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Some items in our catalogs may be out of print or currently unavailable. All prices subject to change (we only change our prices when our costs change). We will always try to inform you of updated prices. Email our mailorder department for availability status. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.



Aquarius Records
New Arrivals #285
08th February 2008



Beloved Customers and Friends:

Welcome to another AQ-list! Good stuff we hope you'll find as always. Three records of the week, a zillion highlights, and the remainder is pretty cool too.

Meant to mention this last week: in case you've been wondering, no we didn't open up another shop over on Castro Street. Why would you think this? Well 'cause right now Gus Van Zandt is shooting a biopic about Harvey Milk (the tragically assassinated San Francisco supervisor / gay rights hero, not the band), starring Sean Penn. And back in the '70s, Aquarius was once located right next door to Harvey Milk's camera shop on Castro Street. So the movie folks have recreated the '70s Castro street scene, including creating a sorta "psychedelic" looking imaginary mock up of the Aquarius storefront in its old spot. Look for it in the film when it comes out, eventually. They even called us to see if we had an old sign they could use, we didn't, so they made their own. Reminds us that one of these days, we'd like to put together a page on our website getting in depth into Aquarius' lengthy history. Even some of us who have been here for over a decade have a lot to learn!

Thanks to everyone who sent in their 2007 Top Tens before our Feb. 1st deadline. We'll be compiling them to put 'em up on our website soon (as quick as we can, seriously). And also randomly selecting our two gift certificate winners... but it's getting late now so we'll do it next week, ok?

And also all you mailorder folks, thanks for bearing with us the last two weeks while we transitioned to a new mailorder team here at AQ. We're still playing catch up just a little bit but things ARE improving... we really appreciate everyone's patience, and your understanding of the fact that 'cause of the, ah, unique way we do things here at AQ (like, writing all these crazy reviews) we sometimes get a bit behind in some other areas. We know you wouldn't want us to put off doing a list just to answer your emails, or vice versa, so we try to do it all, but as you may or may not know, we are a pretty small operation. Getting bigger and better all the time though we hope, and we couldn't do it without you!

Locals, we're having another instore performance this Sunday. SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! Please come down and check it out:

   two short sets beginning at 4pm Sunday February 10th by

   Jozef Van Wissem -- avantgarde classical lute (yes, lute!) improviser from Holland.
   Tetuzi Akiyama -- onkyo acoustic guitar experimentalist from Japan.

   anyone into the "wooden guitar" type of thing should dig this, we're pretty excited.

Also thanks to everybody who showed up for the very well-attended and totally amazing instore performance that British 12-string guitar picker James Blackshaw graced us with this past Tuesday. We took some pictures and video, perhaps we'll get it up on our website one of these days...

And thanks to AQ pal Kurt Wolff, who wrote up the instore, and said some awful sweet things about aQ. Check it out:

http://music.download.com/8301-5_32-9866141-13.html

Also, we're happy to be co-presenting the Huun Huur Tu show on February 26th at the Great American Music Hall. Huun Huur Tu are one of the most important groups from Tuva, and masters of throat singing, their music is haunting and mysterious, gorgeous and totally unique. We saw them the last time they were here and it was one of the best shows we had EVER seen.
We're giving away two pairs of tickets, so if you want a chance at those tix, send an email to store@aquariusrecords.org with:

HUUN HUUR TU TIX

in the subject line, will pick out two names at random, each person will get a pair of tickets! Be sure to include your full name, email and phone number.

As we said, three (3) Records Of The Week. One from a prevous ROTW honoree, Nada Surf. Awesome pop music, maybe the pop record of the year so far. Also, weirdo popster (and part of the Paw Tracks family) John Maus steps out with his amazing solo disc, another contender for pop record of the year, but WAY weirder. And thirdly, at long last a proper reissue of the hard-to-find debut Deadboy And The Elephantmen album, now credited to band leader Dax Riggs.

And the zillion Highlights:

Acid Mothers Temple x 2: a heavy duty new disc from the Japanese psychedelic templars -and- an expanded cd reissue of an old vinyl classic!
Amesoeurs / Valfunde: Killer barely metal split from big time aQ faves and their weirder alter ego. Featuring folks from Alcest and Peste Noire!
Angelic Process lp: finally on vinyl, long time AQ metallic bliss out dream doom fave from this now defunct doomic duo. 
Arcade Ambiance: a reconstructed "field recording" of a video arcade, circa 1981!
Astral Social Club: number 15 in a series of glorious blown out spacey drone music from Neil Campbell's (ex-Vibracathedral Orchestra) new outfit. 
Aidan Baker: another super limited disc of understated beauty.
Ben Baruch: first time on cd for these gorgeous religious tunes from this European Cantor, cinematic and dramatic, with plenty of that 78 record crackle we love.
Birchville Cat Motel: a new single song epic, on the dreamy drone-y side. Super lovely. On Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk label. 
Black Vomit / Rape Rack: cd-r split of True Sheffield Black Psychedelia!
Bonny Prince Billy: a new live record, expensive import, but worth it!
Brown Jenkins: some of the weirdest, murkiest, wooziest, droniest one man black metal you'll ever hear. From Texas!
Gavin Bryars / Philip Jeck / Alter Ego: Bryars' classic piece gets reimagined with help from Jeck and his arsenal of crackling vinyl.
Burmese / Cadaver Eyes: Local grindlords do battle with Israeli noise commandos. Everyone will be destroyed.
Burning Witch: long out of print doom classics compiled and reissued, pre-Sunn 0))), pre-Khanate. Essential heaviness.
Chessie: First record in seven years from this electronica shoegaze indie glitch duo. 
Daft Punk: Live record. If you weren't there, you'll at least know what it sounded like.
Dead Raven Choir: doomic dirgey blackened covers of songs by Neko Case, Townes Van Zandt, Cole Porter, and more!
Dengue Fever: killer Southeast Asian psych pop from these American indie rockers with Cambodian pop princess Chhom Nimol on vocals. Captivating!
Earth pic disc: the last Earth record on fancy and of course super limited picture disc!
Serge Gainsbourg: psychedelic Serge! essential. 
Mark Gergis + Alan Bishop - Sumatran Folk Cinema dvd: A whirlwind musical and visual tour from the Sublime Frequencies folks. 
Gist: dreamy indie pop from Young Marble Giants 
Glass Candy: amazing electronic pop, sassy, sultry, dark and cosmic.
Gluttony: Black metal guitar synth madness, the JAZZ disc. WTF indeed!!
Gnaw Their Tongues: brutal, industrial psychedelic, operatic, ambient black noise. So totally wacked and utterly amazing. 
Gown: Gwon is joined by Sunburned Hand Of The Man for a good old fashioned psych noise folk jam.
Grey Daturas: lp only two song ep of blissy psychedelic drones from these Aussie noisemakers. Their loveliest yet. 
Guapo lp: classic modern UK prog, on vinyl for the first time, super deluxe import!
Half Makeshift: doomic atmospheres of piano, glitch and drone, gorgeous!
Hello Blue Roses: Destroyer side project, strange sweet soft rock. 
Hijokaidan: for Japanese noise fanatics, a live disc from one of your faves!
Iron Lung: Modern power violence from this Northwestern guitar and drums duo. 
Jeremy Jay: brand new 7" from our favorite dour popster. 
Machinefabriek lp: a classic long time aQ fave on super deluxe vinyl.
Gerard Manset: French psychedelic pop gem. Long overdue reissue.
Hisham Mayet - Musical Brotherhoods From The Trans-Saharan Highway dvd:
Mucca Pazza: bad ass, super fun marching band madness. 
Nadja x 2: one old classic on vinyl for the first time, and an out of print cd-r, reissued on cd from this bliss-doom duo.
Orcrilim: multitracked black metallish minimalism from insane guitarist Mick Barr!
Ozmadawn: modern krautdrone psychedelia, heavy and space-y and so awesome. 
Paavoharju lp: classic Finnish loveliness finally on vinyl.
Peste Noire: double cassette box set, collecting all the old demos from these French black metal freeks. 
Primordial: epic Irish black metal brilliance, melodic and majestic!
Shit And Shine: A sprawling double lp from this multiple drummered, multipled bass-ed UK combo, weirder and more bizarrely varied than ever. 
Sightings: a much more polished and rhythm based offering from these avant noisemakers. 
Sound Dimension: collection of classics from Studi One's house band. 
Mitsuru Tabata: psychedelic solo set from Zeni Geva/Acid Mothers Temple guitarist!
Torch Of War: Total and utter Trnsylvanian Hunger worship.
Bjorn Torske: playful and smart electronic music from Norway.
Tzesne: More dark and mysterious undersea drones from Mystery Sea. 
V/A Achtung: more surprisingly swinging grooves from '60s and '70s Germany!
V/A Disco Not Disco 3: volume three in this series of killer left field disco and post punk dance music.
V/A Nigeria Special: massive collection of modern highlife and African blues. 
V/A Rare Youth: killer bargain priced 2cd collection of Rhode Island noise rock, compiled by Geoff Mullen. 
Yamataka Eye: import disc of remixes by the Boredoms leader!

And of course much more stuff on this list is cool too. In particular, check out the DVD section, 'cause in addtion to the two Sublime Freqencies films in the highlights, there's a couple other rad DVD releases this week. One's a brilliantly fucked and funny fake drum instructional video from Fred Armisen. The other is a DVD+3"cd release from our heavy instrumental post rock pals Pelican, the 3" portion including their previously vinyl-only Pink Mammoth tracks!

And then there's a new Kelly Stoltz, a new one from Dead Meadow, new Mars Volta, Witchcraft's The Alchemist finally on vinyl, a new Xiu Xiu, two Michael Rother reissues and more more more more!!! As always, it's getting really late, so we're gonna wrap this up. 

Thanks as always to everyone! Happy Valentines Day!
Now on with the list...


