ISENGRIND / TWINSISTERMOON / NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS The Snowbringer Cult (Students Of Decay) 2cd 21.00
As we commented in our review of the now out of print Laurie Bird cd-r from French bedroom drone-psych-folk duo Natural Snow Buildings, it always surprises us how bands with nothing but a MySpace page and a cd-r or two, can generate so much hype and excitement. It seems to be a common occurrence these days, with some bands even getting real live major label record deals purely on the strength of the handful of tracks on their MySpace page.
To be fair to Natural Snow Buildings, they have been a band since 1999, toiling quietly WAY underground, and over the course of the last 9 years, have only released 4 cd-r's and two tapes, the total number of copies of all 6 releases hovering at about 250. That's insane! How does a band with such a small catalog, that has reached so few ears, possibly generate so much fanboy freakout?! But that's precisely what happened. But thankfully, and perhaps surprisingly, in this case, the hype does not seem unwarranted. The freaking out more than merited. The music of Natural Snow Buildings is definitely something special, much more than the usual generic fx laden droned out abstract cd-r floor-core that seems to be flooding the scene, this boy girl duo write songs, and create gorgeous soundscapes, they mix raga-like psyche with fluttery folk, deep drones with pristine pop, weaving it all together into something spectacular.
So here we have the very first proper cd release (others on the way, reissues of several of their various way-too limited cd-r's) from Natural Snow Buildings, bundled with an extra disc, featuring a whole record from both NSB members' solo projects, Twinsistermoon, whose last disc we reviewed recently, and Isengrind, the project of Solange, the female half of NSB.
Isengrind's half of disc one begins with some deep dark ambience, huge shimmering streaks of ominous sound, like an orchestra tuning up in a cave, drawn out into warm washes of dronelike sound, processed choral vocals, and wheezing accordions. That intro gives way to a buzzing Eastern style raga, lots of percussion, shakers, bells, hand drums, buried beneath a shimmery smear of thick coruscating buzz, a sea of sitars, with Solange's vocals soaring ghostlike over the top. The next track is a dark folky drift, a simple melody, fluttering flute, more abstract percussion, definitely reminiscent of Avarus and other Finnish forest folk, but somehow more ethereal, and genuinely folky. The rest of the Isengrind tracks drift from spectre like folk, simple strums soaked in reverb and wrapped around ethereal vocals, to more raga jams, Indian style buzz filtered through a fractured folk sensibility, to haunting cinematic ambience, abstract soundscapes rife with streaks of feedback and wheezing chordal whir, disembodied strum, mysterious vocals and sporadic percussion, tribal, primal, primitive and raw, but still dreamlike and lovely.
Mehdi begins his side of the disc, with a sound that perfectly compliments Solange's (and make it obvious why the two work so well together in NSB), long drawn out glimmering high end tones, draped over a dark minor key folky strum, and simple percussion, while Mehdi's feminine sounding falsetto soars over the top, all infused with some sort of freaky folky Wickerman vibe. Gorgeous and haunting. That track is followed up by a short chunk of perfect dreamfolk, simple folky strum, and Mehdi's crystal clear vocals, ringing out, pure and impossibly high, if you didn't know better you might think this was some rare track by some lost seventies female folkie.
And so it goes, tracks weaving back and forth, from warm washed out blissy dreamy dronescapes, to simple stripped down folk, often the two sounds drifting into each other, cross pollinating, the folk songs short and seemingly serving to separate the longer sprawling expanses of drone and shimmer, the two sounds dramatically different, but somehow complimenting one another perfectly.
So what happens when the two join forces, becoming Natural Snow Buildings? It would be way too easy to say that the sum equaled the parts, that if you took the sound of the two halves of the first disc, it would equal the whole of the second. There is certainly ­some- truth to that, but it's not math, it's magic. Alchemy, musical sorcery, these are sounds not numbers, and thus are governed by forces far more magical and mysterious than physics or science. The two together join spirits, their natures become entwined, they draw from one another, each offering the other part of their soul, rendered in music. The results are truly divine. An assemblage of sounds, deftly woven into expansive shapes and hushed mystery, landscapes of drone and shimmer, of cinematic wonder and dark introspection. Some tracks are super abstract, layered near static drifts, longform movements that sonically evoke other lands, other times, the past long forgotten, the future not yet experienced, other tracks are wheezing sun dappled Appalachia, but turned inside out, the chords and notes seemingly drawn inward, toward the speakers, the vocals breathless and mournful, all laid atop a thick swirl of distorted riffage, other tracks are fragmented folk, all murky blurred piano, backwards guitars, heartsick melodies, wrapped in a thick gauzy production, smeared into snapshots glimpsed through eyes brimming with tears. Other tracks are space rock writ small, minimal dirges, drone jams, chanted vocals, strange stuttery percussion, and glorious buzzing guitars, culminating in the final track, which begins much like the others, all hazy and dreamlike, vocals ethereal, guitars spare and skeletal, until unexpectedly the band lock into some serious droned out space rock. A serious dark and druggy looped riff, a la Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, Loop, anchored by a simple pounding thudrock rhythm, driving intensely through swirling clouds of FX and warm whirring ambience, a seriously dense, propulsive krautjam, that just so happens to hide a soft drifting pop shimmer underneath, and while the track rocks with a surprising intensity, it's precisely what's underneath that turns the jam into something resplendent.
Gorgeous packaging, a fancy 4 panel gatefold digisleeve, with super striking original artwork and liner notes all drawn by Solange.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS "Resurrect Dead On Planet Six"
MPEG Stream: NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS "Bear Hunting"
MPEG Stream: TWINSISTERMOON "Amantsokan"
MPEG Stream: ISENGRIND "To Ride With Holle"

PORTISHEAD Third (Mercury) cd 14.98
It seems a bit strange to spend very much time writing about the new Portishead. Since by now, odds are you're probably sick to death of hearing about it. Sure we all loved Portishead back in the day, they were one of those rare 'electronic' bands whose appeal knew no boundaries, metalheads, moms, indie kids, the sound of Portishead was dark and sexy and mysterious, sinister and ominous, dark and rife with crackle and buzz. Perfect drugged out late night bliss out music, their strange way of creating sound and composing music, recording their own samples on to vinyl and then spinning and scratching those samples to create new textures, made for a totally unique sound.
So what does a band do after taking almost a decade off? Do they return with a record that sounds just like the last one, which is probably what most folks want, or do they return radically altered? With a sound bold and brash, reinventing the sound they themselves invented in the first place.
On first listen, Third definitely sounds like the latter, but with repeated listening, the record slowly and subtly begins to slip toward the former. Which most definitely speaks to the magic of Portishead, and the new record, which at once embraces the old sound, while turning it into something new. More than past outings, Third is dirty, out of tune, atonal, noisy, chaotic, urgent, sure past records had all that crackle and buzz and fuzz, but those elements were carefully placed, and kept well within line. Third sounds much more, well, loose for lack of a better word, like actual musicians, feeling each other out, maybe even improvising. Less like a studio concoction and more like a real live band. And the sound suits them. And makes for a record at once warm and familiar, but also alien, sort of 'rocking' and rife with WTF? moments.
Take the opener, "Silence", which begins with some sort of radio broadcast, which gives way to a killer loping breakbeat, immediately the fastest tempo Portishead have ever explored, strings swoop in, the sound raw and urgent, almost like the chase scene from some spy movie, gorgeous distorted chiming guitar harmonics ring out, until finally the track slows down, and slithers sexily, the vocals a sexy sultry croon, but it's not long before the track kicks back into the haunting and tense, string laden cinematic jam that opened the track.
Then there's "Hunter", which begins like classic Portishead, all smokey and late night sounding, soft muted reverbed guitars, a lush gauzy production, the vocals ethereal and ghostly, but even here, a few seconds in, the song is interrupted by a super distorted crumbling guitar chord that halts things in their tracks, before fading out, and allowing the song to resume. The a few minutes later, a strange noodly synth freakoutsurfaces, again derailing the song's slow motion groove, but It just sounds perfect. It doesn't at all sound like random weirdness for random weirdness' sake. The first time is jarring, the second time, you find yourself waiting for those parts, even humming along as if they were as crucial to the song as the main melody or the vocals, and the thing is, they are.
Near the end lurks the single, "Machine Gun", with its very machine gun like rhythm, herky jerky, stuttery and not at all fluid, reminiscent of Art Of Noise, the vocals sweetly soaring over this jagged rhythmscape below, which only really varies part way through when the original machine gun drums are replaced by BIGGER, more distorted drums, and wrapped in strange moaning horns (or maybe synths), only to shift once again moments later becoming more electronic, the beats awash in strange FX and metallic buzz. It's so unlikely, that it makes perfect sense as the first single. If you can embrace that strange rhythm, that relentless and very un-Portishead like sound, then the rest of the record will make perfect sense, unfolding in front of you, revealing both the warm familiar sounds missed, and the new, bizarre sonic elements never even imagined
All over the record, the band confounds and confuses, gloriously, the brooding whispery "Small" shifts gears partway through and transforms into a fuzzy organ drenched krautjam, "Deep Water" is a straight up old timey folk song, the vocals and strings soaked in fuzzy ambience (and reminding us a bit of vocalist Gibbons' post Portishead project Rustin Man), "We Carry On" is a sort of atonal Stereolab style jam, relentless percussion, thick swaths of synth, very repetitive and hypnotic, "The Rip" is part whispery folky flutter, part synthy electro buzz, every track here offers some sort of surprise, whether it's the song itself, or some little sonic strangeness lurking within, but never is the song or the sound sacrificed, each track is perfect in its own beautifully twisted way, catchy but never obviously so, groovy, but often convoluted and fractured, it's a difficult record to explain for sure, which is perhaps why so much ink has been spilled, and while we may be sick of reading about it, we sure are finding it nearly impossible to imagine ever getting sick of listening to it, which is precisely why it's one of our Records Of The Week.
MPEG Stream: "Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Machine Gun"

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ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness (Important) cd 14.98
This is the new album from Japan's Acid Mothers Temple, that AMT leader Kawabata Makoto contends is heavier than the average heavy AMT release, going so far as to say it's in the league of something like SUNNO))). Well, is it really?? Would he bet his beard on it? (We all ask, salivatin'.)
The answer: holy shit, yes. It's like indeed kinda like SUNNO))) jamming with Amon Duul, in a relentless riff orgy. That heavy. That droney. That creepy. That kosmic. A slow screaming blackened drone-groan vomiting forth from bad trippin' hippy minds, third eyes staring dull and glassy into the spinning vortex of the void. There's about ten minutes of pure bliss-out at the end of the disc, but before that, what you get is psychedelic guitar gunk out the wazoo. Riff after plodding riff, adorned with alien electronics. Dirge, splurge and more dirge. A roar to end all roars. A space-sludge feedback fantasy.
Each clocking in at about 36 and a half minutes, there's two long tracks (with long track names) here: "Eternal Incantation Of Perpetual Nightmare" and "Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness". Sound kinda black metal don't they? Actually they do. This is an EXTREME Acid Mothers Temple experience let me tell you. Boris, beware! Ufommamut, watch your backs! Electric Wizard, better take another hit!!
Definitely worthy of the nifty, unmistakable Seldon Hunt cover art. Also, FYI we have this in both digital and analog formats. The vinyl version, a heavy gatefold double LP affair, is limited to 1000 copies, and it includes two bonus tracks!!! So act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Eternal Incantation Of Perpetual Nightmare"
MPEG Stream: "Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness "

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness (Important) 2lp 26.00
This is the new album from Japan's Acid Mothers Temple, that AMT leader Kawabata Makoto contends is heavier than the average heavy AMT release, going so far as to say it's in the league of something like SUNNO))). Well, is it really?? Would he bet his beard on it? (We all ask, salivatin'.)
The answer: holy shit, yes. It's like indeed kinda like SUNNO))) jamming with Amon Duul, in a relentless riff orgy. That heavy. That droney. That creepy. That kosmic. A slow screaming blackened drone-groan vomiting forth from bad trippin' hippy minds, third eyes staring dull and glassy into the spinning vortex of the void. There's about ten minutes of pure bliss-out at the end of the disc, but before that, what you get is psychedelic guitar gunk out the wazoo. Riff after plodding riff, adorned with alien electronics. Dirge, splurge and more dirge. A roar to end all roars. A space-sludge feedback fantasy.
Each clocking in at about 36 and a half minutes, there's two long tracks (with long track names) here: "Eternal Incantation Of Perpetual Nightmare" and "Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness". Sound kinda black metal don't they? Actually they do. This is an EXTREME Acid Mothers Temple experience let me tell you. Boris, beware! Ufommamut, watch your backs! Electric Wizard, better take another hit!!
Definitely worthy of the nifty, unmistakable Seldon Hunt cover art. Also, FYI we have this in both digital and analog formats. The vinyl version, a heavy gatefold double LP affair, is limited to 1000 copies, and it includes two bonus tracks!!! So act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Eternal Incantation Of Perpetual Nightmare"
MPEG Stream: "Recurring Dream & Apocalypse Of Darkness "

AHMED, ILYAS The Vertigo Of Dawn (Time-Lag) cd 14.98
Hot on the heels of the recently reviewed, way overdue, double disc reissue of two LONG out of print cd-r's, comes a brand new disc from one of our favorite music makers, Ilyas Ahmed.
In the past, Ahmed has found himself lumped in with lots of modern guitarists, of the neo-Appalachian persuasion, Blackshaw, Rose, etc. And while Ahmed can definitely fingerpick with the best of them, his records were never distinctly 'guitar' records in that same way, even though most of his songs are based around a guitar. And his prowess on the steel string was never really the focal point of those discs. Instead, he used the guitar and those bits of Appalachia, merely as elements in a much larger sonic picture. Vocals, raga like drones, horns, hand drums, each part of a lush lush expansive soundscape, which just happened to be draped across a framework of steel string shimmer, while all around that acoustic guitar, swirled strange and wondrous sounds.
The new disc, The Vertigo Of Dawn, while indeed rich with lustrous guitar, is even more far out, more psychedelic, more druggy, and manages to turn that guitar into something weird and wonderful, a hazy fuzzy ghostlike folk, otherworldly and haunting.
The record begins with a tripped out ESP style free jazz drone drift, all long tones and moaning horns, very serene and sedate and meditative, lots of space, warm whirling reverb, the horns hovering over a soft backdrop of deep rumbles and muted buzz, Eastern style melodies played out like snake charmer melodies, the whole thing very exotic and mysterious and free jazzy.
The second track begins with some aggressively strummed guitar, distorted crooned vocals, and some killer Eastern style melodies (again), it's like freak folk filtered through some Middle Eastern bazaar. The following track is more druggy and woozy, the acoustic guitar again the focal point, but surrounded on all sides by swooping backwards guitars, and ghostlike falsetto vocals. The next track is a sunshiney hippy folk jam, with simple subtle percussion, strummed minor key guitar, but wrapped around some truly haunting vocals and horns, high and drawn out, sometimes hard to tell if it's a horn or a voice, but they add a strange tension, and turn the fluttery folk into something much more intense and mysterious. The whole record is like a long strange trip for Ahmed's guitar, it's gentle melodies, and simple strumming, making their way through strange song after strange song, sometimes, floating unmolested, just glimmering and glistening, while other times being buffeted by thick squalls of buzz and whirring drones, and at others, slowly pulled apart into strange minimal steel stringscapes, each note a sparkling star in a constellation of minor key melancholia, often accompanied by Ahmed's lonesome falsetto wail, wrapping protectively around the guitar's fragile shimmer. So nice.
Fans of all that neo-Appalachia stuff will definitely dig this, as will folks into the freak folk cd-r scene, but even if you're into folky psych like Six Organs Of Admittance, Steven R. Smith, Scott Tuma, and other steel string soundscapers, you might find this much to your liking...
The packaging is fantastic as well, both the lp and the cd are housed in super deluxe fabric textured gatefold sleeves, both with printed insert, the lp is on 180 gram vinyl and is limited to 750 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Golden Universe"
MPEG Stream: "Under The Singing Sea"

AHMED, ILYAS The Vertigo Of Dawn (Time-Lag) lp 26.00
Hot on the heels of the recently reviewed, way overdue, double disc reissue of two LONG out of print cd-r's, comes a brand new disc from one of our favorite music makers, Ilyas Ahmed.
In the past, Ahmed has found himself lumped in with lots of modern guitarists, of the neo-Appalachian persuasion, Blackshaw, Rose, etc. And while Ahmed can definitely fingerpick with the best of them, his records were never distinctly 'guitar' records in that same way, even though most of his songs are based around a guitar. And his prowess on the steel string was never really the focal point of those discs. Instead, he used the guitar and those bits of Appalachia, merely as elements in a much larger sonic picture. Vocals, raga like drones, horns, hand drums, each part of a lush lush expansive soundscape, which just happened to be draped across a framework of steel string shimmer, while all around that acoustic guitar, swirled strange and wondrous sounds.
The new disc, The Vertigo Of Dawn, while indeed rich with lustrous guitar, is even more far out, more psychedelic, more druggy, and manages to turn that guitar into something weird and wonderful, a hazy fuzzy ghostlike folk, otherworldly and haunting.
The record begins with a tripped out ESP style free jazz drone drift, all long tones and moaning horns, very serene and sedate and meditative, lots of space, warm whirling reverb, the horns hovering over a soft backdrop of deep rumbles and muted buzz, Eastern style melodies played out like snake charmer melodies, the whole thing very exotic and mysterious and free jazzy.
The second track begins with some aggressively strummed guitar, distorted crooned vocals, and some killer Eastern style melodies (again), it's like freak folk filtered through some Middle Eastern bazaar. The following track is more druggy and woozy, the acoustic guitar again the focal point, but surrounded on all sides by swooping backwards guitars, and ghostlike falsetto vocals. The next track is a sunshiney hippy folk jam, with simple subtle percussion, strummed minor key guitar, but wrapped around some truly haunting vocals and horns, high and drawn out, sometimes hard to tell if it's a horn or a voice, but they add a strange tension, and turn the fluttery folk into something much more intense and mysterious. The whole record is like a long strange trip for Ahmed's guitar, it's gentle melodies, and simple strumming, making their way through strange song after strange song, sometimes, floating unmolested, just glimmering and glistening, while other times being buffeted by thick squalls of buzz and whirring drones, and at others, slowly pulled apart into strange minimal steel stringscapes, each note a sparkling star in a constellation of minor key melancholia, often accompanied by Ahmed's lonesome falsetto wail, wrapping protectively around the guitar's fragile shimmer. So nice.
Fans of all that neo-Appalachia stuff will definitely dig this, as will folks into the freak folk cd-r scene, but even if you're into folky psych like Six Organs Of Admittance, Steven R. Smith, Scott Tuma, and other steel string soundscapers, you might find this much to your liking...
The packaging is fantastic as well, both the lp and the cd are housed in super deluxe fabric textured gatefold sleeves, both with printed insert, the lp is on 180 gram vinyl and is limited to 750 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Golden Universe"
MPEG Stream: "Under The Singing Sea"

ALTAR SHADOWS Speckledy Falcons (Todestrieb) cd 13.98
Not sure what it was about Altar Shadows that intrigued us more, the fact that they're from Lithuania, or that their record is called Speckledy Falcons. Probably a little of both, but the two taken together, well, they were virtually irresistible to the aQ weirdo black metal obsessives.
And rightfully so. Altar Shadows offer up a blend of majestic Viking tinged black metal, midtempo Burzumic buzz, traditional Lithuanian folk music, black ambience and some field recordings, burbling brooks, birdsong and other sounds of nature. A strange combination, but the band are pretty deft at assembling them into something cohesive and compelling, black and heavy, melodic and mysterious.
Many of the songs start off with field recordings, invoking the spirit of the forest, of the wilderness, which is carried through to the music, even with the riffs are buzzing blackly, they are underpinned by strummed acoustic guitars, mournful melodies, woozy waltz like tempos, often breaking down into a sort of lilting folk interlude, peppered with guitar leads, before swooping back into full buzz.
One track eschews the buzz completely, instead offering up dark brooding acoustic folk, clean crooned vocals, glistening acoustic guitars, melancholy melodies, while another blends the two, turning a folk song into a strange lurching loping blackened jam, with strange staccato drumming, and super emotive melodies, soaring leads, and growled guttural vocals. Their version of a traditional Lithuanian folk song follows a similar pattern, the guitars spread out in long streaks of downtuned buzz, the vocals a demonlike roar, but woven into a strange folky framework, big drums pounding out a rhythm over harmonized melodies, and some simple strumming, strange but quite cool.
But don't let all the folk throw you off, Altar Shadows are indeed a black metal band, who offer up some gorgeously grim black buzz, blast beats, furious riffing, it's just that their black buzz is infused with the spirit of the past, and informed by the folk music of their ancestors, which more than anything, makes their blackness all the more unique, and their sound something special. Plus, SPECKLEDY FALCONS!!!
MPEG Stream: "Margi Sakalai"
MPEG Stream: "Ant Upes Didziausios Smeletr Krantr"
MPEG Stream: "I Dar Gilesni Pragara II"

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB Skelp / Ginnel (Trensmat) 7"+cd-r 10.98
He may be a master of droned out noise, but he's been flirting with club music on and off for the last few years, each full length hiding at least one dancefloor gem, and so Mr. Neil Campbell, ex of Vibracathedral Orchestra, now of Astral Social CLUB, at least on this here new 7", is all about the tripped out psychedelic electronic groove.
But seeing as this is Neil Campbell, his idea of what constitutes dance music, or even electronica is WAAAAY different than most folks. Just check out the A side here. Maddeningly repetitive, a flurry of bleeps and glitches, swoops and burbles, locked into a relentless loop, the main 'beat' staying steady, while all around it a cloud of FX swirls and shimmers, some seriously druggy electro psych drone for sure.
The second track is all minimal house music, sort of. The main beat a stripped down pulse and squelch, with synthy basslines, and some haunting disembodied piano drifting over the top, making for a truly creepy mash up. Maybe one of our favorite Astral tracks ever!
As with all Trensmat 7" releases, the vinyl comes bundled with a cd-r, featuring both the tracks from the 7", as well as three remixes from Richard Youngs, John Clyde-Evans and Magnetize, ranging from super spastic chopped up electronic madness, to spacey static drenched minimal house groove, to wild Bruce Haack like electronic experimentalism, playful and goofy and over the top.
Don't let all the talk of club music scare you away though, fans of recent Astral Social Club know all about Campbell's wild and off kilter take on dance music, which really ends up having more in common with tripped out psych drone and free noise weirdness than it does with -actual- club music.
Pressed on yellow vinyl, and SUPER limited.
MPEG Stream: "Skelp"
MPEG Stream: "Ginnel"

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

BAKER, AIDAN / LEAH BUCKAREFF / NADJA Trinity (Die Stadt) cd 24.00
You read that right, this is indeed another new Nadja AND another new Aidan Baker, at the same time! Even after the world record FIVE Nadja's on a recent list. And while we joke about how prolific this guy is, even we're a bit overwhelmed by what is basically, counting reissues, maybe the 10th or 11th new release in a matter of a month or two. Sure we can whip out reviews like nobody's business, but even we're run a little ragged. But we'll do our best.
Obviously fans will need this, lots of us bought copies, after all, we've yet to hear a bad record from Baker or Nadja, and this one is no different. However it is special for two reasons, one, it's crazy limited, only 500 copies, hand numbered. When we run out of the ones we have it will be gone for good. And two, it features the first (as far as we know) solo jam from the non Aidan Baker half of Nadja, Leah Buckareff.
Three long tracks, released to coincide with a German live performance in April. The Baker solo track is a pretty glistening drift, a bit more dense and thick than past solo efforts, a surprisingly busy sonic swirl, ethereal effects, murky drones, fragments of melodies, bits of feedback and rumble and twinkle, all set in a warm whirring expanse of soft sound.
The Nadja track begins all dark and serene, but quickly builds to an incendiary blown out doom trudge, quite possibly the heaviest and most distorted we've heard the duo, the guitar thick and crumbling and so distorted it almost obscures any melody, the drum machine a chaotic splatter, the last few minutes so intense and heavy and freaked out, the squall of swirling black psych and drum machine sputter almost completely obscures the churning riffage below.
The big surprise here, although we suppose it shouldn't really be a surprise, is Buckareff's contribution. We're tempted to suggest that she start releasing her own records, but that's just what we need! More kick ass records to buy. Anyway, Buckareff's track, is all low end whir, whispery static, and barely there percussion, that builds to a caustic dirgedrone as heavy and intense as anything Nadja has released, but the cool thing is that even when the sound is a wall of heaving roiling black buzz, beneath it lurks that opening bass melody, the strange pit pat percussion, a mournful lope, slowly being swallowed by a massive swell of muted murky washed out heaviness, that quickly fades out, leaving that minimal bassy shuffle to fade out into silence.
Ok, fine, fuck it, bring it on, more Buckareff solo stuff! We can take it. Even if we can't afford more musical obsessions. But after this we need to hear more. Once again, three for three. Nadja, Baker, Buckareff, essential listening for the doomdronedirge inclined.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, hand numbered, in a cool matte paper fold over sleeve.
MPEG Stream: LEAH BUCKAREFF "Socorro"
MPEG Stream: NADJA "Jornada Del Muerto"

BARN OWL From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light (Not Not Fun) lp 16.98
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep hitting and soul satisfying drone anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, they finally have a release that while still limited will at least get to reach a lot more ears then anything they've put out so far. These are sounds that deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare when you hear one that you really feel true soul and spirited passion from. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The lp format suits the duo so well, as their songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just listened to one side over and over and over before we even moved on to the second side with which we then did the same. There is both patience and payoff in Barn Owl's sound. Music that makes you want to close your eyes because you know you are entranced by atrists that know so well what they are doing. While they pressed up way more lps than anything else they've released, it's all relative, meaning these LP's are not going to be around too long, in fact we weren't even able to get as many as we ordered. Highly recommended, but act fast!

