies begin to fall like some sort of black rain, the metallic pummel sort of stumbling to a seasick lumber, turning the whole thing into a creepy crawl, lurching, plodding, downtuned guitars and spare, simple rhythms, a crushing slow motion dirge, with haunting atonal clean guitar parts and moaning melodies. And even during these vast expanses of atmospheric tranquility, you can never rule out sudden blast beat, or a throat shredding vocal part, or a sudden crushing riff. The magic of diSEMBOWELMENT though is that somehow the metallic crush and the melancholic ambience are perfectly balanced. The whole thing is a dark and depressive, minor key and mournful masterpiece. But it's all so fucking heavy! Even the not-so-heavy parts manage to sound completely massive and totally crushing! So intense and emotional and just absolutely beautiful. Yep, beautiful. Lovely even. Like few records we can remember, and certainly one of the only records this heavy and brutal that manages to be absolutely beautiful. Sonically it's a bit like Napalm Death's Scum, and Carcass's Reek of Putrefaction, that classic Earache sound, a bit lo-fi, lots of reverb, big drums, buzzing guitars, all boiled down into a viscous blackened sludge, sprinkled throughout with brief melodic flares and occasional glistening guitars, like rays of sunlight just barely penetrating the suffocating atmosphere of thick low hanging riffs and bleak, brutal ambience.
Disc one contains all of Transcendence Into the Peripheral, and hell, we would have been happy with just that, a long overdue reissue of one of our all time favorite discs. But disc two contains the quite rare Dusk ep, as well as a rare compilation track and the five track Mourning September demo, all of it suitably genius!
Obviously totally and completely essential. The 2cd version is packaged in a cool embossed double digipak, with a booklet of photos and liner notes, including lyrics and a history of the band from drummer Paul Mazziotta.
MPEG Stream: "The Tree Of Life And Death"
MPEG Stream: "Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory"
MPEG Stream: "Cerulian Transience Of All My Imagined Shores"

FORGOTTEN WOODS As The Wolves Gather (No Colours) lp 17.98
Finally back in stock!
Oh how we love the mighty Forgotten Woods, supreme Norwegian black metal weirdos! Their new record, Race Of Cain, reviewed recently, was a mind blower, and their three cd collection of older stuff is an all time AQ best seller. For those of you vinyl freaks who have been holding off, well you are finally in luck, Forgotten Woods' As The Wolves Gather, their 1994 full length, and disc one in the Baklengs Mot Stupet triple cd set, has finally been reissued as an lp! It's super limited of course, we got a handful but they won't last long. Here's a slightly altered version of our review of As The Wolves Gather from the triple cd set:
So...what's the big deal you ask, why are these Forgotten Woods so unforgettable? Well, first off, and at first listen, this will definitely appeal to the whole raw, old-school, Nordic forest black metal necrocrowd. Really good grim stuff in the unholy spirit of classic Darkthrone and Burzum, but with that extra kinda inept, Benighted Leamsish fuckedupedness to it that of course makes us love it all the more. And, additionally and importantly, there's also always a strange, unexpected sort of poppiness underlying everything.
As a friend (who also likes this band, and is a member of Thuja, the Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, the Skygreen Leopards and a bunch of other Jewelled Antler acts) put it, "man it's good...completely inept, like they're barely pulling it off, total 13-year-old-metal-kid-in-the-basement drums."
A classic, but a 'damaged' outsider BM classic as far as we're concerned, this is definitely raw and necro and kvlt and grim, buzzing and black, but it also struggles and stumbles, is blown out, lo-fi and weird as fuck. As with all Forgotten Woods, WAY recommended.  
MPEG Stream: "Eclipsed"

HEAVY METAL FUN TIME ACTIVITY BOOK (ECW PRESS) magazine 9.95
From the same folks who brought us the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book, comes something for the metalhead in your life. And since metalheads need WAY more stimulation that gangsta rappers, this one is not merely a coloring book, but a full fledged ACTIVITY book. You know what that means, connect the dots, mazes, all sorts of things. But in the hands of these guys, the usual kidstuff gets an awesomely irreverent, goofy and seriously metal makeover. After an appropriately goofy (and metal) intro from Andrew W.K., you can expect such fun time activities as a hair metal crossword puzzle, color Rob Halford, Motorhead connect the moles, heavy metal sudoku (it's all 6's), Spinal Tap maze, White Zombie word find, New Orleans band scramble, Dimebag Darrell's goatee connect the dots, Ronnie James Dio's "Holy Diver" metal-libs, Ozzy maze, Slipknot numbers game, Led Zeppelin symbol match and loads more.
Full color cover with cool glossy clear pentagram over a devil horned hand, as well as testimonials on the back from Andrew W.K., Brendon Small (Metalocalypse) and of course Ronnie James Dio.
The perfect metal stocking stuffer...

HIGH ON FIRE Death Is This Communion (deluxe) (Relapse) cd + dvd 16.98
The fire yet burns. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike's three-piece pissed-off stoner metal juggernaut presents their fourth album, and while we can't say we were disappointed or anything (you get what you've come to expect from HoF), neither were we super blown away either, really. Though we never would have predicted it a few years ago, to our minds it would seem that Pike's former bandmates from seminal stoned-on-Sabbath dopesmokers Sleep are up to something a little more interesting at this juncture, in their outfit Om. Or, we're just more in the mood for Om's brand of mystical, minimal weirdness rather than the more bloodyminded bludgeon being beaten into our skulls by High On Fire. But if that's what you want, look no further. Death Is The Communion delivers the goods: Wardrums pound. Lemmylike vocals gargle forth and froth. Clenched fist riffage rakes your flesh. Yeah!
And, as the album bulldozers along, the mood gets more somber, and some diversity is to be had, from majestic, morose keyboard melancholia to surprisingly introspective, un-metally acoustic guitar interludes. So, another fine HoF outing. And by the way, bassist Joe Preston is gone, High On Fire just another notch on his bedpost of one-night-stands-in-bands (as per his stints with Earth and the Melvins). His replacement, Jeff Matz of Zeke.
And by the way, this edition comes with a bonus DVD disc featuring 40 minutes of in-the-studio footage n' stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Death Is This Communion"
MPEG Stream: "DII"

KESSLER, MATT / HUELSING, ZACH Works Cited (Eye Rocket Books) zine 6.00
This isn't your typical zine. Works Cited isn't pages photocopied and stapled together, rather, each hand drawn and unique manilla envelope contains the hilarious contents of the filing cabinet of the fictional Wright Preparatory Academy. Each copy includes: a C grade essay detailing the difference between "true" and "false" metal, intercepted notes, journal entries, and lots more, mostly illustrated documents within which Kessler and Huelsing have woven a story line that deftly reveals the complexities and confusion of adolescence. When reading Works Cited, you feel almost like you could be reading the contents of your own school's filing cabinet. Thus, the authors have created a universal platitude which brings forth the resounding adult-to-youth promise: "You will look back and laugh." If you are lucky enough to snatch one of the limited-to-365 copies, we think you will laugh along...knowingly.

LIPMAN, ADAM Both Sundays (self-released) cd-r 9.98
Following up on his 2006 Feathered Palm Trees cd-r, solo SF singer/songwriter Adam Lipman delivers another intimate batch of down to earth folksy numbers that expose an uncommon vulnerability, earnestness and heart. Once again his tender, youthful voice is joined by some pretty female vocal accompaniment. Those tunes are particularly sweet, engaging listens.
Whereas his last release came with a tiny tiny booklet, this lovingly homespun yet elaborate one comes coil-bound with photo foldouts and text. Ultra limited pressing of 30 (of which we only got a handful which are apparently the last remaining copies!), so act fast. We've been assured that a second (albeit less elaborate) version plus one on vinyl will be released shortly. We'll keep y'all posted!
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 3"

M'LUMBO Sacrifices To The Neon Gods: The Greatest Sacred Cargo Cult Television Theme Songs Of All Time (Mulatta Records) cd 16.98
For being released on the same label that brought us two albums of elephants playing instruments (the Thai Elephant Orchestra), an album of rapping by grade-schoolers (Da Hiphop Raskalz) and several other weird/wonderful projects, the idea of an album of avant-groovy cover versions of well-known television themes seems downright tame! Yet, downtown NYC hipster jazz/world/cassette culture/kitchen sink band M'Lumbo do manage to entertain and intrigue -- who could not help but enjoy unusual, out-there renditions of such familiar tunes as "Hawaii Five-O", "The Addams Family", "I Dream Of Jeannie", "I Love Lucy" and "Get Smart", among others?? It's exotica for the TV generation(s), coming across like a wild mix of Martin Denny and Afrobeat and John Zorn. And actually, most of the time you'd be hard pressed to identify the TV tune that they're using/abusing as a basis for each track of faux-ethnic improv, lost under electronics and samples and an abundance of percussion, and even what sound like the calls of jungle birds... in fact it's probably best if you try to listen *without* thinking about these songs being TV themes, or at least imagine that M'Lumbo's "cargo cult" conceit is true, and you're hearing the musical worship of classic cathode ray gods done by some musically freaky tribe of "savages" who just happen to have free cable and became addicted to old TV reruns.
MPEG Stream: "Mickey Mouse"
MPEG Stream: "The Alfred Hitchcock Theme"

MASERATI Inventions For The New Season (Temporary Residence) cd 14.98
A simple check-list should help you to get an idea of what Maserati is all about: instrumental post-rock, released on the Temporary Residence Ltd. label, with a sports car name sorta like Trans Am... This album focuses a lot of psychedelic guitar distortion and krauty, rhythmic energy into eight sleek, speedy, and sometimes shoegazey tracks that sound like Frippertronics at the disco, or a coke-fuelled Circle/Tortoise/Zombi jam. It's a loud yet gentle ear-massage lit up by flashing, stroboscopic drumming. The drummer also plays in !!! and the Turing Machine, you could sorta see Maserati as a mix of those two bands, mathy propulsive post-rock with a bit of a groove-y, dance-y vibe. Portions of this could make a good Miami Vice soundtrack, like for a scene (filmed from a helicopter) of an exciting power-boat chase across a deep blue, beautiful, sunshiney sea. Also several of these tracks, Cup is convinced, could easily segue into a rendition of "Danger Zone" by Golden Earring... which is cool by us.
MPEG Stream: "Inventions"
MPEG Stream: "This Is A Sight We Had One Day From The High Mountain"

