SKOGSBERG, JOAKIM Jola Rota (Tiliqua) cd 26.00
Even if we didn't make this Record of the Week, we'd probably still be selling quite a few of 'em, as we're sure we've got a lot of knowledgeable record-collector-type customers for whom adding this to cart will be but the work of a second, the second after their eyes bug out upon seeing the artist and title listed above. But since this reissue is not only of an incredible rarity but also of an incredible record, we wanted to make sure everybody heard about it, besides those for whom it's already a "holy grail". Yep, Joakim Skogberg's original 1972 Jola Rota LP definitely falls into the highly obscure "holy grail" category, a lost treasure for lovers of weird, wonderful acid-folk and underground psychedelia. The sort of thing that develops a legend that it can't possibly live up to... but then DOES, blowing minds when it's finally reissued. The sort of thing that's whispered about among connoisseurs of psych, written of in a few select fanzines and blogs, heard only by a lucky few who got an Nth generation cassette dub or cd-r burn from a friend, who got it from a friend, and so on. The sort of thing, that even a few years after a brief exposure to its wonders, will make you stop and think every once in a while, dang when is someone finally gonna reissue that amazing obscure album??? Some other recently excavated examples would include Moolah's Woe Ye Demons Possessed, Bobb Trimble's Harvest Of Dreams, and Gary Higgins's Red Hash... and before that, once upon a time Comus's First Utterance too would have fallen into that category. Bruce Haack's Electric Lucifer as well, though originals of that were and are much MUCH easier to come by. Whereas *this* album was originally pressed in an edition of around just one thousand copies -- of which only a few hundred were ever sold back in the day, with the remainder of the pressing being, gasp, melted down to be recycled into other LPs!
So, here it is, artist Joakim Skogsberg's lone album Jola Rota finally, officially reissued for the very first time! Our hearts went pitter pat when we found out. We first heard this when our friend Loren Chasse (of Of/Thuja/Jewelled Antler/etc. fame) floated us a cd-r burn he had gotten from a pal overseas a couple years ago, as per the scenario outlined above. He figured we'd like it, and of course he was right. What's not to like? Swedish-forest-folk hippie ritual mixed with droned-out psych guitar. Truly strange, and captivating, vocal mumble. And, get this, it was actually mostly recorded out in a forest, on portable reel-to-reel gear!! Once out of the woods, the raw recordings were overdubbed (Skogsberg being responsible for all sounds on this album) in studio, but remain quite raw, the mystery and majesty of northern landscapes, dark shadowy places, placid lakes, tall trees and moss-covered rocks utterly alive in the music of the nature-loving Skogsberg.
Side One starts off with "Jola Fran Ingbo", which introduces Joakim's unusual "Jola" singing style derived from Swedish trad folk, also heavily influenced by Buddhist chant, accompanied by staccato bowings of ominous violin. Immediately this is waaaay darker than most other Swedish folk/psych we've heard! Seriously droney and austere. That's followed by the more freaked out, rockier "Offer Rota", which finds Skogsberg singing whilst pounding away on percussion and unfurling a thick layer of distorted guitar murk, with what sounds like a Jew's Harp warbling in the background. The next piece, "Fridens Lijor", on the other hand, is an unaccompanied vocal piece, close-miced and intimate, all about Skogsberg's fragile Jola babble...
Beginning side two, "Besvarjelse Rota" builds up a dubby, bassy electronic rhythmic whomp-whomp throb beneath its damaged psych guitar wail, that (in our warped imagination) foreshadows modern minimal techno a la Chain Reaction, "heroin house" beats.... could almost be Pole jamming with Algarnas Tradgard or something! Later, the lengthy "Jola Fran Stensate" harkens back to the solemnity of the album's first track, and then "Jola Fran Leksand" winds up this unique, amazing trip with something of a pagan campfire dance piece, for folky fiddle and rattling hand percussion.
Overall, though, Jola Rota's mood is solitary and ceremonial. Skogsberg not a guru leading his followers, but rather one man, inspired, singing devotional songs to nature, in personal communion with the ancient deities of Sweden and the universe... it IS universal, probably why it sounds simultaneously like krautrock and Tibetan worship and Native American prayer-songs. The universality of the drone, and the human voice in spiritual reverence regardless of language. At its droniest, many moments here recall Parson Sound or the aforementioned Moolah. Totally, magically mesmeric. Wow... EVERYONE who's heard this since we got it in has been entranced.
And we're extra happy that not only has this been reissued, but that the reissue was done by our pal Johan's Tokyo-based Tiliqua Records (along with EM Records, one of our absolute favorite reissue labels from that part of the world, or anywhere else). Which means, it's done up deluxe, packaged in a swank miniature gatefold LP-style sleeve, and it's been remastered from the original tapes with the help of Skogsberg himself. There's also new liner notes and previously unpublished photos of the long haired and bearded (of course) Skogsberg included. Nice! Sadly, this too is limited to a one-time pressing of only 1,000 copies... and unlike the original vinyl edition, we doubt the label will be left with any unsold copies to recycle!
FYI there will also be a super, super limited (and expensive) vinyl version of this coming on on Tiliqua in May, not sure if we'll be able to get any of those at all or if they'll be a label-direct preorder thing only...
MPEG Stream: "Jola Fran Ingbo"
MPEG Stream: "Offer Rota "
MPEG Stream: "Besvarjelse Rota"

MODELL, ROD Incense & Black Light (Plop) cd 17.98
We kinda went nuts for the recent Echospace record, The Coldest Season. So much so that we made it our record of the week. And judging by the response, most aQ customers dug it just as much as we did. Which makes sense really. A modern take on that old Chain Reaction sound we all love so much. Heroin House, or whatever you want to call it, muddy murky atmospheres wrapped around deep throbbing four on the floor pulses, smeared and blurred, the sound gloriously washed out and dreamlike. Super spaced out abstract dub, beats drifting in wide open expanses of FX and electronic glitch and shimmer. Dance music for those of us who loathe the dancefloor and instead lurk in the shadows. The rhythm is probably still gonna get you, but it's going to creep up on you slowly and wrap you in its inky black embrace, and pull you into the swirling fuzzy abyss.
Incense & Black Light is the new record from Rod Modell, one half of Echospace, and while everything we loved about the Echospace record is here in full effect, it's even noisier and buzzier and grittier, which can only mean we might even like it moreŠ
The opening track is super dense and heavy, a swirling cloud of crumbling distortion, a bassline that almost sounds like some muted metal riff, but completely abstracted and disembodied, a rhythm buried beneath layers of grit and grime, the track peppered with jagged blasts of glitch and hiss, the whole thing looped into something, that despite all of it's harshness and density, is almost groovy.
The second track begins with some Pole like dub throb, drifting on a layer of gristly hiss, those big echoey crunches pulsing and fading into the mist, beneath it all a throbbing bassline and some muted percussion, sounding like a rougher more raw Echospace. After that the record drifts into much less noisy territory, dipping its toes into some Kompakt like minimalism, still dubby and dreamy, but a bit more skittery, and not nearly as dark and dense. After three songs of gauzy late night Kompakt style minimal techno, the record dips back into the darkness, a slowly shifting smear of pixilated digital crunch, long blurred waves of prickly buzz, all woven into a gorgeously gauzy sheet of sound, that seems to billow in some midnight breeze, laced with crackles and hiss, almost completely devoid of any rhythm. Almost.
The next two tracks crank the dub factor, dialing back the noise a bit, but keeping the effects distorted and the beats crunchy, a sort of Kraftwerk groove pulled apart into some alien dub, hovering over a sea of whirring hum and buried buzz, the melody clipped and bouncing from beat to beat before fading into the roiling ambient murk.
Finally, the last two tracks finish things off, the way they started, with some sort of damaged dub, via Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz, the second to last a gorgeous dubby driftscape, the beats barely holding together, the sound of lapping waves another layer of hiss and buzz, the whole dub drifting into its constituent parts, so druggy and dreamy and blissed out, while the last is glimmering shimmering effulgence, sun dappled sparkles stretched into slow whirring slabs of soft fuzzy thrum, like someone took a single measure of the blissiest Orb song, and stretched it out to 5 minutes, the chords pulled apart exposing the notes within, the notes pulled apart, crumbling to pieces, just blurry shadows, all woven into some slow slippery sonic stream, gauzy, buzzy, warm and dreamlike.
If you loved that Echospace record, but wondered what it would have sounded like if it was mixed by Fennesz, or recorded by Tim Hecker, or spun in a DJ set by Philip Jeck (and who among us didn't?), then this just might be exactly what you're looking for.
MPEG Stream: "Aloeswood"
MPEG Stream: "Hotel Chez Moi"
MPEG Stream: "Body Sonic"
MPEG Stream: "Morning Again"

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ALKERDEEL Luizig (At War With False Noise) cd 14.98
We had copies of this on tape last year, and they flew out of here in no time. Not a huge surprise since A, it's a fucking fierce and sludgey slab of sonic weirdness and B, it was limited to 66 copies! So for everyone who missed out, it's At War With False Noise to the rescue. These guys are quickly turning into our new favorite label, having released the twisted bedroom black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, the blown out psych prog of Veee Deee, the fucked up damaged sludge of Sloth, as well as THREE other releases on this list, including discs from huge aQ faves Gnaw Their Tongues and Marzuraan. But we've been dying for the cd version of this Alkerdeel record. You'll understand why when you read below and listen to the sound sample.
We had a handful of customers recommend these fucked up doomdamagemetalnoise weirdos, and from the first sick, depraved, filthy fucked up note, we were sold...
These Belgians create a serious ruckus, pounding super distorted grim necro ultra raw dirgey droney doom metal, we saw it described as filthyblacksludgedoomdrone which pretty much sums it up. Pounding sludge, with blown out practice space production, grinding guitars, blasting super distorted drums, filthy super sick vocals, with bursts of blackness and stretches of loping minimal crunch, sort of mathy, very doomy, all very very heavy and noisy and awesome. One of our favorite new bands easy. 
Essential for fans of Bone Awl, Ancestors, Ash Pool, Beherit, Akitsa as well as other practitioners of grim buzz and noise drenched sludge...
The packaging is super swank too, screen printed, 6 panel, off-black ink on thick black cardstock. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Luizig"

B.BAPHOMET Einsplundaghn (Small Doses) cd-r 8.98
Okay doomlords and dronelords, it's been a while since we got something in this heavy and grim and bleak and doomic. Something so blackened and crushing, but also so dark and droney, so blissed out and blurry.
The mysterious B.Baphomet, utilizing a strange collection of sound making devices, including bass guitars, Moogs, FX, vocals, Rhodes, percussion, oscillators, seat creaking, vibraphone and of course "knocking something over", has concocted this haunting mysterious collection of blackdrones and downtuned ambient doom, of shimmering whispers and washed out electronic landscapes. Weirdly, two of the tracks here are credited to B.Baphomet, while two of them are credited to M. Colby, who IS B.Baphomet.
Regardless, the opener is for the doomlords, a near black metal crawl, huge guitar chords poured out like black tar, super processed vocals howl and growl, streaks of feedback and long stretches of crumbling rumble, like a black metal version of that Vulture Club record we love so much. This is ultra-ultra-megadoom, an impossibly thick wall of black buzz, of low end sludge, creeping and seeping, the vocals buried in the mix, crushing and pummeling, a slow motion sonic flaying. The track eventually morphs into something much more static, the guitars spread out into throbbing drone, layered with fuzzy synths, and tons of low end, occasionally peppered with barely audible vocals, strange short wave interference, damaged FX,13 minutes of utter and glorious aural punishment.
But from that point on, the other three tracks, are for the dronelords (and hell, by now most aQ customers should count themselves as both, doomlord and dronelord), something much more abstract and minimal, the second track, is a strange swirl of muted melodies, buried rhythms, swells of processed guitar, all smeared into a blurry glimmering dronescape. The third track is similarly minimal and drone-y but much more gritty, the various tones crumbly and distorted, crackle, hiss, whir wrapped around decaying sound, the track slipping from warm alien glow, to subterranean industrial grind, but always stretched into long drawn out alien sounding sonic expanses.
The final track is the prettiest of the bunch, a sort of lullaby, drifting bell like tones, glimmering chimes, muted delicate melodies, warm soft chords, all so soft and shimmery and so unlike the rest of the disc, especially the blackened opener.
SUPER LIMITED!! Only 111 copies! Each disc comes in a super swank hand screened brown on brown cardstock sleeve, with a printed red Japanese style obi, inside, a printed color insert, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

BADU, ERYKAH New Amerykah, Pt.1: 4th World War (Universal / Motown) cd 16.98
Let's get this right out of the way, Erykah Badu is a genius! While we love and can't get enough of folks like Sharon Jones and Nicole Willis, there really is no one else like Erykah Badu, someone who is taking soul and funk into new and outer dimensions. She represents the best of hip-hop culture as well as carrying on a legacy of spiritual and cosmic soul. Badu has that something special that you can't really put your finger on but you sure can feel.
Her last record Worldwide Underground ranks as one of our favorite psychedelic soul/hip-hop records ever made! Five years later, she returns with another ambitious and crazy rewarding record that boasts Madlib as a producer, as well as the Sa-Ra crew, collaborations and guest spots by Georgia Ann Muldrew, Bilal, Omar Rodriguez (Mars Volta), and more. There's super tight and punchy live instrumentation, and samples that demonstrate a wide reaching and enlightened taste (The Yamasuki Singers, Eddie Kendricks, Curtis Mayfield, Nancy Wilson, etc). Badu is mindful and super knowledgeable about the past but she isn't a retro act, she is so about the here and now and could care less about trends and fads. She is one of the few high profile modern artists who truly has her own vision and such a special touch. Her live show a few years ago at the Paramount Theater in Oakland we reminisce about all the time, her band was so out there in the best of ways, and she owned the stage, even playing the Theremin and taking everyone in attendance to the outer limits of a super soul planet we wish we could always orbit.
Her new record starts off with an adaptation of the Roy Ayers produced Ramp classic "American Promise" and from there on out is filled with some of the best songs Badu has recorded to date, including a couple chilling tributes to her close friend J Dilla who passed away since her last album. New Amerykah has a couple moments where it trips up, but like all brave artists it takes the courage to slip up from time to time in order to create so much musical magic. Highly recommended, and for sure check out Worldwide Underground as well if you haven't!
MPEG Stream: "The Healer"
MPEG Stream: "Soldier"
MPEG Stream: "The Cell"

BANNON, J. The Blood Of Thine Enemies (Deathwish) 7" 3.50
Very first solo record from one Mr. J. Bannon, who most of you might know better as the frontman for the mighty Converge, as well as the head honcho of Deathwish Records. But don't let the whole Deathwish / Converge angle mislead you, Bannon also did time in a group called Supermachiner, a more abstract project exploring drones, and blissed out post rock and epic cinematic ambience, and while this 7" is a bit closer to Supermachiner than it is to Converge, it's actually very little like either.
A single track, beginning with a slow whispered shimmer, a simple throbbing distorted bass, very spare and spacious, pulsing amidst soft sonic swells, a creepy minor key melody, a soft dirge. Eventually the vocals come in, mirrored by plinking piano, underpinned by simple percussion, the vocals plaintive and melancholy, a mournful croon, the piano adding some instrumental gravitas, a slow slow slow build, only truly exploding near the very end, and even then it's not so much an explosion as a culmination, a sort of Godspeed like pinnacle, which quickly fades back into the record's opening shimmer. Very reminiscent of Low actually, a dark, dreamy, drifting, abstract slow core. A tempting teaser for the forth coming full length.
And most folks know that beyond playing in Converge, Bannon is also an amazing graphic designer, and that becomes plainly obvious when you see the over the top packaging. The records are pressed on various colors of vinyl, silver, gold, creme, it's a one sided 7", the flip side features a super intricate etching, a winged skull, flowers, and tiny text, all housed in a gorgeous screen printed card stock sleeve that folds together origami style. Each record also includes a download coupon so you can get these analog sounds on your digital player of choice.

BARDO POND Batholith (Three Lobed) lp + cd 21.00
If we had to pick our favorite modern psych rock band, it might be tough. There are so many groups who have mastered the fine art of druggy soundscapes, tripped out space rock, and in-the-red avantpsych drone jams. But if push comes to shove, most of us would probably pick Bardo Pond.
Release after release, every single one of their records manages to push all our musical buttons, be it droney krautrockishness, damaged freaked out noise rock, trippy stoned drift, fluttering psych folk, heavy riffrock, or all of the above! These guys have mastered their craft, but remain unafraid to just wing it, jamming wildly, almost always resulting in something truly transcendent.
Batholith, while ostensibly an actual album, is in fact, a collection of some of Bardo's favorite songs that for whatever reason have never been released until now. Some live tracks, Peel sessions, and the opener "A Tune", that the band began their legendary Terrastock II set with, a laid back stoned groove, all warm washed out guitars and shuffling drums, until over the top, in swoop the Gibbons brothers, to tear it up, unfurling fiery sun baked leads over the top, wrapped around the vocals, a buried murmur, ghostly and gauzy, the whole track a glorious acid drenched, fuzzy buzzy drone-y jam.
In fact most of Batholith sounds like that, super hazy, lazy, drawn out, sprawling riffs, dreamy and definitely WAY druggy.
But that all changes about halfway through.
"Splint" begins as a post rocky meander, barely any guitars, just little trills and flourishes here and there, amidst a cloud of bass thrum and shuffling drums, which rev up about half way through into a dense churning wall of sound, crumbling and massive, before drifting back to the track's opening drift. "Slip Away" is total nineties shoegaze, somewhere between the Swirlies and Swervedriver, the vocals ethereal and dreamlike, the drums a driving pound, but guitars EVERYWHERE, thick and fuzzed out, layers upon layers, one guitar soaring above the rest, skywriting buzzing minor key melodies over the top, sometimes exploding into wahwah drenched squalls, other times just adding to the overall buzz.
The final track, the longest at 10 minutes, is all Eastern raga, with some steel string buzz that sounds a bit like a sitar, a loping sea sick main riff, a hypnotic pulse like drum beat, and again the guitars take over, snarling and growling and glowing, a super intense tangle of downtuned buzz, draped over the steady motorik jam beneath, until the band launch into space, and unload an incredibly fierce and furious space rock outro, the drums dense and complex, the bass thick and fuzzy, the guitars all wound up in a glorious psychdrone battle to the death.
Incredibly deluxe packaging. Heavy heavy gatefold. The record pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Included with the lp is a cd of the same music. LIMITED TO 1049 COPIES!!!
BUT! While they last, we have the even more limited first edition (only 533 copies!) which come with a second bonus cd, featuring one lengthy bonus track. First come, first served, once the bonus disc version is gone, you'll get the regular edition, which still comes with the cd of the album proper.
MPEG Stream: "A Tune"
MPEG Stream: "Push Your Head"

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Seventh Ruined Hex (Important) cd 14.98
With most bands who possess the kind of extensive catalog that Birchville Cat Motel does (41 different titles on the aQ site so far, this making it 42), after a while, it's hard to know what to say. It's tempting to just say something like "you love this band already, if you like the other records, you'll like this one too, so just buy it", and that would probably work on a bunch of folks, it sure would on us, but the thing about BCM, is the sound changes enough to make every new record exciting and new, familiar enough to appeal to fans, but definitely interesting enough to convince most of us that we actually do need another BCM disc to add to the 30 or 40 we already have. This one is no different. Right out of the gate, BCM main man, and axe wielder Campbell Kneale, offers up something we haven't heard from him in a while, a fierce roiling cloud of blown out psych guitar. Thick sheets of keening feedback, dense swirls of high end shimmer like Haino plays Sunroof!, dense squalls are pulled out into long ropy streaks of blinding white hot buzz and skree, as the track progresses, the rough edges and jagged corners seem to get worn away, the sound becoming more washed out, but still just on the edge of full on ear drum damage. That's sort of the magic in music like this, figuring out a way to harness noise, and twist it into pleasing shapes, which Kneale is quite adept at. By the end of the track, the low end has caught up to the high, and the track blisses out nicely.
But that track definitely sets the stage for the rest of Seventh Ruined Hex, a record that is all about HIGH END. It's much easier to wrangle low tones into something dense and beautiful and drone-y and listenable, but the upper registers are inherently a lot more brutal and punishing and difficult to work with. But Kneale, as always, is up to the challenge.
That opening, extended high end ur-drone is followed up by some awesome sonic weirdness, a brief respite from the skree, a strange stuttering rumbling soft cacophony of looped guitars, damaged FX, some thick metallic crunch, all warped an warbly, with a haunting pretty little melody underneath. Definitely another one of those tracks (every BCM record has one) that you can totally imagine being an hour long and it's own full length.
The next track brings us right back to the static drone, and those upper registers, a simple chiming bit of percussion, underscores a crystalline high end smear, various notes and tones, woven into a glistening web of slowly shifting notes and overtones, a glancing listen, and it sounds like some difficult listening, but let your ears adjust to this high end soundworld, and suddenly the track blossoms and reveals its sonic treasures, filling your ears with a cascade of blinding glimmering streaks and warm glowing barely-there melodies.
The title track brings things back into the midrange, at least briefly, a growling, rough edged loop, guitar it sounds like, grinding out a muted pulse, some dark shimmer, some fuzzy blur, but still shot through with slivers of that high end skree, building again to swirling slow motion supernova of sound, emitting thick pulses of smoldering opalescence.
Finally, the record closes with the 17 minute "Bee", which begins all ultra lo-fi doom jam, moaning downtuned guitars and crumbling production, before transforming into a thick gossamer haze of gorgeous lullaby like whirs and shimmer, the high end kept in check, the whole track a slow build, very epic and cinematic, the various stretched out notes and chords churning beneath a layer of warm gentle buzz, midtrack, the sounds threaten to loose themselves and soar skyward, but are quickly reeled back in, the rest of the track a long slow fade, the high end sinking deeper and deeper beneath a warm blanket of instrument hum and blurred melody.
MPEG Stream: "Ghastly Star"
MPEG Stream: "Werewolf Shorn Of Its Hell"

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL / TARENTEL / CHARALAMBIDES Nothing Out There #5 (Nothingoutthere) 3x3"dvd-r 15.98
We discovered this just a little too late. The first in a series of cool compilations, all insanely limited, dvd-r's with interviews and live performances, super fancy homemade packaging. But sadly out of print, a bummer considering how perfect this one seems for aQ. C'mon! Birchville Cat Motel, Tarentel and Charalambides! Limited to only TWENTY FIVE copies. Arghh. Well somehow we convinced the label to do another pressing just for aQ, so here it is, a killer triple 3" dvd-r set, gorgeously packaged, with three long time aQ faves.
Up first is Charalambides, recorded live in Hasselt 2006, several songs, lovely as always, dark and funereal, ethereal, gorgeously shot, super close ups of the guitar, lips against a microphone, lit in reds and blues and purples, a dark stage, nothing but the two players... Really nice, intercut with simple abstract animations and interviews with the band.
The second disc is Birchville Cat Motel, recorded live in Gent 2006, and features Campbell Kneale, aka Mr. BCM, lurking on a hellish looking stage, all red lights and dry ice fog, just Kneale's figure hunched over his instruments, mic stands like demon's claws reaching up through the mist, a huge pair of painted eyes behind him on the wall.
Kneale sort of swaying back and forth in a total trance, wearing a black mask, singing and twiddling knobs, in a surprisingly tiny space, playing to about 20 people, the sound appropriately massive and thick, even mixing in a loop of Metallica (!), electronic bagpipes, and a Buddha Machine. Awesome. Also includes an interview with Kneale, talking about how nobody in NZ knows who he is, and about his very normal, run of the mill life, he's a school teacher, recording as a solitary process, and other cool stuff.
Finally, the third disc features Tarentel live in Geneva and Bern 2006, interviews with the whole band, talking about the development of their sound and creating new sounds, their approach to music making, improvisation, etc. The live stuff features beautiful films drifting behind the band, who are all cloaked in shadow, the sound dark and abstract, low shimmers and abstract drones, thick and textural, fluttering horns and whirring guitars woven into thick rough expanses of muted growl and soft focused creep, laced with tripped out dubby drums.
The video includes shots of the club, the bands wandering around, exterior shots, all woven into the super striking live footage.
Second pressing just for the aQ faithful, LIMITED TO 30 COPIES!!! The packaging is fantastic, every single one slightly different, sizes, shapes, each one a folded up map, the mini dvd-r's affixed to little nubs on the map, liner notes and little photos affixed to other panels of the map, all folded up in a plastic pouch.