BLACK BONED ANGEL & NADJA Christ Send Light (Battlecruiser / Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd 12.98
Another matchup that had to happen eventually, it was only a matter of time. Campbell Kneale's Black Boned Angel, and Aidan Baker's Nadja. Two modern groups redefining doom metal. Filtering doom through their own dronedirge aesthetics, each with a distinctly unique take on doom, BBA's more of a glacial noise drenched dirge, Nadja's more of a blissed out metalgaze.
The two together though churn out what can only be described as epic grandiose doom pop. Or something like that. Soaring vocals, over thick churning crumbling distortion. It almost sounds like a sludge metal Queen, or a bit like recent Record Of The Week honorees Torche, or even Harvey Milk at their most dramatic and over the top.
The main riff is a slowed down classic rocker, turned sludgey and lugubrious but not losing any of its might or majesty. Guitars screech and soar and grind all around it, what sounds like a piano plinks along with the vocals, a sunshiney melody, but it's the vocals, that turn this into glorious sludgepop, a minor key lament, delivered in a plaintive wail, way down in the mix as well, but loud enough to totally carry the song, that main melody lodged in your head, forever!
Not really sure what else to say. If the math of Nadja + Black Boned Angel = Harvey Milk + Torche + Queen x loads of blown out distortion and sun baked buzz doesn't add up for you, you just might be reading the wrong listŠ
This is an ep teaser for the forthcoming full length from the same team on 20 Buck Spin, but fear not, this song, all 21+ minutes of it, is available only on this disc!!
MPEG Stream: "Christ Send Light"

BORIS Smile (Southern Lord) cd/dvd 14.98
It really wouldn't be a new Boris record if fans weren't faced with the always daunting challenge of which of the many versions to buy. There's always the obvious choice, cd or vinyl, further complicated by different packaging, and of course extra tracks on the vinyl (and in this case, different tracks on the domestic versus the import vinyl most likely), and with Boris, being as they are Japanese, fans are also faced with the choice of the import version, or the domestic version of the cd, and again, different packaging and alternate track listings do apply.
If it were just packaging, it would be a no brainer, folks could figure out if they wanted to spend the extra money on the much fancier import version, or just hold on for the domestic. But nope, the band continue to drive their fans crazy making every version slightly different. The lp version of Smile, since so many people have asked, is already out of print and selling for $300 on eBay, due to the fact that it was limited to only 500 copies, and was for sale ONLY at Disk Union stores in Japan and from the band on tour. There will, we imagine, be a less limited lp version, most likely domestic, but no idea when as of now, and no idea about the track listing.
The import version of Smile on cd we reviewed a while back, while a bit pricey, was well worth it, the packaging super deluxe, a big puffy fuzzy yellow bathtub toy like digipak. All silver ink and see through yellow vellum and again all fuzzy and puffy! By comparison, the domestic version looks downright plain, but closer inspection reveals it's pretty nifty too (designed by SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley of course). The sleeve is silver and orange metallic, housing an inner booklet packed with photos and lyrics, the jewel case is adorned with half a smiley face sticker and each one is machine numbered, LIMITED TO 3000 COPIES! Plus it's half the price of the import version. BUT, the track listing is pretty different. The track "Statement" here, is called "Message" on the Japanese Version, and is four minutes longer and a different mix. The untitled final track is 15 minutes long here, but on the Japanese version is 19. However, other songs are longer on the domestic. It is pretty dang confusing for sure. The sound is similar, but there are distinct differences within songs, so much so that it definitely sounds like it must be a different mix all the way through. Arghhhh.
But beyond all that, there is one very good reason to pick up this domestic version, even if you already bought the import. We managed to get copies of the Southern Lord "mailorder-only" version of Smile, which comes with a bonus DVD, featuring three Boris videos. It's this version that's limited to 3000 copies, and once these are gone, it will be a regular old single disc. But while we got 'em, the dvd is pretty kick ass. The band, always stylish and stylized, have upped the ante even more on these three clips, the first, "Statement", is all staggered split screen, guitarist Wata looking sexy and bored in front of her massive stack, Takeshi wielding the double necked bass, and Atsuo flailing wildly behind the kit, everything yellowish orange and tripped out, the various split screen elements constantly shifting and shuffling. The whole band looking pretty dolled up, teased hair and clad in all black. The video for "My Neighbor Satan" is awesome. The trio standing almost completely still, Atsuo playing some old electronic drum kit, Wata playing a huge clunky guitar synth, the band all washed out and distorted and indistinct, the screen white and blurry, as if the band were playing inside a cloud. Finally, the video for "Pink" which looks like the pink on red design of the Pink album come to life, the band rendered in high contrast shades of red, very abstract, almost looking more like a Boris screensaver.
So that's about all we can tell you about this new version. If you haven't bought Smile yet, no reason not to pick up this version, if you bought the import, it might be worth it to you for the dvd and maybe the alternate mix. The bummer is that beyond all this multiple versioned craziness, Smile is just an awesome record:
Every once in a while, we sort of wish we could just move on musically, forget whatever it was we were 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 track listing is all mixed up from the Japanese version, here, they open with what is probably our favorite song on the record, 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.
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.
A bit later comes the track "Statement", from the 7" of the same name (a different version entitled "Message" is on the Japanese version of Smile in its place) which we described 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 then comes "My Neighbor Satan" 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 "Ka Re Ha Te Ta Sa Ki ­ No Ones Grieve", 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 15 minute track (19 on the Japanese version), 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.
As always, just like the Japanese version, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Flower Sun Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Statement"
MPEG Stream: "KA RE HA TE TA SA KI - No Ones Grieve"

BULBS Light Ships (Freedom To Spend) cd 14.98
Basic Channel. Jyrk. Free jazz. Put those things together and you've got an idea of what's in store with Light Ships, the band's first release on Pete Swanson's new label Freedom to Spend. Fellow noiseniks out there will definitely remember Swanson's old label Jyrk, but whereas that label seemed to revolve mostly around his Yellow Swans related releases, this seems more of a label proper. Getting back to the record at hand, Bulbs is a two man collaboration between former Axolotl member William Sabiston (some of you might have been lucky enough to get a copy of his super limited release under the name Ball Lightning) and John Almaraz, who left San Francisco earlier this year to embark on some backpacking across the globe. We checked out what a few people had to say about the record, and the one thing that keeps coming up is techno, techno, techno. Well, to be fair, there is a propulsive element to this record, which may be the only truly linear thing present. And yes, sometimes it is an electronic kick drum. Still, it seems that the greatest influences here are free jazz and African polyrhythms and syncopation. Those who checked out any of the recent Monopoly Child Star Searchers albums, then you're maybe understanding what we're talking about, though Light Ships features significantly higher production quality. Still, if this record is any indication as to what's in store for Freedom to Spend, then we're confident that we will be recommending a healthy dose of their bands and/or projects.
MPEG Stream: "Gold Ropes"
MPEG Stream: "Strickfadfins"

CANTU-LEDESMA, JEFRE & PAUL CLIPSON Corridors (Root Strata) dvd-r 11.98
Second dvd collaboration from film maker Paul Clipson and Root Strata / Tarentel head honcho Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Another gorgeous and sonically blissed out tag team, Clipson's films this time around, again on Super-8, shot entirely in NYC, impressionistic shots of cityscapes, rolling hills, the texture of water, sun dappled evening skies, many of the shots textural, extreme close ups, patterns as much as images and shapes, sunspots, shadows, reflections, very active, the world flying past out the window of a train, power lines and bridges slipping out of eyeshot, setting suns and colored clouds, so lovely and dreamy.
Cantu-Ledesma offers up the perfect soundtrack, music culled from the same sessions that produced the huge aQ fave Shining Skull Breath, so even folks who don't care about the dvd, will want this for the sounds, which are thick and dense, whirring dronescapes, textured and layered, slipping from minimal shimmer to buzzing roar and back again, very much active, the intensity and propulsion of the sounds perfectly matching the motion of the visuals, in some cases, seemingly slowing it down, the drone dragging the landscape flashing by into sudden focus before letting it go again.
Either of these elements would be fantastic on their own, we can only imagine seeing these films projected against the side of a building, or on a huge movie screen, and these sounds would kill broadcast through some massive PA, the thick roiling drones washing over us, filling our ears with grit and grime, but together they work even better, even just viewed on the tiny screen of our computer, sonically and visually evoking all sorts of deep feelings and lost memories, of places never visited, of better times, of lost loves and of a past that keeps slipping further and further away. So lovely.
Packaged in an folded up origami style vellum sleeve with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Already sold out at the label so these are the last copies EVER!

CELESTIAL SEA Deep Inside The Cold (God Is Myth) cd-r 8.98
Celestial Sea is the unlikely collaboration between God Is Myth head honcho Todd Paulson, who is also responsible for Dormant, reviewed elsewhere on the aQ site, and Andrew Curtis-Brignell, of UK black metal one man band Caina. Not unlikely because of the folks involved, it's not hard to draw lines connecting Caina Dormant and God Is Myth, but more for the sound they produce. An epic cinematic post rock more influenced by folks like Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Isis and Mono than any black metal or even metal in particular.
Granted the crossover between metal and post rock is pretty common these days with folks on both sides of the sonic divide borrowing freely from the folks opposite. And we're never ones to complain, we love both sounds, pummeling metallic crunch, and loping mathy instrumental jams, and the two together, well, you know where we stand.
So here we Have Celestial Sea, a (perhaps) one off, that finds the duo getting super spacey for the opening 5 minutes, simple minor key guitar figures unfurling over long drawn out drones, ratcheting up the tension, creating a brooding post rock ambience, that to be honest, we'd be happy to hear continue for the length of the whole record.
Instead, the band launch into the first proper song, soaring crystalline chords, breathless vocals, simple drumming, all swept up in a shimmering swell, building to a crescendo that instead of introducing crushing downtuned riffage, offers up some super proggy organs, but only for a moment, a few seconds later, the guitars drop, and the band is soaring majestically, and heavily through some epic major key chords, the drumming wilder and more chaotic, before blissing back out soon after.
Track three, "William Bentley's Grave" is another slow burner, with a definite prog vibe, lots of glistening shimmer, finally exploding in another epic climax, not crushing or heavy, just expansive and cathartic.
The closer, "Deep Inside The Cold" is the darkest of the bunch, and the most overtly heavy, sounding a bit like Opeth or Katatonia but more mathy and introspective. The guitars thick, ringing out, long passages of droning looped riffage, and finally the record's big payoff, high end guitars spiraling heavenward, the drums double time, a serious final blowout.
Definitely for fans of rock both post and math, and of course metalheads not averse to some sonic subtlety and lots of pretty pretty melody
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in a plain white sleeve with a paste on cover and a printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Clouds"
MPEG Stream: "As The Birds Fly South We Prepare Ourselves For The Impending Storm"

CHOP SHOP Oxide (23five) cd 14.98
Akita. Menche. Blankenship. Dilloway. These are the men of noise with discographies the size of small town phone books, proving their might in the international noise community by the sheer audaciousness of their output. But then again, you might really only need a single testament to stake your claim as one of the greatest noise musicians. Chop Shop has chosen the latter tactic, with Oxide being that sole document, after a relatively tiny back catalogue of cassette only releases, a couple of cdrs, and two infamous 10"s. Both released through RRR, the first was the Steel Plate 2x10" that was literally bound to a steel plate; and the second was a split 10" with Small Cruel Party that was literally cut in half, making playback a dangerous proposition for the needle on your record player. Both of those releases have long been out of print; and despite the hushed respect that those 10"s demand, Chop Shop has kept a low profile. A very low profile. Hence, after a career that has spanned nearly two decades, Oxide is his first proper CD. And it's stunning.
The sole proprietor of Chop Shop is New York based noise technician Scott Konzelmann, whose audio demolition revolves around speaker constructions forged out of hammered plate metal and disfigured commercial grade pipes, which focus particular frequencies and resonant overtones into swarming orchestras of rust, noise, drone, and static. Tape has long been Konzelmann's medium of choice for recording; and like William Basinski before him, Konzelmann endures the self-disintegration of the medium whilst transcribing the sounds of Oxide digitally. Where Basinski's vocabulary of decay is all romance and melancholy, Konzelmann's is muscular and urgently present. Oxide offers a metallurgist's din where compressed air strikes hard steel and machine vibrations generate noxious resonant frequencies in neighboring vents. Konzelmann composes the old school way, with a razor blade and pieces of tape, generating jump cut edits alongside the self-generated debris from the magnetic literally falling apart. These grey, dead-tech drones thus rupture and explode along the faultlines of those edits, and Oxide emerges as a forceful, dynamic album without resorting to purile shock tactics. This is a seriously great noise album for anybody with a passing interest in Broken Flag, Hansen Records, or early Hafler Trio.
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 1) "
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 2)"
MPEG Stream: "Oxide (extract 3)"

CLOUDLAND CANYON Lie In Light (Kranky) cd 14.98
Lie in Light shows Cloudland Canyon wearing their Krautrock worshiping influences fully on sleeve.
We have previously mentioned their cosmic-kraut influence on their debut and follow-up ep. But on those, the lysergic free music of Ash Ra Tempel, Faust, Hawkwind, and Amon Duul II, mixed with more contemporary experimental shimmers of Dead C and This Heat were the key influential touchstones. On Lie In Light, with song titles like "Krautwerk" (how obvious can you get??), "You & I" and "Scheiss Schatzi, Auf Wiedersehn!", Cloudland Canyon this time around channel the Kosmiche and Motorik pulse of Neu!, Can, Cluster, La Dusseldorf and Popol Vuh. More song-structured than their debut, but no less cosmically atmospheric, Cloudland Canyon have upped the ante on their sound and production. While their Krautrock inspirations and tongue-in-cheek song titles may sound derivative on the surface, they bring enough of their own unique perspective on things to make for a highly engaging listen. Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Krautwerk"
MPEG Stream: "Heme"

CLOUDLAND CANYON Lie In Light (Kranky) lp 13.98
Lie in Light shows Cloudland Canyon wearing their Krautrock worshiping influences fully on sleeve.
We have previously mentioned their cosmic-kraut influence on their debut and follow-up ep. But on those, the lysergic free music of Ash Ra Tempel, Faust, Hawkwind, and Amon Duul II, mixed with more contemporary experimental shimmers of Dead C and This Heat were the key influential touchstones. On Lie In Light, with song titles like "Krautwerk" (how obvious can you get??), "You & I" and "Scheiss Schatzi, Auf Wiedersehn!", Cloudland Canyon this time around channel the Kosmiche and Motorik pulse of Neu!, Can, Cluster, La Dusseldorf and Popol Vuh. More song-structured than their debut, but no less cosmically atmospheric, Cloudland Canyon have upped the ante on their sound and production. While their Krautrock inspirations and tongue-in-cheek song titles may sound derivative on the surface, they bring enough of their own unique perspective on things to make for a highly engaging listen. Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Krautwerk"
MPEG Stream: "Heme"

COSBY, BILL Badfoot Brown (Dusty Groove) cd 13.98
When we think of Bill Cosby we usually think of amazing bold pattern sweaters, undeniably funny PG-rated humor and the dad we kind of all wish was ours. Maybe Fat Albert too. What doesn't usually come to our mind is deep hitting, groove heavy, spiritual jazz akin to early '70s Miles Davis. But damn we sure will be thinking about those things now after hearing this previously super impossible to find recording of Cosby on the keys along with a very strong yet mysteriously uncredited band by his side. Some of us had heard Cosby's vocal jazz albums which were likable in their own right, but this is an entirely different and much more potent beast. Believe us when we say this record goes way beyond the novelty of who created it. No matter who was behind this recording, these two long tracks sizzle with fiery passion and flawless execution. Inspired heavily by Bitches Brew era-Miles as well as the likes of Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus and Herbie Hancock, Cosby was tapping into some serious mind expanding and soulful funk infused jazz.
The cd comes with Cosby's thoughtful original liner notes where he talks about the origins of these tracks. The first track "Martin's Funeral" came from his and so many other's experience with coping with the sadness and depression that followed in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination and his personal experience attending King's funeral. The record is all instrumental, and who knew that listening to Bill Cosby and being stoned could be a perfect combination?? While he might still be known best for his TV persona and funny skits about going to the dentist office, there is no doubt after listening to this album that Cosby also has some major depth and musical talent under those amazing large sweaters. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Martin's Funeral"
MPEG Stream: "Hybish Shybish"

CUB Betti-Cola (Mint) cd 14.98
Cuddle-core lives! Here's the newly remastered reissue of Cub's 1992 debut album Betti-Cola which comes with four bonus tracks. First things first, yes, the remastering did make a difference. This cd does sound a whole lot better than the original!
For those unfamiliar... Once upon a time, three Canadian college friends (including our own Cup, pre-I Am Sponbender and AQ!) with little or no previous band experience got together to have fun trying something new for themselves (yeah, you might think "big deal!", but back then things were different... the indie music scene was even more of a boys club for one thing!). Taking the spirit & ethics of DIY punk rock, but understanding the undeniable joy of '60s girl groups, Cub's basement rehearsal space was where the musical genre cuddlecore was born. Releasing a slew of 7" eps (the bulk of which comprise Betti-Cola) and touring extensively, the three gals were definitely kindred spirits with the scene happening just a few hours south at Olympia' WA's K Records (Beat Happening, Tiger Trap, Lois, etc). They even cover Beat Happening's "Cast A Shadow".
A decade and a half later, Betti-Cola's still burstin' with youthful exuberance and blithe spirit (and topping the college radio charts once again to boot!). The tunes are sweet, peppy, rough around the edges, and a bit unsteady at times just like, yes, a cub! On the surface it may seem a little silly or childlike, but looks can be deceiving. It takes guts to throw caution to the wind like they did. As a result, the trio inspired countless young girls and women to pick up guitars or drumsticks or... Heck, look no further than Ms Neko Case who drummed with the band for a spell!
With each album they grew in confidence, skill and composition (personally we favor their second and third albums Come Out Come Out and Box Of Hair), but this is where it all began. Their bright, playful pop is perfect matched with the cover art custom drawn for them by noneother than Dan DeCarlo of Archie Comics fame!
FYI: Come Out Come Out has also been remastered and reissued, and the band's third and final album Box Of Hair has also been rereleased with a bonus fan-pleasin' item.
MPEG Stream: "Go Fish"
MPEG Stream: "My Chinchilla"
MPEG Stream: "Cast A Shadow"

CUB Box Of Hair (Mint) cd 14.98
Cub's newly remastered and reissued third and final album, Box of Hair, plays up the edgier and urgent side of their cuddle-core ethos. The distortion is upped, the song-writing more heartbroken, the lyrics more snarly in their delivery. Stiffer 'real world experience' influences are more pervasive here than on previous releases, and there's an overall feeling that the band is going for broke, and sensing an end coming, want to leave things with a bang. And that's definitely what Box of Hair is, a maturing sum up of priorities, showcasing their best song-writing and musical craft and taking it as far as it can go. One mesmerizing and charming highlight on the album, "Magic 8 Ball", captures all the Cub essentials - infectious pop hooks and clever, bittersweet lyrics. Box of Hair's not as carefree as their previous releases, but it's probably their most meaningful and resonant. Includes a bonus fan-pleasin' item -- a bright, embroidered patch of the band's sunshiney logo!
Note: If you can endure the seemingly endless chair creakiness ("it's not bed squeaks!" says Cup) at the album's end you'll be rewarded with a truly retarded punk rock finish.
FYI: Along with Box of Hair, Betti-Cola and Come Out Come Out, have also been rereleased with bonus tracks!
MPEG Stream: "Freaky"
MPEG Stream: "Loaded"
MPEG Stream: "Main and Broadway"