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And as always, thanks for reading the list, passing it on to all your friends who love weird music, shopping at our store, turning -us- on to all sort of great stuff, and helping us spread the word and get all this great music to the people who love it. YOU!! And as always, please realize that we work really hard on the list, so if you find out about stuff through us, please try to buy your records from us. That way we can keep on doing what we do, and we'll always be here with our ears to the ground, and with cds full of metalcore pitbulls, death metal parrots, gamelan playing elephants, recordings of glaciers cracking, ice melting, zamboni's, life support systems, drag races, audience applause, and of course self flagellating Norwegian dwarves, moaning telephone wires, recorded exorcisms, acapella straight edge metalcore, high school battles of the bands, movie theater organ music, Christian psychedelic folk, Bhangra Black Sabbath as well as all the metal, indie rock, electronica, punk rock, reggae, dub, sixties psych, krautrock, classic rock, country and anything else your heart may desire. So thanks. A bunch!

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Remember, give our STREAMING NEW ARRIVALS RADIO THING a try! (mp3 stream)

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----* Records of the Week :
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album cover NADA SURF Lucky (Barsuk) cd 13.98
It's always the records we love the most, and listen to the most, that are the hardest to describe. Hmmm. As we were writing that, we realized it sounded familiar and what do you know? That's almost exactly how we started our review of the last Nada Surf record. We've joked before, that instead of rambling on and and on and gushing like we often do, we should just write what we usually tell people in the store: "Just buy it. It's AWESOME!!!" But because some folks now do base their idea of a record's importance on the length of the review, we'll go ahead and try to explain exactly why Lucky is so awesome and why you should absolutely buy it, and most importantly why it's almost for sure our:
POP RECORD OF THE YEAR. Sure it's only February. But it was a done deal two songs in. And sure, we're hoping some record will be able to knock Lucky out of its top spot, but it seems very very unlikely.
And while even after probably 100 listens, Lucky doesn't seem quite as genius as it's predecessor The Weight Is A Gift, it gets a little closer every listen.
For those who somehow missed out on the whole Nada Surf phenomenon, they had a HUGE hit back in the nineties, "Popular", you'd know it if you heard it. And it got played enough to become one of THOSE songs you never wanted to hear again. But as with most one hit wonders, they ended up dropped and broke, another victim of the unforgiving major label machinery. They sort of just disappeared after that, almost completely, until years later they resurfaced with a brand new record, on a cool little indie label, and an almost entirely new sound. Lush and introspective, but super rocking at the same time, gorgeous vocal harmonies, amazing melodies, incredible hooks, and really funny, bittersweet lyrics. The next one was even better, another record of the week in fact. The Weight Is A Gift instantly became one of our favorite records of not just that year, but ever. Played to death, every song practically perfect. Heavy, dark, pretty, poppy, and so so so catchy.
A week or so ago, totally unexpected, Lucky showed up in the mail, and from the first song, we knew we'd end up loving this one too. But like almost all of our favorite pop records, it wasn't immediate. It took some listens for the songs to blossom, for the hooks to sink in, for the subtleties to reveal themselves. But as they did, and continue to do, the record just became that much deeper, the sound that much more complex. Instantly catchy throwaway pop has a very limited lifespan, but complicated, grown up pop music, deftly composed and executed, infused with soul and passion, humor and emotion, well, those are the kind of songs that stick. And this record is chock full of those sorts of songs. "Whose Authority" could have come straight off The Weight Is A Gift, with its incredible hook and chorus, then there's the churning minor key groove of "Weightless", dark and heavy, but shot through with pop sunlight, the sweet jangle of "I Like What You Say" with yet another impossibly catchy chorus, "The Fox" is the darkest and brooding of the bunch, but it too manages to remain catchy and pretty. It's hard to pick out songs, since like most great albums, it is an album, the songs working together as much as they work on their own. Fucking brilliant. Again. As much as we love all that crazy weird shit, sometimes nothing does it for us like perfect perfect pop.
MPEG Stream: "See These Bones"
MPEG Stream: "Whose Authority"
MPEG Stream: "Weightless"

album cover MAUS, JOHN Love Is Real (Upset! The Rhythm) cd 15.98
The year is only just beginning but there have already been some amazing new records released that we're pretty sure will end up on our favorites of '08 list. This new outing by the enigmatic John Maus is one of them and it might just be the most engrossing and addicting albums we've been hooked on in a long time!
Best and barley known in the past as being loosely associated with the Paw Tracks family (Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Ariel Pink) Maus has made a record that will make his name definitely stand on its own. As he's created one of the most fantastical, bizarre and engaging pop records in recent memory. Warped bedroom pop with a flair for fantasy, wrapped in old fucked up synths, deep slowed down vocals, cosmic beats and a singular unique vision. Like OMD on codeine or early home demo recordings of The Cure captured on an answering machine tape that's been dubbed over way too many times. Or imagine a soundtrack to a lost early '80s movie made by both John Hughes and John Carpenter, as romantic teenage life intersects with magical apocalyptic doom! Love Is Real is as creepy and mystifying as it is heartfelt and endearing. As catchy as it is unpredictable. Out of nowhere the synths will rise to crazy loud levels or Maus will let out a haunting scream, and even after listening to this album hundreds of time as we have obsessively already, those parts still jump out, scare, startle and thrill us every time we listen.
Start to finish the album is impeccable. Songs lead into each other perfectly, the pacing is dead on, and every single track on the record belongs where it is and has a weight of its own. Whether it's sounding like the muddiest version of a Psychedelic Furs track or tapping into a bizarre drugged out cosmic disco excursion or having a freaked out panic attack, the record pulls from so many directions while always sounding like a completely other universe. This is what fantasy sounds like when the world around you is falling apart. Totally amazing!
MPEG Stream: "Heaven Is Real"
MPEG Stream: "My Whole Worlds Coming Apart"
MPEG Stream: "Tenebrae"

album cover RIGGS, DAX If This Is Hell, Then I'm Lucky (Fat Possum) cd 14.98
As always, we were way ahead of the curve. You were too, right there with us. Going all the way back to Acid Bath, that seminal NOLA rock band, that somehow combined Eyehategod style sludge, and groovy dramatic emotional rock a la Alice In Chains or Katatonia or Jeff Buckley, we were proclaiming that not only should Acid Bath have been HUGE, but AB frontman Dax Riggs should be a rock star. So here we are over ten years later, and all that time, Riggs has continued on, first with Agents Of Oblivion, then Deadboy And The Elephantmen, all groups and records we LOVED, and played incessantly, but still, Dax and co. lurked way underground, barely even making a ripple in the mainstream music world.
But come last year, Riggs resurfaced, performing live and releasing a pretty decent disc (that we've yet to review), and suddenly being pushed hard, his sound, not all that different from Agents Of Oblivion, but now with some promotional real label muscle behind him. Unfortunately, not much happened with his solo record, so it was time for plan B, the first Deadboy And The Elephantmen record, re-released as a Riggs sort-of-solo record. Fair enough. We proclaimed it genius way way back when, and time has done nothing but demonstrate what a killer slab of dark grooviness and intensely emotional heaviness this record is, was and continues to be. So since lots of folks may not have been around when we first gushed about this disc, figured this was the perfect time to gush again.
Years and years ago, the big rock n' roll sleeper hit here at Aquarius had to be the awesome Agents Of Oblivion album, featuring two crucial ex-members of the late lamented cult band Acid Bath. Heavy, poppy, psychedelic rock with vocalist Dax Riggs crooning beautifully over it all. We shoulda made it record of the week, we all thought in retrospect. It became one of our favorite records EVER. We were really bummed then to hear that the Agents, like Acid Bath before 'em, broke up not long after the album's release. But, rumors filtered in that Dax and a new crew of New Orleans n'er-do-wells had formed a new band with the unlikely name of Deadboy and the Elephantmen to carry on where the Agents left off. Allan confirmed this when he happened to visit N.O. and was lucky enough to catch a live performance from this new band. They had a demo out then, and we anticipated a full album release on some big label to appear soon...we waited...and waited... and eventually a Deadboy record did come out, but the band had to release it themselves, since once again, the big labels had no idea and dropped the ball big time. Mystifiying, 'cause Dax is a rock star if ever there was one, and these guys should have been HUGE. This record is epic and darkly dramatic, heavy and groovy and weird as fuck, but also catchy and beautiful. Totally accessible yet morbidly underground, we hear everything from some voodoo Alice Cooper darkness and drama, to a little Aerosmith swagger, to the heaviness and angst of Alice In Chains of course -- Acid Bath was always an AIC meets EHG (Eyehategod) hybrid, in a really good way. Radiohead's "Ok Computer" is hinted at too, and Jeff Buckley, as the music combines weirdly sensitive melodicism and dark atmosphere inspired by their hometown's swamps and cemeteries. Dax is as impressive as ever, he really *sings*, drawing out vowels over a dozen notes. His vocals are oddly warm and comforting but also anguished and intense. While the songwriting on this album does not quite match the relatively flowery yet heavy tunesmithery of the Agents of Oblivion album, and neither does the instrumentation call attention to itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing here as it lets Dax' voice take center stage and he... just... wails. He's like a sludge metal Bowie, flamboyant, and dramatic, his vocals impossibly emotive and intense. Sometimes despairing, sometimes incantatory. Oh the angst! And the music is a perfect match, going from brooding and minor key, to explosive and space-y. For fans of Alice in Chains, Acid Bath/Agents of Oblivion (of course), Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees, and Woven Hand. It may have taken a decade, but finally the rest of the world can discover what some of us knew all alongŠ
MPEG Stream: "Strange Television"
MPEG Stream: "Waking Up Insane"
MPEG Stream: "Song With No Name"
MPEG Stream: "Grave Beyond Windows"