BIRDS OF AVALON Outer Upper Inner E.P. (Volcom) cd ep 7.98
This North Carolina band's debut last year, Bazaar Bazaar, we hailed as a brand new classic of, uh, classic rock. Super '70s yet super fresh too, with their kick ass combo of hard rock and power pop, fueled by killer twin guitar harmonies and fronted by a lead singer with the looks and the lungs of rock gods of daze past. Yep, if anyone's still making truly classic rock, these guys (and gal) are. They're on tour opening for the Raconteurs as we write this, a perfect match though we wouldn't be surprised if the Birds blow the headliners off the stage every night...
So, to tide us over 'til they've got a new full length, here's an ep, six new tracks, both badass and breezy, Birds Of Avalon always making it look easy... If anything, the blissful pop quota has been upped, with "Hazy 98" in particular sounding pretty darn Beatlesy. Elsewhere, they let the guitars lay it on thick and heavy, with "The Reeds" perhaps being the proggiest bit of asskickery (or vice versa) on this sweet lil' disc.
So again, we say check this out to anyone looking for a unique, modern day mix of (hints of) Cheap Trick, Led Zep, Big Star, Thin Lizzy, Southern rock, Rainbow, Raspberries, Nuggetsy garage psych, and other goodness... like maybe if somehow Drunk Horse and The Makes Nice were melded into one band, bathed in sunshine???
MPEG Stream: "Measure Of The Same"
MPEG Stream: "Earthbound"

BIRIGWA s/t (Porter Records) cd 16.98
Originally released in 1972, this album by the Uganda born Birigwa is one of the most unique and hard to categorize albums of afro-folk-jazz-blues-psych we've ever heard. Birigwa came to America to study at the New England Conservatory in the early '70s when he made this beautiful record, which falls somewhere between Tropicalia, pastoral South American psych, spiritual soul-jazz and eclectic blues, accented by his super versatile vocals which swing freely from deep to falsetto, playful to wonderfully weird (check out the last track!) to downright pretty. Backing Birigwa was a really strong band, his sound bolstered by the rich bass lines of Stark Reality member Phil Morrison and the perfect flute touches of Stan Strickland. Think of Caetano Veloso, Jorge Ben, Devendra Banhart or Milton Nascimento, with one foot in Africa, the other dipping its toes in sonic waters flowing from all sorts of great and unexpected places.
MPEG Stream: "Uganda"
MPEG Stream: "Obugumba"

BITTER BITTER WEEKS Peace Is Burning (High Two) cd 16.98
It's weird. We can describe some stuff like nobody's business, dark drones and buzzing black metal, freaky folks and found sounds, harsh noise and weirdo electronic music, but for some reason, pop music seems the hardest to review. Which might be what makes the best pop music so timeless. It's some ineffable something that in some ways is actually impossible to describe, the music contains some mysterious magic, it's what makes songs stick in your head. And your heart. Some impossible chemistry, there's a moment when the drums and the guitars, the bass and the vocals, the voice and the melody, just click, and suddenly, what is just a regular old rock band, and just a plain old song, is transformed into a piece of music, that stirs your soul and that can stick with you forever, whatever is going on in your life, right at that moment, is somehow fused to the music that accompanies it. That record you loved when you broke up with the love of your life, 10 years later it still makes you weep, that first song on the mixtape given to you by someone special, still gives you a little thrill, the first music that made you want to start your own band, the songs that got you through the tough timesŠ there's a reason people NEED music.
And the more music you listen to, the more you realize that the best pop music is the simplest. No amount of overdubs, or crazy psychedelia, or far out production or instrumental prowess can disguise a mediocre record. Granted that stuff can definitely be mixed in such a way, that a record can be total ear candy, but without the songs and the hooks, candy is all it is, sweet and fizzy and then it's gone.
We first discovered Bitter Bitter Weeks a few years ago, aka Brian McTear, an engineer and producer from Philadelphia, and we're sort of kicking ourselves for only getting BBW on the list now, not sure what exactly kept us from reviewing any of those records, especially considering that the first two discs were on constant rotation. Still are actually. That's the problem with so many records to review and only so many hours in the day. But we're finally trying to make it right. The first two BBW records were mostly acoustic affairs, just McTear and an acoustic guitar, it was all about the songs and the voice, the vocals so emotive and intense, warm and familiar, a high, almost falsetto (slipping into a full on falsetto here and there), but rich and rough, and the songsŠ so so gorgeous, perfect indie pop, hell perfect pop period, just so goddamned good, that we were convinced that McTear HAD to be a guy from some other band that we knew, but nope, he was an engineer, and BBW was his first real project. This latest record finds McTear expanding his previously solo outing to a full band and as hard as it is to believe, considering how much we loved those stripped down discs, it sounds even better. 
The songs are still simple and spare, but manage to be lush and layered, clouds of jangle guitar, wrapped around McTear's gorgeous voice, the melodies lilting and perfect, subtle harmonies everywhere. The first song alone is worth the price of admission. A killer main riff, that manages to be heavy and crunchy, but without losing any of its jangle, a cool dark smoky twang in the guitar, intricate but understated drumming, the whole song propulsive and intense, the vocals soaring and lovely, the main hook absolutely unforgettable. This is where writing about music all falls apart, where words begin to fail to describe something that is essentially magical, not sure what else to say. Catchy, lovely, a bit rocking, emotive, lilting, jangly, by now you probably know if this is your cup of tea or not. Listen to the first sound sample, if you're not sold after that, then you have a black black heart devoid of pop and we pity you! The closest comparison we can come up with is maybe My Dad Is Dead, that same sort of dour beauty, minor key melancholia, a definite nineties indie rock / college rock jangle vibe, but at its core, just timeless and practically perfect pop.
MPEG Stream: "Once And For All"
MPEG Stream: "Writing Letters"
MPEG Stream: "Danger In The Halls"

BLACK BUG I Don't Like You / You A Grave (Avant!) 7" 8.98
Most female fronted, angry rock bands probably get tired of getting tagged Riot Grrl, especially since for all intents and purposes, Riot Grrl ceased to be relevant years ago, maybe even ceased to exist entirely. BUT, if anyone was hoping to spawn a revival, Black Bug would be the band to make it happen. The A side of this 7", "I Don't Like You" is a mother fucking ANTHEM. The main riff totally distorted and so in-the-red it threatens to just fall to pieces, but then the chorus kicks in, and another guitar, EVEN MORE distorted and heavy and high in the mix, lurches into action, and lays waste to EVERYTHING. The drums are a mere pitter pat when faced with such blown out riffage, but it doesn't even matter. The vocals, though, seal the deal, distorted, wrapped in effects, howled with haughty pissed intensity, as loud and corrosive as the guitars it snarls around. And the hook, shit, if you gussied it up and got rid of some of the guitars and re-recorded it in a real studio we're talking something like the Breeders' "Cannonball", but instead, as is, it's a fierce fucked up, filthy fucking ANTHEM!
Like the Raveonettes if they were 13 years old, obsessed with Turbonegro, and SO pissed at their shit for brains boyfriend. Or maybe Daisy Chainsaw, but with a singer who is less waifish and sexy, and more bad ass and scary as shit. Reminds us a bit of Monarch punk rock alter ego Rainbow Of Death.
The flipside is not quite the ANTHEM as the A side, but it still slays, processed synthy buzz, tons of effects, this one more groovy and almost dance-y, in a sort of robotic way, more sassy pissed girl vocals. It's not hard to imagine Black Bug waiting outside some dance club and then kicking the living shit out of Uffie. Hellz Yeah!!
Cool thick black and blue sleeve, pressed on coke bottle clear vinyl.

BLACK MOUNTAIN In The Future (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98
Black Mountain have to be just about the best burn out seventies retro hard rock and stoned soul combo going. A druggy blend of chugging Sabbath riffs, Zeppelin bombast, smoldering slow burning after dark jams, late night FM radio ambience and wasted hypnotic Velvet Underground style junkie groove.
This record has been hyped beyond all belief, so you probably already read about it, or maybe even own it, but if not, it's definitely worth checking out.
There's nothing here quite as potent as "Druganaut", the monster metallic jam from their self titled debut, serious contender for one of THE heavy rock jams of all time. A killer riff, awesome dynamics, sexy and intense boy / girl vocals. The opening track on In The Future, "Stormy High" comes pretty darn close, partly by blatantly ripping off "Druganaut" actually, the opening riff is a killer, laid over warbling organs, but the minute it modulates, it begins to sound EXACTLY like "Druganaut", right down to the stop start verses, and the wailing Robert Plant like vocals, but this one does change it up a bit, with weird call and response vocals, and a bunch of fuzzy crunchy Deep Purple-y organ.
Their self titled record was pretty frontloaded, mellowing out quite a bit over the course of the rest of the disc, but hearing "Stormy High" we thought this might be the one where the band kept it heavy and rocking all the way through, but nope, this is a band that definitely and obviously doesn't want to just rock, which, the more we listen, we don't mind one bit. The rest of the record is all stoned and laid back, with killer hooks, and warm carnivalesque organs, soaring strings, and awesome falsetto vocals, it's easy to imagine listening to this stuff in your old beat up El Camino, parked at some make out spot, where all the kids hang out and drink and smoke, hoping to get laid or at the very least forget all about your crappy job and your shitty life. In The Future is all black lights and bongs, late night and leather vests, big amps and bellbottoms, even when it's heavy, it's not so much metal or rocking as it is soulful and grooving. There are some more heavy moments scattered throughout, the opening minute or so of "Tyrants", a swirling super dynamic guitar / organ duel, or the tribal psych jam of "Evil Ways" with some serious ELP worthy keyboards and wailing vox. But for the most part, In The Future is a groovy slab of heavy seventies stoner mood rock, tripped out, dark and dreamy, druggy and just a little bit witchy.
MPEG Stream: "Stormy High"
MPEG Stream: "Angels"
MPEG Stream: "Tyrants"

BLACK OAK ARKANSAS The Knowbody Else '69 (Purple Pyramid) cd 16.98
Way back before Black Oak Arkansas became the wild, liquored up, Southern fried hard rocking musical party we all know and love, and well before James Mangrum strapped on a washboard and transformed into wild Jim Dandy, the ringmaster of the BOA traveling sideshow, there was a little band called the Knowbody Else, who barely hinted at what was to come.
Instead, the sound of the Knowbody Else, essentially the proto Black Oak, is more more laid back and groovy, druggy and stoney, lots of twang and jangle, the drums loping and lazy, lots of slippery slide, and Dandy's, er, Mangrum's vocals are awesome, scratchy and rough, a throaty ragged croon, melodious but still raw, a bit wild and slightly unhinged, like a cross between the guy from Nazareth and the guy from The Monks, basically even though he's super young, he sounds like some crazy old man with a beard fronting a hippie rock combo, which isn't all that far off, minus the old bit.
The opening track is so great, a killer hook, weirdo lyrics about candy bars, some awesome lightning fast slide guitar leads, lots of twang, and a killer shuffling swing rhythm, plus a wicked hook that sticks fast in your head and is damn difficult to get out.
The rest of the record follows the same sort of sonic path, groovy sixties hippie rock, a little like the Allman Brothers meets the Grateful Dead mixed with a little Canned Heat maybe, guitars unfurling dreamily, muted tribal percussion, some flute flutters in the background, warm warbling organ swells, gentle minor key strum, slide guitar melodies, soft swirling twang, occasional bursts of wild lead guitar, it sounds like we're describing some super limited freek folk cd-r, and folks who are into that stuff should definitely check this out, but for the most part, the Knowbody Else is dark and doleful country rock, most of it sounding like just a guy and his guitar, or maybe at the most a couple folks, not the massive outfit pictured on the cover. The songs though are slightly off kilter, a bit trippy and weirdly mysterious, the unique vocals and brooding moodiness, turning the music into something much more 'out there and dark' than most of the stuff from that era. Minus the first track, which is just a killer Southern rock jam!!
It's not hard to imagine, walking down some long stretch of buckling asphalt, nothing but fields and cows in every direction, stumbling upon some old dilapidated roadhouse, pushing open the door, dark inside, except for the dim lights from behind the bar, and the stage against the back wall, filled with a bunch of shirtless longhairs, kicking out these mellow jams. Awesome.
But then there are the bonus tracks from a few years latter, which feature Tommy Aldridge on the drums, who would go on to drum for Ozzy, Whitesnake and Pat Travers, and sound WAY more like the Black Oak we're used to, big heavy proto hard rock party grooves, heavy blues, with crunchy guitars, and big beats, the first of the two bonus tracks is a killer, sounding even more like Nazareth, or maybe Blackfoot, with some super heavy guitar, and Dandy's wailing vox. The second bonus track, titled "Jim Dandy" is a bit cheesy and is sort of skippable, but that first one definitely has us hankering for more of the BOA heavy stuff!
Comes in one of those weird new fangled rounded corner style cd cases, and while they last, includes a button and a patch for your fringed leather vest!
MPEG Stream: "Hold Me Down"
MPEG Stream: "In Your Quiet Home"

BLACKSHAW, JAMES Celeste (Tompkins Square) cd 14.98
We went on an on in the original reviews of these Blackshaw records, about what a shame it is that records this good were doomed to remain limited cd-r's, some kept getting reissued, but always in runs way too limited...
Finally, someone (thanks Tompkins Square!) had the good sense to gussy these discs up and give them the actual proper cd reissue they so deserve.
This amazing record from James Blackshaw is totally different from what you might expect, considering it was originally released on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, home to all things whir and rumble and skree and grrr and rrroooaarrr. This is a whole 'nother ball of... um.. steel strings apparently. Long before Blackshaw was a household name (at least in modern freak folk and neo-Appalachian lovin' households) we were fawning over this gorgeous chunk of modern acoustic guitar alchemy. Celeste is made up of two 15 minute tracks (one played in open C major tuning, the other in open C minor) of totally mesmerizing Appalachian raga folk, performed mainly on 12-string acoustic guitar with occasional farfisa organ and cymbals. Fans of John Fahey, Jack Rose, Matt Valentine and all things free folk will be completely blown away. There's still an element of drone in the repetitive raga-like riffing, but this is mainly and most definitely a weird and wonderful modern avant bluegrass / folk record. Lovely!
Remastered and with new artwork.
MPEG Stream: "Celeste Pt. 1"

BLACKSHAW, JAMES Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances (Tompkins Square) cd 14.98
Of these three new James Blackshaw cd reissues of long out of print cd-r's, Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances is the only one of the three that we never managed to carry at all. We've long gone on and on about how records this good deserve to be heard by more than the 100 or 200 lucky folks who manage to get their hands on the limited cd-r's, and finally, someone (thanks Tompkins Square!) had the good sense to gussy these discs up and give them the actual proper cd reissue they so deserve.
Originally released as a cd-r on Digitalis, limited to 200 copies in 2004, this one slipped right under our radar, which is a huge shame as it is just as good as Sunshrine or Celeste. But it's also quite different. Where as the other discs focus on Blackshaw's deft fingerpicking, and mastery of the steel string guitar, this disc is just as much about the drone and the ambience. Not to say, Blackshaw doesn't get to unleash dexterous little tangles of Appalachian filigree, but those stretches of strum and shimmer are set amidst thick harmonium drones and blissed out field recordings.
The disc begins with a warm whirring drone, all thick wheezes and rich lustrous chords, Eastern melodies, drawn way out into long soft smears. Eventually the guitar joins in, but simple spare strums, soft chords, and gentle fingerpicking, nestled amidst the softly undulating harmonium in the background, the sounds of crickets chirping in the distance, bits of slippery sitar style squiggles. The sound gradually slips into something much more familiar, 'that' Blackshaw sound we love so much, a lot like the other reissued discs, until the guitar fades out, leaving a murky muted shimmer, which soon fades out as well, leaving nothing a strange high end hiss-scape of weird processed percussion and shortwave radio, peppered with bits of high end jangle and distant upper register guitar scrape and disembodied clatter, before the track finally shifts gears once again, filling the last few minutes with urgently strummed guitar, big chunky chords, moaning harmoniums, and billowing splashes of deep resonant cymbal shimmer, a glorious kinetic finish to a another gorgeous sprawling languorous guitardronedrift.
Remastered and with new artwork.
MPEG Stream: "Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances"

BLACKSHAW, JAMES Sunshrine (Tompkins Square) cd 14.98
We went on an on in the original reviews of these Blackshaw records, about what a shame it is that records this good were doomed to remain limited cd-r's, some kept getting reissued, but always in runs way too limited...
Finally, someone (thanks Tompkins Square!) had the good sense to gussy these discs up and give them the actual proper cd reissue they so deserve.
Sunshrine was originally released on Digitalis, 1000 copies that time, but still not enough, which makes sense when you hear how goddamn beautiful this disc is.
More gorgeously lush neo-Appalachia... Two tracks, the first an extended thirty minute epic, a lush and completely gorgeous steel string raga, huge majestic sweeps of intricately finger picked guitar, dense with reverb, accompanied by sarod, harmonium, Farfisa organ, glockenspiel, bells and bowed cymbals. Overwhelmingly beautiful and impossibly otherworldly. Expressive and aggressive but completely delicate and introspective at the same time. The end of the track is especially powerful when the guitars fade out and all that is left is the thick wheezing drone of the harmonium and a cloud of tinkling bells. The final three minutes is a very Fahey-esque, steel string guitar workout, gorgeous folky twang, simple and so breathtaking.
Remastered and with new artwork.
MPEG Stream: "Sunshrine (Excerpt)"

BOREDOMS Super Roots 9 (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
Really dedicated Boredoms fans (who are legion) probably already picked up the expensive Japanese import version of this amazing, latest Super Roots installment that we listed last year. But if you didn't have the yen to pay for it, or just didn't get around to it, you can thank Thrill Jockey for this long awaited domestic reissue. The music and artwork's the same, but instead of the non-standard oversized Japanese jewel box of the import edition, they've packaged it in a nice gatefold mini-lp style sleeve. Now here's our review from before:
Super Roots craziness!! As if to capitalize upon the recent Stateside reissues via Vice of volumes 1 through 8 of their classic Super Roots series, Japan's major exporters of psychedelic, trance-inducing, rhythmic throb the Boredoms have turned on their blinding sonic sun rays and turned out a NEW Super Roots volume, number 9, number 9, number 9... their first in eight years! We just got this import in and it's been blasting in heavy rotation at the store, we're mesmerized.
In the past, the Super Roots series was very much UNLIKE the, um, "regular" albums produced by the Boredoms. For instance, back when they were more of a Buttholesy noise-rock spazzrock outfit, the Super Roots were where their now trademark krauty drone rave moves first seeped into thee higher Bore-consciousness. Now that their output of late has come so much closer to the sounds previously pioneered in the Super Roots series, we were wondering if this new installment would either a) sound like "old" Boredoms or b) introduce some entirely new approach of Bore-music. Well, instead it's c) a lot like recent Boredoms albums Seadrum / House Of Sun and Vision Creation Newsun. In fact, if you've had the chance to see Boredoms (aka Voordoms) lately, this is similar to what you've seen/heard, and the single 40+ minute piece documented here was in fact recorded live in concert on Christmas Eve of 2004. A super-charged minimalist rhythmic symphony built from wordless vocal samples manipulated on Bore-leader Eye Yamantaka's turntable, and the efforts of three hard-working drummers (Yoshimi, ATR, and Yojiro). It drones and churns and builds and bursts and keeps on going and going and going, very choral (it appears that Eye's usual samples are here reproduced and/or augmented by an actual 24 person choir!), each plateau of shining beauty that's reached, each level of energetic ecstasy that's achieved, soon left behind and bettered before it's over... wow. WOW. We hear that they're soon planning on trying to top this with a concert in New York on 7/7/07 featuring 77 drummers! (And our own Andee just might be one of the 77... ) [which indeed he was!!]
You can't say the Boredoms aren't ambitious, but it's all so totally worshipful of the cosmos at the same time.
MPEG Stream: "Livwe (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Livwe (excerpt 2)"

BORIS Smile (DIWPhalanx / Daymare) cd 33.00
Every once in a while, we sort of wish we could just move on musically, forget whatever it was we super into, no matter how magical. Find a new band to fall in love with. To obsess over. To slavishly track down every single shred of recorded music by. Buying multiple versions of the same record just to get one extra song, or a just a few more minutes of glorious drone and buzz. But then along comes a record like this, and wipes that wish away. Boris are indeed the rarest of bands. Few groups engender such utter devotion. If it wasn't Boris, sure it would probably be someone else, but it wouldn't be the same.
Not sure if it's the fact that they're Japanese, or that their early records were so shrouded in mystery, or guitarist Wata's utter bad ass coolness, the increasingly elaborate and insane packaging, the outrageously limited releases, it's probably a combination of all of those things, but the overriding factor is ultimately, that they're an amazing band, who are not afraid to change their sound at the drop of a hat, going from shoe gazing dronelords, to crushing sludge doom destroyers, to wild thrashing rock and rollers, with all sorts of unexpected stops in between. Some folks prefer the droning beauty of Flood, others the Stooges-y stomp of Pink, still others the glacial guitar crush of Absolutego, most folks love them all, and who can blame them?
Smile, the latest from this mighty power trio, takes elements of Pink (arguably, most new fans' favorite Boris record, and most old fans' least favorite) and stretches them way out, turning a record that most of us were expecting to be Pink part two, into easily the group's weirdest and most chaotic. Which is in fact a VERY good thing. Add in some guest action from SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley and Japanese guitarist and Rainbow collaborator Michio Kurihara and away we go...
The record opens with "Message", a dramatically redone version of the A side from the now out of print Statement 7". We described "Statement" like this: fans of Boris' Pink will feel right at home. A serious KISS like riff, some cowbell, and then some ridiculously blown out in the red acid psych lead guitar. It's weirdly lo-fi sounding, but still fierce, and if the band sounds a bit fuzzy and muddy, the leads sound like Wata is IN your headphones, ramming her guitar straight into your ears. It's pretty amazing actually. The music is a wild wooly garage metal stomp, tons of FX, wah wah, the vocals though are a bit of surprise. Weirdly poppy. Double tracked. Super melodic, almost sing-along-able. But it's all about the riffy groove and those impossibly acidic guitar freakouts.
But in the stretched out "Message" version, the track begins with some throbbing sub sonic bass, some seventies "woo-hoo" vocals, some hypnotic tribal drumming, a killer minimal groove that never stops, and even when the track kicks in, it's way more sludge-y and gritty with head spinning stereo panning and an awesomely fucked up mix (another reason to pick up the Japanese version, besides the artwork, more on that later).
The second track, most folks should recognize from seeing the band live. A killer riff, some wailing lead vox, wild thrashy drumming, the various parts spiced up with swoops of backwards guitars, and a crumbling super distorted tripped out FX drenched outro. The next track is THE killer of the disc. With guitars so blown out, they threaten to FRY your headphones, a killer stop start groove, weird blown speaker bass, all wrapped around a pretty sweet pop hook, but the band do their best to bury it in crumbling distortion, and acid fried psych freakouts. Until the last half of the track, where things devolve into some super minimal dronescape with soft strummed whispery guitars, a damaged percussive thud, and lots of barely there shimmer.
Our favorite track, oddly enough, is probably the next one, a cover of legendary Japanese group PYG's "Flower Sun Rain", a gorgeously languorous drift, all reverby clean guitars, soulful vocals, simple subtle percussion, a brief squall of gorgeous sun blasted psychguitar, slipping smoothly back into that slow dreamy drift. We'd have been just as happy to hear Boris do a whole record of PYG covers after that one. But then comes "Next Saturn" another weirdly blissed out pop song, muted tones drifting over muted programmed drums and a thick sheet of distorted guitar, and the vocals, which in the past have often detracted from Boris' power, have definitely become an intricate part of their new sound and have improved vastly, now able to carry a song, and in some ways this whole record, and here they soar and croon, a wicked hook and a lilting moody melody. But it wouldn't be Boris if they didn't smash it to bits part way through, and they do, unleashing huge sheets of heavily delayed guitar and dubbed out drums, throbbing bass, all tangled up into glorious psychedelic meltdowns.
Even the heaviest songs on Smile are infused with hooks and offer up brief glimpses of the poppiness underlying the crunch and rrroooar, no truer than on "Dead Destination" (by the way, some of the song titles in this review are probably wrong, as they are in Japanese on the sleeve, and various sources had different titles, arggh), a thick droned out, bliss blast of thick corrosive guitars, wild sinewy, buzz drenched leads, drums literally buried beneath layer after layer of whir and hiss and a dense wall of guitar. Eventually simple finger picked guitar and more dreamy sad vocals surface from within the roiling psychscape, offering a haunting counterpoint to the fierce fury all around. Even here, at it's thickest and most intense, the song is imbued with a certain melancholy, deftly woven into the freaked out guitars and stuttering mostly buried rhythms.
The second to last track, for its first half at least, is a gorgeous slowcore crawl, just plaintive vocals, delicate guitar, soft cymbal shimmer, a gauzy dreamy drift, that eventually fades to silence, before streaks of feedback fall from the sky, an avalanche of drums follow, until an incredibly emotive main riff, heavy and blown out, takes over, dragging the rest of the track with it, slowly churning, a sort of metallicized krautrock jam, the main guitar thick and distorted, but all around it glimmering harmonics and whirling melodies, those soaring vocals, and of course an appropriately majestic, dramatic in-the-red coda.
The record finishes with a massive 20 minute track, untitled, that almost sounds like a single song synopsis of Boris' new sound. Beginning with tripped out backwards guitar, and skeletal melodies, briefly interrupted by a fierce squall of intense psychedelia, only to bliss back out, giving way to a dreamy dirgey shoegazey dirge, all cascading distorted guitars and hazy lazy vocals, eventually overtaken by huge crumbling slabs of slow motion distortion and blinding streaks of high end skree and moaning feedback, finally drifting off into a slow shimmery feedback infused fadeout.
Be prepared for plenty of confusion in the coming months, this is the Japanese version, the domestic Southern Lord version will have a slightly different track listing, including some different mixes, the lp versions too, will be different, we're not exactly sure how yet, but we'll do our best to keep you informed.
But as is usually the case, the Japanese version has knock out packaging, WAY better than the US version. A puffy plastic gatefold, like something you'd buy at the Hello Kitty store, or a bath toy, a yellow transparent heart cut out of the sponge-like background, all the text printed in metallic silver, inside liner notes printed silver ink on yellow vellum, a silver metallic ink on yellow vellum obi.
If you're a crazy Boris obsessive, you're probably gonna need to buy both the Japanese version and the Southern Lord version, and maybe one of the lp versions as well when they come out, but if you're just here for the music, and you were gonna get just one, we'd probably lean toward this one, for the packaging especially, but also for the revamped opening track.
As always, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Flower Sun Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Statement"
MPEG Stream: "KA RE HA TE TA SA KI - No Ones Grieve"

BORIS Floor Shaker (12" Remix Version) (DIWPhalanx / Daymare) 12" 16.98
In conjunction with the new album Smile, Boris offer up this super limited remix 12", already out of print, limited to 1000 copies worldwide, we only got 40 copies, so once these are gone, probably by the time you've gotten this far into the review, that's IT.
So two songs, both remixed versions of songs from other releases. One a super effected revamped version of "Message" the opening track from the Japanese version of Smile, which itself is a remixed version of "Statement" from the Southern Lord 7" and the US version of Smile. Confused yet? Welcome to Boris country.
So the remixed "Message" takes the original, and drenches it in FX, strips much of the guitar away, leaving just that relentless tribal rhythm, and then wrapped all around it, various little sonic flourishes, drones, and shimmers, little melodic tangles, long drawn out high end streaks, whirs and little stuttery strums, and the original's "woo hoo" vocals. Super minimal and trancey and blissed out. A bit like Boris filtered though later Boredoms.
But the real attraction is the remix of "Floor Shaker", the original was exclusive to the now out of print Southern Lord 7", but here the song is totally pulled apart and twisted into new shapes. At first, the vibe sounds really retro, skittery high hats, the vocals all by their lonesome, then some disco-y beats and some super fuzzy synths. Very new wave sounding. On the verge of being cheesy, but paired up with the plaintive almost emo vocals, the result is actually pretty cool.
But as the track progresses, it gets weirder and weirder, the synths more skeletal and damaged sounding, the beat a simple throbbing pulse, the whole thing doused in weird feedback and electronic squelches, high end chirps, and a cool looped vocal snippet, the vibe much more M83, a sort of washed out sun dappled overdriven shoegaze-y electro bliss out, shades of Health, Crystal Castles, Justice, and that whole new wave of modern synthsoaked dirty disco electropop, all wrapped around little bits of fuzzy blown out Boris.
Again, already out of print, limited to 1000 copies worldwide, we got 40. That's it. Packaged in plain yellow 12" sleeves, sealed shut with a sticker.