CUB Come Out Come Out (Mint) cd 14.98
Come Out Come Out is Cub's masterpiece. Newly remastered with bonus tracks (a couple of them hidden), it is the culmination of all the DIY spirit of their debut but also shows the band honing their skills as musicians and songwriters into a tight set of upbeat tunes with a joyful edge - although Cub was often skillfully bittersweet. Self-proclaimed cuddle-core trio from Vancouver, BC, Lisa, Lisa and Robynn veered away from the battle cries of their more raucous riot grrrl contemporaries preferring to wave the 'home-crafted' flag with a more confident (and varied) direction. Obviously, legions of fanatic cubsters (likely whipped into a frenzy during thir sugar-pop-overload live shows) got the message. On this their second full length, wonder along to "Everything's Geometry", "New York City" (later covered by They Might Be Giants), and covers of the Go-Gos' "Vacation" and Yoko Ono's "I'm Your Angel"!
Originally released as a triple 7" colored vinyl fiesta with some wonderfully twisted cover art by Canadian artist Fiona Smyth, the extra bonus tracks here include a live version of "Cast A Shadow" featuring some Italian dude who jumped on stage to play harmonica, and a sweet phoned-in version of "My Chinchilla" on Canadian Radio, that really captures the band's energetic live spirit. Another key groop in a line of influential DIY femme trios from The Shaggs, Kleenex, and The Raincoats, to The Marine Girls, Shonen Knife and Le Tigre, it's time once again for Cub!!
FYI: Betti-Cola has also been remastered and reissued, and the band's third and final album Box Of Hair has also been rereleased with a bonus fan-pleasin' item.
MPEG Stream: "Everything's Geometry"
MPEG Stream: "Life of Crime"
MPEG Stream: "New York City"

DAVIS, JOHN The Gold Hooped Nature (Root Strata) cd 12.98
We're not sure if this is the first proper full length from this local soundscaper / field recordist, but it's definitely the first one we've ever had. We raved about the last two Davis discs we carried, both cd-r's both now unfortunately out of print.
But this is an actual cd, so it should be around for a while, which is a very good thing, as it's just as fantastic as those long gone cd-r's, so hopefully this time a few more folks will get a chance to lay their ears on Davis' minimal loveliness.
And minimal and lovely is precisely what this is. In past reviews we've mentioned Niblock and Coleclough, and obviously those comparisons still apply, but the cool thing about Davis is that he is not nearly so precise. His sounds have grit and static, there is room sound, tape hiss, not to a distracting degree, but only in so much as it adds a bit of warmth and texture.
Davis' music, while deep and shimmery, mysterious and dark, is also natural, captured and created in its environment, not in some vacuum, so a nearly static drone is often peppered with bits of glitch, strange percussion, slivers of feedback. Sounds pulse and waver, drift and shift, often creating incidental rhythms. Those more rhythmic tracks are like some darker dronier pop ambient music, subtly throbbing beneath slow shifting layers of sound, not murky as much as washed out and soft around the edges.
A few tracks stick out here and there, like the warbly almost jazzy interlude "Half Consumed" with it haunting trumpet melody and strange backwards rhythm, but for the most part, The Gold Hooped Nature is simply another breathtaking collection of minimal dronemusic, from an unsung modern master.
Packaged in a beautiful silkscreened gold on white gatefold cardstock sleeve and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Before And Since"
MPEG Stream: "Hudibras"
MPEG Stream: "Queen Mab's Chariot"

DEADSEA s/t (Chrome Leaf) cd 11.98
The return of Deadsea, not to be confused with New Zealand noise rockers the Dead C. But of course the second you laid ears on this, there would be no confusing the two. Not a chance.
Deadsea were born out of the late great tech grind outfit Three Studies For A Crucifixion, and while the grind is pretty much gone, Deadsea are for sure technical, so much so that much of their music is utterly dizzying in its complexity. Maybe that's the reason these guys aren't huge already. Cuz man, if there was any justice in the world, these guys would be touring with Mastodon or Neurosis or playing Ozzfest or something. Not only are Deadsea heavy as fuck, but the songs are crazy catchy, over the top proggy, an impossible blend of Iron Maiden, Carcass, Voivod, with a million parts, tons of awesome harmonies, incredible drumming, insane riffing, tracks shift from thrashing fury to groovy chugging to woozy breakdown to mathy freak out to sludgey doom all in the blink of an eye. Some tracks get all Champs-like, others are almost Southern sounding. The vocals are generally a guttural sort of shout, but here and there they will soar majestically, usually coinciding with a similarly soaring guitar line.
This is just epic and majestic and brutal and blasting and heavy and we hope that the rest of the world catches on soon, not just for the band's sake, although hell, they deserve it, but for all the heavy music obsessives out there whose lives are less full, and whose iPods are that much shittier, and whose headbanging can only be less frenzied for being without Deadsea. Easily remedied though. So do it!!!
MPEG Stream: "Northwitch"
MPEG Stream: "Coming Home"

EDU K FEATURING MARINA Me Bota Pra Dancar (Man Recordings) 12" 12.98
We first were introduced to Edu K on the second installment of the party starting, raw booty shaking Rio Baile Funk collection. His two tracks on that comp really stood out and grabbed our attention and our bodies as we couldn't help but smile and shake it everytime they came on. So we've been wanting to hear more and we finally were able to get our hands on a new 12" from him. Teamed up with Marina of Bonde De Role fame they make a potent one-two punch of raw and sizzling fun. Edu K brings the sweaty ass shakin' bombastic bounce of Baile Funk better then almost anyone. With Marina on vocals it's kind of like if Peaches got hyphy or if Timberland hooked up with CSS. The Crookers edit on the 'b' side kills, making this a must have 12" for anyone who wants to sweat and shake it all summer long.

EK CAMINITI Buried Light (Digtalis Limited) cassette 9.98
Rich has the pleasure been, of late, to sit down with a new issuance from the stellar Digitalis Limited label. Sean Mccann's wobbly wonder "Flutter Oasis," and the last gem from the ever-unfolding Natural Snow Building's saga have had our ears smiling. And not least of all because they are cassettes. It seems re-aquaintance with any medium is accompanied by a degree of intentionality that peaks you to the details of the experience. And particularly in this case, the warmth of the cassette has been on display, with each of these releases huddling up close to the glowing embers of their mic settings slingshotting into the red. The effect can be quite comforting, as though panned to the far reaches are the sounds and feelings of a few angels blowing on a contact mic. We think it might be worth mentioning too, that the scientific name digitalis means "finger-like," and refers to the ease with which a flower of digitalis purpurea can be fitted over a human fingertip. If the music were fingers, and the flowers your ears, you'd be starting to get the picture.
And so, with all that said, it was with obvious excitement that we received a new installment from Digitalis. And from a store favorite and friend no less, Evan of Barn Owl! Elsewhere on this list you'll find their new full length lp on the awesome Not Not Fun label from LA. Buried Light is a decidedly more droney affair than the last two Barn Owl full lengths, but still very much in keeping with their broader vocabulary. The opening track is like listening to the oscillating resonance frequencies of a massive bell breathing. And in time, its host emerges, an ambiguous and ghostly voice, weaving and wandering on broad syllables through the dense murk. On other tracks, this dynamic is extended to the accompaniment of some Tacoma-like guitar picking, giving the tape a faint western vibe. In fact there are parts of the tape that could be comfortably inserted into one of the more recent Earth records or even Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack. In all cases the pace and depths of the tone relationships are entirely transporting. Evan excels in evoking the texture, pace, and scale of the elements, without attaching the songs to anything too specific. In this manner we are free to imagine them as the soundtracks to a kind of collapsed landscape where the wind of water blows ripples across a lake of sand. What is miraculous about Evan, and Barn Owl, at their most abstract and disintegrated, is the profound ambiguity of their temper. They live at the 360th degree, when you've wandered all the way to end of the light, and things start getting dark. What's more engrossing, perhaps, is you may not even remember if you started out towards the dark or the light in the first place. It's the liminal plane on which we witness the gathering of a cadre of genres; folk, metal, and drone, and watch them sculpt with the naked vibrational core of sound. It's purity, and spiritually relative qualities, align it with the antecedents of some new age music, but rather than easy listening, we might beg you to follow us out onto the thin branch of a pun and call it hard blisstening. It's what it is.
We've only got fifteen of these, so act fast. After that they are gone FOREVER!
MPEG Stream: "The Moss Aglow"
MPEG Stream: "Vedic Pavement"

ENCOMIAST s/t (Lens) cd-r 7.98
Yet another disc from one of our favorite cd-r dronelords, Encomiast. Last heard from on the divine Bathed In Sunlight released on Crucial Bliss earlier this year, this disc is actually an archival recording from way back in 1999, gussied up in 2006, finally seeing the light of day right now.
Bathed In Sunlight was a big surprise as It featured more actual songs, with singing, acoustic guitars, even drums, we still dug it, but definitely nothing like the rest of the Encomiast catalog. This disc however returns us to the brooding slow motion dronescapes that made us dig Encomiast in the first place. Unclear what exactly the instrumentation is, but whatever the source, it's obscured enough that it really doesn't matter. The original sounds are offered up in streaks and blurs, whirs and rumbles, melody here is muted and subdued, this is not nearly as tranquil as some drone records, much of this is harrowing and ominous, sinister and downright scary, Lustmord, Wolf Eyes, you're not far off, some sort of post industrial sprawl, the rumble of distant machines, of subterranean engines, thunder filled skies, a world in ruins, painted in blacks and greys.
Later on in the record, strange percussion is introduced, a lurching distorted crunch, that gives the record some sort of strange propulsion, once again, trudging through an eerie wasteland, while all around strange sonic events occur, shining brightly and briefly before fading away.
"Concupere" is the record's nearly half hour centerpiece, an ultra minimal low end drift, shifting slowly beneath warm metallic swells, and haunting black ambience, eventually the track morphs into something much softer and dreamier, sounding almost angelic up against the bleak sonic sprawl that came before.
Incredibly dark, but also incredibly beautiful. Fans of the slow and low, of deep drones and of dark miserablism, this is your stop.
MPEG Stream: "Suborbit"
MPEG Stream: "Azazel"

EX-COCAINE / YELLOW SWANS split (Not Not Fun) lp 15.98
Is it even necessary to point out that Noise nerds and Free Jazz freaks tend to keep the sort of the same company? Probably not, but if it were, then we would just play you this record and say goodnight. Those of you who don't like jazz, don't get scared off! The sensibility coloring this record with that spirit is really just one of genuinely free improvisation, so don't expect Coltrane or anything like that, this is still largely a Noise affair. Ex-Cocaine starts off with a loose instrumental guitar piece, accompanied by various drum sounds. The second track follows a similar trajectory, with the addition of vocals. If Aztec Camera were a lo-fi art rock band, this is what it might sound like. Side two features none other than the prolific -- and soon to be extinct -- Yellow Swans. Yes, it's true, after 7 years or so of trying to destroy both your ears and your speakers, Gabriel Saloman and Pete Swanson are calling it quits. They're not exactly going to disappear though, just saying goodbye to the Swans and starting some new things. If you saw our last list, then you probably noticed Mr. Saloman's collaborative effort with Aja Rose of In Flux. As for Pete Swanson, he's got a new label called Freedom to Spend -- check our review of it's first release, the album "Light Ships" by Axolotl off-shoot Bulbs. Okay, you're all caught up, now: the second side of the record. From mindfuck analog meltdown to blissful psych incantations, YS have certainly changed over the years, and, perhaps for the best, their final days have drifted into a more melodic, psychedelic direction. This track could not possibly better demonstrate that trend. In fact, if you didn't know who this actually was, it would be pretty dang impressive if you could guess. Meandering guitars, buried vocals, and a final showdown that dissolves into beautiful sheets of noise. Recommended!

FAUST Kleine Welt (Live) (Ektro) cd 14.98
Forget for a second that this is a Faust album. What if it was just some unknown new band, some cd-r we got in the mail, some limited edition cassette release? Heck we've tried that thought experiment, and we'd be all over it! Telling you that it's a mysteriously murky, throbbing psychedelic freak-scene, fraught with krautrocky rhythms and tense textures. Sorta reminds us of a mix of Blues Control and Wooden Shjips... or White Hills and Expo 70... there's a druggy '60s garage vibe, industrial electronic atmosphere, blissful moodiness, and clockwork Circle-like propulsivity, all crammed into one crazy counter-intuitive whole, raw and live! Everything in the way of organ drones, harmonica blurt, echoing voices, shuffling drums, and serious dosage of searing psych-rock geetar found here were all taken from various European performances in 2006, later mixed and edited at fauststudio. We'd assume most of the tracks are pretty much unique to this disc...
Yeah, we'd be pretty into it if it was some new group! Does the fact it's a new disc by krautrock legends Faust, released by Circle's Ektro label, make it any cooler? It doesn't need to. Though if that's what it takes to get you to check it out, that's ok. Conversely, if you were like, oh just another umpteenth Faust reunion album, don't be like that. First off, Faust rule. Even today. Sure, this isn't the original line up. In fact, it's not even the ONLY current line up! Apparently, in the grand tradition of, uh, Saxon and others, there's now more than one version of Faust, each featuring different original band members, going around touring under the name. Weird. Not sure if this fractured factioning is an agreed-upon thing (to cover more ground?) or if they're in competition. Hopefully the former! It would be sad to hear that there's litigation pending.
So anyway, THIS Faust consists of Jan Wolbrandt on drums, Michael Stoll on bass (and flute), Lars Paukstat on percussion and vocals, Steven Wray Lobdell on guitar, and Hans Joachim Irmler on organ, keyboards and vocals. That's a good line up all right, they've got Lobdell in the band after all! Hence the dosage of searing psych-rock geetar previously mentioned...
Recommended, as one of the two very different and very cool live albums newly issued by Ektro that we're reviewing this list (the other one is by '80s strong-man metaller Thor, believe it or not!). Hmmm. Faust + Thor, does that sort of = Circle??
(And note, there's another new live Faust 2cd that we have in stock and hope to review soon, Od Serca Do Duszy, that's the work of the OTHER active Faust unit, featuring Jean-Herve Peron, Zappi Diermaier, and Amaury Cambuzat.)
MPEG Stream: "Foam Of War"
MPEG Stream: "Crawling Wax"
MPEG Stream: "Terrorize Me"

FEAR FALLS BURNING Frenzy Of The Absolute (Conspiracy) cd 14.98
Drums are maybe the last thing you might expect to hear on a Fear Falls Burning record, which makes the opening of the new FFB, Frenzy Of The Absolute, all the more fascinating, since it opens with JUST drums, a huge crash, a doomy drum plod all spread out, spacious and spare. But eventually guitars enter the mix, and slowly take over.
Fear Falls Burning is the one man guitardrone project of axeman Dirk Serries, and over the last year has released numerous cds and lps, each filled with his unique take on the otherwise played out doomdronedirge sound. Fear Falls Burning is a much more musical take, no less thick or corrosive or caustic or heavy, but Serries makes his walls of downtuned drone, and whirring buzz, glisten and shimmer, shot through with melody and unlikely texture, about as poppy as a music this un-poppy can get. And it's no different here. Well minus the HUGE difference of having a drummer. Or should we say drummerS! Serries is joined by a series of guests on Frenzy, most notable the drummers from Swedish post-metallers Switchblade and Cult Of Luna.
At first we were worried that adding drums would just turn FFB's ethereal doomic drift into something much more generic and run of the mill, but just the opposite is true. Serries and his guests subtly transform the sound of FFB into something wholly different, the opening track says it all. That sprawling simple, spread out drumming, continues on throughout the first three quarters of the track, pounding away, not pummeling, but pounding, almost delicately if that were even possible, while Serries introduces soft shimmery delicate melodies, that drift dreamily in the background, the whole thing underpinned by a thick, gradually building Niblock like static guitar drone. But that little lullaby like melody, keeps the track from becoming pure dirge. There's way too much space. It's almost like a seriously metallicized and doomed up slowcore band. This is Low covering SUNNO))), a dreamy droney soporific downtuned dreamlike creep.
The guitars thicken, the ambience grows ever more woozy and buzzy, the various swells of distorted buzz, wash in and out, various melodies surface and then drift off, the song slowly transforming into something much blackened and sinister. Until with about 5 minutes left, the track switches gears and becomes a roiling blur of washed out industrial buzz, muted picked apart riffage, processed percussion, the drums slowly surfacing from below, creeping into earshot, like some black beast clawing its way up from the abyss, creating a dirgey sort of Godflesh / Jesu jam, but way more muddy and murky blown out, blurred and soft focused, and somehow still weirdly pretty.
The second track is way more in line with past FFB recordings, huge heaving slabs of buzzing low end, a vast expanse of fluttering, reverberating guitar growl, slow motion swells of whir, peppered with clouds of cymbal shimmer, shooting star streaks of high end, all blearily blurred into one fluid, constantly shifting dronescape. This track too grows in intensity, becoming more cacophonous, more ominous and atonal, a deep black hole of swirling black melody and thick textured guitarscapery. Like a dreamier, blissier Wolf Eyes.
The final track begins like some super charged Spacemen 3 jam, a crumbling distorted space rock riff, doused in delay, the last note allowed to pulse and skitter off into the ether, before the riff re-engages. Over the top, in swoop more layers of guitar buzz, synth sounding whir and warble, all very trancelike and mesmerizing, the drums don't even kick in until near the end, and even then, they just offer up a huge pulse like pound, a skeletal framework for the swirling buzzing blissy blackness above, the drums finally exploding into an actual rhythm with about 2 minutes to go, the guitars soaring into a serious frenzy, suddenly it sounds like the climax of an Explosions In The Sky song AND the finale of a Godspeed song all woven together into one explosive blown out finish.
As much as we love pretty much everything Fear Falls Burning, this record has us hoping this drum thing is not just a one off, but even if it is, we'll dig it while we can.
MPEG Stream: "Frenzy Of The Absolute"
MPEG Stream: "He Contemplates The Sign"

GREY DATURAS Return to Disruption (Neurot) cd 14.98
Huzzah! Our favorite instrumental down-under doom-bringers return (to disruption) with this new
full-length, the prolific Melbourne trio's debut for Neurosis' Neurot label. It's a good fit, of course, this should go over well with the whole post-rock/metal crowd, this album often grindingly hypnotic, the Grey Daturas' lumbering sheets of distorto-drone skullflowering forth over a roiling bed of precision percussive clangor right from the get-go! Their threatening waves of pure heaviness, sharpened into a drill-drone of an attack, also occasionally take detours into areas of abstract ambience, the guitars of Bonnie Mercer and Rob MacManus carving psychedelic feedback sculptures, then tightening again back into full metallic impact, driven by the skittering drums of Robert Manson.
As heavy as they are (which is HEAVY) you can't really call the Grey Dats a metal band. They're in that quasi-metal realm with the likes of SUNNO))), Boris, Harvey Milk, and Nadja, perhaps, with a certain amount of experimental lo-fi fuckery going on that reminds us of many of their freenoise comrades over in nearby New Zealand... The title track itself is a clattering, pottering about, like something the Dead C would come up with, while the track called "Undisturbed" is anything but, sounding like a violin or creaking door hinge dying a slow and dismal death. And the high-end scraping skree of "Balance Of Convenience" should peel some paint. And then, as already mentioned, there's all the juggernaut, trance-inducing, spaced-out, instrumental doom rock post rock surging through tracks like "Beyond And Into The Ulimate" and "Neuralgia".
The Grey Daturas definitely like all the varieties of drone! And fans of, what should we call it, avant-doom, or drone-doom, or whatever, should like all varieties of the Grey Daturas, starting with this disc if you haven't already made their acquaintance, covering all the bases as it does!
MPEG Stream: "Beyond And Into The Ultimate"
MPEG Stream: "Answered In The Negative"
MPEG Stream: "Undisturbed"

HELLHAMMER The Demon Entrails (Century Media) 2cd + book 27.00
We could easily fill several paragraphs talking about the historical significance of Hellhammer (speaking of metal history, not world history, of course, though for some of us the two are of equal importance). But if you're reading this, and possibly already considering buying a deluxe double cd (or triple vinyl!) set of the band's early demo recordings, you probably already know something about the seminal significance of Swiss primal metal trio Hellhammer, the precursors to Celtic Frost. If you do want to know more, we'd point you to the liner notes to this release, written by HH/CF mainman Thomas Gabriel Fischer (aka Tom G. Warrior, aka Satanic Slaughter), which were adapted from his forthcoming book Only Death Is Real, all about the early '80s origins of those two bands.
As you probably know, Hellhammer started off as an amateur but enthusiastic exercise in teenage worship of NWOBHM black metal originators Venom, but took Venom's defining sound to further extremes, becoming a pioneering band not only in the black metal genre, but also for death metal and sludgy doom metal as well. And all this without much of a recorded legacy, just the 1984 Apocalyptic Raids ep and some compilation tracks and these demos, the band's initial recording sessions at long last presented officially on cd and vinyl, remastered from the original master tapes.
These three demo cassettes -- Satanic Rites, Death Fiend, and Triumph Of Death -- were released in mere handmade handfuls back in 1983. Including raw(er) versions of such later classics as "The Third Of The Storms", "Triumph Of Death", and "Revelations Of Doom", as well as many otherwise unheard Hellhammer hammerings, such morbid morsels as "Dark Warriors", "Crucifixion", "Decapitator", "Ready For Slaughter", and, er, "Bloody Pussies", it's 29 tracks, 102 minutes of truly ancient evil that any self respecting black/death/doom metaller should revel in. With a twanging low-end of rubbery bass, lurching riffs, pogoing rhythms, echoed vocals, these decidedly lo-fi recordings sound almost like a no-wave take on metal. Accidentally avant-garde (unlike Celtic Frost's later efforts to intentionally be so), Hellhammer were so wretched and fucked up that they've defined "necro" for all time. Hear here how they began.
The limited edition double cd version is packaged in a handsome, slipcased hardback digibook, 5.5" x 7.5", with a 36 page booklet bound inside, plus a small poster. Within the booklet, you'll find hella vintage black and white necro photography, xeroxed flier artwork, the original cassette covers, lyrics and liner notes from the band. Along with occult artwork, including a previously unpublished demonic pencil sketch by bassist Martin Eric Ain that, since it's rendered on graph paper, has us speculating that these guys probably were playing D&D in their bunker as well as recording the metal of death.
Meanwhile, the vinyl edition (also quite LIMITED, the eight we have are probably all we'll ever have) is a truly weighty proposition, 180 gram vinyl in a thick gatefold package with the aforementioned booklet, etc. as well.
Once the deluxe cd edition is gone, we'll have the regular, less-deluxe (but also less expensive) version.
MPEG Stream: "Crucifixion"
MPEG Stream: "Maniac"
MPEG Stream: "Decapitator"