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----* Highlights :
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album cover ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. 41st Century Splendid Man Returns (Essence) cd 14.98
It's taken 6 years, but finally, one of our favorite Acid Mothers Temple records is available again, with fancy new artwork and lots of extra music!
Originally released as the first (and only) installment in tUMULt's aborted picture disc series, 41st Century Splendid Man still ranks as one of AMT's finest moments as far as we're concerned. This stuff comes from WAY before these Japanese avant-hippy heroes began pumping out a brand new release every few weeks. When this psychbomb dropped, these guys were still cloaked in mystery, some fucked up weirdo psychrock commune whose sound was as mysterious and indescribable as whatever strange corner of the universe these guys and gals called home.
The sound is epic and tripped out and druggy, blown out and blissfully psychedelic, AMT at their absolute prime, and one of the tracks features special guest star Tatsuya Yoshida of the Ruins! The original was three extended tracks (35 + minutes) of ultra divine transcendental psych-drone. "41st Century Splendid Man" has to be the most beautiful track AMT have ever recorded. Uncharacteristically tranquil and captivatingly beautiful. Droning, shimmering chimes coalesce into some sort of cosmic Ur-drone, punctuated by simple caveman thuds and epic swooshes, resulting in a grand and gorgeous ambience! The other two tracks from the original 12", "Genesis Of Humanity" and "Dalai Gama", are almost like a single track separated into two movements. The first sees AMT back on more familiar ground, with swooping synths and freak out guitar. A stumbling kosmic krautrock, with motorik rhythms and free guitar, amidst a swampy wash of rumbling low end and squealing synths. The track erupts into bubbling atonal out-rock exploration splattered with mad scientist synthesisers as the whole thing slowly mutates into 'cosmic slop' of the nth degree, becoming gradually free-er and free-er. The second 'movement' is all slithery free jazz with bubbling cauldrons of synth sputter, wild keyboards and Can-like rhythms until the whole thing gets all dreamy, eventually blissing out completely.
For this cd reissue, from Brazilian label Essence, there are two extra tracks tacked on that perfectly compliment the three originals. The cd opener, "Ruck Zuck", is an unhinged Hawkwind style heart of the sun, black hole freaked out space jam, a motorik krautrock groove, buried in FX and clouds of shimmer and skree, strange squealing vocals, streaks of feedback and dense swaths of whir and bloop and bleep.
The disc closes with the bizarrely titled "Hell Eskimo Or Polyhedral Mu", a 14 plus minute abstract ambient epic, that twists and contorts, slithers and creeps, beginning as a full on brain melting drug jam eventually transforming into a blissy jazzy post rocky slither that floats hypnotically through glistening clouds of glimmer and shimmer and sparkle, a super nova dappled interstellar drift that sounds a bit like a more damaged psychedelic Necks. Fuck yeah.
Super gorgeous deluxe packaging, a full color Stoughton style paste on gatefold, with the original cover art subtly altered on the cover (sorry, no naked ladies) and some awesome psychedelic liner notes on the inside. And just to avoid any collector confusion, the notes mention the original 41st AMT being a 10", but as mentioned above it was in fact a picture disc 12"! This cd reissue, while not nearly as limited as the 12", is still limited, this time to only 1000 COPIES!
WAY WAY WAY recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "41st Century Splendid Man"
MPEG Stream: "Hell Eskimo Or Polyhedral Mu"

album cover ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE AND THE COSMIC INFERNO Ominous From The Cosmic Inferno (Essence) cd 14.98
*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert*
Heck, Acid Mothers Temple overload! Essence Music of Brazil has brought us not one but TWO Acid Mothers Temple discs this week: the expanded reissue of 41st Century Splendid Man originally released as a picture disc on Andee's tUMULt label, and also this brand new album. Well AMT fans are always ready for more product, aren't they? Better be! 'Cause the cosmic vibes of which Makoto Kawabata and friends are but the earthly vessels for are not waiting for you to pay off those student loans or get that raise... No, they mean to be heard NOW and probably again next week, even if their devotees need to start selling their plasma to keep up with AMT's releases. If you have to choose between paying the rent and picking up another AMT cd like this one, we're confident you'll make the right choice. And if it makes you feel any better, this IS a pretty great AMT album! Great song titles too, and we're not being sarcastic: "Na Na Hey Hey From The Cosmic Inferno", "Nipples In The Dream Woods", and "Golem Rock" are but three of 'em. These Japanese neo-kraut psychedelic voyagers offer up the jams to go with such titles, that's for sure. If AMT's Electric Heavyland is one of your faves, this ought to be right up your acid rock alley.
The disc opens with the wild, wah-wahed guitar excess of "Ecstasy In Hell" and really never lets up, pounding on through the nearly 19-minute "Nipples...", spacey fx in full effect. A darkly droned-out detour is however taken on the next 17 minute track, "Omen Amen", kind of a ceremonial-sounding, folky trance ritual, followed for the next 13 minutes by the riff-repetition of "Dark Side Of The Apocalypse", sounding something like a hypothetical Hawkwind / Les Rallizes Denudes summit. That brings us to "Golem Rock", a garagey number that cranks up the FUZZ big time. And then "Na Na Hey Hey..." provides a surprisingly quiet, spaced-out, and sorta silly coda to the whole thing, with electronically effected voices chanting you know what...
And this gets extra bonus points for the awesome packaging, the miniature LP-styled gatefold sleeve opening up to reveal a rad pop-up book style gimmick inside!
MPEG Stream: "Ecstasy In Hell"
MPEG Stream: "Golem Rock"

album cover AMESOEURS / VALFUNDE split (De Profundis) 7" 10.98
Recently, we've been marveling at the fact, that otherwise troo, grim, cvlt metalheads, seem to be totally smitten with this new wave of blissed out dreamy, barely metal black metal. Most notably, Alcest, who are more My Bloody Valentine than Burzum, and Alcest mainman Neige's other not very metal project Amesoeurs. Sure that stuff is epic and sweeping and gorgeously gauzy, but it's barely metal, let alone BLACK metal. But here we are, anything from either of those outfits is like black gold to the black metalheads world wide.
Well, if the most recent Alcest had you wondering about the above, then this single will definitely be the true test. We'd been waiting ages for a new Amesoeurs record, the last ep, was an all time favorite around here, still heavy, but also mathy, and post rocky, and pretty damn shoegazey all at once. Well this most recent single, one brand new song, jettisons all traces of metal entirely. The result is pretty great, but it's hard for us to imagine metalheads digging this much. More than metal, it sounds like nineties indie rock, college rock, the female vocals are way up in front, over a jangly guitar, and super sunshiney major key melodies, hard not to think of stuff like Jale, Helium and Scrawl, which is not a bad thing at all, just a not very metal thing. But it's a killer song, and back in the day, these guys would have been huge on Simple Machines or K or one of those labels. Can't wait to hear what they do with the next full length.
The flipside features a band called Valfunde, which is essentially the exact same band, except with the addition of Peste Noire mainman Famine, and he brings a little bit of metal and a whole lot of what the fuck to the proceedings. The first Valfunde track begins much like the Amesoeurs track, strummed clean guitar, a bit of jangle, minor key, but over that, another guitar, super distorted and woozy, spills out a convoluted and stumbling sea sick melody, the sound is maniacal and druggy, almost like someone is constantly and randomly twisting the tuning pegs while the guitar is being played blindfolded. The result is a song that sounds a bit like a funhouse mirror sea shanty, dizzying and completely and awesomely fucked up. The second track is the only sort-of-metal thing going on here, with a midtempo Burzumy buzz, creepy haunted house organ, while the vocals are delivered in a raspy demonic shriek, eventually joined by soaring epic guitar leads, not as damaged as the first track, but still pretty freaky, in that distinctly Peste Noire way.
Good stuff for sure, but metalheads be warned, everyone else, as long as you're up for some weird shit, this might just hit the spot...

album cover ANGELIC PROCESS, THE Weighing Souls With Sand (Senor Hernandez / Roadburn) 2lp 26.00
The sadly now defunct dronedoombliss duo's swansong, available as a super deluxe double lp for a very limited time...
What can we say that we haven't already said about this dynamic dronedirgedoom duo? Seriously, have a look at any of the other reviews we've written about The Angelic Process, and see us gush like crazy, what's not to love? Gorgeous swirling black ambience, massive crushing metallic pummel, soaring majestic melodies, the sound somehow heavy and brutal, but washed out and gauzy, a thick My Bloody Valentine haze draped over everything, voices drift amidst the buzz like paper angels dropped into a roaring fire. Everything glistening and sparkling, glimmering and shimmering, then roaring and grinding and washing over you like some suffocating black tide. 
All of their records are fantastic, each feels and sounds like a continuation of the one before it. As if they were all movements in some metallic black hole symphony, with each record, each movement, offering up its own subtle twist on the AP's black buzzing sound world. This latest might be the most sonically varied of the bunch. It's been out for a while now, but we had been working our way through the older titles first.
The overall sound like the others is warped and warbly, a slow crawl though an alien world, like every note and melody is being twisted and bent, tangled up into shapes that confuse and confound, the distortion so thick and viscous it seems to be able to alter the natural order, to use gravity as just another effect, ton-of-bricks downtuned guitars don't fall forward like an avalanche, they seem to drift like billowy black clouds somehow, slabs of low end fall upward, guitars slither in reverse, vocals twist inside out, a gorgeous multidimensional swirl of sound, that occasionally coalesces into a roiling propulsive thunderstorm of blissed out doom. Songs grow from whispers into roars, a black doom Godspeed, but the heavy parts aren't just heavy, they're unearthly, unreal, melodies are pulled apart into sparkling notes that spin and soar, dancing atop a churning miasma of crush and crunch. The sound is an impossible blend of light and dark, evil and good, beauty and utter and complete horror. Like Katatonia broadcast through a wall of clothes dryers, doom metal performed by a symphony of leaf blowers tuned to drop-D, pop songs composed using cement mixers filled with gold bricks, a DJ spinning My Bloody Valentine over diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter remixed by Tim Hecker, all nestled amidst dreamy drifts of hushed shimmer and soft focus ambience.
We could go on and on and on and on and on and on.... needless to say, an absolutely essential slab of blissed out dreamdronedoooooooooooooooooooooooooom...
MPEG Stream: "The Promise Of Snakes"
MPEG Stream: "Million Year Summer"
MPEG Stream: "The Resonance Of Goodbye"