BURNING WITCH Crippled Lucifer (Japanese Version) (Daymare) 3cd 42.00
A few weeks back we gushed and gushed like crazy over this legendary doom classic, all gussied up and elaborately re-packaged and re-issued by the fine folks at Southern Lord. Well, we just got our hands on the Japanese version, now a triple cd instead of a double cd, the packaging very similar, the only real difference being that the Southern Lord pressing came with a download card, so you could download some demos and live shows, well, that's what's on the third disc here. So if you already downloaded those tracks, you don't really need this unless you want to own those tracks on cd. And if you somehow missed this the first time around, and the $42 price tag doesn't scare you off, then by all means grab one! It's worth it. And be warned, we only got a handful, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
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 third bonus disc with 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)"

CLARK Turning Dragon (Warp) cd 15.98
A few years ago Chris Clark decided to drop his first name as he continually tweaked and changed his sound, making his records some of the most consistently interesting and innovative releases in the world of electronica.
With his latest album he's made more bold changes, probably the most immediately felt (and heard!) of his career. Clark's sound is changed to full throttle on this outing and we are loving it. This is way more four on the floor full on crazy dance party style than anything we've ever heard from him before, but still with such an interesting and unpredictable sound palette. While it taps a bit into 90's Aphex Twin and the more raging side of Kid 606, we still can hear Clark's great and eclectic touch in all of these songs. This is the soundtrack to a rave we'd love to spend all night, every night at. We gotta say this is making us want to do a hit of E and dance the night away, but what's awesome about the record is that it also appeals to those of us not too keen on the dance floor, but who still love pounding and driving electronic music that we can totally spazz out to.
Definitely a contender for electronic record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "New Year Storm"
MPEG Stream: "Mercy Sines"

CLARK Turning Dragon (Warp) 2lp 17.98
A few years ago Chris Clark decided to drop his first name as he continually tweaked and changed his sound, making his records some of the most consistently interesting and innovative releases in the world of electronica.
With his latest album he's made more bold changes, probably the most immediately felt (and heard!) of his career. Clark's sound is changed to full throttle on this outing and we are loving it. This is way more four on the floor full on crazy dance party style than anything we've ever heard from him before, but still with such an interesting and unpredictable sound palette. While it taps a bit into 90's Aphex Twin and the more raging side of Kid 606, we still can hear Clark's great and eclectic touch in all of these songs. This is the soundtrack to a rave we'd love to spend all night, every night at. We gotta say this is making us want to do a hit of E and dance the night away, but what's awesome about the record is that it also appeals to those of us not too keen on the dance floor, but who still love pounding and driving electronic music that we can totally spazz out to.
Definitely a contender for electronic record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "New Year Storm"
MPEG Stream: "Mercy Sines"

CLOAKS Serene (Students Of Decay) cd-r 10.98
It's been a while since we've heard from the Cloaks, aka Spencer Doran. But the first Cloaks cd, A Crystal Skull In Peru, is still a steady seller, and for good reason. Two tracks of piano, electronics, guitar, zither and bells, all woven into lush dreamlike soundscapes. The Starving Weirdos released that first one on their label, which made a lot of sense, as they two seems to share a distinct aesthetic, but with the SWs taking the darker path, while Cloaks path was dappled with sunlight, and would around grassy knolls and windswept vistas.
We're pleased to report, that on this latest release, another two tracker, Doran and his Cloaks haven't altered the formula too much. Another couple of fuzzy, gauzy, washed out dronescapes, the first rich with flurries of muted piano, and processed guitars, the emphasis on the piano, which, much like the first disc, reminds us of continuous music guru and master pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, albeit less frenzied. Instead, the clouds of notes emerge from the piano and drift like motes of dust, swirling in the slightest breeze, surrounded by bits of glitch, and crumbling effects, backwards melodies, soft swaths of buzz and whirring shimmer, delicate and crystalline, but so warm and rich and soporific, 35 minutes of dense, swirling soft focus bliss, utterly mesmerizing and hypnotic, yet another one of those tracks that should go on forever and ever.
The second track is much more brief, and acts more as a sort of addendum. A dark, languorous avant Appalachia, dark notes tumbling from the guitar, soft swirls of steel string shimmer, the subtle buzz of deftly fingerpicked melodies, minor key and melancholy, hovering over a backdrop of watercolored whirs, a near static drone beneath the gorgeous little tangles of guitar, laced with spare, spacious piano melodies, a gorgeous late afternoon drift, that near the end, builds to a swirling, densely layered, subtly kinetic coda. So nice.
Packaged in a beautiful full color sleeve, hand stamped and numbered cd-r's, photocopied inserts, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES...
MPEG Stream: "Dream Tape Number One"
MPEG Stream: "Improvisation For Guitar And Piano"

COELACANTH The Glass Sponge (23five) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!! Given that Loren Chasse continues onward in the Jewelled Antler pantheon of alchemical minimalism and occluded psychedelia in current projects as Thuja, Of, Ov, and Softwar, we're revisiting an earlier project that Chasse's a part of -- Coleacanth. Released back in 2003, The Glass Sponge was the second release from this smeared drone and sound art duo, which also features our very own Jim Haynes. The four extended tracks of gorgeous almost-ambience are stained with growling undercurrents, soft pocks of noise, and unsettled field recordings. Forests of cricket-like chirps are blurred into smeary ambient washes of cool greys and pale whites, beneath smatterings of clinking clicking clatter. Keening, indistinct moaning tones sound like distant foghorns, reflected from the slowly shifting terrain. Underwatery warped sonic shudders billow outward as vague melodies drift and float, chiming and reverberating, eventually dissipating into misty clusters of ethereal almost transparent notes. Hissing, fuzzy high end buzz whirs machinelike over industrial clatter that has been smoothed out into pulsing, barely-there rhythms. All of the sounds were collected from various public and private Coelacanth performances, before being assembled into The Glass Sponge. Coelacanth sonically bridges the crystalline energy of Axolotl, the mechanized dynamics of Machinegfabriek, and the long-form ether of Andrew Chalk. This record is so so nice and gets our highest recommendation.
MPEG Stream: "The Electric Hydrometer"
MPEG Stream: "The Hexactinellidae"
MPEG Stream: "The Violet Shell and Its Raft"

CRYSTAL CASTLES s/t (Last Gang Records) cd 14.98
Man, we really, really love old school video games around here. The Tron and Rastan games in the store, the Arcade Ambience field recording series, Power Pill Fist, etc. It has to be part of what lured us into the world of Toronto's Crystal Castles and their 8-bit electro mayhem. We're so glad this finally came out, because half of these tracks have been on the internet for about two years and a legitimate release was looking sort of unlikely. But here it is! We digress, on with the review.
Okay, so the duo has been lumped in -- maybe mistakenly -- with the Klaxons, Justice, Digitalism, and the like, but we hear darker, more interesting minor key melodies that occasionally hint at things like The Knife and Junior Boys. In reality, they're not divorced from any of those bands, but there's something about them that gets us. No, not just the aural video game quality, but the undeniable urge to somehow say they're just a bit more punk. Fun. Playful. In fact, there's a handful of tracks on the record that aren't even mixed. And when we saw them play here a year or so ago, their singer Alice was telling us about how she had been kicked out of the previous night's venue for underage drinking.
It doesn't hurt their art-punk street cred that they're best buds with LA's own Health, who they did a split 7" with a year or so ago. When listening to Crystal Castles, there's the feeling that this duo would be just as happy blasting their sounds through a shitty stereo system at their friend's house party, but lucky for us everyone else seems to be feeling it too -- and now they can invite us along to the party.
MPEG Stream: "Untrust Us"
MPEG Stream: "Xxzxcuzx Me"

DER BLUTHARSCH The Philosopher's Stone (WKN) cd 25.00
The Philosopher's Stone marks the end the of ten long and productive years during which Der Blutharsch have unleashed their signature dark neo-folk upon the masses. Apocalyptic prophecies, mantras, and manifestos spewed forth from the hate-forged lips of Albin Julius, but even this must come to an end. Over the course of 8 tracks and nearly 56 minutes, long-time fans can't help but sit back and marvel at the gargantuan change between 1998's Der Sieg Des Lichtes Ist Des Lebens Heil! and the present release.
The band was considered highly innovative at its inception, but in retrospect it's easily classifiable as straight-forward neo-folk, albeit at its very finest. These days? Geez, I mean, we're hearing something like a blackened, post-industrial Loop or Jesus and Mary Chain. Or maybe even what the Birthday Party would've sounded like if they were a suicidal '70s psych group. Staccato dirges grab distorted basslines and ride them into droney psychedelia, underneath a sky of swirling guitar leads and brutal, haunting vocals. In a way, the album is heavily indebted to Death In June's old, old album The Guilty Have No Past, but on tons of heroin -- and probably a fistful of other downers and/or mood stabilizers. But through it all Julius's mantra could not be clearer. In fact, the back page of the booklet even reads in bold letters: "Uniforms are always changing, rock n' roll will stay forever." And if rock n' roll's main objective is to scare parents, or the majority of society in general, Der Blutharsch are definitely, definitely a rock band. Even though they sure as hell don't look like one. If you were to see them in the street, you'd probably try as hard as possible not to make eye contact, and maybe assume they were an extremely well-funded fascist militia of sorts. Ah, which brings up their (at least implicitly fascist) politics. Well, they're highly questionable at best, and to get the whole story, you'd need to maybe talk with them yourself. As for us, it's not much different than listening to old Ike and Tina Turner recordings, great songs written by a much-less-than-admirable dude. Either way, The Philosopher's Stone is a fantastic cross-section of what Julius and crew are capable of producing, truly mood-altering, honestly fucked up music that completely transcends any traditional understanding of the way songs -- and albums -- work. Somewhere between a heathen liturgy and a well-produced personal catharsis, Der Blutharsch never fails to provide the listener with new experiences and forge new territory in a genre that tends to be cripplingly simplistic, predictable, and indulgent. Recommended.
As always, the packaging is incredible, the cd is in a miniature hardcover book style digipak, all glossy inks and subtle embossing, a big booklet, and super striking imagery. The lp too is extravagant, a similarly rendered glossy layout, but with a BONUS 7" with two tracks not on the cd, in a full color sleeve affixed to the inside of the gatefold.
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone IV"
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone VIII"

DER BLUTHARSCH The Philosopher's Stone (WKN) lp 39.00
The Philosopher's Stone marks the end the of ten long and productive years during which Der Blutharsch have unleashed their signature dark neo-folk upon the masses. Apocalyptic prophecies, mantras, and manifestos spewed forth from the hate-forged lips of Albin Julius, but even this must come to an end. Over the course of 8 tracks and nearly 56 minutes, long-time fans can't help but sit back and marvel at the gargantuan change between 1998's Der Sieg Des Lichtes Ist Des Lebens Heil! and the present release.
The band was considered highly innovative at its inception, but in retrospect it's easily classifiable as straight-forward neo-folk, albeit at its very finest. These days? Geez, I mean, we're hearing something like a blackened, post-industrial Loop or Jesus and Mary Chain. Or maybe even what the Birthday Party would've sounded like if they were a suicidal '70s psych group. Staccato dirges grab distorted basslines and ride them into droney psychedelia, underneath a sky of swirling guitar leads and brutal, haunting vocals. In a way, the album is heavily indebted to Death In June's old, old album The Guilty Have No Past, but on tons of heroin -- and probably a fistful of other downers and/or mood stabilizers. But through it all Julius's mantra could not be clearer. In fact, the back page of the booklet even reads in bold letters: "Uniforms are always changing, rock n' roll will stay forever." And if rock n' roll's main objective is to scare parents, or the majority of society in general, Der Blutharsch are definitely, definitely a rock band. Even though they sure as hell don't look like one. If you were to see them in the street, you'd probably try as hard as possible not to make eye contact, and maybe assume they were an extremely well-funded fascist militia of sorts. Ah, which brings up their (at least implicitly fascist) politics. Well, they're highly questionable at best, and to get the whole story, you'd need to maybe talk with them yourself. As for us, it's not much different than listening to old Ike and Tina Turner recordings, great songs written by a much-less-than-admirable dude. Either way, The Philosopher's Stone is a fantastic cross-section of what Julius and crew are capable of producing, truly mood-altering, honestly fucked up music that completely transcends any traditional understanding of the way songs -- and albums -- work. Somewhere between a heathen liturgy and a well-produced personal catharsis, Der Blutharsch never fails to provide the listener with new experiences and forge new territory in a genre that tends to be cripplingly simplistic, predictable, and indulgent. Recommended.
As always, the packaging is incredible, the cd is in a miniature hardcover book style digipak, all glossy inks and subtle embossing, a big booklet, and super striking imagery. The lp too is extravagant, a similarly rendered glossy layout, but with a BONUS 7" with two tracks not on the cd, in a full color sleeve affixed to the inside of the gatefold.
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone IV"
MPEG Stream: "Philosopher's Stone VIII"

EARTH The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull (Japanese Version) (Daymare) 2cd 35.00
Another Japanese version to drive collectors and completists crazy! This is the import version of the most recent release from eternal aQ faves Earth, and in addition to the record itself, an absolutely gorgeous and timeless slab of dark lugubrious cinematic twang, this double disc tacks on a live disc, recorded in 2006 in Europe, and originally released on Southern Lord as Live Europe 2006, a disc so limited (maybe just tour only) that we never even heard about it, let along carried it. But it's just what you might expect, live versions of all the new Earth favorites, slightly heavier in places, maybe subtly more raw and immediate, but really hewing pretty close to the recorded versions, so most likely for completists only, or folks not put off by the idea of shelling out $35 for a record they already own, for the extra 6 tracks...
And be warned, we only got a handful, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slow motion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
Cool cover art by Arik Roper, housed in a gorgeous black slipcover, letterpressed and printed in gold metallic ink.
MPEG Stream: "Omens And Portents I: The Driver"
MPEG Stream: "Rise To Glory"
MPEG Stream: "Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine)"

FENNESZ / JECK / MATTHEWS Amoroso (Touch) 7" 7.98
Remember that Spire record on Touch a while back? A series of Organ works, by a handful of the usual avant drone suspects: Fennesz, Jeck, Biosphere, Tsunoda, Ambarchi, Watson and othersŠ
Well, this 7" is part of a series of limited eps, based on the Spire recordings. The first we think. And is a tribute to Arvo Part, and to "mystic minimalism". Charles Matthews who was featured on the original Spire recordings, playing the massive pipe organ, is the player here as well, and both Jeck and Fennesz get a side to do what they want with those original sounds.
Fennesz turns the sound of the organ into a minimal whir, gentle washes of grit and whispery buzz, long tones subtly pulsing, deep rich chords, soft swells, gently effected and transformed into haunting alien drones. Those drones infused with melancholic melodies and deep metallic reverberations. Truly mystical and minimal.
Jeck however is much less reverent. Choosing much like he did on the original Spire recording to try something more aggressive, more dark, more noisy, and much less soothing, his side is an almost industrial soundscape or crunch and buzz, the organ's notes transformed into bell like tones, chopped up into jagged melodies, almost like someone is flipping stations, the melody lurching suddenly from note to note, jarring and uneasy, but at the same time hauntingly compelling. The tones are dense and distorted, lots of smeared feedback, thick clouds of pixilated grit and deep droning walls of whir, a super intense and extraordinarily noisy approach from Jeck, something we're definitely interested in hearing much more of in the future.
As always, comes houses in an immediately recognizable Touch style sleeve, with gorgeous Jon Wozencroft photos and design.

FORTERESSE Les Hivers De Notre Epoque (Sepulchral Productions) cd 13.98
A brand new blast of grim frostbitten Canadian blackness from the masters of Metal Noir Quebecois, Forteresse. We were first struck by these guys when we saw the cover of their first record, an old yellowed photo of a young man cradling a violin, then once we threw the record on, it began with a crackly old recording of some sort of folky fiddle music. Whatthefuck, we were thinking, until the band launched into the first track, exploding in a frenzy of classic sounding nineties styled black metal buzz. That record was a tribute to the folk music and culture of the French part of North America apparently, but as we mentioned in the review of that disc, we never would have known it but for those brief bits of scratchy violin.
This latest disc seems to be also steeped in some sort of mythology, the record cover, a very Burzum like black and grey drawing of some old farm house, of leafless winter trees and thick drifts of snow, they are Canadian after all. The songs separated into movements. The music inside is appropriately frosty and grim, barren and wintry, a distinct departure from the thick black buzz of their debut. Here, the sound is super brittle and high end, the tracks are super washed out, the buzzing guitars so smeared and blurred and mixed down that they sound almost like long static streaks of upper register drone, the drums way down in the mix, surfacing here and there in brief flurries of percussive mayhem, but just as often rendered a relentless muted throb, the vocals a harsh howl sprawled over the top.
The result is amazing and totally mesmerizing, an intense blown out blackness, that is rife with soaring keening high end tones, shards of feedback, the riffs cyclical and repetitive. Our favorite track would have to be "Tenebras", where all of the above elements are made even more extreme, the riffing becomes some soaring looped ur-drone, super emotional majestic streaks of sound are woven into an almost static wall of throbbing high end, the drums more a distant splatter of subtle pulses, the vocals even more anguished, tangled up in the shimmering strands of sound, the result is something truly original and unlike any black metal we've heard. There must be some sort of keyboards happening too, the sound is thick and layered but it just sounds like long drawn out drones arranged into an alien orchestral black drift. WOW.
The sound might have changed, but Forteresse have managed to somehow get both better and weirder, and thus remain still, one of our favorite of the current crop of buzzing black hordes.
MPEG Stream: "En Quete Du Souvenir"
MPEG Stream: "Ancienne Voix"

GLORIOR BELLI Manifesting The Raging Beast (Southern Lord) cd 15.98
France pretty much has the market cornered on modern progressive black metal. Deathspell Omega obviously, Hell Militia, Amesoeurs, Alcest, Peste Noire, Mutiilation, Blut Aus Nord, Aluk Todolo, Spektr, Angmar, Wolfe, and now you can add Glorior Belli to the list.
Deathspell fans will go apeshit for these guys, their buzzing blackness is all mathy and post rocky, songs lurch and sway, some songs are thick furious blasts, relentless and dense with black grit, the sound massive and crushing, while others are sprawling post black doomscapes, the guitars unwinding into fractured melodies, the drums stuttering through convoluted tempos, and even the blasting black numbers, more often than not splinter into super angular blackmath workouts.
Manifesting The Raging Beast somehow manages to be raw and grim, but simultaneously super dense and incredibly heavy, the production is incredible, the guitars are thick streaks of luminous melody, wound into black thunderbolts, the drums sound like sticking your head in a cement mixer full of anvils, as much as we love us some super lo-fi tinny 4-track buzz, it's kind of awesome to have a record sound this powerful, especially a black metal record. The riffs are kick ass, and catchy, and the band are not afraid of a groove, so much of the record is spent lurching through weird black waltzes or swinging in strange time signatures before exploding back into soul shearing blasts. And it's that balance between relentless black onslaught, and strange tangled weirdness that keeps this record sounding so amazing.
Definitely for fans of DSO, Funeral Mist, Katharsis and other like minded progressive black metal hordes...
MPEG Stream: "From Darkness There Springs Light"
MPEG Stream: "Deadly Sparks"
MPEG Stream: "Sinister Resonance"

GLORIOR BELLI Manifesting The Raging Beast (Southern Lord) lp 16.98
France pretty much has the market cornered on modern progressive black metal. Deathspell Omega obviously, Hell Militia, Amesoeurs, Alcest, Peste Noire, Mutiilation, Blut Aus Nord, Aluk Todolo, Spektr, Angmar, Wolfe, and now you can add Glorior Belli to the list.
Deathspell fans will go apeshit for these guys, their buzzing blackness is all mathy and post rocky, songs lurch and sway, some songs are thick furious blasts, relentless and dense with black grit, the sound massive and crushing, while others are sprawling post black doomscapes, the guitars unwinding into fractured melodies, the drums stuttering through convoluted tempos, and even the blasting black numbers, more often than not splinter into super angular blackmath workouts.
Manifesting The Raging Beast somehow manages to be raw and grim, but simultaneously super dense and incredibly heavy, the production is incredible, the guitars are thick streaks of luminous melody, wound into black thunderbolts, the drums sound like sticking your head in a cement mixer full of anvils, as much as we love us some super lo-fi tinny 4-track buzz, it's kind of awesome to have a record sound this powerful, especially a black metal record. The riffs are kick ass, and catchy, and the band are not afraid of a groove, so much of the record is spent lurching through weird black waltzes or swinging in strange time signatures before exploding back into soul shearing blasts. And it's that balance between relentless black onslaught, and strange tangled weirdness that keeps this record sounding so amazing.
Definitely for fans of DSO, Funeral Mist, Katharsis and other like minded progressive black metal hordes...
MPEG Stream: "From Darkness There Springs Light"
MPEG Stream: "Deadly Sparks"
MPEG Stream: "Sinister Resonance"

GNARLS BARKLEY The Odd Couple (Atlantic) cd 16.98
Summer Jam lightning rarely strikes twice, and in the case of Gnarls Barkley fluke hit, "Crazy", they were lucky lightning struck at all. So instead of setting out for the impossible, they have made a more memorable full length without the erratic stylistic leaps and goofs of their debut. The tone is darker, but more soulful and while the upbeat jams are fewer, they have enough hooks to keep you listening and coming back. While St. Elsewhere was neurotic and bi-polar, The Odd Couple is addressing demons in a far more beguiling and groovy manner, one that gets better with each listen. Could this be therapy?
MPEG Stream: "Going On"
MPEG Stream: "Run (I'm A Natural Disaster)"
MPEG Stream: "She Knows"

GNAW THEIR TONGUES Devotion (At War With False Noise) cd-r 8.98
It seems almost criminal to release something so limited by a band as hyped as these guys (or this guy) are lately. But there you go. 100 copies. Already sold out. We got almost half of them, but even just in the store they've been flying out of here. So you should know what that means by now. Thankfully, all the hype is well deserved and then some. Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the grimmest, sickest, darkest, most gloriously fucked up outfits going, mixing black ambient drones, dirgey sludge, buzzing black metal, abstract industrial, even mixing in bits of dialogue and snippets of opera and random other weirdness, the result a totally baffling and bewildering headfuck, that manages to creep the shit out of us, but somehow keep us listening over and over and over and over.
Devotion though is a departure, ditching much of the metal of past releases, as well as most of the song structure, and opts for something much more static and ambient, but no less heavy, these four tracks are thick swaths of dark torturous throb and groan, creaks and shimmers, rendered in crumbling greys and hoarse ghostlike wheezes. It's like an aural tour of some mysterious catacombs, built from skulls and rotting flesh, the bleak atmosphere rife with the sounds of strange machinery, the tortured cries of the doomed, a veritable symphony of cacophonous crashes and deafening blasts of blown out buzz, boiled down into a primordial ooze and smeared into gorgeously lush waves of corrosive grinding crush, a bristly brutal blur that slithers and undulates like a pit full of black snakes.
The packaging is appropriately grim and black and bleak, and fancy, as are most At War With False Noise releases, printed cd-r's housed in a two sided washed out black and white gatefold sleeve, decorated with goats and candles and bloodshed and naked women, tucked in an oversized A5 sized black cardstock gatefold jacket, with a barely legible black on black vellum cover, all in a plastic outer sleeve.
And again, limited to 100 copies, already out of print, blah blah blah...
MPEG Stream: "Devotion"
MPEG Stream: "Canibalis"

HAARE Chemical Witchcraft (Kult Of Nihilow) lp 28.00
We listed the 7" by these guys ages ago, and in that review coined the term DRONOISE for whatever it is that Haare do. A roiling black mass of distorted dark ambient, and slow motion abstract free-doom, that record went out of print in no time (it was limited to 270 copies after all) and we've been waiting patiently for more. And now it's finally here.
Another split release between two Finnish labels, Kult Of Nihilow (Fleshpress, Dot [.]. Marzuraan, Boris, Church Of Misery) and Freak Animal (a noise/drone/industrial sublabel of the mighty Northern Heritage). This Finnish one man band continue of from where that 7", and their last full length (The Temple, a Julian Cope Head Heritage record of the month!) left off.
Beginning with an avalanche of skree and shimmer, Haare navigates his strange vessel, assembled from skulls and bones, sticks and twigs, leaves and dried flesh, through four extended soundscapes, each rife with high end, but offering much in the way of deep rumbling drones and buzzing black ambience. Everywhere fall hailstorms of corroded crumbling melody, so blackened they appear more as grey smears than anything resembling melodies. Malfunctioning machinery groans and whirs, clouds of warped effects are shot through with streaks of feedback like shafts of sunlight, explosions of post industrial chaos, riffs pulled to pieces, the parts nothing but jagged shards of crumbling shimmer and decayed drone, everything bathed in a gritty, grimey unearthly glow. It almost sounds like Avarus and Yellow Swans, dosed with LSD and sealed up in a cave with nothing but some busted amps, guitars with no strings, a junky 4-track and the spirit of the undead cave dwellers.
Creepy and noisy, heavy and drone-y, buzzy and blackened and almost psychedelic.
Unfortunately, like the 7" before it, this is crazy limited, ONLY 275 COPIES!! And almost out of print at the label. We got a bunch, but they won't last long. And once they're gone, there's a good chance we won't be able to get more.

