HARMONIA Live 1974 (Water) cd 16.98
Record covers like this one just aren't fair. Michael Rother, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius hiply dressed on a platform in an abandoned train station with their backs turned to the audience playing all manner of amazing looking analog electrical equipment: synths, farfisas, banks of tone generators, oscillators, patch bays, stacks of amps, leaning guitars, and cords everywhere, amongst racks of machines with all sorts of knobs and levels. It just makes us soooo jealous. Not only for such beautiful equipment, but also nostalgic for this period of time in Germany in the early seventies when so much thoughtful and incredibly inventive music was being produced. First Amon Duul II, Can and Faust then Kraftwerk, Cluster, and, Neu!, with Harmonia being the perfect synthesis of the latter three bands both in sound and personnel. Especially when you see the back cover and you get a closer look at the band and you can tell the trio just have this alchemical connection with each other and the sounds they make. Each member is focused but self-assuredly calm. Not exactly what you would expect from a band whom Brian Eno once called "the world's most important rock band". Not that much of the world had ever heard of them. Nor is it what most folks consider rock music to be.
So this is it! We've been reading about this for months, and it's finally here: a live document of a now legendary show on March 23rd, 1974 at Penny Station in Griessem, Germany. Not that it really matters that this is live, as their is no applause or chatter to clue you in, just bits of mumbled talking as the songs wind down at the very end. Harmonia members attribute this to there being only 50 or so people in the audience most of which were either too stoned to clap or too unsure at what points the songs begin and end. Doesn't seem to matter to the band anyway as we've already seen their backs were to the audience the entire time. But for a live document the sound quality is impeccable and what's even better all of the tracks performed weren't on any of their recordings, giving us, thirty-three years later, 5 new vintage Harmonia tracks to pore over. Most of which are over 9 minutes long.
Recorded between Harmonia's woozy debut, Musik Von Harmonia, and its more rock-leaning follow-up, Deluxe, Live 1974 is the logical conglomeration of both sounds, sort of like the merging of Terry Riley-ish repetitions with Robert Fripp's or Heldon's spacey and searing guitar extrapolations. But unlike conventional rock bands, Harmonia's music doesn't climax or necessarily change all that much, making their deceptively simple musical structures more akin to trance, electronica and slow disco. Beginning with the slow burn of "Schaumberg", an 11 minute epic of Rother's sinewy guitar lines that build and loop over gentle pulses of Moebius's programmed percussion and Roedelius' repetitive tonal keyboard patterns merging into a more sped-up and hypnotic version with bass rhythms on "Veteranissimo", an extended 17 minute meditation on "Veterano" from Musik Von Harmonia that breaks down to quiet heartbeats before slowly building again. "Arabesque", the shortest track at five minutes, does away with the percussive elements altogether, instead focussing on overlapping patterns of melodic synth and guitar before slamming into the loping quarter-hour stoner lurch of "Holta-Polta", then finally culminating in the blissful pastoralism of "Ueber Ottenstein".
It's been a stellar year or two for krautrock reissues as most of the Klaus Schulze, Cluster, Harmonia, Popol Vuh and Michael Rother catalogs have been reissued, re-introducing to the world the proto-new age realms of seventies German kosmiche music at a time when we can easily see its influence weaving through so many new bands like Arp, The Alps, White Rainbow, Lichens and Sylvain Chaveau. Always timeless, and never dated, Harmonia, like most of their German contemporaries mentioned above, were the most important rock band in the world simply because they cared about what they did, kept it simple, never indulged, and always left us wanting more.
MPEG Stream: "Schaumberg"
MPEG Stream: "Veteranissimo"
MPEG Stream: "Holta Polta"

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3/4HADBEENELIMINATED Theology (Soleilmoon) cd 24.00
Italian avant outfit 3/4hadbeeneliminated offer up a new cd... it's a little pricey but that's 'cause they splurged on the packaging. We'll talk about that in a second, but first the music. If you've heard their previous work, like the Hapna release A Year Of The Aural Gauge Operation (an AQ Record Of The Week in 2005), you'll know to expect fractured and mysterious soundscapes, a densely textured drone-zone constructed from field recordings, record crackle, improvised acoustic instruments, radio static, fragments of piano melody, electronic treatments, whispered Italian voices, turntable scratchings, reel-to-reel tape manipulation, synthesizer sinewaves, scattered percussion, and more. That's a zone we LOVE to visit. There's two long tracks, lots to explore, all manner of curious creakings and cracklings, shifting rhythms and rumblings abounding within 3/4hadbeeneliminated's carefully crafted and/or improvised music. At times quiet and meditative, at others noisier and distorted, but always (to our ears) utterly gorgeous and compelling. Aligns quite nicely with the likes of the Jewelled Antler collective, the Finnish forest foraging of Kemialliset Ystavat, and of course others in the experimental underground Italian scene of which the members of 3/4hadbeeneliminated are a part.
As for the packaging, start with a plain cardboard box, a little over six inches square and one inch deep. Open it up and you'll find a slightly smaller hinged wooden box, each one hand-painted with wax paper decoration. Open that up and there's the cd, in a colorful fabric sleeve, with a paper insert listing the track titles (revealing each one to be a suite of sorts btw). Certainly nicer than the standard jewel case... though one slight drawback is that the cd itself is likely to be coated with a layer of dust from the wooden box, so you'll have to gently wipe it clean or you might find it skipping and glitching out (which would fit in with some of their musical methodology, actually). Indeed, this rustic, elaborate cottage industry packaging is certainly reflective of the rough-hewn, intricate mystery of their music, which deserves such unique treatment.
By the way, there's also an even more expensive new vinyl-only limited edition LP by these folks, a totally different album using these recordings as a basis for recomposition, called The Religious Experience, simultaneously released on Soleilmoon. We just a have a couple in stock right now but hopefully can get more and give it a review sometime soon, although simply we can say it's a nice companion to this...
MPEG Stream: "I Am Daughter"
MPEG Stream: "The Cradle"

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS s/t (Killer Pimp) cd 13.98
We'd been hearing about this band quite a bit, often touted by reviewers as being "the loudest band in New York", which is all well and good, but that sort of thing generally doesn't translate very well on record. What we can tell you, is that more than any band we've heard in ages, these guys have their My Bloody Valentine, Loop, Spacemen 3, Jesus And Mary Chain chops down pat. But before you get all exasperated as we would be likely to do, we do realize that the bands who actively rip off some or all of those bands couldn't be counted on your fingers even if you had a thousand hands. And most of those bands steal the sound, but then have no idea what to do with it anyway. And most of them don't even get the sound right.
So it's definitely saying a lot, when we can say that, yes, these guys owe EVERYTHING they have to MBV and Jesus And Mary Chain and Loop and Spacemen 3 but still manage to totally rule. And somehow, they manage to make all of this borrowing sound totally fresh and original and exciting, and loud and heavy and like they just might have made our new favorite record.
From the first track these guys have it nailed. Murky, fuzzy, lo-fi, super blown out, with a weird buzzy guitar sound, wrapped around an almost gothy Interpol-ish bassline and keyboard melody, but when the vocals came in we were immediately transported to Psychocandy era Jesus And Mary Chain, the vocals and melodies and even the drums buried beneath clouds of billowing crumbling distortion. The second track is even more in-the-red and distorted, a crashing wave of dissonant guitars, that gives way to some almost Stereolab like Neu!-worship, and some sing songy indie boy vocals, which of course are summarily crushed by the moaning massive bursts of guitar fury and what sounds like bleating horns in the chorus.
"To Fix The Gash In Your Head" begins with sputtering drum machine and is quickly ensconced in thick minor key swells all dramatic and gothy, and the other distinct side of the band is revealed, a sort of super charged extra heavy Depeche Mode, which is in no way a bad thing. But on this track especially, the vocals are super Dave Gahan, with some industrial Skinny Puppy-isms thrown in for good measure, but still the heart of the song is a throbbing synthy new wave. And it sounds amazing!
Later tracks veer from swirling washed out wall of sound dronerock, to murky doom pop, to super eighties John Hughes soundtrack electro-pop, to grungy distorted Grebo, to throbbing Joy Division miserablism, to rocking Swervedrivery shoegaze, to shimmering glimmering M83 blisspop, but always liberally doused with waterfalls of coruscating white light guitars, sheets of roiling feedback, massive walls of buzz and hiss. Noisy and chaotic and furious and epic but always with a heart of pure pop and a halo of washed out guitar shimmer. So great.
MPEG Stream: "Missing You"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Think Lover"
MPEG Stream: "To Fix The Gash In Your Head"
MPEG Stream: "The Falling Sun"

AI ASO Chamomile Pool (Pedal) cd 19.98
A couple of years ago Japan's Ai Aso served up an absolute dreamcake of an album titled Lavender, then last month she teamed up with Wata of Boris for an amazing book and 7" set. Ai's delights keep on coming with this, her latest full length. Her cooing Japanese waif vocals float like fallen blossoms atop a blurred watercolor stream of effected guitar and steady programmed Casio-esque rhythms. Taking a dip in this Chamomile Pool will surely have the same calming effect as the tea of the same name. We imagine it'd even make a great substitution for traditional baby lullaby fare. This will definitely soothe children of all ages, but the overall serenely elegant tone ensures its adult appeal too. Not an abrasive tone in sight, everything is smooth, soft and so very enchanting. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Date"
MPEG Stream: "Hundred Years"

ALCEST Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde (Profound Lore Records) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!! Been waiting to get more of these forever.
We've been gushing over French black metal outfit Ameseours for a while now. Their amazing blend of buzzing blackness and indie jangle. Like nothing we'd heard really, but was exactly what we always wanted, nay needed to hear, just didn't know it. As we mentioned in our review of their record, various members of that group also do time in the much more black metal Peste Noire, whose most recent record FolkFuck Folie we also reviewed recently, and in both reviews we lamented the fact that we were never able to get the ep by yet another related band, the even less metal, more blissy Alcest. And while that 2 song disc does in fact seem to be out of print, this here is the brand new full length, and besides being amazing, and one of the prettiest records of the year, it's absolutely and entirely not the least bit metal. AT ALL. 
Which is in no way a bad thing, it's just perplexing that black metal folks have been touting this as one of the best metal records of the year, even ever. Much like Ameseours, Alcest is all about indie jangle, and blissed out shoegazey pop, but where Ameseours, mixes that sound with a more traditional buzz and blast, resulting in some strange blackened hybrid, a sort of indie jangle black metal, Alcest, jettison the metal entirely, leaving nothing but gorgeous, dramatic, epic, blissful pop perfection. And this is simply that, perfect pop. The guitars are still distorted and slightly heavy, and there is some double kick drum action, but that stuff is so wrapped up in dense smears of glistening chordal thrum and breathy emotional vocals, simple acoustic guitar picking and buzzing fuzzed out grooves, that it just sort of gets absorbed into Alcest's divine dreamy drift. 
We talked about Justin Broadrick channeling the spirit of early nineties shoegaze pop in Jesu, but Alcest sound like they were transported directly from that era, yanked from a field of similarly minded sonic explorers like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, Swervedriver, Chapterhouse, and the like. It almost seems pointless to mention anything about the band's black metal pedigree, since if you were going on sound alone, you would be hard pressed to not imagine this was some legendary college rock record from 1992, each track glorious and glistening, the guitars soaring, epic and majestic, all major key, a walls of sound, rich and thick and lustrous, the bass mirroring the guitar, simple subtle harmonies, everything tangled into lilting bliss pop epics, while over the top drift soft fuzzy vocals, both male and female, that almost even more than the music recall that specific musical era.
Absolutely the finest slab of blissed out, post My Bloody Valentine dreampop indie jangle drift we've heard in forever. Just listen to the sound samples and we think you'll be just as smitten as we are... 
MPEG Stream: "Printemps Emeraude"
MPEG Stream: "Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde"
MPEG Stream: "Les Iris"

AUDIOPAIN The Switch To Turn Off Mankind (Vendlus) cd 11.98
"Faster to death with the throttle at max / as I introduce Mr. Neck to Mr. Axe". Yeah! With lyrics like that, and a headbanging maelstrom of speedy riffs to match, this is Thrash Metal all right! But unlike a lot of today's self-professed "old school" thrash bands, Norway's Audiopain aren't primarily an exercise (however deadly) in '80s nostalgia. It's retro thrash, yeah, and they did title one of their older discs 1986, but we get the idea that they're thrashing with no regard for trends, in a more modern, blackened way, maybe 'cause they don't present themselves in formula thrash fashion (at least not on record, we don't know what they look like live). The imagery of their cd packaging isn't about spikes and leather and fists in the face. Or nuclear bombs and radiation symbols. It is dark and evil looking, signifying "extreme" metal for sure, but doesn't try to look like an old Kreator or Nuclear Assault album, y'know? It's a lot artsier than that (though not as creative as the unique packaging of their previous album for Vendlus, 2004's The Traumatizer). However, when you hit "play", you'll hear that this sure IS thrash metal, that would have given any moshpit back in the eighties quite a workout. 100 percent aggro, heads down, faster than a shark, razor-sharp, thrash-til-death metal, that will have your neck thoroughly wrecked before the 27 minutes of violently concentrated force on this six-song cd have barely begun.
And while the lyric quoted at the start of this review (from the title track) is certainly the sort of thing an Exodus or Destruction would have come up with back in the day, much of the rest of the lyrics here are way more cryptic and oblique, with seeming themes leaning towards the black metal side of things, anti-religious and evil and obviously misanthropic. You get the idea that Audiopain wishes there was indeed a Switch To Turn Off Mankind. And if we sell this to any kids, their parents will surely be looking for the switch to turn off Audiopain...
MPEG Stream: "Alliance"
MPEG Stream: "Holy Toxic"

BONGZILLA Stash and Methods For Attaining Extreme Altitudes (Relapse) cd 14.98
What is it with stoner rock, and its seemingly unending appeal to those of us who don't smoke pot. Perhaps it musically induces a similar mindstate and headspace as getting totally blazed, but how the heck would we know. Yeah, it's heavy and brutal, downtuned and crushing, groovy and brutal, but there's something else going on in there, it's gotta be the pot! And if smoking pot DOES actually sound/feel like this, then we're totally kicking ourselves for abstaining for the last 30+ years.
If any one band truly embodies the sprit of stoner metal, it would have to be Bongzilla. C'mon, they're called BONGZILLA after all!! And while the name might have you thinking these guys are some kind of joke, this shit is deadly serious. These guys may love their weed, and sing about it incessantly, but they totally destroy, wielding their skull crushing stoner doom riffage like stoned cavemen atop prehistoric dragons, bong in one hand, bloodied axe in the other. Similar to how Japan's serial killer obsessed stoner rockers Church Of Misery lace their songs with news snippets and sound samples of all their favorite killers, Bongzilla tracks are packed with news and propaganda, radio broadcasts and snippets of conversation, all about pot and smoking pot, the value of pot, the legal issues, facts about harvesting, police reports, sometimes replacing the vocals all together, the band will lock into a killer groove and just pound it into the ground, over a constant litany of pro pot propaganda. But hell, it fits perfectly. And eventually that stuff becomes just part and parcel of Bongzilla's sound.
Which in other hands might be overbearing, cuz if a band doesn't have songs, and RIFFS, then nothing else would matter. But these guys kill, the riffs thick and distorted, groovy and weirdly catchy, some tracks a plodding ultra doom dirge, others furiously rocking sludge, the vocals a near black metal screech, the drums pounding and massive, but it's ALWAYS all about the riffs (and the weed). And the riffs here are massive and hooky, super distorted and blown out, hypnotic and so so so heavy.
This reissue compiles Bongzilla's smoking debut, Stash, and their follow up ep, Methods For Attaining Extreme Altitudes, a three song chunk of ultra sludgy stoner doom, culminating in the nearly 14 minute stoner metal epic "Smoke / I Love MaryJane", which begins at a pretty serious clip, before slipping into spaced out bleary eyed smoke drenched ultra doom, a minimal plodding trudge, bordering on Khanate territory, building gradually to a chaotic Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet stoner space rock freak out, all swirling distorted guitar, washes of keening feedback, more snippets and samples, the whole thing eventually blissing out into a buzzing droning tribal outro.
We can only imagine how good this stuff must sound stoned, or maybe if you were -actually- stoned, they would cancel each other out and you would hear nothing but silence. Whatever...
Needless to say, this shit is WAY recommended, for stoners and straight edge stoner sympathizers alike...
MPEG Stream: "Gestation"
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Smoke"
MPEG Stream: "Smoke / I Love MaryJane"

BRODSKY, STEVEN'S OCTAVE MUSEUM s/t (Hydra Head) cd 11.98
It's been a weird wild ride for Cave In. But admittedly a ride all of their own making. They began life as a crushing post-metalcore behemoth, easily holding their own alongside such other sonically likeminded bruisers as Cavity, Coalesce and Deadguy. Then the band morphed into a strange arena pop band, ditching much of the heaviness for hooks, much of the downtuned pummel for radio friendly bombast. Metalheads were stunned and seemed to have written off the band completely, but some of us actually dug the new direction. And it really wasn't that big a surprise as the band was often described as Slayer meets Radiohead, so they were just leaning toward the latter, a part of their sound that was present anyway. Sure we missed the Cave-In of old, but heck, who were we to argue with another kick ass pop band? Then after dabbling with a major label, the band returned to their old label with a sound, which while retaining some of their new found poppiness, was definitely a return to form in terms of heaviness.
Now while all this was going on, Cave In frontman Stephen Brodsky was constantly recording on his own, forming side projects, releasing all sorts of distinctly unheavy records, solo and acoustic, poppy and pretty, ostensibly all the stuff he wasn't able to explore in Cave In. And just like with Cave In, we pretty much dug most of what we heard (minus a misstep here and there) so we were pretty excited to hear this disc from Brodsky's new band Stephen Brodsky's Octave Museum. But we weren't prepared for THIS, or to be as totally blown away as we were.
Brodsky's sound here with his Octave Museum is definitely pop, an ultra catchy mix of understated Beatles-esque poppiness and big heavy catchy power pop. Like some strange mix of Radiohead / Muse / Queen / Jellyfish / Big Star / Redd Kross / the Posies... Bombastic and orchestral, epic and expansive at one moment, stripped down and jangly the next. Every song is a pop gem. Brodsky's voice often slips up into a gorgeous falsetto soaring above glorious tangles of crunchy riffs, dense complicated drumming, little flurries of new wave-y FX, wild keening leads, the vocals and the lead guitar often getting all wrapped up in amazing harmonies. There's definitely a sixties vibe, and more specifically some serious Beatles worship, but it seems to be filtered through the brainy quirkiness of XTC, and then sometimes supercharged, the guy was responsible for Until Your Heart Stops after all!
That said, this is NOT metal at all, not really ever HEAVY, it's pure, nearly perfect pop. At it's heaviest, it's a hefty chunk of kick ass power pop, but this record's not really about heavy, it's all about mood and melodies, hooks and harmony...
Fans of old school jangle pop as well as lovers of more modern metallic poppy crush will for sure freak out for this, and any one who digs any of above mentioned bands as well as groups like Sloan, Silver Sun, Ryan Adams, the Jayhawks and other AQ pop faves should definitely check this out... it took us a while to get around to reviewing it but we're so glad we did, it's awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Kid Defender"
MPEG Stream: "Kill The Queen"
MPEG Stream: "Voice Electric"

BURNING SAVIOURS Nymphs & Weavers (Transubstans Records) cd 17.98
Long hair, bellbottoms, loud guitars, Swedish accents... and they spell fire "phyre". It's the new Burning Saviours. What more do you need to know?
Ok, here's the quick recap. First there was Witchcraft, the Swedish band that magically conjured an authentic sounding seventies stoner/doom/psych thing a la Pentagram, Black Sabbath, and a host of other early '70s bands more obscure (many of them wielding both flutes and Mellotrons along with the heavy, proto-metal riffs). Then we discovered *another* seemingly timelost Swedish band, Burning Saviours, who were almost more Witchcraft than Witchcraft. Not a case of one band ripping off the other, more a case of both bands liking Pentagram, Sabbath, and the self-same host of obscure '70s proggy proto-metal acts... and being equally talented at bringing their influences to life. They both debuted with self-titled albums. Then Witchcraft released Firewood, and Burning Saviours released Hundus. It was kind of like having four Witchcraft (or Burning Saviours) albums instead of two! Fans debated which band was "better" but why bother, we love 'em both.
Earlier this year Witchcraft released their third album, the much-lauded The Alchemist. A definite step forward for them, if not a break with the past. And now Burning Saviours have come out with their third album, Nymphs & Weavers. For them too, something a bit different. Maybe a lot different, 'cause they have had to make some lineup changes. Their original vocalist/guitarist decided to leave the band to pursue his academic studies, so they replaced him with a new singer -and- a new guitar player.
The new Burning Saviours is still a heavy-riffed '70s-styled retro-proto-metal affair, never fear. But they have diverged from the "Witchcraft" sound of their previous albums to some degree, perhaps in large part due to the different voice and style of their new singer. Unlike his predecessor, he sounds nothing like Bobby Liebling of Pentagram (remember, Burning Saviours is named after a Pentagram song). He definitely brings in with him more of a traditional Swedish folk influence (he plays flute too). They had that before, of course, the folkiness, but it's more pronounced now, more like a metal Dungen or something. His sometimes solem, soaring vocals remind us a bit of the the singer on New Dark Age, the pagan masterpiece by UK epic doomsters Solstice. Apart from the singer, who Burning Saviours fans will either get used to or not (we're certainly warming to him but do miss the old guy), the this album already seems as comfortably classic as something actually from 1971 or so, full of the usual righteous heavy rock riffage, stick-in-your-head melodies, Heepish organ jamming, electric folk-prog jiggery, and, like Witchcraft too when they ham it up on stage, a bit of whimsy -- it features the heaviest song ever to boast a title like "Dreaming Of Pastries"!
MPEG Stream: "Pondhillow's Finest"
MPEG Stream: "The Spellweaver"
MPEG Stream: "Hillside Mansion"

CHAUVEAU, SYLVAIN Nuage (Type) cd 15.98
Since 2000 Sylvain Chauveau has been making delicate and minimal musics, composing for dance and film and playing live on bills with the likes of Fennesz and Sigur Ros. But it wasn't until this record that we really took note of his delicate touch, creating soft fragile sounds that perfectly capture solitude and frozen emotion. All the tracks here were originally recorded for two films by Sebastien Betbeder. Strings and piano are the main instruments, played with a perfect restraint that helps create a lush and somber beauty. The music on Nuage has made us think of the clear airy sounds of Jon Luther Adams, the melancholic beauty of Michael Cashmore, the collaborations between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamato and recent record of the week alumni Erik Enocksson. All very fine company to be in. And such a perfect record for the chill of winter. Sounds that can give our hyperactive minds a moment to simmer and slow down. So nice!
MPEG Stream: "Fly Like A Horse"
MPEG Stream: "Nuage II"
MPEG Stream: "Andrea's Hands"

CIRCLE Vaahto (Trensmat) 7" 8.98
ATTENTION FINNISH MUSIC FREEKS AND CIRCLE OBSESSIVES!!! ULTRA LIMITED CIRCLE 7" ALERT!!! Fans of these freaky Finns best act fast as this is a super limited, already out of print, brand new seven inch single featuring two preciously unreleased songs. In Trensmat's series of ultra limited 7", usually limited to 100 copies or less, we convinced the label to double their pressing, half of which came to aQuarius, but needless to say, like all things Circle, these will not last long, and once they are gone, they are gone forever...
So here you go, two new tracks, of that instantly recognizable motorik Circular hypnorock. No metal, or ambience, this is the classic Circle sound, the A side is Circle at their most stripped down, the drums and guitars locked into a constant loop, the bass following right along, so mesmerizing and seemingly endless, the vocals a barely there whisper, while off in the distance lurk all manner of random clatter and mysterious percussive events. Right in the middle there's an awesome stumbling atonal guitar 'solo' before the band slips right back into that same groove. Goes on and on and if we had our say it would have kept right on going and filled up both sides of a 12".
The flip side is another single riffed hypnojam, a bit less languorous and a little more propulsive, very krautrocky, with lots of harmonica (!) and the vocals much more of a focal point, higher in the mix and leading the groove behind them. Throughout the song are cool tripped out new wave-y synth washes, lazily draped over that impossible catchy Circle rhythm. The end though holds a bit of a surprise with a super bizarre harmonized low vocal coda, a bit like a chorus of Orcs, creepy and kind of what-the-fuck, cool to, and it's Circle, so you should be prepared for them to toss in an Orc chorus now and then.
Cool packaging, a very metal Circle logo, designed by Krypt (who we can only assume is Krypt Axeripper aka Jussi of Circle) sinking into a Finnish seaside, while on the flip is a strange pencil drawing of four guys who look nothing like Circle. Pressed on red vinyl, and as we mentioned above, SUPER SUPER LIMITED AND ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL!!!