album cover ARCADE AMBIANCE '81 (GDG) cd-r 12.98
You know we love field recordings and "environmental sounds". And you know we love '80s arcade games (witness the vintage Tron and Rastan machines that now make their home in our shop). So when we found out about these "Aracade Ambiance" discs -- which are exactly what the name implies -- we had to have them, and suspect that more than a few of our customers will want 'em too. There's three volumes in this professionally reproduced cd-r series, 1981, 1983, and 1986. We have all three but thought we'd get more of this first and earliest entry to highlight it on our list, this time.
It's one hour of "authentic" eighties video arcade sounds, what you'd hear if you paid a visit to a busy, bustling arcade back in '81. The blips and beeps and blasts of video violence, memorable musical themes from classic games, some crowd noises and of course the occasional clatter of the coin changer/token machine... it's just like we're ten years old again and skipping school. Those of us of a certain age that is -- some of the staff here at AQ weren't even born back then. Actually I might have been a little older before I spent a lot of time hanging out in the local arcades, as when younger I recall having bad day at the "Pennsylvania Spacetion" when some bullies took my tokens... Anyway if you were shooting aliens and asteroids, running mazes and dodging monsters way back when, this is gonna be a definite nostalgia trip!
We put "authentic" in quotes above 'cause this is actually a bit like the Jurassic Soundscapes cd we highlighted on our last list. The fellow who put these together didn't have the amazing foresight to drag a tape recorder out to a real video arcade back in '81. Nor was he able to convert a Time Pilot game into an actual time machine, though there's a good chance that he's dreamed of such a thing (which he probably wouldn't use to meet Jesus or kill Hitler or buy Google stock but instead to blow quarters at his local long-gone eighties arcade). "Composer" Andy Hoyle (whose face appears on the back cover of these discs, for some reason) wanted to create an background ambient soundscape to help give the impression that when playing retro games on his home console, he was actually in an arcade back in the day. Carefully collaging the musical cues and sound effects from period video games (this '81 set including the likes of Centipede, Asteroids, Gorf, PacMan, Defender, Frogger, Qix, Berzerk, Crazy Climber, Missile Command, Rally X, Space Invaders, Tempest, Galaga, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, and many more) with some more generic sounds recorded in a modern day arcade, Hoyle has artificially (and very convincingly!!) re-created what an arcade in 1981 actually would have sounded like. Not unlike the way field recordist Jean-Luc Herelle enabled us to hear the trompings and trumpetings of the dinosaurs of the Jurassic, 200 million years ago... It's a dense, non-looping, almost-hypnotic soundscape that Hoyle has sampled and sequenced. Heck it IS hypnotic for those of us in love with arcades!
And like we said, we also have copies of Arcade Ambiance '83 and '86 available, they're great too, each one guaranteed to bring back remarkably specific memories to those who wasted afternoons (and many quarters) during the golden age of arcade gaming... you can practically smell the cigarette smoke (that's right, they allowed smoking in arcades, and most machines had burns on 'em from players resting their cigarettes) and bask in the imagined video glow. Good times!
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 8"

album cover ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB #15 (self released) cd-r 10.98
It's that time again, another volume in Astral Social Club's ever expanding self released cd-r series. It's been only a few months since the last one, but who's complaining? If we didn't have to work and do stuff and eat, and all that, we might just spend all our time high as a kite, sprawled out on a big ol' fuzzy sofa, with Astral Social Club blasting through 1000 watt quadraphonic speakers mounted in the ceiling.
But, as it is, we'll just have to make do rocking these cd-r's in our iPods. Which is fine, as this stuff is perfect to drown out daily life, or to fill your head with whirs and buzzes, drone and spaced out psych, to chillout, drift off, or to groove to on some alien dancefloor, or to blast from your strange sleek pod like vehicle as you speed down some alien highway. Neil Campbell, ex-Vibracathedral Orchestra, the man behind ASC, continues to dabble in dance music, as well as spacekraut, taking his usual Sunroof!-ed ragas, into all sorts of new directions. Sure the core of the sound is still the circular looped hypnotic longform drone, but many of the tracks here get twisted into strange mesmerizing rhythms, some bordering on dance grooves, but even at its 'funkiest' it's still blissy and droney and spaced out and druggy. A few of these tracks still show that Campbell can hold his own within the dreamdrone set, offering up transcendental slabs of glistening high end that Sunroof! Or Birchville would love to call their own, but then right after, will come some super minimal percussive flutter, some swirling abstract FX-scape, or some pounding almost house sounding banger. But all filtered through Campbell's uniquely cracked effects-soaked, drug-infused, blissed out, space drone soundworld.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Four"

album cover BAKER, AIDAN Live From The Rotunda (Philadelphia, PA, February 2007) (Gears Of Sand) cd-r 12.98
Not one, but TWO new Aidan Baker releases this time around, the reissue of Nadja's out of print cd-r Bliss Torn From Emptiness, and this, an ultra limited live document, of Baker performing in Philadelphia in February of 2007.
A gorgeous set of deep dark ambient drones, minimal, ghostly, haunting, slow building, but never really reaching resolution, instead building all sorts of glorious tension, then slowly fading out again. The opener, is a slowly swirling sea of deep dark tones, almost bell like, but spread out into lugubrious melodies, softly pulsing and gently drifting. The middle two tracks are much less bass heavy, instead offering up hisses and whirs, the creepy exhalations of some old abandoned industrial wasteland, notes and tones and chimes, slowly making their way up from the abyss, through the hazy, gauzey atmosphere, indistinct and blurred, but gradually taking shape, and assembling themselves into almost-melodies.
The final and longest track, begins super spare, long tones, and single notes let loose in an expanse of soft shimmer and lots and lots of space, like someone playing a guitar, in slow motion, miles away, the sounds taking forever to reach the speakers, and once they do, they've degraded and changed, merely shadows of the original sounds they once were. But the track explodes near the end into a glorious polyphonic sonic sunburst, streaks of high end skree shot skyward, the crowd bathed in the white glow of this pulsing, organic, slowly expanding sound. And with all live shows like this, the smattering of applause at the end is so surprising, like there were only maybe 20 people there (which there probably were) as the sound is so massive, it's hard not to imagine that Baker wasn't in some huge cathedral, behind a massive bank of lights and soundmakers, instead of hunched over his gear in some dingy little club.
Recorded by Scott Slimm, who runs the aRCHIVE label (as well as recording many of the live aRCHIVE releases), and gorgeously packaged in an elaborate fold over origami style cardstock sleeve, silkscreened, each one hand numbered, with a full color insert, and of course... LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

album cover BARUCH, BEN The Complete Recordings 1949-1950 (Sub Rosa) 2cd 16.98
Not sure if a lapsed Jew is anything like a lapsed Catholic. But if it is, I definitely used to live with one. We joked that I was way more of a Jew than he was. I would make matzah brie and matzoh ball soupŠ OK, well maybe my Jewishness didn't extend much beyond the kitchen, but that was STILL more Jewish than my lapsed housemate.
What's the point of all that? Well, I of course know nothing about Jewish religious music either really, cantors, synagogal religious songs, but I know what I like. And I have been LOVING this collection of old 78s by Yitshak Jacques Zaludkowski, aka Ben Baruch. A two disc set that collects his complete recorded output, originally released as 78 rpm picture discs in 1950 on Saturn Records. Running the gamut from religious, songs -about- religious topics, and songs about the inception of the state of Israel, all sung in Hebrew, Baruch's music is gorgeous and emotive, his voice a lush rich baritone, the music super dramatic and orchestral. Strings swoon beneath Baruch's powerful croon, some folks here thought it sounded like the music in the sad parts of Disney movies, which is not all that far off. His voice actually sounds a bit like Thurl Ravenscroft, who sings the Haunted Mansion song. Operatic and darkly emotional, Baruch weaves dreamy, haunting tableaus, every song sounds like it was pulled from some mysterious old film, jazz, big band, swing, all lushly underpinning Baruch's gorgeous smooth voice. And of course, since they're mastered from old 78's, there's plenty of crackle and pop and tape hiss, wrapped warmly and lovingly around every note. In fact, fans of the recent record of the week Victrola Favorites will probably dig this too! So gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Zol Nokh Zayn Shabbes"
MPEG Stream: "Dos Lempi"
MPEG Stream: "Ruah"

album cover BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven (Pica Disk) cd 14.98
Noisemaker Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk label offers us three brand new blasts of delightful noisiness. Two discs of SERIOUS noise from Incapacitants and Hijokaidan, and this one of softer prettier noise, from long time aQ favorite Campbell Kneale, aka Birchville Cat Motel.
And even by BCM standards, Gunpowder Temple of Heaven is pretty pretty noise. One long meditative ur-drone, shimmering, glistening layers of reverberating sound, like Spacemen 3 played Phill Niblock. The sort of dense dronemusic, that becomes alive when listened to closely. The various sounds sprawling and twisting, changing shapes, timbres shifting, overtones beating, subtle rhythms, ghostly melodies, all this going on just below the surface. The surface being long thick, rich tones, each drifting subtly, tonal colors gradually changing.
What begins as soft and shimmery, soon builds to something more gritty and dense, glistening sonic flares smeared into roiling swirls of blinding sound. Eventually, the rough edges are worn away, and the tone becomes more and more pure, smoother and more rich, the sound of organs, and lilting melodies surfacing, the sounds gentler, their interactions with each other more complimentary, soothing, dreamlike, mesmerizing, various notes and tones gradually sloughing off, leaving less and less sound, the drone becoming more fine, more simple, until finally, a single note wavers and then blinks out. Divine!
Super deluxe gorgeous packaging. Gatefold digipak, with thick velvet backing for the cd, and a booklet with an awesome BCM essay from the Dead C's Bruce Russell.
MPEG Stream: "Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven (excerpt)"