INDIAN Slights And Abuse / The Sycophant (Seventh Rule Recordings) cd 14.98
Sorry, we never got for y'all the limited vinyl 12"s that are now (thankfully) combined onto this 2-on-1 compact disc full-length (and then some) offering from Chicago doomcore dirgemasters Indian. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. But heck, here's all four tracks from Slights And Abuse and five tracks from The Sycophant on one handy 5" digitally encoded disc. And anyone into the HEAVY (that would be, a lot of you) damn well ought to check it out. This is the follow up to Indian's previous Seventh Rule album The Unquiet Sky, and it crushes just as much or more than that impressive debut did.
The initial attack of Slights And Abuse's first three tracks had us a bit staggered with their speedy spew... it's a vicious thrashing all right, the band ripping through some tricky riffing and unleashing the wretched vokills with frenzied ferocity. But then that record's 15 minute finale "Fatal Luck" slows things down, waaaay down, and we remember why these guys remind us so much of the Melvins. And Khanate. Buried At Sea, Boris and Cavity too!
The second half of this disc, The Sycophant half, is the weirder one, with experimental interludes like the eerie ambient piano instrumental "Allotriophagy". More distorted drone abounds on "Gloat". Yet the metallisms of part one certainly bleed through, from the doomy triumph of "The Sycophant" to the chunky chuggery of "Pigs In Your Open Wound"... truly, each song on this whole disc being pretty killer in its own weird and/or wrathful way. And you gotta like the cover paintings, 'specially the one on the back for The Sycophant, depicting a Pope doing the bloody bird-biting routine a la Ozzy.
MPEG Stream: "Cursed Reform"
MPEG Stream: "Fatal Lack"
MPEG Stream: "Lust"

JACKSON, MILLIE It Hurts So Good (Spring Classics) cd 15.98
Besides having some of the most memorable album covers ever, Millie Jackson also made some damn fine music! While it's her saucy mouth and sassy attitude that she is usually most known for, It Hurts So Good is all about an undeniably deep hitting and fiercely delivered Southern soul that sizzles so damn good! This was her second album, recorded in 1973 and while many later albums would provide some great moments, It Hurts So Good really stands as her strongest album from start to finish. Her voice is so strong and bold and the rich instrumentation kicks oh so right. Millie shows her range from in your face and funky to smooth and sultry without losing a bit of rawness or conviction in the process. With bonus tracks worth hearing and extensive liner notes this is a must have for soul & funk lovers, and a record that really deserves more attention and praise. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Hipocrisy"
MPEG Stream: "Help Yourself"
MPEG Stream: "It Hurts So Good"

JAY, JEREMY Airwalker (K Records) 7" 4.50
Jeremy Jay won a very special place in our hearts with his short but so great ep debut on K which came out at the end of last year. Recently he played an amazing live show here in San Francisco followed by a great instore here at AQ. We finally were able to get our hands on the Airwalker 7" which has two of our favorite songs from the ep on one slab of vinyl. "Airwalker" is the irresistible title track that has become a big hit on our local college radio station KUSF and on 'Sigh 2' it's "We Stay Here (In Our Secret World)" a song we could listen to over and over and over and never get sick of, how perfect is that for the 7" format. With his debut full length just around the corner we can get lost in some of Airwalker's magic a little bit longer until there's a new batch of songs to sway in the sky with.
MPEG Stream: "Airwalker"
MPEG Stream: "We Stay Here In Our Secret World"

LEWIS, JEFFREY 12 Crass Songs (Rough Trade) cd 14.98
We were never really all that into Crass. And we have no idea who the heck Jeffrey Lewis is, but shit, this record has totally kicked our asses. Okay, ass kicking might be a little off, considering what a playful, fun, and goofy record this is. And not goofy in a bad way, just goofy in that way that old pop record are, those super naive early K records singles, old They Might Be Giants. You know, clever and cheeky, almost like children's music. In fact this record might be just the thing to get your toddler started early in their nascent desires for anarchy and their just waiting to blossom urge to smash the state. And it won't hurt teaching them some profanities either, maybe baby's first words will be "Fuck off!"
The arrangements are sing songy, strings, piano, simple acoustic guitar, the sing songy aspect is probably due to having to cram so many words in such little spaces. Minus the lyrics, this might be some gorgeous twee bliss pop disc, bits of folk, tinkling piano, moaning strings, stretches of drone, some subtle twang, all woven into a lilting playful pop. The darker songs almost sound like Magnetic Fields, all brooding melancholy misery and muted pop jangle. But it's the lyrics hat make the record, that turn these playful pop songs into off kilter punk rock, indie folk, protest songs. Lewis has a super laid back sung/spoken delivery, that suits the songs and lyrics perfectly. He's also joined by some awesome female vocalists, who sing a handful of the songs, but mostly join in for the choruses, like on "I Ain't Thick, It's Just A Trick", the hook delivered in a strange boy/girl harmony that sticks in your head like crazy.
Some of the tracks sound a bit beatnicky, with bongos, and tongue twisting political manifestos, lots of this sounds like it could be some weird NYC band from back in the nineties with a record or two on Shimmy Disc, a sort of off kilter, fractured anti-folk, some are extra goofy, a couple are intense and dark. But light or dark, goofy or earnest, the lyrics transform each song into something almost sinister, something subtly powerful, the lyrics having to carry much of the anger and bitterness, since in Crass, the music was as vitriolic as the words, and here for the most part, the music is anything but. The result, while still patently poppy and folky, is much more thought provoking and subtly challenging than most pop music.
Huge Crass fans might be distraught at these reinterpretations, but Anarcho dabblers might just dig, and folks into weird pop, and weird folk, who like their tunes with a little weight-of-the-world behind them, should definitely give this a try.
Awesome packaging, a colorful coloring book sleeve, with two die cuts, revealing an inner sleeve decorated with various images which show through the die cuts depending on which way the sleeve is oriented. Also includes a massive comic book rendering of how this record came to be on one side, while on the other, a comic revealing just what those images showing through the cover mean.
MPEG Stream: "End Result"
MPEG Stream: "I Ain't Thick"
MPEG Stream: "Systematic Death"

MABUKI, JUNKO Slave Of Love (Tiliqua) cd 26.00
What was meant to be a limited series, seems to be extended indefinitely, with a new disc on this week's list, and at least two more installments planned. And if anything, they just keep getting better, and more perverted! There's just too much sexy sound to stop now. Longtime readers of the aQ list will no doubt be familiar with the Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of archival releases from Tiliqua Records in Japan (who also released the Joakim Skogsberg, this week's Record Of The Week). Each disc in the series unearths a lost gem from a particular sexy chanteuse, lost examples of a strange, and distinctly Japanese artform, where studio bands would perform groovy tunes, exotica, lounge, new age, jazz, even sometimes sort of Morricone style soundtracks, while a starlet would coo and purr, groan and moan over the top.
Past installments have included sexy action heroine Ike Reiko, Japanese "Play Girl" Kuwabara Yukiko, seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani (who Mabuki is often compared to), legendary porn actress Taguchi Kumi, sexy Lolita, Petite M'Amie, aka Mari Keiko and the most recent disc (and the only one not out of print), which instead of focusing on a particular starlet, focused on the composer responsible for many of these releases, Masami Kawahara.
But this newest installment returns to the series' original pattern, collecting all the recorded works by a single actress/performer, in this case, S+M / bondage queen Mabuki Junko, who essentially took over when Naomi Tani retired. Mabuki was curvaceous and busty, and a spirited performer, writhing and squirming as she was restrained, tied up, whipped and spanked, finding fame starring in films with titles like All Women Are Whores. Her film career was brief, her musical career even more so, having released a single 7" and a single cassette. The cassette was part of a series called Yoru No Driver, designed for truckers, to keep them company on long lonely all night drives, and were thus sold primarily in gas stations and truck stops. Both are collected here, and both are as weird and wild, freaky and fucked up as all of the other installments. And in its own way, one of the weirder installments.
Playing more like some soap opera on tape, the music is exotic and groovy, somewhere between easy listening and light jazz, but with strange Eastern tinges. The music fading out, to play in the background, while Mabuki and her male 'co-star' deliver their lines. Growing more and more frenzied and feverish, until Mabuki begins to sob, and groan, and squeal, the sound of fabric tearing, the sound of tape being pulled from a roll, the sound of whipping, grunting, breathless grunts and howls, all bathed in reverb, and over a smooth jazzy backdrop.
Other tracks feature fuzzy flute, muted trumpets, string stabs, groovy guitars, some actual singing (most notably on the second track, which was the title song to one of Mabuki's films), steel string guitars, spacey synthesizers, shimmering harps, shuffling snares, what sounds like koto, xylophones, some tracks totally goofy and cheesy, others haunting and ominous, at least one a groovy string soaked disco groove, but most all of them featuring long stretches of soap opera drama, with Mabuki pleading and sobbing tearfully, eventually giving in, and losing herself in some sexy punishment. Weird weird weird, but as always pretty fascinating and of course way recommended for fans of wild and exotic sounds.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, sexy photos of Mabuki including the cover shot of her gagged with a scarf, and the gatefold phot showing Mabuki in an open robe trussed up with red cords, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese including a biography of Mabuki, and notes on each track. ULTRA LIMITED!!! Like most of the releases in this series, this one is a one time only limited pressing of only 1000 copies, and is already SOLD OUT. There's a good chance once these are gone we will be unable to get more...
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

MACHINEFABRIEK Music For Intermittent Movements (Soundtracks For Films By John Price) (self released) cd-r 16.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Machinefabriek. Never thought we'd have to type those words. But it's true, after a relentless release schedule, it's been at least a few months since we've heard even a peep from Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek, but as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and we were getting a little overloaded to be honest, too many releases to listen to let alone review.
But listening to this now, we're reminded just why we were all so excited about this group in the first place. Zuydervelt has such a way with sounds, merging the pristine with the gritty and damaged, turning soft subtle shadings into dark crumbling mysteries.
This cd-r collects a handful of scores composed for the International Film Festival in Rotterdam earlier this year, and harkens back to the Machinefabriek of old, back when we first discovered his Marijn record.
Dark and doleful, soft shimmering ambience, smeared with tape hiss and subtle digital distortions, notes and tones drifting over a crystalline landscape of blurred murmur and strange crackles and creaks, everything gauzy and washed out, the sound gradually decaying, chords falling to pieces, a slowly collapsing house of sound, recorded in slow motion, and all the various elements fall to pieces, a gorgeous bit of decasia rendered in deep resonant rumbles and haunting ghostly melodies.
Elsewhere dense squalls of static explode, the shards and fragments drifting to the ground like dead leaves, hailstorms of hiss fill the air with sizzling shimmer, piano notes flutter and flicker like dying stars, thick metallic strings rumble and reveberate, huge cavernous swells sprawl over a field of muted glitch, and the subtle whir of alien machinery, gong like tones ripple lazily through a gauzy moonlit haze, disembodied chords float weightless, the ghosts of songs, the spirits of melodies, allowed to flat freely, affording us just glimpses and overheard whispers. So good.
All we needed really was a little break, and now with fresh ears, we're totally re-smitten by the gorgeous sounds of Machinefabriek.
The bad news though, is that like always, this is crazy crazy limited. So when we run out, it's not entirely likely that we'll be able to get more...
MPEG Stream: "Camp Series 1"
MPEG Stream: "The Boy Who Died"

MARZURAAN Five Years Worth Of Fuck All (At War With False Noise) cd 14.98
Latest release from one of our favorite proponents of drone/doom/dirge, alongside folks like SUNNO))), Corrupted, Earth, Khanate, Boris, Eyehategod, etc. But as we've mentioned before, unlike many of those other bands, UK's Marzuraan always seemed to approach their sound with one eye on the sludge, the other on the pop. Imbuing even the heaviest and murkiest of dirges with crystalline shimmer, or subtle muted melody, or even buried hooks, without sacrificing any of their sheer power or skull caving heaviness.
This disc collects a whole mess of odds and ends, from live shows, to rehearsals, to practice space recordings, random jams, improvised grooves and awesome unlikely covers. And if anything give us a glimpse into the development of their sound, from primitive noise dirgescapers to full on heavy pop band and back again.
The opening track is a cover of "After Glow" by Loop, and Marzuraan covering Loop is only one step removed from Boris covering Swervedriver, meaning a fucking grungy shoegaze goth drone bliss out match made in heaven. And the band don't change it up too much, it sounds like it could be some lost live Loop recording. Dark and dreamy and groovy and intense, the guitars washed out, the drums propulsive and tribal, the vocals weary and lightly effected, helps that it's one of our favorite tunes already, but Marzuraan nail it.
The other unlikely cover is "Turned Inside Out" by the Rollins Band, recorded live in 2005. A dark roiling filthy groove, all tightly wound Greg Ginnish guitars, raspy wailed vocals, the guitars muddy and massive, the drums pummeling, the whole track a relentless lurching groove.
The comp is loosely in reverse order, starting now, and ending way back when, so track by track, the sound becomes more and more simple, moving away from the progressive drone pop and blown out shoegaze drone of recent recordings to something much more primitive and noisy.
There's "Moneybox" recorded live in 2006, an abstract noisescape that manages to shimmer and drift, eventually coalescing into a gorgeously doomy plod, the drums an occasional crunch, the guitars spread out in thick sheets of crumbling low end and fluttering feedback. Like a much prettier more washed out Khanate. Then there's "Bad Flange", another live track, from 2004, which finds the band drifting even further into pummeling glacial doom, slow slithery heaviness, spread out over a pounding spare beat, and fragmented melodies tangled up in the downtuned caveman riffage.
"Martian Deconstruction" spreads out a thick undulating guitarscape, like a supercharged Fear Falls Burning, the guitars smoldering and whit hot, the notes and chords pulled apart into crumbling cascades of crackly buzzing sound, wound up into warm melodic swells. "Earth 3" sounds just like you might imagine, thick guitars, unwinding lazily, over a plodding propulsive bass line, very skeletal and almost unfinished sounding, a dreamy sort of slowed down dronefuzz jam. The disc finished with the oldest Marzuraan track, "HARMed" from way back in 2002, and is a massive processed soundscape of tangled downtuned guitars, sheets of buzz and hiss, stuttering jabs of grinding fragmented riffage, deep resonant metallic shimmer, shrieking feedback smeared into soft high end whirs, a muddy, murky, super distorted melted guitar blur.
Amazing Thumbprint Press packaging. A six panel, thick cardstock sleeve, printed in black and clear gloss, super striking. The inside featuring a full Marzuraan discography.
MPEG Stream: "Afterglow"
MPEG Stream: "Muck Bucket"
MPEG Stream: "Martian Deconstruction (Drum Free Mix)"

NADJA Skin Turns To Glass (The End) cd 12.98
With some bands, you want something new and different every record, strange new sounds, that confound as much as confuse, pushing boundaries, and stretching the limit of that band's 'sound'. But some groups, you don't want to ever change. You want every record to be a continuation of the one before it, you long for some way to make every song, and every record, seemingly play forever. Each release, more like a movement in a massive symphony stretched out over multiple records and multiple years.
The key though, is to somehow, within this sonic stasis, to continue to evolve, however subtly. Sure the sound remains unchanged, the tone and timbre is consistent. But within these boundaries, the songs do in fact change and shift, and offer up new ideas, new landscapes of sound, new hooks, new angles with which to hear, varied and wonderfully assorted pieces of a bigger whole.
Such is the case with dreamdoom duo Nadja, who much like their mainman Aidan Baker, release records at an alarming rate, often topping one a month, and while it's been challenging to review each and every one, we have, and we've enjoyed all of them. But listening to this latest Nadja, we began to view the band, and their record differently. There was no point in approaching this record as if it was their first, or as if it was something completely new, that we'd never heard before. Because we have. It's quite similar to past Nadja releases, the sound they've created is so much their own, the guitar impossibly full and blown out, organic, but wreathed in digital fuzz, and it's no studio trick, they played right here in aQ, and even at a less than deafening (but still plenty loud, thank you!) volume, they managed to conjure up the same heaving heaviness, the same gauzy atmospheres, the buried thump of the drum machine. In fact, as I was writing this, someone came up and asked if this was Nadja. C'mon! Most doom bands, drone bands, heck non-pop bands in general, you'd be hard pressed to immediately recognize. But Nadja have transcended all the descriptors often flung at them, doom, shoegaze, drone, metalgaze, they all apply, but none so much more than simply the name Nadja.
So why buy this one? Or the two forthcoming releases? Or the 30 or 40 past releases? Well, if you're like us, we can't get enough of the sound of Nadja. And like we mentioned above, we HAVE figured out a way to make this sound go on forever. Each record, takes the dense blissed out buzz, the lurching doomic trudge, the gloriously effulgent majesty of Nadja, and stretches it out just a little bit further. Each time adding something crucial that wasn't there before. On Skin Turns to Glass, the songs are evenmore meditative and repetitive, looped endlessly, the riffs churning mantra-like, a buzzing slow motion hynorock, separated by spaced out stretches of glimmering ambience, and deep cavernous drones. Every Nadja record we're tempted to declare it the best yet, but we'd bet you if we went back to one of the first releases, we'd immediately think that it was in fact the best one. Such is the magic of Nadja, the sound they've created, the soundworld, each piece is as important as any other, the sound wouldn't be complete, in fact can naver be truly complete, until there are no more records, no more songs, no more pieces to add to the ever expanding puzzle. Hopefully that will never happen.
Includes an unlisted bonus track, nearly thirty minutes of shimmering doomic minimalism, droning dark bliss, that explodes in the last minute or so, in a flurry of incendiary white noise, a drum damaged blown out psychguitar metallic meltdown, that ends quite abruptly, leaving us to wait patiently for the next movement, coming soon...
MPEG Stream: "Sandskin"
MPEG Stream: "Skin Turns To Glass"

NEHIL, SETH & JGRZINICH Gyre (Cut) cd 17.98
Seth Nehil and John Grzinich have been collaborating in various sound ventures off and on for well over a decade, back when the two met in Austin, Texas. Gyre marks the conclusion of a body of field recordings and agitated environments that the two began working on while travelling throughout Eastern Europe and later manipulated into installation soundtracks, arriving at three lengthy tracks. A constant fluidity of gray sounds wraps around the opening track of Gyre, which gives the impression of being deep underwater investigating the nether regions; yet the tactile sounds of various rubbings and cracked details contrast the subaqueous references with earthen found sounds of soil, stone, wood, and metal. The second piece acts as a call and response to the acoustics of some crumbling Soviet warehouse, with wooden tappings echoing from various parts of the space, presumably from the two participants. Gradually, a thick rumble of low end thrumb reverberates through additional layers of chattering birds which serves to counter the 'industrial' sound debris. The creaking from a high tension wire sets the stage for the final piece on Gyre, with ringing metallic vibrations amassing into a beautiful aura of hallowed droning. On par with the likes of Murmer, Loren Chasse, Tarab, Eric La Casa, and Small Cruel Party, Gyre is an excellent album.
MPEG Stream: "Cast"
MPEG Stream: "Weald"
MPEG Stream: "Glaze"

NOSTRADAMOS s/t (World Psychedelia) cd 17.98
While we wish we could boast about having a large section of Greek '70s psychedelia, this one and only full length by Nostradamos, recorded in 1972, will now be the very high standard by which we will judge any other Greek acid-folk-psych-pop we are lucky enough to get our ears on. And that's kind of unfair for any of those records because this is truly an amazing and unique record.
As intricate and eclectic as they were poppy and infectious, Nostradamos utilized the regular rock band instrumentation but added elements like violin, flute, horns and harp which gave their songs a rich and colorful luster. Hints of more traditional Greek folk are infused into their psychedelic pop, giving an incredible range to the album and even within the songs themselves, thus making for an incredibly exciting and pleasurable listening experience. We definitely hear a kinship between this and some of the more earthy Tropicalia happening at the same time in a totally different place on the globe. Nostradamos still sounds so alive and relevant today. So many moments on this record would be at home on something by an Elephant 6 band, and we could see lots of today's indie folk stars like Beirut, Coco Rosie, Rio En Medio and even Dungen totally digging on this, we sure are!
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 11"

PHILLIPS, WASHINGTON What Are They Doing In Heaven Today? (Mississippi) lp 10.98
Another awesome archival release from the folks at Mississippi records. Not only is their catalog slowly being re-pressed, but there are a whole slew of new releases, the first being this collection from the enigmatic Washington Phillips.
Very little is know about Phillips, other than he was from Texas and only ever recorded sixteen songs. That's it. Sixteen songs. Twelve of which are here, all of them totally gorgeous and mysterious. Phillips vocals are intense and world weary, but it's the accompaniment that really stands out.
The cover shows an illustration of Phillips playing what looks like a toy piano, but the sound is stranger than a toy piano, much higher and more resonant, chiming and tinkling, like little bells, like Christmas carols, a sort of joyous effulgent sparkling shimmer. The liner notes suggest that it may or may not be a Dolceola, an extinct late nineteenth / early twentieth century instrument that looks like a hybrid of a toy piano and a zither. But as there is only one confirmed recording of the Dolceola, on a Leadbelly track from the forties, it's hard to prove just what Phillips' instrument could be. According to a 1961 interview with Frank Walker, who recorded Washington Phillips, the instrument Phillips used was homemade and was something "nobody on earth could use except him". Online sources speculate that it could be a fretless zither or a phonoharp. Whatever it is, it sounds somewhere between a hammered dulcimer, a spinet (baby harpsichord) and an ice cream truck (minus the sound system), all beneath a warm fuzzy patina of dusty crackle. The notes tumble and twinkle while Phillips weaves them seamlessly into a warm glowing backdrop for his testifying, creating a gorgeous and haunting angelic gospel blues, that is truly unique.
As always, pressed on thick vinyl, housed in a gorgeously screened jacket, includes an insert on thick textured paper, with very minimal liner notes (appropriately enough) on one side, and and on the other an ad for the Dolceola out of some old time catalog. Cool!