CLARKE, DAVE I Love Techno (Music Man) cd 16.98
Who would have thought we'd be freaking out over a compilation called I (Heart) Techno, 'cuz, barring some particular strains of techno, we (or more specifically in this case, I) don't actually (Heart) techno all that much. Chain Reaction, Kompakt, Pop Ambient, Plastikman, Gas, Thomas Brinkmann, Richie Hawtin, are all great, sure, but as a whole, techno has to be really fucked up and weird, murky and mysterious and minimal to hit the spot. But holy shit if this stuff doesn't totally destroy. Especially the first track. And to be honest, we had this comp in stock, and had been listening to the first track and ONLY the first track for months. It is the minimal techno jam of the year. Never heard of Christian Smith or John Selway but their track "Coming Storm" is fucking perfect. It had us wishing they had done a Villalobos and stretched it out to fill a whole cd. But that's what the repeat button is for.
So we eventually did listen to the whole comp, and it's really really great, but even so, the first track is SO GODDAMN GOOD that even if the rest of the comp was total and complete shit, it would be well worth highlighting and spending $15 bucks on.
So what has us all in a tizzy? It's hard to explain really, it's minimal, but not murky, the rhythm is loud and hard, the beats thick and crunchy, but right out of the gate, it's like two beats all tangled up, slightly out of phase, so it sounds like techno galloping, as the two beats compete, other bits of percussion join in, and the sound somehow manages to get more busy and chaotic, but without losing the minimalism that makes it so appealing. Like Plastikman and Thomas Brinkmann remixed by Oval, but then housed up just a bit. Or imagine a way heavier less murky but no less Heroin-y Chain Reaction. Eventually, some throbbing bass joins the melee, and it's downright grooving, but still in a weird haunting minimal abstract way. Female vocals drift into the picture, but they're not diva style, they're cold and clinical, an alien sonar throb offers a melodic counterpoint to her chilling sung spoken vocals, smoothly morphing into the next trackŠ
Phew. Before we go one, and talk about just how goddamn good this whole comp is, let us again stress how amazing that first track is, and how badly we NEED to hear more from these guys. Okay, on with the rest of the review.
Since it's a mix, the first few tracks seamlessly morph from the super minimal opener, gradually shifting, the house elements becoming more and more pronounced, but everything so static and hypnotic, that you almost don't notice the change until you're 3 or 4 tracks in. Raudive's "Magnetic" is the perfect follow up to "Coming Storm", a simple melody and rhythm looped over and over and over, various other rhythmic bits and strange electronic squelches joining the fray, before dropping out again, and leaving just the skeletal framework, and those haunting female vocals again. By three or four tracks in, we're definitely in more traditional house territory, but the sounds are so alien and repetitive, it's pretty mesmerizing. And definitely has us reconsidering our non-love of most house music. The whole rest of the disc, while not reaching the pinnacle of the opener, or even the follow up, still retains a certain cold droning hypnotic quality that is pretty hard to resist. The disc finishes off with "The Same" by the problematically monickered Velvet Underwear, who offer up a killer slab of chilled euro disco electro house, the main melody looped amidst huge bass throbs and crunchy crumbling synths, over which, the vocalist, who sounds like a frigid but VERY sexy European dominatrix, delivers her lyrics in a cool aloof monotone, eventually dropping out and letting the track unwind in a killer coda of buzzing serpentine synths and throbbing basslines. So awesome, even (and maybe especially) for the house-phobic and dancefloor averse amongst you...
MPEG Stream: CHRISTIAN SMITH & JOHN SELWAY "Coming Storm"
MPEG Stream: RAUDIVE "Magnetic"
MPEG Stream: VELVET UNDERWEAR "The Same"

COHRAN, PHILIP & THE ARTISTIC HERITAGE ENSEMBLE The Malcolm X Memorial (Mississippi) lp 14.98
This jazz classic, now available on vinyl, housed in a super deluxe gatefold jacket, another awesome limited lp artifact from Portland's Mississippi Records...
Philip Cohran is a true unsung hero in the history of cosmic jazz. He played with Sun Ra in the late '50s and '60s and was a cofounder of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). In the late '60s he ran the Afro-Arts Theater in Chicago, which was the location of this mesmerizing concert that Cohran performed with the Artistic Heritage Ensemble as a tribute to the late Malcolm X. Originally released on LP on Cohran's Zulu label, the record has been out of print for ages and commanded big dollars from those lucky enough to track down a copy. Lucky for us this amazing performance is now available on cd for the first time. The first track starts reeeeal slow before the fire starts to burn hotter and hotter as the performance goes on. With an ensemble that included trumpet, trombone, tuba, conga, guitar, bass, percussion, sax, cornet and vocals from Sister Ella Pearl Jackson, this is some seriously forward thinking jazz, just dripping with soul and consciousness. Like the more melodic moments of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago and early Sun Ra, this is totally essential and one of the best jazz reissues we've heard in quite a while!
MPEG Stream: "Malcolm X"
MPEG Stream: "El Hajj Malik El Shabazz"

COHRAN, PHILIP AND THE ARTISTIC HERITAGE ENSEMBLE On The Beach (Kelan Zulu / Katalyst Entertainment) cd 11.98
Finally, this avant afro-jazz classic has been repressed, repackaged and re-released. On The Beach compiles tracks from the late '60s output of Philip Cohran, one of the founders of Chicago's AACM and an early member of Sun Ra's Arkestra. While Sun Ra looked toward outer space for inspiration, Phil Cohran (himself an astronomer and mathematician) and his ensemble found manifestations of cosmic spirituality here on earth. Mining different musical traditions such as jazz, rhythm & blues, European classical, "Eastern" music, but most specifically reaching into elements of African experience and heritage, the ensemble builds complex rhythms around melodic elements usually provided by Cohran's "frankiphone", a gorgeously buzzing bell-like electrified thumb piano of his own design.
On "Unity," which appeared on the excellent Oulele comp a few years ago, the percussion-heavy groove is anchored by the steady droning of Cohran's violin uke. The results go beyond "jazz," even when adding modifiers like avant- or afro-. This is soul music on a higher plane. So beautiful and powerful, this work fits into a larger picture that includes the afro-centric work of John Coltrane, Art Ensemble of Chicago's free-funk explorations with Fontella Bass, and Fela Kuti's consciousness raising jams. Members of the Artistic Heritage Ensemble went on to play with the likes of Miles Davis and Earth, Wind & Fire.
The cd is lovingly packaged in a hand letterpressed sleeve and contains two more tracks than the vinyl version.
RealAudio clip: "Minstrel"
RealAudio clip: "Unity"

CRANDELL, RICHARD Spring Steel (Tzadik) cd 15.98
As much weird, loud, obtuse, and left of the margin music that we love and champion here, we also never shy away from music that we know is undeniably beautiful. Whether it's the majestic West African Kora music of Djibril Diabate and Lanaya or the evocative piano compositions of Lucian Cilio or the sweeping elegance of The Rachels. There is a long list of music that we cherish that manages to be both so beautiful and filled with soul. Richard Crandell deserves a spot right on the top of our all time beautiful music list. Playing the mbira (the thumb piano) to mesmerizing perfection, his last record was one of our favorites of 2004. Three years in the making and Spring Steel is another batch of stellar minimalist compositions that make us melt every time we hear them. There is a tenderness and focus to Crandell's playing that has the ability to make everything else in the world just fade away as you let his soft hypnotic sounds entrance you. Crandell is a rare performer, with such a delicate touch and impeccable taste.
Spring Steel sounds almost like Colleen paying homage to Steve Reich. Methodical and skilled yet so filled with soul and soothing power.
MPEG Stream: "Inner Circle"
MPEG Stream: "Japanese Lullaby"
MPEG Stream: "Spring Steel (A.K.A Ichiro 51)"

DIVANITY Leaden (Total Rust) cd-r 7.98
This one's pretty much a no brainer for you doomlords and drone freeks out there. From the same label that brought us the horror funereal doom of Wraith Of The Ropes, the epic majestic blackened doom of Mourning Dawn, and the mega multiple o'd ultra doom of Funeralium, comes this, the debut demo from Israeli doom merchants Divanity. Sloooooooow, sick, plodding, crushing, miserable, abject, harsh, hateful, brutal, hellish, slow motion ultra mega funeral ambient doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. And if that wasn't enough to get you doom-ed ones salivating, Divanity also just so happens to feature members of Israeli noisemakers Grave In The Sky, Lietterschpich and Poochlatz, so you know there's some twisted, demented, fucked up, noisy weirdness lurking in there as well.
Leaden is one track, one long slow musical death march. A thick low-end drenched crawl, a trudge through thick black tar, the vocals an anguished howl, a crushing, pummeling chunk of supreme sludge, heavy and nearly static. Not sure why they stopped at 15 minutes, this is the kind of sound that could have continued on for hours, forever, oozing forever onward, swallowing up everything in its path. The weird thing is that the main riff is surprisingly catchy, not always noticeable, but every once in a while, you realize there's a nifty little hook buried in there somewhere, but if you're not looking you'll miss it, being way too busy having your skull caved in by the bands relentless plod. Gloriously and fantastically slow and heavy, just how we like it. If you need bands, think Moss, Khanate, Planet Aids, Bunkur, Catacombs, Otesanek, Monarch, Monument Of Urns, Nihill, Whitehorse, Stumm and that sort of dire musical decay.
MPEG Stream: "Leaden"

DUKKHA / BLACK VOMIT Be My Second (Frequency Thirteen / Night Angels Serve) cd-r 8.98
The return of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!!
A few lists back we listed two discs of mysterious blackened post rock ambient epic weirdness, one from a band called Skultroll, the other from a group called Ice Bound Majesty, both offering up tangled sounds not easily to pin down. The hypno krautrock of Circle, the dirgey black doom of Bunkur, mixed with epic space prog, damaged drones, and whatever the fuck else those weirdos could cram in.
So as we continue to fly through copies of both, it seemed like maybe it was time to dig deeper into this bizarre black scene of freaky fucked up musical madness, dubbed by these outfits True Sheffield Black Psychedelia, and needless to say, it is indeed black, most definitely psychedelic and oddly enough, also from Sheffield!
So this time around we picked up a split, two more mysterious Sheffield combos, Dukkha, and the appetizingly named Black Vomit.
The odd tracks are Black Vomit, three long ones, culminating with a nearly 20 minute closer. But what the heck does Black Vomit sound like? Not as black as you might think. The opening track is a gorgeous drum heavy krautjam, the drums plugging along, with little double kick drum flourishes, relentless and motorik, as a huge warm washed out black cloud of swirling fuzz and hissy shimmer drifts in, a bit like Tim Hecker, dense and layered and constantly shifting, thickening as the song progresses, shot through with streaks of feedback and speaker rattling low end pulses, little flurries of effects and grinding industrial whir, sounds like a dronemetal Necks or a way more blessed out and dreamy Pharaoh Overlord. The second Black Vomit track, clocking in at nearly eleven minutes, is a much blacker beats, the middle portion a chaotic psychedronemetal freakout, the drums a blurry blast, the guitars tangled and angular, all wrapped up in a throbbing low end buzz, eventually mellowing out and stretching out into a hissy buzz drenched static drone, beneath which the sounds of frogs and crickets, bits of TV or radio broadcasts, a drifting barely there bit of simple guitar strum, super intense and creepy and cinematic. The final track, The Black Vomit's closer, a bruising 19 minute jam is a long form ambient sprawl, beginning with some epic tribal drumming, some industrial clatter, and thick corrosive drones, before the drums drop out leaving just the low end to drift and throb, swell and shift, a gorgeous dreamy thrum, until the drums kick back in near the end, finishing off with a flurry of mathy chaos, the drones and buzz building in tandem, a corrosive final moments prog psych blowout.
Then there's Dukkha, who sound like Black Vomit's kissing cousins. Their opener is nearly 23 minutes long, and is a loping post rock dirge, the drums a simple pound, the bass looping and loping in the background, the guitar in thick sheets buzzing dronelike, and occasionally locking into weirdly groovy stoner jams and then unwinding again into static sheets, the vocals a demonic distant wail, the riffs surfacing and locking into endless loops and super hypnotic hypno metal jams, like a crusty black metal Gore. The second track sounds like the first one, with the drums pulled out, the whole thing dipped in a bucket of busted effects pedals, and dumped over a wall of feeding back amplifiers. Maybe the 'dub' version of the first track, a Dense cloud of fucked up electronics, jagged melodic fragments, freaked out FX, and massive groaning walls of crumbling ultra distorted slow motion riffing.
Fucking awesome. Black enough for the true grim kvlt, but rhythmic enough to appeal to folks who dig Circle, This Heat, Aluk Todolo and the like and who aren't averse to something equally rhythmic, but way more blackened and brutal.
MPEG Stream: BLACK VOMIT "Squalltomb"
MPEG Stream: DUKKHA "Clod"
MPEG Stream: BLACK VOMIT "Eblis, Laced On Herba Sacra"

FEAR FALLS BURNING Once We All Walk Through Solid Objects (Tonefloat) 5lp box 88.00
This one has been a long time coming. Especially for us. The long rumored, even longer in the works 5lp Fear Falls Burning collaborative remix collection came out a while back, but when our box arrived from overseas, the box was smashed, and while the lps were all in perfect condition, the outer sleeves were not, so we had to wait patiently for them to make more sleeves, specifically for us, and then pray that the box of new sleeves showed up without also being crushed by the Postal Service.
Well, finally, the box arrived and the new sleeves were as close to perfect as we could hope. And thus we can finally list this ambient guitar drone masterpiece. One of our favorite purveyors of blissed out guitar doomdirgedrone, remixed, reworked and reinterpreted by a bunch of bands that couldn't be more kick ass if we had picked them ourselves!!! And gorgeously packaged to boot!
Let's start with the music. Five lps, twenty minutes a side, over three hours, one band to a side, the source material for each side original recordings by Fear Falls Burning, each artist, adding, removing, remixing, or reimagining the sounds given to them by FFB, the results uniformly gorgeous.
The first side is Bass Communion, who turn FFB's droning guitars into chiming choral blissy bell like tones, which eventually build into thick buzzing Spacemen 3 like drones, but which near the end slip back into whirling soft focus ambient drift. The flip side features Final, the solo guitar project of Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, etc.). Broadrick takes his FFB material and stretches it out into a moody meandering soundscape of layered distorted strum and thick crumbling swells, a lovely slowcore guitar drone, peppered with bits of melancholy melody and subtle harmonies.
The second disc starts off with Freiband, aka Frans De Waard, the most minimal of the bunch, a glistening dark ambience, a slow trawl through fields of ephemeral sonic sparkle and soft drones rumbling way off in the distance. The B side of disc 2 is Harvestman, the solo project of Neurosis' Steve Von Till, and his take on FFB is a haunting dark psychedelia, thick slabs of reverbed guitar allowed to drift through the ether, chunks of almost metallic riffing surface throughout, but are suffused with muted shimmer and soft whispered whirring.
The A side of disc 3 is Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel, and his FFB source material is transformed into a glorious keening ur-drone, all upper register buzz over a wash of shifting overtones and blurred chordal resonance, like drifting on some ominous black sonic sea, haunting and subtly ominous. The flipside is Byla, featuring one of the guys from Behold The Arctopus, but don't be expecting any weirdo tech metal, nope, the do Fear Falls Burning proud with a wall of grinding feedback that is smeared into a weirdly soothing high end drone, while downtuned guitars warble and pulse, shimmer and drift, abstract melodies floating atop the rumbling low end, like some disembodied Appalachia.
Disc 4's A side is occupied by perennial AQ fave Aidan Baker (Nadja), one of the only collaborators here who added nothing, no extra instruments, used only the original tracks given to him, but the results are just as unique, a mysterious landscape of ghostly echoes and whispered guitars, long stretches of blisssy drift and dark washes of distorted hiss. The B Side is occupied by Johannes Persson, whose track is a sea of big billowy downtuned riffs, reverberating and fading out above buzzy angular riffs, everything washed out and blurred beneath layers of fuzzy rumble, a strangely active ambience, with a bit of twang ala more modern Earth, eventually building to a gorgeous Godspeed like crescendo.
The A side of the final disc features another long time AQ fave, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma of local space drone alchemists Tarentel, who creates a dark murky dronescape rife with subtle glitches, and grinding distorted guitar smeared into smooth swells, a constant droning buzz running throughout, everything effulgent and haloed in glistening otherworldly glimmers, weirdly enough the darkest and most ominous of the bunch. And finally, finishing things off, is 3/4hadbeeneliminated's Stefano Pilia, who unfurls a warm folky drift, with occasional distorted drones surfacing here and there, all washed out sun dappled and so serene, finally building to an epic and intense soft shimmery crescendo.
Needless to say, if you're a fan of Fear Falls Burning, any of the collaborators, or experimental guitar ambience and dark droning drift, this is totally essential.
The packaging is pretty dang deluxe too. Each lp is pressed on ultra thick 180 gram crystal clear vinyl, the liner notes printed on the lp labels, each lp housed in it's own printed PVC sleeve, blue metallic ink, allowing the clear lp to be visible through the blurry blue images and text, all housed in a library / analogue tape style cardboard outer sleeve, printed in full color. So gorgeous.
A note to vinyl obsessives. These are not sealed in plastic. The design is such that the outer sleeve bends and gets damaged easily, so we removed the outer plastic wrap, and inserted a 12" cardboard flat inside the box alongside the lp sleeves, which protect the lps, and keep the outer sleeve from being damaged. And when shipped these will be extra carefully packaged for their arduous journey to your doorstep.
Already sold out and out of print. We have a bunch, but as always, these probably won't be around for long...

GALBRAITH, ALASTAIR Orb (Nextbestway) cd 14.98
Oh Alastair, how we have missed you. Although there have been a handful of reissues, a collaboration here and there, and those incredible long wires discs, there's something magical about the strange world Galbraith is able to conjure up give a whole record to work with. A dizzying blend of folky freaky lo-fi experimental pop, handmade instruments, ambience and noise, all held together by some ineffable magic that very few possess, but some, like Galbraith have mastered and seem to unfurl effortlessly.
Orb is the first proper solo record in years and also marks the re-activation of Galbraiths Xpressway label, now called Nextbestway. And once again, we're transported to some mysterious glade, where a strange man is hunched over a small arsenal of sound making devices, and like some sort of mad scientist is assembling an endless series of perfect little sonic gems.
The opening track is so immediately warm and recognizable, with it's warped warbly organ, and Galbraith's haunting multi tracked vocals, reminding us once again, that long before Neutral Milk Hotel, Galbraith was shaping similarly powerful little spiritual pop songs, and "Here Not There" is no different. Less than two minutes, but in that brief span, he's able to lull and soothe, trip out and transport. The second track is even shorter, less than a minute, but it's a killer chunk of billowy krautrock drift that finishes in a flurry of digital skipping.
Galbraith has a sort of Guided By Voices thing going, giving us tantalizing glimpses of incredible hooks, cool moody riffs, fluttering bits of sweet folk, but then nips them in the bud, songs that could very well stretch on for hours, slip away after minutes, sometimes seconds, creating these brief magical flourishes that have us returning over and over to sample briefly, always wanting more.
Like all Galbraith discs, the sounds are disparate, but interconnected, clattery feedback drenched Dead C style noise rock, with crumbling distortion and fuzzy sheets of synth, murky detuned folk ramblings, keening scarping strings, high end skree and metallic reverberations, utterly heartbreaking perfect pop, stretches of field recordings overlaid with soft shimmery drones, wheezing organs and delicate plucked strings, thick swaths of dense guitar buzz and super distorted vocals, black metal via NZ noise rock, meandering abstract Appalachia draped over soft swells of mumble and drift, warm warbly guitar and every possible combination in between.
So lovely, so magical and so totally mysterious. Galbraith is truly a bard from beyond, a songsmith who transcends genre, perhaps even time and space. And we're so glad to have him back.
MPEG Stream: "Here Not There"
MPEG Stream: "One Direction"
MPEG Stream: "Lost"
MPEG Stream: "Bird Ghost Viola"
MPEG Stream: "Short Dream FOr Fire Organ"

GOAT WITCH Live At Cumbersome Records - Oct. 30th 2005 (We Empty Rooms) cd 13.98
After digging heavily on Australian doom merchants Fire Witch, we discovered the less heavy and more sprawling and post rocky Goat Witch, featuring some of the same members, whose Blind record was a huge hit around these parts.
So now we have another Goat Witch disc, called Live At Cumbersome Records, which appropriately enough was recorded live, and features an expanded line up of two drummers, three bass players and one guitarist, which includes ALL the members of Fire Witch as well as a bunch of other Aussie noisemakers.
Like Blind, this disc shrugs of much of the doom, treading into more Godspeed like waters, long sprawling slow building epics, where the drums offer up textures and filigree as often as actual beats. You think with three basses this would be a bloody sludgefest, but instead, the basses are subtle, woven into a shifting latticework of low end, allowing the guitar to drift and ring out, riffs floating above the thick swirling swells. Eventually the drums do kick in, but not in a crushing doom way, instead, the sound gets even more mathy and post rocky, the drums hyperkinetic, the guitars slippery and slithery, suddenly it's some krautrock spacerock hypno jam, relentless and hypnotic, eventually breaking down into some seriously dreamy drift, shifting streaks of guitars, muted tribal drumming, moody and smoldering, slow burning and ominous, thick cymbal swells, culminating in a tripped out mathy outro, all effected guitars throbbing basses. And that's just the opening 42 minute salvo.
The second track is almost like a dubbed out version of the first. Beginning with bits of scraped guitar, abstract bass drift, bursts of chaotic drum splatter, long stretches of near ambient shuffle, sometimes coalescing into almost Morricone sounding grooves, or tripped out mathy minimalism, getting pretty heavy toward the end, but not so much metal as thick swaths of spaced out psychrock, fluttering feedback, grinding bass lines, stuttering rhythms, finishing off with a brief burst of furious ultra tight riff rock, before stumbling to a halt.
Two tracks, 72 minutes. Heavy, dark, mathy, krauty, spacey. Folks who are gonna love this know who they are. You dig White Hills, Monster Magnet, Godspeed, Circle, Necks? Metallic post rock? Ambient drone doom? Mathy psychedelic krautrock? Yeah, we thought so...
Packaged in a cool mini DVD style sleeve, full color artwork and a full color insert.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

HARUMI s/t (Fallout) cd 16.98
Fallout is one of those reissue labels whose gargantuan output has some quality control issues but when they strike gold, we're always, like their catchphrase, blown away. Recent Fallout gems have been Malachi, Friar Tuck and Fraser and Debolt, but when this Harumi record came in, we knew it had to be good. And boy, is it! Recorded in New York in 1967 by Tom Wilson who helmed records by The Velvet Underground, Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel, the self-titled debut of Japanese musician and singer Harumi is one of the best instances of East-meets-West influences. Acid-tinged fuzzy folk pop with lots of phase shifting and reverbed vocals largely played on a range of traditional Far Eastern instruments, this album features plenty of sample-heavy passages. The album is anchored by the two final tracks. One a mesmerizing 13 minute sitar-soaked spoken word piece called "Twice Told Tales of The Pomegranate Forest" and the other the 17 minute garage rocker, "Samurai Memories" featuring extended bits of conversation in Japanese from members of Harumi's family. Highest Recommendation!!
MPEG Stream: "Talk About It"
MPEG Stream: "Sugar In Your Tea"
MPEG Stream: "Twice Told Tales Of The Pomegranate Forest"

HECKER, TIM Atlas One (Audraglint) 10" 10.98
By now we shouldn't have to go into too much detail about our undying love for the mysterious music of Tim Hecker. Just have a gander at the AQ website for much gushing over Hecker and his gorgeously gauzy sonic soundscapes. This new 10" is no different. One single epic, split into two movements, two sides, both dramatically different, but both absolutely beautiful.
Part one, side A, is the more intense of the two. Looped and processed guitars overlapping and all tangled up into gloriously softly roiling swirls of sound, melodies like snakes squirming and slithering and wrapping themselves around each other. Sitar like buzzing keening metallic high end, swooping backwards then drifting forward again. Here and there gentle lilting bits of finger picked guitar surface as do thick washes of distant crumble, everything deftly woven into a blurred slow moving dense and detailed sonic drift. At times it almost sounds like a symphony for tuning orchestras, a soft cacophony melted down into something, gauzy, dreamily indistinct and otherworldly.
The second half, which takes up all of side two, is much more glistening and effervescent, sparkling glimmery high end, little melodic trills fluttering and pulled apart, allowing the notes to drift and settle , the various elements gradually blurring into one another, the streaks and smears like slow burning comet tails of sound. Plucked guitars pepper the night sky like twinkling stars, all viewed through a cracked kaleidoscope, a washed out fog of hushed shimmer and slow moving blurs of indistinct beauty. Absolutely gorgeous.

HIS NAME IS ALIVE Sweet Earth Flower - A Tribute To Marion Brown (High Two Recording Co.) cd 15.98
Without knowing why or how, the idea of the recently more soulful, perpetually Beach Boys obsessed pop group His Name Is Alive tackling a record of tracks by legendary jazz saxophonist Marion Brown, seems not just unlikely but maybe even ill advised.
So we were pretty surprised and thrilled when we finally wrapped our ears around this disc. A dark smoldering expansive ambient jazz sprawl, His Name Is Alive, seriously channeling the spirit of Marion Brown, in such a way that is at once totally faithful but also, quite modern and radical.
Most of the tracks are languorous and laid back, and sometimes sound like a jazzier No Neck Blues Band, a sort of fluttering free folk, the sounds drifting like smoke, the percussion sizzling and shuffling, the horns moaning softly, lots of tinkling chimes and little flurries of piano, gorgeously soft focus and hypnotic.
There are a few live tracks, which is where the band really cut loose, and embrace the noisier side of Brown's oeuvre, "Capricorn Moon" the first live track, is much boppier, the drums and bass locked into a sort of muted exotica, while the horns bleat wildly over the top, the sound very African, and dipping into some serious Ethiopiques territory here and there. The next few songs return to the blissy jazzy tranquility of the first few, until "Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim", which starts off all dreamlike, but by the end, is a squall of thick distorted guitars and skronky saxes, a serious free jazz duel.
The two part "Geechee Recollections" is another slow burning jam, all exotic percussion and thick rubbery basslines, wailing sax, shuffling skittery drum lines, moody meandering piano, the second half a super minimal late night jazzy sprawl, like a less repetitive Necks, but the same sort of mysterious murky swirl.
The record finishes off with a live version of the opening track, sticking close to that same smoky late night shimmer, but with the horns more active and up in the mix, the drums a bit more propulsive, some wah guitar, managing to sound just a bit more fierce, but without losing that blurry blissy sultriness...
This is so good. We used to love love love His Name Is Alive. They even played an instore here, which was a blast. They sort of lost us though lately with their ever intensifying soul leanings, but this record is absolutely gorgeous, and has definitely restored our faith in Warn Defever and company, plus anyone so into Marion Brown is aces in our book.
A portion of the proceeds of the sale of this cd goes to the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, which is also quite cool...
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Earth Flying"
MPEG Stream: "Juba Lee Brown"
MPEG Stream: "Geechee Recollections I"

JAY, JEREMY Airwalker (K) cd ep 5.98
Wow! We've got ourselves a big time winter crush! A youngster living in LA, Jeremy Jay has made an ep that we've been playing on repeat pretty much nonstop since we first got our ears on it. By far the best thing K has put out in ages. While it's a brand new record it has a charm and feel that made many of us think it was some amazing lost gem from the early eighties. Tapping into the poppier side of the early Factory vaults, Jeremy Jay's Airwalker reminds us of great early '80s records by The Wake and The Go-Betweens. He's like some amazing twee incarnation of Ian Curtis. Imagine Kings Of Convenience doing Joy Division covers. This is one of those rare records that just about everyone on the AQ staff has been smitten by. It's pretty impossible not to get swept away by his young fey pop chops filled with a richness and spark that demands you to pay attention. Somehow managing to cover both Blondie and Siouxsie & The Banshees while making those songs his own, this is a kid we're pretty certain the world will be taking notice of very soon. We haven't been this enamored with a new, young indie-pop voice in ages. This could very well sneak on to some of our best of 2007 lists. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Airwalker"
MPEG Stream: "Angels On The Balcony"

JAZZFINGER Orange Sauce / Peace Factor Fashion (alt.vinyl) 8" square lathe cut 26.00
We haven't heard from these guys in a while. Which more than likely just means we somehow missed out on about a million super limited cd-r's and cassettes and wax cylinders. But we weren't about to miss out on this one. Another in alt.vinyl's series of ultra limited 8" lathe cuts (the Prurient one is featured elsewhere on this list).
As always, the boys are in fine form, offering up confounding and confusional loveliness and sometimes not so loveliness.
Side one sounds like Nurse With Wound doing the soundtrack for an afternoon soap opera, with a melodramatic organ wheezing and whirring in a sea of partially plucked guitars and dense clouds of shimmering feedback, metallic clang and all sorts of grind and crackle and crunch and glitch and buzz. All deftly woven into something surprisingly listenable, almost like some super lo-fi dada-ist Pop Ambient jam.
The B side is a gorgeous minimal, lazy and languid, slowly unfurling Taj Mahal Travellers like organic drone, all drawn out billowy buzz, drifting over a spare stretch of low end shimmer, very meditative and serene. Occasionally over the top drift little flurries of percussion, bells and shakers, very tribal and ritualistic. Both sides are pretty dang awesome.
And like all the releases in the series, this is a custom hand cut, Peter King lathe cut, 8", and it's SQUARE!!! Packaged in gorgeous square and triangular die cut sleeves, super fancy textured paper, with a paste on front cover and a printed insert, each insert hand numbered, each release LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!