MOVING UNITS Hexes For Exes (Metropolis) cd 14.98
Is it just us or did you think the same thing?! Hmmm, the title of Moving Units' new album made us immediately think of the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy ("It's a PILL!... that gives WORMS!... to EX-GIRLFRIENDS!!"). Heh heh, anyhoo, these LA fellas continue to strut their stuff, and keep their sleek dance rock comin' with this their second full length. They're now on Metropolis Records (formerly on Palm Pictures), but they haven't jarred us with any other surprise changes, they're still very very indebted to the '80s. In fact, few bands have ever sounded quite so 'Duran Duran' circa Seven And The Ragged Tiger. Made us daydream of Simon LeBon singing atop the phat synth tracks of Daft Punk. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure to be packing the hip kids' dancefloors across the nation.
MPEG Stream: "Pink Thoughts"
MPEG Stream: "Crash 'N' Burn Victims"

MURCOF Cosmos (Leaf) cd 14.98
Tijuana-based techno musician Fernando Corono (a.k.a. Murcof) has released an album that serves as a worthy successor to those that have so obviously influenced him -- without asking Corono, we'd point to the abstract dub-masters of the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction crew and Richie Hawtin's experimental work under his Plastikman moniker. Previous Murcof work has garnered attention for its intricacy, and led to him being considered a sort of electronic classical composer. The newest offering, Cosmos, bears witness to an increasingly pastoral sensibility that is at once both choatic and hymnal. Maybe the easiest way to describe the music is to make reference to labelmates M83. But where the aforementioned pop-electronic-shoegazers sometimes fall flat with incessant drumroll crescendos and a flood of pre-programmed "choir voice" pads, Murcof manages to shine with an intensely cerebral effort that presents itself for both active and passive listening.
MPEG Stream: "Cometa"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmos II"

MV & EE WITH THE GOLDEN ROAD (MATT VALENTINE / ERIKA ELDER) Gettin' Gone (Ecstatic Peace) cd 9.98
If you've ever asked yourself just -exactly- when Matt Valentine will abandon any pretense that would suggest he isn't Neil Young's little brother, wonder no more. MV & EE's inebriated folk drones of yore have given way to a much more straight-forward style of writing, which means more riffs and less hippie freak-outs. As usual, Erika Elder's vocals have that feeling of hearing someone singing in the shower from the next room over; novice but strikingly pleasant. Valentine's voice is an acquired taste at best. In spite of his singing, catchy melodies abound as they churn out a good pop-folk-rock record that both complements their other work and serves as a good starting point for anyone who's curious. This is anthemic folk Americana for the uninitiated. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Easy Livin'"
MPEG Stream: "Speed Queen"

NARROWS, THE Benjamin (Wantage USA) lp 11.98
NOW ON VINYL! Last list's Record Of The Week, finally available on lp.
It's been ages since we've heard from Bellingham Washington's Narrows, whose last two (and only two) records, Alligator and The Skull At Life Size, were huge AQ favorites. Our Narrows obsession was solidified by a mindblowing show at the Hemlock where the band laid waste to all post rock past and present in a matter of 30 or 40 minutes, managing to rock so hard, even with the frontman / guitar player seated the whole time. A mix of lurching loping metallic bombast and lilting whispery post rock moodiness, not like the current crop of metallic post rockers though, no the Narrows were something much more unique... all the best parts of nineties mathrock, June Of 44, Slint, Rodan, but filtered through that weird Bellingham outsider vibe (also responsible for Reeks And The Wrecks) and lovingly wrapped in some serious skull crushing riffage. And of course songs. Killer songs. Moody and mournful, personal and emotional, and catchy as all get out.
We had sort of given up on the Narrows, we knew there was a record in the works, but they sort of seemed to drop off the musical map completely, until all of our fears were assuaged by the sudden appearance of this here brand new full length, that is somehow even better than their first two discs, heavier, prettier, weirder....
Beginning with the nine minute near perfect post rock epic "The Sasquatch", a sequence of big groaning downtuned riffage, huge pounding drums all wrapped around a strange insistent loping groove, with wailed super emo vocals, like a prettier Melvins almost, or a resurrected Engine Kid, some Unwound, a little bit of Sub Pop, a little Amrep. These super dynamic nine minutes might as well go on for 90 minutes as far as we're concerned.
The second track, the even longer "Last Of The Norsemen", is all slithery slowcore, with crooned sadboy vocals, spidery guitar melodies, shuffled drums, until the crashing chorus, a gorgeous minor key stop start lurch, along the same lines as Codeine's "Cave In", with burbling underwater bass added to the mix, and a convoluted mathy arrangement, before drifting back into the moody lope of the first few minutes, peppered with strange slippery guitar chords and unexpected dynamics, somehow totally off kilter and alien sounding, but super catchy and melodic and surprisingly pretty!
"Quellish" is up next with its serpentine distorted crunch and crashing blown out drumming, letting up here and there for some muted shuffle and croon, before the bombast is brought in again, a super emotional musical seesaw, that manages to subvert the tired loud-soft-loud-soft thing and turn it into something new and exciting sounding.
As if the deal wasn't already sealed for best post-math-whatever-rock / slowcore record ever already, they finish it off with the heartwrenching "Over and Out", a sort of damaged Pinback on horse tranquilizers mathy groove, with big booming Albini-ish drums, over blooping underwater bass, and slithery minor key distorted guitar melodies, and a super subtle hook to die for. The song has a wicked, super dramatic coda with crumbling distorted riffing, and super emotional leads, yeah LEADS, what self respecting post rock band can whip out the leads and bring you to your knees without sounding the least bit cheesy? Can't think of very many (or any really)... but The Narrows pull it off effortlessly. There's an "Over and Out" part two, but it's more sort of a coda, that now burned into your ears/heart/soul melody is pulled apart, wrapped in some twangy Morricone-ish guitar, some tinkling music box like keyboards, and allowed to unfurl lazily into the distance, becoming more and more abstract and indistinct, culminating in seven minutes of silence... Needless to say one of our favorite new records, pushing all our buttons, old math rock, new post rock, metal, pop, heavy, pretty, strange... Absolutely and utterly recommended (as is seeing these guys live if you get the chance)!
MPEG Stream: "The Sasquatch"
MPEG Stream: "Last Of The Norsemen"

NURSE WITH WOUND Homotopy To Marie (United Jnana) cd 14.98
FINALLY REISSUED!!! Of all of the Nurse With Wound records (and we like a bunch of them!), this is our favorite. Perhaps because this makes the least 'sense,' with a textbook definition of how Surrealism can be accurately applied in an aural context. Within Homotopy To Marie, Steven Stapleton (the proprietor of Nurse With Wound) addresses most of Andre Breton's qualifications of Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by the reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation." In many respects, John Cage took Breton's theories to one possible logical end; but Stapleton wanted to bridge contemporary musical production techniques (musique concrete informed by Industrial culture) with the original Surrealist fascination with Victorian imagery applied to Freudian definitions of fetishism, thus offering a version of Surrealism that fits better with how Breton may have thought Surrealism would sound. References to culture and the world as we know it abound in this record, but in such a convoluted way as to appear perfectly normal next to something that would normally be aurally incongruous. The title itself certainly refers to this. Often utilized within the highly specialized vocabularies of genetics and chemical engineering (you think that *we* get verbose!), a homotopy (as best as I could determine) is the relationship between a specific object and the fundamental characteristics that define the family in which that object belongs. Who Marie could be is perhaps best left between Stapleton and Marie.
Homotopy To Marie is Stapleton's finest audio collage, culled from various studio sessions, found sounds, and unknown media samples. Proceeding along at a stately pace, this album is certainly not a quiet affair, yet each sound within the album is given plenty to hold its unique place with the collage at large. It opens with "I Cannot Feel You as the Dogs are Laughing and I am Blind" -- a close investigation of shards of glass with a gated volume filter on it to accentuate the brittleness and fragmentation of the sound, followed by a period of snoring (presumably from Stapleton) which shifts to various screams, maniacal laughs, and hysterical utterances as if from an asylum. The title track is an amazing collage of a multiple gongs with the tonal rings augmented by occasional backwards masking and manipulated attack. Stapleton's use of the vocal sample is at it's best here with two characters (a shy little girl and a confident woman) intermittently reciting ambiguous phrases "When I woke up I didn't know where I was" answered by "Don't be naive, darling!". The rest of the album is a clutter of non-descript distortion, feedback from guitar buzz, microphones overloaded by megaphones screaming into them, broken by backwards dialogues in Spanish, rag time pianos, and clattering horns finally explode into a whimsical polka but have a weird aura surrounding them like when Hermann Nitsch uses polkas as punctuations to his orchestral drones.
Homotopy To Marie is a confounding album that matches its psychological instability with its dexterity in its composition, that leaves you not with a recognition of sound within an organized context, but the feeling of unidentifiable unease. An absolute masterpiece.
MPEG Stream: "I Cannot Feel You As The Dogs..."
MPEG Stream: "Homotopy To Marie"
MPEG Stream: "Astral Dustbin Dirge"