POWERS COURT Red Mist Of Endenmore (Dragonheart) cd 21.00
You know how we're always talkin' cult this, cult that, with regard to black metal? Well heck if your black metal band *isn't* considered cult you may as well hang it up. But in other genres, the term can still have some actual meaning. Power metal ferinstance. Lots of not-cult bands of that ilk crowding the scene. And then the occasional one that truly is "cult", has a cult, or deserves a cult (following)... we'll leave it to black metal bands to potentially BE cults in the religious sense.
In any event, all this is preliminarily in aid of saying, bow down, a new Powers Court album (only their third in 18 years of existence!) has finally materialized on our shared plane of existence!! We've reviewed and raved about their others, longtime AQ customers may remember. Basic info: Powers Court is a power metal trio from Illinois (yep, American metal!) whose cult quality is pretty much owed to the persona of the talented Danie Powers, guitarist/vocalist. Females are rare enough in metal bands, especially as leaders, making Ms. Powers immediately notable. She's notable too for her amazing, nearly 5-octave range. She'd be a unique and formidable vocalist alone, but she's also the main songwriter, shredder, and riffmaster (mistress?) of the band. Go, girl!
And while it's been quite a few years since the last Powers Court album back in 2001, Danie & Co. seem to have put that time to good use, crafting a meticulous and magnificent display of 21st century true metal mastery... We'll recommend this immediately to Hammers Of Misfortune fans for a couple reasons, first you probably like operatic female metal vocals, and secondly, this is a concept album, a narrative based on some dark Italian folktale about doomed lovers and occult happenings. This sinister story is set against a relentless, surging backdrop of proggy, pyrotechnic power metal. And we do mean power. Full of explosive, galloping double bass drumming, chunky buzzsaw guitar riffage, harmonic squeals, herky-jerk rhythmic complexities, and, soaring melodically o'er it all, that haunting, weird voice. Theatrical, commanding, sorta like a power metal version of Grace Slick or Pat Benatar, also comparable to Kind Diamond. She sings like a woman possessed, sometimes a crystal clear delicate songbird (as on finale "Vain Regrets") in the upper range, sometimes descending to a much throatier, lower register that's definitely medievally monkish, or even akin to a black metal rasp. Often doubled, multitracked for extra eerie effect, Powers warbles and holds notes in weird ways, her phrasing always adding as much preternatural personality to the proceedings as does her wide range.
Recommended! Definitely for Hammers fans, also for anyone into the dark, thrashy eccentricity of another American metal cult, Manilla Road.
MPEG Stream: "A Somber Day"
MPEG Stream: "Outrage"
MPEG Stream: "Darkness Calls"

PRURIENT And Still, Wanting (No Fun Productions) cd+5"vinyl 14.98
We've said it before, we'll say it again. If there was anyone capable of dragging us kicking and screaming over to the darkside, it would be Dom Fernow, aka Prurient. And by the dark side, we mean umm... well, loving noise music. We already do sort of dig noise, most of the music we love is in some way noisy, and we do love some 'noise' artists, but most specifically defined noise music, well that stuff can leave us cold. Wait a second, hold on. As we write this, we realize that pretty soon, the more reviews of 'noise' records we write, noise records that we LOVE, we're just gonna have to do away with these apologetic intros entirely, since it's becoming more and more apparent that maybe we do indeed just simply love noise.
And this record is indeed NOISE music. Heavy on the noise. Heavy noise. Gnarled, crumbling, buzzing, hissing clouds of white noise, of dense static, of blown out grinding chaotic sound. The root sound is in fact, pure noise, almost white noise, sounds you've heard on a million Merzbow records, but as with other Prurient discs, it's what you do with it, how you shape it, the subtle textures underneath and within. The shapes, the dynamics, the melodies (when you can find them), the musicality, while some groups will conjure up the noise, and leave it at that, Fernow uses noise the way a rock band uses the guitar, he plays it, he uses it to compose SONGS. It's hard to explain, and sometimes it's difficult to hear, but once your ears understand how to listen to Prurient's noise, it's like someone colorblind seeing colors for the first time, everything explodes, a prismatic burst of thick textured sound.
One interesting aspect of Prurient, is how big a role vocals play, some spoken, some howled, often distorted or processed, it expands the boundaries of noise, by not only introducing lyrics, but also by creating another layer of sound, something to play against the crumbling distortion and the white hot rrrroooar. Beyond that, Fernow also manages to introduce all sorts of strange soundscapes beneath the noise on the surface, sometimes it's warm whirring ambience, which makes those track sound like some supercharged Tim Hecker record, or Fennesz remixed by Merzbow. Other tracks chop up the noise into stuttering rhythms, the throbbing crunch creating almost-grooves, others are more dense and impenetrable, but even those tracks offer up fragments of melodies, bits of blurred drone, hints of some sort of song buried in the mire. This whole disc, while being fierce and fucked up, heavy and thick and noisy and brutal, manages also to be haunting and creepy and beautifully damaged. Fans of all that blissed out drone music we champion, who are looking for something a little more intense, who perhaps now realize that having to dig for beauty might just be more rewarding than having it handed to you, might do well to check this out. Another divine disc of brutal bliss and harsh beauty, and these days no one does it better than Prurient.
Killer packaging. Super fancy thick gatefold sleeve, two pockets, on one, the cd, and a booklet of photos, all of roiling water and crashing waterfalls, in the other pocket, a 5" vinyl single with two extra tracks!
MPEG Stream: "Memory Repeating"
MPEG Stream: "Lust End"
MPEG Stream: "Total Terrorism"

RASHOMON The Ruined Map (Film Music Volume 1) (Mirrors) cd 14.98
Another disc we've been meaning to list for ages. The first release from Rashomon, the new project of Matt Thompson, former and founding member of UK prog combo Guapo. Rashomon incorporates much of what drove the music of Guapo, avant prog, psychedelic rock, soundtrack music, even metal into their sound.
But Thompson is approaching this new music from more of a filmic angle, the sounds much more cinematic, which should have been obvious from the name of the project, the record's title, and even the songs, each bearing the name of a classic film. Might be a bit pretentious in other hands, but this is the guy who founded Guapo, his prog cred is solid as a rock, as is his instrumental prowess, and it's obvious listening to these songs.
How the music here relates to the various films, is a bit tough for us to comment on since, we're embarrassed to say, we've seen only 2 of the 8 films referenced, but we're certainly excited to check the rest of them out now.
The opening track is a dark brooding convoluted space prog workout, channeling Goblin, as well as John Carpenter, into an intense creepscape, all minor key and darkly ominous, with long stretches of haunted house synth and wheezing harmoniums, the drums complex, skittering amidst a winding droneprog jam, heavy on the low-end and the tension building shimmer.
The second track is all smokey and jazzy, a minimal shuffle beneath some atonal scrabbly Derek Bailey like guitars, the track soon morphing into creepy sepia tone music box melodies.
Over the course of the rest of the record, as the tracks slip from film to film director to director, Bresson to Suzuki, Starewicz to Shindo, Branded To Kill, Lancelot Du Lac, Onibaba, The Mascot, the songs follow suit, shifting from mood to mood, sound to sound, soaring strings, ballroom jazz, bursts of acid fried synth blow outs, tribal almost African sounding drumming, gypsy folk violins, super intense spastic freaked out avant metal damage, deep shimmering drones, long stretches of creaking industrial ambience, haunting bagpipe like melodies, moody abstract drifts, gently strummed guitars clouds of cymbal shimmer, a constantly shifting world of sound, deep and layered, expansive and indeed, so cinematic.
Fans of Guapo will want this for sure, but anyone into far out soundtracks, experimental soundscapes or avant prog should definitely check this out as well.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Onibaba"
MPEG Stream: "Blast Of Silence"
MPEG Stream: "A Quiet Week In The House"

SHITMAT / LADYSCRAPER Grungecore Volume 1 (Fukdup) 7" 6.50
There's been much talk about grunge around aQ these days. A lot of it has to do with the fact that a bunch of us just love grunge, STILL, and thus talk about it all the time. But beyond that, Andee recently dedicated an entire radio show to his grunge favorites, and this summer is the Sub Pop 20th anniversary celebration, which rumor has it, might entail a Green River reunion! And now there's this, the first volume in a proposed series called Grungecore. And the second we heard about it, we knew we needed it!
Gabber jungle dancehall electronic freak Shitmat, covering Nirvana's "Negative Creep"!!! As if that weren't enough, the flipside is some other crazed electronic tweaker taking on Nirvana's "Senseless Apprentice" (aka "Scentless Apprentice"). And if even that weren't still enough, every single 7" comes in a sleeve, hand sewn from actual flannel shirts! Holy shit!!!
So the Shitmat side is a killer. It begins with all this throbbing black ambience, weird rhythmic skitter, which explodes into a fierce relentless blast of gabber madness. But it no way does it sound anything like Nirvana. UNTIL, the vocals kick in, and then it fits, it sound so right, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Kurt Kobain fronting some band on DHR back in the nineties, the rhythm of the original is kept intact, with the little pauses filled with flurries of jungle instead of that moaning guitar, the howling at the end of the chorus processed into some fucked up digital scream. Only reminds us how much we love Shitmat.
The flipside is someone called Ladyscraper, and their version of "Scentless Apprentice" sounds nothing like the original, less of a remix, more of an interpretation. Huge chunks of throbbing sizzling synth, massive grinding bass, the beats are more like speaker shredding bolts of digital crunch, the churn and skitter and occasionally explode into impossibly dense tangles of digital glitch. The vocals are super distorted, almost black metal, the whole thing stops and starts, super convoluted, it's basically impossible to tell it's a Nirvana song, but that doesn't mean it's not awesome.
Each 7" comes in its own flannel sleeve, hand sewn, from various parts of various different flannel shirts. Some are sleeves, and have buttons or cuffs, others have parts of collars, a few have a strange mudflap that flops outside the plastic sleeve. Each sleeve has a Grungecore sticker affixed to the front and a FUKDUP label Sub Pop parody sticker on the back, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, the label on the 7" is hand stamped and hand numbered, and includes a photocopied insert with liner notes and rad high school drawings. WAY recommended.

SMITH, ELLIOTT XO (Plain Recordings) lp 16.98
Wow, now back in print on vinyl, all deluxe 180-gram style, for first time since it was originally released!!
It's easy to forget that when Elliott Smith first hit the scene things were a lot different than they are now. There weren't that many sensitive singer songwriters roaming the underground and there was still a pretty huge divide between the 'indie' and the mainstream. Of course that has all changed so much, but when Elliott first started to get wider attention thanks to Gus Van Sant's use of his songs in Good Will Hunting and the Oscar nomination that followed, it was really an exceptionally strange occurrence in the indie music scene. It kind of marked the moment where much of what had been a big well kept secret would soon become a part of popular culture. We can still remember watching Smith on live TV performing at the Oscar's in his white tuxedo looking so sweet, nervous and humble. It truly felt like one of US was finally getting their deserved moment in the spotlight. Of course he lost to Celine Dion, but there was really no one you would rather get to represent so many of the underdogs than Elliott Smith. It was like finally getting to see someone honest and uncorrupted in a mainstream Hollywood setting. His music was so pure and beautiful, with this uncanny ability to make the bitter sound so sweet.
XO was Smith's major label debut and he took full advantage of a bigger budget, and more time in he studio to explore and reach further, honing his amazing ability to construct and orchestrate grand yet never bloated pop songs. There was still lots of the more minimal moments, stark songsmithery and delicate fingerpicking, all hallmarks of his earlier work, but there was a new lush and and much fuller sound on XO. Without trying to sound too hyperbolic, XO is as close to a perfect pop record as you can get. We can't count the times that one of these songs was put on a mixtape we made, or was played over and over and over as it so closely corresponded to a relationship we were having or a moment in time we were going through.
He never hid the fact that he was hugely influenced by The Kinks and The Beatles and while countless others made careers out of trying to rip off both of those bands, Smith managed to tap into the internal world of those bands, their amazing melodies and moods, like no one else has, carrying the torch for smart, sincere, heartfelt and truly timeless pop music.
This is an album so full of warmth, like it was made just for you, the music flowing out of your speakers, filling your room or your headphones with glorious beautiful sound. Songs about lovers, friends, relationships and the human condition, that will ring with warm truth for decades to come.
MPEG Stream: "Waltz #2 (XO)"
MPEG Stream: "I Didn't Understand"
MPEG Stream: "Baby Britian"

SMITH, ELLIOTT XO (Dreamworks) cd 15.98
We're listing the lp version of this classic Elliott Smith album, available on vinyl again for the first time since forever, but we realized the cds never got a proper listing back in the day, so in case you're not a vinyl person, but still want to experience this amazing record, here ya go:
It's easy to forget that when Elliott Smith first hit the scene things were a lot different than they are now. There weren't that many sensitive singer songwriters roaming the underground and there was still a pretty huge divide between the 'indie' and the mainstream. Of course that has all changed so much, but when Elliott first started to get wider attention thanks to Gus Van Sant's use of his songs in Good Will Hunting and the Oscar nomination that followed, it was really an exceptionally strange occurrence in the indie music scene. It kind of marked the moment where much of what had been a big well kept secret would soon become a part of popular culture. We can still remember watching Smith on live TV performing at the Oscar's in his white tuxedo looking so sweet, nervous and humble. It truly felt like one of US was finally getting their deserved moment in the spotlight. Of course he lost to Celine Dion, but there was really no one you would rather get to represent so many of the underdogs than Elliott Smith. It was like finally getting to see someone honest and uncorrupted in a mainstream Hollywood setting. His music was so pure and beautiful, with this uncanny ability to make the bitter sound so sweet.
XO was Smith's major label debut and he took full advantage of a bigger budget, and more time in he studio to explore and reach further, honing his amazing ability to construct and orchestrate grand yet never bloated pop songs. There was still lots of the more minimal moments, stark songsmithery and delicate fingerpicking, all hallmarks of his earlier work, but there was a new lush and and much fuller sound on XO. Without trying to sound too hyperbolic, XO is as close to a perfect pop record as you can get. We can't count the times that one of these songs was put on a mixtape we made, or was played over and over and over as it so closely corresponded to a relationship we were having or a moment in time we were going through.
He never hid the fact that he was hugely influenced by The Kinks and The Beatles and while countless others made careers out of trying to rip off both of those bands, Smith managed to tap into the internal world of those bands, their amazing melodies and moods, like no one else has, carrying the torch for smart, sincere, heartfelt and truly timeless pop music.
This is an album so full of warmth, like it was made just for you, the music flowing out of your speakers, filling your room or your headphones with glorious beautiful sound. Songs about lovers, friends, relationships and the human condition, that will ring with warm truth for decades to come.
MPEG Stream: "Waltz #2 (XO)"
MPEG Stream: "I Didn't Understand"
MPEG Stream: "Baby Britian"

SMITH, ELLIOTT Figure 8 (Plain Recordings) 2lp 21.00
Wow, now back in print on vinyl, all deluxe 180-gram style, for first time since it was originally released!!
It's easy to forget that when Elliott Smith first hit the scene things were a lot different than they are now. There weren't that many sensitive singer songwriters roaming the underground and there was still a pretty huge divide between the 'indie' and the mainstream. Of course that has all changed so much, but when Elliott first started to get wider attention thanks to Gus Van Sant's use of his songs in Good Will Hunting and the Oscar nomination that followed, it was really an exceptionally strange occurrence in the indie music scene. It kind of marked the moment where much of what had been a big well kept secret would soon become a part of popular culture. We can still remember watching Smith on live TV performing at the Oscar's in his white tuxedo looking so sweet, nervous and humble. It truly felt like one of US was finally getting their deserved moment in the spotlight. Of course he lost to Celine Dion, but there was really no one you would rather get to represent so many of the underdogs than Elliott Smith. It was like finally getting to see someone honest and uncorrupted in a mainstream Hollywood setting. His music was so pure and beautiful, with this uncanny ability to make the bitter sound so sweet.
Figure 8 was his follow up to XO and his second outing on Dreamworks. It found Smith continuing his exploration of a more orchestral sound as well as some of the more full on rock moments that came to bloom on XO. There was so much anticipation for this album, especially after the fantastic XO, and Smith found himself under much more media scrutiny and heightened label pressure to SELL MORE RECORDS.
Luckily, he came out of it with a record that in many ways was his breeziest and even at times hinted at a happier Elliott Smith. It was of course not without its heart wrenching songs and daydream moments. While so much attention is given to his amazing voice it's so clear on Figure 8 and all of his releases really what a gifted guitar player, overall musician and of course talented songwriter he was.
This is an album so full of warmth, like it was made just for you, the music flowing out of your speakers, filling your room or your headphones with glorious beautiful sound. Songs about lovers, friends, relationships and the human condition, that will ring with warm truth for decades to come.
MPEG Stream: "Somebody That I Used To Know"
MPEG Stream: "Happiness"
MPEG Stream: "Everything Means Nothing to Me"

SMITH, ELLIOTT Figure 8 (Dreamworks) cd 15.98
We're listing the lp version of this classic Elliott Smith album, available on vinyl again for the first time since forever, but we realized the cds never got a proper listing back in the day, so in case you're not a vinyl person, but still want to experience this amazing record, here ya go:
It's easy to forget that when Elliott Smith first hit the scene things were a lot different than they are now. There weren't that many sensitive singer songwriters roaming the underground and there was still a pretty huge divide between the 'indie' and the mainstream. Of course that has all changed so much, but when Elliott first started to get wider attention thanks to Gus Van Sant's use of his songs in Good Will Hunting and the Oscar nomination that followed, it was really an exceptionally strange occurrence in the indie music scene. It kind of marked the moment where much of what had been a big well kept secret would soon become a part of popular culture. We can still remember watching Smith on live TV performing at the Oscar's in his white tuxedo looking so sweet, nervous and humble. It truly felt like one of US was finally getting their deserved moment in the spotlight. Of course he lost to Celine Dion, but there was really no one you would rather get to represent so many of the underdogs than Elliott Smith. It was like finally getting to see someone honest and uncorrupted in a mainstream Hollywood setting. His music was so pure and beautiful, with this uncanny ability to make the bitter sound so sweet.
Figure 8 was his follow up to XO and his second outing on Dreamworks. It found Smith continuing his exploration of a more orchestral sound as well as some of the more full on rock moments that came to bloom on XO. There was so much anticipation for this album, especially after the fantastic XO, and Smith found himself under much more media scrutiny and heightened label pressure to SELL MORE RECORDS.
Luckily, he came out of it with a record that in many ways was his breeziest and even at times hinted at a happier Elliott Smith. It was of course not without its heart wrenching songs and daydream moments. While so much attention is given to his amazing voice it's so clear on Figure 8 and all of his releases really what a gifted guitar player, overall musician and of course talented songwriter he was.
This is an album so full of warmth, like it was made just for you, the music flowing out of your speakers, filling your room or your headphones with glorious beautiful sound. Songs about lovers, friends, relationships and the human condition, that will ring with warm truth for decades to come.
MPEG Stream: "Somebody That I Used To Know"
MPEG Stream: "Happiness"
MPEG Stream: "Everything Means Nothing to Me"

STELZER, HOWARD Bond Inlets (Intransitive) cd 14.98
Tapes were always a fickle medium, with the mechanics of the tape liable to fail the more you played it. Similarly, dropouts were always a possibility if you mistakenly hit the record button when you meant to hit stop; and then there was the hiss which rounded off all of the higher frequencies and dulled rhythmic edges. Even if you got a professionally manufactured tape, the hiss was still there. Indeed, tape noise is a particular sound which has faded from the collective consciousness in almost all arenas, except maybe for right here at Aquarius. We've certainly championed more than a handful of brilliant tape-sourced albums, including the best being Reynols absurdistly self-evident Blank Tapes and the maudlin evocations of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. We can also add to the list Howard Stelzer's brilliantly deadened compositions of densely compacted tape hiss found on Bond Inlets.
Two long tracks roughly equal to what would fit onto a 60 minute tape, Bond Inlets is grounded in a gray noise smearing over all of the low-end thud rumbles and distant field recordings where motion and energy is only the faintest shadow of its former self. Stelzer works in layering piles and piles of this source material and then rips these layers apart along slip-strike faults, leaving decaying echo and gravel throated drones in its wake. While definitely intense in its slow-burning compositional dynamics, it's hard to qualify Bond Inlets as a proper noise album, as this isn't the punishing electrocution of Merzbow, Masonna, or Prurient. Dare we call this a 'mature' noise album? Don't worry, your parents will still hate it.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

STRIBORG Trepidation (Displeased) cd 14.98
We figured that before the brand new record Autumnal Melancholy drops from Tasmanian black metal misanthrope Striborg (just showed up today, reviewed on the next list!), we oughta finally list the last of the reissues. So here it is, Trepidation, another damaged and deliriously freaked out, fucked up and grim grim grim slab of rain forest black metal as only Striborg can do it.
Like all of the other Striborg records, this is absolutely essential for fans of outsider black metal, and actually anyone into super challenging, confusing, weird-as-fuck sounds needs to dig into some Striborg. It rarely gets more outsider than this.
Striborg is Sin Nanna, who lives in Tasmania, supposedly sans phone or internet, communing with nature, offering up his blackened soul to the spirit of the forest. In the form of impossible buzz drenched blasts of black metal. And we talk about BUZZ all the time, but Striborg takes it to a whole other level. The guitars and riffs rendered almost dronelike, suspended in a wall of shifting crumbling fuzz, in fact wall might be off the mark, the sound isn't so much a wall, nothing so massive and foreboding, instead it's like some sort of flowing black river, churning and choppy, but blurred into something almost static. The drums sound inhuman, and probably are, a monotonous relentless beat pounding away but again, pounding connotes heaviness, and the sound here isn't really heavy, it's atmospheric more than anything. Super lo-fi, a wash of keyboards draped over the blurry buzz, the vocals are the biggest disruption, howling and shrieking, a wicked maniacal cackle, but just as often they vocals fade away leaving just that droning buzz to almost lull you into a trance.
Primitive, and raw, stumbling and chaotic, a dizzyingly confusional strain of metal cloaked in blackness and doused in drone, the guitar tone like a vacuum cleaner, the drums like cardboard boxes and trashcan lids, the arrangements convoluted and complex when they're not locked into a seemingly never ending loop. Fucked up for sure, brilliant? Without a doubt.
There are plenty of other Striborg reviews on the aQuarius site, if you want to read more about the man, the band, the sound. Needless to say, the metalheads around here consider Striborg one of our all time favorites, possibly the most freaked out and fucked up, damaged, and completely and utterly baffling of the bunch. And Trepidation definitely ranks up there with Striborg's best. Fans obviously need it if they don't already have it, and if you're new to this black metal weirdness, and were looking for a good place to start, to bravely enter the dark damaged world of Striborg, Trepidation, even heeding the title, might just be the one...
Deluxe reissue (originally released in 2005), with all new artwork, tons of photos of snow and forests and trees, all printed in black and metallic silver.
MPEG Stream: "Journey Of A Misanthrope"
MPEG Stream: "Dismal Snow Set In The Sombre Forests"
MPEG Stream: "Catawampus"

STUMPS, THE The Black Wood (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
In a dream, you've gotten yourself lost in an endless cavern... you've been curiously wandering in the darkness, down down into the earth, for a long long time. When you stop to rest, you realize that the silence that had surrounded you is different now. You think you can hear music... drifting from someplace deeper in the darkness. Drifting, droning, dark, dark, dark... that's this music, the reverberant, cavernous, quiet sounds of The Stumps. Sleepy and creepy at the same time. You move closer, and The Stumps get louder. Troglodytic thud and rumble begins to build. That's the beauty of this album, these tracks are part whale call mystery, part trashy crashy garage rock clangor. Ambient eeriness flows into plodding free rock chaos, with heavy distortion blanketing all. The twelve and a half minute untitled track number 5 (none have titles, as far as we can tell) is all about that drone-drift, whilst track 7, for instance, rouses itself to a spaced-out, slow-motion spasm of psychedelic guitar grind-gunk and percussive splatter-clatter.
The Stumps trio of drummer James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles), bassist Stephen Clover (Seht), and guitarist Antony Milton (Mrtyu, AM, Nether Dawn, etc.) is a New Zealand underground supergroup, by the way. No wonder they're so easily so shambolic, somnolent, and sinister sounding... Outside of their own cd-r littered island realm, we couldn't compare this to much else besides, maybe, Fushitsusha.
Welcome to the cavern, welcome to the dream.
MPEG Stream: "track 3"
MPEG Stream: "track 5"
MPEG Stream: "track 7"