KOBAYASHI Dasselbe In Grun (self released) 7" picture disc 5.98
We get so much stuff to listen to. Literally hundreds of cds and lps and tapes every month. We do our best to listen to everything. And many all time AQ faves and big sellers came from the piles and piles of stuff folks send in. But every once in a while, we come across something that's been sitting forever, for ages, we finally listen to it and are blown the fuck away! In cases such as those we do our best to get in touch with the band or label and order a bunch for the store. Often they don't even remember sending them, but are psyched that we're finally ordering some. As much as we're psyched to be listing it, and probably kicking ourselves for waiting so long to discover it.
But in some cases, it's been so long, that maybe the piece of paper or the note that came with the records has disappeared or gotten lost, and then we end up digging around on the internet trying to track them down so we can get them for you all to check out. Lucky for us, the guys in Kobayashi took it upon themselves to send us a whole stack of their 7"s (not recommended generally by the way), however that was months and months ago and it was only a few days ago that we finally checked it out, and whattayaknow, it's pretty goddamn great. So if you're in the band, drop us a line! If you're not, by all means pick up one of these killer chunks of obtuse metallic grind.
The sound is tough to describe, it's definitely grindcore, classic sounding for sure, but with lots of slow dirgey bits, chunks of doom, weird angular riffing, spastic rhythms, jagged guitars, dual shrieking vocals, short and sharp, but not always fast and furious, sometimes just gnarled and chunky, but laced with bursts of furious buzz, chunks of churning low end, lurching tempos, and occasional blast beats. There's a bit of powerviolence, a bit of grind, some crustiness for sure, and a whole lot of metal, all tangled up into a pretty serious slab of grinding atonal, freaked out brutality. The packaging is amazing too. It's a picture disc, housed in a thick red vinyl sleeve, one side is the song titles over little black blocks, the other side a man's head, but pull the disc out, and the blocks turn into letters, the lyrics to the songs, and the man's head removed from the sleeve suddenly reveals the skeleton beneath the skin. A sort of 3-D style red and blue disappearing ink thing. Plus the band members have names like Tommyknocker and Ziggy Starfuck, and are credited with instruments like sticks of fatality, screams of brainstrain, frantic rhythms and immortal throat. What's not to love? Pretty cool stuff.

LSD-MARCH Nikutai No Tubomi (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2cd 17.98
It's Japan's LSD-march at their heavy psych droney mostest, this time just the duo of guitarist Shinsuke Michishita and drummer Ikuro Takahashi, laying down two discs worth of Tokyo flashback style murk and grime...well especially on Disc 1, which is entirely one long song, the title track. It's a slow-building densely textured piece, a 39 minute slithering dark psychedelic guitar solo set amidst thick waves of distortion effects and cymbal washes... perfectly paced and hypnotically foreboding. Gradually the pulse quickens, vocals murmer o'er the miasmic throb, and the living ghost of Les Rallizes Denudes nods approvingly... this piece's payoff being its own mesmeric momentum. When the end does come, after an appreciable increase in volume and noise from the disc's beginning, you can imagine amps falling over, toppling like the monolith in 2001. Boris fans should approve of this metallic rumble.
Disc 2 features eight individual pieces, and offers a mediative comedown from disc one's climactic intensity (at first), track one "Aubade" being composed of tingling bells. "Elephant" is next, and is a weird one, a pattering of drums accompanying atonal string scrape that maybe suggests an elephantine trumpeting sound? The disc continues in an equally weird and diverse manner, all the tracks much more intimate and oddly experimental in sound than the more usual LSD-march issue electric storm of disc 1. It's more-or-less acoustic up to track 5, "Love", which stomps on some pedals for a distorted electric (distorted vocals too) dubby noise rock stumble. And then track six enters into some sort of ritual drone ceremony or something... all of this is pretty cool, LSD-march letting their hair down and doing something completely different from track to track, like we said in an experimental spirit, culminating in track 8, "Holy Ghost", a festive freakout for harmonica and scattered percussion. Perhaps their tribute to Albert Ayler, to hazard a guess.
It's like these two discs, one a long-form, heavy-duty improv, the other a potpourri of creative freaky ideas, are the intended out-there companions to their recent, much more tightly song-based album Constellation Of Tragedy on Important, a recent AQ highlight. Nikutai No Tubomi comes as equally recommended!
Oh, and lest we forget, this is a NUMBERED, LIMITED EDITION OF 500 COPIES!!! And comes in a fancy, thick gatefold package.
MPEG Stream: "Nikutai No Tubomi (excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "Stone"
MPEG Stream: "Love"

MARBLEBOG Forestheart (Autopsy Kitchen) cd 13.98
Since we first heard the name Marblebog, we somehow just knew this obscure Hungarian horde would be a fast favorite, before we had even heard a note of music, and man were we right. The last record, 2004's Csendhajnal, now unfortunately out of print, was a huge hit at AQ, the perfect balance of swirling synthy ambience, and mournful melancholy Burzumic buzz, so we had been anxiously awaiting the reissue of 2005's Forestheart ever since, and now it's finally here.
This duo from Hungary mix traditional Hungarian folk, modern grim black buzz, and blissed out ambience into epic swaths of blurry blackness, woven from loping minor key guitars, simple mostly midtempo drumming, strangled croaked vocals, and while the parts might sound similar to black metal obsessives, it's not just the parts, it's how they're played, and recorded and arranged, the mood and the timbre, the sound and the feeling as much as the actual riffs.
And while the riffs are of course amazing, it's the feel more than anything that make Marblebog so special. Everything is dripping with such sadness and sorrow, not just minor key, but whole arrangements and progressions perfectly assembled to evoke strange feelings, heartbreak and woe, death and destruction, so mournful and melancholy, sweeping swells of buzzing sound, with incredible dynamics, and bits of melody that swoop in out of nowhere and are immediately swallowed up again.
The appropriately titled "Opening" is a brief stretch of swirling krautrocky synth, peppered with haunting animal like FX and creepy scrapes and groans, all drenched in reverb and delay, hovering beneath a pale moonlit sky. This intro opens up into the sort of title track "I Am The Forestheart", a glorious blast of melancholy blackness, with a main riff as catchy as it is dark and depressive. Part way through the band shift gear, and slow down into a strummed folky interlude, a jig like melody, Jew's harp, the sound of wind and rain, a haunting spare drift.
There are three more longish tracks, all channeling the same forest spirit, looped cyclical black buzz, suffused with hypnotic drones and unlikely little melodic flourishes, everything muted and murky and dreamlike, often breaking down into simple acoustic guitar drifts, before picking back up again. The harrowing over the top vocals of the first records are now much more settled into the background, more a part of the music, almost like another layer of buzzing drone, but still just as harrowing and anguished.
The final track is a 13+ minute ambient soundscape of shimmering synths, and mad scientist lab FX, burbling and gurgling beneath, dreamy washes of high end drift, strange muted percussion, some seriously Goblin like keyboard creep, and eventually some awesome lurching downtuned guitar, not so much crushing and heavy as creepy and thick, cyclical and hypnotic, a gorgeous lurching dream doom.
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Forestheart"
MPEG Stream: "A Tempest Never Calming Down"
MPEG Stream: "Closing"

MARBLEBOG Forestheart (Autopsy Kitchen) lp 13.98
Since we first heard the name Marblebog, we somehow just knew this obscure Hungarian horde would be a fast favorite, before we had even heard a note of music, and man were we right. The last record, 2004's Csendhajnal, now unfortunately out of print, was a huge hit at AQ, the perfect balance of swirling synthy ambience, and mournful melancholy Burzumic buzz, so we had been anxiously awaiting the reissue of 2005's Forestheart ever since, and now it's finally here.
This duo from Hungary mix traditional Hungarian folk, modern grim black buzz, and blissed out ambience into epic swaths of blurry blackness, woven from loping minor key guitars, simple mostly midtempo drumming, strangled croaked vocals, and while the parts might sound similar to black metal obsessives, it's not just the parts, it's how they're played, and recorded and arranged, the mood and the timbre, the sound and the feeling as much as the actual riffs.
And while the riffs are of course amazing, it's the feel more than anything that make Marblebog so special. Everything is dripping with such sadness and sorrow, not just minor key, but whole arrangements and progressions perfectly assembled to evoke strange feelings, heartbreak and woe, death and destruction, so mournful and melancholy, sweeping swells of buzzing sound, with incredible dynamics, and bits of melody that swoop in out of nowhere and are immediately swallowed up again.
The appropriately titled "Opening" is a brief stretch of swirling krautrocky synth, peppered with haunting animal like FX and creepy scrapes and groans, all drenched in reverb and delay, hovering beneath a pale moonlit sky. This intro opens up into the sort of title track "I Am The Forestheart", a glorious blast of melancholy blackness, with a main riff as catchy as it is dark and depressive. Part way through the band shift gear, and slow down into a strummed folky interlude, a jig like melody, Jew's harp, the sound of wind and rain, a haunting spare drift.
There are three more longish tracks, all channeling the same forest spirit, looped cyclical black buzz, suffused with hypnotic drones and unlikely little melodic flourishes, everything muted and murky and dreamlike, often breaking down into simple acoustic guitar drifts, before picking back up again. The harrowing over the top vocals of the first records are now much more settled into the background, more a part of the music, almost like another layer of buzzing drone, but still just as harrowing and anguished.
The final track is a 13+ minute ambient soundscape of shimmering synths, and mad scientist lab FX, burbling and gurgling beneath, dreamy washes of high end drift, strange muted percussion, some seriously Goblin like keyboard creep, and eventually some awesome lurching downtuned guitar, not so much crushing and heavy as creepy and thick, cyclical and hypnotic, a gorgeous lurching dream doom.
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Forestheart"
MPEG Stream: "A Tempest Never Calming Down"
MPEG Stream: "Closing"

MEADS OF ASPHODEL, THE Life Is Shit e.p. (Firestorm) 7" 9.98
More distinctly not very black metal weirdness from some of our favorite black metal weirdos. If you might remember back to the most recent Meads release, In The Name Of God, Welcome To Planet Genocide, we were all sort of knocked for a loop by the band's new direction. Or directions. From the very Crass like cut and paste political cover art, to the punky crust and other weirdness inside, these freaks had gone and outweirded even their own weird selves. So now we have the latest single, and it seems, at least for these three songs, the band have abandoned the black metal entirely. All covers. All classics. Stiff Little Fingers, The Ruts and The Stranglers. All done pretty straight, not black metallized or anything, just raw crusty pounding melodic old school punk rock. The Stiff Little Fingers cover is a jam, an awesome song so done straight it's still an awesome song, the vocals appropriately raspy, the guitars buzzing and the drums pounding. The Ruts cover features original Ruts guitarist Paul Fox and sounds as kick ass as the original. The only place things get extra weird is on the final track, the Stranglers cover, where the vocals are strangely processed and sound about as close to black metal as anything here, but then we've got Mirai from the band Sigh with insane blasts of crazy prog synths, and some new wave female background vocals. Sounds like a bit of a mess, and it sort of is, but it's also awesome and totally rocks in this amazingly unhinged way.
Meads fans who were thrown off by the lack of buzzing blackness will be even more confused by this triple shot. But if you're into metal and punk rock, you could do way worse than hearing these killer tunes revamped and twisted up a bit by the always brilliantly baffling Meads.
Cool old school black and white skull cover. All the records are hand numbered and signed on the label by all the band members. Probably limited too...

MILE END LADIES STRING AUXILIARY, THE From Cells of Roughest Air (Bangor) cd 14.98
What do you get when three ladies from groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion come together to form a "string auxiliary"? One intense and beautiful album, that's what! With cello, viola and violin employed with full force, this is a record that maintains a compelling tension from start to finish. Almost what you would imagine Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca or Steve Reich would come up with if they were to use a string ensemble to score a lost Hitchcock film. Suspense filled sounds played with a piercing perfection. Kind of like a more forceful version of the Rachels' with the same elegant touch but a punchier disposition. This is totally recommended! Came out a while back (last year) but we only just mangaged to get some more in, it's a Canadian import. Not sure when/if we'll be able to get more when we run out...
MPEG Stream: "Sequences of a Warm Front"
MPEG Stream: "Thunderheads and Radar"

MURMER We Share A Shadow (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 15.98
Proprietor of the Framework radio show on Resonance FM for many years now, Patrick McGinley has implored his listeners to "open your ears and listen" to the world at large, presenting an impeccable series dedicated to field recordings and its use in composition. So, it goes with out saying that the field recording and the found object are commonplace within McGinley's own sound art constructions which he records under the moniker Murmer (and not Murmur, mind you!). Given his predilection for wandering throughout the European countryside for all that it has to offer (not just limited to environmental sound), his recorded output has been somewhat limited. We Share A Shadow is his first proper solo album in almost three years, although his collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough did stand out as one of the dronemusik highlights of 2006. Consisting of two very long pieces, We Share A Shadow is a notably restrained album whose dark beauty reveals itself with a slow and deliberate pace. The first untitled piece opens with sheets of cold rain scuffing the smooth arcs of bowed metals, whose Feldman-like swell and collapse recalls the late period work of Bernhard Gunter. As the rain gently fades, a composite drone emerges out of those rasps and vibrations from the bowed metals and intensifies through dissonant timbres subtly agitating the shimmer and filigree of the gilted drone. Throughout, windswept debris ricochets across the stereo field casting an ominous cloud onto the sustained tones. The second piece is an even darker affair with a motor grinding against a piece of metal in the distance while a somber, almost doomscape piano plods in the foreground. With plenty of low frequency rumbles and spectral activity lingering in the background, this piece is almost like KTL remixing Xenakis at 16 RPM. Needless to say, this is an incredible album.
Gorgeously packaged in hand water-colored / letterpressed sleeves, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 2"

NJIQAHDDA Njimajikal Arts (E.E.E. Recordings) 2cd-r 19.98
With a name like Njiqahdda, and a record title like Njimajikal Arts, all the text written in some unreadable Eastern script, and cover art consisting of lush green foliage and nothing else, with the promise that this was some mysterious alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed black metal, you know we were seriously intrigued. But at the same time, we really had no idea what to expect. We got these from E.E.E. one of our current favorite labels, home to all of the amazing unblack metal we've been raving about forever... so at first we assumed it was another unblack metal offshoot of one of the many E.E.E. bands, but the label assured us it wasn't. Later we discovered, it was actually a sort of experiment to see if folks reacted differently to stuff on E.E.E. if they thought it wasn't Christian. So, after all, it ends up, it is actually guys from Flaskavsae and Drommer, who together have whipped up one of the weirdest and most gorgeously fucked up (un)black records of the year. Which is saying a lot considering how twisted and far out most of the E.E.E. stuff is...
Where to start? Two discs, looooong tracks, weirdly washed out buzzing post rock, with lots of clean guitars and haunting atmospherics, all tangled up with thick blasts of dense black buzz, and with super freaked out production and lots of unlikely and not very metal sounds and arrangements.
The opening track, "Blister Within The Hive" is based around a super Slinty' guitar riff, looped and repeated, the drums weirdly staggered and mathy, the vocals a muted mumbly howl, super distorted and demonic, but not like black metal, more like noise rock. The main riff shifts and gets more and more dramtic and lush, while the vocals become more distorted and more unhinged, transforming into swirling clouds of harsh hiss and blurred white noise. With the repeated almost looped riff, it's like an un-black metal Circle, relelntless and mesmerizing, and totally hypnotic. The guitars and drums slowly fade out leaving a twisted, slithery buzzing low end drone, super minimal, as it crawls through a field of glitch and shimmer, like some cd-r drone record.
The second track, "A Tale Of Ancient Tergue" is more traditional black metal, but it's all relative. A loping Burzumic midtempo buzz, with tho seame freaked out alien vocals, the drums and cymbals super hot and way up in the mix, threatening to overload everything, the main riff and melody surprisingly melancholy and catchy, again locking into a continuous loop, until the main riff drops out, and suddenly a haunting chorus of voices takes over the main melody, humming and crooning over the still poundin and crashing drums, creepy and so beautiful. All hovering in a thick cloud of swirling FX and spaced out shimmer.
The disc finishes off with the nearly half hour long "Blue Wintry Days", a doomy surge through fields of hissing white noise buzz, the guitars soaring, the drums again sizzling white hot all over the place, mournful and melancholy, but so weirdly washed out at times it sounds like Tim Hecker vs. Burzum vs. Merzbow. About halfway through the various elements become less and less distinct, and the song transforms into an almost static blur, before shifting back into a dark doomy plod, but still always, a bit more mathy and post rock and spaced out that any black record has a right to be. And we love it.
The second disc is just two long songs. The first, "Ancient Tergue Recital" begins all ambient, with deep cavernous drones and birdsong, shimmering metallic reverberations and delicate chimes, a sparse ambient sprawl, that builds and builds, getting darker, and more ominous, the melodies turning minor key, but continuing to drift, a tranquil black ambient lullaby wrapped around a lilting and haunting music box melody.
The final track, "The Wintry Grey" is another long ambient workout, this one even more minimal than the first, more in line with Coleclough or Chalk, minimal and nearly static, subtle overtones shifting gently as the various layers rub against each other almost imperceptibly. A keening high end draped over a warm whirring low end, the two all tangled up in a divine dreamy drift.
Definitely one of the coolest, darkest, weirdest, doomiest, dreamiest (un)black metal records of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Blister Within The Hive"
MPEG Stream: "A Tale Of Ancient Tergue"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Wintry Days"

OF The Sun & Earth Together (Ultra Hard Gel) cd 12.98
Loren Chasse, one of the chief swamis of the collective Jewelled Antler sound through such projects as Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Franciscan Hobbies, Ov, and too many more to list (boy, they used to crank out those cd-rs!), records solo under the moniker Of (the similarly named Ov being the duo of Chasse with his wife and AQ-employee Christine, full disclosure). Simply put, we love Of (and Ov), of course... and are always happy when Chasse takes some time away from his other activities (the somewhat less musical of which being his day job as a public school teacher) to craft a new Of album, a phantom tendril from his own personal dreamworld reaching through our shared reality to caress our ears and cause imaginary crystals to glow softly somewhere within that part of our minds attuned to such blissful vibrations. Not to make this sound like any sort of New Age fluff though, as while as ethereal and meditative as this is, Chasse always incorporates some primitive grit into his work, his music full of feedback hiss, quiet distortion, ambient elemental field recordings of nature, the magnified rubbings of rocks and plants, objects close to the ground, part of the earth, illuminated (and given shadow too) by the radiation of a far-off, flaming star.
The music of The Sun and Earth Together is akin to a slowly turning mobile, as if it were giving off drones and tones as well as glinting with color and the reflections of light. As light shimmers, so does this music. As light dims, it dims too. The abstract sculptural shapes of this imagined mobile move in beautiful indeterminate patterns, much as the sounds Chasse conjures from disparate sources* as cymbalom and stones, autoharp and voice, bells and bowls, guitar and zither all drift delicately, and droningly, in phosphorescent clouds and constellations. This disc clocks in at 51 minutes, consisting of four tracks, each one longer than the last, from the three minute opener "Ignimbrites" to the 26 minute closing title track. All composed of tingling, whispered layers of lo-fi loveliness, gentle and graceful and ultimately glorious.
*we're guessing on some of these...
MPEG Stream: "Archangelic Curtain"
MPEG Stream: "Ignimbrites"
MPEG Stream: "Vog Rings"

ONODERA, YUI Suisei (And/OAR) cd 13.98
Not much information to present about who Yui Onodera is. Nor is there anything in the way of a conceptual framework to guide one through this album beyond its sources from "environmental sound and pump organ." Not that it really matters anyway, as Suisei is a gorgeous album of darkly textured drones with parallels to Thomas Koner's isolationist compositions or Keith Berry's precious deconstructions. Wind, rain, and water all make themselves known in the collection of field recordings, as does the pump organ, which reveals itself in harmonic sustained tones with a spectral timbre (e.g. Niblock, Radigue, Chalk, etc.). During a particular enigmatic episode, wooden creaks and sodden groans duet with a motorized persistant soft-grind, giving the impression that some unscrupulous machine is quietly compacting sinews, meat, and bone. Strangely, it never sounds macabre or unsettlingly grotesque; rather, these crunching textures situate humbly next to a hypnotic wash of compressed static and melancholic shadowy drone, which sublimely shift into a slippery crescendo of grey massed sound. Very, very well done!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

PANDIT, KORLA The Grand Moghul Suite / The Universal Language Of Music (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
While Esquivel, Les Baxter and Arthur Lyman are usually the first names that come to mind when people talk about classic exotica, for our money the leader of the pack should for sure be Korla Pandit. Filled with charisma and a quirky disposition he used his Hammond B-3 organ to create sounds that evoke the sounds of a haunted carnival in a mysterious section of India via a b-movie made on a back lot of a studio in Hollywood. Pandit is best known for his TV show which aired in the 1950's on KTLA and through syndication throughout lots of the country.
You got to check out Youtube clips of it right away, it's simple and stunning black & white filmstock zooming in on the beautiful face of Pandit as he wailed away on his organ, sometimes even playing two of them simultaneously. Adorned in a turban, a voice-over would introduce him and his 'Universal language of music.' While it was often believed that he was born in New Delhi the truth was he was actually born in Missouri and was truly one of the first iconic musicians to create such an elaborate alter ego. We love how Pandit's music was not just throwaway novelty fare. There is true mystique, suspense and playful uneasiness in the sounds he created. It makes so much sense that shortly before Pandit died Tim Burton made sure to get him on the silver screen for a cameo role in Ed Wood. It also makes so much sense that after his run on the KTLA show he was replaced by Liberace. While Liberace may have gained more fame and fortune, Pandit is the one who taps into the imagination and hearts of those of us who love strange and enchanting sounds.
MPEG Stream: "Magnetic Theme"
MPEG Stream: "Trance Dance"
MPEG Stream: "The Banjello"

PET GENIUS s/t (Hydra Head) cd 11.98
The more we hear from Mr. Stephen Brodsky, frontman of the mighty Cave In, the more we're beginning to wonder if maybe his particular genius was wasted in the context of a sludgy metal band. Or perhaps it was specifically that weird pop genius that made Cave In such a bad ass proposition. And that should have had people more prepared for their eventual shift into bombastic progpop.
Regardless, we've got two Brodsky projects on this week's list, the psychedelic power pop of Brodsky's Octave Museum, and this brand new disc right here, that sounds like some weird hybrid between Elope, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Beatles, XTC, Kyuss and the White Stripes... If that's even possible, and on repeated listening
This disc is pretty all over the map, some tracks are jangly and dreamy, others are crunchy and super heavy, many are both. But it's the perfect pop songwriting that holds all of these disparate sounds together. And perfect pop they are.
We were pretty much sold 10 seconds in, the opener is a barnstormer, a killer riff, with a lurching stop start verse, and some Beatles-esque falsetto vocals, all wrapped around one of the most killer hooks ever! The second track is more blessed out, folky and very British sounding, with epic melodic swells, and more falsetto vocals, gentle acoustic strum and some playful vocal guitar interplay. But track three, "Walls Of Etiquette is the gem here, and most likely the single, if records like this actually have 'singles', groovy and stoner, with a slithery riff, keening vocals, a super catchy melody, and a churning super intense grinding metallic refrain, and a chorus to die for. Very reminiscent of Queens Of The Stone Age back when they were AWESOME. A lot of this record reminds us of that amazing Open Hand record we raved about a few years back. "Man Of The Mountain" is another killer, beginning with a crunchy metal intro, before slipping into a dreamy folky drift, all poppy shimmer and irresistible hooks.
The rest of the record plays out in a pretty similar fashion, with Brodsky pitting his Beatlesy pop heart against his distorted desert axe, the results pretty tough to beat. And this is one of those records we just gave a cursory listen to, but soon found ourselves spinning it over and over EVERY day. No better recommendation than that...
MPEG Stream: "Doomsday"
MPEG Stream: "Walls Of Etiquette"
MPEG Stream: "The Visiting Dynamiter"
MPEG Stream: "Man Of The Mountain"

PRURIENT Outside The World e.p. (alt.vinyl) 8" square lathe cut 26.00
Prurient are turning out to be one of our favorite modern noise artists. At some point early on, Prurient, aka New Yorker Dom Fernow, realized 'noise music' wasn't all about volume or power or abrasion or violence or brutality, it was as much about texture and timbre and mood and dynamics and hell, even melody. The magic happens when you figure out a way to combine all of those into one single complex sound. And Prurient has been doing that since we fist discovered his Black Kite record.
This is one of four new 8" square lathe cuts released by alt.vinyl in the UK, run by the Jazzfinger guys, and finds Fernow moving into even more ambient and drift like territory. One side is all washed out buzz drenched crumble, a barren landscape of time lapse decay, cities falling to ruin, fauna withering, wildlife dying, the sky turning an ashen grey, the soundtrack to a gradual return to dust, the various sounds wreathed in a hissy swirl of tape drop outs and creaking mechanical whir. The other side is even more pretty, tranquil, ambient, like the first sighting of the sun after the dust clouds clear, and signs of life begin to stir, still bleak and haunting, but pretty and subtly hopeful. Wide open expanses of distant fragmented melody, mumbled barely there drones, with the surface noise of the record as much an element as the music itself.
And like all the releases in the series, this is a custom hand cut, Peter King lathe cut, 8", and it's SQUARE!!! Packaged in gorgeous square and triangular die cut sleeves, super fancy textured paper, with a paste on front cover and a printed insert, each insert hand numbered, each release LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!