ORAM, DAPHNE Oramics (Paradigm) cd 28.00
BACK IN STOCK! Wow, What a nice and welcome surprise for early electronic music fans! This 2cd anthology is the first re-issued work from one of the most important and unsung heroes of electronic music, Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic workshop. Beginning her career in the forties with the BBC as a "music balancer" (an arduous task of syncing recorded taped music with a live performance feed so that broadcasts would remain uninterrupted in case of war-time blackouts), Oram spent most of her nights fascinated with synthetic sounds and experimenting with oscillators and tape machines, as well as composing unperformed orchestral works and sound pieces for film and play commissions. Promoted to music studio manager, she campaigned for the BBC to provide electronic music facilities for composing music and sound effects using electronic music and musique concrete techniques for use in its programming which led to the founding of the Radiophonic workshop in early 1958. However, her desires to compose music and further her studies and development of synthetic music theory, caused her to leave the BBC a year later. Working off two grants from the Gulbenkian foundation in the 1960's, and supplementing her income through advertising work, she developed her most unique contribution, the Oramics composition machine and the drawn sound technique, an elaborate mechanism that allowed her to create pure sound through the transcription of drawn lines. For being the first woman to direct an electronic music studio as well as the first woman to design and construct an electronic music instrument, her legacy remains largely unnoticed in this male-dominated field. She lectured extensively and wrote one of the most philosophical books on electronic music, called An Individual Note of Music, continuing her developments with early Apple computers until a series of two strokes forced her to retire. She died in 2003. Culled from an extensive archive of compositional pieces, film and play commissions, early sound experiments with the Oramics machine, and advertising jingles, this anthology covers material from the late fifties to the early seventies. Fans of Delia Derbyshire, Raymond Scott and early electronic music enthusiasts of all sorts will find lots to love here. Highly Recommended!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Birds Of Parallax"
MPEG Stream: "Lego Builds It"
MPEG Stream: "Snow"
MPEG Stream: "Fanfare Of Graphs"

PIG DESTROYER Phantom Limb (Relapse) cd 14.98
Who would have thought a band with name like Pig Destroyer, and heck, a band that -sounded- like Pig Destroyer, would be super popular, but just check out the sticker on the front of the new Pig Destroyer record Phantom Limb: "For fans of Slayer, Mastodon, Lamb Of God, Melvins, Black Dahlia Murder, Cephallic Carnage." Huh? Cephallic Carnage makes sense but the rest? It seems like maybe they're just saying, "If you like heavy music, this is heavy too, so you'll probably like it." Which is certainly true, but Pig Destroyer are way heavier and weirder and more extreme than most of those bands, but then again who are we to complain if the Alternative Press youth of today are digging shit like Pig Destroyer along with their Slipknot, way better than A.F.I. of Aiden.
But as much as we dig PD, we're still surprised at how popular they've become. They're definitely great, but not -that- great. Maybe if you have a limited exposure to grind, we can see how they might blow your mind. But personally we tend toward Pig Destroyer's drum machine drive alter ego Agoraphobic Nosebleed, who take the metallic grind of PD, and speed it up, twist it all around, and chop it into short sharp blasts of furious impossibly technical fury.
But fuck it, we're nitpicking, sure we like AnB more, but this is some seriously heavy and brutal metalgrind insanity. These guys totally destroy, and totally shred, super convoluted arrangements, confusional mathiness and superhuman tempos, all wrapped in super downtuned chug and blown out distortion, howled vocals and buzzing bass, lots of the tracks slip into a more straight ahead thrashing punk which we're not so into, but the blasting parts are face meltingly intense and so awesome, and PD do kick out some damaged sea sick doomy jams here and there that are pretty kick ass. And hell there are plenty of super catchy killer riffs dotting Pig Destroyers hyperspeed grindscapes.
So yeah, maybe we love Agoraphobic Nosebleed a bit more than PD, and this is definitely not our favorite Pig Destroyer disc (that would probably be the Painter Of Dead Girls comp, or maybe their debut full length Explosions In Ward 6), but fuck it, this is still severed heads and hacked-off shoulders above most grind, and definitely heavy enough to please most metalheads and grindfreaks alikeŠ
MPEG Stream: "Rotten Yellow"
MPEG Stream: "Jupiter's Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Deathtripper"
MPEG Stream: "Girl In The Slayer Jacket"

POLLARD, ROBERT Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love (Merge) cd 14.98
Hey, here's a new pop album from Uncle Bob!
He may have laid his Fading Captain label series to rest, but Robert Pollard ain't shutting down any time soon! He can't be stopped, and Merge Records is helping to ensure that with not one but two new albums at once! The label has suggested the age-old Beatles vs Stones debate as a fitting differentiation point between the two faces of Pollard's current double whammy -- that is, a poppy one and a harder edged rock one. Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love is the former, and the one we favor of the two (psst, the other is Standard Gargoyle Decisions). Lots of jangly guitars, lots of peppy energy. Pollard's releases are seldom so clearly sorted and defined. We can usually count on some element of bee-in-his-bonnet randomness, but not so this time. And you know what? As much as we've always loved and appreciated his devil may care approach, it's really a pleasure to hear a relatively even keeled sixteen songs in a row. That's the case with this here album.
MPEG Stream: "Our Gaze"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Hamilton"

POLLARD, ROBERT Standard Gargoyle Decisions (Merge) cd 14.98
Hey, here's a new rock album from Uncle Bob!
He may have laid his Fading Captain label series to rest, but Robert Pollard ain't shutting down any time soon! He can't be stopped, and Merge Records is helping to ensure that with not one but two new albums at once! The label has suggested the age-old Beatles vs Stones debate as a fitting differentiation point between the two faces of Pollard's current double whammy -- that is, a poppy one and a harder edged rock one. Standard Gargoyle Decisions is the latter. It's grittier and more distorted with more electric guitar dissonance. We personally favor the brighter, sweeter sunbeam that is the former (Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love), but perhaps you'll see things differently.
Pollard's releases are seldom so clearly sorted and defined. We can usually count on some element of bee-in-his-bonnet randomness, but not so this time. And you know what? As much as we've always loved and appreciated his devil may care approach, it's really a pleasure to hear a relatively even keeled seventeen songs in a row. That's the case with this here album.
MPEG Stream: "The Killers"
MPEG Stream: "Psycho-Inertia"

SADIES, THE New Season (Yep Roc) cd 15.98
Known to veer wildly from style to style, tempo to tempo, mood to mood, those lanky Canadian troubadours The Sadies keep things at a relatively dour faced, slow creep this time around.
Less sprawling too, notably absent on New Season are their trademark excursions into Hawaiian guitar, garage rawk and Morricone spaghetti western territories. Still they're as great as ever because these boys know just how to hit that perfect so-lonesome-you-could-cry pace'n'vibe time and time again. Awesome effortless musicianship, slightly tweaked and twisted takes on age old musical traditions injected with an ever affecting spookiness.
MPEG Stream: "What's Left Behind"
MPEG Stream: "A Simple Apparition"

SAVAGE REPUBLIC 1938 (Neurot) cd 14.98
The Savage Republic song "Birds of Pork" has been the preamble to each and every Neurosis show for many, many years now; so if anybody should be subsidizing a Savage Republic reunion recording, it should definitely be Neurot Recordings! And yes, the influence that Savage Republic had on Neurosis can still be heard in these recordings, as the heavy tribal percussion is still the underbelly to these expansive post-punk crescendos. The current incarnation of Savage Republic revolves around Thom Fuhrmann, Ethan Port, and Greg Grunke (all of whom were members back in the day) alongside Val Haller (who had played with Fuhrmann in the grossly underappreciated Autumn Fair in the late '80s) and Alan Waddington. 1938 is pretty true to the sounds that Savage Republic had produced on Ceremonial or Customs, with that tribal percussion grounding slashes of drone guitar which slide into post-Morricone / proto-Godspeed crescendos for guitar and violin. Vocals have always been the problematic area for Savage Republic; and fortunately, they keep this album almost entirely instrumental.
MPEG Stream: "Marshal Tito"
MPEG Stream: "Monsoon"

SHIRE, DAVID The Hindenberg (OST) (Intrada) cd 30.00
Even if David Shire had only ever done the scores for The Taking Of Pelham 123 and The Conversation, those two alone would seal the deal, ensuring Shire a top spot as one of our favorite film composers EVER. Those two soundtracks are so amazing, so intense and emotional, incredibly dramatic and really really strange. The recurring melodic motif of the Conversation is one of those rare musical moments, a tiny chunk of music that once it enters your head, it sticks there forever. It helps that it's repeated over and over and over in the movie and on the cd...
But Shire did so much more, amazing films, ridiculous movies, tons of TV, silly and fantastic, dark and depressing, some were fairly surprising, cuz who would have ever assumed that the guy who did Pelham 123 and The Conversation was the same man responsible for some of the music for Saturday Night Fever and Norma Rae...
From the same folks who brought us the long overdue cd release of the Conversation comes the soundtrack to The Hindenburg from 1975. One of the final entries in the spate of disaster movies, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Hindenburg is the story of the legendary 1937 crash of The Hindenburg, a German Zeppelin, which remains still one of the worst disasters of the 20th century and one of the first to become a media event due to live radio broadcasts and newsreel footage. The movie transformed the disaster into a mystery, a secret plot to destroy the Hindenburg. A pretty killer cast, George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, Burgess Meredith...
The music, while not as idiosyncratic as either Pelham or The Conversation, is still moving and dramatic, much more classic sounding old school soundtrack music, with haunting strings, playful little melodies, sweeping expanses of orchestral swoon, occasional bursts of atonal Bernard Hermann style high end tension, fluttering woodwinds, deep ominous low end, some more classical sounding string sections, it's all pretty great, even removed from the visuals, our favorite moments of course are the darker, dronier more tense and ominous bits, which thankfully make up much of the score.
Also included is a strange vocal track, called "There's A Lot To Be Said For The Fuehrer", a croony tin pan alley style ballad, and the whole record is bookended by newsreel broadcasts, the opening is a brief history of ballooning and the development of the zeppelin, all jaunty and playful, the closing is really intense, a rough scratchy live recording set to music of an eyewitness to the disaster, describing the crash as it unfolds, visibly shaken, his voice cracking as he struggles to keep from weeping. Heavy.
Certainly not the weirdest score, but soundtrack fans will definitely dig, and Shire fans should check this out for sure (as well as the recent Zodiac score that we also have in stock). And as with all the Intrada reissues, tons of photos and super extensive liner notes.
MPEG Stream: "Suspect Montage"
MPEG Stream: "Fin Repair Sequence"
MPEG Stream: "Boerth Sets The Bomb / Preparing To Land"
MPEG Stream: "Prelude To The Holocaust"