SUNN O))) 00Void (Japanese Version) (Daymare) 2cd 36.00
The final installment in Daymare's comprehensive SUNNO))) reissue campaign, and probably the most eagerly anticipated, not just because 00 Void is one of their best, but because the extra bonus disc features the original record reimagined and recontextualized by dadaist sound sculptors Nurse With Wound.
00Void is in fact, SUNNO)))'s first proper album, the preceding Grimmrobe Demos, being just that, demos, but sonically, it picks up right where Grimmrobe left off, huge undulating slow motion riffscapes, epic, majestic, glacial, ominous and black hole heavy. Although it hardly seems necessary at this point, for those who have managed to somehow avoid SUNNO)))'s sonic influence, SUNNO))) began life as the world's first, best, only, (and last?) EARTH tribute band, emulating and bowing before the glacial "power ambient drone" metal of Earth, creating a little cult of the dronedoomdirge faithful, long before the hipster set caught on, but this record, as much as Grimmrobe before it made a case for SUNNO))) as their own entity, sure they owed every aspect of their sound to the band they were birthed to honor (still do really), but they managed to subtly imbue that same sound with their own influences and experience, creating something even more slow and low if that were even possible, setting yet another standard for heaviness.
So on 00Void, SUNNO))) indulge in pure unfettered doom, loosed from any sort of rhythmic constrictions, unmoored from traditional song structures, letting riffs and tones and pure vibrations emanate from their wall of speakers, like some monstrous black tuning fork, almost more a physical sensation than an aural one, but those movements of blackdrone infused with a musicality that blossoms slowly the deeper you allow yourself to sink. Suffocating, pummeling, crushing, oozing, but also soothing and beautiful. Maybe one of our favorite SUNNO))) records for sure. And if the pure grim heaviness of the three originals wasn't enough, 00Void also includes a cover (or, an interpretation, anyway) of a Melvins tune! Another band who were dabbling in slow motion heaviness long before it was cool...
This deluxe Japanese reissue is gorgeously packaged as always, swank matte finished textured paper gatefold, printed inner sleeves, insert with liner notes (all in Japanese), but most importantly of all, a whole extra disc, a complete reworking of 00Void by Nurse With Wound. Most folks probably never even made it this far in the review anyway, the mention of NWW remixing SUNNO))) in the first paragraph probably had most people scrambling for the add to cart button, but for folks who stuck it out, it's well worth rebuying 00Void again for the extra disc, as it's a fantastic disc of haunting drones and abstract soundscaping, constructed using the glacial doom of SUNNO))) as the building blocks, which is surprising considering how shimmery and serene much of this is.
The opening track is one long slow billow of sound, gentle clouds of muted metallic reverberations, deep resonant chiming tones, soft smeared bass notes, all blurred into a creeping drift, that is more Chalk or Coleclough than SUNNO))). The second track is evenmore abstract, isolating, or adding voices, peppering the dreamy drone with strange metallic clang, moaning horn like bleats, sprays of hiss and buzz, all over a warbly wandering bassline, the vocals driving the song at points, a nasally croon entangled in the tracks gauzy gurgle, the bass getting thicker and thicker, coated in grit and grime and hiss, the vocals effected and almost demonic, breaking glass, weird industrial clatter, and lots and lots of hisssssssss.
The final track, another gorgeously minimal drone, the sound of SUNNO))) smeared and blurred and muted into a hushed thrum, soft subtle layers shifting and blending, warm and rich and textured but simple and spare, near the end, voices and radio static surface, but still barely audible, another whispered layer beneath a sea of tranquil hushed whir. Pretty dang cool, even if it's fairly far removed from the sound of the original, but then again, that's sort of the mark of a good remix as far as we're concerned.
Be warned, we got a bunch but they'll probably go quick, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
MPEG Stream: "NN 0)))"
MPEG Stream: "Ra At Dusk"

TYMAH Loquitur Cum Algo Sathanas (No Colours) cd 17.98
The return of Transylvanian black metal horde Tymah, who besides delivering a blackened howl equal parts Mayhem, Ulver and Darkthrone, also have the distinction of being one of the only black metal bands fronted by a woman.
Their last two records were furious blasts of buzzing Norwegian style blackness, and this one is no different. Many of the songs begin or end with slow, woozy, midtempo stretches of Burzumic buzz, but the bulk of the record is blasting old school blackness. Troo and grim. The drums a relentless blastbeat, beneath lightning fast riffs, and frontwoman Dim's hellish howl. The riffing isn't just fast and frantic, it's also epic and majestic, weaving triumphant melodies, and unleashing some killer hooks. Rare is the riff that sticks in your head like a pop song, but a handful of these songs have been lodged in our black skulls since we first got this in. Even one of the mailorder folks was just humming along to "In Devenit Satana" as these words were being written.
The sound is thick and intense, the guitars writhing and whirring and whipped up into an absolute blackthrash frenzy, the production full and HEAVY, none of that tinny lo-fi brittle buzz, this is the sort of blackness that crushes and pulverizes. Managing to sound true to the old masters, but to infuse their sound with energy and originality, much of it due to the axe mastery and throat shredding wail of the lady Dim. Folks are so impressed by that woman who sings for Arch Enemy, and rightfully so. She is pretty bad ass, but all she does is sing. Imagine her squaring off against Dim, bespiked and corpsepainted, axe in hand, atop a mountain of black amps, behind a wall of black fury, forest by her side. No contest.
Yet another fantastic grim black missive from quite possible our favorite band from Transylvania.
MPEG Stream: "Caedeban Dei"
MPEG Stream: "In Devenit Satana"

V/A An England Story (Soul Jazz) 2cd 23.00
The folks who run Soul Jazz Records must have made the best mixtapes. Heck, what are we talking about, they STILL make the best mixtapes. Their whole label is essentially based on their mixtape skills. Every release, an incredible collection of tracks, from super obscure rarities, to instantly recognizable favorites, managing over the course of a disc or two, to encapsulate and represent perfectly a sound or a scene. It's like a college course on music history condensed into a handful of songs. Whether it's Brazilian post punk, classic reggae, New York noise, Afro-Cuban music, Big Apple Rappin', modern dubstep, Tropicalia, Chicago Soul, Soul Jazz can present a super concise history of whatever sound it is. In fact, we're beginning to think, they could pick ANYTHING and we'd be willing to check it out. Easy listening, boy bands, Reggaeton, top 40, singers who used to be Mousketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club. If anyone could turn that shit into something compelling and listenable, Soul Jazz could.
Thankfully, this latest comp focuses on something much closer to our music obsessed hearts. A history of MC culture in the UK, including all the various roots and offshoots, dancehall, hip hop, jungle, garage, grime, dubstep. Anyone who dug past Soul Jazz releases like the two Box Of Dub discs, Rumble In The Jungle, any of the various dancehall comps, it almost goes without saying that this too will be some essential listening. While we recognize lots of the artists, we hadn't heard a single track here, but we've already begun compiling a list of records to track down just based on the brief samplings offered up here.
The discs aren't really chronological, or divided by genre, instead, they are deftly arranged to demonstrate the inherent similarities, to allow the listener to hear dancehall butted up against some dubstep, some UK hip hop cozied up to some jungle, the various track so different, but often incorporating similar elements and obviously drawn from the same musical history.
Some favorites: Doctor & Davinche's "Gotta Man", a loping stuttery grime jam, with a weird shuffling rhythm, a killer string stab loop, and of course some amazing tongue twisting flows. The Indian flecked hip hop groove of "So U Want Morre?" from Ty & Roots Manuva, peppered with some muted tablas, little flurries of string shimmer, a looped Eastern vocal refrain. The classic ska-infused dancehall of Tenor Fly's "Bump And Grind", soulful horns, a fluttering falsetto hook, and TF's agile gruff and raspy toasting. Riko's "Ice Rink Riddim", a convoluted grime stutter, with pizzicato guitar notes, beats made out of smeared FX and trash can lids, makes us wonder why this guy isn't as hyped as Dizzee Rascal or Wiley. "Deep" by Jakes & TC, some sort of two step garage, with some awesome fuzzed out Justice style synths, super growly vocals, and a super bouncy beat.
There are a couple weaker tracks near the end of disc two, but by then, it hardly matters, the rest of the collection is just so awesome. Funky, fucked up, groovy, big beats, killer hooks, amazing rapping and toasting, and like we already mentioned, just like the best mix tapes, An England Story leaves you wanting to hear more from pretty much every artist here!
Like all Soul Jazz releases, impeccably packaged, jewel case housed in a full color slip cover, a HUGE booklet, with liner notes, photos, interviews and more!
MPEG Stream: DOCTOR & DAVINCHE "Gotta Man"
MPEG Stream: TENOR FLY "Bump And Grind"
MPEG Stream: RIKO "Ice Rink Riddim"
MPEG Stream: JAH SCREECHY "Walk And Skank"

V/A Bearded Ladies (B-Music) cd 15.98
Like the freak circus entertainments of a bygone era, so too does this new B-Music compilation mine the fringe of far-flung female folk from the recent past and immediate present. Starting where the Folk Is A Four Letter Word comps left off, Bearded Ladies features many of the same B-music 'vixens' such as Wendy and Bonnie, Turid, Susan Christie, Selda, Heather Jones and Brigitte Fontaine joined by their more contemporary equivalents, Speck Mountain, Misty Dixon (Jane Weaver), Lights, Lispector, Emma Tricca, and Magpahi amongst others. Not as "Old Tymey" as the cover would suggest, Bearded Ladies excavates the rare individual artistry from pigeon-holed genre conventions as the contemporary artists are just as unfettered and original as the older artists, and not merely new retreads of folk motifs made popular in the last few years by Joanna Newsom and Cat Power. Another winner for B-Music. Ladyfolk lives!
MPEG Stream: SPECK MOUNTAIN "Hey Moon"
MPEG Stream: WENDY AND BONNIE "Paisley Window Pane"
MPEG Stream: BRIGITTE FONTAINE "Le Goudron"
MPEG Stream: MISTY DIXON "Are You Lost"

V/A Bollywood Steel Guitar (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
Just from the title alone, we knew that this latest installment in the always-amazing Sublime Frequencies series of unusual and under-documented "world music" recordings was gonna be the bomb! Indeed it is. The 'exotic' and infectious verve of vintage Bollywood film soundtrack music, performed with electric steel guitar as lead instrument for extra awesomeness, is hard to beat! The steel guitar, bringing with it the groovy twang of Western Swing and Hawaiian fret-sliding flavor, as well as a measure of classical Indian music, easily effects an emotive echo of the human voice that ordinarily fronts Bollywood themes. Compiler Stuart Ellis' informative liner notes describe these instrumental pop versions of Hindi film hits as the "elevator music of India" and if that's the case, we'd definitely rather be stuck in an elevator in Mumbai than anywhere else. There's 21 rare tracks by a half dozen masterful Bollywood steel string slingers: Van Shipley, Kazi Aniruddha, S. Hazarasingh, Sunil Ganguly, Charanjit Singh, and Guatam Dasgupta, recorded between 1962 and 1986.
A completely captivating collection, already one of our favorites among the many great Sublime Frequencies releases. And probably it should be no surprise that, for example, Van Shipley's "Jan Pahechan Ho" from the 1966 film Gunaam immediately gives us Sun City Girls flashbacks...
MPEG Stream: VAN SHIPLEY "Jan Pahechan Ho"
MPEG Stream: KAZI ANIRUDDHA "Piya Tu Ab To Aja"
MPEG Stream: SUNIL GANGULY "Are Diwano Mujhe Pehchano"

V/A Golden State Funk (BGP Records) cd 19.98
With the Bay Area Funk comps that Luv N Haight put out in the last few years we were reminded of what a lot of spirited funk and soul was busting out of the Bay Area during those golden years. Golden State Funk digs even deeper as it mines the dancefloor burners and gritty shakers that were recorded inside Leo Kulka's Golden State Recorders studio here in San Francisco in the late '60s and early '70s.
Many of the twenty tracks on this all hits and no-misses collection were never released before. It's making us want to try to get our hands on anything and everything by the likes of Jeanette Jones, 87th Off Broadway, The San Francisco TKOS, Ramona King, and loads more. These are songs that could hold their weight right next to more well known hits by big names like Ike & Tina, Sly & The Family Stone and Curtis Mayfield. So cool that a recording studio operated by a Czech native which started in LA recording folks like Frank Sinatra and Little Richard really came into its own when it moved to San Francisco in 1965 on Harrison Street and found magic in the soul and funk scene that was about to explode here in the Bay Area. Packed with really interesting and informative liner notes. This is not just an amazing historical document but a record filled with super tasty grooves and deep hitting funk!
MPEG Stream: 87TH OFF BROADWAY "Can't Get Enough"
MPEG Stream: JIMMY BEE "Vida Blue Pt 1"
MPEG Stream: JEANETTE JONES "I'm Glad I Got Over You"

V/A Juche (DPRK) cd 14.98
Another amazing and mysterious and confusional release from Tesco, who almost single handedly are keeping modern industrial and post industrial music alive and kicking. They've brought us Der Blutharsch, Death In June, Anenzephalia, and now JUCHE. A compilation of modern industrial artists, weighing in on North Korea (!). What is Juche? Well Wikipedia describes it like this:
"The Juche Idea is the official state ideology and state-sponsored religion of North Korea and the political system based on it. The doctrine is a component part of Kimilsungism, the North Korean term for Kim Il-sung's family regime. The core principle of the Juche ideology since the 1970s has been that "man is the master of everything and decides everything". Juche literally means "main body" or "subject"; it has also been translated in North Korean sources as "independent stand" and the "spirit of self-reliance"."
Removed from the context of actual, totalitarian politics, Juche sounds kinda cool. Intense, brutal, simple. And certainly like some sort of industrial music manifesto. So it makes sense that these bands would have something to say about it. What exactly is up to you to decipher. From the music and the extensive art and text in the accompanying booklet. But for now we'll concern ourselves with the musicŠ
We were mostly excited by a brand new unreleased track from aQ faves Anenzephalia, whose past records were rife with the sort of intense, bleak, grim, blackened dronescapes we can never get enough of. The track here is still grim and dark, but more rhythmic, a crackling lo-fi glitchscape, a skeletal rhythm crafted from squelches and pops spread out over the drift below, a garbled alien melody, equal parts sine-wave and damaged sonar ping, eventually joined by a wavery insect like blackbuzz, and some distorted disembodied vocals, a looped snippet from a speech of some sort, the whole track subtly harrowing, and weirdly hypnotic.
The Turbund Sturmwerk track is super creepy as well, a whispery shimmer of ambience, a strange looped vocal whir in the background, sweeping swell of distant distortion, soft smears of hiss, all beneath an urgent voice, an emotional speech of some sort, the song shifting gears part way through and morphing into a swirling dirge, of crumbling downtuned chords, throbbing low end buzz and extremely panned bursts of fuzz and hiss. The Grey Wolves offer up another chunk of grinding ambient creep, a rough, gritty textured wash of processed synths and strange looped distortion, melodies rendered in shards of feedback and fractured effects, a voice buried in the mix, urgent and ominous, peppered with bits of Bush, and some tangled blurred rhythms.
Operation Cleansweep weigh in with a sinister stretch of drawn out tones, layered caustic rumbles, whirring machinelike drones, mysterious percussive thumps and creaks, all smeared into a dense throbbing buzz. The strangest track is probably Militia's, beginning with some spoken word, that slips into singing, in the background a slow building looped chunk of glimmering ambience. Soon an hypnotic looped synth melody swoops in, pulled from some lost Phillip Glass piece, accompanied by junkyard drums, all very mesmerizing and repetitive, a bit like gamelan, or some Steve Reich piece. A haunting slab of alien industrial world music.
The rest of the tracks are just as weird and cool, dark and drone-y, Con-Dom, Genocide Organ, Ex-Order. In fact, much of this comp seems to fall more in line with experimental drone music, than traditional 'industrial' music, some of it reminding us of mellower more blissed out Prurient, with processed vocals, all manner of rumbling, pulsing low end, plenty of buzz and blurred murk, all of it dark and mysterious and fucking awesome.
Packaged in an oversized A5 red textured cardstock booklet, the text and symbols on the cover letter pressed in embossed metallic gold, inside a full color booklet, with lyrics, images, photos, each band with their own page. And as it says on the back cover "Limited Edition of 15,000,000 copies", so better get yours nowŠ
MPEG Stream: TURBUND STURMWERK "Reunification"
MPEG Stream: MILITIA "A Kite Of Glass In A Blood Red Sky"
MPEG Stream: ANENZEPHALIA "Work For NK"

V/A Last Kind Words (Mississippi) lp 10.98
This barely even needs a review at this point, which at AQ customarily means a long and very extensive review will follow, but we're serious this time. We can barely keep anything on Mississippi Records in stock. This small Portland store turned reissue label has been releasing an amazing bunch of old timey gospel and blues comps, African comps, as well as some killer jazz. I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Life Is A Problem, Lipa Kodi Ya City Council. All sold out in the blink of an eye. Mississippi have been gradually repressing those, as well as readying a whole 'nother batch of musical goodness. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the Washington Phillips lp, and then there's this here beauty of a comp, Last Kind Words, an amazing collection of old timey blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, a ton of rarities, not the usual blues suspects at all: Edward Clayborn, Isiah Nettles, The Anglin Brothers, Kid Prince Moore, Lulu Jackson, Louis McDaniels & Gid Smith, Sister O.M. Terrell, Robert Wilkins and a bunch more.
A couple of our favorite tracks are the title track by Geechie Wiley, her voice so lovely and raw, a gorgeous mournful melody, and a hook that is so catchy, all it takes is one play in the store, and we're all humming it all day, and "Catfish Blues" by Robert Petway, some raw stomping stripped down blues, with some amazing guitar playing, but it's the voice that does it, a raspy soulful croon, that sounds like it was crafted using whiskey, cigarettes and sandpaper, occasionally soaring to an almost falsetto, but just as smoothly slipping into super low growl.
As if the music weren't enough, and believe us IT IS, Last Kind Words also features original artwork, by aQ pal and bad ass artist Chris Johanson. Also includes a printed cardstock insert with the track info and very little else. As always SO RECOMMENDED. And as always, be prepared for us to sell out of these right quick. We'll do our best to restock as quickly as possible, assuming the label doesn't sell out too...

V/A Nigeria Disco Funk Special: The Sound Of The Underground Lagos Dancefloor 1974-79 (Sound Way) cd 17.98
Y'all went crazy for Sound Way's Nigeria Special compilation a few lists back, and we expect Nigeria Disco Funk Special -- the second installment in a 3-part series -- to be just as enticing a proposition. Whereas the first Nigeria Special was a sprawling collection of sounds and styles intended to show the sheer diversity of Nigeria's musical output in the early '70s, this volume is far more musically concise, consisting of mostly instrumental cuts that are heavily indebted to the American funk and disco being imported into Nigeria at the time.
This collection of deep funk, Afro-boogie and serious disco will transport you (and your booty) to the sweat-soaked discos of Lagos, where native sounds shimmy up next to imported grooves bringing the dancefloor to a fever pitch of go-go bells, funky drums, wah wah guitar, popping bass and blasting horns. This is tight, dirty funk being filtered through afrobeat and highlife.... the results are absolutely AMAZING!
Like all things from Sound Way, Nigeria Disco Funk Special comes with gorgeous packaging, extensive liner notes, archival photos and repros of original album artwork. Take your pick between a super slick digipak for the cd version and a gorgeous gatefold sleeve for the 2LP. This is heavy shit. Don't miss out!
MPEG Stream: JOHNNY HAASTRUP "Greetings"
MPEG Stream: DR. ADOLF AHANOTU "Ijere"
MPEG Stream: S-JOB MOVEMENT "Love Affair"

V/A Nigeria Disco Funk Special: The Sound Of The Underground Lagos Dancefloor 1974-79 (Sound Way) 2lp 25.00
Y'all went crazy for Sound Way's Nigeria Special compilation a few lists back, and we expect Nigeria Disco Funk Special -- the second installment in a 3-part series -- to be just as enticing a proposition. Whereas the first Nigeria Special was a sprawling collection of sounds and styles intended to show the sheer diversity of Nigeria's musical output in the early '70s, this volume is far more musically concise, consisting of mostly instrumental cuts that are heavily indebted to the American funk and disco being imported into Nigeria at the time.
This collection of deep funk, Afro-boogie and serious disco will transport you (and your booty) to the sweat-soaked discos of Lagos, where native sounds shimmy up next to imported grooves bringing the dancefloor to a fever pitch of go-go bells, funky drums, wah wah guitar, popping bass and blasting horns. This is tight, dirty funk being filtered through afrobeat and highlife.... the results are absolutely AMAZING!
Like all things from Sound Way, Nigeria Disco Funk Special comes with gorgeous packaging, extensive liner notes, archival photos and repros of original album artwork. Take your pick between a super slick digipak for the cd version and a gorgeous gatefold sleeve for the 2LP. This is heavy shit. Don't miss out!
MPEG Stream: JOHNNY HAASTRUP "Greetings"
MPEG Stream: DR. ADOLF AHANOTU "Ijere"
MPEG Stream: S-JOB MOVEMENT "Love Affair"

VERDUNKELN Einblick In Den Qualenfall (Van) cd 13.98
We've been meaning to list this record for ages, the second release from mysterious German horde Verdunkeln, a huge favorite around these parts. And while these guys are often compared to mid period Burzum, they are so much more than that.
Just take the first song, with its weird gothy into, processed Joy Division bassline, over plodding simple drum line, chanted monk like vocals, as far as we're concerned, the track could have continued on like that, a weird minimal stripped down goth doom jam, vibes of early 4AD, old militaristic industrial, but instead, the chorus offers up a thick slab of crunchy superdistorted guitar, and howled, effected shrieks, before slither back into the same gothy crawl, until it finished off with a furious freak out, all pounding drums, blown out guitars, wild leads and huge chunks of throbbing bass.
And that sort of defines their sound. It's almost like some eighties goth band, like Christian Death, the Abecedarians, or Kommunity FX, were transported to some grim black forest, where they continued to play basically the same music, but with the surroundings seeping into every note, the starlit sky, the dense canopy of trees overhead, the whipping wind, the snow capped mountains, turning them into something basically undefinable. Sure it's black metal. Sort of. And yeah, it's some kind of weird dark gothwave, but the way those two elements are incorporated transform Verdunkeln into something so bizarre, and so unique, that it's hard to really describe.
Each song begins as a lurching midtempo bass heavy crawl, the bass heavily reverbed and effected, the vocals haunting and deep, when the guitars do come in, they are massive, chugging away at one moment, soaring majestically the next.
Our favorite song might be the second track, "Im Zwiespalt", beginning with that haunting reverbed twang, the sound of rainfall, cracks of thunder, the guitars finally come in, and the song lurches into motion, some sort of lumbering downtuned blackdoom behemoth, that plods along until a sudden break, when a delay drenched guitar offers up a strummed minor key melody, and the song explodes into a weird majestic cinematic blow out, the chords and notes soaring, until that delayed guitar break comes back in briefly, and the song resumes it's dense plod, but this time the riffing following the clean guitar, a weird post rocky, mournful vibe. Bleak and harrowing, and super epic and emotional. Midway through the track, the tempo picks up and the band begins to rock seriously for the first time, replete with tangled leads, haunting melodies, still strangely melancholy and emotional, before fading out into a drifting drone-y shimmer, peppered with huge bursts of crumbling downtuned chug, beneath a washed out smear of lonely synths, only to finish with a strange mathy outro.
And even though for right now, that might be our favorite song, this is one of those discs, that whatever song you happen to be listening to is your favorite. Next song, "oh wait, THIS one is the best song". Next song. "Actually, THIS one is way better. And so it goes. The whole record is just this impossible black metal goth, downtuned post rock doom, majestic cinematic post metal, avant metallic rock, who the fuck knows, and really who cares. There are definitely some Burzumic elements, some distinctly black metal tropes, but Verdunkeln are one of the very few, incredibly rare BM bands around who absolutely and completely sound like nothing you've ever heard.
MPEG Stream: "In Die Irre"
MPEG Stream: "Im Zwiespalt"

WOODS OF INFINITY Hamptjarn (Supernal) cd 15.98
Latest chunk of blackened whatthefuck from these Swedish weirdos, who most long time readers of the aQ list will already be familiar with. Their modus operandi is a twisted take on the sort of midtempo Burzumic buzz, flecked with bits of folks, strange carnivalesque filigree, and INSANE vocals, from croony clean singing, to throat shredding maniacal shrieking, to growled monster gurgle, all wrapped round some seriously bent black metal, loping and plodding, melancholy and mournful, miserable and doomy.
Woods Of Infinity are not super fucked up in the way a lot of the black metal we love is, retarded, damaged, stumbling, etc. They are however WEIRD AS FUCK, the music for sure, but especially the vocals, and apparently the lyrics, which according to one online source involves a serious love of young girls among other perversions, a truly twisted, surreal, abstract, their weirdness deftly woven into their folky blackened dirges.
This is definitely the best sounding WoI record, very loud and heavy and clear, with lots of acoustic guitars, strange keyboards, out of tune pianos, really bizarre samples, and some of the strangest songs we've heard from these guys yet.
"Lakttagen" begins with some gauzy ambient piano, the guitars come in all filthy and crumbling and gritty, the vocals a raspy cackle, that gets more and more hysterical as the track progresses, the piano plinking out a sad melody, over a buzzy wash of guitar grit. "Avgrund" is a gorgeous epic mournful doomic dirge, but the vocals are some sort of twisted dramatic top 40 croon, all soulful and emotional, almost cringeworthy, but somehow it works. How about "Stilla", another killer doomy din, with strangely orchestral flourishes, choir like background vocals, but then the main vocals join in, a sort of drunken howling, like Lemmy on a bender, caterwauling in Swedish over the dark doleful melancholia underneath.
Then there's "Forsta Augusti", maybe the weirdest of all, a strange sort of shuffling metal calypso, with still more tortured vocal mewlings, over a groovy exotic melody, and a cha cha cha sort of beat. And it just keeps getting weirder and weirder, if that were even possible, more strange fucked up vocal stylings, long stretches of creepy ambience, blasts of almost buzzing black metal, long haunting samples, epic majestic stein hoisting metal sea shanties, shimmering dark folk, and more that we could possibly list in a single review. Remember these are the guys who covered Barry Manilow on another record, so most of this madness should come as no surprise.
Definitely way too weird for the average black metaller. But metal fans into the freaky and the bizarre, the confusing and completely fucked will dig this big time, and quite possibly non metal folks might too, as long as they possess a distinct penchant for weird shit, and have no aversion to some buzzing blackness in their strange sounds...
MPEG Stream: "Elvira"
MPEG Stream: "Vasendet"