RASTAN (Taito) video arcade game 0.25
Allan's always wanted his own Rastan machine, and finally, thanks to the magic of eBay, he got one, and for relatively cheap too, considering that he probably spent as much in quarters playing it in the arcade back in the day! As you've probably noticed, it's here in the store and up and running, along with Andee's prize Tron machine (reviewed last list). We thought we'd write a little bit about each machine in the usual AQ New Arrivals list style, just for kicks. No, you can't add this to your cart, but you can stop in and drop a quarter or two into it in person...
So, for those of you without the experience of wasting your adolescence and lunch money loitering in video arcades, and don't know the (vintage 1987) Rastan game, here's the rundown: the title character, Rastan, is your basic Conan the Barbarian style swords & sorcery adventurer running around, jumping and stabbing things and collecting treasure. If you're good enough, you'll advance from level to level (there's six levels of three screens each), beating each boss, exploring new and ever-more dangerous fantasy realms, and perhaps eventually finishing the game. Haven't made it to the end yet ourselves -- it would take a several hours of play and many many credits, even if we were skilled enough at the game.
What's so awesome about Rastan? Well the graphics are pretty cool, especially the backgrounds which are totally D&Dish and mystically evocative. There's wilderness scenes (from jungles to rocky barrens) and also castle and cavern interiors, complete with flaming pit traps and rolling bolders and Tarzan style rope swings. It's a two dimensional, moving left-to-right game, using what's called "parallax scrolling" to give an illusion of depth to the backgrounds. The monsters are pretty cool too -- four armed boomerang flingers and fire spitting hydra and (at higher levels) scary Medusa ladies whose green snakey hair extends to entrap you... But the most dangerous monsters have got to be the bats. Individually they don't seem that scary, but they're tough to hit, there are a lot of them and they'll come for you if you're taking too long getting from point A to point B. We've lost more lives to those pesky bats than anything else in the game... Another cool thing about the graphics is that they've left out a lot of the usual video game clutter -- there's no point values popping up on the screen when you slay something, it's more "realistic" than that... well sort of. The "life meter" is pretty cool too, your heart shown pumping at one end, louder and more desperately as you sustain hit after hit...
But the BEST thing about this game, by far, has got to be the theme music. It's brilliant. If we could get a cd soundtrack we'd be sooooooo stoked. Awesomely ominous '80s arcade electronica. We don't even know the name of the composer, but it's a bit like like John Carpenter making medieval metal music... sinister and suspenseful, especially when the music cresendos to warn of an impending bat swarm attack!
If you play the game be sure to ask Allan for some pointers: like, you gotta learn how to jump down with your sword or (other weapon) also pointing down to deal with certain obstacles/enemies... sword swipes combined with a jump seem much more powerful... you can go up ropes faster if you jump while you climb (as long as there's a wall next to the rope for you to "bounce" up)... and watch out for the vials of poison some monsters leave behind... but if you see the gold sheep's head, you want that, it'll restore your life meter to full... So come on by and try being a "brave adventurer who dared to challenge"!
MPEG Stream: "Rastan theme music"

ROTHER, MICHAEL Fernwarme (Water) cd 16.98
Along with the Harmonia Live 1974 cd that we're making Record Of The Week, the Water label has reissued the first four solo records of Harmonia, Kraftwerk, and Neu! veteran, Michael Rother. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the others we should get to on a later list.
We'd assume that the majority of AQ regulars are largely familiar with at least one of Michael Rother's projects. Whether it be his his work with Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster, or Harmonia, Rother's contributions to the last 30 plus years of music are innumerable. Still, his solo work that has been conspicuously absent from most write-ups and record shelves. Perhaps that's because the early '80s saw Rother in a bit of transition period from his Krautrock glory days to a point where he embraced New Age with arms wide open. Despite naysayers, New Age isn't necessarily a four letter word. Not necessarily. But fear not, while embracing New Age, Rother didn't -- or perhaps couldn't -- completely abandon his musical past. Thankfully, the fine people at Water have made the first four Rother albums available once again, lovingly remastered and repackaged with original art and new liner notes.
Like the three preceding releases, 1981's Fernwarme finds Rother accompanied by drummer Jaki Leibezeit of fellow uber-famous Krautrockerers Can. Unlike the first three solo albums, this one shows Rother returning much closer to his days with Harmonia than attempting to incorporate elements from anything like, say, Kitaro. In fact, despite the lead guitar of opening number "Silberstreif" relying heavily upon the "Do-Re-Mi" tune taught in grade school music class, Fernwarme is an excellent contribution to an incredibly impressive career, full of simple beauty, a warm embrace of blissed-out pop melodies. Jaki's lightly propulsive motorik shuffle is the heartbeat pulse that underpins the harmonized guitar lines spun by Rother, his harmonies at times making us think of Citay's most exquisite moments... elsewhere Rother delves into darkly droning keyboards, and Fernwarme starts to sound not unlike a much mellower Zombi. Very very nice, a highly recommended early '80s spacey prog kraut classic!!
MPEG Stream: "Silberstreif"
MPEG Stream: "Klangkorper"

ROTHER, MICHAEL Sterntaler (Water) cd 16.98
Along with the Harmonia Live 1974 cd that we're making Record Of The Week, the Water label has reissued the first four solo records of Harmonia, Kraftwerk, and Neu! veteran, Michael Rother. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the others we should get to on a later list.
We'd assume that the majority of AQ regulars are largely familiar with at least one of Michael Rother's projects. Whether it be his his work with Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster, or Harmonia, Rother's contributions to the last 30 plus years of music are innumerable. Still, his solo work that has been conspicuously absent from most write-ups and record shelves. Perhaps that's because the early '80s saw Rother in a bit of transition period from his Krautrock glory days to a point where he embraced New Age with arms wide open. Despite naysayers, New Age isn't necessarily a four letter word. Not necessarily. But fear not, while embracing New Age, Rother didn't -- or perhaps couldn't -- completely abandon his musical past. Thankfully, the fine people at Water have made the first four Rother albums available once again, lovingly remastered and repackaged with original art and new liner notes.
Sterntaler is from 1977 and is Rother's second solo work recorded by Conny Plank and featuring Can's Jaki Liebezeit on drums. Similar in scope and feel to Cluster's more pastoral efforts, namely Sowiesoso, Rother's signature gliding guitar playing is recognizable throughout. Think Neu! light. And that's not a diss, although Andee thinks it sounds like an eighties movie montage or the background music in a timeshare video presentation. But you have to remember, Andee doesn't like Can either... And put in context that Rother's first solo album Flammende Herzen sold more than all Neu! records combined, we might understand why Rother would pursue this more New Age-ish direction. And if you're gonna listen to New Age, then stuff like Rother and fellow (former) krautrockers Ashra and Deuter is the way to go. In any event, Sterntaler definitely reaches to the heights of late-period krautrock a la Cluster and for curious fans is very worthy of your time. Lovely and recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Sterntaler"
MPEG Stream: "Fontana Di Luna"

SHEVALREQ Tournament At Constantinople (Cyclops) cd 15.98
We raved about a band called Xynfonica a few lists back. A baffling and ridiculous melding of 'classical music' with growled demonic death metal vocals. Some of us were blown away, others of us, well, were not. We discovered Xynfonica was created using nothing but a guitar synthesizer, and the man behind Xynfonica also had a record label, based entirely on this concept of musics made with guitar synthesizers, coupled with evil metal vocals, and had TWO OTHER RELEASES. One world music! And one jazz. Whatthefuck?! We knew we had to hear all of 'em!
So here we have the auspicious debut of Shevalreq. The world music installment of what seems to be a series of truly fucked up outsider musical weirdness. Starting with the cover, Shevalreq was already shaping up to be just as amazing as Xynfonica, the band name and album title in thick purple script, the cover a photo of the guitar synthesizer, and what appears to be a dat machine, and ON TOP OF THE synth and the dat machine are some miniature knights on horseback jousting!!! The back cover shows the same night posing next to the guitar pedals and still on top of the GIANT musical equipment. Inside are pages and pages of lyrics, again, an EPIC, this time concerned with some sort of ancient civilization, jousting, knights, murder, intrigue, castles and royalty, hard to say exactly, especially since it's impossible to understand the lyrics as they're delivered in that monstrous rasp.
And then there's the music. To be totally honest, it doesn't sound all that different than Xynfonica, lots of the tracks sound like a Youtube clip of a cat walking back and forth on a synthesizer keyboard. Coupled with the evil vocals, well, it's just totally bizarre, and to some of us absolute brilliance, but this one stands out as suddenly, the sounds will shift, and we're suddenly listening to tablas, or some Eastern sounding horns, and here and there, Monsieur Shevalreq even busts out little squalls of furious lead guitar. Wailing leads, soaring strings, plink plonky synths, growled invokations, rumbling fake cellos, all woven into a stumbling, damaged concept record about jousting and duels and kings and castles. What more do we need to say?
If you bought the Xynfonica, you almost absolutely need this, if you didn't, we still have some left, or you might as well start with this one. And next time, we'll review the JAZZ one?!?! We can hardly wait.
MPEG Stream: "Tournament Roster"
MPEG Stream: "Argalia's Challenge"
MPEG Stream: "The Jousting Contest"

SKULL DEFEKTS, THE Polonium (Kning Disk) 3"cd-r 13.98
Not only is this limited 3" cd-r release on one our our newest favoritest labels, Sweden's Kning Disk (who brought us both the Erik Enocksson Record Of The Week and Balroynigress reviewed on our last list) but it's also by one of our newest favoritest bands, The Skull Defekts (also Swedish). You know why we love Kning, and if you read our reviews of a handful of their previous releases, you also know what we think is so great about The Skull Defekts... they're abstract technicians of noisy mechanical rhythm n' glitch, masters of repetitive industrial improv thrum n' stutter. Like their Stateside colleagues (and Kning labelmates) Wolf Eyes, they've also been quite prolific (we have several other new Skull Dfx titles in stock and awaiting review, in fact!).
Polonium (named for a rare, radioactive element, used in the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning) is a heavy, hypnotic electrical noise construct about 20 minutes long, recorded live on the radio (Resonance FM) in London, England, January 6th 2007. Although performed by a stripped down duo version of the band, normally a quartet, it's a good example of what we love about this outfit and would make a good introduction to their sound, though we're listing it now mainly 'cause we know fans are gonna want to get their hands on this before it's gone, as this release, in its second and possibly final edition, is LIMITED TO 100 NUMBERED COPIES. We only have a few...

SOUND PROJECTOR, THE 16th Issue magazine 14.98
Holy crap. This thing weighs a ton. 184 pages, a thicker even than usual A4 sized tome wrapped in their trademark red, black and white cover graphics. England's Sound Projector is back with its 16th issue, as always a must read for the sort of folks likely to be reading this review -- that is, if you're an avid AQ-list reader, you're gonna love Sound Projector, 'cause each enthused (yet sometimes scathingly critical) issue of this fanzine consists in large part of many, many music reviews, exploring the unusual, underground, avant-garde sonic territory that we at AQ love. And we usually learn a lot from each issue, from their obscure selections and thoughtful opinions. This time the 'zine is broken into five sections, starting with an international record review survey ranging the USA and UK to the "The Nordic Realms", where you'll find the "world music" likes of Getachew Mekurya and Raushan Orazbaeva right next to sundry "Free Folk" folks... Section two is also right up our alley, "Noisy Rock, Evil Noise, and Black Noisy Music", where you'll find reviews of the first three Earth albums (that's right, did we mention that the Sound Projector could care less about release dates, and just reviews whatever they want to from whenever it came out?) along with Darkspace, Forgotten Woods, Burning Star Core, and Darsombra among many more... Section three is all interviews rather than reviews (actually, there's reviews too), featuring talks with Japanese avant-guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, UK experimentalist Philip Sanderson (of Storm Bugs and Snatch Tapes fame, among other things), German tape composer Frank Rothkamm, sound collagist Joe Frawley, and UK '80s "postpunk electronic ensemble" Cultural Amnesia. Then with Section four it's back to the reviews, of wide ranging "Art Music" from Annea Lockwood to Nurse With Wound... Finally there's section five, "Remainder", a miscellany of cassettes, drones, jazz, and much much more. Happily, page 184 of the magazine is an index, in very tiny type! Ackamoor, Idris right above Aethenor. Khlyst next to Kirchin, Basil. Softwar followed by Sombres Forets... nearly 400 reviews in all! A lot of things that we've listed too (now's your chance to get a second opinion) -and- lots of stuff we haven't even heard of at all! Recommended, even at the unavoidably steep import price (but it is the biggest Sound Projector yet).

STORY, THE Arcane Rising (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
One of our favorite "folkpsych" albums of last year was the debut full-length Tale Spin from the English father-son duo known as The Story. Wasn't terribly much of a surprise, really, since the elder half of The Story, Martin Welham, was an integral member of Forest, an amazing (and undeservedly obscure) band from back in the original late sixties/early seventies magical era of British acid folk music, contemporaries of Fairport and Pentangle and the Incredible String Band and Dando Shaft and Comus. The reissues of their two albums have been huge favorite here at Aquarius. But now it's almost forty years later, and we suppose that Martin making music with his son Tom could have been a let-down. But it wasn't, not a bit, no sirree. Martin still had "it". And apparently a musical talent for pastoral prettiness runs in the family too.
And this second album from The Story is also quite something. Again what wows us is just the lovely blend of their gentle voices and sprightly guitar strum, singing songs full of melancholic atmospheres and melodic enchantment... As an acoustic duo, the focus here is on the song writing, the melodies and pagan-tinged lyrics, not psychedelic effects or rock bombast, and the Welhams do wonders with just their guitars and voices, plus some sundry hand-percussion, flutes, and (literal) bells and whistles too. Like Tale Spin, this album is utterly sweet and mellow and hum-able...in terms of mood, it has its dark corners but even then the Martin and Tom's harmony vocals bring warmth and light to the journey, which seems to be along forest paths and over country streams, across both misty moors and sunny meadows. The songs (sixteen of 'em) are ALL quite nice, none of them overly lengthy, mostly just a minute or three apiece, making maximum melodic impact before The Story moves itself along to the next song. Timeless stuff -- we could almost imagine a Welham grandchild eventually joining up and The Story continuing and bridging yet another generation...
PS They also have a track on the excellent new Brit-folk compilation John Barleycorn Reborn, which we'll be reviewing on our next list...
MPEG Stream: "Watch Out"
MPEG Stream: "Flash Across The Sky"

STRIBORG Nocturnal Emissions / Nyctophobia (Displeased) cd 14.98
If black metal has a "Jandek" then Striborg might be it. Certainly, an argument can be made that black metal itself is already "outsider art" and then if that's the case, where to put Striborg? Outside the outside. So much of Striborg's eccentrically intimate, idiosyncratic output (this disc holding many fine examples, for instance at one point when it sounds like he's playing the violin in the shower) is so exquisitely wrong it's right, so inadvertently avant-garde and very much trance-inducing that of course Striborg is a big AQ fave. Until recently, though, it was easier for us to get Jandek cds than those of Striborg. But at long last the gates to Striborg's lair have swung open, and the many previously hard-to-find recordings by this Tasmanian black metal savant (as you may know, Striborg is a "band" staffed solely by the mysterious Sin-Nanna) are now readily available to us... and to you, the discriminating consumer of fucked-up black metal. Among the many Striborg discs that we for so long wanted but were unable to stock, is this one. Another essential in Striborg's damaged discography for sure. This cd combines two demos from 2002 and 2003, so it's material from pretty early on in Sin-Nanna's career of evil, though his demo-days go back as far as 1997, and these are in fact the final two (4th and 5th) demos released before he started making "proper albums" instead, although production-wise we can detect no great differences! This cd compilation of those two demos was originally released in 2003 by Striborg's own Finsternis Productions in a limited edition of 500 copies, and has now been resurrected by Displeased (along with, as we said, several other desirable Striborg artifacts).
Nocturnal Emissions consists of the title track, followed by "Despondent Cries", "Son Of The Moon", and "The Freezing Northland". The latter is interesting 'cause you'd think in Striborg's case it would be "The Freezing Southland", being so nearby to Antarctica, but it turns out that this track is a tribute to another one-man black metal cult, Norway's Ildjarn. We should also note that "The Son Of The Moon" is dedicated to Sin Nanna's baby boy, Zachariah aka Sin-Nanna junior (the name Sin-Nanna that of the god of the crescent moon in ancient Sumer, btw). This might be the first and only black metal song written by a proud father to his newborn son! In welcoming his child to "this world of tragedy, magic and sorrow", he tells him, "the stars of Aquarius is [sic] on your side".
Otherwise, Striborg's lyrical themes are entirely depressive and misanthropic, all mope-tropes matched of course by his music, the ever-present droning black buzz, a fuzzed-out spray of monochrome guitar distortion, through thick fields of which wander Striborg's special, utterly non-metroymic drum-stumble and over which he rasps his despondent cries.
The four tracks of Nyctophobia are next, "Under Black Rain", "Through The Dark Fog", "Across Thornfields", and "Into Night Moor". We'll single out "Under Black Rain" for mention, as it's composed entirely of what sounds like woozy violin improv, his jittering string-scrape punctuated by a resonating gong-blows, mixed with field recordings of drizzling rain and ominous thunderclaps... we'd be happy with just a whole disc of just that! But each track here has its unique charms, "Through Dark Fog" in particular notable for Sin-Nanna's excessively distorted vocal turn. And "Into Night Moor" is a beautiful outro of isolationist electronic ambience. It seems everything he touches turns, not to gold, but to blackened weirdness. Weird enough we assure you that you'll be giving your stereo strange looks and often rewinding to hear some choice bit of bizarreness again and again, if you share our taste in outsider black metal oddity! None more sublime than Striborg.
We'll have reviews of a couple more Striborg reissues soon (Trepidation and Spiritual Catharsis) and also look forward to a new release, the Journey Of A Misanthrope DVD...
MPEG Stream: "Nocturnal Emissions"
MPEG Stream: "Despondent Cries"
MPEG Stream: "Under Black Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Dark Fog"

SUN CITY GIRLS Dulce OST (Abduction) cd 16.98
It's Christmastime for Sun City Girls fans it seems... well it's almost Xmas anyway for everybody as we write this, but what we mean is that some hard to find gems from the SCG's extensive and bizarre discography are finally finding their way back into circulation, with several long out of print LP titles getting cd re-release on Abduction in recent months. Sad as it is that the SCGs are no more (the trio's drummer Charles Goucher tragically a victim of cancer earlier this year) at least it will be a while before they run out of recordings to reissue, as this prolific band's back catalog of obscurities goes way back to the early '80s...
This particular item, a soundtrack (or is it? the film "was never completed" and perhaps was never begun, either), was originally released on limited edition vinyl in 1998. Based on this music though, we'd LOVE to see this film, if it did in fact exist. According to a "reliable" source (Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls, in the liner notes) the story goes that the SCGs were approached by a mysterious Japanese film director to provide the music to his film about a secret underground alien base in New Mexico. This alleged director turned out to be a member of the infamous Aum Shinrikyo cult, perpetrators of the sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. Unfazed, the SCGs took the commission... but never heard from the Japanese man again. Hmm. Well we're happy that the SCGs followed through and produced this album (OR, made up that story, and produced this album).
On it, they blend delicate, melodic moments of overwrought cinematic beauty with the usual surreal SCG shenanigans. There's breathy, wordless vocals, industrial-strength noise, improv clatter, and cocktail-jazz flourishes... it's weird, it's spooky, it's sometimes quite lovely. Now, while we know the Sun City Girls could have easily done all this by themselves, they actually got some help from their friends, this album featuring contributions from violinist Eyvind Kang, clarinetist Jessie Miller, and last but not least, Japanese spazzprog drums/bass duo The Ruins (Tatsuya Yoshida and Ryuichi Masuda)!! Ends up sounding something like Mike Patton's Fantomas attempting to make music for a cattle mutilations movie, in the imagined style of a '70s Italian soundtrack, as if released on ESP-Disk (whew! stretched out that implausible string of doubtful comparisons didn't we...).
MPEG Stream: "Dulce (Main Title)"
MPEG Stream: "Electro Bovine Method"
MPEG Stream: "Descent To Level 7"

TAJ MAHAL TRAVELLERS August 1974 (P-Vine / Columbia Japan) 2cd 41.00
Once again, repressed and back in stock, but who knows for how long?! THE ULTIMATE DRONE RECORD!! We love this record so much. The Taj Majal Travellers are so utterly mind blowing. This is a double cd reissue of this legendary Japanese psych ensemble's second lp, the reissue has gone in and out of print, and has been unavailable for several years now, but when we did have it in stock, if anyone asked about drones, this is the record we would always suggest. One of the most hallowed artifacts of the psych-rock collector scum scene (originals on vinyl could set you back more than $1000!), this album is an epic higher key improvised drone extravaganza, all performed live on beaches and deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated. Feedback, time-space lag, horns, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound. So unbearably awesome. And this is not electronic music, or studio based carefully constructed drone music, this is massive and organic, dreamy and natural, waves of sound drifting through sun and sky, rain and fog, trees and electrical wires, the shape of the earth, the temperature, the wind, all affecting the sound, changing the timbre ever so slightly, band members spaced out over hundreds of yards, improvising on an impossible grand scale, the earth as their stage, nature as their recording studio, a deliriously abstract sound world of subtle drones and drifting ambience. Imagine some long hairded seventies Japanese psych rock combo, but filtered through the Jewelled Antler Collective, jamming with Chris Watson, set up on sandy dunes, grassy knolls, forest glades, each not necessarily -playing- their instruments, but instead coaxing sounds from within the instruments, setting those sounds free and sending them skyward, watching it drift downwind, where a bandmate snatches the sounds and coaxes complimentary sounds from his instrument, sending a sonic response, until these messages, these sounds weave into and around each other, the sky full of warm warbly mysterious sound. Psychedelic for sure, but more a sort of eyes closed, mind open dream drift drone psychedelia. ONE OF OUR ALL TIME FAVORITE RECORDS!!
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"

TELESCOPES, THE Another Whip (Trensmat) 7" + cd-r 8.98
We've long been fans of the Telescopes, a veritable UK institution. A long running blissed out space rock outfit as adept at crafting dreamy billowy drone rock epics as they are spewing huge gobs of caustic guitarnoise and wild psychedelic freakouts. This ultra limited 7", in Trensmat's ongoing series of eps, finds the band dabbling in the latter. Two tracks of crumbling slowly decaying space rock ambience, washed out guitars, streaks of glittering feedback, rumbling drones, coruscating white noise guitar buzz, blurred disembodied chordal bliss and crunch slabs of fuzzy distortion, all stretched out into mesmerizing sprawls of dreamlike psychedelic space drone. Heavy and dense, noisy and divine!
Includes a cd-r with the same tracks as the 7", but also with a 40 minute cd-rom film. A gorgeous and super abstract black and white video and live performance recorded in 2006, all stripes and striations, static and video white noise, shifting and slowly moving and changing shape, crumbling beauty, abstract decay and distortion, the visual analogue to the Telescopes blown out ambient skree.
Pressed on opaque cloudy blue vinyl. Packaged in a cool full color sleeve with a half cutaway on the back revealing the single and the cd. LIMITED!!! Of course. Less than 100 copies worldwide...