album cover BLACK VOMIT / RAPE RACK split (Frequency Thirteen / Night Angels Serve) cd-r 7.98
More True Sheffield Black Psychedelia!!! Which is quickly becoming our new favorite microgenre. As the name implies, the sound is black metal, psychedelic, and of course from Sheffield in the UK. Although black and psychedelic only barely scratch the surface of what's going on with these discs. Post rock, blacknoize, krautrock, furious grind, blissed out ambience, hypnorock, all tangled up into fierce blasts of whatthefuck atmospheric heaviness. We've already listed amazing releases from Ice Bound Majesty, Skultroll and a split between Dukkha and Black Vomit (see the reviews on the AQ website for more on Treu Sheffield Black Psychedelia). And we were so smitten with Black Vomit, we figured we'd track down more from them.
So here's another blast of Black Vomit, this time teamed up with the equally distastefully monickered Rape Rack.
Black Vomit start things off with some haunting ambience, that quickly gives way to some crusty fuzzy drone, eventually erupting into some fuzzed out metallic groove, which transforms into some grunting psych power violence, the programmed drums occasionally shorting out DHR style, a blur of garage fuzz pound, murky blackness, and relentless hyperspeed krautrock. After a brief bit of ambience, the band kick out the jams on a super space-y, hyper processed Circle-style jam. Hypnotic, and relentless, the riff wrapped in FX, the drums slipping from motorik pulse to furious blast and back again, over the top, harsh howled demon vox, a weird washed out blackened krautrock, that after another brief bit of drone tranquility explodes into some straight up black buzz. Awesome. Black Vomit are like Immortal's Blizzard Beasts crossed with Circle's Zopalki. We definitely need a full length from these guys.
Rape Rack offer up their own take on black psychedelia, eschewing drums completely, for some intense textural black ambience, rough and gritty, hissy and crumbling, distorted and buzzing, melodies falling to pieces, being sucked under corrosive drones, the 16 minute epic that finishes things off, is smoother than all that, glistening shimmering cavernous expanses of digital buzz smeared into soft streaks of shadowy grey streaks.
Not sure about the last track, it's definitely too heavy and fucked up to be Rape Rack, maybe it's the two bands together, but it's a killer, furious lightspeed buzz, processed and heavily effected, the vocals deranged and over the top, huge echo-y bellows howling in clouds of reverb and delay, threatening to drown out the din below. A furious black coda, that leaves us wanting WAY more.
MPEG Stream: BLACK VOMIT "Dripping Red"
MPEG Stream: BLACK VOMIT "Witchtrial"
MPEG Stream: RAPE RACK "Gorgon"

album cover BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY Wilding In The West (P-Vine) cd 25.00
Wilding In The West, the follow up to his first live record, Summer In The South East, finds Prince Billy with full band at his side as they play lots of material from recent albums The Letting Go and Master And Everyone, recorded at shows throughout California during their 2007 tour. We love when the band gets down and dirty turning the usually quiet and folksy Bonnie Prince Billy into a rugged force to be reckoned with (check out the raw and rocking version of "Master And Everyone"!). A true troubadour and songsmith, Oldham demonstrates once again that his songs can take many different forms and can be interpreted many different ways. Along with some super charged versions of classic BPB songs there's also a really comfortable down home feeling to many of the tracks, letting the band show off their tight chops but play it laid back enough to allow the songs to travel well off the path when needed. This one's a Japanese import (hence the price tag) but luckily there is some cool packaging and photos that along with the great live performance will make bigtime Will Oldham fans want to add this to their collection for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Master & Everyone"
MPEG Stream: "O Let It Be"
MPEG Stream: "Three Questions"

album cover BROWN JENKINS Dagonite (Moribund) cd 14.98
Brown Jenkins sounds like a pretty unlikely name for a black metal band, until you realize it's from an HP Lovecraft story. And the cover is sort of an unlikely image for a black metal record as well, just two hands playing a guitar, against a field of black. But then Dagonite is a very unlikely sounding black metal record.
This one man band from Texas, manages to weave an incredibly drone-y doomy black web, no furious buzzing or relentless blasting. Instead, it's murky and woozy, warbly and dissonant, heavy on the drone and the atmosphere, there are barely any vocals and when they do surface, they are more moans and howls than actual vocals, just another layer of blacknoise. The tempos go from mid, to total doom, but are more complicated than normal, with a bit of mathiness to them, a definite post rock vibe, sometimes the black fog dissipates, allowing the riffs to lock in and actually sort of groove, but even then, it's weirdly haunting and ominous, and not really rocking, more sort of lurching and seasick.
Sometimes Brown Jenkins sounds like Velvet Cacoon slowed waaaay down, at other times they sound like a damaged druggy Ved Buens Ende, lots of loping arpeggiated melodies, and woozy riffage, but even when they're referencing other bands, they sound totally unique, a weird dark, drugged out fucked up black heaviness, as creepy and atmospheric as it is pummeling and relentless. Some sort of blackened slowcore, or post-doom blackness, fuck, who knows what to call it, but whatever it is, it's awesome. One of our favorite black metal (or whatever) records of last year (yeah, we're just getting around to reviewing it now) which will totally whet your appetite for their new record, which should be coming out soon! Can't wait.
MPEG Stream: "Blessed"
MPEG Stream: "Dagonite"

album cover BRYARS, GAVIN / PHILIP JECK / ALTER EGO The Sinking Of The Titanic (Touch Tone) cd 16.98
Not sure we remember much about Gavin Bryars original Sinking Of The Titanic, or at least past recordings and performances. We do remember digging it. A dark elegiac meditation on the sinking of that ship obviously, but also a musical metaphor for the failure of modern technology, the piece is open, and can be as short as 15 minutes, and as long as an hour plus, lots of low end, Bryars is a bass player after all, lots of samples and spoken text. That is one thing we do remember, that there tended to be way too much sampling and spoken text.
This latest performance, finds Bryars reimagining his pieces with two new collaborators, who help give the piece a whole new sound and feel. One is Italian avant chamber outfit Alter Ego, the other is long time AQ fave Philip Jeck. It's difficult to determine what Alter Ego contribute, much of the atmosphere and ambient sound and classical instrumentation we would assume, but it's not hard at all to hear what Jeck brings to the table, records and record players, hiss and crackle. It's perfect really, his gauzy dusty sonic smears, help transform the piece into a haunting snapshot from the past, an old yellowed newspaper clipping, a faded memory.
Right from the start, the piece begins with a thick layer of staticky crackle, laid over a murky throbbing bass, eventually, the crackles moving to the background, letting the soft drifting passages come to the surface, like sonic glaciers floating on a sea of hiss and fuzz, fragments of melody, and bowed strings lurk just below the surface. There's plenty of text in this version too, samples, sounds, voices, but they too are blurred and smeared and become more like voices from the past, calling out from the beyond, the thoughts and fears of ghosts and spirits. Throughout, the mood and timbre shifts, from deep murky minimalism, to soaring dramatic majesty, always slightly uneasy, subtly ominous, a gorgeously dark and mysterious trip into the past.
Not knowing better, you could definitely mistake this for a new Jeck solo record, a roomful of turntables with records by Arvo Part spinning at 16rpm, but it's more than a sonic collage, The Sinking Of The Titanic is a stunning composition, the melodies and movements, the mood and mystery, carry as much meaning as the players and their sound.
Housed in a deluxe oversized cardstock gatefold, with lots of liner notes in lieu of cover art. Cool.
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Of The Titanic (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Of The Titanic (excerpt 2)"

album cover BURMESE / CADAVER EYES split (Heart & Crossbone / New Scream Industry) cd 11.98
We'd be hard pressed to think of ANY band that could hold their own on a split record with our very own local noiseniks Burmese. But if anyone can, it's Israeli noise combo Cadaver Eyes.
But first off, holy shit are we psyched to have new music from Burmese. These guys are seriously sloooooow workers. Other than a handful of shows, we've heard nary a peep from these guys, there was the reissue of the tUMULt release on vinyl, but it's literally been years we've been waiting for a new record. Multiple lineup changes, disastrous tours, scrapped recordings, the sort of luck that has plagued these guys forever. But finally, they've beat the curse, and gotten us 11 new blasts of brutal, speaker shredding ultraviolence. Some confusion mix of Whitehouse style abstract noise, pummeling grind, damaged metal, freaked out power violence. They may be down to one drummer, but they still have two bass players, and now THREE vocalists.
They sound as good as ever, still furious and freaked out, sometimes offering up sprawling electronic dronescapes, sometimes, frantic flurries of lightning fast grind, sometimes convoluted lurching metallic crunch, and often all of the above at the same time. Hypnotic and heavy and seriously fucked up. Just another reminder, since they're loath to do it themselves outside of their sporadic releases, that these guys are quite possibly the best band in SF.
But then there's Cadaver Eyes, recorded live on WFMU, using just drums, vocals and no-input mixing board. And listening to this, it seems impossible that there's not two guitarists and multiple drummers and synths and who knows what else. The sound is dense and freaked out. Spastic spurts of strangled grind, long stretches of speaker shredding electronic buzz and skree, long drawn out abstract dronescapes of howling vox and pounding drum plods spaced WAY out, culminating in the nearly eight minute closer, beginning with the strangely titled "Ba Yom Yom" and finishing off with an absolutely unrecognizable cover of "Sweet Home Alabama", a convoluted blow out of maniacally howling vocals, sputtering percussive crunch, LOTS of feedback, and thick walls of rumbling crumbling distortion.
Awesome. And about as UN-easy listening as we can imagine.
MPEG Stream: BURMESE "War Vs. Women"
MPEG Stream: BURMESE "Hard Cell"
MPEG Stream: CADAVER EYES "Execution Procedure # Three"
MPEG Stream: CADAVER EYES "Ba Yom Yom / Sweet Home Alabama"

album cover BURNING WITCH Crippled Lucifer (Southern Lord) 2cd 17.98
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a "drop card", which is a thing that lets you download a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Predictions"
MPEG Stream: "History Of Hell (Crippled Lucifer)"