HELLHAMMER The Demon Entrails (Century Media) 3lp 39.00
We could easily fill several paragraphs talking about the historical significance of Hellhammer (speaking of metal history, not world history, of course, though for some of us the two are of equal importance). But if you're reading this, and possibly already considering buying a deluxe double cd (or triple vinyl!) set of the band's early demo recordings, you probably already know something about the seminal significance of Swiss primal metal trio Hellhammer, the precursors to Celtic Frost. If you do want to know more, we'd point you to the liner notes to this release, written by HH/CF mainman Thomas Gabriel Fischer (aka Tom G. Warrior, aka Satanic Slaughter), which were adapted from his forthcoming book Only Death Is Real, all about the early '80s origins of those two bands.
As you probably know, Hellhammer started off as an amateur but enthusiastic exercise in teenage worship of NWOBHM black metal originators Venom, but took Venom's defining sound to further extremes, becoming a pioneering band not only in the black metal genre, but also for death metal and sludgy doom metal as well. And all this without much of a recorded legacy, just the 1984 Apocalyptic Raids ep and some compilation tracks and these demos, the band's initial recording sessions at long last presented officially on cd and vinyl, remastered from the original master tapes.
These three demo cassettes -- Satanic Rites, Death Fiend, and Triumph Of Death -- were released in mere handmade handfuls back in 1983. Including raw(er) versions of such later classics as "The Third Of The Storms", "Triumph Of Death", and "Revelations Of Doom", as well as many otherwise unheard Hellhammer hammerings, such morbid morsels as "Dark Warriors", "Crucifixion", "Decapitator", "Ready For Slaughter", and, er, "Bloody Pussies", it's 29 tracks, 102 minutes of truly ancient evil that any self respecting black/death/doom metaller should revel in. With a twanging low-end of rubbery bass, lurching riffs, pogoing rhythms, echoed vocals, these decidedly lo-fi recordings sound almost like a no-wave take on metal. Accidentally avant-garde (unlike Celtic Frost's later efforts to intentionally be so), Hellhammer were so wretched and fucked up that they've defined "necro" for all time. Hear here how they began.
The limited edition double cd version is packaged in a handsome, slipcased hardback digibook, 5.5" x 7.5", with a 36 page booklet bound inside, plus a small poster. Within the booklet, you'll find hella vintage black and white necro photography, xeroxed flier artwork, the original cassette covers, lyrics and liner notes from the band. Along with occult artwork, including a previously unpublished demonic pencil sketch by bassist Martin Eric Ain that, since it's rendered on graph paper, has us speculating that these guys probably were playing D&D in their bunker as well as recording the metal of death.
Meanwhile, the vinyl edition (also quite LIMITED, the eight we have are probably all we'll ever have) is a truly weighty proposition, 180 gram vinyl in a thick gatefold package with the aforementioned booklet, etc. as well.
Once the deluxe cd edition is gone, we'll have the regular, less-deluxe (but also less expensive) version.
MPEG Stream: "Crucifixion"
MPEG Stream: "Maniac"
MPEG Stream: "Decapitator"

ISUNGSET, TERJE Iceman Is (All Ice) cd 16.98
Yet another mysterious disc of ice music, from the ice music master, Terje Isungset. What is ice music you ask? Well Isungset crafts actual musical instruments out of ice, yep, ICE instruments, all playable, from horns to vibraphones, the tones they create lustrous and surprisingly warm.
The instruments are beautiful, ice sculptures, glowing blue and white shapes that when struck, or blown, or rubbed, produce amazing sounds. Much of the music is percussive, the ice sounding like amuted gamelan, or a xylophone, the notes lustrous and deep. There are horns as well (although we won't even begin to question how someone can play an icehorn without getting their lips stuck), whose sounds range from alien cries, honking bleats, deep moans and every variation in between.
Where past discs have been super pretty, serene, and almost new age in their blissed out tranquility, Iceman Is manages to create a sound a bit more dark and ominous. The vocals on past releases, which reminded us of Bjork, here are replaced by strange mewlings, creaking falsettos, haunting ghostlike whispers, drifting amid the ice chimes and cold ambience.
In fact minus the fact that this record is played primarily on ice instruments, it wouldn't be all that surprising to hear these sounds on some super limited cd-r, some strange band of Finnish folkies or mysterious Midwestern bedroom 4-trackers. Very percussive, tribal, primitive, abstract and free, the melodies are spare and spread out, every track seems to have a definite drone element, no matter how minimal, the ice percussion offers up dreamy underwater sounding rhythms, there are some electronics, but they blend in perfectly with the sounds of the ice, in fact there are some tradition instruments mixed in here and there, but so deftly, they also end up sounding dark and delicate and icy.
Too bad it will never be cold enough out here to get Isungset and his band here to play. Maybe we should get them to do a tour of walk in freezers! Anyway, another gorgeous disc of haunting music made with ice, the darkest of the bunch, which of course means WAY recommended.
And like the three ice music releases before it, Iceman Is also boasts some of the most amazing packaging we have ever seen. The booklet and tray card are semi-transparent vellum, printed images of Isungset, behind icicles, playing the ice harp, in gorgeous deep blues, the whole thing wrapped in a thick slip cover made from a thick foggy semi transparent textured plastic, printed in silver metallic ink, the edge cut away to reveal the cd's spine, which is filled with water, with tiny bubbles drifting back and forth, and yes, we mean ACTUAL water, in a little custom made vial, so perfect it does indeed look like the cd tray is full of water, just waiting to be frozen and played! So awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Blue"
MPEG Stream: "Frozen"
MPEG Stream: "Iceman Is"

JALDABOATH Hark The Herald (Death To Music) 3"cd-r 13.98
Another three inch chunk of demented black metal weirdness from the UK. If you love the grim bizarre buzz of Old Forest, who recently returned after nearly 7 years, and whose own 3" cd-r we reviewed a few lists back, or the medieval madness of Meads Of Asphodel, then odds are you're gonna love Jaldoboath. From the same strange land, and featuring at least one dark knight who has done time in both Meads and Old Forest, Jaldoboath sound a bit like the Meads mixed with power metal thrashers Bal Sagoth, if they were a bit less serious and had recorded a holiday album. Seriously. The guitars gallop, the riffs and melodies are soaring and triumphant, the vocals are gurgly and growly, but there are horns, fanfares, fluttering flutes, jaunty little jigs, strange little sound effects, proggy organs, it's almost like listening to the strangely metal court musicians of King Arthur's court in some alternate reality.
Songs like "Bring Me The Head Of Metatron", "Seek The Grail", "Hark The Herald" and "Da Vinci's Code", each track plays like the theme music for some insane medieval Monty Python metal sitcom. On "Seek The Grail" you can almost picture the credits, the freeze frames as each character is introduced, and the horns, make it sound almost ska at times. "Jargue De Molay" is the least goofy, playing instead like some metallized Emerson Lake And Palmer, with awesome organ jams, creepy crackly breakdowns, a wicked main riff, all peppered with hand claps, blasting double kick, minor key trumpets, throbbing bass.
But then right after that comes the title track, which has a strange sing song vocal line, over a lopped trumpet fanfare, and a very holiday sounding main melody. Like a legion of musical mall Santa's gone metal and marauding through the hordes of innocent holiday shoppers. But then the last track swoops in, sounding a bit like Tool filtered through UK black metal buzz, all brooding buzz, Eastern sitar like melodies, and crooned baritone vocals. Over the top and dramatic, and weirdly hooky. WTF?
So fucking far out. But if like us, you're already a loyal knight of the Meads round table and sometime dweller in the Old Forest, well then this is just the sort of thing you can't get enough of.
WAY recommended, but only for truly twisted musical souls...
And like the Old Forest 3"cd-r also on Death To Music, SUPER LIMITED!!!
MPEG Stream: "Hark the Herald"
MPEG Stream: "Da Vinci's Code"

LES RALLIZES DENUDES Le 12 Mars 1977 a Tachikawa (Over Level) 2cd 27.00
BACK IN STOCK. This Japanese psych essential, originally reviewed back on list 156, has been hard to come by for some time now but finally has been repressed or something, and we've got 'em, again!
You hear that? That echoing, droning, heavy psych jamming destroying your mind? Yep, at last, we've got 'em. Real cds, not cd-rs. Reasonably priced. More than a handful in stock (for now). The distorto-delic seventies Japanese guitar psych holy grail known as "Live '77", previously released only in an absurdly expensive, impossible to track down double cd-r edition, and in part on long-gone vinyl bootlegs, is now within your grasp (almost). This we expect to have around for more than two seconds at least, and is a comparative steal at only $25. Nicely done too, with a die cut cover revealing a blurry b&w photo of Les Rallizes Denudes guitarist Mizutani Takashi in action.
Disc one starts off exploring Les Rallizes mellow side, all sensitive and lovely, with "Enter The Mirror", but then soon explodes into sheer amplified overload, with throbbing mantric rhythms Circle fans should dig. It's a searing wash of guitars in the most far out VU, Neil Young, Fushitsusha realm, but taken way further out. Rough, raw live sound, but really all the fuzz and distortion and grit sounds just right. There's four long tracks on disc one, three looong tracks on disc two. By the time the epic 20+ minute "The Last One" on disc two marches into white noise oblivion, you -- and maybe your speakers -- will be fried.
Apparently, Takashi and co. are still out there, somewhere in Japan, making music as they have been for the past 30-odd years, but rarely leaving a recorded trace. But this 1977 live set isn't just about the only thing really available, it's also proof of their obscure genius. Next to 60's beat-psych legends the Jacks, they are maybe THE pioneering Japanese psychedelic outfit, obviously a BIG influence on today's underground Japanese psych bands, like Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, High Rise and Mainliner, Acid Mothers Temple, Nagisa Ni Te, maybe even noiseniks Hijokaidan... All of 'em could simply be Les Rallizes tributes, really. We'd have to imagine that Keiji Haino and co. caught some Rallizes shows back in the day. So, if you like any of that stuff, you need this...and if you're the sort who buys every admittedly fine Kawabata Makoto/AMT cd or LP released every goddamn week, you have to get this just to help with the cosmic balance, man. Get 'em now, while you can!
MPEG Stream: "disc 1, track 1 (Enter The Mirror)"
MPEG Stream: "disc 1, track 3"

LUGUBRUM Albino De Congo (Old Grey Hair) cd 13.98
Uh, what?? If you would have told us that our favorite Belgian carrots n' beer obsessed black metal weirdoes Lugubrum (who are also one of our favorite black metal bands, period!) would title their new album Albino de Congo and incorporate African thumb-piano music a la AQ faves Konono No.1, we'd have thought you were pulling our legs, trying to up the ante on our made-up album April Fool's jokes from a few years back.
But of course, it's no longer April, and the band being Lugubrum, we have to believe it. Heck, we're HEARING it. The new Lugubrum is here, and it does indeed take their raw black metal attack into "Extreme Music from Africa" territory, with song titles like "Lugwampinga", "Bwikalubalume" and "Kurlerha Omugongo". There's a picture of a thumb piano in the cd booklet, and they claim this album was in fact recorded in the Congo. Is it a joke? With these guys, it always is AND it always isn't, which is why we love 'em so much... also 'cause their music is invariably awesome. (And with Belgium's colonial history in the Congo, we can perhaps assume there's specific cultural/political dimensions to Lugubrum's interest in that part of the world.)
We see no reason why Conrad's Heart of Darkness can't be just as useful a black metal inspiration as Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings. So in exploring their own hearts of darkness, the metallic component here is FIERCE. But they've given it a Congolese context. Thus, for instance, they'll be tearing through the vicious riffage of "Kabondobondo, Muborobondo" and then some hand-drumming will rise to the surface. Or the sounds of the jungle at night make an appearance in the midst of "Kurlerha Omugongo". A lot of the time it seems they'll save the polyrhythmic hand drums and tinkling thumb pianos and shamanistic chanting and other ethnic instrumental elements for the beginnings and ends of songs, though maybe they're there the whole time but just can't be heard above the din of buzzing black metal guitars and blasting drum battery and Frosty death-grunts.
And, remember that Lugubrum can be (and always has been) plenty odd without the addition of this African influence. So there's some very strange beets, we mean beats, and lovely jazzy or post-rocky interludes (like the dreamy "Mushole"), and other weirdness to be heard here unrelated to the Congo concept. When this is playing, at times you could easily forget that you had a "black metal" record on, and think you were listening to, say, the krauty rhythms of Circle instead. Lugubrum have a knack for mixing all sorts of strange stuff into a cohesive whole, it all flows somehow without any jarring juxtapositions actually spoiling your, uh, suspension of disbelief.
While we don't really believe that this was recorded in the Congo, we'd like to think it was true, and can't prove otherwise. What we will assert is that this is another excellent, eccentric Lugubrum album, and quite recommended!
Oh, and another note: this is one time we're happy we DIDN'T get the limited edition, as supposedly the first 100 copies of this were "cursed and pissed on by pygmy medicine men". Believe it, or don't, but don't ask us for one of those!
MPEG Stream: "Kadurha"
MPEG Stream: "Lugwampinga"
MPEG Stream: "Isirhe"
MPEG Stream: "Kurlerha Omugongo"

MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS Mandala Levitations (Pacific City Sound Visions) cd-r 9.98
With most noise bands you can usually figure out how the sounds are made, where they come from. Even if the source is run through a bank of effects, totally processed and distorted, it's usually pretty easy to tell if it's a synthesizer, or a guitar or just a voice.
But with Monopoly Child Star Searchers, we are just confounded, gloriously and utterly so. MCSS is a side project of the uber prolific Skaters, and as we mentioned in the last MCSS review, we might dig Monopoly even more than the mother ship. Precisely because their sounds are so totally tweaked. So completely alien. It sounds impossible that these sounds could just be conjured up. They are so rich and textured but the sound is so completely lo fidelity.
Besides all that, the sounds themselves are really hard to describe. It sounds like some dusty old African 78s, being played at 156rpm, broadcast through a spinning Leslie speaker. Everything warbly and murky, lots of high end percussive melody, almost like sped up marimbas or thumb pianos, speaking of which it also sort of sounds like a way sped up shortwave broadcast of some lost Konono live jam.
The whole disc is swirly and tripped out, dense and dizzy, relentless and tribal, druggy and dreamy, so totally hypnotic and mesmerizing. And still after repeated listens, we have no idea what the instrumentation is, how it was recorded, if it's live or sampled, all we know is it's super cracked and weirdly beautiful and we love it!
MPEG Stream: "One"

MURRAY, BRENDAN Commonwealth (23five) cd 14.98
We've ballyhooed Brendan Murray's exceptional, yet perennially overlooked drone & din work in the past; but nothing could have prepared us for Commonwealth. Damn, this guy is good. No, wait; he's fucking great! After a handful of cd-r productions, a Twonicorn cassette, and a fine cd release on Intransitive of processed shimmer, shifting frequencies, and some low-end girth rumblings for our obligatory SUNNO))) reference, Brendan Murray has produced his best work to date with Commonwealth. Compositionally, it's incredibly simple: a drone goes up, and it goes down. It lasts a little under 50 minutes. But buried with this single minded composition, there are thick spun rumbles, reflective vibrations, sympathetic sub-harmonics, and rich tonal frequencies. Out of the constant tectonic whir that introduces Commonwealth, shimmering clusters sound like a battery of reed organs or hurdy-gurdies, slowly modulating into heavier, deeper drones. We've been told that the source material for these sounds is guitar, although you'd be hard pressed to hear anything guitar-shaped anywhere on the disc. It's far more like the hallowed minimalist sound of Charlemangne Palestine and LaMonte Young. Dare we say, it's better? Yes, Murray's drone hums like a perfectly tuned machine, with multiple pistons purring in a steady progress along Commonwealth's compositional arc. When Murray shifts the focus of the album downward, which begins not even halfway through the piece, the descent is noticeable; but it actually becomes Murray's most fertile work within Commonwealth. Here, low rhythmic thrumbs crawl beneath the surface of the slowly collapsing drone, precluding its inevitable terminus. Perfect trance-enducing dronemuzik. Fans of Aidan Baker, Andrew Chalk, and Phill Niblock should definitely take note!
MPEG Stream: "Commonwealth (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Commonwealth (extract 2)"

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Passing Out (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 15.98
Heavy.
Black.
Drone.
That's the shorthand of what happens on Passing Out, the finale to a trilogy proposed by Benny Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa on the virtues and vices of alcohol blurred into a sinister ambience. But of course, we cannot leave well enough alone; and the longhand version is necessary to position this album at the top of the heap of heavy, black, drone albums that we continue to clamor about. Yes, Passing Out is a fucking brilliant album; and if you were blown away by the previous two entries in this trilogy -- Vikinga Brennivin and Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna -- then you're pretty much obligated to pick this album up as well.
Much like Nilsen's old project Hazard and the previous two collaborative records, the album starts in shadow and stealth with an ominous drone backing windswept industrial field recordings. Ten minutes in, this desolate cold snaps with a blinding shimmer of sustained sound. These are ostensibly lighter tones, but given a malevolent twist. Another agitation of activity fires with some sort of tactile crackling that dissolves into a gaping Lustmord meets Popul Vuh passage with a soft rhythm from some slow motion maracas. Benny tells us that these stoned maracca shakes are courtesy of Oren Ambarchi. He also tells us that Leif Elggren also makes a vocal appearance somewhere on the album; but there's nothing that sounds like the sly narration on The Ghost Orchid here. Soon after, a cyclical growl of spectral guitars recall what Robert Hampson used to be able to sculpt through the guitar on his once mighty project Main; and all of this gives way to ring-modulated percolations with disembodied melodies scratched from old 78s that sound like a transistor radio slowly drowning in a giant metal tank filled with water. Deep resonant vibrations abound, with some creepy breathing in your ear whisperings that may be those Leif Elggren vocals that Benny was talking about. Gradually, all of these deep drones and shadowy overtures glide into a slumbering descent. But the Icelandic weirdoes in Stilluppsteypa couldn't just let the album drift away without their absurdism forcing through the door, as they blurt with a clinical repetition of blooping electronics smashed and grabbed from Raymond Scott circa Manhattan Research. It's an unsettling climax to the album, but one that works brilliantly through Stilluppsteypa's expert use of electro-acoustic black humor. But it's drone that dominates the album, as angelic wash and devilish rumble collude to end this magnificent album. Oblivion never sounded so good.
Passing Out is beautifully packaged with letterpressed and silkscreened artwork. Very nice.
MPEG Stream: "The Scandinavian Tourist (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "The Scandinavian Tourist (extract 2)"
MPEG Stream: "The Scandinavian Tourist (extract 3)"

OTESANEK / LOSS / ORTHODOX / MOURNFUL CONGREGATION Four Burials (Battle Kommand) cd 13.98
The good news, is that this disc will be absolute heaven (or hell if you prefer) for the doom obsessed, for those who NEED utter and extreme heaviness, who thrive on massive walls of sludge, of creeping crumbling downtuned riffage, of skull splitting rib cage rattling drum pound. And the fact that this disc contains exclusive tracks from four of THEE heaviest and THEE doomiest bands around. The bad news though, is that somehow, this disc is already sold out at the label, so this could very well be the last we see of Four Burials. We did get a bunch of these, but since so many of the aQ faithful are of the doomier persuasion, odds are these will disappear in no time.
So most doomlords will see the above names and that's all it'll take, four exclusive tracks, LONG ones, from Loss, Orthodox, Mournful Congregation and Otesanek. For avid readers of the aQ list, you too are probably familiar with 2 or 3 of those. But just in case, we'll give a quick rundown of the bands / tracks that make up the Four Burials here...
Otesanek is up first. Last heard from splitting a disc with Japan's Coffins. They are definitely doomy, obviously, but might also be the heaviest of the bunch, a sort of Eyehategod meets Moss thing going on, and one of the few bands this slooooooow, to also fuck things up big time. Super strange arrangements, ultra dynamic, lots of weird starts and stops, angular riffs, crazy vocals (both male and female, both super intense and harsh). Definitely for fans of Khanate and Bunkur and all that sort of ultradoomdirge, but weirder and more fucked up. Definitely dying to hear more from these guys.
Next up is Loss, whose approach to doom is much more classic and melodic, beginning with some unnerving samples, woven into a spare doomy plod, the band slip into some seriously melodic post rock, all clean guitar and sparse drumming, eventually morphing into a sound majestic and massive, a bit like old My Dying Bride, impossibly loooow vocals, super mournful melodies, very dramatic and miserable. The song weaves back and forth between that classic doom-ic crush and the melancholy loping post rock, eventually somehow fusing the two.
Then comes longtime faves Orthodox, from Spain, whose sound, especially here, is way more spacious and spare, very minimal. with long stretches that are practically inaudible over the daily din of the store (this is headphone doom for sure!). Chanting, monk-like and somber, clean guitars drifting and shimmering, simple stripped down drumming, some wailing dramatic vocals, the sound an abstract mysterious slowcore that seems to get more and more strangely psychedelic, without ever getting overtly heavy. Really strange, but fans of Orthodox will already be well used to their, umm... un-Orthodox approach to all things doom.
Last up, legendary purveyors of true doom, Australia's Mournful Congregation, whose sound is sad and sorrowful, melancholy and miserable, a gorgeously epic lugubrious crawl, super melodic, but totally washed out and painted in sweeping shades of black and grey. Think Skepticism, Thergothon, Esoteric, Asunder, the sort of dark, slow motion, soul stirring creep we could listen to forever.
MPEG Stream: OTESANEK "Seven Are They"
MPEG Stream: LOSS "(To Pass Away) Death March Towards My Ruin"