V/A Black Mirror: Reflections In Global Musics (Dust To Digital) cd 15.98
Arab-American violin; Thai Buddhist ritual performance; One of the first commercial recordings of Bali Gamelan; Northumbrian bagpipes; a Hindu Tamil Wedding song; a French Cameroun Rhumba; a scene from a Chinese Opera; a Turkish folk-dance song; Hutzl wedding music from the Ukraine; An unearthly theme from a supernatural Indian soundtrack; a ten-year-old Swedish girl singing with a zither...
What do these and many other far-flung sounds on this compilation have to do with each other? Are they the results of meticulous years of travel, recording, and collecting in the field? Well, no. Were they extracted from some archivist's well-researched collection of indigenous music? Um, not exactly. What these sounds do have in common is they are all culled from 78 rpm recordings made between 1918-1955; feature artists and ensembles from all over the world, mostly Europe, Asia and the Middle East (though some tracks were recorded in America); and come from the collection of one person, Ian Nagoski, who admittedly made no special efforts to find them. Instead the music found him. Never traveling more than 30 minutes from his home in the US, never buying through mail and not spending very much money, Nagoski has been able to amass an incredible collection of global treasures, finding gems through diligence, patience and perseverance that most antique record collectors wouldn't have the stamina to suffer through. Looking at some of the reproductions of the labels, some with only hand-written words, we can only imagine at how many hours of guesswork, collecting and concentrated listening Nagoski must have endured to filter the wheat from the chaff. Well-researched liner notes give clues to the origins of these 24 tracks, and Dust-to-Digital have done a fine job of cleaning up the sound (some might say a little too well -- there's nothing wrong with a little vinyl crackle here and there!). But what's really nice is to listen to a collection of songs that are not thematically arranged or compiled within a specifically defined ethno-musical context. Just these strange and beautiful documents of lost worlds colliding together discovered through the displaced happenstance of chance. Giving us hope that there are still undiscovered musical gold within our grasp. Highly recommended!
Oh, and we wanted to mention one song in particular, which everytime it's played in the store has customers and employees alike perking up their ears at its strange almost creepy beauty. It's music from a Japanese Kabuki, called "Songs In Grief", performed by Sinkou Son & Kouran Kin, and it's perhaps the most haunting beautiful thing we've ever heard. Mysterious little vocal trills, strange chanting, a bit like Elizabeth Clare Prophet, but so much more haunting and enchanting. It gives us chills everytime we hear it, and even if the rest of the comp wasn't so absolutely amazing, would be worth the price of admission alone!
MPEG Stream: GONG BELALOEWANA BALI "Kebyar Ding, I (Bali)"
MPEG Stream: PAUL PENDJA ENSEMBLE "Ngo Mebou Melane (Cameroun)"
MPEG Stream: HUTZL UKRANIAN ENSEMBLE "Welsisni Melodyi (Ukraine)"
MPEG Stream: LATA MANGESHKAR "Aayega Aanewaala (India)"
MPEG Stream: CHRISTER FALKENSTROM "Baklandets Vackra Maja (Sweden)"

V/A Box of Dub 2: Dubstep and Future Dub (Soul Jazz) 2cd 21.00
Much like volume one, which we raved about a while back, this latest installment of Soul Jazz's Box Of Dub collection of dubstep and 'future dub' is as much a straight dub record as it is a dubstep record. Maybe even more so. Hence the 'future dub' descriptor in the title. Could well have called it modern dub or something similar. The dub element, while sometimes totally twisted into new shapes, is more often left relatively pure, a slab of classic old school dub, just slightly modernized, maybe with a bit of extra bass, or some haunting effects, but not much else. The power, as always, is in the BASS.
And just like the first volume, this is an absolute killer. All the tracks here, whether they be shuffling classic dub or super creepy skeletal dubstep, are dark and slithery, with huge thick basslines, skittery dubbed out percussion, vocal fragments, warbly loops, hypnotic rhythms, all hovering somewhere between late night bliss out, and bumping slow motion dance floor destruction.
The tracks are all distinctly dub, but in all sorts of shapes and forms, from Ramadanman's swirling dizzy shuffle, with strange little sonic flares and vocal snippets over a looped bassline and some modern electro shimmer, to the straight up soulful dub of Pinch's "Step 2 It" featuring the smooth soul croon of Rudey Lee, but like most of the tracks here, peppered with fucked up FX, thick undulating basslines, and all sorts of random sonic weirdness. The Cult Of The 13th Hour track sounds like a Kode9 outtake, super minimal, lots of record crackle over a looped Eastern Melody and an ominous spoken word vocal line, growling and muttering over a revved up Portishead rhythm track. Cotti's "Tamil Dub" sounds like a dubstep Muslimgauze, with buzzing sitars, and a killer throbbing bassline stutter, creepy animal calls, and slowed down vocal samples. Digital Mystikz contribute two tracks, the first some classic sounding dub, channeling the modern British sound of On-U Sound and the Dub Chemists, the second a more dubstep number, but with clanky kitchen sink percussion and horns, sounding like a slowed down Specials. Pinch offer up more dark and dangerous dubstep with their second track "Chamber", a super spare slab of low end sprawl, the drums a hiccupping stutter, the bass surfacing in big roiling waves, everything murky and mysterious, and ultra minimal. The disc closes out with Skream's "Sublemonal", another nod to the old school, with a super reverbed horn refrain over an ultra stripped down barebones dub workout, the snare reverbed into the ether, the bass smooth and shimmery.
The more we listen to this, the less distinctly 'dubstep' it sounds, and the more it just sounds like some freaky outer space dub record, which is in no way a bad thing, just a bit surprising. Because of the dearth of decent dubstep and grime in the US, we're always hankering for more, so whenever a 'dubstep' record pops up, we're pretty excited and order it right away, but lest we forget, long before this new fangled dubstep, we loved us our dub, BIG TIME. So when someone takes a dub record and adds all sorts of buzzing bass, gets it all space-y and tripped out, low slung and speaker melting, haunting and ominous, pulsing and throbbing, we're pretty much sold.
MPEG Stream: RAMADANMAN "Every Next Day"
MPEG Stream: CULT OF THE 13TH HOUR "Wickedness"
MPEG Stream: KING SOLY "Tamil Dub"

V/A Box of Dub 2: Dubstep and Future Dub (Soul Jazz) 3lp 25.00
Much like volume one, which we raved about a while back, this latest installment of Soul Jazz's Box Of Dub collection of dubstep and 'future dub' is as much a straight dub record as it is a dubstep record. Maybe even more so. Hence the 'future dub' descriptor in the title. Could well have called it modern dub or something similar. The dub element, while sometimes totally twisted into new shapes, is more often left relatively pure, a slab of classic old school dub, just slightly modernized, maybe with a bit of extra bass, or some haunting effects, but not much else. The power, as always, is in the BASS.
And just like the first volume, this is an absolute killer. All the tracks here, whether they be shuffling classic dub or super creepy skeletal dubstep, are dark and slithery, with huge thick basslines, skittery dubbed out percussion, vocal fragments, warbly loops, hypnotic rhythms, all hovering somewhere between late night bliss out, and bumping slow motion dance floor destruction.
The tracks are all distinctly dub, but in all sorts of shapes and forms, from Ramadanman's swirling dizzy shuffle, with strange little sonic flares and vocal snippets over a looped bassline and some modern electro shimmer, to the straight up soulful dub of Pinch's "Step 2 It" featuring the smooth soul croon of Rudey Lee, but like most of the tracks here, peppered with fucked up FX, thick undulating basslines, and all sorts of random sonic weirdness. The Cult Of The 13th Hour track sounds like a Kode9 outtake, super minimal, lots of record crackle over a looped Eastern Melody and an ominous spoken word vocal line, growling and muttering over a revved up Portishead rhythm track. Cotti's "Tamil Dub" sounds like a dubstep Muslimgauze, with buzzing sitars, and a killer throbbing bassline stutter, creepy animal calls, and slowed down vocal samples. Digital Mystikz contribute two tracks, the first some classic sounding dub, channeling the modern British sound of On-U Sound and the Dub Chemists, the second a more dubstep number, but with clanky kitchen sink percussion and horns, sounding like a slowed down Specials. Pinch offer up more dark and dangerous dubstep with their second track "Chamber", a super spare slab of low end sprawl, the drums a hiccupping stutter, the bass surfacing in big roiling waves, everything murky and mysterious, and ultra minimal. The disc closes out with Skream's "Sublemonal", another nod to the old school, with a super reverbed horn refrain over an ultra stripped down barebones dub workout, the snare reverbed into the ether, the bass smooth and shimmery.
The more we listen to this, the less distinctly 'dubstep' it sounds, and the more it just sounds like some freaky outer space dub record, which is in no way a bad thing, just a bit surprising. Because of the dearth of decent dubstep and grime in the US, we're always hankering for more, so whenever a 'dubstep' record pops up, we're pretty excited and order it right away, but lest we forget, long before this new fangled dubstep, we loved us our dub, BIG TIME. So when someone takes a dub record and adds all sorts of buzzing bass, gets it all space-y and tripped out, low slung and speaker melting, haunting and ominous, pulsing and throbbing, we're pretty much sold.
MPEG Stream: RAMADANMAN "Every Next Day"
MPEG Stream: CULT OF THE 13TH HOUR "Wickedness"
MPEG Stream: KING SOLY "Tamil Dub"

V/A Eccentric Soul: The Outskirts Of Deep City (Numero Group) cd 17.98
At this point the Numero Group's Eccentric Soul series is no longer any sort of secret. The world couldn't help but take notice of the amazing job the label has done at digging deep into uncharted and forgotten regional labels and scenes from the heyday of soul and funk. So now, we usually don't have to turn people on to the series but instead we're often asked -which- of the Eccentric Soul comps is our favorite. A very tough question as they have yet to release a dud. But there are two of the releases so far that are a step or two above the rest in their golden soul perfection. The collection from The Big Mack label out of Detroit and Florida's Deep City label, a collection that we still listen to all the time.
So we were quite excited when we found out that Numero was going to mine even further into the Deep City vaults with a follow up collection from the amazing Florida label. Apparently Numero Group got their hands on a box of lost Deep City master tapes so seven of those tracks are on here as well as killer tracks from some of the other Miami labels putting out sizzling soul 45's back in the day. Every song we've ever heard from Helene Smith fills us with chills of excitement and she has two more on this collection, alongside amazing songs from a young Betty Wright, Lynn Willliams, Clarence Reid, The Rollers, etc. Anyone who has been taken by the spell of Miami soul needs to get this immediately and in fact this could very well become our new favorite of all the amazing Eccentric Soul releases. So damn pleasing!
MPEG Stream: HELENE SMITH "Pot Can't Talk About The Kettle"
MPEG Stream: THE ROLLERS "Knockin' At The Wrong Door"
MPEG Stream: LYNN WILLIAMS "Don't Be Surprised"

V/A Pop Ambient 2008 (Kompakt) cd 15.98
It's that time again. As inevitable and as the first snowfall, the first day of spring, the end of summer, comes a brand new installment of blissy beatless electronica from Kompakt. Since 2000, Kompakt has been releasing collections of what they call Pop Ambient. Techno with the beats removed, leaving just billowy clouds of shimmery sound, the vestiges of beats that once were now only ghostly pulses, or distant soft swells. Dreamlike melodies, washed out loops, whirring electronic shuffles, bits of glitch smoothed into soft rounded textures, bits of guitar strum pulled apart, the notes drifting weightless amidst bleary eyed ambience. Not sure what else to say at this point. By now, almost everyone we know anxiously awaits the arrival of a new Pop Ambient comp. Immediately, a whole new world of late night drift, a dark swirling ocean of sound that is at once soothing and mysterious, glimmering and haunting.
This collection is no different. Most of the names are familiar by now: The Field, Markus Guentner, Andrew Thomas, Ulf Lohmann, DJ Koze, Klimek. The sounds are quite familiar as well. Gauzy, sun dappled, breathless and whispery, a sort of streamlined new age, meditative and mesmerizing, hypnotic and completely tranquil. Many techno tropes are still present, but here they are transformed into distinctly non techno shapes and arrangements. Most of the songs, are simple with only a single part. Slowly shifting and drifting and transforming. It's like Steve Reich or Terry Riley or Phillip Glass composing late night chill out techno.
Long stretches of blurred fragmented melodies. Synths and strings wheeze and warble, the beats that remain are nothing more than metronomic bits of hiss, heartbeat like pulses, wreathed in prismatic sparkles, clouds of record crackle, hazy streaks of smoothed out shimmer. It's like a whole sound based on that one part of 10CC's "I'm Not In Love", a washed out sprawl of droning chordal buzz, but stretched out into billowing transparent sonic sheets, laced with subtly soaring strings, tiny bits of glitch and fuzz, dramatic, dreamy, soporific and sweetly serene. But not without just a hint of melancholy. All the tracks are amazing, but a few stand out, Klimek's "The Ice Storm" a slab of seriously cinematic soundscaping, replete with warm washes of synths, and super dramatic Bernard Hermann strings, an occasionally surfacing bit of percussive skitter, all woven into a darkly personal mysterious drift. And of course The Field, who we love, offers up one of his best tracks ever, "Kappsta 2", with an immediately recognizable skipping hiccupping looped cd landscape, like a much more dramatic Oval, with synths and vocals and strings and fuzzy bass all chopped and blurred into a kaleidoscopic, and strangely rhythmic expanse of dizzying and diffused dreamdrone. As always absolutely breathtaking. And oh so highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: THE FIELD "Kappsta 2"
MPEG Stream: MARKUS GUENTNER "Oceans Day"
MPEG Stream: KLIMEK "The Ice Storm"

V/A Pop Ambient 2008 (Kompakt) lp 15.98
It's that time again. As inevitable and as the first snowfall, the first day of spring, the end of summer, comes a brand new installment of blissy beatless electronica from Kompakt. Since 2000, Kompakt has been releasing collections of what they call Pop Ambient. Techno with the beats removed, leaving just billowy clouds of shimmery sound, the vestiges of beats that once were now only ghostly pulses, or distant soft swells. Dreamlike melodies, washed out loops, whirring electronic shuffles, bits of glitch smoothed into soft rounded textures, bits of guitar strum pulled apart, the notes drifting weightless amidst bleary eyed ambience. Not sure what else to say at this point. By now, almost everyone we know anxiously awaits the arrival of a new Pop Ambient comp. Immediately, a whole new world of late night drift, a dark swirling ocean of sound that is at once soothing and mysterious, glimmering and haunting.
This collection is no different. Most of the names are familiar by now: The Field, Markus Guentner, Andrew Thomas, Ulf Lohmann, DJ Koze, Klimek. The sounds are quite familiar as well. Gauzy, sun dappled, breathless and whispery, a sort of streamlined new age, meditative and mesmerizing, hypnotic and completely tranquil. Many techno tropes are still present, but here they are transformed into distinctly non techno shapes and arrangements. Most of the songs, are simple with only a single part. Slowly shifting and drifting and transforming. It's like Steve Reich or Terry Riley or Phillip Glass composing late night chill out techno.
Long stretches of blurred fragmented melodies. Synths and strings wheeze and warble, the beats that remain are nothing more than metronomic bits of hiss, heartbeat like pulses, wreathed in prismatic sparkles, clouds of record crackle, hazy streaks of smoothed out shimmer. It's like a whole sound based on that one part of 10CC's "I'm Not In Love", a washed out sprawl of droning chordal buzz, but stretched out into billowing transparent sonic sheets, laced with subtly soaring strings, tiny bits of glitch and fuzz, dramatic, dreamy, soporific and sweetly serene. But not without just a hint of melancholy. All the tracks are amazing, but a few stand out, Klimek's "The Ice Storm" a slab of seriously cinematic soundscaping, replete with warm washes of synths, and super dramatic Bernard Hermann strings, an occasionally surfacing bit of percussive skitter, all woven into a darkly personal mysterious drift. And of course The Field, who we love, offers up one of his best tracks ever, "Kappsta 2", with an immediately recognizable skipping hiccupping looped cd landscape, like a much more dramatic Oval, with synths and vocals and strings and fuzzy bass all chopped and blurred into a kaleidoscopic, and strangely rhythmic expanse of dizzying and diffused dreamdrone. As always absolutely breathtaking. And oh so highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: THE FIELD "Kappsta 2"
MPEG Stream: MARKUS GUENTNER "Oceans Day"
MPEG Stream: KLIMEK "The Ice Storm"

V/A (DAFT PUNK) Discovered: A Collection Of Daft Punk Samples (Rapster) cd 14.98
It's no secret that many of us here at AQ are huge fans of Daft Punk. In fact Matt, Irwin and Antaeus all went to their concert in Berkeley this summer and still light up when talking about what an amazing night it was. The fact is Daft Punk have perfected their unique strain of dance music, executed in a way that almost anyone can get into, without losing any of the electricity and spirit that makes their sound so special. So it's always been obvious to us how fun it would be to be able to go through their gigantic record collection. This compilation features tracks that they have sampled on their three albums, so it's no surprise that it's filled with all sorts of rare funk, soul and disco gems.
While this works a just a killer comp, it's especially fun if you're a Daft Punk fan as we've gotten so much pleasure hearing such unmistakably Daft Punk moments in their original incarnations. We also think it's so cool that they made sure to give full props to their source material and the wealth of vintage dance music that they have borrowed so heavily from. Dance gems from folks we know and love like Karen Young, Cerrone and Sister Sledge to more obscure burners from the likes of Little Anthony & The Imperials, Edwin Birdsong and Breakwater this is a collection that's been making us dance and smile so wide.
MPEG Stream: EDWIN BIRDSONG "Cola Bottle Baby"
MPEG Stream: KAREN YOUNG "Hot Shot"
MPEG Stream: LITTLE ANTHONY & THE IMPERIALS "Can You Imagine"

V/A (MAN IS THE BASTARD NOISE / AMPS FOR CHRIST / BN/K2 / THE HIEROPHANT / UNICORN / ANTENNACLE / SLEESTAK) No Skull Left Unturned (200mg) 3cd / 4 booklets / stickers / patch / bookmark / button 41.00
We often lament the fact that many of our favorite bands predate the list. Bands we love and obsessed on, but whose records, and often entire careers, came well before we began our bi-weekly chronicling of musics weird and heavy, dense and brutal, lovely and catchy. Slint's Spiderland has a one line review ferchrissakes!!!
And then there's Man Is The Bastard. The supreme rulers of West Coast Power Violence. A throbbing, churning, dual bass-ed behemoth. A crushing low end onslaught, double basses, crushing drums, howled vocals, swirls of caveman electronics, amazing graphic design (that ubiquitous MITB skull!), political lyrics, challenging subject matter, intense artwork, they were the ultimate D.I.Y. punk rock dirge metal outfit. If you don't own any MITB records, stop right now, and make it happen, any one into heavy, thoughtful brutality, or into experimental and extreme outsider punk rock, needs to own every bit of Bastard they can get their hands on. It's hard to imagine a punk rock band who hasn't been influenced by MITB. In fact the crustcore back pack crowd that you most often equate with legendary epic metal lords Neurosis, you'll find are almost ALL sporting the MITB skull somewhere on their persons, back patch, button, tattoo, it's probably more ubiquitous in this generation than the Black Flag bars or the Einsturzende Neubauten figure. And for good reason. MITB were not only heavy, they were fucking weird, not metal, not punk rock, not noise, but all of those things. And not only did MITB leave an amazing musical legacy, the various members all continued on, taking various bits and pieces, vestiges of what once was Man Is The Bastard, and incorporating them into a whole new world of noise and sound.
Thus we have No Skull Left Unturned. A triple cd collection of mostly new recordings from all the various Man Is The Bastard offshoots (only the Sleestak tracks are previously released). An eclectic bunch for sure. From drone to noise, to ambient to post rock and every possible hybrid in between. Some groups we already know and love, some we're only just discovering, others we're re-discovering and digging all over again. Even if you're new to the world of Man Is The Bastard, this is a killer comp, that will definitely appeal to folks into noise, drone, punk rock, metal, but for MITB fans, this is the motherlode! About the coolest thing short of a reunion or a brand new MITB record.
Before we talk about the bands, let's discuss the packaging. HOLY SHIT. We've seen amazing packaging, but this is so deluxe, and so gorgeously and meticulously hand assembled, true to the D.I.Y spirit for sure, but so over the top. It would be worth it for the packaging alone. Let's start from the outside and work our way inwards.
An oversized grey envelope, sealed with a metallic silver wax seal, bearing the imprint of the MITB skull, affixed to one side of the envelope is a library card pocket, inside, a card with the names of each band typewritten. Flip it over, the MITB skull is printed in black metallic ink, and a clear transparency is affixed over the top. Inside, there are FOUR zines, each with a hand printed silkscreened hard cardstock cover, printed in oranges and blacks. Inside the first, Sounds, are the three cds, a track listing, liner notes, photos and track info for each band on the comp, in the back are two pages of stickers, one with stickers for the comp and all the various bands, one a whole page of MITB skull stickers, along side the cds, are an embroidered patch and a pin, both bearing the same skull image. The set is numbered on the inside of the cover. Limited of course. The second zine, also housed in a silkscreened card stock cover, Discography, is just that, a complete discography of Man Is The Bastard and MITB related bands, including tons of reviews from various zines and magazines, as well as a full color poster featuring the covers of every single MITB and related release. Zine number three, Interviews, is ultra thick, packed with tons of interviews with all the various members of MITB, discussing everything from music to politics, touring, art, reviews, Japanese fans, drugs and loads more. Also included in this zine is a hand screened MITB bookmark, no doubt to use as you work your way through all of this text. And finally, zine 4, Images, is even thicker than the Interviews zine, with tons of images, photos, posters, interviews as well as most, if not all the liner notes and inserts from all the various MITB releases. All 4 zines tied together with a piece of twine and sealed in that envelope.
Phew! And we haven't even gotten to the music yet. Which is just as intense and impressive as the packaging:
Let's start with Amps for Christ who are probably the most well known of the bunch, at least around here. Henry Barnes was the noisemaker for Man Is The Bastard, with his homemade amps (Amps For Christ!), lo-fi duct-tape electronics, screwdrivers and bastardized circuit boards, he added a weird caveman lo-tech sheen to MITB's churning bass heavy power violence, but post-Bastard, Barnes took his Amps and created a strange world of jangle gypsy folk, lilting strum and soaring joyful bagpipe like buzz. A glorious field of fuzzy sonic flowers and sparkling sunshine, all woven into bouncy jigs, doleful drones, simple strum and dreamy childlike melodies, but peppered with strange spoken word, machinelike robotic, murky loping krautrock, and raga like buzz. The tracks here run the gamut, featuring the usual Amps guests contributing dreamlike female vocals, keening violas, and extra strum and pluck, all woven into a constantly confusional world of bent circuits, blown out guitar buzz, summery afternoon folk flutter, and ominous dirgey strums.
Then there's Unicorn, who have been a big favorite around these parts, with their washed out minimal ambience, dark drones and atmospheric drift. The Unicorn tracks here are much more varied, the first a strange electro soundscape of crunchy beats and distorted vocals, feedback squiggles and damaged synths, the second more of the Unicorn we're used to, barely there drift and shimmer, a faraway pulse, then the third a murky midnight forest jam, recorded from beneath the earth, everything muffled and muddy, smeared rhythms, and mysterious insect sounds, like No Neck doing Chain Reaction.
Probably the most prolific and most direct of the MITB offshoots is Bastard Noise, whose output has been nearly impossible to keep up with, and who embraced the noise side of Man Is The Bastard (hence the new monicker) ditching most of the bass and rhythm in favor of a much more static and generally harsh sound. That said, their blend of caveman electronics and black ambience is quite compelling, from huge ambient sprawls of softly shifting black whir, to freaked out walls of pure fierce sound, a thick swirl of soft white noise and manufactured alien soundscapes, harsh and brutal, noisy and intense, but also weirdly inviting and impossibly listenable.
Bastard Noise teamed up with Japanese junk-noise unit K2, for long stretches of chaotic, kitchen sink, electronic noise freakouts: malfunctioning electronics, damaged amplifiers, squalls of loops and stuttering glitch and buzz and grinding crunch.
Antennacle are a new name to us, not sure which Bastard is involved, but they contribution to this collection is one epic 20+ minute soundscape, ominous expanses of insectlike buzz, spare percussive rattle, low end hum, blessed out shimmer, brief stretches of glimmering outer space FX, chunks of feedback, occasionally assembled into strange alien rhythms, a constantly shifting soundworld dipping into territories as far reaching as Dead C murk, Keening Sunroof!-like ur-drone, No Neck style folky clatter and Wolf Eyes-ian electronic landscapes.
Hierophant is another new name to us in the field of post Bastard offshoots, this one another American / Japanese team up, all electronics and field recordings, woven into a jagged field of low end thrum and hissing high end buzz, abstract percussion, and clouds of Merzbowian rrroooar, swirls of spaced out FX, a discordant din, the sound of a noise rock band crashing headfirst into a junkyard gamelan. Long stretches of what sound like field recordings of some alien swamp, all indescribably chirps and croaks, suspended in a muddy viscous black bog, over which thick sheets of coruscating high end feedback drift like storm clouds.
But probably the most exciting stuff here are three previously released tracks from Man Is The Bastard noiserock side project Sleestak. It exciting to hear what a more mellow MITB might have sounded like, an ominous low slung brutality, bass heavy dirges, moody malevolence, more a sort of beautiful brutal post rock. A loping bass line wanders through a field of hiss and hum and buzz, spacious and spare, almost like a meaner more malevolent Low or Bohren. Slowcore peppered with bursts of twisted noise freakouts, and distant bits of shortwave squiggle, a very Slint-like vibe, with the guitar locking into super hypnotic loops, over lurching downtuned bass, drifting detuned melodic fragments, if someone didn't know better, they could definitely mistake this stuff for some super obscure Touch And Go or AmRep noiserock band. Killer stuff. Previously released, but we'd never heard these tracks before, and will absolutely be hunting down everything we can find. In fact, this whole comp will have most of you digging for discs by all these bands. And our waning love of Bastard Noise has most definitely blossomed again after digging into these tracks. Absolutely and totally recommended. And of course the best part of a comp like this is that it got us all excited about Man Is The Bastard again, and that shit sounds as good as ever.
Man Is The Bastard! Crossed Out! Infest! Spazz! No Comment! Capitalist Casualties! All hail WEST COAST POWERVIOLENCE!! And the glorious sounds borne from their legacy...
MPEG Stream: SLEESTAK "Atomic Clock"
MPEG Stream: SLEESTAK "Dumb Luck"
MPEG Stream: UNICORN "Treebeard"
MPEG Stream: HIEROPHANT "A Shadow Behind Your Shadow"
MPEG Stream: AMPS FOR CHRIST "Cock Of The North"
MPEG Stream: ANTENNACLE "We Will Remain"

WHITE HILLS Heads On Fire (Rocket Recordings) cd 14.98
After a whole mess of crazy limited cd-r releases, this is only the 2nd proper, actual cd release from these East Coast blown out garage psych space rockers. Avid readers of the list will no doubt by now, be hip to these guys, their wall of guitar, Hawkwind meets the Stooges meets Monster Magnet meets the Heads is tough to beat, every song drenched in wild outer space FX, the drums pounding beneath an avalanche of psychedelic guitar, the vocals, shadows flitting across the molten surface of these tracks, barely audible just another layer of dense fuzz.
So how does this record stack up to the rest? We mentioned that the last release, the tour only Abstractions And Mutations, was the band's fiercest yet, but Heads On Fire might have us reassessing. Cuz this has to be exactly what it would sound like if your head was indeed on fire.
The opener is a heavy as fuck space rock romp, right out of the gate, a wall of buzzing wah wah guitar is loosed, and all you can do is hang on for the ride, it's like Spacemen 3 on speed, that same sort of billowy tripped out warm guitar buzz, but souped WAY up, supercharged, a blinding supernova of freaked out garage rock psychedelia. But the track right after that is way riffier, a serious Stooges-y stomp, plenty of guitar crunch and psychedelic squalls, but the vocals are more present, a sort of Wyndorf style lord mother fucker drawl, wrapped in reverb and draped over the jagged riffing and pounding drums.
Then there's "Don't Be Afraid", which begins with whipping wind and distant foghorns, ominous and mysterious, a phone being dialed, ringing and ringing, the band gradually coming in, a slow lope, simple tribal drums, a laid back guitar line, soft fuzzy swells of sound in the background, a lugubrious slow build, the vocals howled and spacey, reverbed and dripping with delay, the guitar getting gradually more and more jagged and distorted, until everything drops out, just wind, and muted electronics, muffled FX, the bass line creeping along steadily, bits of melody drifting by, the vocals come back in and BAM the band takes off, the guitar spitting flames, the drums falling down a mineshaft, a huge tangle of psychedelic space rock chaos, and then nothing, a weird, barely there, 5 minute outro, bits of guitar, creaking and buzzing, more wind, and finally silence.
And in case that last 30 minutes, and those last 5 in particular, had you forgetting just where you were, the band shuts things down with 4+ minutes of furious fuzz and pummeling pound, thick and corrosive, and so distorted the riffs seem to melt into each other, the vocals sung from the bottom of a well, a bit of start stop dynamics, replete with creepy giggling children, and then the perfect send off, a sky full of psychedelic fireworks, multicolored streaks of white hot guitar, a blinding ear full of sonic pyrotechnics like staring straight into the sun.
MPEG Stream: "Radiate"
MPEG Stream: "Ocean Sound"