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AMBARCHI, OREN Pendulum's Embrace (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
Now available on vinyl!
Space... tones... space. A bass note now and again, and whispering hissssss. A guitar string plucked, muffled by effects, droning into silence. And repeat. Doom paced (as per much on the Southern Lord label, home to SUNNO))) after all), but not "heavy" like doom metal. Talk about slooooooooooooooow though. Soporific this is, in a nice nice dreamy way. Warm and pretty and so, so sad sounding. There's three long tracks here that do indeed wrap you in their embrace, and proceed with the reassuring steadiness of a pendulum's swing. Aussie experimentalist Oren Ambarchi (known for many collaborations, projects, and solo albums, including 2004's wonderful Grapes From The Estate to which this is perhaps offered as sequel) utilizes sounds both fragile and foreboding, from instrumentation including glass harmonica, bells, piano, percussion, and of course guitars. The opening track "Fever, A Warm Poison" sleepwalks glacially, as per the first few sentences of this review. Ambarchi orchestrates the swell of strings, or what could be an accordion's wheeze, into this album's soundworld on the second track, "Inamorata". Utterly gentle & melancholic. As is the 17 minute finale, "Trailing Moss In Mystic Glow", which while blissfully relaxed, might be the "busiest" track of the disc on account of the presence of some quiet, spectral vocals, indistinct but still a suggestion of songiness towards the end of the piece. The guitar melodies are denser here, and there's a hint of glitch. It's gorgeous at any rate. This cd should appeal to fans of Earth's Hex, and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, and even Boris's gentler moments, as if held under a microscope, volume hushed. Also this very list [not this one, but the one upon which the cd version of this originally appeared], we've reviewed the new release from another Ambarchi act, Sun. This could be that Sun album, left out to melt in the (actual) sun, to droop and drip, pooling into a limpid, low-key loveliness...
MPEG Stream: "Fever, A Warm Poison"
MPEG Stream: "Trailing Moss In Mystic Glow"

BEEQUEEN Sandancing (Important Records) cd 14.98
Frans De Waard and Freek Kinkelaar have been very active in the Dutch experimental sound community for well over two decades in far too many projects to count. Beequeen was one of those projects, having originally producing some lovely post-Eno driftwork ambient pieces; yet, over the past three album, De Waard and Kinkelaar have steadily pulled atmospheric songs and folk structures out of that ambience. Sandancing is the latest venture and really seems to be mining the same skeletal songwriting as Low had on Secret Name. It doesn't hurt that the two have recruited vocalist Olga Wallis to join their project, as she's got a voice eerily similar to Low's Mimi Parker.
MPEG Stream: "Breathe"
MPEG Stream: "The Honeythief"

BEHOLD THE ARCTOPUS Skullgrid (Metal Blade) cd 13.98
In the time it takes to read this review, your head would have spun around about 1000 times if you'd been listening to this album, instead. It's the latest tour de force from hyper technical math metal geeks Behold The Arctopus, and it's chock full of their usual blazing fast fretboard acrobatics (on instruments with WAY more strings than most guitarists would want to contend with) and blasting superprogalistic complexpialidocious drumming. Imagine a jazz fusion band called Melt-Meshuggah, with Eddie Van Halen sitting in to shred, that's kinda what BTA is all about. Whew! We can really only stop and stare at the stereo when these boys get going, though they do let up for some post-rock atmospheric bits too at times. It's all instrumental, also as per usual, with song titles like "Canada", "Scepters", "You Are Number Six", and the sorta Champs-ily named "Some Mist".
MPEG Stream: "Canada"
MPEG Stream: "Scepters"

BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW Dandelion Gum (Graveface) 2lp 21.00
We just had a super limited number of these, ultra deluxe, scratch and sniff, hand numbered from a batch of 500. Those are all gone, but the label discovered a box of lps in the warehouse, exactly the same in EVERY way, -except- they're not numbered. So if you missed out, one more chance to snap one of these up before they're gone...
When this album first came out (on cd), we all dug it, quite a bit, so we wrote a little blurb about it, sold a bunch. But somehow, this record, and this band, has continued to grow on us, big time! This, and the two BMSR reissues, get played incessantly, and now in retrospect, we LOVE LOVE LOVE this record. So much so that we feel like maybe we should go back and rewrite the review and gush endlessly. And maybe we will. Eventually. But for now, this record, this aQ fave, this genius chunk of dizzying synth pop perfection, has been reissued on vinyl, SUPER LIMITED, an ultra deluxe double lp, pressed on extra thick swirled pink vinyl, super heavy full color gatefold sleeve, each with a scratch and sniff bubblegum bubble on the front cover! And as if that weren't enough, there's also am exclusive bonus track, that's not on the cd, and is only available HERE!
Until we have time to rewrite the review, and blather on endlessly about how much we love it, this short and sweet review will have to do:
In pretty much every respect, this sprawling new album from Black Moth Super Rainbow is overflowing with whimsy and trippy fun -- from the lengthy head-scratchin' song titles to the color-drenched cover art to the Bruce Haack-y vocoded vocals to the breezy ten-speed rollerskate synthesizer'd funkiness. Imagine if Black Dice or the Flaming Lips took a swing at electro and new wave, and your brain might go into a delirious tizzy with the delightful chew of Dandelion Gum.
MPEG Stream: "Jump Into My Mouth And Breathe The Stardust"
MPEG Stream: "Neon Syrup for the Cemetery Sisters"

COIL The Ape Of Naples & The New Backwards (Important Records) 4lp 100.00
Issued at the end of 2005, The Ape Of Naples marked the end of an era for Coil. It was the grand finale to a tumultuous career of psychotropic electronica, sidereal ambience, and post-industrial occultations. A year earlier, Jhonn Balance died as the result of an alcohol related accident. In the intervening months, his partner -- both creatively and romantically -- Peter Christopherson resurrected many of the tracks from the ill-fated Backwards sessions as well as unreleased recordings that date back to the beginning of Coil in 1982. It should be noted that Christopherson did not intend The Ape Of Naples to be lumped in with the Stolen and Contaminated series of rare and unreleased material; rather, he shaped the album to reflect his grief and melancholy.
The Backwards sessions were originally commissioned as a follow up to their seminal oblique dance album Love's Secret Domain, which emerged out of Coil's obsession with British acid house and rave culture. In fact, Trent Reznor had brought Coil to his New Orleans studio to record much of those sessions in hopes of releasing the album on his Nothing imprint. Unfortunately, more than a decade went by with only false starts and creative dead ends; and Backwards never emerged. While it's not all that clear if The Ape Of Naples is the album that Coil envisioned when they were making Backwards, The Ape Of Naples stands as a mighty triumph in the Coil pantheon of releases, ranking up there with Horse Rotovator and the aforementioned Love's Secret Domain.
In releasing The Ape Of Naples on vinyl some three years after the original cd, Important Records has bundled the 3LPs of The Ape Of Naples with a fourth LP comprised of Christopherson's further revisitations of the Backwards sessions onto an LP called The New Backwards. These tracks found here may be even better than what's found on The Ape Of Naples. The only drawback is that this 4LP set is a bit pricey, and painfully limited to 500 copies, most of which have already been snatched up.
MPEG Stream: "Heaven's Blade"
MPEG Stream: "Teenage Lightning 2005"
MPEG Stream: "Going Up"

EXCEPTER Debt Dept. (Paw Tracks) cd 14.98
Haunted and humorous, Excepter's Debt Dept. opens with a Sabbath like riff, looped and fuzzed to create the platform for the vocals of not 1, nor 2, but 3 vocalists' unhinged ramblings.
Excepter's cast flood the track with faithless and caustically delivered lyrics, half sung, half spoken. The effect is oddly chilling, considering the tone is ultimately that of Excepter's tried and true mix of futurist-dub, narcotic fuzz and drone, and mellow yet schizophrenic vocals; a pastiche sometimes too dynamic, ridiculous, or slapdash to take "seriously." Nonetheless, on Debt Dept., Excepter's sardonic wit and notedly more focused approach gives them a winning hand. Their most recent efforts have been less oriented towards vocals and lyrics, but the addition of two new vocalists, Clare Amory and Lala Harrison, has changed that. The vocals by committee approach is made a dominant fixture through the diverse array of effects their digressions are filtered through. The rhythmic collision course is more spacious than previous efforts giving time for grooves to develop, and even a few hooks to set in. Beyond the half-sung/postpunk/almost-rap like vocal delivery, there are also spectral vocal interludes, resulting in blanketed and billowing textures that soften the harsh and incisive beats and guttural, expulsive, and erotic moaning.
Those who love Excepter will find themselves well satisfied with Dept Debt., as it embellishes and improves upon their developing style of droney, dubby eclecticism. On this, their full length Paw Tracks debut, the band offers a near staggering swirl of most of the styles and sounds the label already offers, with heavy ladle-fulls of Black Dice, Rings, and Ariel Pink added to the already potent brew. Lest this hint at a lack originality, it must be stressed that the way in which the band incorporates and stirs these qualities is wholly original. Rhythmically, the album is a little tighter and more committed than previous efforts, with a greater apprenticeship to hip hop and dub, and some wacked notion of post-industrial dance. It could work well as the soundtrack to some alchemists in a satellite factory processing dark matter into... well... dark pop. Or perhaps like watching a disco ball shatter in slow motion, its shards reflecting a disparate collection of cultural references as they fly past you. Whichever the more operative metaphor, the band has invited you lovingly to their fucked-up, post-everything party, and if we were you, we'd be joining them in the festivities.
MPEG Stream: "Kill People"
MPEG Stream: "Sunrise"

GAZHEART (RITA ACKERMAN / DAVE NUSS) s/t (Locust) lp 23.00
BACK IN STOCK, PROBABLY THE LAST COPIES WE'LL GET!
A gorgeous and mysterious one sided lp from GazHeart, a duo made up of artist Rita Ackerman, and No Neck Blues Band's Dave Nuss. The two played together in Angelblood as well, but these recordings were made after the breakup of that band, on the duo's annual trip to visit Ackerman's family in Budapest. During late nights in the backyard, with Nuss beating on coffee cans and broken bottles, Ackerman sang lyrics she had created using automatic, unmeditated writing. The results are beautiful, innocent, playful, haunting and very mysterious.
This consists of a series of short tracks, each with a slightly different tribal rhythmic component beneath Ackerman's vocals, which range from ghostly chantlike recitations, to sweet cooing, to wild wailing. The record drifts from tripped out FX drenched clang and clank beneath childlike gurgling, to campfire handdrums and sweetly almost whispered vocals, to hypnotic almost looped sounding tribal drums tangled up with breathy ethereal hum, to Casio style drum machine pitted against manic vocalizing and buzzy synth melodies, to the final track, the percussion super abstract, with chimes and bells, the vocals sung by a little girl, very cute and innocent, but also quite haunting.
Fans of Deerhoof, OOIOO, Tenniscoats and obviously No Neck and Angelblood will definitely dig.
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a thick sleeve, with Ackerman drawings on both sides, each the opposite/negative of the other, printed on nice thick paper, the lp is one sides, the flipside has an original Ackerman etching. Cool.

HUKKELBERG, HANNE Rykestrasse 68 (Propeller) cd 15.98
Norwegian singer-songwriter Hanne Hukkelberg's debut, Little Things, was an enchanting collection of delicate instrumentation, fluttering vocals, and sophisticated songwriting. It took more than a few of us here at aQ by surprise and became something of a sleeper hit for lazy sun-drenched afternoons. The same sensibilities that made Little Things so successful are evident on Rykestrasse 68: vocals pushed to the front of the mix, dry, personal and sultry while a kaleidoscope of drips, drops, bells and whistles flutters in the background. However, the darker mood and sense of melancholy on this record make it more suitable for grey days and rain-streaked windows than its sunnier predecessor.
The obvious points of comparison are, of course, artists like Bjork, Feist and Tujiko Noriko -- powerhouse singers who blend fractured acoustic sounds, electronic flourishes and sophisticated songwriting; however, Rykestrasse 68 stands on its own as a beautiful work from a tremendously talented artist who manages to achieve a really engaging combination of naivete and a deliberate, self-aware intellectualism. It's a winning blend, evident in the mix between the toy instruments and found sounds that lend the record a certain childlike quality and the darkness and drama to that comes out in its best moments (take her cover of The Pixies' "Break My Body," for example).
This, much like her previous, will undoubtedly fly beneath the radar, as it falls into that awkward middle ground between something you'd read about in The Wire and cafe-friendly pop. However, give this one a chance and it'll undoubtedly become the perfect soundtrack to some quiet, melancholy moment in your life. Simply gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Berlin"
MPEG Stream: "The Pirate"

LUMSK Troll (Tabu) cd 16.98
When we first heard Lumsk a few years back, it totally blew us away. Some really odd combination of Hammers Of Misfortune, Enslaved, Scandinavian folk and The Fucking Champs. Yep, you read that right.
And that is what it actually sounded like, lots of Viking riffery, some epic vocalizing, but also some serious metallic shredding, boy / girl harmonies, folky interludes, some medieval / renaissance faire filigree, some fuzzy synths, pretty weird, but pretty dang cool too.
So here's the follow up, and if anything, it's more of the same. But with a couple changes, much of the shredding is gone, and the folk element is more pronounced, but other than that, it's still some confusional combination of chugging riffage, fluttery female almost-operatic vocals, super dramatic male vocals, soaring strings, folky fiddle and a mess of over the top Viking metal chug.
A handful of the tracks are almost straight Scandinavian folk, the vocals lilting and delicate, the arrangements swooning and melancholy, and then just when you're all ensorcelled and entranced, the band will kick in with some over the top, downtuned chugging stein-hoisting metallic drinking song or some epic metal hoedown.
Definitely an acquired taste, but we can tell you that at least two people at aQ dig this band a LOT (bet you can't guess which ones).
MPEG Stream: "Dunker"
MPEG Stream: "Asgardsreia"
MPEG Stream: "Trolltind"

MASONNA Ultimate Collection Vol.1 (Alchemy) cd 21.00
There's noise, and then there's noise!!! And then, there's Masonna... and this, the Ultimate Masonna (volume one).
Never heard any Japanese noise? Well, there's always a first time, and this could be it. Maybe you'll love it (if not, you'll probably hate it... not much room for any reactions in-between). If you have heard Japanese noise, you probably already know Masonna. Along with Merzbow and Hijokaidan, he's probably the most (in)famous and most extreme of all the many Japanese noisicians. At AQ, he's also quite popular for his other sonic endeavors, the analog spaced out kosmiche electronic trips of Space Machine, the super psychedelic rhythmic synth grooves of Christine 23 Onna, and the fuzz-freaked garage rock of Acid Eater. Those outfits, to varying degrees, can be considered music, even pop music. But recording under the Masonna moniker, Maso Yamazaki makes sheer noise, no "music" involved at all. Just ultra dynamic, distorted screaming and electronic distortion, volume cranked to the max, an all-out expressive attack, acrobatic and energetic. Very similar to his famous "jumping" live performances.
In honor of Masonna's 20th anniversary of noisemaking, packaged with super swank graphics (we dig the elaborate Greatful Dead/Quicksilver looking logo) and liner notes in both English and Japanese, Ultimate Collection Vol.1 brings back two long out of print Masonna documents. It includes the oddly titled Masonna Vs. Bananamara LP, originally released on vinyl in 1989 by Japan's Vanilla Records in an edition of 290 copies, and the aptly titled 1996 album Hyper Chaotic, originally from tiny US label V Records. Reissued together on one compact disc, these two albums comprise 48 mostly short tracks (many of 'em under a minute each) of the most intense, shrieking shards of distortion with which you've ever abused your ears... you've been warned!!
The vs. Bananamara album (which was Masonna's debut LP after some self-released cassettes) perhaps features more high-end skree, while the later Hyper Chaotic is more about blown-out white noise... but there's plenty of both sounds throughout!
MPEG Stream: "Keckold"
MPEG Stream: "Baimn Lamx"
MPEG Stream: "Hyper Chaotic - Chapter 2"
MPEG Stream: "Hyper Chaotic - Chapter 13"

MAUS, JOHN Songs (Upset! The Rhythm) lp 14.98
Also available on vinyl!
Not to be confused with the John Maus who was in the Walker Brothers in the '60s this John Maus has been making warped baroque pop in the cozy confines of his bedroom in Minnesota for the last several years and is best known for his contributions to Ariel Pink and Animal Collective offshoot Panda Bear. Maus is one seriously prolific songwriter who until now has kept pretty much all of his own songs to himself. "Songs" is a collection of some of those dark pop offerings recorded at home over the last few years. Channeling the spirit of Ian Curtis and using vintage electronic equipment, Maus's songs evoke a hazy kind of daydreaming but with a much more morose slant. His deep voice got us thinking of folks like Calvin Johnson, Scott Walker and on the first track he's a dead ringer for Robert Smith. Dark weird pop done right!
MPEG Stream: "Time To Die"
MPEG Stream: "And Heaven Turned To Her Weeping"

OH SEES, THE The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In (Castle Face / Tomlab) cd 16.98
The Oh Sees have changed a lot since they were the OCS. Back then, Oh Sees frontman John Dwyer had his Coachwhips, a wild sweat soaked, garage stomp party, furious and frenzied, throbbing and in-the-red, so OCS was the outlet for Dwyer to explore the other sides of his multiple musical personality. The debut OCS record (released on tUMULt) was two discs, one of mostly solo acoustic guitar, a super intimate bedroom folk, all dusty and crackly, warm and super intimate, bits of damaged Casio, warbly old vinyl, damaged FX, lovingly crafted into some sort of heartfelt lo-fi sonic loveletter. The other disc was more noisy, super abstract, blown out blasts of free jazz weirdness, drones and rumbles, howling feedback, white noise, pink noise, and every color in between. OCS 2, 3 and 4 followed a similar pattern, a sort of lonely lo-fi homebrewed indie folk, off kilter and melancholy, wistful, damaged and dreamy.
But with the dissolution of the Coachwhips, came a name change for OCS, now The Ohsees, or sometimes The Oh Sees, a change in sound, and a transformation into a full band.
While not as freaked out and furious as the Coachwhips, the Oh Sees new record sounds more like the long lost CW's than any of Dwyer's records since. Garage-y jangle, shuffling drums, the vocals distorted, the songs simple and stripped down, but the big difference is that here Dwyer splits the vocals with bandmate Brigid Dawson, the result is truly endearing harmonies, with Dwyer often the wailing counterpoint to Dawson's sweet angelic croon. And songs that sometimes sound like alien versions of that classic Phil Spector girl group sound. But at its heart, the sound is still fuzzy and buzzy and skeletal, groovy and garage rocky, wouldn't be hard to imagine this disc on In The Red, or see these guys on tour with the Dirtbombs or the Country Teasers or the Husbands. (Bonus points for having a song about aQ pal and local artist extraordinaire Maria Forde!)
Weird too that it's out on Tomlab, it IS blissy and fuzzy and poppy, but not nearly as much as everything else on Tomlab, which is why it's only -through- Tomlab and is really on Dwyer's just launched Castle Face labelŠ
Big booklet, with lyrics, and kick ass eye popping artwork on the front and back!
MPEG Stream: "Block Of Ice"
MPEG Stream: "Visit Colonel"
MPEG Stream: "Maria Stacks"

PROSANCTUS INFERI Sacreligious Desecration In Excelsis (Chrome Leaf) lp 13.98
When we first put this on, the aQ death metal experts were convinced this was some old DM classic reissued. We were hearing Deicide, Slayer, Darkthrone, but a bit more on the grind side, hints of Circle Of Dead Children and Phobia, but the more we listened, the more it sounded too dense and heavy, too furious and frantic, and even though it definitely borrowed from the classics BIG TIME, it sounded too modern. This is in fact the latest record from a band called Prosanctus Inferi who hail from Columbus, Ohio, and who recorded this festering chunk of buzzing black sickness just last year!
These guys definitely know their shit. Spewing a relentless stream of furious snarling blackened buzz, relentless and filthy, the production incredibly dense and suffocating, the guitars massive, no tinny insect like buzzing, the riffs here ROAR, the drums blast and pound, the sound is definitely rooted in black metal, but is definitely on the blackened side, and most of the songs veer into short stretches of tangled grind, shades of early Carcass, but whoever they're borrowing from, PI whip their various influences into a total head spinning black death workout, shifting gears every few seconds, riffs splintering apart, brutal blasts slowing down into doomy grooves, then exploding back into some static death metal pound. Another online review described this record as "virgin hammering goat blasting black death metal" and who are we to argue?
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, already nearly sold out at the label. Swank two sided silkscreened sleeves, the back side just a half sleeve revealing the lp inside.
MPEG Stream: "Fratricide In The Holy House Of God"
MPEG Stream: "Sacreligious Desecration In Excelsis"

SEPPUKU / MUTANT APE split (At War With False Noise / Turgid Animal) 7" 7.98
First vinyl release from At War With False Noise and it's a doozy.
The A side is a band called Seppuku, who not long ago sounded completely different and were called Testsuo! Ring any bells? No matter, what we've got here are two songs, the first a caustic slab of Eyehategod, caveman Sabbath style sludge doom, classic Sabbath riffs melted down into something much more raw and viscous, the vocals a feral howl, practice space drums that plod along bravely amidst the doomic din, all wrapped up in a warm swirling cloud of downtuned buzz and lurching drone. The second track is way more spare and space-y, some sort of tripped out abstract krautjam, the drums skittering along in wide open expanses of whir and rumble, riffs drifting in clouds of glittering FX, cookie monster vox waaaay off in the distance, a stumbling druggy meander that eventually careens into a chaotic free psych blow out. Sounds like a lo-fi noise rock version of Bardo Pond or Comets On Fire, but after WAY more pot and too much Hawkwind. Wait. There's no such thing as too much Hawkwind. Awesome.
The flipside is by Mutant Ape, and sounds a lot like you accidentally set the needle down directly on the label instead of on the wax. A horrifying white noise crush, electronics grind and squeal, feedback shrieks and all sorts of blown out sounds crumble and collapse only to be set afire and shoved through your melding speakers. This is indeed NOISE, and is truly for those partial to such things, or with ears of steel. And of course, it's a good aural palate cleanser, flip it over between spins of the Seppuku side, blow out all the doomy riffs, so you can begin againŠ
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES. Oversized gatefold sleeves, with laser printed full color paste on artwork, and a photocopied insert.

SORE THROAT Death To Capitalist Halmshaw (Area Death Productions) cd 14.98
Okay, Sore Throat are one of our favorite bands. EVER. But for ages their shit has been impossible to track down. Crusty, heavy, fast and furious, stupid, goofy, political, pissy, snarky, clever, wasted, and musically unbeatable. They were cramming hundreds of songs on to 7"s before Anal Cunt was even a bad idea. BUT, and this is the big but here, we tried to get a ton of these to list, and managed to only get 5. But we wanted to give at least a few folks on the list a chance to experience the fucked up grindcrust joy of the mighty Sore Throat. So be prepared to be disappointed. Only the crazy dudes up at 2am on Friday maniacally watching the aQ site for the update will probably be able to snag these, but you never know. Fear not though. There are some upcoming reissues, which we'll be able to get plenty of, enough for everybody. But for now, 5 of you are in luck, get ready, get set go...
Oh yeah, the record. A cd compilation of some super rare demos, 83 songs in all, furious crusty metallic anarcho grind. Comes with an extensive booklet, some inserts and a Sore Throat patch!