PYRAMIDS s/t (Hydra Head) 2cd 14.98
As much as we love that Hydra Head sound, huge churning riffage, pummeling drums, crushing metallic dirges and all things heavy heavy heavy, we're becoming more and more obsessed with the releases that don't fit so comfortably on HH, don't necessarily embody that classic Hydra Head sound. Although that's not necessarily fair, as the more bands HH sign that sound different, the more diffuse and varied that HH 'sound' becomes, which renders this whole theory moot. But whatever, stick with us for a second, there is a point. It's sort of how we were with Sub Pop, sure we loved Green River and Soundgarden and Mudhoney, THAT sound, but we got crazy obsessed with stuff like Rein Sanction and Hardship Post, the stuff that stuck out, that sounded WEIRD, maybe almost more than the regular Sub Pop stuff.
It might be just that for a band to kick someone's ass SO much, that they're willing to release a record by them, even though sonically it's a whole different ball of wax, means that the record in question is that good, that fucked up, that unique, or could be that we just like to be contrary. Either wayŠ
Whatever. We love Isis and Cavity and Pelican, but lately, we, like a lot of you, have been obsessing over Jesu, Hayaino Diasuke, Austerity Program, Torche, Pet Genius and now Pyramids, who hail from Denton Texas, and who sound like nothing on Hydra Head. If we had to pick one band, it might be Jesu, but even then, the similarities are minimal. Pyramids are blissy and fuzzy and gauzy and pretty, almost ambient at times, drifting dreamily, their sounds shimmering and glistening, everything blurred and washed out and totally fucking gorgeous, BUT, they do have some surprises up their sleeves. And it's those surprises that make this record such a mind blower.
But let's start at the beginning. The first three tracks here are totally lovely, guitars are wisps, vocals are fluttery shadows, melodies are delicate and fragile, the production is warm and sun dappled, rhythms are muted shuffles, effects swirl and sway, here and there, the sound thickens into something almost heavy, but never quite gets there, remains on the pretty drifty side of heavy. It's like a more avant freaky version of Mazzy Star or Galaxie 500, that same sort of windblown washed out blissy vibe. Until the fourth track.
Beginning with some minimal guitar buzz, amidst a whirl of chiming harmonics, shortwave interference, and blown out buzz, the drums kick in, and the riff locks into an insectoid buzz, and suddenly the Pyramids are some sort of black metal band, still bleary and blissy, but with pounding drums and buzzing guitars, eventually vocals come in and it's like a metalgaze Sigur Ros, which is most definitely awesome.
The next track too offers more of the same, a sort of swirling chaotic shoe gaze-y black metal, and in fact the rest of the record continues on in that vein, each track a twisted convoluted take on blissed out black metal, sometimes grinding and furious, but even then swathed in a warm sonic glow, sometimes more poppy and swirly, like a more abstract Swervedriver. As you can tell, it's pretty hard to describe. Not sure it's really black enough to appeal to black metallers, it's more like some shoegaze ambient metal pop band just borrowed some black metal tropes and wove them into their gorgeous blown out soundworld.
There's a second disc too, of remixes, by the likes of Jesu, James Plotkin, Loveliescrushing, Birchville Cat Motel, Blut Aus Nord and more, and we would have assumed that remixes by those folks, of this sort of music, would just render them more blissed out, but instead, at least the first two, transform the songs into furious blown out black jams. The first, remixed by Toby Driver of Kay Dot, Ted Parsons of Prong and Swans and Colin Marston of Behold the Arctopus, begins all soft and swirly, but by the end has added super distorted drums, and all manner of fried buzz. The Plotkin remix up next, strips away most of the bliss, and leaves a seriously fucked sounding lo-fi in-the-red black metal blast. The Jesu remix sounds just like you might imagine, a gauzy slowcore drift, with the vocals jacked way up, soaring through the ether, a fluttery falsetto. The two Loveliescrushing mixes bring out the soft blurred ambience of the originals, making them even more tranquil and serene. Birchville turns his mix into a virtual BCM track, using bits and pieces of the original, creating a thick slow growing drone, that builds to a buzzing crescendo before fading back into a dark moody drift. Blut Aus Nord is the most fucked up remix. Not sure if they added tons of stuff, or just did some crazy mix, but the guitars groan all dizzy and woozy and angular, the drums, pounding and machinelike, the vocals a hissy evil howl, the whole track a lurching black lope. All the mixes here are amazing, utterly transforming the originals, but in doing so hewing to the spirit of the original record, which was already pretty schizophrenic and all over the amp as it was.
Way way way recommended. A new aQ favorite for sure...
MPEG Stream: "Sleds"
MPEG Stream: "The Echo Of Something Lovely"
MPEG Stream: "End Resolve"

REVERIES, THE Matchmakers Volume 1: The Music Of Willie Nelson (Rat-Drifting) cd 14.98
The Reveries were indeed a revelation. A modern slow-mo, off-kilter, creaky rickety avant country combo, whose sound was a bleary blend of campfire twang, woozy slowcore, and most notably, a system by which each player holds a tiny speaker in their mouths while they play, with the various other players sending their sounds and signals into the mouths of the other players, letting the various musicians shape and twist and contort those sounds, often combining them with their own vocal parts.
The result was truly unique, haunting, mysterious, and gorgeously fractured. The last Reveries disc, was titled Plays The Music Of Sade. We weren't sure if that was some high concept thing, and it was in fact inspired by the Marquis De Sade, or if they were indeed covers of songs by the pop vocalist Sade (pronounced shar-day). It's perhaps a testament to the Reveries skill at reinvention that we were unable to realize that they were actually Sade covers (or it might speak to our being wholly unfamiliar with her body of work minus THAT song) Regardless, just like the record before, the Reveries created a wholly otherworld of moaning melodies, and creeping tempos, of strange voices, of detuned guitars, warbly basslines, shuffling percussion, all warped and funhouse mirrored by their circuitous journey from instrument to amp to speaker to mouth to microphone to recorder to compact disc.
On this first volume, in a proposed ongoing series, the Reveries tackle, as the title suggests, the music of country music icon Willie Nelson, and it's a pretty fine match. The first track is a surprise though, fairly rocking by Reveries standards, a rollicking version on "I Let My Mind Wander", with propulsive drumming, some serious riffing, and that strange whistle like melody that the band seems to lace each song with, a sort of falsetto croon. And the vocals as always are a sort of mush mouthed garble, due in no small part to the singe having to sing around the speaker in his mouth.
The rest of the record unfurls lazily, all creaking back porch blues, the guitars often drifting by in disembodied twangs, each arrangement spare and abstract and seemingly always on the verge of collapse, the drums shuffling and minimal holding it all barely together, but it's the melodies that make it immediately the Reveries, each one, each vocal line wavery and woozy, unfurled and filtered through a jew's harp like warble, keening whistle like tones tangled and ghostlike. Even the most recognizable songs, like "Crazy", become something totally and utterly different.
The overall sound is dark and drunken, mournful and mysterious, some tracks add harmonica, nose-flute, singing saw, and while those elements add to the lushness of the Reveries' sound, they're almost unnecessary, their core sound is so delicate and alien even at its most stripped down, so beautifully creepy, that all it ever takes to suck us in is that slow languorous twang, some warbly vocals, and a sweetly sad minor key melody...
MPEG Stream: "Any Arms Won't Do"
MPEG Stream: "Didn't Sleep A Wink Last Night"
MPEG Stream: "I Let My Mind Wander"

RODEN, JEFFREY Seeds Of Happiness (New Albion) cd 16.98
This was sort of a sleeper hit around here, so we figured we oughta get a few more copies in and relist it for the folks who might have missed out on it first time around...
We've long been fans of sound artist Steve Roden, and his 'lowercase' sound explorations. His music is minimal and often flickering on the very edge of audibility. Beautiful and occasionally dangerously delicate. On a recent visit, he passed us a cd from Jeffrey Roden, who just so happens to be Steve's uncle, and who is also a musician, a bass player by trade, but just like his nephew, Roden is not content to work within the traditional confines of an instrument's sound, or a particular genre. Roden composes for and records solo bass, but unlike many solo instrumental records, Seeds Of Happiness is all about melody and texture, this is not noisy, or skronky, or 'difficult', the strings are not scraped, or bowed, the sound is not processed, the bass is played like a bass, the notes rich and reverberant, the melodies fluid and lovely, the arrangements languid and lush. Some tracks are super simple, almost like a bass line just plucked from some lost pop song, allowed to hover and drift out in the open, loosed from its traditional rock moorings. Other songs are dense and subtly complex, little flurries of notes, tangled melodies, all woven into a shimmering static backdrop, for a simple swooping melody to drape over the top. The mood is minor key and melancholy, but most of the songs here are infused with a rich warmth, the melodies not so much sad as they are wistful. 
A simply gorgeous, gorgeous lazy afternoon, rainy day assortment of dreamy drifting loveliness. So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "On Awakening"
MPEG Stream: "Stillness"
MPEG Stream: "Certainty"
MPEG Stream: "Clouds Like Choirs"

ROSE, JACK Dr. Ragtime & Pals / Self Titled (Tequila Sunrise) 2cd 16.98
A new Jack Rose disc is always cause for celebration around here. Along with James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, Richard Bishop and a few others, Rose is one of the new modern masters of the steel string guitar, helping to reinvent and redefine neo-Appalachia or modern folk or whatever you want to call it. But this disc is even more exciting, because not only is it a brand new album (recorded last year), it also includes as a bonus disc, the long out of print s/t album originally released on aRCHIVE, now available only in this set.
Let's first talk about this new record. No huge changes, we're happy to announce, just more of Rose's gorgeous steel string beauty, gossamer sheets of buzzing shimmer, droning ragas, traditional bluegrass, slippery slide, melancholy melodies, jaunty pick and strum, the mood occasionally dark and ominous, sometimes playful and festive, and other times dreamy and serene, it's as much about the sound as the songs. To see Rose play live is pretty mindblowing, his mastery of the guitar is truly humbling, his playing incredibly physical, but so fluid and seemingly effortless. And the sounds that emerge from that chunk of wood and steel are consistently breathtaking. Which is true even on record, those sounds well removed from the actual recording, but retaining much of the physical act of the performance, the energy and the emotion, the sound vibrant and LIVE. This new disc is no different. Sonically, well in line with the rest of Rose's recorded works, but like every new Rose record that comes along, it manages to subtly expand and progress, sonically and compositionally, while continuing to sound classic and timeless.
Fans will obviously need Dr. Ragtime, but for folks who have yet to discover the magic of Jack Rose this is a perfect place to start, and odds are those same folks will very likely find themselves wanting and perhaps even needing more!
As we mentioned above, this double disc set also includes the long out of print self titled Jack Rose aRCHIVE release. Here's what we had to say about that disc when we first reviewed it way back when:
By now, Mr. Jack Rose should need no introduction. Numerous releases on Eclipse, VHF, Tequila Sunrise, tons of amazing shows (including a killer instore right here at AQ) every performance totally spellbinding, with a repertoire that runs the gamut from classic bluegrass to drone drenched ragas to neo-Appalachia and probably to some styles of playing he just made up. In fact Rose was seemingly the first to not just ape the music and style of John Fahey, instead choosing to create his own sound and style, due in no small part we'd guess, to his continuing membership in drone-raga ensemble Pelt, and that raga vibe most certainly informs all of his playing, which just might explain why we find Rose so much more interesting than many of his contemporaries.
This disc collects a handful of studio recordings recorded over the last year, featuring Rose exploring the slide guitar, and as always, it's positively divine. From twangy countrified bluegrass breakdowns, to dense tangles of elaborate finger picking, his slide so slipper and fluid, totally emotional and moving, every song so complex and technical, but at the same time so goddamn simple and beautiful. The highlight would have to be the 12+ minute "Spirits In The House", with its amazing harmonics over a warm backdrop of buzzing low end overtones. The main melody so completely captivating, shimmery and wavery, sounding very Eastern and very much like a sitar, the perfect blend of wistful bluegrass melancholia and buzzing Eastern style raga. So gorgeous. And as with pretty much every Rose record, absolutely essential.
(There is an import jewel case version, but this is the domestic, super limited (only 1000 copies) version with much more deluxe packaging, an oversized booklet style sleeve, a Japanese style obi, and more...)
MPEG Stream: "Miss May's Place"
MPEG Stream: "Song For The Owl"
MPEG Stream: "Bells"
MPEG Stream: "Levee"
MPEG Stream: "Revolt"
MPEG Stream: "Sy Louis Blues"

SHINING PATH, THE Live At Voltaire Commune (Trensmat) 7"+cd-r 10.98
The Shining Path is the psych rock alter ego minimalist experimental duo Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff, and in the past we've raved about their blown out kraut flecked space rock. This new 7" captures the group live in 2005, two tracks from one of their very rare live performances.
The opener is a deep slow burning dirge, glistening and glowing, the sound of a planet slowly drifting into the orbit of a collapsing sun, guitars swirl and soar, grind and growl, effulgent and resplendent. This is drone rock rendered almost static, the riffs crawl, the bass throbs, the whole track creeps, or more appropriately, floats weightless, in a cloud of layered red hot psych guitar, spit out in thick glowing gouts, shot through with feedback, it's like High Rise covering Stars Of The Lid!
The second track is a bit more rocking, the drums and bass locked into a motorik groove, while the guitar, still super distorted and blown out, spits out riffs in sudden bursts, eventually coalescing into one constant stream of psychfuzz, pelted by fragments of super effected vocals, strange little squalls of FX, and then the bass gets all dubbed out, bouncing back and forth beneath the buzz and fuzz.
Like all Trensmat 7"s, the vinyl comes bundled with a bonus cd-r, this one featuring an extra live track, a heavy rocker, with some serious riffing and harmonica (!), as well as four live videos from various performances, nicely filmed, cool effects, tripped out lighting, and most importantly, more awesome music, with bleated sax, moaning horns, droney raga-like buzz, chanted vocals, creepy ambience, thick walls of guitars, rumbling throbbing bass, all woven into some seriously spaced out psychedelic dronerock.
Pressed on white vinyl and of course, VERY LIMITED!
MPEG Stream: "Live At The Voltaire Commune"
MPEG Stream: "Lonely Hearts"

SIMONE, NINA High Priestess Of Soul (Verve) cd 12.98
It can sometimes be daunting with some legendary artists, especially with ones who have left us so much great music, to figure out where to start in terms of really exploring their music. Truth be told, any time or any way you get to hear a Nina Simone song it's pretty damn special. Whether it's on a mix someone made you, or one of the many best-of collections, or even any of the great live recordings. But lately we've really wanted to spend some quality time with her albums, as they were created so meticulously and flow so amazingly, with perfect emotional peaks and valleys that take you on a spiritual sonic journey from start to finish.
We easily could list a handful of essential albums from Nina Simone (we reviewed the great Silk & Soul a couple years back and it's become a staple of the AQ soundsytem), but this time around, we'll focus on one of her true masterpieces, High Priestess Of Soul, recorded in 1966. With lush and tasteful arrangements by Hal Mooney, this is a record that definitely demonstrates Simones's dynamic range and magical touch. From sad and sultry to empowered and resilient, her songs have this magical way of cutting right to the truth. From the rich gospel of "Take Me To The Water/I'm Going Back Home" to one of the most amazing and minimal deep groove songs of all time!!! "Come Ye" and the strong and proud anthem "Don't You Pay Them No Mind", High Priestess of Soul is filled with songs that that are like mirrors that reflect all that is true and real.
One of our all time favorite records, and an album that if you don't already own, we know you will want to start spending some serious time with, as it will become one of those special records you turn to when you need the real deal to hit your soul just right!
MPEG Stream: "Come Ye"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Gonna Leave You"
MPEG Stream: "Keeper Of The Flame"

SKITLIV Amfetamin (Cold Spring) cd 15.98
This one was definitely made for aQ. Self described black noise / doom metal from Maniac, formerly of Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem, joined by Kvarforth of Swedish black metallers Shining, and Attila from SUNNO))) (and also Mayhem oddly enough) and featuring music by Current 93. A pretty odd mix for sure, especially the two former Mayhem vocalists, and what's even more odd, is that this release features only two studio tracks, the other 6 recorded live, one of which is an intro recorded by David Tibet and Andrew Liles as Current 93. But a strange band deserves a strange release, so here we go.
The opening title track is some super abstract noise drenched doom, falling somewhere between Khanate, Gnaw Their Tongues and something much more spacious and abstract. A simple little guitar melody drifts through a landscape of howled and shrieked vocals, thick bursts of caustic crumbling distortion, little flurries of metallic chug, haunting minor key melodies, a truly twisted doomscape for sure, but it's Maniac's vocals (as well as Attila's here) that make it so fucked up and freaked out. So impossibly harsh and intense, a monstrous growl/shriek totally in the red, swallowing up all the sounds around it, managing to sound as creepy and crawly as it does intense and insane. There's tons of shit going on in the background too, strange voices speaking, other instruments drifting in and out, random samples and field recordings, some buried percussion, all only adding to the weirdness.
The second studio track is a whole different story, a hugely heavy slab of plodding doom metal, guitars thick and loud and distorted, layer upon layer of grind and crumble and buzz, the vocals super intense, slipping from hellish shriek to demonic growl and back again. Lots of effects, the arrangement full of starts and stops, plenty of grinding guitar lurking beneath the main riff, a loping freaky fucked up ultradoom jam for fans of Moss, Monarch, Nihill, Bunkur, Whitehorse, etc.
The rest of the disc is a live show recorded at the Camden Underworld in the UK in 2007, and begins with a creepy Current 93 intro, with David Tibet, howling his strange invective, over a wash of hiss and white noise and guitar rumble, until the band launch into a live version of the second studio track mentioned above which launches the band into an expansive trudge through some serious tweaked and twisted doom. Live it sounds a lot less freaked out and a lot more TRUE, huge riffing, caveman drums, amazing throat shredding vocals, the sound is definitely raw and live sounding, but it perfectly suits Skitliv's hellish black doom. The record closes with a live version of "Amfetamin", the track that opened the disc, and it's appropriately intense, the addition of drums doing nothing to take away from its minimal menace, the focus less on vocals (minus a flurry of howls and shrieks midway through) and more on the droning guitars and grinding crumbling creepy black ambience.
MPEG Stream: "Amfetamin"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Pain Coming"

SKULLFLOWER Desire For A Holy War (Utech) cd 14.98
First in a new series from the Utech label, a curated collection of releases, each featuring original artwork from artist Stephen Kasner (whose book we still have a few copies off, see elsewhere on the site), a hand picked roster that seriously SCREAMS aQ: Aluk Todolo, Final, Skullfower and more!
First up is Skullfower, a brand new disc, which finds Matthew Bower embracing mayhem and chaos. He may have flirted with riffage and space rock for a brief spell, but he is back to creating huge caustic guitarscapes, with Skullfower seemingly a much harsher, noisier, more aggressive take on his Sunroof! project. Where Sunroof! traffics in blissed out ragas and soaring high end ur-drone, Skullfower is creating dense worlds of sound. Psychedelic, textured, layered, but blown out and ultra distorted, it's almost like a guitar orchestra, Bower conducting a symphony of Keiji Haino's, but he's doing this all himself (for the most part). A cursory listen reveals an ear shredding blast of whitenoise sound, but the opening track is about as melodic as music like this gets, not in the traditional sense, but there seems to be some sort of sonic narrative, the various chunks of riff, the keening high end squiggles, the washed out chordal whir, it all blends into one massive, organic, strangely musical chunk of soft noise.
However, the second track will take a bit more digging to discover its inner warmth, for it is indeed white hot, a wall of grinding hissing speaker punishing white noise, the next few tracks follow suit, never straying far from the upper registers, sometimes pulsing and stuttering, but remaining on the difficult side of easy listening. But even in these harsh sonic environs, Bower manages to create melody and texture within what is essentially a noise context, this is far from Merzbow (well, okay, not FAR).
By track five, the low end has caught up the the high, and while the proceedings are still noisy, the skree is offset by the whir, there seems to be a sort of industrial percussion buried WAY down in the mix, melodies fracture and fly apart, only to drift back together in new shapes, some stretches are downright beautiful, tangled melodies, disembodied riffing, a convergence that turns chaos into structure, a song surfaces where there was once noise, before slipping back into unhinged drift. The final track is a blast of psychedelic noise guitar blow out, a sonic battle, riffs clash and break into jagged shards, lightning bolts of feedback are hurled then deflected by a churning rumble of amp buzz, speakers are cannons, the sky black with buzz, the ground wet with whir, a gorgeous sky splitting, earth shaking cacophony.
MPEG Stream: "Your Cities, Your Tombs"
MPEG Stream: "Moses Conjured A Blood Niagra"

SUN KIL MOON April (Redeye) 2cd 16.98
From the first few chords and softly warbled vocals of April's 10 minute opening track, "Lost Verses," it's clear that we are in familiar territory with Mark Kozelek's latest release under the Sun Kil Moon moniker -- his first collection of new songs since 2003's Ghosts Of The Great Highway; his incredibly distinctive, molasses-slow blend of roots, indie rock, doom and gloom folk, Neil Young-tinged guitar sprawl, and traditional American songsmithery is in full effect here. Kozelek has made a career out of continually refining a very particular and immediately recognizable aesthetic. It's a sound that is at once both sprawling and intimate, expansive and hushed, confident and reserved. April is marked with the same sense of haunted yearning and loneliness that has characterized all of his best work. In fact, this may be one of the finest collections of songs he's produced to date. It's easy to get lost in this record, as the delicate interplay between words and melody weave their way around one another and reveal a stark beauty that only Kozalek is able to produce.
This 2cd set includes a bonus disc with alternate versions of 4 songs from the album lovingly packaged in a digipak adorned with ethereal b&w photography that will be as familiar to fans as the sound of Kozalek's voice. Simply gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Lost Verses"
MPEG Stream: "Moorestown"

SUN RA Media Dreams (Art Yard) 2cd 31.00
Just the Sun Ra album to make your friends go, "what the bleep bloop is that? (bleep bloop)". That's 'cause the cosmic-Afro-jazz maestro's space age synthesizer extemporaneity is fully one-fourth (or much more!) of the soundfield, this being the product of an unusual quartet lineup (Sun Ra: piano, organ, Moog synth, rhythm machine, vocals, John Gilmore: tenor sax, drums, vocals, Luqman Ali: drums, vocals, Michael Ray: trumpet, vocals), So, want some way-out Sun Ra action? Check this out!
The groaning low-end synth that starts disc one, track one ("Saturn Research") should immediately get your attention. And by track two, "Constellation", Ra & Co. have gotten into a groove worthy of the Star Wars cantina... Throughout, all sorts of warped electronic sounds are conjured by Ra's keyboards, with his primitive drum machine occasionally also augmenting the beats of the live drummer in the mix.
This is the follow up Disco 3000, highlighted here a few weeks ago, and if you liked that, you'll like this too. If anything it's possessed of even more mystery and otherworldliness (as only Sun Ra can deliver, in the realm of jazz or elsewhere). Again, as with Art Yard's Disco 3000 reissue, this is an expanded double cd edition (13 tracks, 96 minutes), restoring much previously unreleased music from the original performance tapes recorded on tour in Italy in 1978, with this unique four-piece mini-Arkestra.
Like we said, this is laced with lots of spooky electronic drone and bleepage, but of course as "out" as it gets, being a Sun Ra record there's a lot of jazz tradition to it too, with Ra getting melodic on the piano, and featuring plenty of gorgeous sax soloing from Gilmore, though he gets freaky with it too. Plus there's scaled-down versions of some of the Arkestra's famous space-positive chants -- and a rather more negative chant as well: "The Truth About Planet Earth... Is A Bad Truth!" They sound inexplicably happy chanting that one, maybe 'cause they have travel plans to other planets anyway -- the next track after it is "Space Is The Place".
MPEG Stream: "Saturn Research"
MPEG Stream: "Media Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Twigs At Twilight"