SUPERMAYER Save The World (Kompakt) cd 15.98
For a Kompakt release, Supermayer seem to be throwing some quark and even some pop sensibilities in the face of the usual blurred ambiance and we like it! Save The World, the debut collaboration from Kompakt's own Michael Mayer and Superpitcher is diverse in range, but never comes across as indecisive. At their most poppy, the duo could be easily compared to early Minty Fresh superstars Tahiti 80 and Papas Fritas. Even Looper and Moby come to mind when the pop conventions are coupled with a tinge of electro. Short, experimental, ambient tracks help the album flow nicely between pop and their other focus, housey electro that toes the line between your classic Kompakt bliss and a more Daft Punk style electro-groove. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "The Lonesome King"
MPEG Stream: "The Art Of Letting Go"

TBA (AKA NATALIE BERIDZE) Size & Tears (Max Ernst) 2cd 18.98
"Too wrong and too dreamy." So says the press release for this 2cd set of electronic curiosities from Natalie Beridze; and it's a strangely apt description of these sounds, of course, meant in the best possible way. Beridze hails from the former Soviet republic of Georgia; and some time ago, she caught the attention of Thomas Brinkmann, who has since helped produce her albums and released them on his Max Ernst imprint. There's a strange intimacy to her collages of whispered spoken word and MIDI-sequenced piano solos that stream around the concrete slabs of post-techno breakbeats and electroid glitches. Given the leftfield abstractions of her work, references to Autechre and Aphex Twin have been popping up in the media; but her work (like that of Ukraine's Zavoloka) speak with a whimsical playfulness through electronics and semantics that is almost completely detached from a dancefloor context. A difficult set of recordings to take in, given its atypical agenda; but this is well worth spending some time with.
MPEG Stream: "March In Ocean And Falling Asleep"
MPEG Stream: "Itaka Farewell March"

TEMPLETON, MARK Standing On A Hummingbird (Anticipate) cd 15.98
Nice title! And, oooh. It's a very nice recording too. This debut album by electro-acoustic glitchtronica artist Mark Templeton should appeal to fans of Paul Wirkus, Mitchell Akiyama, Guiseppi Ielasi and others working in the experimental-but-beautiful, lowercase field of painterly abstraction, processed instruments, delicate drone, and (last but not least) ambient melodies. Mark Templeton's use of guitar, accordion, vibraphone, cymbals and especially banjo have us most closely comparing this to Geoff Mullen's wonderful thrtysxtrllnmnfstns, as Templeton is similarly submersing the notes played acoustically into a warm, electric bath of creaking staticky stuff, accompanied by murmuring field recordings and chirping digital glitch, like the pleasant but disintegrated soundtrack to some grainy super 8 footage, barely heard beneath the whirr of the film projector itself. Sweet swells of sound throb and drift, fracture and coalesce. It's all very lovely and mysterious, gentle caresses for curious ears.
MPEG Stream: "Pigeons Hurt"
MPEG Stream: "Standing On A Hummingbird"
MPEG Stream: "Pattern For A Pillow"

TOY BIZARRE kdi dctb 039 (Ferns) 3" cd 9.98
Throughout the '90s, Cedric Peyronnet would boldy announce that none of his Toy Bizarre recordings were made with synthesizers or samplers, instead with field recordings and collage techniques as his twin media. It has been speculated that this notion comes from a punk attitude against France's institutional avant-garde which evolved out of the work of Pierre Schaefer and Pierre Henri; but at the same time, Peyronnet's recordings focus on the specificity of sound locations, and the technology of samplers and synthesizers didn't have the ability to reflect the unpredictability that Peyronnet witnessed in environmental sound. While Peyronnet doesn't mentioned his aversion to technology on this 3" from Ferns, he's retained the same adventurous sensibility for dynamic edits coupled with nocturnal, slippery ambience. From the jump-start opening of crackling twigs and grasses with an airplane's Doppler-effected engine roaring in the distance, Peyronnet's 20 minute composition dissolves into elegantly fluid timbres weaving out of tactile sounds from sand, grit, gravel, and other bits of detritus. Once all of the sounds have all settled into a drift of stasis, a quick jump to another set of textures and abrasions begins with a corresponding set of sympathetic drones. Fans of Loren Chasse's field recording work, Tarab, and Steve Roden should all take note of this exceptional release.
MPEG Stream: "kdi dctb 039"

TWO GALLANTS s/t (Saddle Creek) cd 13.98
This SF band craft sturdy country rock with dusty roads 'n' harmonica friendly withered male vocals, and they've packed their third full length with it! Clearly Two Gallants' music is deeply influenced by the blues, the sort whose roots run deeeep in the southern swamps. Here's nine well scuffed, weathered and leathered songs that fit well alongside the strainin' with emotion Americana stylings of labelmates Bright Eyes and Eric Bachmann as well as My Morning Jacket or Waco Brothers. Real good!
MPEG Stream: "The Hand That Held Me Down"
MPEG Stream: "Ribbons Round My Tongue"

WELCOME Sirs (Fat Cat) cd 14.98
This Seattle band has a name and album title ripe for an Abbott & Costello skit. Welcome! Sirs! Polite niceties aside, this is some tweaked, disjointed retro-pop that seems deeply indebted to The Soft Boys, The Pixies, The Breeders, Pavement and oh, maybe a little (or a lot) of The Beatles too. The ten tunes are played out on lanky electric guitar and loosely slung bass with singers who could almost convince us that they're the rambunctious offspring of Kim Deal and Robyn Hitchcock.
MPEG Stream: "All Set"
MPEG Stream: "This Minute"

WIRE, THE #285 November 2007 magazine 9.98
Another new Wire magazine, which of course means another amazing big ol' batch of new (and not so new) modern music. This month on the cover Detroit Techno technicians Underground Resistance, inside: hip hopper Flying Lotus, guitarist / bagpiper David Watson, sound artist Daniel Menche, Global Ear on Addis Ababa, sound / performance artists Juneau/Projects/, Invisible Jukebox with JG Thirwell of Foetus, musician, noisemaker and label honcho Russell Haswell, guitarist Loren Connors, jazz legend Sonny Simmons and as usual pages and pages of reviews (cds, lps, 7"s, shows, performances, installations, happenings, books, films, DVD's) and finally a back page Marx Brothers gospel (?) epiphany from Howard Mandel.

YIKES Whoa Comas / Blood Bomb (Kill Shaman) cd 10.98
Yikes, indeed! If you enjoy effects heavy, fuzzed out, fucked up, rudimentary rawk freakshows, this new Yikes is for you! John Dwyer and co. launch a boil-popping noise barrage that barely leaves any room for the squawked and shouted vocals. If you've been keeping tabs on Dwyer's sonic activities, you might be please to discover that his latest exclamation fits right between his old bands Coachwhips and Pink And Brown. Tho' we can also say that on songs like "The Wick" he sounds like a dyspeptic Robert Pollard. The assault is short if not sweet; the seven songs clock in at just under fifteen minutes!
MPEG Stream: "The Wick"
MPEG Stream: "Blood Bomb"




----*
----* Compilations :
----*

V/A Blow Your Cool: 20 Prog / Psych Assaults From The UK & Europe (Psychic Circle) cd 16.98
The record-collecting excess of Nick Saloman (Mr. Bevis Frond) pays off for all of us once again, as he presents yet another collection of groovy old '60s/'70s tracks from rare vinyl that he's compiled for the Psychic Circle label. Blow Your Cool is a sequel of sorts to Psychic Circle's winning A Visit To The Spaceship Factory comp but instead of featuring only obscure UK prog/psych gems, this ventures further afield to showcase tracks by weird/cool bands from Continental Europe as well. Thus it's definitely got something of the Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word/"B-music" vibe.
Of the 20 artists included, a few names jump out as familiar to us, and speak well to the quality of the comp. There's Cosmic Dealer (a psychedelic Dutch band who more than live up to their name, which is much better than what we're told their original moniker was: Floating Fudge), Triangle (the title track "Blow Your Cool" is by this French group, it's also on the collection from them we listed last year), Zior, Egg, Freedom, Mogul Thrash (featuring John Wetton), Les Variations (more Francias Metal de Proto we've reviewed before), Blue Beard (with "Sly Willy", also found on the Some Songs Stuck In My Mind comp we listed last week), and The Rattles (feat. Achim Reichel). Then, among the rest, quite a few new-to-us surprises, from the bombastic, poppy opening track "To Live" by Paradise Hammer from England, to the progged-out, wound-up Hendrixy heaviness of Italy's Tritons on their "Drifter". Also on here: Primitive Man, Barry Freeman & Strange Power, The Foundations, Dream Police, Ferris Wheel, Paul Ryder & Time Machine, Jess & James, Bedlam, and Swegas.
As usual, informative liner notes and graphics pertaining to each track are provided in the full-colour cd booklet. What can we say, but keep 'em coming, Nick!
MPEG Stream: COSMIC DEALER "The Scene"
MPEG Stream: PARADISE HAMMER "To Live"
MPEG Stream: MOGUL THRASH "Sleeping In The Kitchen"

V/A Boston Underground 1979 - 1982 (Moulty) cd 13.98
For those who remember when there were genuine underground music scenes (or for younger whippersnappers who wanna know what the fuss was all about)... this compilation is a great document of Boston based bands from a brief four year stretch that bridged the seventies with the eighties. Remarkably polished and burstin' out with youthful energy, Boston Underground is nicely varied from earnest jangle pop to sneering garagey rawk to angular no wave. Many of these songs which may seem tame and downright quaint by today's standards were fresh and downright adventurous back then. it's super cool that we're getting a chance to hear these pockets of amazing music that sadly seldom reached the ears of anyone outside of the city limits let alone within them. Check it out!
MPEG Stream: MAPS "I'm Talking To You (1979 45 dm 1852)"
MPEG Stream: ART YARD "Sixty Cycle Hum (1981 radio tape)"