WILDILDLIFE Six (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
We dug the first ep from SF transplants Wildlife, who just so happened to feature our very own Matt in mailorder on guitar and vocals. A blown out tripped out heavy as fuck space rock psychedelic freakout of the highest order. Since then, not only have the band changed their name, to the much weirder and somehow more appropriate Wildildlife but also honed their sound into something somehow more blown out, more tripped out, heavier, weirder, but more importantly, WAY catchier. Hooks and melodies that most bands would kill for, but Wildildlife play it like it's no big thing, burying that stuff under avalanches of processed guitars, throbbing howling bass pedals, metallic Iron Maiden like riffing, insane chaotic drumming, and a fierce white hot wall of sound.
We were pretty much sold from the first track. Beginning with some simple Adam Ant drumming, tribal and pounding, before the glistening reverbed Big Country guitars come in, all swathed in delay and drifting over the tangled rhythmic chaos below. The guitars build into a serious chordal frenzy, and then a strange haunting, and very eighties sounding hook, and that's when the vocals come in. Distorted but melodic, a dangerously catchy hook, that somehow reminds us of Gaye Bykers On Acid. Druggy and tripped out, with a cool guitar/vocal "laŠ lalalalalaaaaaaa" refrain that sticks in your head FOREVER. Wildildlife are usually described as Butthole Surfers meets Black Sabbath, which while flattering, and maybe to a certain extent accurate, hardly do justice to Wildildlife's cracked pop flecked noise rock heaviness.
Yeah, they're heavy, but there's no massive doom riffing or downtuned metallic pummel, and they are definitely trippy, but not in the same way as the Buttholes.
Take the second track, beginning with a wicked tangle of distorted guitar, when the drums kick in, and the band locks into an angular almost new wave melody, and those vocals return, sort of raspy and crooned, echoed by either a high wavery guitar or a falsetto vocal, and they repeat, mantra like, mesmerizing and hypnotic, relentless and seriously tripped out. The drums a constant rhythmic lock beneath the strange poppiness of the vocals and the guitar, before the whole thing splinters into a Hawkwind free rock noise jam, all super effected vocals, total drum mayhem, and thick washes of crumbling guitars and throbbing buzzing bass, eventually petering out into a gorgeous metallic slowcore dirge, everything still wrapped in thick layers of reverb and delay, a gorgeous mournful doomic sonic deathmarch. While some may hear the Buttholes, we're hearing stuff like the God Bullies, the Cows, Lubricated Goat for sure and still plenty of Gaye Bykers, although all even more souped up and super charged.
The two halves of the record are separated by the longest track, the 18+ minute "Magic Jordan", which begins as a washed out post rock dirge, all shimmery strummed guitars, echoey Jim Morrison vocals, and a simple stripped down rhythm, Eventually, the band erupts into a massive roiling bout of slow heaviness, that sounds like a way more psychedelic Harvey Milk, with killer angular riffs surfacing amidst the endless black sonic swirl, eventually giving way to 10 minutes of tripped out free folkiness, all warped backwards guitars, abstract percussion, fluttering melodies, haunting disembodied vocals, all sorts of random creaks and chimes and whir and hiss. Which is quickly followed by what is easily the catchiest track on the record. The relatively brief seven minute long "Feed", with its abstract delayed guitar harmonic feedback intro, giving way to probably the most Buttholes sounding bit on the record, a tense and intense bit of furious drumming, and throbbing bass beneath little flurries of metallic guitar leads, doused in FX and sent swirling over the abyss, while the vocals croon from WAY down in the mix, finishing off with a cool thick chunk of melancholy riffage, massive low end throbs playing out a gorgeous melody beneath the squiggly guitar chaos above.
The disc finishes off with a massive sonic one two punch, two fourteen minute tracks, the first, a super abstract slow motion noise doom lurch, with anguished vocals, sung from the bottom of a well, the guitars and drums offering up jagged little stabs, before locking into a relentless Swans like crush, nearly suffocating the vocals, until the band again lock into an impossible blissed out drone, where the guitar and bass mesh into a nearly M83 sounding wash of fuzzed out psychdrone, before reverting to full on glacial plod until the end.
While the final track, begins with a thick bit of bassy buzz, weaving a hard to define slow motion melody, the buzzing rich and thick and rife with overtones, metallic, electric and lush all at once, eventually joined by a downtuned guitar mirroring that same slow motion melody, eventually joined by dramatic almost gothic vocals, the drums dropping in like brass knuckled fists to the sternum, the band again almost slipping into some intense Swans like doom, before the riffing slips away leaving nearly six minutes of soaring guitar noise, and cymbal sizzle, eventually building to a super dramatic major key coda, all soaring chords and falsetto crooning, like some sort of alien metallic "Star Spangled Banner" (again reminding us a bit of Harvey Milk), before drifting off into a meandering morning after guitar bass post rock fade out.
Way recommended. Noisy and heavy and poppy and psychedelic and fucked up and catchy in a way few bands can pull of. And the one time we caught them live, we were hanging in a hammock, above the stage, IN A BUS, getting rammed repeatedly by the headstock of the guitar as the two axemen dueled wildly in the outrageous confines of the space below. Barring that sort of intimate and surprisingly painful interaction with Wildildlife, this record will definitely serve as an ideal introduction to their damaged and druggy fucked up metallic noise rock space pop, at least until you too can be battered and bruised by these guys in the flesh!
Recorded by Aaron from Mammatus, released on the always awesome Crucial Blast, and in some seriously amazing packaging, a super fancy mini gatefold sleeve, thick and full color, with an intense bejeweled turquoise skull on the cover, a fucked up masked dirt faced hatchet flag duel photo inside, as well as a full color booklet with liner notes and a bunch more freaky blurry creepy masked wild(ild)life photos...
MPEG Stream: "Things Will Grow"
MPEG Stream: "Tungsten Steel / Epilogue"
MPEG Stream: "Magic Jordan"

WOLFSKULL Black Uhura (200mg) cd-r 9.98
It's been nearly a year since we've heard from this mysterious black sonic beast from New Zealand, a shadowy entity that may or may not be a dirgedronedoom shadow cast by the very dark side of one PseudoArcana head honcho Antony Milton.
Black Uhura is four looooooooong tracks of gorgeous viscous murk. The opening track is a dreamy drift, if you dream of being dragged through thick tarpits in the very depths of the underworld. Riffs held over a flame and melted down into shimmering black puddles of sound, rippling gently, beneath, vocals mumble and warble, buried under a crushing slab of slow sinister sprawl, like some unholy collision between SUNNO))) and the Dead C, but with the bass cranked and the treble turned all the way down.
The second track is way more caustic, a blown out riffage rendered in violent squalls and smeared sheets of crumbling buzz and low end rumble. Prickly and chaotic and dirgey, almost more Merzbow noise, than any sort of dirgey drone, but closer listening reveals some buried riffage, some moaning walls of feedback, some corrosive metallic song structure, but sounding as if it were left outside to rust and decay and slowly crash to the ground.
The third track returns to the relative tranquility of the first, with the song elements even more noticeable, a barely there voice, a sing songy melody, some sort of desiccated melody, all washed out and indistinct, beneath the slow flowing river of molten hum and lo fi shimmer. Then the final track crashes back down, but not before slowly building up from a tolling church bell, a stuttering disembodied riff, thickening guitar growl, coruscating peals of feedback and machine like grinding buzz, all slowly sinking into a roiling black abyss, eventually morphing into a super hypnotic processed low end slither, and a surprising drum machine'd smoky coda...
Packaged in a super swank oversized dvd sized booklet, offset printed. The cover black on thick brown cardstock, the inside 8 pages of hellish black and white sketches, liner notes, the cd affixed to the back cover, and a 200mg sticker. Limited of course...
MPEG Stream: "Methuselah"
MPEG Stream: "Black Uhura"

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60 WATT KID s/t (Absolutely Kosher) cd 12.98
60 Watt Kid arm themselves with some krautrock and psychedelic inspirations among other things, and put them through the rough'n'tumble settings of indie rock. Heaps of effected guitars, oozy keyboards, loosely drummed rhythms, processed samples, and distorted hoot'n'holler vocals. Very trippily mix'n'match, and very much along the oddly angled slant of bands such as Oneida and Liars. Mid-album album they go through a brief personality change, coming back down to earth as they drift off on a wistful folksy number "North American Road". Later still, they morph into Sea And Cake-ish post-rockers for a spell. They strike us as a very antsy, but they always find their way back to their strange space-psych stew.
MPEG Stream: "Everyday There's Something Special (Hold On I Gotta Take This Call)"
MPEG Stream: "North American Road"

BELLA No One Will Know (Mint) cd 16.98
Bella lead the charge of Vancouver's next generation of new new new wavers! Surprising how a trio of such dour faced kids can whip up such peppy synth pop. No doubt there reside a few Blondie, New Order, and Kim Wilde records (ahem, cds?!) in their music collections? We're not complaining though 'cause while these gals and guy are not winning any originality awards, they are winning our hearts with their youthful exuberance and infectious hooks. No One Will Know was recorded with the very complimentary help of John Collins of New Pornographers as well as Roddy Bottum and Will Schwartz of their genre elders Imperial Teen. In fact, many tunes here could easily be mistaken for those of a younger I.T. Super breezy and catchy, and oh so teen movie soundtrack ready!
MPEG Stream: "Give It A Night"
MPEG Stream: "No One Will Know"

BURIAL Untrue (Cargo) lp 21.00
Finally, this unanimous AQ fave is available on vinyl!
Record of the year, 2007. As far as some of us are concerned, there's no question. Burial's first album was an eponymous release on Kode 9's Hyperdub imprint and really came out of nowhere. Here was this amalgamation of British dance tropes (e.g. dubstep, 2-step garage, darkcore drum & bass, etc.) into a magnificent exercise in mood engineering. Even though an urban malaise echoes through the whollop bass-bin rattle of most dubstep, that first Burial record mined a melancholy whose dramatic power has never been heard in dubstep, and rarely matched even by such downbeat experts as Massive Attack, Boards of Canada, Slowdive, or even Joy Division.
So with his second album Untrue, the aesthetic framework for Burial remains intact; yet the anonymous figure behind Burial has admitted that he was seeking a "downcast euphoria." You know what, he fucking nailed it. All of the sounds retain the first album's urban dourness reverberating through each electron and washed drone. The hovering basslines which once stalked the darkest of jungle's rhythms are ghostly presences flickering around Burial's atypical drum programming, which by his own admission is done by hand without the aid of a sequencer. The clipped, 2-step breakbeats always appear as the cocking of a gun; but it doesn't seem like Burial is taking aim at his audience. Rather, it's metaphor for the cold, inhumane existence in the grimy parts of London, where violence is just another thing to shrug at and move beyond. All of these sounds are clearly present in Burial's debut album, but the "euphoric" part of Untrue's intention is found in Burial's use of voice. Taking a cappella tunes sung by his friends (sometimes, left as a voice mail on his cellphone), Burial has crafted an eerie cast of disembodied vocals, twisted into cybernetic R&B croons, all clipped and compressed in the same manner as his pistol-whipped snare cracks. It's as if the human voice alone can transcend the dire circumstances of our earthly confines, even when the songs reflected broken dreams and a dwindling hope. Burial seeks out the fleeting moments of beauty and raw emotion, codifying it through his impeccable craft on this very impressive and soon to be iconic recording. If you're not hearing it from us, you'll hear from somebody else: Burial's Untrue is the best record of 2007.
MPEG Stream: "Archangel"
MPEG Stream: "Ghost Hardware"
MPEG Stream: "Untrue"

CLOUDLAND CANYON / LICHENS Exterminating Angel (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
This is a match that makes perfect sense. As Lichens and Cloudland Canyon have both been making some of the most compelling and rewarding crystalline soundscapes of the last few years. One long track clocking in at around a half hour "Exterminating Angel" does sound like the sum of both of these artists' parts. With the first half sounding much more like Lichens, gorgeous deep in space hazy explorations while the krautier leanings of Cloudland Canyon come into focus in the second half of the track propelling the sounds into their kosmiche orbit. Fans of mid-late '70s Tangerine Dream and early Heldon will for sure want to jump aboard this cosmic adventure.
MPEG Stream: "Babylon"

DANAVA Where Beauty & Terror Dance (Kemado) 7" 3.98
Yay, two new songs from Portland's finest melodic heavy psych rockers Danava, a band whose ripping '70s style metallic power trio action is augmented by a dusting of trippy space rock synthesizer soundz from fourth member Rockwell... Just saw 'em recently opening for Witchcraft, one of the only bands around that's capable of giving us as much of a rock n' roll thrill as these guys.
On this seven inch (which includes a coupon enabling a free download of mp3 versions of these tracks) you get the title cut "Where Beauty & Terror Dance", and on the flip, their cover of "Jericho" by fuzzblasted English psychedelic proto-metallers Stray, originally from that band's 1971 album Suicide. All right!

DILETTANTES, THE 101 Tambourines (Strange Touch) cd 13.98
This new(ish) SF quintet have some recognizable faces from the Bay Area music scene onboard. We suspect there might not be over a hundred tambourines on this album, but front man the mutton-chopped Joel Gion (formerly of Brian Jonestown Massacre) gives the one he's got a thorough workout here nonetheless. His band The Dilletantes blend the key sounds of all the '70s rock kingpins. Y'know, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, MC5! The tambourine and maraca peppered results are the kind of loose bluesy rawk'n'roll that never goes out of style!
MPEG Stream: "Ready To Go"
MPEG Stream: "Like Crazy"

DRAKE, NICK Family Tree (Sunbeam) 2lp 34.00
Now available on vinyl!
In hopefully what will be the last attempt to squeeze blood from the Nick Drake stone, we get this 2lp of 28 early home recordings that showcase the raw beginning of Drake's brilliant songcraft and the previously unacknowledged influence Drake's family, particularly his mother and sister, had on his musical upbringing. It's a pretty interesting (but not entirely essential) collection of lo-fi recordings some of which were sketches for songs that would appear later on Pink Moon and Five Leaves Left, and there are one or two tracks that were originally released on the Time of No Reply anthology. The highlights include a duet with sister Gabrielle called "All My Trials" that we wish there was more of, and "They're Leaving Me Behind" which sounds like an early version of "Parasite" from Pink Moon with different lyrics. Occasional classical pieces by The Family Trio and a couple of old songs sung by his mother Molly are nice but act as little more than interludes rather than the indelible familial influences the compilers claim them to be. Like the pitfalls that befell the Nick Drake documentary, A Skin Too Few, the slimness of Drake's output and life is stretched so thin in order to supposedly reveal the minutest new insights into a mysterious figure, that we forget that the enigmatic mystery is the reason his work is so compelling in the first place. Revealing every tiny sketch of an artist's process and claiming them important only gives fodder to the backlash campaign that has started ever since "Pink Moon" was featured in a VW ad. Which is unfortunate for an artist who has never had any say or control over his own legacy, save for three brilliant records, which should be plenty enough for anyone.
MPEG Stream: "They're Leaving Me Behind"
MPEG Stream: "All My Trials"
MPEG Stream: "Tomorrow Is A Long Time"

DRAKE, NICK Fruit Tree (Universal Island) 3cd+dvd 60.00
This all time beloved AQ tresure, out of print for ages, finally gets reissued, in time to give as a gift, to ANYONE you know who might not have this, because everyone should own these records. Some of the most breathtakingly lovely folk music EVER. Now with new artwork, and with the addition of the recent Nick Drake documentary A Skin Too Few. To make room for the dvd, they bumped the odds and sods collection Time Of No Reply, but is not such a loss, as much of that stuff has surfaced in one form or another in the recent spate of collections gathering up anything and everything Drake ever recorded.
But here, in addition ot the movie, you get everything you need, all three classic albums: Pink Moon, Bryter Layter and Five Leaves Left. Breatless, intimate, heartfelt, tragic, lovely, dreamy, wistful, heart breaking, personal, intense and mysterious folk music that sounds as otherworldly as it does timeless.
In a super nice box, with a new 100 page book. Absolutely essential.

DUNCAN, JOHN / KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLFF Untitled (Die Stadt) cd 22.00
Three excellent pieces from three excellent sound artists that Die Stadt lumped onto one CD, with no real thematic connection to speak of. John Duncan's piece is a recording of the jawdropping live set he did at The Compound here in San Francisco in 2006. The hissing shortwave and noxious datastreams which have been signature source materials for Duncan continue here, with Duncan displaying a considerable amount of restraint in the slippery juxtaposition of softened white noise, periodic accelerations and crescendos, and subharmonic rumblings. This climaxes with a tempestuous 8 second blast of hurricane-shock noise. Kontakt Der Junglinge (aka Thomas Koner & Asmus Tietchens) also present a live piece, but then again haven't all of their recordings been live presentations? This one from the Mutek Festival in 2003 is an isolationist gem of shadowy ambience and deep deep drones (the Koner half of the equation) with electronically treated recordings of clanking machines (the Tietchens half of the equation). Hausswolff seems to have revisited the source material from his There Are No Crows Flying Around The Hancock Building installation / cd document, with a loop of an electronically treated screeching birds (not a crow, mind you... there's a red-tail hawk and the chirp of what could just be a blackbird), monotonously sitting on top of gradient build of amassed gray noise.
MPEG Stream: JOHN DUNCAN "Live At The Compound"
MPEG Stream: KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE "Montreal Solution 1"
MPEG Stream: CM VON HAUSSWOLFF "Circulating Over Square Waters (Framed Nature)"

EVAPORATORS, THE Gassy Jack And Other Tales (Nardwuar / Mint) cd 16.98
Nardwuar the Human Serviette whomps us with a double whammy this fine December day! Not only do we have his new double dvd Welcome To My Castle! (the prequel to last year's Doot Doola Doot Doo... Doot Doo! 2dvd), but also his band's new album! Over the years, Thee Evaporators have become quite the well-oiled garage rawk hotrod featuring members of venerable Vancouver bands The New Pornographers, The Smugglers, and Slow.
They're at the top of their game here. Guitarist David Carswell's riffage is particularly tasty. Those that know and love Nardwuar are well familiar with his often atonal off-key squawking style of singing. This time around he's almost tuneful! Much like the probing questions he asks his interview subjects, Nardwuar's lyrics have a habit of being hilarious, educational and topical -- often all at the same time! On these fourteen songs he sings about a butterknife, social housing for the needy, a dance move called the 'eggbeater', Sasquatch, and bacon among other things. Need we say, super fun and super silly! The cd ends with an ancient interview clip with Courtney Love which sorta harshed out our good times. In closing, we wish to add that we don't want to keep on belabor the point, but we have to ask once again, what is it with Canadians and unfortunate nicknames (and bandnames)?! Apparently it's not just a recent phenomenon either. There was a historic Vancouver figure called Gassy Jack! Yikes!
MPEG Stream: "Gassy Jack"
MPEG Stream: "You Got Me Into This, Now You Get Me Out!"

FOETUS (SCRAPING FOETUS OFF THE WHEEL) Nail (Some Bizzare) cd 22.00
Finally reissued on cd! Nail is Foetus' fourth album which was originally released in 1985. Whoa, that's twenty two years ago! So damn criminally underrated and unjustly lumped in with the less stellar, more single-minded 'industrial' artists on the Wax Trax label, the time is right to set the record straight...
Like an orchestral clash of Birthday Party, Swans and Einsturzende Neubauten set in a tawdry cabaret deep in the seediest underbelly of the darkest noir flick imaginable? Close, but better! A one-man symphony, wrecking crew, and/or runaway train, Foetus' music is truly fierce, mean, nihilistic and... absolutely brilliant, black humored and beautiful! Some might say that he works in similarly multi-genre meltdowns, enormous scopes and sprawling ranges as Mr. Bungle or Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and they'd certainly be correct, but Foetus was doing it all by his lonesome years before those groups. Furthermore, he was an influential wizard behind the scenes too, co-producing early Coil albums, and collaborating with other (in)famous aural beacons Nurse With Wound, Sonic Youth, Marc Almond, The The, Nick Cave, and Lydia Lunch to name just a few. (Re)visit this wonder... a seething, scathing, festering and perversely enticing musical menace. Highly recommended.
Note: Yes, this is a bit of a pricey import, but we haven't heard any word about a domestic reissue.
MPEG Stream: "The Throne Of Agony"
MPEG Stream: "Descent Into The Inferno"
MPEG Stream: "Enter The Exterminator"

FORDE, MARIA Read This To Get Your Enjoys magazine 4.00
You may remember us pimping our pal Maria Forde's artshow a list or two back, featuring sketches of veggies and things. And if you live in the neighborhood, you for sure have seen her bad ass drawings and paintings of various classic movie stars and starlets, as well as some wicked zombie drawings, which have found their way onto shirts and buttons. We're even discussing having here do a series of AQ employees and AQ favorite records!! She also even painted a portrait of our very own Andee which you can see on the very out of date staff page on the AQ website.
We've had random bits of here art here in the store over the years, she's still quite partial to the zine, and heres are always amazing, super detailed, ultra personal, intimate and funny, fun to read and packed with awesome drawings and weird shapes and ideas.
Read This To Get Your Enjoys is the latest from Forde and her merry band of like minded collaborators, various writers and artists. Packed with stories, and drawings, comics, photos, with gorgeous colored pencil full color front and back, inside and out covers, the front even has a little pocket with a stick of gum for you to chew on while you curl up and dig in. The back cover has a little pocket too, that one has a little tiny mini zine in there, to check out once you've worked your way through. We'd tell you more, but you should just buy it, and discover all the special hidden things inside for yourself. Limited to only 50 copies, each signed and hand numbered, and a total STEAL at only four bucks...

FORGOTTEN PATH Issue 1 2007 magazine 9.98
Sure there are plenty of metal magazines, Terrorizer, Decibel, Metal Maniacs, etc. But there are very few that focus on the true grim kvlt underground. Oaken Throne obviously, and now Forgotten Path, from Lithuania, which has both of its cloven hooves planted firmly South of Heaven.
In this first issue, there are interviews with AQ faves Woodtemple, Finnish legends Horna, the slightly more mainstream Agalloch, as well as way more obscure groups like: Absonus Noctis, Imperium Dekadenz, Nae' Bliss, Mordhell Stutthof, Nocturnal Depression, as well as a bunch of bands we had never heard of including Forest Of Fog, Andaja, Aaskereia, Godless Cruelty, Nebular Mystic.
In addition to all that, tons of demo reviews, album reviews, loads of killer photos, the whole thing nicely laid out, on thick glossy paper, slightly oversized we've had issue one for a while now, and we're still working our way through it. And as with all magazines like this, you know they're on to something, when we already have a list of new bands and records to track down. Can't wait for issue two!

GREAT AUNT IDA How They Fly (Northern Electric) cd 13.98
The lovely Vancouver singer/songwriter Ida Nilsen came through town while on tour opening for The Waterboys. Why? Well, story has it that she covered one of their songs on her last album, and band leader Mike Scott caught pleasant wind of it. He also invited her to help out with the recording of their new album.
Anyhoo, Ms Ida kindly dropped off a batch of her new full length How They Fly, and it's terrific! She's buddies with many Canadian aQ faves too, particularly from the Mint Records stable of artists. Everything is warm and comforting about Great Aunt Ida's music -- her singing, the well-placed entrance of horns, a nicely recorded piano, some understated electric guitar. We can see why Mr. Scott among others have taken a shine to her music. While it's rooted in country folk, there's also glimmers of '70s West Coast soft rock and '90s indie girl pop. So nice, she just might become our new Canadian darling!
MPEG Stream: "Company You Keep"
MPEG Stream: "We Say No"

GROWING Disconfirm / Horizon (The Social Registry) 7" 6.98
Two brief experimental soundscapes from these AQ faves. No space rock or krautrock or any kind of rock actually here, this is mostly ambient drift, and strange sonic experimentalism, and the end result manages to sound quite strange and quite strangely pretty.
The A side resembles an ambient noise version of The Smith's "How Soon Is Now?" with a stuttering churning reverbed guitar riff, looped into a hypnotic rhythm, slowly transforming into a machinelike landscape, while over the top tumble playful fluttery FX drenched melodies and streaks and swooshes of feedback and metallic hum. The flipside is a series of haunting little sonic events, muted rhythmic thumps, gurgling underwater melodies, little high end squiggles, all very textural and murky, like some tiny alien machine crawling its way slowly up through the depths...