TAIGA REMAINS Ribbons Of Dust (Root Strata) cd 12.98
Finally the way too limited Ribbons Of Dust cd-r's get a proper cd reissue. Three volumes, each a 3" cd-r, from one of our favorite abstract drone outfits going. We raved about all three installments, so if you missed out on any or all, or just want to upgrade to actual cd, then now's your chance.
Seems like the impetus for starting a cd-r label must be born from a similar need to create music yourself. Considering how many microlabel bosses are also serious sound makers in their own right (Campbell Kneale and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Antony Milton and PseudoArcana, Brad Rose and Digitalis, etc.) Makes sense, a passion for discovering new music can be fed directly by making that new music yourself. Taiga Remains is the solo electric guitar project of Alex Cobb, who also happens to run Students Of Decay, a pretty badass cd-r label. Volume 1 of Ribbons Of Dust is a slow moving, bleary eyed, slow moving morning of a track. The guitar is rendered riffless, instead it's transformed into a sparkling glistening glimpse of a sun dappled expanse of still water, foggy and fuzzy, a dream world of shimmering muted high end drift and warm soft hum. Reminds us a bit of ex-Souled American axeman Scott Tuma, and his abstract slow motion soundscapes. So totally lovely and blissfully otherworldly.
Volume 2 is made up of huge billowy clouds of dense but soft electric guitar drift. Melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds. Ambarchi meets Fennesz but with the bones removed, leaving just a drifting ghost of the guitar. It's hard to even think of this as a guitar. There's no strumming, or picking, or bowing, instead it's nothing but shimmering and glistening and sparkling and reverberating and drifting and shining and floating and twinkling and slowly fading away...
The final volume is all about late night, disembodied slow shifting guitar glimmer. Huge soft clouds of warm chords, thick swells of reverberating steel strings, minor key drifts of shimmer and whir, very oceanic, like drifting on some soft sleep sea, each note another gentle swell, lulling you into a state of complete bliss out. So beautiful.
Packaged in a super striking silkscreened origmai style fold over cardstock sleeve with a printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Ribbons Of Dust"
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

THOR Live In Detroit (Ektro) cd 14.98
Ok, you wanna know where the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal) gets all their ideas? Our pal Jussi (of noted NWOFHM purveyors Circle/Pharaoah Overlord/Steel Mammoth/Krypt Axeripper/etc.) kind of gives it away by reissuing on his Ektro imprint this classic 1985 live album by metal/bodybuilding legend THOR!!
Yes it's a live album (the band rockin' Detroit rock city, with appropriate album cover artwork) but don't worry, it's an AWESOME live album. The recording is great, the band's performance is killer, the crowd is raucous, of course it's got almost ALL the hits ("Thunder On The Tundra", "Knock 'Em Down", "Keep The Dogs Away" among them), AND Thor's between-song stage raps are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Love it when he asks if the crowd reads Kerrang! magazine, gets no response, and is like, "anyhow..." and goes on with his story (about the remarkable size of his back up singer's breasts). Or when he introduces a song as being "a big hit in Alaska". Yes, he-man of metal Jon Mikl Thor is hilarious (he'd happily agree we're sure) but he also rocks, as anyone who's seen him play even recently knows, and heck this was laid to tape back in his heyday! At the time, his heavy metal superheroics were probably only matched by the combined might of Manowar.
If you're gonna buy just one Thor album, you won't go to wrong to make it this one. It includes three bonus tracks also from '85, live recorded in England, New York City, and Thor's native Canada. One of them is a song that was lost for 23 years and has never been heard on any other Thor recording!! The cd booklet is stuffed with rad old photos of the band playing and posing, with glimpses of the feats-of-strength that, along with his cool tunes, made this campy metal muscleman famous. For a few seconds back in the '80s anyway. But not forgotten!!
Yet more proof that Ektro is one of the best record labels ever. Not only did Ektro just reissue this live Thor album but at the same time they've released a live album by krautrock legends Faust! Thor -and- Faust. Damn. That's our kind of label. After all, we had Thor do an in-store album signing here a couple years ago, and still have the autographed hot water bottles to prove it!
MPEG Stream: "Thunder On The Tundra"
MPEG Stream: "Lightning Strikes"

V/A Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk In 1970s Nigeria (Sound Way) cd 16.98
It's appropriate that Nigeria Rock Special kicks things off with a supremely heavy slab of organ/bass/drum groove by Ofege called "Adieu," as this is the third and allegedly final installment in Sound Way's incredible Nigeria Special series. We were skeptical that this volume would be able to live up to the high standards set by the first two, but honestly this is probably the best of the three. No joke, it's so effing good that when we put it on in the store all of us just look at each other and kind of do that squinty head bobbing groove thing where you're kind of like, "holy crap how good is this? SO GOOD!" In fact this is one of those rare compilations that manages to transcend its genre and appeal to people who may not normally be into African music -- it's not every day that you see some of the serious blackened noisemongering customers digging stuff from the "international" section!
First thing, the title might be a little misleading... if you're coming to this expecting to hear stoned out proto-metal clomp or extended blues riffage, you might be a bit disappointed. While there are fuzzed out guitar explorations aplenty on this disc, the overall feel definitely leans more towards the funky side of things. If you're a fan of the Boscoe lp we reviewed a few lists back, or the Skull Snaps record, or even Black Merda (or anything from the now sadly out of print Chains and Black Exhaust compilation) you are going to LOVE this record: imagine blown out, psychedelic instrumental passages layered over heavy, heavy, heavy bass and drums with no shortage of traditional highlife and afrobeat flourishes and you're in the ballpark. In fact, with the exception of a few tracks (most notably, Question Mark's "Freaking Out," which, believe it or not, sounds kind of like Can covering something from the Nuggets box), the western influence is actually less present in this collection than it was in the last volume.
There are too many standouts to list them all, but we would be remiss not to mention that Mono Mono's "Kenimania" comes on like Fela tackling a Booker T jam; or that Ofo The Black Company's "Enario" is a simmering pot of mid-tempo funk and call and response vocals that holds up as a worthy successor to their mighty "Allah Wakbarr" (a song you might remember from two other essential compilations: Nigeria 70, and World Psychedelic Classics Vol. 3); or that the treble-kicking guitars of Colomach's "Cotocun Gba Gounke" create a mind-blowing hybrid of Middle-Eastern-tinged desert blues and Hendrix-ian pyrotechnics; or that Joe King Kologbo & His Black Sounds' "Another Man's Thing" is a frenetic polemic that switches gears from hyperactive shuffle to deep funk throb-n-stab in the blink of an eye!
Look, we know we've been pushing these Nigeria Special comps hard for the last few months but it's for good reason: the three volumes together form a meticulously curated, beautifully packaged collection of songs that spans two decades and demonstrates the intense creativity and musical diversity in post-revolution Nigeria. Taken by itself, Nigeria Rock Special is a gripping, exuberant, and infectious listen from start to finish and definitely comes with as high a recommendation as we can dish out!
MPEG Stream: THE ACTION 13 "More Bread To The People"
MPEG Stream: THE HYGRADES "In The Jungle (Instrumental)"
MPEG Stream: MONO MONO "Kenimania"
MPEG Stream: QUESTION MARK "Freaking Out"

V/A Sacrifice At The Altar Of The Satanic Blood Angel: A Tribute To Von (Rusty Axe) cd 9.98
There are cult bands and then they are the TRUE KVLT bands. Few fit that bill better than San Francisco's Von. Von existed for a few years back in the late eighties / early nineties, recorded only two demos, and then split up and disappeared.
But that's just the sort of stuff that creates the cult, that turns a band into something more, that and an incredible collection of furious grim thrashing black metal madness. Fourteen songs, all fast and black, all quite similar sounding, almost like one long song chopped up into 2 minute movements, but like very few bands, there's just something special about Von, sure the sound, the production, the energy, but it has to be the songs too, since even played by other bands, those songs exude a strange black power, a grim malice and hellish energy that belies their simple composition.
Lots of folks have covered Von over the years, most recently SF's own Leviathan, on his split with fellow Bay Area black horde Crebain, but here we've got a whole disc of covers, most of them true to the spirit of Von, in that they are raw and primitive and buzzing, but each special in its own black way.
Very few bands here that we've actually heard of: Enbilulugugal, Black Vomit, Godless, Execrator, Beastcraft, Tjolgtjar, Raw Hatred and that's about it. Check out the names on some of the other bands: Blasphemophager, Unholy Crucifix, Godslaying Hellblast, Sermon Of Foulness, Nuclearhammer, Ceremonial CastingsŠ
And they all sound just how you might think, carrying on in the grim tradition of Von, lo-fi, thrashing, black, brutal, buzzy, the rhythms fast and relentless, the riffing and drumming in a constant fury, the vocals in various shades of howl and gurgle, lots of the tracks peppered with wild squiggly leads, sometimes the sound is thick and caustic, a white noise blur, other times it's a tinny practice space recording, once in a while, like with Black Vomit, the song is transformed into something freaked out and damaged, but for the most part, this is one for the true, the grim, those of black heart and cursed soul.
Definitely for fans of Von (obviously), Beherit, Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Darkthrone and other practitioners of raw raw raw primitive black metal.
MPEG Stream: BLACK VOMIT "Devil Pig"
MPEG Stream: ENBILULUGUGAL "Lamb"
MPEG Stream: BEASTCRAFT "Satanic Blood"
MPEG Stream: TJOLGTJAR "Christ Fire"
MPEG Stream: GODSLAYING HELLBLAST "Veinen"

VON HIMMEL s/t (Donkeydisk) cd-r 8.98
We're always up for some more tripped out abstract space psych, or some druggy far out improv krautdrone, or even some cracked electronic prog, so this debut cd from local outfit Von Himmel definitely hit the spot, touching on all of those imaginary genres and then some.
The note that arrived with this disc included a bunch of wacked text including bits like: "Recorded through a single mic with the power of a thousand suns" and "First in a series of stone-age crystal technologies' hyper metareverberant mycophiliac outer space groove unit transmissions" and of course "An as yet unknown German psych substitute with free jazz perversions discovered lodged in the core of a meteorite" which all sounds completely wacked, until you wrap your ears around the sounds these guys conjure up.
Picking carefully through those garbled transmissions, we come up with German, free jazz, metareverberant and psych, and you might be getting close. You'd also have to include druggy, krautrock, murky, tripped out, and handful of other descriptors.
Three long songs that manage to sound both abstract and groovy, channeling German Oak as much as any other influence. The German Oak vibe is huge, the cavernous lo-fi production, the strangely funky vibe running throughout. But at the same time, Von Himmel are exploring some lost corner of the galaxy, setting a course for the heart of the sun, they blast through dense clouds of swirling effects, metero belts of tribal percussion, the sky a series of fuzzy smears, their path shifting from blown out psychjam, to laid back sun baked groove to full on drug doused black ambience.
The first two tracks are extended sonic explorations, equal parts Can, Faust, Popol Vuh, German Oak, Amon Duul, looooooong spacey voyages, all long hair and big amps, black lights and bellbottoms, big drums and lots of wah and flange, but for the final track, the band lets loose of all that stuff, leaving some whirring buzzing black hole, which rumbles and reverberates eventually disappearing into the inky blackness.
Definitely for fans of the above mentioned groops, but well worth checking out if you're into stuff like Comets On Fire, Wooden Shjips, Hawkwind, Spacemen 3 and other outer sonic space explorers.
CRAZY LIMITED! Only 50 or so copies...
MPEG Stream: "Lunar Meditation"
MPEG Stream: "Skylark"

WHITE HILLS / GNOD Aquarian Downer (self-released) cd-r 9.98
Latest from these aQ beloved, NY based drugdronepsychspace rockers, this time, they've teamed up with mysterious UK outfit Gnod, who add a whole other layer of fuzz and grit and blown out buzz, to WH's already heady heavy spaced out sound. In fact the entire first track are most of the second consists primarily of blurred, smeared ambient drones, washed out FX drenched soft noise, more Sunroof! that Hawkwind, but eventually, this sprawling freeform swirl begins to coalesce into something only slightly more cohesive, a shuffling tribal mantra, a cycle of simple percussion and whirring thrum that reminds us of No Neck or Sunburned Hand. Even into the third track, the record has yet to ROCK, instead, muted tablas, streaks of space-y effects, more warm shimmering whir, very tranquil and meditative and almost sort of stoned sounding. Track three finishes off with a little flurry of glitch and squelch, leading into still more muted bliss.
BUT, track 4 is when the band really start to intensify, the drums locked into a more Krautrock sounding beat, the guitars thickening, the ambience slightly more ominous, until finally, the band launch into a seriously heavy and dark, spaced out kraut jam, mostly drums, way up in the mix, pounding and pulsing, beneath a sky full of FX and riff-less guitars offering up clouds of rumble and throb, the bass, a thick black serpent, coiled up around the propulsive rhythm. It's even more intense and 'heavy' sounding after the first three tracks, that while awesome on their own, all dark and raga like, also served to build some serious tension, like some sort of super long intro. But this jam will definitely not disappoint long time WH fans in need of their drone psych space rock fix.
The record finishes off with some super intense synth dronebuzz, like a super ominous dark ambient Tangerine Dream, a simple wavery tone, whirring malevolently within a cloud of drifting muted effects, little bits of shortwave buzz, streaks of hiss and whir, eventually drums join in, but not to rock really, instead they just lock into a repetitive pound, laced with little flurries of percussive splatter, but mostly the drums just pound away, the cymbals unleashing huge sheets of metallic shimmer, the guitars again forgoing riffs and gushing blown out FX soaked buzz, over all that synths swirl, electronics bleep and bloop, it's like a chaotic blend of the heaviest most drugged out and damaged Acid Mothers Temple and Hawkwind outros, until the crowd sounds come in and it becomes clear that this was all live, which makes it even more impressive.
Packaged in a plain black cardboard sleeve, with a paste on front and back cover, and a photocopied insert with liner notes.
SUPER LIMITED as always. We got the very last copies. 40 of em. Not sure we'll be able to talk them into making more if they run out, we'll of course try if it comes to that, but best to grab one of these quick just in case!
MPEG Stream: "Hard Butter Reality"
MPEG Stream: "Subordinate Contact"

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BORBETOMAGUS Live In Allentown (Agaric) cd 14.98
There's two types of people in this world. People who like Borbetomagus, and those who don't. Probably there's many more of the latter. But for the former, each and every Borbetomagus album is pretty much a must have. Kinda the same way with the likes of Merzbow and Jandek, many of whose fans are doubtless shared.
So, for whom it may concern: here's a new album from the notorious New York wall of noise sax/sax/guitar improv trio! Well, not exactly new, this is actually a reissue (first time on cd) of a cassette originally released back in 1986, now including an entire bonus 22 minute second set, live in Allentown, Pennsylvania (home to renowned fantasy artist Boris Vallejo we just happened to randomly learn today as well).
The usual Borbeto-trio of Sauter/Dietrich/Miller is augmented here by the bass of Adam Nodelman and the electronics of Scott Legrath, as if they needed more noise-making help! Apparently this was upon the occasion of a "3rd annual Halloween extravaganza" 10/29/86 and in the pictures everyone's wearing weird masks and stuff.
The boasted-of "killer" sound is indeed pretty much so, every bit of sax blurt and guitar skree is ear-piercingly present and accounted for. Scary. As is the way with Borbetomagus, their squealing squall of sonic intensity shall soon send the appropriate sort of listener into rapturous trance. Stress on "appropriate" (see paragraph one).
MPEG Stream: "First Set"
MPEG Stream: "Second Set"

DEAD LETTERS SPELL OUT DEAD WORDS A Line : Align (Mystery Sea) cd-r 17.98
Found a stash of these in the back room. Lucky thing too since these Mystery Sea discs are limited to 100 copies, AND they're amazing, so you get one more chance you lucky bastards, don't blow it:
This is the first time we've reviewed anything by Swedish dronescaper Thomas Ekelund, aka Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, which is weird as folks around here are big fans. It's not for lack of releases, he's been pretty prolific, it just one of those things, so many releases, artists, records, so little time.
Well, we aim to change that all right now, with this, the latest from Ekelund, a limited cd-r released on night-ocean-drone label Mystery Sea, and Ekelund's sounds here sound right at home. Three looooong tracks, the first, ultra minimal, it takes minutes to get going, but once it does, it's a fantastic expanse of ultra minimalism, so minimal in fact that much of it borders on Francisco Lopez territory. But turn it up, and listen close, and Ekelund's soundworld will reveal itself to you. A washed out murmur, peppered part way through with footsteps, the sound of metal on metal, some sort of random field recording, of men working, the clang and clatter overshadowing the whispery sounds beneath, but by the end of the first track, those whispery sounds have built into growling swells, thick smears of muted melody, crumbling and almost industrial sounding when paired with the grind and creak of the workmen.
The second track starts off in a similar fashion, strange super close mic'd sounds, thumps and scrapes, crinkles and cracks, over a super busy microscopic dronescape, all hisses and whirs and little bits of almost invisible melody, but it doesn't take long for that track to also swell into something dense and thick, high end tones rest atop a pulsing sea swell like drone, the low end fading out leaving a strangely dreamy high end shimmer, eventually fading out and leaving just those strange clunks and scrapes and that whirling swirling whisper beneath.
The closing track is a continuation of track two, in fact, they all sort of fit together into one sprawling soundscape, but the closer remains murky and minimal, a subtle scraping floating on a thick, but soft and smeared low end rumble, it's only in the last minute or two that other sounds join in, strange twinkles and glimmers, like laying on the ocean floor and watching bits of sunlight slowly make their way through the swirling blue grey sea.
Amazing packaging too, full color tray card, numbered, the booklet a half booklet, leaving half of the cd face exposed. Very striking.
And as always LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "At Keiller's Park (Summer 2006)"
MPEG Stream: "At Keiller's Park (Fall 2007)"

DEVOTCHKA A Mad & Faithful Telling (Anti) cd 16.98
Colorado quartet Devotchka do a lively jig down the path between the tweaked baroque pop of The Arcade Fire and the nouveau Balkan gypsy stylings of Beirut and Gogol Bordello. A Mad & Faithful Telling is a beauty capturing the band at its best, brisky tempo'd and impassioned with very Adrian Belew-esque swooping vocals and sweeping horns and strings following suit. This is music that'll leave your ears fevered and your cheeks flushed!
MPEG Stream: "Along The Way"
MPEG Stream: "Transliterator"

DILLOWAY, AARON & C. SPENCER YEH The Squid (Hanson) cd 13.98
We loved this record when we first got it on LP which is sadly out of print now. But luckily it's finally been re-released on cd with a long bonus track tacked on for good measure!
Two AQ favorites team up together for one great record that demonstrates a more pensive side to these noise rock heavyweights: Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes) and C Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). Squid delivers on its title as the sounds on this lp make you feel like you're deep underwater tangled up in the undersea world. Using tape loops, bowed tape, tape delay, violin, voice and electronics, Dilloway and Yeh create dark, moody textures brimming with mystery, suspense and restraint. We could totally hear this as the score to some Matthew Barney piece, as it shares much of the same influence as his films. As much as we love Wolf Eyes there is something pretty magical and always unexpected about what happens when Dilloway steps away from his main band. And C Spencer Yeh continues to show us that he has one of the most unique visions in the noise scene. And together it's pretty fucking magical. Excellent!
MPEG Stream: "Ahab"
MPEG Stream: "False Speech I - III (Bonus Track)"

DIZZEE RASCAL Maths + English (Definitive Jux) cd 14.98
One gets the sense that grime needs a serious shot in the arm. The genre's inception was so vastly novel, it seems it's almost fated to an awkward or even boring adolescence. What is surprising about Maths + English, is that while it's great, it's still oddly significant of this transformation, by virtue of the fact that it excels, but also relies, on the grime formulas without really pushing the boundaries consistently. It having been over half a year since any of the grime elders made a contribution to our racks, things have been pretty sleepy, and no young upstarts have capitalized on the vacant spotlight. However, for a time, Dizzee will be America's grime darling again, because despite the groaning above, the record is pretty irresistible. At its worst its totally riveting pump-up music, with Dizzee's foul mouth regaling us with sexual escapades, and dissing imitators amusingly. At its best it wonders into some genre-bending, borrowing more heavily from dub-step, punk, and even no wave. The record's opening has gorgeously icy and murky synths evocative of recent favorites M83 and Brenda Ray's intoxicating Walatta, juxtaposed with some very Skull Disco beats that we assume are the sounds of knives being sharpened. The records best track "Wanna Be," features female backing vocals immediately evocative of X-Ray Spex or the Slits, while the instrumentation is a totally buoyant and throbbing synth line that would have been found on a mid-nineties grime video game, had we been that lucky. At least there's Wu Tang. There's also plenty of crunchy, gritty, and totally rabid tracks to satisfy the grime classicist, and most retain their urgency, with only a few misses. The record is a qualified classic, given the short history of the style, though we think someone needs to come along soon to turn grime upside down, otherwise the conventions may begin to pall.
MPEG Stream: "World Outside"
MPEG Stream: "Wanna Be"
MPEG Stream: "U Can't Tell Me Nuffin'"

EVANGELISTA Hello, Voyager (Constellation) cd 15.98
Few can express utter gut wrenching, hand wringing torment while still embracing a melodic beauty like Carla Bozulich. Diamanda Galas and P.J. Harvey are the only others who immediately come to mind. Evangelista is her new project which also features members of A Silver Mt. Zion whose presence is definitely felt throughout. Their debut full length Hello, Voyager threaten to drown the listener in the overwhelming current of despairing bleakness and broken beauty. Some songs swagger in bluesy defiance, some plod on in a saturnine somnabulism, some assault with gritty dissonance ("Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space" which recalls the untethered drama of bands such as the sadly defunct Pleasure Forever), some sweep you up in a lush stringed devastation ("The Blue Room"). No sunlight reaches the deep recesses of this music, you get the sense that the voyager in the title will never come up for air. No happy endings here, Evangelista haunts long after the final gloomy notes have faded... awesome.
MPEG Stream: "The Blue Room"
MPEG Stream: "Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space"

EX-BOYFRIENDS In With (Absolutely Kosher) cd 12.98
Ex-Boyfriends' latest full length kicks off in full college rock fashion. Yeah, it's the infectiously hook laden kind that immediately gives you the warm nostalgic fuzzies for '90s indie bands like Tree People, Velocity Girl or Tsunami... but with Robert Smith style dour singing and post-punky edged guitar crunch! The first three songs on In With in particular have 'highschool movie soundtrack' written all over it, and you know that's a good thing in our books! A terrific spring-summer pop album!
MPEG Stream: "Pick Up Line"
MPEG Stream: "Situation"

I SHALT BECOME In The Falling Snow (No Colours) cd 17.98
We listed this grim black gem earlier this year, but sold out almost immediately. Finally managed to get handful back in, so don't miss out again...
Yet another archival release from grim suicidal one man black metal outfit I Shalt Become, aka S. Holliman, who hails from Illinois of all grim places, and who, as far as we can tell, has been pretty much inactive for the last decade. This release was recorded way back in 1998 and was originally released as a demo credited to Birkenau, the name Holliman used before switching to I Shalt Become.
Like Wanderings before it, In The Falling Snow is a fantastic, and fantastically twisted chunk of sorrowful black misery. As doomy as it is black, heavily indebted to Burzum of course, but I Shalt Become shares much in common with other more modern practitioners of this sort of ultra grim, plodding midtempo blackness, Xasthur, Krohm, Nortt, Make A Change Kill Yourself, the riffs buzzing and crumbling, the temps loping and dirgey, the mood grim and dour, super atmospheric, not lo-fi necessarily, but murky and muddy and washed out sounding, dreary and drone-y, sweeping swaths of epic keyboard, and the vocals, an exhausted miserable sounding croak, as if most of the lifeforce has already drained away, not leaving enough vitriol to howl or shriek, just enough energy to barely get out these last words from a moldering old deathbed, the wasted, dead quality of the vocals perfectly matching the depressive mood of the music.
But even as miserable and despondent and depressive as these sounds are, they're also hauntingly and harrowingly beautiful, soaring strings, minor key melodies, super dramatic and ultra personal, everything weirdly soft focus and dreamlike, the buzz and plod blurred into gauzy dronemetal soundscapes, the double kick, a pulse buried beneath thick layers of billowing fuzz, the riffs looped and repeated into black buzzing mantras. Way recommended of course, for the miserable and the black hearted.
MPEG Stream: "Burning"
MPEG Stream: "In The Falling Snow"