V/A From The Entrails To The Dirt (End All Life) cd 17.98
Out of print for WAY too long, this mind blowing avant black metal French four way is finally available again.
Originally released as a series of SUPER limited split vinyl eps, a 7", a 10" and a 12", each teaming up bizarre mysterious French black metallers Malicious Secrets with some of their more well known countrymen: Antaeus, Mutiilation and Deathspell Omega. Holy shit! You might as well stop reading right now and order one of these as fast as you can. You shouldn't even need us to tell you how totally fucking mindblowing this comp is. Antaeus offer up a short buzzing blast of ultra grim blackness, a fuzzed out blur of droning black metal, downtuned guitars, blown out lightning fast blast beats, guttural growls, the whole thing a white hot lo-fi blast of utter brutality. Then of course there's Mutiilation, who not only offer up a reverb drenched burst of atmospheric blackened buzz, also super lo-fi, blasting and buzzing, and hauntingly creepy crawly like it was recorded in a cave or at the bottom of a well, but they also do a cover of Sinatra's "My Way"! But you wouldn't necessarily know it, the croonsome original becomes a harsh pitchfork to the head, dripping with thick droney guitars and shrieking black howls, although it does have a super cool, riffy sort of un-metal breakdown in the middle. Most of you will need this for the final track, a brand new, exclusive to this comp 20 minute epic from Deathspell Omega, rife with impossibly obtuse riffs, weird atonal guitar skree, super complex rhythms, haunting ambient dronescapes, weird math-metal breakdowns, and of course some of the fiercest fucked up black metal ever. Woah.
As if that weren't enough, let's not forget the three tracks from Malicious Secrets, each of their three tracks from the splits are totally dizzying swirls of ultra fucked up, BIZARRE black metal, riffs are bent and twisted into impossible shapes, blasting drums are sprayed wildly all over the place, each song is a serpentine, non-linear sonic mindfuck, a huge spastic black churning whirlpool, with little bits of riff or little streaks of blast beat surfacing now and again, while over the whole thing the vocalist moans and groans, low and haunting, each syllable stretched into long drawn out bellows, sometimes breaking into hacking coughs or throat clearing before once again returning to an utterly agonizing wail. So totally fucked up and so totally amazing!
MPEG Stream: MUTIILATION "My Way"
MPEG Stream: DEATHSPELL OMEGA "Mass Grave Aesthetics"

V/A Skull Disco: Soundboy Punishments (Skull Disco / Rough Trade) 2cd 14.98
Originally a pricey import, now available domestically WAY cheaper ($8 less!), one of our favorite recent collections of kick ass, bass heavy dubstep.
Dub is all about the bass. The darker and more cavernous the better. The more you feel it, the more your fillings rattle, the better. So it makes sense that the same would hold true for dubstep, but maybe to an even greater degree, as the sound of dubstep is even more spare and skeletal than dub, leaving nearly nothing except for the rhythm and the bass.
Soundboy Punishments collects the first 5 vinyl releases from UK label Skull Disco on cd for the first time, and while ostensibly this stuff is dubstep, it almost sounds more like Muslimgauze or old On-U sound stuff or even Spectre at times, but way more stripped down, way heavier, and with the sort of massive undulating bass that washes over everything like a thick black wave.
The first 5 12"s on Skull Disco, split pretty evenly between the artists Shackleton and Appleblim (with one track from Gatekeeper) are all epic slabs of blown out bass heavy skitter, with blurry distant synth and little Eastern flourishes, as well as the occasional dubbed out vocal, smeared into blurred ripples of reverb. Super abstract and minimal, hypnotic and groovy, the beats and shuffling and subtle, not the huge pounding of 'traditional' dubstep, or the manic grind of jungle, instead, the sound is laid waaaaaaay back. A sort of more modern digi-dub, varied percussion, tablas, hand drums, all woven into simple rhythmic frameworks, always with a rumbling low end pulse lurking right beneath the surface, until part way in, the bass DROPS, and suddenly everything has changed, what was a lazy lope is transformed into a throbbing lurch, a wall of gut churning low end, fuzzy and distorted and blown out, sounding almost like the hardest jungle track ever, slooooooooowed way down. The first disc is pretty blissed out, hard to imagine these tracks filling dancefloors, although they have been, it sounds more like music to get wasted, and sort of just lounge about, head nodding, the vibrations washing over you. With all the hype about this disc and these tracks, initially we were a bit let down, but gradually, this has grown on us like crazy to the point where we pretty much don't ever want to listen to anything else.
The second disc is where it gets weirder, and a bit harder, featuring unreleased cuts as well as non-Skull Disco tracks, including the long anticipated nearly twenty minute mix of Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" by Ricardo Villalobos. Anyone who dug that last Villalobos disc, Fizheuer Zieheuer will definitely dig this. Simple shuffling and ultra minimal pulses, stretched out endlessly, so dark and hypnotic, with slow shifting synths in the background. Our only complaint are the vocals, a slowed down mysterious voice intoning apocryphal lyrics over almost the whole song, a la Spectre or the last Plastikman record, it's a little distracting, and we have to say we probably would have liked it without, but even so, it's beginning to growing on us too. The rest of the second disc is like a supercharged version of disc one, more synths, thicker bass, stranger arrangements and creepier melodies, a lot more like slowed down jungle, with heavy beats and reverb and delay everywhere, the more laid back abstract cuts definitely remind us of the Bush Chemists, a totally druggy and dreamy outerspace dub. So good. And based solely on how much this gets played in the shop, this just might be a brand new unanimous AQ fave.
Packaged in a cool, creepy black and white cardboard sleeve that looks way more metal that electronica...
WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: SHACKLETON "Blood On My Hands (R. Villalobos Apocalypso Now Mix)"
MPEG Stream: SHACKLETON "Stalker"
MPEG Stream: APPLEBLIM "Girder"

V/A To The Triumph Of Evil: A Tribute To Judas Iscariot (ISO666) cd 13.98
Finally back in stock, no longer in the oversized book style case, now in a regular jewel case, and thus a bit cheaper. So if you missed out before, now's your chance.
Another super limited, ultra deluxe reissue of a compilation that came out last year, and then again in a limited run of only 150 copies more recently, and which somehow completely slipped beneath our radar the first time around. Hard to believe considering how amazing this is. All you need to know is it's a tribute to Judas Iscariot, a USBM institution, and features the elite of what might be considered the second wave of USBM cover classic JI tracks: Xasthur, Leviathan, Nachtmystium, Krieg and more! Holy shit!
After 10 years, Judas Isacriot hung it up in 2002, but they still manage to influence countless legions of musical minions. Most of the bans here owe no small debt to Akhenaten and his Midwestern metal outfit, which is obviously why they're here paying their respects.
The mighty Xasthur covers "The Cold Earth Slept Below...", the result is an incredibly lo-fi, brittle washed out smear of fuzzy guitars, stumbling dirgelike drumming, the whole thing so hissy and buzzy it's almost dreamlike, with some gorgeously mournful melodies that would make it sound downright poppy if it weren't so frosty and harsh. So fucked and hauntingly pretty it had us digging out our old JI records to hear the original. AQ fave Leviathan takes on "Where the Weather Beats Incessant", nearly 12 minutes of moody depressive midtempo blackness, with some strange droney interludes, super harsh distorted vocals, and strange drawn out guitar parts, the whole thing epic and majestic and almost post rock sounding. Krieg cover "Babylon", a furiously fuzzy, ultra lo-fi burst of muddy murky black buzz, guttural vocals vomited up from the depths, blasting beats, amazing lightning speed riffing, but the melodies buried in the mix are haunting and again strangely lovely....
Fellow Midwesterners Nachtmystium tackle "Gaze Upon Heaven In Flames", a super loud, in the red blast of relentless buzzing black metal, the riffs and the drumming a blinding blur, until about halfway through where the song breaks down into a strange, lurching half time almost-groove with creepy melodies and a odd timed hiccuping rhythm. Frostmoon Eclipse offer up their version of "Spill The Blood Of The Lamb" the grimmest and frostiest of the bunch so far, murky and muddy, but thick with buzz and thrash, the vocals a hateful demonic gurgle, the whole thing a buzzing snarling beast. The rest of the lineup holds their own nearly as well, offering up their own varied takes on classic Judas Iscariot material. Eternity Of Darkness, Sign Of Katu, Arkenstone, Merrimack, Dead To Earth, The Black Death, Carving To Nenia, Martyr and Birkenau.
The strange thing is, that as buzzing and black, as hateful and harsh, as dreary and depressive as these tracks are, we had almost forgotten how pretty some of the Judas Iscariot stuff really was...
MPEG Stream: XASTHUR "The Cold Earth Slept Below"
MPEG Stream: KRIEG "Babylon"
MPEG Stream: LEVIATHAN "Where The Winter Beats Incessant"

----*
----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed :
----*

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!