album cover CHESSIE Manifest (Plug Research) cd 11.98
It has been far too long since we've heard from Chessie. Seven years, in fact. And that sabbatical, hibernation, hiatus, or whatever you want to call it is somewhat quizzical, considering that Overnight (the 2001 album in question) had received heaps of acclaim from all across the board. For loyal Aquarius customers who happened to venture in the store around that time, Overnight was on the short list of albums that seemed to be in constant rotation here in the store, alongside the likes of Spoon's Girls Can Tell, the first New Pornographers album, Amon Duul II's Yeti, and the Andrew Chalk / Jonathan Coleclough collaboration Sumac. We have our beloved former co-worker Byram Abbott to thank for getting Overnight under our collective skin. Seven years later, Chessie works their magic once again.
A duo comprised of Stephen Gardner and Ben Bailes, Chessie operates along the borders between digitally crunched electronics and impressionist shoegazing. Gardner began his off-and-on musical career in US shoegazing indie-pop band Lorelei back in the early '90s, with a smattering of impressive singles that clearly formed the foundation for Chessie's chiming guitars grafted into an electronica context. Many of the songs on Manifest enjoy wistfully slow-burning, post-pop crescendos (e.g. Pinback, early Stereolab) as remixed through the fizzing Max/MSP patches of Fennesz. Shuffling motorik breakbeats, pierced bleeps 'n' bloops, blissed-out washes of multi-tracked guitars, and maudlin samples from muted French horns and strings pock the album's varied tracks, with occasionally lulls into hypnotic atmospherics only to snap into some truly memorable pop hooks. Had Chessie decided to incorporate a vocalist, perhaps they might be the next Postal Service; but the more adventurous route of the instrumental better serves Chessie's sensibility. A very highly recommended album, and one which will no doubt be on lost of folks 2008 top ten lists!
MPEG Stream: "Inner City"
MPEG Stream: "Long Bridge"
MPEG Stream: "High Time"
MPEG Stream: "Poughkeepsie Aflame"

album cover DAFT PUNK Alive 2007 (Virgin) cd 17.98
It's been over 6 months since Daft Punk played in San Francisco but anyone who was there will never forget it. Daft Punk proved they are one of the greatest live experiences on the planet. From an immaculate trance inducing light show, to a futuristic pyramid shaped console that they were housed in and then of course the loud, supremely danceable songs that they blasted through the amphitheater as thousands of people grinning wildly, completely let themselves go, dancing with ecstasy and an adrenalized joy that we rarely ever get to experience. Alive 2007 captures that show (and that recent tour) perfectly. It's pretty much the same set they played here as they morph many of their songs into one new track which gives a new life to many of their already well known songs from their three albums.
We're sure that at least one Daft Punk record has found its way into your subconscious (Discovery will always be our favorite!) as they are a duo who have discovered an amazing way to be accessible to such a wide range of people (ravers, metal heads, hip-hop kids, gay club scene, indie rockers, ordinary joes, etc) yet create music with such charged and creative energy. They manage to bring elements of disco, prog, house, psychedelia, funk and rock to a level of ecstatic heights rarely reached in popular music. Long live Daft Punk!!!
MPEG Stream: "Burnin' / Too Long"
MPEG Stream: "Aerodynamic Beats / Forget About The World"
MPEG Stream: "Around The World / Harder Better Faster Stronger"

album cover DEAD RAVEN CHOIR My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind (Aurora Borealis) cd 14.98
Holy crap. 30 seconds into track one of this new Dead Raven Choir opus and we're like, what the heck is goin' on? Is this really our Polish pal Smolken, the avant-folk poetry-readin' cd-r makin' black metal lovin' weirdo?? Well it must be, but that track he sure sounds like some sore-throated Japanese man, fronting an intense industrial distorto-drone metallic pipe-fight dirgerock explosion, with the sawing strings of a cello (or bass) suggesting the funereal-folk of another Smolken project, Wolfmangler.
It's not like Dead Raven Choir wasn't scary before, either in acoustic Eastern European Jandek mode or doing the (Cask Strength) black-metal-as-sheer-noise thing, but good grief! In some ways, this is the perfect, sick hybrid of those two approaches, sounding something like a weird-folk version of Khanate or SUNNO))), with blown-out bulldozer bass frequencies utterly overrunning songs that Smolken probably originally composed on acoustic guitar, sitting on a back porch somewhere, staring at the sunset. What could have been sparse folk numbers are instead fully distorted and doomful and get a big thumbs up from us.
Ok, we must admit we wrote all that before bothering to look at the song titles (or read the press-release). Now we know why some of these tunes maybe somehow sounded slightly familiar, or as if transposed from a less-dire domain... he didn't compose very many of 'em at all, instead My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind is for the most part an album of covers! 7 out of the 10 tracks here are Dead Raven Choir interpretations of some of Smolken's favorite country, folk, and popular tunes by artists/victims as dissimilar as Richard Thompson and Cole Porter (!!). They're all done in Smolken's special skewed style of outsider black metal, as described above, and needless to say most of 'em are darn close to unrecognizable! We liked this a lot to begin with, now we're even more into it knowing we're actually hearing songs by late great country western songwriter Townes Van Zandt (Smolken used to live in Texas after all), alt-country chanteuse Neko Case ("Favorite"), and even obscure New Zealand drone-pop artist G-Frenzy ("From The Stars", a song that originally appeared on an out-of-print PseudoArcana cd-r we reviewed a few years back). There's also a maritime ballad by Stan Rogers, and oh yeah, the vocals on that very first track sound Japanese 'cause it's a song, "Kigi Wa Haru", by PSF-label folk troubadour Kazuki Tomokawa, an sensible choice on Smolken's part since Tomokawa's work aligns closely with that of Kan Mikami, with whom we've compared DRC's starker acoustic guitar n' vocals tracks before.
And if you like this as much as we do, you'll be happy to learn that he has another, all-country-covers album coming up, entitled Lonesome Drinking Metal...
MPEG Stream: "Kigi Wa Haru"
MPEG Stream: "A Rosebud In June"

album cover DEAD RAVEN CHOIR My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind (Aurora Borealis) lp 17.98
Holy crap. 30 seconds into track one of this new Dead Raven Choir opus and we're like, what the heck is goin' on? Is this really our Polish pal Smolken, the avant-folk poetry-readin' cd-r makin' black metal lovin' weirdo?? Well it must be, but that track he sure sounds like some sore-throated Japanese man, fronting an intense industrial distorto-drone metallic pipe-fight dirgerock explosion, with the sawing strings of a cello (or bass) suggesting the funereal-folk of another Smolken project, Wolfmangler.
It's not like Dead Raven Choir wasn't scary before, either in acoustic Eastern European Jandek mode or doing the (Cask Strength) black-metal-as-sheer-noise thing, but good grief! In some ways, this is the perfect, sick hybrid of those two approaches, sounding something like a weird-folk version of Khanate or SUNNO))), with blown-out bulldozer bass frequencies utterly overrunning songs that Smolken probably originally composed on acoustic guitar, sitting on a back porch somewhere, staring at the sunset. What could have been sparse folk numbers are instead fully distorted and doomful and get a big thumbs up from us.
Ok, we must admit we wrote all that before bothering to look at the song titles (or read the press-release). Now we know why some of these tunes maybe somehow sounded slightly familiar, or as if transposed from a less-dire domain... he didn't compose very many of 'em at all, instead My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind is for the most part an album of covers! 7 out of the 10 tracks here are Dead Raven Choir interpretations of some of Smolken's favorite country, folk, and popular tunes by artists/victims as dissimilar as Richard Thompson and Cole Porter (!!). They're all done in Smolken's special skewed style of outsider black metal, as described above, and needless to say most of 'em are darn close to unrecognizable! We liked this a lot to begin with, now we're even more into it knowing we're actually hearing songs by late great country western songwriter Townes Van Zandt (Smolken used to live in Texas after all), alt-country chanteuse Neko Case ("Favorite"), and even obscure New Zealand drone-pop artist G-Frenzy ("From The Stars", a song that originally appeared on an out-of-print PseudoArcana cd-r we reviewed a few years back). There's also a maritime ballad by Stan Rogers, and oh yeah, the vocals on that very first track sound Japanese 'cause it's a song, "Kigi Wa Haru", by PSF-label folk troubadour Kazuki Tomokawa, an sensible choice on Smolken's part since Tomokawa's work aligns closely with that of Kan Mikami, with whom we've compared DRC's starker acoustic guitar n' vocals tracks before.
And if you like this as much as we do, you'll be happy to learn that he has another, all-country-covers album coming up, entitled Lonesome Drinking Metal...
MPEG Stream: "Kigi Wa Haru"
MPEG Stream: "A Rosebud In June"

album cover DENGUE FEVER Venus On Earth (M80) cd 14.98
Yaaaaaaay! One of those releases that probably doesn't even need any introduction, its feverishly anticipated arrival is received by grabby hands and torrents of drool! The always deliriously fun and wildly captivating Dengue Fever is back with their third album! You simply can't help but get all giddy and dance-y when they unleash their unmistakable blend of good ol' American rock'n'roll with the pop sounds of Southeast Asia and beyond. Luminous lead singer Chhom Nimol slips effortlessly from slinkily sensual to playfully kittenish, and the fellas continue to kick ass with their awesome musicianship and artistry. Together they're electrifying, intoxicating, and drop-dead gorgeous! We could go on and on, but why? We're wasting valuable listening time! Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Seeing Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Tiger Phone Card"
MPEG Stream: "Oceans Of Venus"