JANDEK Glasgow Friday (Corwood Industries) cd 8.98
Holy geeze. 'Nother day, 'nother Jandek. We reviewed the representative from Corwood's fine new studio album The Myth Of Blue Icicles just last list, now here's another in his series of live recordings. It's Jandek album number 53 overall!! As the title indicates, 'twas recorded in Glasgow, Scotland, on a Friday. Specifically, Friday 10/14/05.
His usual Glasgow crew of Richard Youngs (bass) and Alex Neilson (drums) backs him up. The all new tracks include "This Wasted Life", "Slave Of The River", "If I Could Be With You", "My Plan", and eight more, all ditties in the Jandekian stylee of extreme outsider rock improv, the music atonally skronky and stompy, or hauntingly spare and strummy, the man's vocals a dismal and disturbed presence.
This is THE perfect purchase for anyone looking to add a 53rd item to their Jandek collection. And even if you don't have that many Jandek discs, we'd recommended it merely for the presence of AQ fave Youngs. How 'bout a full-on Jandek/Youngs collaboration next time, guys?
MPEG Stream: "Walking Blues"
MPEG Stream: "These Kokomos"

JARBOE & JUSTIN K. BROADRICK J2 (The End) cd 13.98
Apparently this album hit the Billboard "New Age" charts! Not sure how or why, you wouldn't think that a collaboration between one of the Swans and a member of Godflesh would qualify as New Age (and it really isn't!). Downtempo electronica with some avant-garde elements, more like, with hints of doomic menace. If you're looking for the crushing metallic guitars of Godflesh, you won't quite find them, though many passages are deep and dark and spooky enough to remind us of Broadrick's current project Jesu.
The deal with this perhaps inevitable collaboration (inevitable given Broadrick's obvious Swans fandom, and Jarboe's openness to collaborative ventures, witness her earlier disc with Neurosis), is that it's JB making mostly electronic backgrounds for Jarboe to do her thing vocally... operatic excesses, and mewlings and moanings... so obviously you've got to be into "her thing". Some are, some aren't. The ambient, layered and looped wailings of the opener, "Decay", should separate the two camps pretty clearly. Some will find Jarboe's vocals to be full of mystery and emotion, others, simply irritating (though it's only on "Tribal Limo" that we really got annoyed with her, the track featuring weird Diamanda Galas yodelling over junky Gang Gang Dance-ish beats).
That said, for those into Jarboe, there's a lot to like here. And we can kind of see how, New Age or not, this could crack the charts on the strength some of the better cuts, like "Let Go" which sounds a lot like Portishead or Bjork, Jarboe effecting a babygirl voice under a blanket of crackley drone, accompanied by a spare snare thwack...
MPEG Stream: "Let Go"
MPEG Stream: "Tribal Limo"

NID Plate Tectonics (Aufabwegen) cd 16.98
This big time aQ fave, out of stock for ages, finally available again!
While not new, we only just discovered NID, and our discovery came about in a very random manner, considering various related works were right under our nose. We listed a killer 4 way split 12" a while back called One Man Drone, and our favorite track from the spit was a piece by a group called B(degree)Tong. We later discovered that the man behind B(degree)Tong was previously a member of German experimental sound-collective NID. But what we did not know was that NID was sometimes also known as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, a group who had various releases on the Drone Records label, one of which is included on the recent tUMULt collection of out of print Drone singles.
So now it's sort of come full circle and we have this, the only proper full length recording (as far as we know) from the group NID, aka Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim and it's pretty amazing. Pretty bizarre too, but then with a (sometime) name like Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, what else would you expect?
Three looooooooong tracks. Each an epic, incredibly varied soundworld, blending found sounds and field recordings with drones and intense blasts of layered sound. The opener begins with a muted cacophony of birds and crickets, before disappearing into a roiling black cloud of rumbling low end and distant droning guitar buzz. It almost sounds like sticking your head out of a speeding car, the wind whipping by and causing all sorts of distortions, but blurred into an impressively massive wall of sound. Within all this whipping sonic wind and rumbling whirs, are strange bits of percussion, the clang and bang of metal on metal, shakers and simple rhythms, they drift briefly in the eye of the storm, before the drone drops again, even more furious than before, until it fades out amidst the dreamy shimmer of female vocals and haunting minor key melodic buzz. Really intense and strangely beautiful.
The second track is another deep cavernous roar. A bit smoother than the previous number, but not for long, bit of metallic buzz surface amidst the undulating rumbles, with some serious dynamic spikes, some of which sound like brief bursts of SUNNO 0))), and others are even lower and more aggressive bits of low end exploration. There are bits of static and random buzz here and there, but mostly it's black and dark, a massive growling beast, slowly uncoiling into a monster that blocks out the sun. Near the end of the track, the darkness abates and in its place is a strange skipping stuttering snippet of music, wrapped in hazy distortion and looped into a mesmerizing rhythm, repeated over and over and over, gradually crumbling and becoming more and more distorted before erupting into a final burst of chest rattling low end, finally slowing down and sputtering to a halt.
The final track is over twenty minutes and is the most melodic of the bunch. Beginning with a looped cycle of xylophone melody, over a throbbing low end pulse and streaks of keening distant guitar and bits of operatic female vocals. Very ominous and mysterious sounding. When suddenly everything stops, and there's a guy with a British accent ranting over someone ransacking a kitchen, breaking glass, clanging cutlery, and suddenly it's gone, and we're back in some new dronescape, a mumbled voice looped into a haunting mantra, beneath distant thunder like rumbles, and little blurs of high end melody, indistinct, but gradually building in intensity. The drones drift away leaving birds and voices, and some strange bits of hiss and skree, before transforming into a plodding doomdrone beast. A simple stretched out rhythm over cavernous thrums and the sound of subway cars, everything pulsing and throbbing, a bizarre bit of dark collage, that manages to be strangely musical and completely hypnotic.
An amazingly weird record, and absolutely essential listening for the drone obsessed, which we would assume should be most of you...
MPEG Stream: "Mid-Atlantic Rift"
MPEG Stream: "Earth's Crust"

NIHIL PROJECT Plough Plays (Barl Fire) cd-r 11.98
Back in stock!!! For the last time. The label is now defunct so we will never be able to get these again!
UK label Barl Fire has a darn near perfect record with kick ass releases from James Blackshaw, Rameses III, Robert Horton, Lamp Of The Universe, Floating World, United Bible Studies, The North Sea, Uton and more. Their focus seemingly on drone folk and free rock. Their last two releases however, this one, and the James Reid (reviewed elsewhere on this list) have begun to drift more toward straight ahead folk, or at least the sort of modern folk of New Weird America and similar minded hippies. Where as the James Reid channels the spirit of Nick Drake, the Nihil Project is more of a pagan ritual, a sort of Renaissance Wicker Man mystickal magickal folk. Sitars and zithers, tablas, harpischords, violins, along with more traditional acoustic guitars and flutes as well as some little more modern electronic flourishes. Crooning vocals, lilting melodies, occasionally dark and ominous, but just as often playful and festive. Definitely for fans of the Wicker Man, Pentangle, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Forest, Comus, as well as the new breed of modern folk a la Devendra, Brightblack, Newsom and the like...
MPEG Stream: "Unquiet Grave / Twa Corbies"
MPEG Stream: "Weaving Wheat"

NUMAN, GARY + TUBEWAY ARMY Replicas Redux (Beggar's Banquet) 2cd 15.98
It's always a joy to rediscover an album from your youth that's stood the test of time, offering not only a comfy nostalgic feel but also remaining wonderfully listenable decades later. This one's a keeper (particularly if you ask Cup!), and we don't even really need the bonus disc of b-sides and other extras included in this expanded 2008 tour edition. The alternate renditions of "Down In The Park" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?"will surely geek the super duper fans though!
On a passing glance at the synthesized surface of Gary Numan's music it'd be easy to dismissed it along with the hordes of '80s new wave fluff and cheese. Heck, he was the king of British new wave back then! However if you move past your feelings good or bad for his ultra hit single "Cars", you'll be rewarded with near classical compositional elegance, heartbreakingly beautiful melodic interludes, not to mention Numan's remarkably emotive voice expressing his dystopic Philip K. Dick, W.S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard inspired lyrics. All these things stand in stark contrast to the emotionless android chill commonly associated with the genre, and ultimately that's the point that's made crystal clear when hearing Replicas nearly three decades after its original release. While it certainly appeals to the new waver in all of us, it delivers so much more!
MPEG Stream: "Are 'Friends' Electric?"
MPEG Stream: "Down In The Park (early version)"
MPEG Stream: ""

NURSE WITH WOUND Images / Zero Mix (Beta-lactam Ring) cd + book 37.00
Angry Eelectric Finger was a project that Steven Stapleton began back in 2003, having asked irr. app. (ext.), Cyclobe, and Jim O'Rourke to rework some unreleased Nurse With Wound material for three separate takes on three separate albums. The NWW material was known as the Zero Mix and was only made available as a bonus to those who pre-ordered the entire trilogy from Beta-Lactam. Well, near five years later, the Zero Mix resurfaces. This time Beta-Lactam has housed the music with a massive 220 page book filled with images of Stapleton's paintings. As for the music of the Zero Mix, it's classic Nurse With Wound, all dark, unsettling, and obtuse. A crawling loop of what sounds like detuned church bells plods along with some sort of hand-crank grinding, following much of what Stapleton and Colin Potter offered on Salt Marie Celeste. Elsewhere, the weirdo factor is turned up with some varispeed mutations on spring loaded plucked strings, which in turn recalls some of the oddball moments of Homotopy To Marie. Out of these sounds, some saxophone splutter creeps into the mix, marking the final available recordings from Xhol Caravan's Tim Belbe. Car crash white noise and hurdy-gurdy drones complete the media in the pastiche. For some reason, the cd is split into three tracks although there is no discernible difference with the vinyl, which only had two. While there's no text explaining the context of the artwork, each image looks to be painted on a repurposed lp, with Stapleton's psychedelic smears of bright, plastic paints with all sorts of Dali-esque squiggles, amoebas, hands, breasts, penises, and eyes making up a huge inventory of circular mandalas. Some of the last images, show all of these records mounted taxonomically on the wall, part of the installation of paintings that Stapleton did at the Burren School of Art, a few years back. Beautifully done.
Keep in mind that this is one of three variations in presenting Images / Zero Mix, as there's just the book (with no cd) and there's also a massive 14" x 7" box that holds both the book and cd with an entirely different second cd as well.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1 (excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "Track 2 (excerpt)"

NURSE WITH WOUND The Musty Odour Of Pierced Rectums (A Collection Of Obsolete Primitive Variations) (Beta-lactam Ring) lp 26.00
"A Collection of Obsolete Primitive Variations" reads the subtitle to this lp from Nurse With Wound. Beta-Lactam had issued this in 2003 as a cd-r in an edition of 300 copies to coincide with Stapleton's DJ appearance in Portland, Oregon at around the same time. Of course, those cd-r's disappeared rather quickly; and this vinyl edition of 500 won't last long either. Given Steven Stapleton's history with recycled sounds, it's hard to say if this is a collection of outtakes like the recent Rat Tapes Volume 1 or if this is one variation on a theme extended over the course of the album. In any case, Stapleton's mastery of audio techniques through metallic clank, musique concrete razor cuts, and grim psychedelic smoke & mirror is on full display here with plenty of fizzed noise and electrical drone cast in sidereal shivers and electrical delirium.

POLLARD, ROBERT Superman Was A Rocker (Needmore Songs) cd 10.98
Mister Pollard keeps on keepin' on... and on and on! Is there a word beyond "prolific"? His musical output is ceaseless! It's a neverending string of lo-lo-fi pop meanderings and dishevelled bizarre noisy shambles that's been peppered with some absolute winners as well as some stinkers. We've got two new ones in this month, Superman Was A Rocker (under his own name) and We've Moved (under the moniker Psycho And The Birds). Right now, we're leaning in favor of the latter because this one is a bit too wacky with its radio clips and other random tidbits of mischief interspersed with the songs. Might be your cup of tea though! If you're gonna get your feet wet with this or any other Pollard release, you've gotta be prepared to accept the wheat with the chaff, the dreamily tuneful with the discordantly tuneless. Of course if you're already a Robert Pollard fan, you probably already own this! Heck, we often wonder why he doesn't just set up an Uncle Bob's cd of the month subscription club.
MPEG Stream: "Another Man's Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Love Your Spaceman"

PSYCHO AND THE BIRDS We've Moved (Happy Jack Rock Records) cd 13.98
Mister Pollard keeps on keepin' on... and on and on! Is there a word beyond "prolific"? His musical output is ceaseless! It's a neverending string of lo-lo-fi pop meanderings and dishevelled bizarre noisy shambles that's been peppered with some absolute winners as well as some stinkers. We've got two new ones in this month, Superman Was A Rocker (under his own name) and We've Moved (under the moniker Psycho And The Birds). Right now, we're leaning in favor of this one 'cause it's got more distinctly Pollardesque fuzzed out, catchy pop numbers. If you're gonna get your feet wet with this or any other Pollard release, you've gotta be prepared to accept the wheat with the chaff, the dreamily tuneful with the discordantly tuneless. Of course if you're already a Robert Pollard fan, you probably already own this! Heck, we often wonder why he doesn't just set up an Uncle Bob's cd of the month subscription club.
MPEG Stream: "Tomorrow Man"
MPEG Stream: "Hybertech Green"

QULFUS Enos (Gigante Sound) cd-r 9.98
From the Bay Area folks who brought us the wonderfully twisted, eclectic sounds of Borful Tang, Blanketship and Vulcanus 68, we've now received a new project of mind-loosening aural trips. Qulfus (aka Dominic Cramp who is currently on the road playing organ with Carla Bozulich's Evangelista whose new cd we also have listed this week!) roams freely through the hills and valleys of art-damaged exotica and dank noise soundcapes. The craftily collaged samples and tactile sounds from analog synths, electric bass, pots'n'pans and other unconventional instruments make for a listening experience very much reminiscent of the glorious dark strangeness of Bruce Haack and Gershon Kingsley. Comes packaged in a burlap covered cardboard case.
MPEG Stream: "The Moustache"
MPEG Stream: "Gold Bond"

RETRIBUTION GOSPEL CHOIR s/t (Caldo Verde) cd 13.98
For most folks involved in rock music the usual trajectory is that they start out loud and rocking, full of piss and vinegar and then as they get older they mellow out and explore their more sensitive and mature sides. But if you're Allan Sparhawk, you did just the opposite and started out as quiet and slow as can be, so it kind of makes perfect sense that he's now moonlighting, using his -other- non-Low project to explore his more full on rock cravings. While there have been some hints of Sparhawk's desire to rock on a few Low albums (especially on Low's Sub-Pop debut, The Great Destroyer) it hasn't been until now that we've actually heard a record from him that is all about the rock, from start to finish. Produced by Mark Kozelek, we can imagine it was really refreshing for both Allan and Mark to let loose in the studio and let out some good old fashion testosterone, where both usually have to hold back so much in all of their other endeavors. Of course Sparhawk's trademark voice and guitar playing are instantly recognizable. Just because he's rocking don't expect this to be some fluffy fun rock band, because the same intensity, tension and conflict that has made Low's music so important to so many of us is still embedded in what he's doing with Retribution Gospel Choir. The record sounds like someone working out their demons and battling a possible musical mid-life crisis in a really cathartic and moving way. This isn't really a departure as much as it is someone letting off some much deserved steam, sweating in the garage and showing that just as he helped invent and perfect slowcore, he's just as capable at rocking, with the same glorious results.
MPEG Stream: "They Knew You Well"
MPEG Stream: "Somebody's Someone"

SANCTUM Of the Horizon (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
Following up their recent split with Oakland's Stormcrow, this warlike Seattle-based crew of crusties drop their full-length for 20 Buck Spin. And it's the sound of a whole lotta new ones being torn! Angry, crushing metallic mayhem. Guttural vox over churning, deathly guitars n' battery. Inspired by the likes of Bolt Thrower, Unleashed, Extreme Noise Terror and Amebix, they do their influences proud, carrying the banner of "War Crust" high, following their own marching orders into the meatgrinding artillery barrage and resulting bloody red mist that their music creates.
Packaged in a nice cardboard mini-LP-style gatefold sleeve, adorned with black and grey grim graphics. We count AT LEAST twenty-three obvious skulls and/or severed heads on stakes in the artwork. The disc also includes seven bonus tracks taken from two earlier vinyl ep releases.
MPEG Stream: "In The Shadow Of Death"
MPEG Stream: "Last Breath"

SECRET CHIEFS 3 / JOHN ZORN Xaphan: Book of Angels Volume 9 (Secret Chiefs 3 Plays Masada Book Two) (Tzadik) cd 15.98
Let's state right from the outset that Trey Spruance's musical entity known as Secret Chiefs 3 is simply impossible to nail down and describe. Words really do not do SC3 justice, especially in the case of their latest work -- sprawling in scope, intricate in detail and majestically presented -- but we will make a valiant attempt here. Indeed, adjectives such as magical, mysterious and mind-blowing do apply, however they barely scratch the surface. We'd say 'spectacular' but the folks at Tzadik already beat us to the punch by using it on the cd's obi blurb. On Xaphan they've joined forces with their comrade John Zorn, performing eleven passages from his epic work, Masada Book Two. The eleven players embrace, attack, caress and devour the compositions with an otherworldly zeal. They come together as a single inimitable force, at once seeming absolutely unhinged and utterly in control. The threads of the SC3 aural tapestries are always densely knotted and woven with ace musicianship and from a myriad of disparate styles and inspirations delving into spy thriller soundtracks, exotica, metal, surf, esoteric knowledge and so much more. So it is on Xaphan, and the formidable outcomes may seem impervious to some and electrifyingly listenable to others. Breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Sheburiel"
MPEG Stream: "Barakiel"

SPACEMAN, J. / SUN CITY GIRLS Mister Lonely (Drag City) lp 17.98
ALSO NOW IN STOCK ON VINYL! Harmony Korine tapped both the Sun City Girls and Jason Pierce (aka J. Spaceman of Spiritualized and formerly of Spacemen 3) to write the soundtrack to his film Mister Lonely. No, it's not a collaboration; but rather two opposing forces that may or may not work within the context of the film. As of the release date of the soundtrack, the film has not been released, so we can't comment on how it work in the film. Much like the restrained interludes on recent Spiritualized albums, Pierce offers lushly cinematic arrangements with spectral guitar crescendos, pretty-pretty pastoral tunes from string and woodwind ensembles, and sustained eerie ambience; and the Sun City Girls don't. These tracks do account for the final recordings ever to be made by the Sun City Girls, as drummer Charles Goucher passed away shortly after their completion. That said, these SCG tracks are not as absurdly weird as some of their soundtrack ventures (e.g. Dulce, Juggernaut, and Piasa: Devourer Of Men), but Alan Bishop's off kilter croon emerges alongside the rickshaw guitar picking of his brother Richard, plenty of out of tune piano ditties, and some cacophony between a transistor radio and a harmonica. It goes without saying that the Girls had to deliver a spectacular cover of the Bobby Vinton tune "Mr. Lonely." Hey, is that Werner Herzog issuing some demonstrative claim between a couple of the tracks? Why yes, it is!
MPEG Stream: J. SPACEMAN "Blues 1"
MPEG Stream: J. SPACEMAN "Garden Walk"
MPEG Stream: SUN CITY GIRLS "Stooges Harmonica"
MPEG Stream: SUN CITY GIRLS "Mr. Lonely Viola"

TAPE Milieu Plus (Hapna) cd 17.98
Hapna has reissued the second album from the Swedish trio Tape, in a digipack with new artwork and four bonus tracks (hence the Plus in the title) from the original 2003 recording sessions. They've done the same with Tape's first album as well (now Opera Plus) but for some reason that disc didn't excite us nearly as much as Milieu did (though we should probably use this opportunity to revisit it and see if we feel differently now). Actually, we didn't even ever review Opera, yet were immediately taken with Milieu. It's simply great, gorgeous.
Theirs is a melodic yet abstract soundworld, very Jewelled Antler in approach, and very delicate. Field recordings + instruments in a calming, semi-improvised setting of simple song-sketches. Acoustic guitar, harmonium, trumpet, electronics, tapes... Hushed, droned, very pretty but not precious. A most pleasant half-hour (plus) indeed! From the Hapna label, who previously brought us Tape member Johan Berthling's marvelous drone collaboration with Oren Ambarchi, My Days Are Darker Than Your Nights. (Hapna is also the home to AQ-faves Sagor & Swing as well amongst many others, by this time hopefully you all have some Hapna in your house).
MPEG Stream: "Oak Player"
MPEG Stream: "Edisto"

TUK Shallow Water Blackout ((K-RAA-K)3) cd 15.98
This K-RAA-K classic and big time aQ fave finally back in stock (we've been out since 2006!!)
Most of us got kind of bored by the whole laptop revolution years ago. Nerds checking their emails while some sound program runs basically on its own, a cascade of bleeps and bloops and glitches. Electronica, intelligent dance music , glitchcore, glitchtronica, what-the-fuck-ever. There have been exceptions of course, and some folks can most certainly turn a crappy old laptop into a wheezing world of wonder, or an alien symphony. One of our all time favorite 'glitch' records would have to be Oval's Diskont, a gorgeous murky underwater soundscape of burbling beauty and glistening shimmer, all woven together from digital glitch in the form of skipping compact discs. Few records since then have managed to bridge the massive gap between technical tomfoolery and emotional resonance. But damn if this latest (and first as far as we know) from Guillaume Graux, aka Tuk doesn't come damn close.
Unlike Diskont, Tuk's Shallow Water Blackout isn't all dreamy bliss and soft focus flutter, instead Graux weaves super dense tangles of sound, organic and otherwise. The most notable sonic elements are traditional instruments, acoustic guitars, piano, harps, organs, but it's what he does with them... chopping and stretching, twisting and tweaking, long stretches of skips and stutters somehow coalesce into strangely haunting minor key melodies, occasionally getting all backed up into huge crunchy, super dynamic rhythms, but not dance music rhythms, more sort of 'song' rhythms. The opener is the perfect example. What begins sounding like Hill Street Blues or Christopher Cross given a Jeckian muted mumbled abstract dream fuzz makeover, gets more and more dark and moodily melodic, bookended by these amazing math rock style stop/start arrangements, where huge blasts of fuzzy ambience give way to utter silence, only to burst back into motion again, the glitchy electronic equivalent to the hardcore breakdown maybe. With the same physically powerful affect.
And the whole record continues in that fashion, gorgeous chopped and reassembled minor key guitar tangles, bits of piano and random song fragments, peppered with digital crunch, of course plenty of glitch, loads of fuzz and hiss and crackle, all perfectly interacting and transforming the organic elements. Graux most definitely has a deft hand at composing and songwriting. These are not just huge messes of sound, these are actual songs, dark and beautiful, with an internal logic, a sonic story, a melodic journey through a weird world of dissected and strangely reassembled pop music. Much like labelmate Ignatz, who constantly reimagine and reinvent Appalachia and Delta blues, creating a whole new sound, Tuk do something similar with electronic music, coming up with a sound that is neither cold nor unemotional, not dance-y or really in any way groovy, but instead is some weird futuristic mood music, weirdly emotional mysteriously ominous and so so lovely.
Think Oval, Chris Clark, Jeck, Tim Hecker, Pierre Bastien, Dialing In, Part Timer, Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, Grouper... So pretty...
MPEG Stream: "Low Carb Love"
MPEG Stream: "Stilnox Parties"

VIRGIN OF THE BIRDS Mixed Choir (Abandoned Love) cd 8.98
You might recall the sunshine-sweetened sounds of SF pop band Morning Spy from a few years back (we carried two of their releases Subsequent Light and The Silver Age). Well, since then the fella from that band up and started an indie label Abandoned Love Records and a new solo project Virgin Of The Birds. Jon Rooney is his name and this is his debut album. In our reviews of Morning Spy we likened his vocal stylings to Daniel Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers) and John Darnielle (Mountain Goats), and with Mixed Choir we can utter the same refrain. The resemblance is often striking similar, and the results strikingly good!
MPEG Stream: "City Falcons"
MPEG Stream: "Hey Kirsten"

WAX POETICS #28 magazine 9.99
Al Green on the front, Q-Tip on the flip. It's another as always awesome issue of Wax Poetics, our favorite magazine covering hiphop, jazz, funk and soul.
128 pages, lots of the usual beautiful photography and vintage album art. And text too: features on Estonian Rare Groove, the Afrobeat of Orlando Julius, King Britt on soundtracks, afro-jazz trombonist Phil Ranelin, Headhunters drummer Mike Clark, the two cover stars, and of course much more. Dig!