SWORD, THE Gods Of The Earth (Kemado Records) cd 13.98
If you're gonna call your metal band The Sword (not just Sword, of which there have been a few, but THE Sword) you've got a lot to live up to. So maybe it's not such a surprise that lots of folks in the scene have been hatin' on this band 'cause somehow they're not "true" enough. And/or they got just too darn popular. Ironic hipster metal they get called. We've probably said it ourselves. But of course what's ironic is how 'cause a band gets big, suddenly they're not cool anymore. Now, it does seem that Austin's The Sword live charmed lives, young undoubtedly hipster dudes bringing the heavy to a maybe not entirely metal audience, getting all kinds of hype with only one album (well, now two) to back it up. That there's OTHER bands out there equally worthy who don't get on MTV or Guitar Hero, we won't deny! Better bands, even. Heck, the world ain't fair. But that doesn't mean that The Sword aren't good fist in the air fun. C'mon, their High On Fire meets The Fucking Champs brand of HEAVY, guitar harmony laden, stoner/doom rumble, replete with swords & sorcery fantasy metal '80s influences, might not be the most original or imaginative thing ever but sounds pretty good to us, even if they're certainly no Slough Feg.
And this sophomore effort, Gods Of The Earth (oooh, full of themselves, are they?), is probably up a songwriting notch or two from their Age Of Winters debut two years ago, though following the same general template, so if you liked that one you'll like this too. There's a couple melodic acoustic guitar intros and interludes, but mostly massive amps to 11 guitar crush and drum pummel the rest of the time. The Sword's seriously stentorian riffage rules, conjuring images of conquering armies sweeping savagely across ancient bloody battlefields. Kings and wizards, rogues and rangers populate their lyrics, and they even do a song about an axe. It's all very D&D, straight faced no joking (which should be a point in their favor). If The Sword's songs were airbrush artwork they'd go great on the side of your van.
'Tis true, sometimes their rather relentless (or shall we say epic?) chugga-chuggery and lackadaisical singing/shouting (Sleep style, as is much else of their sound) can eventually sound a bit been there done that. But not when you're fully engorged with headbanging lust, which you as a redblooded metalhead ought to be! That is, as long as you're not being a scene policeman too worried about what's metal and what's poseur to have a good time. What do you want to be, high school hall monitor or sword-swinging barbarian berserker?? The Sword offer you the choice of either role we suppose.
PS we don't have the vinyl of this yet, but we DO have a few copies of their recent picture disc 10" with album track "Fire Lances Of The Ancient Hyperzephyrians" backed with the non-album cut "Codex Corvidae"!
MPEG Stream: "Lords"
MPEG Stream: "The Black River"

SWORD, THE Fire Lances Of The Ancient Hyperzephyrians (Kemado) 10" picture disc 14.98
See nearby for our review of this band's new album Gods Of The Earth, for which this limited edition 2-song picture disc vinyl 10" was a teaser. We've just got a handful. It's got album track "Fire Lances Of The Ancient Hyperzephyrians" on side A, with the non-album cut "Codex Corvidae" on side B.
The artwork features the band's logo superimposed over a skeletal horse rising from an erupting pool of glowing magma, a typical scene in ancient Hyperzephria.

TENHORNEDBEAST / MARZURAAN split (Aurora Borealis) cd 15.98
BACK IN STOCK!
Every once in a while, someone will release a record, and we can't help but feel like it was made specifically for us. And for you. Some records just perfectly speak to the aQ aesthetic, as undefinable as that seems to be. This is another one of those cases. Someone thought it would be a perfect combination to match up UK one man ambient drone outfit Tenhornedbeast, with UK slow motion doomlords Marzuraan. And it is perfect. And a fantastic idea, but just because something is a great idea, doesn't always mean someone thinks of it. And we're not saying we had been thinking someone should get these two bands together specifically, we're just glad they did, and we sort of wish we HAD thought of it. But that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that it happened, and now we can all luxuriate in the deep dark heaviness both of these bands explore. And while the bands are indeed different, their aesthetics are not all that far removed. The both exist in some blackened nether region, haunting sonic realms, where heaviness can be expressed in both utter darkness and extreme force, sometimes both, and once in awhile neither.
Tenhornedbeast offer up a nearly 30 minute long sonic ritual, beginning as a bit of swirling black minimalism, but slowly building to a truly intense wall of doomdrone, the sound thick and textured, a churning cauldron of low end buzz and downtuned disembodied riffs, all brought to a boil and poured out in a viscous black torrent, left to flow like some subterranean river. But these deep drones are laced with melodies, and keening high end shards, allowed to shine forth occasionally, but often swallowed up before they can fill those caves with their unnatural light. The track continually changes shape, sound and timbre, various shades of grey and black, lightening and darkening as the landscape changes, a haunting journey through some lost world, where sound replaces sight, allowing us to navigate ever deeper.
Marzuraan counter with what must be one of their prettiest tracks ever. It's still sludgey and doomy, but the notes ring out, the melodies almost soar, the sound fuzzy and glimmering, almost like these guys have caught the shoegaze bug as well. Washed out and blissy, super melodic and melancholy, but the coolest part is that the track seems to warble and waver, almost like someone is manually adjusting the tape speed, so the notes sound drunken and drugged, the track lurches and weaves drunkenly, only adding to the haunting and off kilter beauty. Part way through, the riffs get a little more riffy, and then the vocals come in, a moaning distant croon, and we're most definitely in serious Jesu territory, but that weird speed shifting hitch, keeps it from sounding too pretty, or two blissy. But if these guys keep heading in this direction, they could definitely give Jesu, and Nadja and other metallic shoegazers a run for their money.
The packaging is super swank, a three panel gatefold, each of the front panels diecut with each band's symbol, printed inside and out, housed in a thick plastic sleeve with a sticker affixed to the front.
MPEG Stream: TENHORNEDBEAST "Law Of The Needle"
MPEG Stream: MARZURAAN "Into Countless Battles"

THESE NEW PURITANS Beat Pyramid (Domino) cd 14.98
After some truly spectacular British only singles, These New Puritans landed their debut album on Domino. In the process of recording Beat Pyramid (including some rehashing of those earlier singles), the art-punk quartet polished up their sound with the production chops of Gareth Jones, who had worked with Wire, Nick Cave and Einsturzende Neubauten back in the day and more recently with the Liars. These New Puritans have adopted the classic post-punk sound with jittery sparkplug guitar riffs and nervously taut rhythms, which could come from the best works from Gang Of Four, the Fall, or Joy Division. Unlike many of their contemporaries which also wear those same influences on their sleeve (i.e. Interpol, Bloc Party, The Editors, etc.), These New Puritans keep it dark without ever getting maudlin. Vocalist Jack Barnett has a dispassionate delivery more in keeping with Mark E. Smith's slurred bark. If only his subject matter were a bit more caustic like Smith's, though. Much of what Barnett has to say is rather quotidian verses about numerology or paranoiac surveillance or whatnot. Fortunately, the band is good enough to overcome his shortcomings at this stage in the game as a lyricist. Altogether, Beat Pyramid makes for a pretty damn good record.
MPEG Stream: "Elvis"
MPEG Stream: "En Papier"
MPEG Stream: "Navigate - Colours"

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V/A Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli (Numero Group) 2lp 17.98
Now also on vinyl! Here's our review of the cd we highlighted a few months back:
We haven't had a new solo guitar compilation in awhile. Last couple of years it seems we were inundated with them, marking the new and old waves of what is often called "American Primitive", a dubious term like "Freak folk" that no one likes to use anymore, but a more accurate or useful term to describe this genre has failed to materialize. While past comps focused on the founding touchstones of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke, and their modern offspring, Jack Rose, Sir Richard Bishop, and James Blackshaw, there have been plenty of overlooked stop-gaps in between these generations that have failed to garner the same kind of adoration or reverence. Often unfairly relegated to the "New Age" trashbin of recording culture, solo guitarists such as Alex Degrassi, William Ackerman and Michael Hedges focused on a more melodic (and often more technically showy) pastoralism, which represented to some the death-knell of innovation for the genre from its raw and altruistic beginnings. The latest compilation in the Numero Group's Wayfaring Strangers series sets to alter that perception by focusing on 14 private press recordings of solo guitar between 1968 and 1980 that chronicle the fertile and adventurous spectrum between Fahey and Ackerman. While a couple of the names are familiar (Richard Crandell, William Eaton) most of the players we haven't heard of including: Dana Westover, Ted Lucas, Scott White, George Cromarty, Daniel Hecht, Jim Ohlschmidt, Stephen Cohen, Mark Lang, Tom Smith, Dan Lambert, Brad Chequer and Dwayne Cannon... Another milestone in a great series from this always-awesome label!
MPEG Stream: TED LUCAS "Raga In 'd'"
MPEG Stream: RICHARD CRANDELL "Diagonal"
MPEG Stream: JIM OHLSCHMIDT "The Delta Freeze"
MPEG Stream: MARK LANG "Strawberry Man"

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ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE Never Ending Space Ritual (Swordfish) 2dvd 41.00
This newest Acid Mothers Temple dvd release, a double disc set, is pretty much essential for fans of that prolific Japanese freak-hippy musical commune. And we're not just saying that, like we would about any of their millions of releases. This is extra-essential 'cause it's intended as a "history of" the whole AMT phenomenon. And it pretty much proves them to be a "Never Ending Space Ritual" indeed! Heck, the menu loops alone are pretty cool... naked ladies and explosions and psychedelic effects, all right!
The first disc has two main sections. One features an example of archival live footage from each year of the band's existence, 1998 to 2007, plus an "early years" concert that's remarkably jazzy.
The other section includes video from a bunch of AMT "family" offshoots, including Acid Mothers Temple SWR, Acid Mothers Gong, Acid Mothers Guru Guru, and one we hadn't heard of before, Acid Mothers Temple & The Incredible Strange Band. During the Acid Mothers Gong segment, Daevid Allen pretty much out-freaks the entire band just by dancing (and wearing an outfit handed down from Madonna in her conical bra phase)!
On disc two (the main menu of which features video footage of the Father Moo album cover photo shoot!), you get an interview with Makoto Kawabata (in English), a bunch more live concert footage including performances of such faves as "La Novia" and "Pink Lady Lemonade", and a selection of extras -- among them a "guitar smashing medley"!!
So, even if you don't buy every last AMT thing to come your way, if you're at all into this band, this would be one to seriously consider picking up.

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

5IVE "Hesperus" (Hydra Head) cd 14.98
ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT "Absolute Magnitude" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98
AHMED, MAHMOUD "Ere Mele Mele" (L'arome Productions) lp 16.98
AJA ROSE & GABRIEL SALOMAN "s/t" (Self-Released) cd 9.98
AJATTARA "Kalmanto" (Spikefarm Records) cd 17.98
AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB "Golden Age" (Merge) cd 14.98
ANAAL NATHRAKH "Hell Is Empty, And All The Devils Are Here" (Feto) cd 14.98
APPLES IN STEREO "The Discovery Of A World Inside The Moone" (One Little Indian) cd 14.98
AUTISTIC DAUGHTERS "Uneasy Flowers" (Kranky) cd 14.98
AVERSE SEFIRA "Advent Parallax" (Candlelight) cd 13.98
AXA HOUR OF DARA BLEU "Clones Of Eros" (Fire Museum) cd 13.98
AXELROD, DAVID "Seriously Deep" (Dusty Groove) cd 14.98
B-52'S "Funplex" (Astralwerks) cd 14.98
BAUHAUS "Go Away White" (BMI) cd 14.98
BLUES CONTROL "Puff" (Fusetron) cd 14.98
BORATTO, GUI "Annunciation" (Kompakt) 12" 11.98
BORN RUFFIANS "Red Yellow & Blue" (Warp) cd/lp 14.98/17.98
BOTTOMLESS PIT "Hammer Of The Gods" (Comedy Minus One) cd 12.98
BRAXTON, ANTHONY "12 + 1tet (Victoriaville)" (Victo) cd 15.98
BRAXTON, ANTHONY "Trio (Victoriaville) 2007" (Victo) cd 15.98
BRINKMANN, THOMAS "When Horses Die..." (Max Ernst) cd 17.98
BROTZMANN, PETER "Born Broke" (Atavistic) 2cd 21.00
BROWN JENKINS "Angel Eyes" (Moribund) cd 14.98
BURKETT, JOSHUA "Where's My Hat?" (Time Lag) cd 14.98
BURNING STAR CORE "Amelia" (No-Fi) 10" 21.00
CHILDREN "Death Tribe" (Kemado) 12" 12.98
CROWLEY, ALIESTER "1910-1914 Black Magic Recordings" (Cleopatra) cd 16.98
DATURAH "Reverie" (Graveface) cd 13.98
DEAD CHILD "Attack" (Quarterstick) cd 14.98
DEATH IN JUNE "Rule Of Thirds" (Ner) cd 16.98
DEEPCHORD (ECHOSPACE) "Grandbend" (Echospace) double-12" 25.00
DEL THE FUNKY HOMOSAPIEN "Eleventh Hour" (Definitive Jux) cd 14.98
DEVOTCHKA "A Mad & Faithful Telling" (Anti) cd 16.98
DISKJOKKE "Staying In" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98
DJ SCOTCH EGG / SHITMAT (SCOTCHY AND SHITTY) "Rave like a Headless Chicken" (Wrong Music) 12" 11.98
DODOS, THE "Visiter" (French Kiss) cd 13.98
ECHOSPACE "Spatialdimension" (Echospace) 12" 11.98
FOLK SPECTRE, THE "The Blackest Medicine" (Wodsist) lp 14.98
FUZZ AGAINST JUNK "Netti Netti" (Invada) cd 15.98
GENGHIS TRON "Board Up The House" (Relapse) cd 14.98
GOLDFRAPP "Seventh Tree" (Mute) cd 15.98
GUILTY SIMPSON "Ode To The Ghetto" (Stones Throw) cd 14.98
HABITAT SOUND SYSTEM "Zebras In The Dancehall" (Gematria) 7" 4.98
HAINO, KEIJI & YOSHIDA TATSUYA "Hauenfiomiume" (Magaibutsu) cd 21.00
HALF MAKESHIFT "Omen" (Profound Lore Records) cd 13.98
HAYAINO DAISUKI "Headbanger's Karaoke Club Dangerous Fire" (UPC) cd 10.98
HEAVY, THE "Great Vengeance and Furious Fire" (Counter) cd/lp 14.98/22.00
HOWLIN' RAIN "Magnificent Fiend" (American/Birdman) cd 12.98
HUMAN INSTINCT "Stoned Guitar" (Rockadrome) cd 14.98
IRON MAIDEN "Live After Death" (Sony) 2dvd 22.00
ISIS "Holy Tears" (Ipecac) cd ep 7.98
ISLAND "Orakel" (Vendlus) cd 13.98
JANDEK "The Myth Of Blue Icicles" (Corwood) cd 8.98
JARBOE & JUSTIN BROADRICK "J2" (The End) cd 13.98
JARVINEN, ANNA "Jag Fick Feel" (Hapna) cd 16.98
JUCIFER "L'Autrichienne" (Relapse) cd 14.98
KAPITAL BAND 1 "Playing By Numbers" (Thrill Jockey) 2cd 15.98
KAWAGUCHI MASAMI'S NEW ROCK SYNDICATE "Cat Vs. Frog" (Palindrone) lp 17.98
KHAN "Space Shanty" (Esoteric Recordings) cd 21.00
KRONOS QUARTET AND WU MAN "Terry Riley: The Cusp of Magic" (Nonesuch) cd 16.98
LOCKWOOD, ANNEA "A Sound Map Of The Danube" (Lovely Music) 3cd 37.00
MACHINEFABRIEK "Bijeen" (Kning Disk) cd 14.98
MELOY, COLIN "Colin Meloy Sings Live" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98
MESHUGGAH "Obzen" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98
METABOLISMUS "Snowy Meadows / Somnia" (The Social Registry) 7" 6.98
MGR "Wavering On The Cresting Heft" (Conspiracy) cd 14.98
MISS KITTIN "BatBox" (Nobody's Bizzness) cd 16.98
MISSION OF BURMA "Signals, Calls, and Marches" (Matador) cd/lp 15.98/25.00
MISSION OF BURMA "The Horrible Truth About Burma" (Matador) cd/lp 15.98/25.00
MISSION OF BURMA "Vs." (Matador) cd/2lp 15.98/25.00
MONO "The Sky Remains The Same As Ever" (Temporary Residence Ltd.) dvd 17.98
NAKED ON THE VAGUE "Blood Pressure Sessions" (Dual Plover) cd/lp 16.98/13.98
NALLE "The Siren Wave" (Locust) cd 14.98
NASUM "Doombringer" (Relapse) cd 13.98
NATURAL FOOD "s/t" (Porter Records) cd 16.98
NEPTUNE "Gong Lake" (Radium) cd 16.98
NERVE NET NOISE "Dark Garden" (Intransitive) cd 14.98
NORTT "Galgenfrist" (Avantgarde) cd 15.98
NUMAN, GARY + TUBEWAY ARMY "Replicas Redux" (Beggar's Banquet) 2cd 15.98
OAKEATER "Molech" (Nihilist) lp 21.00
PAN SONIC "Kuvaputki" (Cargo Records) dvd 15.98
PELLARIN "Gundso" (Statler & Waldorf) cd 17.98
POWER PILL FIST "Extra Life" (Graveface) cd 11.98
RACONTEURS "Consolers Of The Lonely" (Warner Bros.) cd 16.98
RAMESES III "Basilica" (Important Records) cd 14.98
RELIGIOUS KNIVES "It's After Dark" (Troubleman) cd 13.98
RETRIBUTION GOSPEL CHOIR "s/t" (Caldo Verde) cd 13.98
RIGOR SARDONICOUS "Vallis Ex Umbra De Mortuus" (Paragon Records) cd/lp 14.98/21.00
RIMPOCHE, BOKAR "Sacred Chants & Tibetan Rituals From The Monestary Of Mirik" (Sub Rosa) cd 15.98
SAMAIDON "All Is Well" (Bedroom Community) cd 15.98
SANCTUM "Of the Horizon" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
SCULPTURED "Embodiment" (The End Records) cd 12.98
SHE & HIM "Volume One" (Merge) cd 15.98
SIAN ALICE GROUP "59.59" (The Social Registry) cd 14.98
SIC ALPS "Description Of The Harbor" (Awesome Vistas) lp 14.98
SILVER MT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA-BAND "13 Blues For Thirteen Moons" (Constellation) cd/lp 15.98/22.00
SINGER "Unhistories" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/17.98
SLIM CESSNA'S AUTO CLUB "Cipher" (Alternative Tentacles) cd 14.98
SNOOP DOGG "Ego Trippin" (Geffen) cd 15.98
SONS & DAUGHTERS "This Gift" (Domino) cd 14.98
SOURVEIN "Ghetto Angel" (This Dark Reign) cd 14.98
SPRING HEEL JACK "Songs & Themes" (Thirsty Ear) cd 16.98
STRIBORG "Autumnal Melancholy" (Dis-Order) cd 14.98
SUISHO NO FUNE "Prayer for Chibi" (Holy Mountain) cd 15.98
SUN KIL MOON "April" (Redeye) cd 14.98
SUN RA "Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue" (Atavistic) cd 15.98
TALL FIRS "Too Old To Die Young" (Ecstatic Peace) cd 10.98
TERMINALS, THE "Last Days Of The Sun" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
TERMINALS, THE "Touch" (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
TIDES / GIANT "Split" (Teenage Disco Bloodbath) cd 9.98
TODD, MIA DOI "Gea" (City Zen Records) cd 13.98
UNEARTHLY TRANCE "Electrocution" (Relapse) cd 15.98
V/A "Encyclopedia Asthmatica Vol. 1" (Asthmatic Kitty) dvd 15.98
V/A "Imaginational Anthem Volume Three" (Tomkins Square) cd 14.98
V/A "Shadow Music Of Thailand" (Sublime Frequencies) lp 25.00
VVEREVVOLF GREHV "Zombie Aesthetics" (Relapse) cd 14.98
WHITE, JIM "Transnormal Skiperoo" (LuakaBop) cd 14.98
WHITMORE, WILLIAM ELLIOTT "Hymns For The Hopeless" (Southern) lp 12.98
WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE SON GOD "Out of Body Diva" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
WHY? "Alopecia" (Anticon) cd 14.98
WILL HAVEN "The Hierophant" (Bieler) cd 14.98
WOODS FAMILY CREEPS "s/t" (Time Lag) cd 14.98
WOOFAH "#2" magazine 10.98
WRATH OF THE WEAK "Alogon" (Profound Lore) cd 14.98
WRATHCHILD AMERICA "Climbin' The Walls" (Wounded Bird) cd 14.98
YOSHIDA, TATSUYA & SOTOYAMA AKIRA "Drum Duo" (Enban) dvd-r 13.98
YOSHIMIO "Yunnan Colorfree" (Shock City) cd+dvd 50.00
ZORN, JOHN "Dreamers" (Tzadik) cd 16.98

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ABOUT MAILORDER


Please place your order via our website.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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


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

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SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} April 8th
Torche "Meanderthal" cd on Hydra Head
The Breeders "Mountain Battles" cd/lp
Tapes' n Tapes "Walk It Off" cd/lp on XL
Robert A.A. Lowe & Rose Lazar "Gyromancy" book + 3" cd on Thrill Jockey

----} April 22nd
Grey Daturas "Return To Disruption" cd on Neurot
Birchville Cat Motel "Four Freckle Constellation" lp on Conspiracy
Aethenor "Betimes Black Cloudmasses" cd/lp on VHF
Malcolm Middleton "Sleight Of Heart" cd on Full Time Hobby
Sonic Youth "J'Accuse Ted Hughes" lp on SYR
Jack Rose "Dr. Ragtime & His Pals + s/t" 2cd on Beautiful Happiness
Jack Rose "Kensington Blues" vinyl edition on VHF

----} April 29th
Dizzee Rascal "Maths + English" on Definitive Jux
Cloudland Canyon "Lie In Light" cd/lp on Kranky
v/a "Nigeria Rock Special" cd/2lp on Soundway

----} May
Necrofrost "Blackeon Lightharvest" cd

----} May 6th
Matmos "Supreme Balloon" cd/2lp on Matador
Steve Von Till "A Grave Is A Grim Horse" cd/lp on Neurot
Scott Kelly "The Wake" cd/lp on Neurot
16 Horsepower "Live March 2001" 2cd on Alternative Tentacles
Amebix "No Sanctuary: The Spiderleg Recordings" cd/lp+7" on Alternative Tentacles
Terry Riley "The Last Camel In Paris" cd on Elision Fields (live 1978)

----} May 13th
Pita "Get Out" cd reissue on Editions Mego

----} May 20th
Devendra Banhart "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon" 2lp version on XL
The National "A Skin, A Night/The Victoria EP" cdep/dvd on Beggars Banquet

----} June 2nd
A Storm Of Light "And We Wept The Black Ocean Within" cd/2lp on Neurot
Dead Can Dance reissues

----} June 16th
US Christmas "Eat The Low Dogs" cd/lp on Neurot

----} sometime soon, maybe real soon
Ilyas Ahmed "The Vertigo Of Dawn" cd/lp on Time-Lag
UFOmammut "Idolum" cd/cd+2lp on Supernatural Cat
Brendan Murray "Commonwealth" on 23five
Chop Shop "Oxiode" 23five
Omit "Interceptor"
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
Nachtmystium/Leviathan split cd on Battle Kommand
Magma "Mythes et Légendes Vol.4" DVD on Seventh
Earth, Roots & Water "Innocent Youths" cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Walker Brothers "Take It Easy With The Walker Brothers" cd reissue on Water
Feelies "Crazy Rhythms" cd reissue on Water
BJ Nilsen & Stillupsteypa "Passing Out"

----} also upcoming sooner or later
Machinefabriek "Mort Aux Vaches" cd on Staalplaat
T2 "It'll All Work Out In Boomland" cd reissue on Acme/Lion
T2 "s/t" cd reissue on Acme/Lion
Akira Rabelais "Hollywood" cd on Schoolmap
Boris "Smile" cd on Southern Lord (domestic, different track listing!)
Mariana Topley-Bird w/ Dangermouse
Mike Patton "Perfect Place" cd on Ipecac
Paavoharju "Laulu Laakson Kukista" cd/lp on Fonal
Silver Jews "Look Out Mountain, Look Out Sea"
Circle X "Prehistory"
Loren Chasse & Michael Mnortham "Otolth"
The Wrens new album
Andrew W.K. new album
Wolfmother new album
Endless Boogie "tba" cd/2lp on No Quarter
Coh "Strings" cd on Raster
White Heaven "Levitation" cd edition on Farside
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
The Heads tba 2cd 'best of' on Leafhound
16-17 "Gyatso" cd reissue on Savage Land
Pyha "The Haunted House" cd on tUMULt
Varghkoghargasmal "Drowned In Lakes" cd on tUMULt
Like A Kind Of Matador "Halfway To Dangerous" cd on tUMULt
Coil "The Ape Of Naples/The New Backward" 4lp vinyl version on Important
Gore reissues on Southern Lord
The Endless Blockade "Primitive" cd/lp on 20 Buck Spin
Coffins "Buried Death" cd/lp on 20 Buck Spin
Black Boned Angel / Nadja collaboration cd/lp on 20 Buck Spin
Black Boned Angel "The Endless Coming Into Life" cd on 20 Buck Spin
Portishead "Third" cd on Island
Eater "The Album" 2cd deluxe 30th anniversary reissue on Anagram
Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Serge Gainsbourg "Histoire de Melody Nelson" cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Serge Gainsbourg "L'homme à tête de chou" cd reissue on Light In The Attic

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanLaurenIrwinScottSallyAntaeusCameronMichaelandFrank