album cover EARTH Hibernaculum (Southern Lord) picture disc 14.98
Not ones to be left out on the whole "you haven't really owned a record until you've bought it in three different formats" thing, Earth re-release their kick-ass last album, now as a picture disc, Packaged in the same sleeve as the original, but inside, surprise, a gorgeous eye-popping picture disc. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, and knowing how these things go, it's either now, or eBay later...
Here's our review of the record when it first came out:
Holy crap, a new Earth album! Since the full-scale return (and reinvention) of Dylan Carlson's Earth project with last year's highly regarded studio album Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (a Record Of The Week here at Aquarius when it came out) and subsequent tour, fans of the slow and low have had plenty to be happy about. That album took the extreme drone-metal Earth invented in the early '90s (a sound appropriated by SUNNO))) some years later) and turned it into a bleak n' desolate hybrid of post-rock and country-western! Spacious desert drone dirge with lap steel, something like Low meets Calexico meets the old Earth. Most Earth fans, ourselves included, had to give Hex a spin or two just to be sure we were hearing things right. But then, we all knew we were hearing it right and right it was. Such a great album.
What manner of follow up then is this new Hibernaculum? Well, some of it is gonna sound familiar...yet different. Since Earth's approach has morphed so much over the years, Dylan and co. have decided to revisit and re-record some old Earth compositions in the style of Hex, the way they've been playing 'em on tour, like when we saw them here in SF last year. Not a bad idea at all! You get to hear 'em do the classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" from their 1991 debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" from their final Sub Pop album, 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons, and the obscure "Miami Morning Coming Down" from a 1997 compilation on the Ash label called Scatter. These tunes all get the Hex treatment and wind up as windswept and lovely as you'd expect. There's also a fourth track, a new mix of the 16+ minute "A Plague Of Angels" which originally appeared last year on a very limited edition split vinyl release with SUNNO))). All of these pieces are simply gorgeous. Minimalist, Morricone-cinematic, twangfuzzdrone. Glacial twilight shimmer, velvet-hammer heavy. Droning deep and dark but uplifting as well. Weirdly we realize that Earth now sounds more like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore than Bohren & Der Club Of Gore ever sounded like Earth, if you know what we mean. And their instrumentation is a lot more like Bohren's now, including Hammond B-3, piano, upright bass, and trombone among other things (not the typical doom arsenal).
In the recent Earth documentary, "Within The Drone" (available with the cd version of Hibernaculum), Earth mainman Dylan Carlson, discusses LaMonte Young and suchlike inspirations, but he's got no pretentious theories of "the drone" to espouse, though he does opine interestingly that for him, the more complex music becomes the closer it is to noise. So a simple sound, slowly repeated -- a drone -- is much more to his liking. Aha. Hmm. But it's clear from the sounds on Hibernaculum that simple does not mean "easy". Supreme precision and feel is needed. To play music this slow, they've got to be good -- and they are.
MPEG Stream: "Ouroboros Is Broken"
MPEG Stream: "A Plague Of Angels"

album cover GAINSBOURG, SERGE Les Annees Psychedeliques 1966-1971 (Le Smoke Disques) 2lp 17.98
If you have any way to listen to vinyl, you should definitely buy this, like right now! Very few items in our store require such minimal convincing that they are absolutely essential, as we've seen this flying off of our shelves as soon as we got them. What more could you want to know: Serge Gainsbourg! Psychedelic Years! Double vinyl! Totally Affordable!
Ok, Ok, some of you need some further convincing. Probably some of you have some Serge in your collections and want to know what exactly is on here, and it's good to know because it's not really that obvious. The title says "Psychedelic Years", but this isn't a greatest hits collection, and probably only a couple of songs will be familiar to casual Gainsbourg fans ("Bonnie and Clyde" and "En Melody" from Melody Nelson). The bulk of the tracks are from French films and TV soundtracks between 1966-1971 and are arranged by either Jean-Claude Vannier (Histoire de Melody Nelson) or Michel Columbier (Initials B.B.), two of Gainsbourg's greatest collaborators. Each providing smoky and stony grooves, some with sexy femme backing vocals, for such films as Cannabis, Anna, Le Pacha, Vidocq, Manon 70, Ce Sacre Grand-Pere, La Horse, Mister Feedom and Si J'etasi Un Espion. Three tracks even contain bonus beats for you record heads. There is not one bad cut on here. So don't miss out as we're not sure how long this will be available. Did we say that THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

album cover GERGIS, MARK & ALAN BISHOP Sumatran Folk Cinema (Sublime Frequencies) dvd 22.00
One of two new dvds from the always amazing Sublime Frequencies label, this one, like a visual version of those Sublime Frequencies "RadioŠ" compilations, where the compilers would flip through the radio stations in whatever country they were visiting, capturing little chunks of sound, radio plays, pop jams, folk music, etc. And while this is not quite as short-attention-span as those comps, it's generally the same idea, a sprawling, musical and visual collage of live shows, impromptu performances, local scenery, bits of television shows, nature footage, night markets, street scenes, all woven into a slightly psychedelic expanse of sights and sounds, with of course a KILLER soundtrack.
From live nightclub hip hop workouts (covering House Of Pain no less!), to casual jam sessions, seated around a coffee table, players smoking and relaxing on couches, to funky musical reviews, complete with a journeyman band and a sexy dancing and signing teen superstar frontwoman, to far out sci-fi monster movie clips, to strange performances from variety shows, homeless dudes rocking out on busted old Casio keyboards, lots and lots of birds, chirping and trilling over mysterious dronemusic , violin players weaving a cacophonous tuning-up din, gorgeous haunting classical music complete with the instructor correcting his students, sultry nightclub torch singing, amazing traditional folk music and costumed performances, incredible broken glass dancing, acoustic beach jams, complete with the sound of the surf, children playing, and best of all, just tons of footage of people, and places, playing music, hanging out, doing business, relaxing, dining, traveling, living their lives, all set to an incredibly varied selection of music, from folk to pop, to classical and anything in between.
Includes a bunch of extra footage, more amazing performances, extra footage of some of our favorite bands in the feature proper, as well as a a whole segment of trailers for other Sublime Frequencies dvds.

album cover GIST, THE Embrace The Herd (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
Attention Young Marble Giants Fans!!
If you have worn out your copies of Colossal Youth from repeated listenings, and have always wanted to hear more from that group, this might just be the next best thing. Started as a side project by YMG main songwriter and guitarist, Stuart Moxham, The Gist's first single hit the shelves six weeks before YMG called it a day at the tail end of 1980. Taking time to stretch out from the rigid arrangement process of YMG, Moxham recorded the Gist's only album, Embrace The Herd, with a bit of help from his former bandmates, Alison Statton and Phil Moxham along with guest appearances by Epic Soundtracks, Viv Goldman and members of Essential Logic. Combining Eno-like fourth world instrumentals with an idiosyncratic approach to songwriting, Embrace The Herd is an engaging document of post-punk DIY creativity. Think a dancier and stranger YMG, yet not as loungey as Alison Statton's spin off group, Weekend. While perhaps not as seminal or as focused as Colossal Youth, The Gist sound remarkably refreshing and much less restrained. Plus it's nice to have some new-to-us sounds from this era to worm away in our ears. Includes four bonus tracks. Fans of Antenna, Marine Girls, The Slits, The Raincoats, and leftfield post-punk rhythms of all sorts will find lots to love here. So Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Love At First Site"
MPEG Stream: "Clean Bridges"
MPEG Stream: "Light Aircraft"

album cover GLASS CANDY Beatbox (Italians Do It Better) cd 13.98
Johnny Jewel may not be a household name but his music has been on our stereo pretty much non stop for the last several month. The musical mind behind both Chromatics and Glass Candy, it's his sparkling touch that has helped make electronic pop sound exciting again. It's no mistake that Glass Candy had the leadoff track on the After Dark compilation that helped define one of the more exciting scenes to emerge in the last several years. Songs that make you want to dance in clouds as you get lost in that hazy intersection of new wave, spaced out disco and post-punk minimalism.
Much like Chromatics who underwent a very radical and rewarding shift in sound with their latest Night Drive, Jewel has brought that same aesthetic to Glass Candy with equally impressive results. Beatbox travels in such a nice way starting off with seriously sassy momentum on songs like "Beatific" that almost sounds like Lizzy Mercier Descloux covering a track from the first Madonna record and then the later part of the record travels in much moodier cosmic territory recalling French AQ faves Ruth with nods to the brilliant early production of Giorgio Moroder. Glass Candy rang in the new year with a performance here in SF on New Year's Eve and we can't think of much better company to party with. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Beatific"
MPEG Stream: "Candy Castle"

album cover GLUTTONY Collapse Of The Roman Republic (Liber Primus) (Hekaloth / Cyclops) cd 15.98
Fans of the damaged and deranged, the truly warped and mindbending, the freaky, fucked up and plain baffling, by now should be well acquainted with the mysterious master of the guitar synth, and his bevy of bewildering outfits, two of which we've reviewed on past AQ lists, this being the third, in what we can only imagine is some sort of insane trilogy. Xynfonica came first. A "classical" record, completely composed and performed on the guitar synthesizer. A tripped out, outsider slab of post Peter And The Wolf classical deconstructed, atonal and so so so difficult, oh and did we mention that the other part of the equation was seemingly incongruous raspy evil metal vocals? A totally not-right combination, but for those of us who dig that sort of stuff, it was pretty unbeatable. Then there was the HUGE booklet of lyrics, complete with FOOTNOTES!!!
Then came Shevalreq, part two in the "trilogy", his 'world music' record, where the same atonal angular tones and notes, the howled raspy vocals, were this time wrapped around faux tablas and various other ethnic percussion instruments. If anything, it was even more fucked and amazing. Not to mention the over the top cover art, with miniature jousting knights on horseback ON TOP OF various dat machines and other studio gear. WTF?
So while we anxiously awaited part three, we were fairly sure nothing could top Shevalreq. But oh were we wrong.
The new one is called Gluttony, the name of the record: Collapse Of The Roman Republic, another epic tale of war and death and love and betrayal, this one being his quote unquote jazz record, and fuck if it's not the most amazingly fucked up record EVER. Now in addition to the metallic rasp, the stumbling angular melodies, are lots of synthesized horn stabs, crooning synthesizers, faux vibes and marimbas, synth oboes, synth bassoons, all peppered with some serious twisted tangles of Greg Ginn-esque guitar squall, usually draped over some woozy, smoky dive bar synthjazz. It still sort of sounds like Peter And The Wolf, but it also sounds like the score for some mystery noir z-movie thriller, ripe for some sort of Sam Spade voice over, but instead you get a voice over from some growling bile spewing demon, and the tracks lope on endlessly, the melodies, maniacally off kilter, the whole thing so brilliantly baffling it's almost impossible to listen to the whole thing, but we've come close. Very very close.
Absolutely recommended, but ONLY for those who can handle stuff like this. You know who you are.
MPEG Stream: "Marius Engages The Teutons"
MPEG Stream: "Teutonic Invasion"
MPEG Stream: "Marius Engages The Cimbri"
MPEG Stream: "The Rise Of Sulla"