YOB Catharsis (Kreation Records) lp 16.98
NOW ON VINYL! As is the specialty of Kreation Records, who have previously brought us swank analog editions of heaviness from the likes of Sleep, Graves At Sea, and Wormwood amongst others. Here's what we said about the original cd version of this album from the late great Yob when we reviewed it way back on list 180...
Ok, we've got one here for anyone into the sludgy, stoner sounds of the likes of Electric Wizard and Sleep!! Yob is perhaps your new favorite band. From Portland, Oregon, these psychedelic doom lords take their chosen genre's obligatory Black Sabbath worship to the extent of incorporating the swingin' jazzy/jammy aspects of the Sabbath sound that most doomsters tend to disregard. Nor do they skimp on the the meaner, rigidly metallic side of the Sabs, or on the mountains of the moon sized riffage doom fans require. Yob is slow motion, sweat leaf'd sludge to the max. Most notably, while their vocalist does dip into a demonic growl at times, mainly he soars like an insane, heavily effected hybrid of Ozzy and Geddy Lee. The result is a remarkably unique sound for a band that unquestionably wears their influences on their collective sleeve. The closest comparison would be to a spaced-out combination of Sleep and Dead Meadow. The three long tracks (18, 7, and 23 minutes) showcase a stoned style that even fuses funk with full-on dirge doom. There's a couple other fine doom metal releases on this weeks' list (Solitude Aeturnus, Well Of Souls). But while those bands' style is to build big castles, these guys tunnel through the earth, out the other side, and into outer space. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Aeons"
MPEG Stream: "Ether"

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

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

ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT "Absolute Magnitude" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98
ADAMS, PATRICK "Master of The Masterpiece 2: More of The Best of Patrick Adams" (P&P Records) cd 16.98
AETHENOR "Betimes Black" (VHF) cd/lp 13.98/14.98
AIR "Moon Safari" (EMI) cd + dvd + book 26.00
AJATTARA "Kalmanto" (Spikefarm Records) cd 17.98
AMBARCHI, OREN & Z'EV "Spirit Transform Me" (Tzadik) cd 16.98
AMEBIX "No Sanctuary" (Alternative Tentacles) cd/lp+7" 14.98/13.98
AWESOME COLOR "Electric Aborigines" (Ecstatic Peace) cd 11.98
AXA HOUR OF DARA BLEU "Clones Of Eros" (Fire Museum) cd 13.98
BASHO, ROBBIE "Bonn ist Supreme" (Bo Weavil) cd 17.98
BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Four Freckle Constellation" (Conspiracy) lp 30.00
BLACK KEYS, THE "Attack & Release" (Nonesuch) cd 14.98
BON IVER "For Emma, Forever Ago" (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98
BOTTOMLESS PIT "Hammer Of The Gods" (Comedy Minus One) cd 12.98
BRAXTON, ANTHONY "12 + 1tet (Victoriaville)" (Victo) cd 15.98
BRAXTON, ANTHONY "Quartet (GTM) 2006" (Important) 4cd 30.00
BRAXTON, ANTHONY "Trio (Victoriaville) 2007" (Victo) cd 15.98
BRINKMANN, THOMAS "When Horses Die..." (Max Ernst) cd 17.98
BROWN JENKINS "Angel Eyes" (Moribund) cd 14.98
BURIAL HEX "Initiations" (Aurora Borealis) cd 15.98
BURKETT, JOSHUA "Where's My Hat?" (Time Lag) cd 14.98
CAVE, NICK & THE BAD SEEDS "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" (Mute Records) cd 16.98
CHILDREN "Death Tribe" (Kemado) 12" 12.98
CHILDREN OF BODOM "Bloodrunk" (Spinefarm Records) cd 14.98
CLINIC "Do It!" (Domino) cd 14.98
COURTIS, ANLA / SEIICHI YAMAMOTO / YOSHIMI "Live At Kanadian" (Public Eyesore) cd 10.98
CROW TONGUE "Red Hand Mark" (Hand / Eye) cd 14.98
CUT COPY "In Ghost Colours" (Modular) cd 11.98
DEATH IN JUNE "Rule Of Thirds" (Ner) cd 16.98
DIAMOND, NEIL "Home Before Dark" (Columbia) cd 14.98
DIPLO / NEWHAM GENERALS / ELEWEDU OF AGEGE "split" (Honest Jons) 12" 12.98
DISKJOKKE "Staying In" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98
DROIDS "Star Peace" (Repressed) cd 17.98
EATER "The Album + Singles Plus" (Anagram) 2cd 17.98
ELI KESZLER "Livingston" (Rare Youth) lp 15.98
ENDLESS BLOCKADE, THE "Primitive" (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
ESQUIVEL, JUAN GARCIA "Mexico Days" (El) cd 17.98
ETRAN FINATAWA "Desert Crossroads" (Riverboat) cd 16.98
EXPO '70 / RAHDUNES "split" (Kill Shaman) lp 14.98
FAUST "Od Serca Do Duszy" (Lumberton Trading Company) 2cd 24.00
FEAR FALLS BURNING "Frenzy Of The Absolute" (Conspiracy) lp 36.00
FERN KNIGHT "s/t" (VHF) cd 13.98
FRICARA PACCHU "Midnight Pyre" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98
GENGHIS TRON "Board Up The House" (Relapse) cd 14.98
GHOST "Overture: Live In Nippon Yusen Soko 2006" (Drag City) cd + dvd 17.98
GILLESPIE, DANA "Foolish Season" (Rev-Ola) cd 16.98
GREGOR SAMSA "Rest" (The Kora Records) cd 14.98
GUILTY SIMPSON "Ode To The Ghetto" (Stones Throw) cd 14.98
HABITAT SOUND SYSTEM "Zebras In The Dancehall" (Gematria) 7" 4.98
HALF MAKESHIFT "Omen" (Profound Lore Records) cd 13.98
HALO, ABDEL HADI & THE EL GUSTO ORCHESTRA OF ALGIERS "s/t" (Honest Johns) cd 17.98
HAMBURGER, NEIL "Sings Country Winners" (Drag City) cd 14.98
HEALTH "Heaven" (Flemish Eye) 12" 13.98
HEAVY, THE "Great Vengeance and Furious Fire" (Counter) cd/lp 14.98/22.00
HEXLOVE "Knew Abloom (Life's Hood)" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
HOWLIN' MAGIC "The Dreaming" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98
HOWLIN' RAIN "Magnificent Fiend" (Birdman) cd/lp 12.98/
HUMAN INSTINCT "Stoned Guitar" (Rockadrome) cd 14.98
ISIS "Holy Tears" (Ipecac) cd ep 7.98
ISLAND "Orakel" (Vendlus) cd 13.98
JARVINEN, ANNA "Jag Fick Feel" (Hapna) cd 16.98
JULIE MITTENS, THE "s/t" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
KALMA, ARIEL "Le Temps Des Moissons" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 17.98
KAPITAL BAND 1 "Playing By Numbers" (Thrill Jockey) 2cd 15.98
KAWAGUCHI MASAMI'S NEW ROCK SYNDICATE "Cat Vs. Frog" (Palindrone) lp 17.98
KELLY, R. "Double Up" (Zomba) cd 16.98
KELLY, SCOTT "The Wake" (Neurot) cd 14.98
KHAN "Space Shanty" (Esoteric Recordings) cd 21.00
KLUSTER "Admira" (Important) cd 14.98
KLUSTER "Vulcano: Live In Wuppertal 1971" (Important) cd 14.98
KOSS "Four Worlds Converge As One" (Mule Electronic) cd 16.98
LA IRA DE DIOS "Cosmos Kaos Destruction" (World in Sound) cd 23.00
LARD FREE "Unnamed" (Captain Trip) cd 25.00
LIL MAMA "VYP Voice Of the Young People" (Zomba) cd 17.98
LOCKWOOD, ANNEA "A Sound Map Of The Danube" (Lovely Music) 3cd 37.00
MACHINEFABRIEK "Bijeen" (Kning Disk) cd 14.98
MANIACS DREAM "Turku Hold 'Em" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98
MEGAFAUN "Bury the Square" (Radium) cd 16.98
MELOY, COLIN "Colin Meloy Sings Live" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98
MENACE RUINE "In Vulva Infernum" (Tour De Garde) cassette 5.50
MESHUGGAH "Obzen" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98
MGR "Wavering On The Cresting Heft" (Conspiracy) cd 14.98
MILIEU "A Warm Wooden Hollow" (Infraction) cd 15.98
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
MISTRESS "The Glory Bitches Of Doghead" (Feto Records) cd 15.98
MITTOO, JACKIE "Wishbone" (Light In The Attic) lp 15.98
MONO "The Sky Remains The Same As Ever" (Temporary Residence Ltd.) dvd 17.98
MONOTONIX "Body Language" (Drag City) cd/lp 12.98/12.98
MOTORPSYCHO "Little Lucid Moments" (Rune Grammofon) cd 17.98
MUDBOY "Hungry Ghosts!" (Digitalis) cd 13.98
MUTANTES, OS "A Divina Comedia Ou" (Vinyl Lovers) lp 33.00
NACHTMYSTIUM "Worldfall" (Century Media) cd ep 6.98
NADA SURF "Karmic" (Hi-Speed Soul) cd ep 10.98
NAKED ON THE VAGUE "Blood Pressure Sessions" (Dual Plover) cd/lp 16.98/13.98
NALLE "The Siren Wave" (Locust) cd 14.98
NATURAL FOOD "s/t" (Porter Records) cd 16.98
NERVE NET NOISE "Dark Garden" (Intransitive) cd 14.98
NUMINOUS EYE "Live/Studio" (Little Mafia) 12" 9.98
NUMINOUS EYE "The Farthest Thing" (Charnel Music) cd-r 9.98
O BANDO "s/t" (Discos Mariposa) cd 17.98
OAKEATER "Molech" (Nihilist) lp 21.00
OMEGA "10000 Lepes" (Hungatron) cd 17.98
PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE "From Etudes To Cataclysms For The Doppio Borgato" (Sub Rosa) 2cd 18.98
PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE "Sharing A Sonority with Terry Jennings, Bob Feldman, Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad" (Algamarghen) cd 21.00
PAN SONIC "Kuvaputki" (Cargo Records) dvd 15.98
PARKS "Umber" (Infraction) cd 15.98
PATTON, MIKE "A Perfect Place" (Ipecac) cd 15.98
PELLARIN "Gundso" (Statler & Waldorf) cd 17.98
PERCEE P "Perseverance" (Stones Throw) cd 15.98
PINCH "Underwater Dancehall" (Tectonic) 2cd 22.00
POWER PILL FIST "Extra Life" (Graveface) cd 11.98
PRETTY THINGS, THE "S.F. Sorrow" (Sundazed) lp 17.98
RACONTEURS "Consolers Of The Lonely" (Warner Bros.) cd 16.98
RAMESES "Misanthropic Alchemy" (Feto) cd 14.98
RAMESES III "Basilica" (Important Records) cd 14.98
RELIGIOUS KNIVES "It's After Dark" (Troubleman) cd 13.98
RICHMAN, JONATHAN "Because Her Beauty Is Raw & Wild" (Vapor) cd 15.98
RIGOR SARDONICOUS "Vallis Ex Umbra De Mortuus" (Paragon Records) cd/lp 14.98/21.00
RILEY, TERRY "The Last Camel In Paris" (Elision Fields) cd 14.98
RIMPOCHE, BOKAR "Sacred Chants & Tibetan Rituals From The Monestary Of Mirik" (Sub Rosa) cd 15.98
ROOTS, THE "Rising Down" (Def Jam) cd 14.98
ROSETTA "Cleansing Undertones Of Wake/Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 9.98
ROSETTA "Wake / Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 13.98
RUSSIAN CIRCLES "Station" (Suicide Squeeze) cd 14.98
SAMAMIDON "All Is Well" (Bedroom Community) cd 15.98
SANTOGOLD "s/t" (Downtown) cd 14.98
SARMANTO, HEIKKI "Moonflower" (Porter Records) cd 16.98
SARTORI, ANDREA "Il Tagliacode" (Persona) cd 16.98
SEMIMUUMIO "Vamos" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98
SHANKAR, RAVI & ALI AKBAR KHAN "More Flowers of India" (El Records) cd 17.98
SHY CHILD "Noise Won't Stop" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98
SIAN ALICE GROUP "59.59" (The Social Registry) cd 14.98
SILVER APPLES "s/t" (Phoenix) lp 34.00
SILVER MT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA-BAND "13 Blues For Thirteen Moons" (Constellation) cd/lp 15.98/22.00
SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER "Live March 2001" (Alternative Tentacles) cd 15.98
SKREAM "Rinse: 02" (Rinse) cd 16.98
SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "Open The Gates Of Mimer" (AA / Nosordo) cd 14.98
SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "The Sound Of Defekt Skulls" (Utech) cd 14.98
SLAGMAUR "Skrekk Lich Kunstler" (Nekk Brekk Productions) cd 15.98
SLIM CESSNA'S AUTO CLUB "Cipher" (Alternative Tentacles) cd 14.98
SNOOP DOGG "Ego Trippin" (Geffen) cd 15.98
SONIC YOUTH "J'accuse Ted Hughes" (SYR POB) 12" 10.98
SPARKS "Indiscreet" (Universal / Island) cd 16.98
SPARKS "Kimono My House" (Universal / Island) cd 16.98
SPARKS "Propaganda" (Universal / Island) cd 16.98
SPRING HEEL JACK "Songs & Themes" (Thirsty Ear) cd 16.98
SUISHO NO FUNE "Prayer for Chibi" (Holy Mountain) 2cd 15.98
SUN RA "Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue" (Atavistic) cd 15.98
T2 "It'll All Work Out in Boomland" (Acme / Lion) cd 16.98
T2 "s/t" (Acme / Lion) cd 16.98
TABATA, MITSURU "Lumrapideco" (Utech) cd 16.98
TALL FIRS "Too Old To Die Young" (Ecstatic Peace) cd 10.98
TAMAGAWA "L'Arbre Aux Fees" (Basses Frequences) 3x3"cd-r 14.98
TAPE "Opera Plus" (Hapna) cd 17.98
TAPES 'N TAPES "Walk It Off" (XL) cd/2lp 13.98/15.98
TAU EMERALD "Travellers Two" (Important Records) cd 14.98
THING WITH KEN VANDERMARK "Immediate Sound" (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 16.98
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
UP-TIGHT "Live At The Lucrezia" (Last Visible Dog) dvd 14.98
V/A "Basic Replay" (Basic Replay) cd 17.98
V/A "Blitzing The Ballroom: 20 UK Power Glam Incendiaries" (Psychic Circle) cd 16.98
V/A "IVG Vol 1" (Born Bad) cd 15.98
V/A "Melenudos!" (Gorilla) lp 26.00
V/A "Melodii Tuvi: Throat Songs And Folk Tunes From Tuva" (Dust To Digital) cd 15.98
V/A "Migrating Bird" (Honest Johns) cd 17.98
V/A "New Orleans Funk Vol. 2" (Soul Jazz) cd/3lp 21.00/27.00
V/A "Perfect Un-Pop: Peel Show Hits & Long-Lost Lo-Fi Favourites Vol. 1 1976 - 1980" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
V/A "Realistic Patterns" (Psychic Circle) cd 17.98
V/A "Secret Garden Vol. 1:" (Invada) 15.98
V/A "Trogotronic Compilation, The" (Thumbprint Press) cd 8.98
V/A "You Got Yours!: East Bay Garage 1965-1967" (Big Beat Records) cd 19.98
VETIVER "Thing Of The Past" (Gnomonsong) cd 13.98
VIRGIN OF THE BIRDS "Mixed Choir" (Abandoned Love) cd 8.98
VOLCANO THE BEAR "The Mountains Among Us" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 22.00
VON TILL, STEVE "A Grave Is A Grim Horse" (Neurot) cd 14.98
VVEREVVOLF GREHV "Zombie Aesthetics" (Relapse) cd 14.98
WAGONER, PORTER & DOLLY PARTON "Always, Always / Two Of A Kind" (American Beat) cd 14.98
WANDERING MIDGET, THE "I Am The Gate" (Eyes Like Snow) cd 15.98
WARFARE "Metal Anarchy" (Castle) cd 18.98
WELLES, ORSON "Your Obedient Servant" (El Records) cd 17.98
WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE SON GOD "Out of Body Diva" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
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
YELLE "Pop Up" (Source / Caroline) cd 13.98
YORO SIDIBE "s/t" (Yaala Yaala) cd 14.98
YOSHIMIO "Yunnan Colorfree" (Shock City) cd+dvd 50.00
ZIMMERS HOLE "When You Were Shouting At The Devil... We Were In League With Satan" (Century Media) cd 12.98

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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


----} May 6th
Matmos "Supreme Balloon" cd/2lp on Matador
No Age "Nouns" cd/lp on Sub Pop

----} May 13th
Philip Jeck "Sand" cd on Touch
Oren Ambarchi "Destinationless Desire" 7" on Touch
Pita "Get Out" cd reissue on Editions Mego
v/a "Nigera 70: Lagos Jump" cd on Strut

----} 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
Mudhoney "Superfuzz Bigmuff Deluxe Reissue" 2cd on Sub Pop
Mudhoney "The Lucky Ones" cd/lp on Sub Pop

----} May 27th
v/a "Disco Italia: Essential Italo Disco 1977-1985" cd on Strut

----} also in May
Kayo Dot "Blue Lambency Downwards" cd on Hydra Head
Darsombra "Eternal Jewel" cd on Public Guilt
Opeth "Watershed" cd/2lp on Roadrunner
Necrofrost "Blackeon Lightharvest" cd

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

----} June 10th
Gas "Nah Und Fern" 4cd box/2lp on Kompakt
Love "Out Here" cd reissue on Collector's Choice
Love "False Start" cd reissue on Collector's Choice
John Cale & Terry Riley "Church Of Anthrax" cd reissue on Wounded Bird
v/a "The In-Kraut Vol. 3" cd/2lp on Marina

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

----} June 24th
The Osmonds "Crazy Horses/The Plan" cd 2-for-1 reissue on 7T'S (plus a bunch of other Osmonds...)

----} sometime soon, maybe real soon
Scorch Trio "Brolt" cd on Rune Grammofon
Boris "Rock Dreams" 3lp Southern Lord vinyl edition
UFOmammut "Idolum" cd/cd+2lp on Supernatural Cat
Omit "Interceptor"
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
Nachtmystium/Leviathan split cd on Battle Kommand
Magma "Mythes et Légendes Vol.4" DVD on Seventh
Walker Brothers "Take It Easy With The Walker Brothers" cd reissue on Water
Feelies "Crazy Rhythms" cd reissue on Water

----} also upcoming sooner or later
Machinefabriek "Mort Aux Vaches" cd on Staalplaat
Akira Rabelais "Hollywood" cd on Schoolmap
Mariana Topley-Bird w/ Dangermouse
Paavoharju "Laulu Laakson Kukista" cd/lp on Fonal
Silver Jews "Look Out Mountain, Look Out Sea"
Circle X "Prehistory"
Loren Chasse & Michael Mnortham "Otolth"
The Wrens new album
Andrew W.K. new album
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
Gore reissues on Southern Lord
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
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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CLUSTER CALIFORNIA TOUR 2008

presented by DONUTS, (((Folk Yeah!))), Arthur Magazine, KUSF,
Important Records, West Add Radio, and of course Aquarius Records....

//////////////

MAY 22
Los Angeles

CLUSTER + Lucky Dragons, Mi Ami

venue tba

//////////////

MAY 23
Big Sur

CLUSTER + Wooden Shjips, Arp

6pm Henry Miller Library

//////////////

MAY 24
Santa Cruz Mountains

CLUSTER + Ariel Pink, Howlin' Rain, Bronze, Ascended Master

6pm Brookdale Lodge

//////////////

MAY 25
San Francisco

CLUSTER + Tussle, White Rainbow

7pm Great American Music Hall

//////////////

MAY 26
San Francisco

CLUSTER Aquarius Records in-store!!!!!!

5pm Aquarius

//////////////

go to www.donutsparty.com
for lots more information, where to get tickets, poster graphics,
mp3s, etc.

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanLaurenIrwinScottSallyAntaeusCameronMichaelandFrank