HUXTABLES, THE s/t (self-released) cdr + dvdr + zine 5.00
Back in stock!
A synopsis of this self-titled debut by The Huxtables themselves: "In the beginning, there were two sweaters, a drum sweater and a guitar sweater. We attempted to win but lost a battle of the bands at our high school. At that point, we finally became a real family. Of course the guitar and drums are the parents and the drawings, video, bass and keyboards are the kids, uncles and aunts. On this recording, half of its songs are from a small concrete closet in Washington DC. At one point the closet was storage space for an up-right bass. We finished the album in a kitchen in Boston while in a tussle with the police. What they did to us in that kitchen forced us to become a collective notion and stop being a band. New songs are being worked out and the collective's future album will be called The Mere Pressure Of My Hand." The Huxtables are two 17 year old boys from New York who make art and music that's noisy, naive, raw and a little bit silly. But awesome and fun!
MPEG Stream: "Dragonfly Society"
MPEG Stream: "Nothing Can Stop Us Now"

JOHN FRANCIS, THE On The Moments We Share (Rerum Novarum) cd 7.98
We've long had a soft spot for the darkest of country folk twang -- Mark Kozelek, Tindersticks, Jesse Sykes, and Hotel Alexis to name just a handful. The last couple months have brought us a few more residing a little closer to home. Case in point, The John Francis' smoky blues filled On The Moment We Share. Deep deep male vocals and slow creeping tempo keep the mood bleak and somber. This album fits well right alongside the latest from fellow SF band The Black Swans. Music that never leaves the shadows? We're right there with 'em. Thanks for sharing!
MPEG Stream: "Grace For One"
MPEG Stream: "Future Americana"

KLABAUTAMANN Der Ort (Heavy Horses) cd 17.98
Finally back in stock. This amazing chunk of post rock-ed black metal brilliance!! Here's our review from when we first had this in:
A while back we reviewed a killer disc from a German band called Woburn House, who traffic in a killer blend of repetitive hypno rock a la Dutch outfit Gore, but blended with a heaping dose of mathy post rock, a combo that totally kicked our asses. But then we discovered that there was in fact blacker side to Woburn another project by some of the same members called Klabautamann, who were supposed to be a super weird black metal band!! This we had to hear. So after some internet sleuthing, we got in touch with the band and managed to get a bunch of the Klabautamann debut cd Der Ort, and if anything, it's even cooler, and WAY WAY weirder than we would have ever hoped.
Take the first track, it begins like most black metal songs, with a buzzing insectoid riff, which explodes into some epic blackened riffing, we love it already, but then suddenly, the guitars drop out, and leave a skeletal post rock jam, lilting clean guitars, but with blasting double kick drums and growled demonic vocals, a weird combo for sure, but so good. Then the song transforms into some mathy metallic breakdown, before blissing out into some dreamy melodic drift, before bursting back into full on black blast again. And that's just the first track.
The second track begins with acoustic guitars and drums, a dreamy strum and pound that could easily be some weird indie rock band, the vocals kick in, a sort of sing song monotone, with little melodic curlicues underneath, until the song lurches into some complex stop start groove, with wild octopoidal drumming and little bursts of squiggly guitar leads. After a gorgeous classical breakdown, the drums kick in, a blazing blast beat accompanying this lovely finger picked guitar, another bizarre juxtaposition that sounds amazing.
The next track is a dense tangled black angular workout, all impossibly convoluted Voivod-ish riffs over furious drumming, before again breaking into a weird loping post rock jam, punctuated by brief bursts of blazing blackness.
It's hard to explain exactly what's going on, but whatever it is, it's awesome. Every track is dense with riffs and parts, gorgeous clean sections are butted up against filthy frosty blackness, acoustic guitars routinely jam alongside metallic blast beats, crazy complicated riffs are chopped into stuttery fragments, and rearranged around mathy rhythms...
Then there's the final track, a total out of the blue mind blower, a nine minute epic, that is still sort of black metal, but also sounds like Tool or Coheed And Cambria, chugging riffs, wailing vocals, both male and female, all tangled up in killer harmonies, the whole thing shoegazey and kind of emo and super poppy, the guitar weaving elaborate textures, but it's the vocals, so weird and cool, it almost has us wishing the whole record had singing like this. So unexpected and so goddamn great.
After the recently reviewed Lifelover, probably our most listened to new 'black metal' disc for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Der Ort"
MPEG Stream: "Forlorn Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Winternacht"

LIBERTINES, THE Time For Heroes: The Best Of The Libertines (Rough Trade) cd 10.98
Don't know 'bout you, but we've found it a bit irksome (and laughable) how bands who've only released a couple of albums have been getting "Best Of" cds. Yes, it's true that audience attention spans have gotten so short, popular music fans are seemingly at their most fickle, and as a result the shelf life of bands has too. So shrewd record company marketing departments have adopted the "Best Of" release as a ploy to remind fans of the band/pop star they held so dear only a couple years or months ago (possibly the worst one to date? "The Best of Martika"). Often they have arbitrarily selected songs to pad up the 'hits'. Yeeesh, we guess it's not really lie if they really do think the chosen songs are the BEST of the artist's body of work, but...
Anyhoo, this is our longwinded introduction to The Libertines' Time For Heroes cd. Yeah, they were probably more known for band member Pete Doherty and Kate Moss' tabloid exploits than their music. That's sort of unfortunate because they were a pretty good U.K. band with two albums that had A FEW good, solidly catchy, swaggering songs that blended garage rawk revivalism and post-punk fervor... you get them all here. Time For Heroes features what someone (apparently some were fans) deemed the band's best material from their 2004 self-titled sophomore album and 2002 debut Up The Bracket along with some b-sides. Heck, both albums in their entirety could probably fit on the one cd... and then they could've called it "ALL Of The Libertines"! Hahahaha. So silly.
MPEG Stream: "Can't Stand Me Now"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Look Back Into The Sun"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Live In San Francisco (23five) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Live In San Francisco is a fantastic document of Francisco Lopez' pursuit of an 'absolute concrete music.' In previous recordings, Lopez has recontextualized the insects from rainforests, ambient din of the urban environment, human voices, the run-out grooves of vinyl, and even death metal blast beats in constructing his textural slabs of gray sound; and his live concerts rework similar themes and source material with compositional strategies that best fit the performance context. While he's performed in San Francisco numerous times, the two performances that found their way onto Live In San Francisco were the Hexaphonic show at the Lab in August 2000 and an intimate performance at 3feetofftheground in July 2001. The documentation from The Lab show opens with a noxious hiss that builds up to loud crash like a heavy steel plated door slamming shut in a cavernous warehouse. Slowly another hiss ramps out of the reverberation of his initial crescendo and becomes more and more volatile until the kill switch is cut some 25 minutes later. The second recording from 3feeofftheground resembles some of the leviathan plods from Daniel Menche as a monstrous mechanical rhythm increases in strength and ominously marches forward. As with the previous Live in 'S-Hertogenbosch document, Live in San Francisco comes with a blindfold so you too can replicate the experience of being blindfolded at a Francisco Lopez show.
MPEG Stream: "Live At The Lab"
MPEG Stream: "Live At 3feetofftheground"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Lopez Island (Elevator Bath) cd 17.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Lopez Island is one of the many islands that dapple the Puget Sound of Washington state, located about 150 miles NW of Seattle. It seems an isolated environment that probably attracts a good deal of outdoorsy types in the summertime; yet for the field recordist / composer Francisco Lopez, he explored the island's soundscape during the winter of 1999-2000 when sleet, snow, wind, and rain perpetually fell upon the island. Lopez has always been a consumate phonographer, with his typical strategies being acousmatic in nature, whereby he would extract and filter particular sounds from his recordings and build monolithic slabs of grey sounds elegantly shifting from near silences to tumultous crescendos. La Selva (and to a lesser extent Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches) remain the most highly regarded compositions through this strategy, with sounds becoming blurred into a miasma of turbulance, confusion, and intrigue. Here on Lopez Island, our man Lopez begins his composition with an extended passage of raw recordings, in particular there's the damp tactility of sleet sploshing amidst wet leaves and twigs. If anything, Lopez has set the stage for a very cold environment, followed by a brisk whistling of wind that Lopez slowly transforms into a thoroughly synthetic climax of sparkling drones and haunted siren songs that resemble the isolationism of BJ Nilsen, Stilluppsteypa, and the Hafler Trio much more than before. Since the release of his Live In San Francisco recording, we haven't been too keen on Francisco's output; but Lopez Island marks the inevitable return to excellence for Mr. Lopez.
MPEG Stream: "Lopez Island (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Lopez Island (extract 2)"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO Wind [Patagonia] (And/OAR) cd 13.98
Wind [Patagonia] is the third in a series of recordings from Francisco Lopez which also included Building [New York] and the universally acclaimed La Selva, all three of which are raw field recordings in the Chris Watson vein of sleight edits rather than Lopez' typical strategies for acoustmatics. As you can imagine, Wind is a collection of wind recordings; and as you could probably also gather, Lopez captured these sounds in the southern regions of Argentina. Lopez himself describes this as "relentless environment of sonic strength;" and yeah, these field recordings do hold a dynamic abrasion heard in most noise records, yet the sounds are all of winds whipping across the Patagonian landscape.
MPEG Stream: "excerpt"

MARINE GIRLS Lazy Ways / Beach Party (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
We have a certain soft spot for that brief period of early 80's British underground female-fronted new wave pop that has been getting revived a lot lately. Namely on Cherry Red Records, the label that championed such sounds to begin with. We made Young Marble Giants a record of the week a while back, and in its influential wake the whole face of British music had seemingly changed. Bands like Antenna, Carmel, Everything But the Girl, The Gist, Weekend, and The Marine Girls had kept up post-punk's DIY enthusiasm, but tempered its urgency into breezy and soft, almost loungey acoustic pop. The Marine Girls were a three girl band started by Tracy Thorn, later of Everything But the Girl. All the members sang with simple bossanova-style guitar and bass arrangements with no drums, each song clocking in at under three minutes. This CD compiles the Marine Girls only two recordings, Lazy Ways from 1983 and Beach Party from 1981 before Thorn left to do a solo record and then join Ben Watt in EBTG. Fans of Nouvelle Vague, Liliput, Cub, The Raincoats, as well as contemporary bands like Pillows, Beach House and Finches will find lots to love here.
MPEG Stream: "A Place In The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "20,000 Leagues"
MPEG Stream: "Marine Girls"

MARK, CAROLYN Nothing Is Free (Mint) cd 16.98
Long associated as the 'other Corn Sister' (Neko Case is the other half of that vivacious duo) and collaborator with many other Canadian indie music luminaries, Carolyn Mark shines in her own spotlight on this, her fifth full length. She's a Canadian city slicker with comforting hillbilly charm, a goddess with gusto dishing out country pop delectibles with her trademark infectious spice of life. She's your closest bosom buddy. A perpetual hostess with the mostest, it's a well known fact that she can tell a baudily hilarious tale and then turn on a dime for a genuine forlorn heartbreaker and she can also down the hooch with the big boys. Who doesn't heart Ms Carolyn? She throws in a curve ball this time around, closing the album with something a little different, the Massive Attack-esque drowsily downtempo "Destination: You". It's a nice change, revealing yet another facet of this dynamo. A wonderful voice that comes as much from the gut as from the heart!
MPEG Stream: "The 1 That Got Away (With It)"
MPEG Stream: "Pink Moon And All The Ladies"

MODERN SOUND QUARTET Otinku (EM Records) cd 21.00
What's the latest obsession of our friends at Japan's weirdest, most wonderful reissues label, EM Records? Last summer, they brought us a special series of sixties surf music soundtracks, and we can thank EM for the essential selection of "singing saw" recordings stocked at Aquarius... as well as much else in the vein of incredibly strange or at least unusual music. Now, EM is excited about...the steel drums! Or, as EM more correctly calls 'em, steel pans. Now, steel pans, to us, aren't quite as thrilling as musical saws, though we'll admit that it's cool that these tuned percussion instruments are made from cast-off 55 gallon oil drums. They've got an interesting history and all, but steel pan and calypso music isn't really our thing... overexposure to the touristy, cheesy use of the instrument doesn't help. What's next, EM celebrates the pan flute? But, at least on the two steel pan oriented albums that EM has recently rescued and reissued, the steel pan sound is pretty sweet, and totally jazzed up. Afro-Caribbean jazz-funk laced with the percussive melodic chiming sound of the steel pan is what you'll hear on this album by the Modern Sound Quintet, recorded in Stockholm, Sweden (of all places) in 1971. But the band wasn't Swedish -- leader Rudy Smith came from Trinidad, birthplace of the steel pan, and the other musicians in the group hailed from Trinidad, Ghana, Barbados, and Surinam. Smith was the pannist in the group, which also featured drum kit, congas, bass and piano. They cook up some funky originals as well as putting their own unique steel pan spin on such standards as Milt Jackson's "Bag's Groove", Joe Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", and Herbie Mann's "Memphis Underground". Perhaps in this context the steel pan does sound a bit like that more ordinary jazz instrument, the vibes, but of course with more of a tropical island flavor. No doubt there's some grooves here that some crate-digging DJ's would be happy to have unearthed on vinyl, now they'll know to look for this. And while we won't pretend this is the most amazing thing EM has ever released, it's kinda neat if you are at all into obscure jazz-funk exotica. Pretty charming really. This is the one to get, and if you love it then check out EM's other related steel pan release, a reissue of 1984's Still Around by the Rudy Smith Quartet.
Oh and of course this boasts EM's usual deluxe gatefold sleeve packaging job, with informative, illustrated liner notes in both Japanese and English.
MPEG Stream: "Otinku"
MPEG Stream: "Flower In The Rain"

O'NEIL, TARA JANE Wings, Strings, Meridians (Square Root Books / Yeti) book+cd 14.98
Wings, Strings, Meridians is the latest release of audio and visual art by aQ fave Tara Jane O'Neil. The book is filled with her paintings, photographs and drawings. In the back of the compact 6" square softcover is a cd -- her tenth solo album!
Open your (or someone dear's) eyes and ears to the wonders of TJO. The pages are filled with loose tangles of thin, rough black lines shaded in earthy hues blurred in spots as if by rain or tears. Sometimes stark, sometimes busy, the images are populated by furry and feathered critters, human figures and abstract forms. Likewise, her music is an impromptu comforter woven from thread bare dusky melodies. Pretty great!
MPEG Stream: "Pearl Into Sand (Live)"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Light Room (Discovery 4-Track)"

PANTS YELL! Alison Statton (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
Odd, the folks at the Soft Abuse call this "modern pop music", but to us it sound totally like late '80s/early '90s breezy indie pop. Ah, everything old is new again! Heck, the album title sums it up well. Alison Statton was the singer for aQ fave seminal post-punk-popsters Young Marble Giants. She's the gal with the sweetly unassuming, unadorned not always pitch-perfect voice. Other appropriate touchstones include Galaxie 500, Orange Juice, Belle And Sebastian circa Tigermilk or Aislers Set (or the softer Wyatt Cusick side of Trackstar). Despite their whimsical exclamation of a band name, their music doesn't make any sudden moves or dial up the volume knob. Nope, this is yummy strummy jangle pep.
MPEG Stream: "More Purple"
MPEG Stream: "Magenta And Green"

PHARAOH OVERLORD #1 (Ektro) cd 14.98
At last, back in stock (although supplies are limited)! Here's our review of the debut Pharaoh Overlord album, from way back on list 113...
The other day a mail order customer called up and ordered Finnish post-rockers Circle's tUMULt release "Andexelt" (soon to be repressed BTW), and also "Ciudad de Brahman" by Argentinean stoner-rock outfit Natas. I immediately suggested that he also get a copy of this debut cd by Pharaoh Overlord, which, being the "stoner rock" project of Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo, is pretty much a perfect cross between the hypnotic riff-repetition and rhythmic pulse of Circle and the super heavy stoner vibe of Kyuss-worshippers Natas! Jussi describes this project (which also includes the guitarist from Bad Vugum band Sweetheart) as being "Hypno-improv-stoner-rock from Finland (file under Psychedelic)" and we'd have to agree, that's the honest truth. It's VERY psychedelic in the most head-noddinest of ways, really not that far removed from the heavier Circle output, but with more of a stoner sensibility that should definitely appeal to fans of Kyuss and the like. The jams on here also hark back to '70s greats like Pink Floyd and Ash Ra Tempel. It's all instrumental, all mesmerizing, totally great. Everytime we play it in the store people ask what it is, it's that good. Definitely if you're already a sucker for anything Circle (like us!) you'll want it, and stoner/space rock fans should also be very very happy with this disc. Oh, and yes, it's called Pharaoh Overlord, how cool is that?
MPEG Stream: "Landslide Non Stop"
MPEG Stream: "Mystery Shopper"

PLURAMON The Monstrous Surplus (Karaoke Kalk) lp 16.98
Now available on vinyl!
We've been waiting a long time for this one. The follow up to Pluramon's 2003 outing Dream Top Rock, which is a classic AQ favorite at this point. These days Pluramon sound almost nothing like their earliest incarnation when Markus Scmickler was making somewhat abstract electronics with stunning results. But luckily Schmickler is one of those great musicians that changes his palette often but whose results always soar to great heights. This outing finds him exploring somewhat similar terrain as was found on Dream Top Rock, with Julee Cruise on board once again on several tracks with her blissed out and enigmatic vocals. With even more upfront and unadulterated pop in these tracks this has had us thinking lots of Mojave 3 and even the Broken Social Scene as well as My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver. Such perfect shoegaze songs for the crisp cold days we've been having in San Francisco. The Monstrous Surplus is one of those great records that weaves itself into your subconscious with repeated listens. Minus one dud (we could have gone without the spoken vocal delivery of "Fresh Aufhebung") the album is pretty close to daydream pop perfection. We're pretty surprised that the last Pluramon release didn't make bigger waves as we think it was just as amazing as releases by folks like M83 and Mum which did get to a wider audience. In a year with a nice resurgence of shoegaze influenced records from folks like Ulrich Schnaus and Trembling Blue Stars we hope that Pluramon finally gets the wide appreciation and respect they so rightfully deserve!
MPEG Stream: "Turn In"
MPEG Stream: "Drowning In You"

SEABEAR The Ghost That Carried Us Away (Morr Music) cd 16.98
If your dream musical date would be with Postal Service and Pernice Brothers, well, the sweet sounds of Seabear come pretty darn close. Shufflin', soft and breezy pop tunes with shy boy lead vocals and angelic girly backing ones. Sure to please devotees of the Morr Music label, and anyone else whose ears need a snuggle!
MPEG Stream: "Good Morning Scarecrow"
MPEG Stream: "Libraries"

SIGUR ROS Heima (Deluxe Edition) (XL) 2dvd 32.00
We will forewarn you that we only have a handful of these super deluxe editions of this Sigur Ros double dvd release! So if you or someone you know is a Sigur Ros fan, and you wanna treat yourself (or him or her), you better hop to it!
This edition of Heima is ultra ultra limited (meaning we won't be able to get more than what we currently have in stock!). It comes packages in an elegant slipcover with a stylin' hardcover book filled with color photographs. As with everything Sigur Ros create, this is a beautiful treasure for the eyes and ears. The title is the clue to what's inside. The word "Heima" translates roughly from Icelandic into English as "at home" or "homeland". Dvd One features an hour and a half long band documentary, and Dvd Two is filled with fantastic live performance footage from their 2006 tour across Iceland (the shows were free and unannounced!). The camerawork is artfully shot in glimpses and lingering gazes of the band and their surroundings. As always the band leaves a haunting impression that's both epic and intimate, formidable and ephemeral!
FYI: We also have the regular version in stock. It's the same dvds but instead of a companion hardcover book, it comes with a considerably thinner but still splendid insert booklet.

SIGUR ROS Heima (Regular Edition) (XL) 2dvd 16.98
This is the regular (i.e., non-deluxe) slipcovered digipak'd version of Sigur Ros' Heima double dvd set. We have a handful of the limited edition hardcover book version, but if you miss the boat on 'em, don't feel too bad because c'mon folks, it's Sigur Ros we're talking about here! Nothing from them is ever ordinary or less than strikingly beautiful. The title is the clue to what's inside. The word "Heima" translates roughly from Icelandic into English as "at home" or "homeland". Dvd One features an hour and a half long band documentary, and Dvd Two is filled with fantastic live performance footage from their 2006 tour across Iceland (the shows were free and unannounced!). The camerawork is artfully shot in glimpses and lingering gazes of the band and their surroundings. As always the band leaves a haunting impression that's both epic and intimate, formidable and ephemeral!

SMITH, RUDY QUARTET Still Around (EM Records) cd 21.00
Japan's EM Records presents the second in their "Steel pan" series. It's not just steel pan music, though, it's steel pan jazz. Read our review of EM's other steel pan reissue, 1971's Otinku by the Modern Sound Quintet for more info... This is a later (1984) album by the Modern Sound Quintet's leader, Rudy Smith, aka "the jazz king of steel pans", and again mixes his Caribbean steel pan chops with funky jazz grooves and other international influences (it was recorded in Stockholm with mostly European sidemen and an South African drummer). Then there's the bebop meets classical hijinx of their composition "Be Bach"!
Otinku, maybe 'cause it's from '71, seems a bit more special to us, so we'd recommend it first but then if you want more steel pan jazz, we've got this too! Again, presented with the usual nice EM packaging and respectful attention to detail.
MPEG Stream: "Ursia"
MPEG Stream: "Be Bach"

SOTHEAR, SREI AND SIN SISAMOUTH Cambodian Psych-out (El Suprimo / Defective) lp 14.98
AT LAST, BACK IN STOCK!!
Another amazing compilation of Cambodian psychedelic music recorded from the late sixties to the mid seventies. This comp, culled from much crate digging in the open air markets of Siem Reip, right next to the legendary temples Angkor Wat focus exclusively on songs performed and sung by legendary Cambodian vocalists Sin Sisamouth and Srei Sothear. Sisamouth is a name that should be familiar to all fans of Cambodian psych, as he is featured heavily on pretty much every single compilation of Cambodian psych from that time (including all four of the Cambodian Rocks comps of course). Sisamouth wrote thousands of songs, many performed by Sothear, and many for films in which she also starred. The two become partners and eventually became two of the most (if not THE most) famous singers in Cambodia.
Tragically, both were killed by the Khmer Rouge -- as were their bands and of course millions of their fans. Their musical legacy they left is staggering. Thousands of amazing tunes, from garage rock stomps to full on psych rock blow outs. Wild guitars, buzzing distortion drenched leads, groovy wah wah rhythms, and organs all over the place, whirring, wheezing, warbling, all fuzzy and thick, sometimes spitting out nimble high end melodies, other times a thick carpet of psychfuzz, add in some James Brown funky horns, wild drumming, and some of the most amazing vocals ever, that go from croon to wail to squeal to howl and every place in between, and you've got some of the wildest psych-rock ever made!
Full color psychedelic sleeve with liner notes on the back.
All proceeds of the sales of this album go to the United Nations' Cambodian relief fund Adopt-A-Minefield. You can learn more or donate by going to http://www.landmines.org.

SPEAKERS, THE En El Maravilloso Mundo De Ingeson (SalgaelSol) cd+book 48.00
We've had this cult Latin American psych reissue on and off (mostly off) for a few years now, and so since we just managed to get this super deluxe oversized book edition, we figured we'd relist it, for those of you who might not have gotten a chance to hear it (or hear about it) yet. It's pricey, but the packaging is pretty over the top. And of course it's an amazing album.
The cd comes housed in a 7" sized sleeve, full color and on thick card stock. Inside is affixed a 20 page full color booklet, filled with photos and drawings, and tons and tons of liner notes (all in Spanish unfortunately), and affixed to the inside front cover is a little crunched up chicklet, a replica of the supposed LSD bubble gum that was included in the original album!! Awesome.
Here's what we said about this before:
Whoa, this is a strange disc, a reissue of some primo Columbian psych acid-rock pop weirdness circa 1968. Totally trippy and weird, starting with the wonderfully freaky cover drawing of the band, with the music being even freakier. Probably inspired by Sgt. Pepper's and buttloads of drugs. The Speakers (also known as Kris Kringle on an LP reissue of this, for some reason) play nice Spanish-language pop/beat music that's been totally messed with, coming closer to Nurse With Wound than the Mutantes (although if you can imagine all the ridiculous moments of studio-fuckery on the Mutantes cds crammed into one disc, this would be it). Completely odd and delightful! And who can forget that track sung in the bizarre squeaky baby voice...
Some additional interest might be stirred regarding this due to the fact that the band was recently profiled in issue 22 of Ugly Things magazine issue! We learned a few interesting things from that article, among them that The Speakers, at the time, were apparently quite popular in their home country. Who would have thunk? And, "En El Maravilloso Mundo De Ingeson" is explained -- Ingeson was the name of the studio where they were able to record for free at night, in return for putting Ingeson's name in the album title (The Speakers In The Marvelous World Of Ingeson)!
MPEG Stream: "Oda A La Gente Mediocre"
MPEG Stream: "Historia De Un Loto Que Florecio En Otono"

TRUTH & JANEY No Rest For The Wicked (Rockadrome / Vintage) cd 13.98
We had a reissue of this beloved badass '70s psychedelic proto-metal obscurity some years back (list 127) on the now-defunct Monster label. Rockadrome kinda took over from Monster, and now they've gotten around to making this available again as part of their Vintage series. The graphic design has been improved, but otherwise it's the same as the previous edition (including the bonus tracks) with no additions.
Here's what we said about it before: Reissue of a rare 1976 album by this legendary (among collectors anyway) trio of hard-rockin' Midwesterners. Truth & Janey were heavy and energetic and had some great songs but disco apparently killed 'em off. We're left with this album and the the bonus singles tracks that comprise this cd. Guitarist/vocalist doesn't quite have the voice for the two blues covers they attempt, but the rest is mighty good. These longhaired youngsters were into bellbottoms and fully-cranked Marshalls -- so if you are too, check this out! Another authentic '70s stoner rawk classic for today's fans to listen to and learn from!
MPEG Stream: "Down The Road I Go"
MPEG Stream: "It's All Above Us"

VON IVA Our Own Island (Ruby Tower) cd 14.98
Von Iva's music is impassioned, loose and fun! These three ladies seem always party primed. That's right, we said three! Since their last release the band bid a fond farewell to bassist Elizabeth Davis Simpson. As a result, their sound has become far more minimal with Kelly's primal drum beats, Jillian's sultry vocals and some of Becky's stark keyboard lines filling in for the departed basslines. Seemingly inspired by ESG and Tina Turner, Our Own Island's ten tracks are ultra retro sounding and electro funky. Jillian continues to keep brows and loins fevered with her super-soul pipes. These gals don't perspire, they sweat! And we suspect they'll get you all hot'n'bothered too.
MPEG Stream: "Guise"
MPEG Stream: "No Resistance"

WAX POETICS #26 magazine 7.99
Bobby Byrd, Devin the Dude, Barrington Levy, the Osaka Monaurail, a look back at Kurtis Blow's 1979 single "Christmas Rappin'" (not just a novelty, but a historical milestone)... All that and more is to be found in the 138 colorful pages of this new issue of the wonderful Wax Poetics, essential reading material for all fans of cool old (and new) hiphop, jazz, funk and soul!