album cover GNAW THEIR TONGUES An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood (Senor Hernandez / Roadburn) lp 21.00
You can definitely tell a lot about a band by the names of records and song titles. Case in point: Gnaw Their Tongues. Some song titles: "My Body is Not a Vessel, Nor a Temple. It's a Repulsive Pile of Sickness", "And There Will Be More of Your Children Dead Tomorrow", "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Sound the Horns, the Water is Poisoned". Some album titles: Spit at Me and Wreak Havoc on My Flesh, Preferring Human Skin Over Animal Fur, Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh, Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladders Emptying, Vomiting, and now this, An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood. But then what is it exactly that we can glean from these titles? That the men in Gnaw Their tongues are demented? Sick? Depraved? Probably. But where titles like this might lead one to assume the music attached to the above words would be some sort of hateful harsh white noise, or some sort of near unlistenable Whitehouse worship, the truth is, Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the few bands with an utterly distinctive and recognizable sound. There are very few bands we can think of, even amongst our favorites. You will absolutely never confuse the music of Gnaw Their Tongues with any other outfit. And conversely, you will never hear something that is not them, and assume it is, because NOTHING sounds anything like Gnaw Their Tongues.
So much so that even explaining their sound in a review is fairly difficult. The last GTT review, we resorted to a tale of hell and hellbound journeys, of total annihilation and utter destruction, of death and decay and misery, all in a bid to evoke the same sort of images and visions, thoughts and feelings that are evoked by the sounds these guys produce.
It's definitely not black metal, but it is most certainly black. If forced to describe their sound in some succinct, and non-rambling manner, it might be cinematic operatic orchestral avant industrial doom. But since we can ramble, it might be easier to dig a little deeper.
Every song is epic, like little films, sounds evoking images, evoking thoughts and emotions, horns and orchestral stabs, flutes and strings, are as much a part of the sound as guitars. Probably more so. Thick gristly slabs of buzzing low end, crawl beneath pummeling percussive plod, operatic vocals soar and wail, bits of electronic glitch and whir drift in and out, guitars are downtuned and allowed to spread like toxic oil spills, tracks are peppered with bits of dialogue, and snippets of films, found sounds and mysterious textures, occasionally, harsh hellish blackened shrieks join the fray, as do bits of dark ambience. There is plenty of space, the sound managing to be expansive and open, as well as claustrophobic and suffocating.
It's a bit like a black metal Arvo Part, scoring a lost Hitchcock thriller, so totally intense and emotional and epic, rife with nervous tension and extreme dread. Whenever the sound verges on white noise, or total implosion, the sound abates, leaving Bernard Hermann-ish strings, or some bit of cryptic dialogue, or some strange disembodied rhythm, before spilling forth again like black vomit. The layers of blasphemous sound piling up like blackened bodies, buzzy and filthy and grime-y but so composed, not really that chaotic at all, a controlled chaos perhaps, each sound painstakingly placed to help paint that blood red picture.
An impossible blend of metal, choral, industrial, electronic, ambient, drone, noise and blackness, a gorgeous, and gorgeously infernal concoction, every record, another chapter in some sick saga, hell swallowing the surface dwellers, misery and mayhem overtaking humanity, death and pestilence, the world a graveyard for humanity, such utter depravity conveyed in such epic and dementedly brilliant sounds, which is precisely why Gnaw Their Tongues is quickly becoming one of our favorite bands goingŠ

album cover GOWN For The Maples (Three Lobed Recordings) lp+cd 21.00
Somehow, we have never reviewed anything by Gown (not to be confused with Gowns plural), the work of Andrew Macgregor, who is one half of Bark Haze with Thurston Moore. But this is as good a place to start as any.
On For The Maples, Macgregor enlisted the help of longtime AQ faves Sunburned Hand Of The Man, for one big final psychrock blowout before he left the US of A for more Northernly climes (aka Canada), and it is indeed a blowout, but not without plenty of gentle twang, fluttery folk, and meandering jams. The opener starts out with a massive multiple drum jam, a furious percussive cacophony, with thick streaks of blown out psych guitar, but all that quickly settles down, into a spacious twangy drift, the vocals crooning over slowly unfurling minor key guitars, and shuffling drums, but the track ramps it up and is soon a murky krautdrone groove, Macgregor's guitar, keening and wailing over Sunburned's druggy drift. The second is another woozy spaced out jam that builds to a total wild pagan psychrock freakout.
And finally, the nearly 20 minute closer, Sunburned in full on caveman drug jam mode, Macgregor wrangling some seriously cosmic sounds out of his guitar, the whole group locked into a psychrock duel to the death, culminating in blown out blast about halfway through, before the track devolves back into a churning space drone plod, gradually petering out to fuzzy soft shimmer.
Gorgeous heavy 180 gram vinyl, thick silkscreened sleeves, hand numbered, LIMITED TO 698 COPIES, each lp comes with a real cd (not a cd-r) of the whole record, AND while they last, a SECOND disc, of previously unreleased material. But there are only about 300 of those, and we only got a handful so those definitely won't last long.
MPEG Stream: "Part II"
MPEG Stream: "Taylor's Jam"

album cover GREY DATURAS Owly Claw Hammer (Emperor Jones) 12" 14.98
It's hard for us to come to terms with the fact that the Grey Daturas are from Australia, it seems like they're always on tour, always in the US, and always in aQ! I We feel like they must live just down the street, we see them more than some of us see our own families. Part of it is because SF is their homebase when they're not at home. But part of it is that they ARE indeed always on tour. And as most folks realize, the more a band tours, the tighter they get, and while we loved the Daturas from day one, their shambolic improvised psychedelic drone rock always on the verge of total chaos, they have continued to get better and better, their sound constantly evolving, able to pummel and destroy with the best of them, but also perfectly capable of weaving drifting drone-y ambience, which is what they do here. Mostly.
This limited lp only release, finds the Daturas in Texas, and unlike most bands, who on their days off, drink, and record shop and fuck around, the Dats record. Often with other like minded bands in whatever town they happen to be holed up in. So while the Daturas were in Texas, they borrowed some equipment, and recorded these two sidelong epics. Two halves of what was probably an extensive ambient space jam, surprisingly tranquil for these noiseniks, but not entirely.
The A side is all guitar, no drums at all, an epic expanse of various texture and timbres, of feedback and long drawn out notes, of billowing chords and downtuned buzz, all shifting and drifting glacially, dreamy and druggy, not really menacing or ominous at all, more sort of washed out and sun dappled, rich warm and inviting, really really pretty, quite reminiscent of Fear Falls Burning in factŠ
The B side is more of the same, beginning almost exactly where the A side left off, except for a big chunk in the middle, where the guitars are whipped up into a psychedelic frenzy, and the drums finally come crashing in, not so much pounding out a beat as offering another layer of percussive texture, loose stumbling rhythms, little flurries of fills, nearly buried by the barrage of dense guitars, sounding a bit like a Loop vs. Dead C jam, only to have the drums drop out again, letting the guitars slip back into their abstract, near-ambient drift.
Awesome.

album cover GUAPO Black Oni (Hlava) lp 36.00
Now available on vinyl! Super deluxe import, gorgeous sleeve, in a weird black plastic wrapping and a black sticker. VERY LIMITED so act fast.
Here's our review of Black Oni when it first came out:
You know how much we like instrumental underground UK prog masters Guapo here, right? Andee even put out one of their albums (2001's Great Sage, Equal Of Heaven) on his label tUMULt. Subsequently they released the massive Five Suns opus on Cuneiform. And now, their new release Black Oni is unleashed by Mike Patton's Ipecac label. And they've been going from strength to strength.
Like Japan's Ruins, the Guapo trio take a lot of inspiration from '70s prog, in particular the "zeuhl" stylings of the amazing French band Magma. But where the Ruins generally concentrate the Magma sound into a hectic hyper-blast, Guapo tend to stretch things out, spreading their prog-frenzy across (in this case) a forty-three minute, five part epic composition, not unlike the five part, forty-six minute title suite of Five Suns... that's their specialty it seems. Crazed drumming and complex bass lines coexist with spaced-out keyboards (including '70s prog stalwart the Mellotron), making Black Oni a combination of energetic prog mayhem and droning electronic darkness. For fans of Yeti, Tarantula Hawk, Circle and even The Necks... and of course anyone already into Guapo will love this new one. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "3"
MPEG Stream: "5"

album cover HALF MAKESHIFT L'Anse Amort (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
Last year we raved about this oddly named, mysterious one-man-band's debut disc on Utech, entitled Aphotic Leech, saying stuff like "Absolutely essential for the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined, fans of all things SUNNO))), Nadja, Fear Falls Burning, Trollmann, Boris, Marzuraan". We've been letting Half Makeshift's second cd (four tracks this time, instead of one long one) sink in for a while now, and are convinced that it's just as amazing, even more spacious and atmospheric. Though maybe we should stress that while we think that the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined are likely to dig this, it ISN'T really all that heavy. More super moody and slow and atmospheric. It's not until like the end of the seventeen minute track 1 "The Whale's Heart", and again halfway through the 14 minutes of track 3, the title track, that some truly loud and heavy guitar destruction is heard. A lot of the rest of the time, this is way more restrained. The first track, for instance: Chiming tones and majestic chords, slow and gorgeous. Building slowly, ponderously, into a massive cloud of distorted rumble, joined by a broken, staccato rhythm track right, blast beat style, at the end that eventually glitches out as the song fades away, piano notes suspended amidst the silence hum reverie in silent reverie. Later on, you get gentle music box melodies combined with fuzzed guitar worthy of a black metal horde. And slo-mo doom, with seagulls and ocean samples, that's mesmeric but never all that heavy.
It's all the work of one guy, Nathan Michael, who is credited with piano, organ, strings, drone, machines, manipulation, glitch work. He hails from Maryland, a hotbed of old school doom, but Half Makeshift is closer to Nadja than Pentagram. Also way more post-rock! Sorta like Coh meets SUNNO))). Heck not too unlike KTL.
Mastered by James Plotkin, and packaged much like an aRCHIVE release, in an oversized rectangular 4 panel cardboard sleeve with four postcard-like arty photo inserts featuring super striking images of towers and piers and tunnels and back alleys...