3/4HADBEENELIMINATED "The Religious Experience" (Soleilmoon) lp 33.00
3/4HADBEENELIMINATED "Theology" (Soleilmoon) cd 24.00
AC/DC "Plug Me In" (Columbia) dvd 29.00
ADAMS, JOHN LUTHER "For Lou Harrsion" (New World) cd 16.98
AESOP ROCK "None Shall Pass" (Definitive Jux) cd 14.98
AHMED, MAHMOUD & EITHER / ORCHESTRA "Tsedenia Gebre-Marqos" (Buda Musique) dvd 14.98
AIR GUITAR NATION (Docurama Films) dvd 19.98
ALASEHIR "Philosophy of Living Fire" (Siltbreeze) lp 13.98
ALCORN, SUSAN "And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar" (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 21.00
AREA C "Haunt" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
ARMISEN, FRED PRESENTS: JENS HANNEMANN "Complicated Drumming Technique" (Drag City) dvd 15.98
ART FLEURY "I Luoghi Del Potere" (Die-Schachtel) cd 27.00
ATELEIA "Nightly" (Radium) cd ep 11.98
BALROYNIGRESS "Shampoo And Champagne" (Kning Disk) cd 14.98
BALTHROP, ALABAMA "Your Big Plans & Our Little Town" (End Up) 2cd 12.98
BARONESS "Red Album" (Relapse) cd 14.98
BARUCH, BEN "The Complete Recordings 1949-1950" (Sub Rosa) 2cd 16.98
BASINSKI, WILLIAM "El Camino Real" (2062) cd 14.98
BEEM "The Famous/Mouth Everest" (Flogsta Danshall) 7" 6.50
BEHOLD THE ARCTOPUS "Skullgrid" (Metal Blade) cd 12.98
BISON "Earth Bound" (Forest) cd 14.98
BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW "Falling Through A Field" (Graveface) cd 12.98
BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW "Start A People" (Graveface) cd 12.98
BLANCHARD, JACK & MISTY MORGAN "Life And Death (And Almost Everything Else)" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98
BLANCHART, JACK & MISTY MORGAN "Weird Scenes Inside The Birdhouse" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98
BUG "Skeng" (Hyperdub) 12" 12.98
BURIAL "Ghost Hardware" (Hyperdub) 12" 11.98
BURIED AT SEA "Ghosts" (Neurot) cd 14.98
BUTTHOLE SURFERS "Pioughd / Widowermaker" (Latino Bugger Veil) cd 14.98
BYLA / JARBOE "Viscera" (Translation Loss) cd 13.98
CHARALAMBIDES "Electricity Ghost" (Wholly Other) cd 13.98
CHROMATICS "In The City" (Italians Do It Better) 12" 11.98
CHROMATICS "IV...Night Drive: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" (Italians Do It Better) cd 13.98
CLOUDLAND CANYON "Silver Tongued Sisyphus" (Kranky) cd 9.98
CLYDE-EVANS, JOHN "Apetal Thunderfall" (Digitalis) cd 11.98
COFFINS / THE ARM AND SWORD OF A BASTARD GOD "split" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
COLLEY, JOE & JASON LESCALLEET "Annihilate This Week" (Brombron) cd 15.98
COMMON EIDER, KING EIDER "How To Build A Cabin" (Yik Yak) cd 12.98
CONVEY, JOSHUA "Vacant Integument" (Utech) cd 14.98
COPE, JULIAN "You Gotta Problem" (Head Heritage) 2cd 27.00
DARJEELING LIMITED, THE "(OST)" (Abkco) cd
DEAD KENNEDYS "Milking The Sacred Cow" (Manifesto) cd 9.98
DOWN "III: Over The Under" (Down Records) cd 17.98
ELEGI "Sistereis" (Miasmah) cd 17.98
ELEH "Floating Frequencies / Intuitive Synthesis 1" (Important) lp 14.98
EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER "Brain Salad Surgery" (Shout Factory) cd 14.98
EQUIMANTHORN "Exalted Are The 7 Throne Bearers of Ninnkigal" (From Beyond) cd 14.98
EROC "3" (Brain / Revisited) cd 17.98
EXIAS-J "Live Document 2003-2005" (PSF) 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
EYES LIKE SAUCERS "Still Living In The Desert" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
FAY, BILL "From The Bottom Of An Old Grandfather Clock" (Wooden Hill) cd 24.00
FOREVER AMBER "The Love Cycle" (Wooden Hill) cd 24.00
FOUR MINTS, THE "Gently Down Your Stream" (* (asterisk)) cd 14.98
GANE, TIM & O'HAGEN, SEAN "La Vie D'Artiste (OST)" (Too Pure) cd 13.98
GENESIS "Yakta Mama" (Guerssen) cd 23.00
GHOST "Overture; Live In Nippon Yusen Soko 2006" (Drag City) cd + dvd 17.98
GULTSKRA ARTIKLER "Kasha Iz Topora" (Miasmah Recordings) cd 15.98
GURDJIEFF, G.I. & THOMAS DE HARTMAN "Oriental Suite" (Basta) 4cd+book 113.00
GUSTAFSSON, MATS & YOSHIMI "Words On The Floor" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98
HALF MAKESHIFT "L'Anse Amort" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
HAWTIN, RICHIE "Concept 1" (Minus) 2cd 22.00
HAZLEWOOD, LEE "Something Special" (Water) cd 14.98
HIGGS, DANIEL "Metempsychotic Memories" (Holy Mountain) cd 14.98
HISTORY AT OUR DISPOSAL "Symbols In The Architecture" (Creative Capitalism) cd
HOLY FUCK "LP" (Young Turks) cd 13.98
HOOR-PAAR-KRAAT "In Eros Veritas" (Goat Eater Arts) cd-r 10.98
IELASI, GIUSEPPE "August" (12K) cd 14.98
INCAPACITANTS "73" (Alchemy) cd 21.00
JANDEK "Brooklyn Wednesday" (Corwood Industries) 3cd 17.98
JAPANCAKES "Giving Machines" (Darla) cd 15.98
JEAN, NORMA "I Guess That Comes From Being Poor" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98
JESPER, TERJE & JOACHIM "s/t" (Shadoks Music) cd 15.98
JOHNNY LUNCHBREAK "Appetizer" (* (asterisk)) cd 14.98
JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION, THE "Jukebox Explosion" (In the Red) cd/lp 13.98/10.98
JULIUS, ORLANDO "Super Afro Soul" (Vampi Soul) 2cd/3lp 33.00/42.00
KANG, EYVIND "Athlantis" (Ipecac) cd 16.98
KISS THE ANUS OF A BLACK CAT "Turn Hegel On His Head" (Public Guilt) 7" 5.50
KLANGMUTATIONEN "Weibe Messe" (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
KONDO, HIDEAKI "Structures" (Modern Music / PSF) cd 16.98
KOSMOS "s/t" (The End) cd 12.98
KOUYATE, BASSEKOU & KGONI BA "Segu Blue" (Out Here) cd 16.98
LES SAVY FAV "Let's Stay Friends" (French Kiss) cd/lp 13.98/15.98
LETTERS "s/t" (Type) cd 15.98
LIARS "s/t" (Mute) lp 16.98
LICHENS "Omns" (Kranky) cd + dvd 16.98
LINDSTROM "Contemporary Fix EP" (Smalltown Supersound) cd ep 14.98
LOUDERMILK, JOHN D. "The Open Mind" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98
LSD-MARCH "Constellation Of Tragedy" (Important) cd 14.98
LUBELSKI, SAMARA "Parallel Suns" (The Social Registry) cd 14.98
MAGIK MARKERS "Boss" (Ecstatic Peace) cd 10.98
MAKES NICE, THE "This Time Tomorrow" (Frenetic) cd 13.98
MALMBERG, ERIC "Verklighet & Beat" (Hapna) cd 15.98
MANTLES, THE "Burden Walk With Me" (Dulc-i-tone) 7" 4.98
MASHAYEKHI, ALIREZA & ATA EBTEKAR (SOTE) "Persian Electronic Music: Yesterday And Today (1966-2006)" (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98
MATTHEW SHIPP "Piano Vortex" (Thirsty Ear) cd 16.98
MAYER, NATHANIEL "I Want Love And Affection Not The House Of Correction" (Vampi Soul) cd/lp 17.98/29.00
METALOCALYPSE: DETHKLOK "The Dethalbum" (Williams Street / Adult Swim) cd 14.98
MIKA MIKO "666: E.P. + 7" + Rare" (PPM) cd 13.98
MISTRESS "The Glory Bitches Of Doghead" (Feto Records) cd 15.98
MOBY GRAPE "s/t" (Sundazed) cd 19.98
MODESELEKTOR "Happy Birthday" (BPitch) cd 16.98
MORRICONE, ENNIO "Morricone Giallo" (Bella Casa / Cherry Red) cd 17.98
MOUNTAIN HOME "s/t" (Language Of Stone) cd 14.98
MRK1 "Copyright Laws" (Planet Mu) cd/cd 17.98/17.98
MUM "Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy" (Fat Cat) cd 14.98
MUNDO "Down In / Dub Of" (Baked Goods) 10" 12.98
MUNDO "Low / U Get" (Baked Goods) 10" 12.98
NADJA "Radiance Of Shadows" (Alien8) cd 14.98
NATHAMUNI BROTHERS "Madras 1974" (Fire Musem) cd 14.98
NILSEN, B. J. "The Short Night" (Touch) cd 16.98
NO AGE "Weirdo Rippers" (Fat Cat) cd 14.98
NO NECK BLUES BAND "Live At Ken's Electric Lake" (Locust) 2cd 23.00
OBLIVEON "From This Day Forward" (Prodisk) cd 14.98
OBSCURUS ADVOCAM "Verbia Daemonicus" (Battle Kommand) cd 14.98
PACIONE, ADAM "From Stills To Motion" (Infraction) cd + 3"cd 17.98
PARSON "Throw Some Ds" (Planet Mu) 12" 7.98
PHOTEK "Form & Function Vol. 2" (Sanctuary) cd 17.98
PICASTRO "Whore Luck" (Polyvinyl) cd 14.98
PIECES OF PEACE "s/t" (Cali-Tex) cd 14.98
PINCH "Pepper Spray" (Planet Mu) 12" 7.98
POCAHAUNTED / ROBEDOOR "Hunted Gathered" (Digitalis) 2cd 22.00
POPOFF, MARTIN "The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal Vol. 3: The Nineties" (Collector's Guide Publishing) book + cd 28.95
PRIESTBIRD "In Your Time" (Kemado) cd 13.98
PRINZHORN DANCE SCHOOL "s/t" (DFA) cd 14.98
PROPINQUITY "Propinquity" (* (asterisk)) cd 14.98
PROTESTING THE DIXIE CHICKS "A Film By Christopher Fleeger" dvd 9.98
PSYCHEDELIC HORSESHIT "Magic Flowers Droned" (Siltbreeze) cd/lp 13.98/13.98
QUI "Love's Miracle" (Ipecac) cd 15.98
RANDALL OF NAZARETH "s/t" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/15.98
RANDY BARRACUDA "Rick James is Dead/The High" (Flogsta Danshall) 7" 6.50
REED, LOU / ZEITKRATZER "Metal Machine Music" (Asphodel) cd+dvd 17.98
RILEY, TERRY "Music For The Gift" (Elysium Fields) cd 14.98
ROGUE WAVE "Asleep At Heaven's Gate" (Brushfire Records) cd 14.98
ROOT "Daemon Viam Invenient" (Shindy) cd 15.98
ROSENBOOM, DAVID "Future Travel" (New World) cd 16.98
ROSETTA "Cleansing Undertones of Wake/Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 9.98
ROSETTA "Wake / Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 13.98
RST "Axes" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
SCORCHER "Thunder Power" (T.H.E. M.O.V.E.M.E.N.T.) cd 15.98
SEABEAR "The Ghost That Carried Us Away" (Morr) cd 16.98
SHARK MOVE "Ghede Chorra's Shark Move" (Shadoks Music) cd 15.98
SHE WANTS REVENGE "This Is Forever" (Geffen) cd 12.98
SHIRE, DAVID "Zodiac (OST)" (Varese Sarabande) cd 16.98
SHITMAT "Grooverider" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
SIGUROSSON, VALGEIR "Ekvilibrium" (Bedroom Community) cd 15.98
SKEPTA "Greatest Hits" (Boy Better Know) cd 21.00
SKULL DEFECTS, THE "The Sound Of Defekt Skulls" (Utech) cd 14.98
SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "Open The Gates Of Mimer" (AA / Nosordo) cd 14.98
SOLITUDE AETERNUS "Alone" (Soul Food) cd 17.98
SOLITUDE AETURNUS "Hour Of Despair" (Metal Mind Productions) dvd 24.00
SORIAH "Ofrendas De Luz A Los Muertos" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 17.98
SPECTRE, AARON "Say More Fire" (Rag & Bone) 12" 12.98
SPENCER, DUB & TRANCE HILL "Return Of The Supercops" (Echo Beach) cd 16.98
SPOOKY, DJ "Creation Rebel" (Trojan) cd 14.98
STRIBORG "Nocturnal Emissions / Nyctophobia" (Displeased) cd 14.98
STRIBORG "Spiritual Catharsis" (Displeased) cd 14.98
STUMPS, THE "The Black Wood" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
SUISHOU NO FUNE "The Light Of Dark Night" (aRCHIVE) cd
SUISHOU NO FUNE "The Shining Star - Live" (Important) cd 14.98
SUPERSILENT "8" (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98
SURF PUNKS "Oh No! Not Them Again!" (Noble Rot) cd 13.98
SURF PUNKS "Party Bomb" (Noble Rot) cd 13.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI NEW DIRECTION UNIT "April Is The Cruellest Month" (Jinya) cd 24.00
TARAF DE HAIDOUKS "Maskarada" (Crammed Discs) cd 15.98
TARWATER "Spider Smile" (Morr Music) cd 16.98
TERMINALS, THE "Last Days Of The Sun" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
TETREAULT, MARTIN / KID KOALA "Phon-o-victo" (Les Disques Victo) cd 15.98
TODAY IS THE DAY "Axis Of Eden" (Supernova) cd 14.98
TORTURED SOUL, A "Kiss Of The Thorn" (Eyes Like Snow / Northern Silence) cd 11.98
TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR "From Moja To Minneapolis" (Gashud) dvd 28.00
TRANSMISSION 0 "Memory Of A Dream" (Candlelight) cd 13.98
TULUS "Biography Obscene" (Candlelight) cd 14.98
TULUS "Cold Core Collection" (Indie Recordings) 2cd 16.98
TUNNG "Good Arrows" (Thrill Jockey) cd/lp 14.98/13.98
TURBONEGRO "Retox" (Cooking Vinyl) cd 14.98
TURZI "A" (Kemado) cd 14.98
TUSSLE "Warning EP" (Smalltown Supersound) cd ep 14.98
UDAY NAPOLEON "Crack Crack Crack/Brains" (Flogsta Danshall) 7" 6.50
V/A "200" (Planet Mu) 2cd/2lp 9.98/17.98
V/A "Milky Disco" (Lo) cd 14.98
V/A "More Pressure Vol 1: Straight To The Head" (Pressure Sounds) cd 17.98
V/A "People Take Warning!" (Tompkins Square) 3cd box 58.00
V/A "Portable Supersound" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 12.98
V/A "Summer Records: Anthology 1974-1988" (Light In The Attic) Dual Disc 17.98
V/A "We Are Not Together" (Repsychled) cd 17.98
VARGR "Northern Black Supremacy" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
VENETIAN SNARES "My Downfall" (Planet Mu) cd/2lp 14.98/17.98
VIBERT, LUKE AND JEAN JACQUES PERRY "Moog Acid" (Lo) cd 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
WALKER, SCOTT "And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball?" (4AD) cd ep 8.98
WALL OF SLEEP "Sun Faced Apostles" (psycheDOOMelic) cd 14.98
WALTER, WEASEL QUARTET "Revolt Music" (ugExplode) cd 11.98
WAX POETICS "#25 Oct/Nov" magazine 7.99
WAX POETICS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 1 book 39.95
WEEDEATER "God Luck And Good Speed" (Southern Lord) cd 15.98
WEST, KANYE "Graduation" (Roc-A-Fella) cd 15.98
WHITE MAGIC "Dark Stars" (Drag City) cd 12.98
WHITE RAINBOW "Sky Drips Drifts" (???) cd 7.98
WILDILDLIFE "Peas Feast" (Chicas De Hoy) cd-r 4.98
WILEY "Playtime Is Over" (Big Dada) cd/lp 14.98/25.00
YCOSAHATERON "La Nuit" (Baphomet) cd 14.98
YELLOW SWANS "At All Ends" (Load) cd 13.98
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
ZODIAC MINDWARP AND THE LOVE REACTION "Tattooed Beat Messiah (Special Collector's Edition)" (Rock Candy) cd
ZOROASTER "Dog Magic" (Southern Lord) cd 12.98
ZRASDTVOOTIE "III" (Holy Mountain) lp 15.98
ZS "Arms" (Planaria) cd 10.98