WINEHOUSE, AMY Frank (Universal Republic) cd 14.98
Who is that fresh and smiling face on the cover? Is that really Amy Winehouse? We didn't recognize her without her ratty beehive, missing teeth, coke boogers and prison tattoos. Oh right, this is her first record. It's finally available domestically and probably her label fearing she'll never get it together enough to make another record are eager to get more dough from their falling star. Although we have to admit, Miss Winehouse is a much better artist when she's battling her demons than when she doesn't have any, as Frank will attest. Back To Black was one of the best records this year, not just because of the tightness of the band or it's retro soul focus but also in the sincerity of her delivery, and the almost gut-wrenching honesty of her songwriting.
Frank has some good moments too. Her vocal delivery sounds amazingly older than a 17 year old, but the music relies on a dated blend of jazz and hip-hop tinged R&B that hasn't aged as well. The songwriting shows promise but it just doesn't quite add up as a complete work. No wonder Miss Winehouse distanced herself from this record. Too bad she couldn't convince the label to do the same. Not that it's really all that bad, just not nearly in the same league as her follow-up.
MPEG Stream: "Fuck Me Pumps"
MPEG Stream: "In My Bed"

WIRE Read & Burn 03 (Pink Flag) cd ep 10.98
"Return to form" is the ubiquitous tag granted to aging rockers who enjoy a certain cultural cache from way back when even when the new material may pale in comparison. Yet, the problematic "return to form" claim doesn't really stick for Wire, even as they've never attempted to rewrite the punk and post-punk textbooks they penned with their first three records, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154. Since the band has split and reformed numerous times with a bunch of commendable side projects filling the gaps (i.e. Dome, He Said, Duet Emmo, etc.) and with numerous stylistic changes, each with their own merit, Wire doesn't really have a stylistic norm, to which "return to form" applies. So with the third (and probably best) chapter of the Read & Burn saga, Wire "return to form" only in the fact that they managed an edgy, post-punk set of recordings that continue to follow the adventurous trajectory set forth from Pink Flag. Clocking in at almost 10 minutes, the first track parallels the opening of 154, with Graham Lewis deepening his slightly sinister baritone voice to that of Nick Cave's. But when the slow acceleration of bass / guitars / drums hits cruising speed, Wire find themselves in familiar territory -- perfect pop-punk choruses with tonguing tying lyrical twists. The production on the entire 4 song ep enjoys a digital polish, and on the introduction, when Colin Newman takes over on vocals from Lewis on the pogo-punk chorus, his voice is smoothed from the spittle and snarl of Pink Flag into what is found here. For the other songs, Wire pull in the long-form art-rock reigns for three equally nice tunes with Newman alone at the vocal helm. Well done.
MPEG Stream: "23 Years Too Late"
MPEG Stream: "No Warning Given"

ZOROASTER Dog Magic (Terminal Doom) 2lp 19.98
NOW ON LIMITED EDITION COLORED VINYL, thanks to the aptly named Terminal Doom label... Here's our review of the cd released by Southern Lord:
Zoroaster's monster debut ep from last year had us looking forward to more from this heavier-than-thou Georgia band, and Dog Magic is no disappointment, being another devastating display of brutal doom metal in the Eyehategod tradition, putting 'em up there within the ranks of such bands as Khanate and Graves At Sea. It's six songs, just under an hour, featuring several epics approaching the 15 minute mark, like the massive "Algebra Of Need".
Zoroaster takes doom to all of its extremes, from trance-inducing passages formed from nothing but distorted electronic drones, to bulldozering bursts of thrashing speed -- that's right, doom doesn't always have to be slow! Though plenty of this is, slow and sludgy and laced with all sorts of disturbing experimental textures. Zoroaster should provide not only your requisite doom fix this week but lots of good headphone listenin' for months to come, but be careful to have mercy on your ears and not to turn it up too loud or those headphones will clamp together and crush your skull just when you're trying to enjoy the electric organ solo in the middle of "Terminally Charged", or something...
MPEG Stream: "The Book"
MPEG Stream: "Tualatin"

ZOVIET FRANCE Digilogue (Soleilmoon) cd 15.98
BACK IN PRINT! So, here we are waxing poetic about this album even as Zoviet France has all but disappeared from the public eye, with founding member Ben Ponton holding onto the project even though no new recordings appear in sight and as former member Robin Storey has released a whole bunch of middling albums (amidst a couple of greats) as Rapoon.
Given how many contemporary gutteral drone artists have been delving into tape loop manipulation, multiple delay pedal configurations, and transcendent tones vulcanized from base elements, listening to Zoviet France in today's climate is essential... as it would prove that this British semi-anonymous collective had better ideas, better execution, better packaging, and better results than 99% of what's coming out today. Sadly, the Zoviet France albums that would have best paralleled much of the current lo-fi drone obsession (i.e. Eostre, Norsch, Mohnomische, and even Shouting At The Ground) are all woefully out of print thanks to a unreconcilable rift between the aforementioned Ben Ponton and Robin Storey. Only a handful remain available for public consumption; and Digilogue is one of them, demonstrating the Zoviet France process of overlapping loops, hypnotic atmospherics, and ephemeral dub activity when applied to digital technology. While there is a considerable crispness to many of the sounds heard on Digilogue, Zoviet France still managed to render their sounds as if they were the liturgical / ritualist music for some hitherto unknown non-Occidental culture hidden in the English countryside. Digilogue's opening track "Alchemagenta" is a noteworthy entry into the Zoviet France pantheon of sounds for its eerily dubbed out miltaristic horn stab which former AQ-employee Byram Abbott was convinced made its way on to an early episode of The Simpsons. Mechanized bells, streched out vocal plainsongs, and oceanic swells of electric wash all cascade through Zoviet France's graceful use of delay patterns for what truly is one of the best records of the '90s and is absolutely required listening for anyone with a passing interest in experimental music over the past 50 years.
MPEG Stream: "Alchemagenta"
MPEG Stream: "Haze Polder"

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INCA ORE / GROUPER split (self-released) cassette 8.98
We have very very very few of these so we won't go into too much detail. You probably already know just from the two artists if you need this or not. New work from two of the few women kicking ass in the mostly male 'noise rock' scene. Both huge AQ faves, both who utilize voice and effects, in addition to the usual string-ed instruments to weave dreamlike soundscapes and delicate cinematic ambience.
Both are in full effect here, each outfits offering up gauzy beauty and mysterious haunting murk, distant shimmery drones and abstract lo-fi song fragments. Gorgeous as always.
Printed insert in a gold paint splattered tape case. And as mentioned above, CRAZY limited and gone before you know it.

SS HELL CAMP: CULT CLASSICK VOL. 1 OST (Cult ClaSSick) cassette 7.98
We wish we had a million of these, and we wish it was a cd instead of a cassette, cuz this is so weird and freaked out and creepy and awesome that had it been a cd and not probably already out of print, we most definitely would have made it a record of the week.
The lost soundtrack to an obscure video nastie, SS Hell Camp, one of those Nazi prison movies, lots of nudity, torture, violence, and while many of us here consider ourselves to be experts in all things fucked and freaky old movies, none of us had ever heard of or seen this glorious piece of cinematic trash.
But based on the soundtrack alone, it sounds like it's probably the greatest bad movie EVER. Manic pianos, buzzing synths, creepy ambient music, weird seventies keyboards, orchestral percussion, the sounds of marching jackboots, German soldiers, machine gun fire, babies crying, women screaming, super bad acting dialogue, and inexplicably, a grunting panting beast right in the beginning. Maudlin, and cheesy, cinematic and overly dramatic, lots of this sounds like extra low budget Goblin, and if you can imagine Goblin scoring a Nazi prison flick, well, we barely need to say anything else. The recording is murky and lo fi, as if it was dubbed right off of an old VHS tape (which it probably was) but only adds to the mood and feel and flavor. When we first threw this on, it sounded exactly like some of the music from those fake trailers between the two movies in the Grindhouse double feature. Which is obviously what those guys were going for.
We are gonna track down this movie eventually, but until then, we're watching it in our heads every time we play this chunk of trashy cheesy awesomeness.
Super low budg packaging, and crazy limited so these will probably fly out of here, and odds are that'll be it...

V/A Matter 10.2007 (Tape Of The Month) (self-released) cassette 5.00
Back in September we got the first installment in what was meant to be a sort of tape of the month thing organized and recorded by two local guys, one who you all might know from his weirdo black metal band Amacoma (he also plays in Black Fiction and 3). It was a huge hit (we do have a few copies left if you missed it) and so they immediately got to work on the October installment. So we know what you're thinking, but it wasn't all our fault, just mostly. We got the October tape, right at the end of the month, but then stuff got crazy and we're only now getting around to reviewing it and it's December! But fuck it, just imagine that ten is a twelve and we'll be fine, it's just as cool and weird and varied as the first volume, with each dude taking a side of the tape, and this one like the first is essential for lovers of weirdo black metal as there's a brand new Amocoma track!
And it's a doozy, worth the price of admission alone. So buzzy and washed out, it's barely even black metal, it's more like some cavernous black ambient epic, the riffs more like throbbing pulses, the vocals hissy clouds of static, grim and fuzzed out, but because of the extreme blur and smear it's almost like black metal pop ambient. Here and there, the riffage does coalesce into extreme blackness, or splinters off into some spare clean guitar slither, but it always returns to the blossoming avalanche of black buzz.
There's a track by a band called Hash Hashish, that's a serious slab of gorgeous distorted dreampop, with some weird almost death metal vocals mixed in as well as some circusy keyboards and a dense wall of My Bloody Valentine blur. The 3 Leafs song is an awesome stretch of super spaced out druggy ambience, all whirling FX and disembodied voices, percussive thud and dark rumbling whir.
The flip side is packed with sonic weirdness, it's hard to differentiate which is which (ah, good old tapes!), but there are two tracks by Debre Damo, and two by Atom Eve, they all sort of blend into each other, but it's all awesome. Abstract electronic experimentation, bleeps and bloops, whirs and shimmers, very musiq concrete, woven into dense tripped out garagey space rock with thick guitars and pounding drums and of course lots and lots of FX. Weird alien guitar experiments are stretched out into crumbling glitchy ambience, it seems like maybe the names are just to keep it interesting as the whole side plays like a single piece.
As always, dying to hear more from all of these outfits, and keep listening to that Amocoma track over and over...

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V/A Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970 (Rhino) 4cd+book 73.00
It's just past the fortieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, and while we San Franciscans have never stopped being reminded of those legendary months of drug abuse, panhandling and squatting, perhaps the rest of the world needs a large dose of that dirty hippy love. And in what better form than this latest installment of the Nuggets box set series?
Unlike past volumes, what we have here is a 120 page book full of rare photos detailing the scene and 4 cds compiled under various themes: "Seismic Rumbles", "Suburbia", "Summer Of Love," and "The Man Can't Bust Our Music".
Beginning with Dino Valenti's original version of "Let's Get Together" and ending with the Youngblood's more famous version, this Nuggets edition includes many famous and familiar San Francisco bands including Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & The Fish, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Count Five, Blue Cheer, The Great Society, The Charlatans, Sly and The Family Stone, Santana and Big Brother and The Holding Company. Some with more than one track. But the real price of admission is for the obscurities: The Syndicate of Sound, The Harbinger Complex, The Stained Glass, Fifty Foot Hose, Kak, Salvation, The Vejtables, The Wildflower, The Tikis, The Frantics, The Serpent Power, and Frumious Bandersnatch. There are only a few omissions, like Cold Blood, The Fire Escape, Tripsichord, and Parish Hall (though some would argue those aren't really omissions at all) that would make for a more well-rounded collection focusing more on the obscurities (the reason we like Nuggets in the first place) rather than the heavyweights who are quite well represented on plenty of other more mainstream compilations. But if anyone is looking for the definitive San Francisco music experience of the sixties, you probably won't find one more lovingly detailed than this. Trip on and Trip out!

V/A Plum (Thrill Jockey) 10 x 7" box set 40.00
LIMITED EDITION (2000 copies) vinyl-only box set containing ten 7" singles. Each side of each 7" features a Thrill Jockey recording artist covering a song by another Thrill Jockey recording artist, to celebrate the Chicago indie rock/electronica label's 15th anniversary. Thus: Califone cover Freakwater. Freakwater cover The Zincs. The Zincs cover Howe Gelb. Howe Gelb covers John Parish. John Parish covers Califone. Etc. 20 songs by 20 artists by 20 artists, all facets of the Thrill Jockey catalog old and new. Others appearing: Tortoise, Adult., Bobby Conn, Archer Prewitt, Mouse On Mars, The Sea And Cake, Directions In Music, David Byrne, Sue Garner & Rick Brown, Pit Er Pat, Thalia Zedek, Eleventh Dream Day, Pullman, Arbouretum, Angela Desveaux... hey what happened to A Minor Forest II (a la Amon Duul II)? Oh well...





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NARDWUAR THE HUMAN SERVIETTE Welcome To My Castle! (Nardwuar / Mint) 2dvd 28.00
Time to give your eyes, ears and funny bone a workout! To prepare yourself we suggest you drop and give us twenty! Heh heh... here's the prequel to Nardwuar The Human Serviette's 2006 double dvd interview extravaganza Doot Doola Doot Doo... Doot Doo! (please see our review of that release if you need a Nardwuar tutorial). What d'ya know, it's another double dvd interview extravaganza! How does he do it?! The superhuman Canadian Nardwuar packs every nook and cranny of these dvds with wild'n'woolly entertainment. Totalling a whopping five and a half hours in running time, Welcome To My Castle! contains his two cable TV specials that he produced back in the '90s, and a plethora of interviews with such varied celebrities as Bob "Gilligan" Denver, The Monkees' Mickey Dolenz, Tommy Chong, Ron Jeremy, Timothy Leary, Cynthia Plaster Caster, Jello Biafra, Flea, Courtney Love, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Anthony Robbins, Tom Vu, former U.S. President Gerald Ford, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and many many more! Some are total gutbusters, some are jawdroppers, some are a bit tense, and some are sublime.
Plus you also get a bunch of new vids by his band Thee Evaporators (be sure to check out their latest full length Gassy Jack And Other Tales which we've also reviewed on this here list!). Pssst, the dvds' menus and chapter titles were all hand-lettered by our own Cup!


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If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart!

3/4HADBEENELIMINATED "The Religious Experience" (Soleilmoon) lp 33.00
AHMED, MAHMOUD & EITHER / ORCHESTRA "Tsedenia Gebre-Marqos" (Buda Musique) dvd 14.98
ALCHEMIST "Tripsis" (Relapse) cd 14.98
ANGELBLOOD "Mambo Mange" (Locust) lp 17.98
APACHE "Boys Life" (Douchemaster) 7" 5.50
ARMISEN, FRED PRESENTS: JENS HANNEMANN "Complicated Drumming Technique" (Drag City) dvd 15.98
AXA HOUR OF DARA BLEU "Clones Of Eros" (Fire Museum) cd 13.98
BACH, SEBASTIAN "Angel Down" (Get Off My Bach) cd 13.98
BACHDENKEL "Lemmings" (Ork) cd 17.98
BARONESS "Red Album" (Relapse) cd 14.98
BEHOLD THE ARCTOPUS "Skullgrid" (Metal Blade) cd 12.98
BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Seventh Ruined Hex" (Important) cd 14.98
BLACK COBRA "Feather And Stone" (At A Loss) cd 13.98
BOSMANN, KARL "Eskalation" (You Don't Have To Call It Music) lp 38.00
BOXCUTTER "Glyphic" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
BROTZMANN, PETER / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE / MATS GUSTAFSSON "The Fat Is Gone" (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 16.98
BYLA / JARBOE "Viscera" (Translation Loss) cd 13.98
CHAUVEAU, SYLVAIN "S" (Type) cd 14.98
COPE, JULIAN "You Gotta Problem" (Head Heritage) 2cd 27.00
DAFT PUNK "Alive 2007" (Virgin) cd 16.98
DAISIES (OST) "s/t" (Finders Keepers) cd/lp 23.00/30.00
DAUNER, WOLFGANG (QUARTET) "The Oimels" (Long Hair) cd 24.00
DELLS, THE "Sing Dionne Warwicke's Greatest Hits" (Dusty Groove) cd 13.98
DILLOWAY, AARON "Infinite Lucifer" (Hanson) lp 14.98
DIRGE "All The Sky Shall Descend" (Blight Records) cd 16.98
DIRGE "Wings Of Lead Over Dormant Seas" (Bright Records) 2cd 17.98
DISTANCE "My Demons" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
DOWN "III: Over The Under" (Down Records) cd 17.98
EQUIMANTHORN "Exalted Are The 7 Throne Bearers of Ninnkigal" (From Beyond) cd 14.98
ERGO SUM "Mexico" (Lion Productions) cd 15.98
EROC "3" (Brain / Revisited) cd 17.98
ESKIBOY "The Best Of Tunnel Vision" (Baked Goods) 2cd 22.00
EXIAS-J "Live Document 2003-2005" (PSF) dvd 27.00
EYES LIKE SAUCERS "Still Living In The Desert" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
FERRANTE AND TEICHER "Soundproof: The Sound of Tomorrow Today!" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
FUTURIANS "Play The Breathtaking Sounds Of Tivol" (Soft Abuse) lathe cut 7" 14.98
GALWAD Y MYNYDD "s/t" (Finders Keepers) lp 30.00
GHOST "Overture; Live In Nippon Yusen Soko 2006" (Drag City) cd + dvd 17.98
GHOSTFACE KILLAH "The Big Doe Rehab" (Def Jam) cd 14.98
GIST, THE "Embrace The Herd" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
GLASS CANDY "Beatbox" (Italians Do It Better) cd 13.98
GLOBAL SYSTEMS SILENTLY MOVING "Altering The Air" (Silentes) cd 17.98
GLUTTONY "Collapse Of The Roman Republic (Liber Primus)" (Cyclops) cd 15.98
GORILLA "Rock Our Souls" (Go Down Records) cd 23.00
GORILLAZ "D-Sides" (Virgin) 2cd 23.00
GRUPPO D'IMPROVVISAZIONE "Nuova Consonanza" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
GUSTAFSSON, MATS / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE "Splatter" (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 14.98
HALF MAKESHIFT "L'Anse Amort" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
HARALD HEDNING "s/t" (Garageland Records) cd 19.98
HERELLE, JEAN -LUC "Jurassic Soundscapes: A Scientific Interpretation" (Fremeaux & Associes) cd 15.98
HITCHCOCK, ROBYN "Eye" (Yep Roc) cd 13.98
HITCHCOCK, ROBYN "I Often Dream of Trains" (Yep Roc) cd 13.98
JONESY "Masquerade - The Dawn Years Anthology" (Esoteric) cd 25.00
KANE, JONATHAN "The Little Drummer Boy" (Radium) cd 11.98
KANG, EYVIND "The Yelm Sessions" (Tzadik) cd 15.98
KILLERS, THE "Sawdust" (Island) cd 15.98
KLIMEK "Dedications" (Anticipata) cd 15.98
KONDO, HIDEAKI "Structures" (Modern Music / PSF) cd 16.98
KUBISCH, CHRISTINA "Five Electrical Walks" (Important) cd 14.98
KUBISCH, CHRISTINA "Night Flights" (Important) cd 14.98
LICHENS "Omns" (Kranky) cd + dvd 16.98
LINDSTROM "Contemporary Fix EP" (Smalltown Supersound) cd ep 14.98
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
METZGER, PAUL "Deliverance" (Locust) cd 14.98
MONSTER MAGNET "4-Way Diablo" (SPV) cd 16.98
NATHAMUNI BROTHERS "Madras 1974" (Fire Musem) cd 14.98
NECKS, THE "Townsville" (ReR Megacorps) cd 17.98
NEW YORK NOISE: ART & MUSIC FROM THE NEW YORK UNDERGROUND 1978-88 (Soul Jazz) book 39.95
NILSEN BJ & Z'EV "22'22" (Ideal) cd 14.98
NO NECK BLUES BAND "Live At Ken's Electric Lake" (Locust) 2cd 23.00
NOSTRADAMOS "s/t" (World Psychedelia) cd 17.98
OCEAN, THE "Precambrian" (Metal Blade) cd 14.98
OCTOPUS PROJECT, THE "Hello, Avalanche" (Peek A Boo Industries) cd 13.98
OMEGA MASSIF "Geisterstadt" (Radar Swarm) cd 16.98
OPETH "The Roundhouse Tapes" (Peaceville) 2cd 16.98
PEEESSEYE, THE "Mayhem In The Mansion, Shivers In The Sack" (Evolving Ear) cd 11.98
PHOTEK "Form & Function Vol. 2" (Sanctuary) cd 17.98
PINCH "Underwater Dancehall" (Tectonic) 2cd 22.00
PRURIENT / KEVIN DRUMM "All Are Guests In The House Of The Lord" (Hospital Productions) cd 13.98
PSYCHEDELIC HORSESHIT "Magic Flowers Droned" (Siltbreeze) cd/lp 13.98/13.98
QUEEN "Rock Montreal & Live Aid" (Eagle Vision) dvd 17.98
R/S ONE "Snow Mud Rain" (Erstwhile) cd 14.98
RADIGUE, ELIANE "CHRY-PTUS" (Schoolmap) 2cd 28.00
RANDALL OF NAZARETH "s/t" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/15.98
ROCHE, JEAN C. "Rossignols: A Nocturne of Nightingales" (Fremeaux & Associes) cd 15.98
ROMERO, DAMIEN "Twins" (Tone Filth) 2lp 27.00
ROOT "Daemon Viam Invenient" (Shindy) cd 15.98
ROSETTA "Cleansing Undertones Of Wake/Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 9.98
ROSETTA "Wake / Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 13.98
ROTHER, MICHAEL "Flammende Herzen" (Water) cd 16.98
ROTHER, MICHAEL "Katzenmusik" (Water) cd 16.98
SARTORI, ANDREA "Il Tagliacode" (Persona) cd 16.98
SATIE, ERIC "Socrate: Symphonic Drama" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
SAVIOURS "Cavern Of Mind" (Kemado) 12" 5.98
SCHMICKLER, MARCUS WITH HAYDEN CHISHOLM "Amazing Daze" (Hapna) cd 16.98
SEVEN THAT SPELLS "The Men from Dystopia" (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 16.98
SHINDIG "Issue 1" magazine 8.98
SINCLAIR, JOHN "Guitar Army: Rock & Revolution With MC5 And The White Panther Party" (Process) book+cd 22.95
SKEPTA "Greatest Hits" (Boy Better Know) cd 21.00
SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "Blood Spirits and Drums are Singing" (Conspiracy) cd 15.98
SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "Open The Gates Of Mimer" (AA / Nosordo) cd 14.98
SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "The Sound Of Defekt Skulls" (Utech) cd 14.98
SLEEPARCHIVE / ANTTI RANNISTO "s/t" (Sleeparchive) cd 22.00
SMITH, STEVEN R. "Owl" (Digitalis) cd 12.98
SMOHALLA "Nova Persei" (God Is Myth) 3" cd-r 8.98
SNAKES SAY HISSS! "I'll Be Lovin' You" (self released) cd-r
SNIVELLING SHITS, THE "I Can't Come" (Damaged Goods) cd 16.98
SOLITUDE AETERNUS "Alone" (Soul Food) cd 17.98
SOLITUDE AETURNUS "Hour Of Despair" (Metal Mind Productions) dvd 24.00
SPENCER, DUB & TRANCE HILL "Return Of The Supercops" (Echo Beach) cd 16.98
STRIBORG "Spiritual Catharsis" (Displeased) cd 14.98
STRIBORG "Trepidation" (Displeased) cd 14.98
SUISHOU NO FUNE "The Shining Star - Live" (Important) cd 14.98
SUN RA "Disco 3000" (Artyard) 2cd 33.00
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Dislocation" (Jinya) cd 17.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Inanimate" (Jinya) cd 17.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Mass Hysterism" (Jinya) cd 17.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Qadhafi" (Jinya) cd 17.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Shibito" (Jinya) cd 17.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI NEW DIRECTION UNIT "April Is The Cruellest Month" (Jinya) cd 24.00
TENNISCOATS "Tan-Tan Therapy" (Hapna) cd 16.98
TERJE, JESPER & JOACHIM "s/t" (Shadoks Music) cd 15.98
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
THERMALS, THE "The Body, The Blood, The Machine" (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
TIME FLYS, THE "In Crowd" (Douchemaster) 7" 5.50
TODAY IS THE DAY "Axis Of Eden" (Supernova) cd 14.98
TULUS "Biography Obscene" (Candlelight) cd 14.98
TULUS "Cold Core Collection" (Indie Recordings) 2cd 16.98
TURBONEGRO "Retox" (Cooking Vinyl) cd 14.98
TUSK "The Resisting Dreamer" (Tortuga Recording) cd 11.98
TUSSLE "Warning EP" (Smalltown Supersound) cd ep 14.98
UTON "Ground's Dream Cosmic Love" (Students Of Decay) cd-r 7.98
UTON & VALERIO COSI "Kaarmeenkaantopiiri" (Fire Museum) cd 13.98
V/A "10 Tons Heavy" (Planet Mu) 2cd 13.98
V/A "200" (Planet Mu) 2cd/2lp 9.98/17.98
V/A "David Shrigley's Worried Noodles" (Tomlab) 2cd 37.00
V/A "Gold Record Studio: Live At Laney Flea Market" (Edgetone Records) 2cd 14.98
V/A "He And She" (Pet Records) cd 14.98
V/A "John Barleycorn Reborn: Dark Britannica" (Cold Spring) 2cd 24.00
V/A "Lifting The Veil: The Earliest Blues Guitarists" (World Arbiter) cd 17.98
V/A "Melodii Tuvi: Throat Songs And Folk Tunes From Tuva" (Dust To Digital) cd 15.98
V/A "Pillows & Prayers" (Cherry Red) 3cd+dvd
V/A "Smashits" (Shitkatapult) cd 16.98
V/A "Sock It To 'Em J.B." (Body & Soul) cd 15.98
V/A "Space And Time" (Hotflush) cd 21.00
V/A "War II (The Turd Hunt Continues)" (Hip Hop Slam) cd 11.98
V/A "Waterpipes and Dykes: Dutch Psychedelic Underground 1966-1972" cd 13.98
V/A "Welsh Rare Beat 2" (Finders Keepers) cd/lp 23.00/30.00
V/A (ESHETE, ALEMAYEHU) "Ethiopiques Vol. 22 : More Vintage!" (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
VEX'D "Degenerate" (Planet Mu) 2cd 14.98
VILE CHERUBS "The Man Who Has No Eats Has No Sweats" (Afterburn) cd 13.98
WU-TANG CLAN "8 Diagrams" (Universal) cd 14.98
WYATT, ROBERT "Comicopera" (Domino) cd 15.98
WZT HEARTS "Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones" (Hoss) lp 15.98
YOUNG, NEIL "Chrome Dreams II" (Reprise) cd 17.98
YOUNGS, RICHARD "Summer Wanderer" (Gipsy Sphinx) lp 17.98
YOUNGS, RICHARD & ALEX NEILSON "Electric Lotus LP & Lotus Editions CD" (VHF) lp+cd 15.98

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ABOUT MAILORDER


Please place your order via our website.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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


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

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SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} on the way, any day
Circle "Rakkenus" live cd on Ektro
Circle "Telescope" live 2cd on Sunhair
Tractor Pulling "Ghost Hungerland" 7" on Ektro
Es "Sateenkaarisuudelma" 2cd on Fonal
Fricara Pacchu "Stories Of Old" 7"+book on Fonal
Eleanoora Rosenholm "Vainajan Muotokuva" cd/lp on Fonal
Striborg "Journey Of A Misanthrope" DVD

----} in January
Magnetic Fields "Distortion"
Cat Power "Jukebox" 2nd album of covers
Dengue Fever "Venus On Earth"
Saviours "Into Abbadon" on Kemado
Aleister Crowley "1910-1914 Black Magic Recordings"
Caetano Veloso "Irene"
John Zorn "Filmworks XIX"

----} in February
Nada Surf "Lucky"
Kelley Stoltz "Circular Sounds"
Mountain Goats "Heretic Pride"
Ghengis Tron "Board Up The House"
Danava "Unonou" on Kemado
Brendan Murray "Commonwealth" on 23five
Chop Shop "Oxiode" 23five
Omit "Interceptor"
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
Jesus & Mary Chain "B-Sides Collection"
John Coltrane "Africa Brass" and "Ballads" reissues

----} in March
Unearthly Trance "Electrocution"
BJ Nilsen & Stillupsteypa "Passing Out"

----} also upcoming sooner or later
3/3 "s/t" 2cd reissue on P-Vine
Afrirampo "Suuto Breakor" cd on P-Vine
Mariana Topley-Bird w/ Dangermouse
Paavoharju "Laulu Laakson Kukista" cd/lp on Fonal
Silver Jews "Look Out Mountain, Look Out Sea"
Circle X "Prehistory"
Loren Chasse & Michael Mnortham "Otolth"
The Wrens new album
Andrew W.K. new album
Suishou No Fune new album on Holy Mountain
Wolfmother new album
Endless Boogie "tba" cd/2lp on No Quarter
Coh "Strings" cd on Raster
White Heaven "Levitation" cd edition on Farside
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
Powers Court "The Red Mist Of Endenmore" cd on Dragonheart
The Heads tba 2cd 'best of' on Leafhound
16-17 "Gyatso" cd reissue on Savage Land
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
Peter Grudzien "The Unicorn/Garden Of Love" LP reissue on Subliminal Sound

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanLaurenPamChristineIrwinMattScottSallyAntaeus and Cameron