_______________________________________________________________________

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

______________________________________________________________________

SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} October 23rd
Holy Fuck "LP" cd on XL/Young Turks
Prefuse 73 "Preparations" cd+bonus cd/2lp+bonus cd on Warp
Fear Falls Burning / Birchville Cat Motel split cd
Ghost "Overture" cd on Drag City
White Magic "Dark Stars" cd ep/12" on Drag City
Jens Hannemann "Complicated Drumming Technique" dvd on Drag City
Randall of Nazareth (of Pearls and Brass) "s/t" cd/lp on Drag City
Black Dice "Load Blown" cd
Ween "La Cucaracha" cd
Shark Move "Ghede Chokra's" cd on Shadoks
Terje, Jesper & Joachim "s/t" cd on Shadoks
Pluramon "The Monstrous Surplus" cd/lp on Karaoke Kalk
Marcus Schmickler "Altars of Science" cd+dvd audio on Editions Mego
Secret Chiefs 3 "Xaphan: Book of Angels Volume 9" cd on Tzadik
Guy Klucevsek "Song of Remembrance" cd on Tzadik
Henry Flynt & Nova'billy "Nova'billy" cd/2lp on Locust
The Family Elan "Stare Of Dawn" cd/lp on Locust
Paul Metzger "Deliverance" cd/lp on Locust

----} also in October
Endless Boogie "tba" cd/2lp on No Quarter

----} November 6th
Sigur Ros "Hvarf/Heim" cd
Gescom "A1-D1" cd on Skam
Citay "Little Kingdom" LP on Important (cd on Secretly Canadian)
Sun "I'll Be The Same" LP version on Important
His Name Is Alive "Sweet Earth Flower: A Tribute To Marion Brown" cd on High Two/Aum Fidelity
Eskiboy (Wiley) "The Best of Tunnel Vision" 2cd on Eskibeat Recordings

----} November 11th
Om "Pilgrimage" LP on Southern Lord

----} November 13th
Mutantes "Live Barbican Theater London 2006" 2cd on Luaka Bop

----} November 20th
Wildildlife "Six" cd on Crucial Blast
Six Organs Of Admittance "Shelter From The Ash" cd/lp on Drag City
The Valerie Project "s/t" cd/2lp on Drag City
The Story "Arcane Rising" cd on Sunbeam
Blut Aus Nord new cd
Stereo-Total "Paris-Berlin" LP import version on Disko B
Peter Grudzien "The Unicorn/Garden Of Love" LP reissue on Subliminal Sounds

----} also upcoming sooner or later
Xasthur "Defective Epitaph" 2cd import on Daymare
Jesu "Lifeline" cd import on Daymare
Coh "Strings" cd on Raster
White Heaven "Levitation" cd edition on Farside
Burning Saviours "Nymphs & Weavers" cd on Transubstans
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
Bobb Trimble "Harvest Of Dreams" and "Iron Curtain Innocence" reissues on cd and lp on Secretly Canadian
Boris w/ Kurihara "Rainbow" LP version on Inoxia
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
The Heads tba 2cd 'best of' on Leafhound
16-17 "Gyatso" cd reissue on Savage Land
Crebain "Night Of Stormcrow" cd with bonus tracks on tUMULt
Pyha "The Haunted House" cd on tUMULt
Varghkoghargasmal "Drowned In Lakes" cd on tUMULt
Like A Kind Of Matador "Halfway To Dangerous" cd on tUMULt
Richard Crandell "Spring Steel" cd on Tzadik
Eyvind Kang "The Yelm Sessions" cd on Tzadik

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________

THURSDAY, nov 1st (the day after Halloween)
CASTRO THEATER, sf.  8 pm. $12

aquarius records, arthur magazine, and the dead channels film festival present two mindblowing and ultra rare 'Czech new wave' vampire masterpieces with live-in-the-theater-accompaniment by telemagnetic SF soundtrackstars SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 and 10 piece touring ensemble THE VALERIE PROJECT!


THE LAST THEFT (Jiri Barta 1987 21mins)
live soundtrack by SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 (SF/Vancouver)

VALERIE and her WEEK of WONDERS (Jaromil Jires 1970, 73mins)
live soundtrack by the VALERIE PROJECT (PA)


fresh from their success as the hit of the DEAD CHANNELS film festival - where SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 stunned their audience with their commissioned soundtrack to David Cronenberg's 'Crimes Of The Future' - 1.1.1 will be performing an original soundtrack to Czech master animator Jiri Barta's only live-action film THE LAST THEFT. this short film is a rare and magical work which mixes black humor and dreamy, hand-tinted atmospheres to stunning effect.

Philadelphia musicians THE VALERIE PROJECT bring new life to a forgotten classic of the Czech New Wave: Jaromil Jires' VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (1970). The film sound goes off and the amps get cranked (do harps need amps?) as a collective of Philly's finest underground musicians take it on the road to pay tribute to this seminal film of the new folk movement.

___________________________________________________________


SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 is the 'tele-ambient dream self' of I AM SPOONBENDER. While IAS is designed for performing in concert halls, SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 frequently heighten the impact of projected images by composing and performing live soundtracks to works by filmmakers such as Derek Jarman, Maya Deren, David Cronenberg, Charles and Ray Eames, Tod Browning, etc, (and perhaps most strangely, has even performed at a private corporate party surrounding a speech by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom).
SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 is not a side project- rather, it is a fully focused, smaller scale satellite extension of the central IAS concept. while there is some sonic crossover, the group's more challenging, textural, and sound-to-picture aspects are often found in the never-the-same-show-twice SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 . it is even more psychological, 'inner space', and mainstream difficult. it is loved equally by its creators, CUP and DUSTIN DONALDSON.

THE VALERIE PROJECT is spearheaded by Greg Weeks (Espers, Grass), Margie Wienk (Fern Knight) and Brooke Sietinsons (Espers, Grass), the ensemble includes harpist Mary Lattimore, cellist Helena Espvall (Espers), Vocalist Tara Burke (Fursaxa), bassist/percussionist Jesse Sparhawk (Fern Knight, Timesbold), flautist/keyboardist Jessica Weeks (Woodwose, Grass), enigmatic electronicist Charles Cohen and percussionist Jim Ayre (Fern Knight, Rake). Key to the concept is how reframing the film's action with an alternate soundtrack draws new interpretations from a work of intricate depth and changeable meaning. Foremost in the musicians' minds, however, is paying tribute to a timeless fantasy film of increasing relevance. The tone is lush, orchestral and acid-charged.

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________

Ya Ho Wa 13 Book Signing / Cd Listening / Q & A

November 18th
1:00 PM

Right here at aQuarius recOrds
1055 Valencia Street
between 21st and 22nd.

Our favorite far out musical hippy commune from the seventies, who not only ran a popular health food restaurant, but created some of the most intense and tripped out sonic spaciness we've ever heard, will be here in the flesh to sign copies of a new book, The Source, which tells the tall but true tale of the group and their leader Father Yod. They'll also be answering questions and playing tracks from the cd that accompanies the book (which are all unreleased, for those who thought they had it all!).

For folks new to the musical and mystical magic of Father Yod and Ya Ho Wa 13, here's our review of the massive 13 cd boxset collecting all of the commune's releases

There are a handful of records that seem to truly define the unique (sometime ridiculous) aesthetic that we pride ourselves on here at Aquarius Records. The Conet Project is one, a four cd set of haunting mysterious shortwave transmissions of spy stations, hours and hours of numbers and music. Then there's the Thai Elephant Orchestra, a recording of gamelan playing elephants, or the Ghost Orchid, a recording of emanations from beyond the grave, but one release that is truly near and dear to our freaky musical hearts is the Yahowha box. Originally released on Captain Trip as a jumbo sized box with 13 cds in regular jewel cases with a huge LP sized booklet, with lots of amazing photos and loads of Japanese text, this massive collection has been re-issued in a gorgeous wooden box, sealed with gold cords and a wax seal, the jewel cases are gone and instead the discs are housed together in slim sleeves, and the all-in-Japanese-anyway booklet is gone now too (although we've yet to crack one of these open, so we suppose it might have been resized to fit in this much smaller box), but it's also cheaper and will now fit on your cd shelf. But why is this collection so essential and why should you absolutely drop everything and pick up one of these amazing boxes? Read on...
For 13 discs you better get the complete recordings... and here on God and Hair that is what you get. (Well, this was true until recently when The Operetta was released...but you do get plenty!)
Led by the late, legendary Father Yod (who died in a hang-gliding accident in the late 70s... just like Icarus!) YaHoWha 13 "epitomize the insanity of highly-personalized psychedelic exploration via the fringes of rock music and its subsequent private documentation better than anything else produced by the human race to date." (a glorious if over the top description from the fine folk at Forced Exposure)... This collection ranges from tribal acid pound to weird noisy float to dense aural freakouts, all accompanying Yod's megalomaniacal vocal output (as on the unbelievable masterpieces Penetration and I'm Gonna Take You Home). Then there's the other side of Yod and his minions, creepy cult-guru sermons over simple acoustic guitars (which give those tracks a vibe not unlike the recently reveiewed freak folk of Charles Manson's). Warning: this stuff is VERY hippie. But if you're anything like us that's maybe not so much of a warning as it is a promise!

And the review of the book itself will be on next week's list!!!

They're also performing at Cafe Du Nord later the same night, for more info on that, and other shows and Ya Ho Wa related events, go here:

The Source

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE

performing live

November 18th
4:00 pm

Right here at aQuarius recOrds
1055 Valencia Street
between 21st and 22nd.

Later the very same night, after the Ya Ho Wa book signing, AQ fave Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs Of Admittance, will be performing live in the store. We're huge fans and we're thrilled to give folks a chance to see Chasny preform in a super intimate setting.

And for anyone who has yet to discover the amazing music of Six Organs, here's our review of his last release, The Sun Awakens:

It's such a nice day out and we'd really rather just sit in the sun and listen to this disc than review it, so why don't we just say: another great Six Organs album! and leave it at that, ok? Not ok? You want more from us than that? Well it IS another great album from this Ben Chasny fellow, whom for us is definitely tops among all the current crop of psychedelic guitar-pickin' folkies. Whether he's lending his weary voice to some lovely acoustic pop balladry, or blissing out on the fretboard in Fahey/Basho rustic raga mode, or harking to the spaghetti western soundtrack sound of Bjorn Olsson, or channeling krautrock spirits for a heavy duty distorted electric guitar jam, Chasny -- with a little help from his friends -- shines on this album. Maybe his best yet! Gorgeous, moody, yes indeed.
Of course, sitting in the sun listening to this might not be the idea. The Sun Awakens this is called, but it's more likely that the music on here will generate grey clouds to blot out the sun, casting shadows from some other time and place of pagan worship. Particularly when you get to the droning darkness of the mysterious, moaning, album-closing "River Of Transfiguration", an extended 24 minute ceremony of a song featuring the bass playing of Al Cisneros of Om and Sleep fame. Oh yeah. Recommended.

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________

CLIFF HENGST & SCOTT HEWICKER

Issues, Confessions, and Psychedelic Crises
A public reading from Good Times: Bad Trips, Thursday October 25, 7:30 - 9:30pm

Please join us at Gallery 16 on Thursday evening, October 25th, for Issues, Confessions, and Psychedelic Crises, a public reading from Hengst and Hewicker's new book Good Times: Bad Trips. The reading will feature many of the book's contributors including Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Lawrence Rinder, John Koch, Karla Milosevich, Shaun O'Dell, Margaret Tedesco, Ezra Feinberg, Cheryl Meeker, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Jennifer Locke, Scott Hewicker, Gerald Corbin, Leslie Shows, and Irwin Swirnoff, among others. Cliff Hengst will MC the event.

This book is a collection of true accounts exploring an under-recognized rite of passage: The Bad Trip. Pairing individual stories with paintings, collages and photographs by the artists, the book delves deeply into the romantic pathos of psychedelic crises.

Here's our review of Good Times: Bad Trips from a recent AQ list:

Ever had a bad trip? And no, not just an "oh I'm freaking out man" sort of trip, we're talking the sort of trip that sticks with you forever. The first time, the worst time, the best worst time, sex, death, injury, mayhem and misery, well our very own Scott Hewicker and his partner Cliff Hengst have been collecting tales of these bad trips from a who's who of artists and musicians, friends and family, even AQ employees and have finally compiled them all into one volume, this here gorgeous hardcover book entitled Good Times: Bad Trips, and not only packed with stories, but with all sorts of original and found artwork to accompany these far our freaked out tales of drugs and debauchery. 
The contributors include Devendra Banhart, local luminary John Dwyer, our very own Irwin Swirnoff and our very own Lauren Robertson, Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel from Matmos, John Koch from Troll, Ezra Feinberg from Citay, Alexis Georgopoulos from Arp, Wayne Smith from Aero-Mic'd, Nathan Burazer from Tussle, Jack Hanley (of Jack Hanley Galleries) as well as loads of artists and writers like Chris Johanson, Shaun O'Dell, Keegan McHargue, Leslie Shows, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy... the list goes on and on and on. 
The thing is, it almost doesn't matter who wrote which story, so much so that the credits are tucked away, way in the back of the book, so the stories are just that, stories, removed from their authors, not overly writerly, instead conversational, like hanging out drinking and telling tales, where most bad trip stories actually get told. And these are some seriously demented stories. Some are super funny, some are really intense and brutal, some are so ridiculous they sound made up, others are more mundane, but resonate as experiences most of us have shared. It's an amazing read. A killer collection of short stories, all of them fascinating, tales of stolen jet skis, yellow food banquets, secret upper crust sex societies, deflowered virgins, brain loops, dead body mannequins, emergency room freakouts, smoking out with Lee Scratch Perry, football player rapists, midnight calls to Mom, industrial strength lasers, heart murmurs, talking crows, living nude books, grey music, naked hippies, sex with surrealists, skin rashes, mouths full of dough, Cher costumes, stolen Harry Potters, boom box kicking, fake pistols, guitar masturbating, mother meltdowns, Tesla coils and so so so much more. 
Gorgeously designed and laid out, plus the book is jam packed with eye popping art, paintings, drawings, collages, photographs and ephemera, all suitably warped and trippy, beautiful and bizarre, collected, found or created by Hewicker and Hengst. And all housed in a super swank, full color 136 page hard cover book. Each one signed by the artists!! Absolutely recommended. And a limited run of only 1000 copies, so buy now or be prepared to sell a kidney or take out a second mortgage on your house to pick one up on eBay later...

Hengst and Hewicker's exhibition S.A.N.E at Gallery 16 continues through November 3, 2007. For additional information please contact Vanessa Blaikie at 415.626.7495 or email vanessa@gallery16.com.

GALLERY 16
501 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.626.7495 [p]
415.626.8439 [f]
Gallery16

Gallery Hours:
Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm
Saturday, 11am - 5pm


_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________



Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanLaurenAshleyPamChristineIrwinMattScottSallyAntaeus and Cameron