ISHIKAWA AKIRA & COUNT BUFFALO Uganda (Tiliqua) cd 28.00
It's no longer out of the ordinary for a rock band to look beyond rock for inspiration. Or a jazz band, looking to expand their sound. It definitely makes sense as musicians are generally constantly striving to explore, to open their minds, their music, searching for unique instruments, new ideas, new sounds, even looking for something much more ineffable, something more spiritual. Psychedelic rock bands have typically looked East, The Beatles are probably the prime example of a rock band looking to India for musical AND spiritual inspiration. But on a much smaller scale, modern music develops and expands by incorporating new influences, the more 'exotic' the better. So for years, we could watch bands do just that, incorporate new instruments, sitars, tablas, whatever, alternate tunings, Eastern scales. Jazz musicians on the other hand, tended to look to Africa for inspiration, the tribal drumming, the vocal chants, all found their way onto tons of amazing records, amazing in part because of what they borrowed from the African music that was their genesis, as with many many discs by the Art Ensemble, Coltrane, Don Cherry, etc., etc...
So if all this borrowing and influence is so commonplace, what's the big deal with this disc, a deluxe reissue of a rare 1972 LP entitled Uganda, by Japan's strangely named Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffalo? Well to begin with, imagine a Japanese jazz drummer in the early seventies, so obsessed with African music, that not only are his records already rife with African influences, but he eventually travels there, and proceeds to play with local musicians, collects indigenous instruments, and returns, driven to realize the record he knows he must make, Uganda, a record that manages to sound like African music, jazz and psychedelic rock, while sounding like nothing else. Ishikawa teamed up with fellow percussionist Larry Sunaga, a bassist and guitarist, and a saxophonist, who instead of playing sax, composed all four lengthy pieces here, the results are amazing. Dense, dizzying, abstract and tribal, fuzzy and tripped out, long stretches of solo hand drum percussion, furious acid fuzz freakouts (courtesy of guitarist Kimio Mizutani, from Love Live Life+1, People, and other freaky Japanese '70s psych units), chanting and handclaps, all woven into an expansive, sprawling divine chunk of out there Afro-fuzz-psych-jazz-rock divinity.
Take the first track "Animals and Dawn", nearly 12 minutes long, and over those 12 minutes, the song veers and drifts through about ten distinctly different sounds and styles, all held together by the relentless African drum jam that runs through all four tracks. Beginning with what sounds like some strange low end synth buzz, those drums kick in, intense and hyper rhythmic, amazingly recorded, so on headphones it sounds like drums are all around you. That buzz, pulses and undulates beneath the frenzied drumming, and this goes on for almost 3 minutes, which is when some wild super distorted acid psych guitar swoops in, jagged and freaked out, spitting out soaring wah wah drenched buzz, before the bass joins in and the drums coalesce into a more recognizable groove, and the band nails it, heavy, slithery proto-metal, churning and pounding, eventually locking into a super technical prog workout, and then dropping out completely, again leaving just the drums, which are soon joined by hand clapping, and chanted African style vocals. Finally, for the last four minutes or so, the band unwinds a groovy jazzy prog workout, still underpinned by those same rhythms, but now the bass carries the groove, letting the guitar go wild, wild psychedelic leads all tangled up in great strange shapes over the groovy rhythm below. Eventually, the song is swallowed up by effects, reverb, delay, echo, as if the band were playing on some huge elevator, as we sit on the surface, listening as the band slips further and further into darkness. Holy shit. If this were a $30 single, that track alone would make this essential for folks into psychrock, proto-metal, free jazz, avant African music or really anyone into strange and fantastical sounds.
The second track, "Asking For Love", once again begins with African drums, the two percussionists, offering up wild tangled beats for nearly two minutes, until in swoops a weird synthy buzz, which quickly transforms into a seriously Led Zep worthy riff, the drums a strange counterpoint to the distinctly rock and roll riffage, and the vocals soaring and shouting, but this kick ass riff fades out only after a minute, and we're back to more dense drumming, Mesmerizing and hypnotic, locking into incredible grooves, veering off into off kilter time signatures here and there, but always returning to that groove. This continues until about one minute from the end, when the bass and guitars explode in a buzzing psychedelic freakout, the drums mirroring the intensity of the axes, locked into an ever expanding supernova of blown out sound, until the furious explosive finish. Whew.
Track three (on the original, the start of side 2) "Battle", begins with some straight up jazz prog, angular and complex, the drums and guitars locked tight, the whole thing convoluted and intricate, stopping suddenly after 30 seconds, at which point an African thumb piano plucks out a delicate music box melody, while in the background, other strange instruments scrape and thump and honk, eventually blossoming into a full on Afro-jam, the drums pounding away, male and female vocals, call and response over the mesmeric beats below, but again, this only lasts a few minutes before switching gears and launching right back into the angular prog that opened the track. This happens a couple more times. Long stretches of abstract percussion, plenty of buzz, and rattle, melodies played out on mysterious African instruments, separated by brief blasts of that  buzzing tangled prog, which is exactly how the track finishes off.
The closer, "Pygmy" begins with a groovy walking bass line, a cowbell heavy almost-funk rhythm, eventually some acidic wah wah guitar, and suddenly we're in some serious seventies, Blaxploitation soundtrack style jazz funk, the bass a constant presence, that groove irresistible, the vocals soulful, the percussion still busy and intense, beneath the more static rhythm driving the songs. The guitar and vocals get all tangled up, the vocals more sort of scatting, the guitar offering up jagged shards of high end, or unfurling soaring psychrock leads, the bass and guitar locking into step right at the end, for one final super tight psychprog finish.
It almost seems ridiculous to describe each song in detail, as that's only part of the story. All four tracks work together, leading into one another, offering up bits from pervious songs, giving up little sonic hints as to what might come later, and it's not just the arrangements, it's the feel, the mood, the vibe, and while mere description might make some of the songs sound schizophrenic, flipping back and forth from part to part, some parts lasting only a few seconds, nothing could be further from the truth. The composition here is as deft as the performance, the arrangement is simultaneously free and abstract, yet, tight and composed. The songs breathe and open up, drift and wander, but never seem to lose their direction, and the grooves ever present, even if on the surface the band seem to be drifting though inner space.
Uganda is truly unique, freaky and far out for sure, but most definitely an essential chunk of jazzy, proggy African Japanese psych rock bliss, organic, expansive, epic, rhythmic, space-y, proggy, heavy and funky!! If you've got Julian Cope's Japrocksampler book, you'll find it in his Top 50 list of Japanese psych essentials, right above the debut from Flower Travellin' Band.
As with all Tiliqua releases, gorgeously packaged. This one is housed in a full color miniature box, printed front and back, with a Japanese style obi of course, and inside extensive liner notes in both Japanese and English, with tons of photos. And it is limited of course, not sure how limited, but judging from how quick past Tiliqua releases fly out of here, better to be safe than sorry. And this is actually the first in a new Tiliqua series called Distorted Oriental Sensory Perceptions 1969-1978 focusing on "Obscure Japanese Psychedelic rock artifacts." We can hardly wait to see what they dig up next... there's a lot of others on that Japrocksampler list we'd love to hear...
MPEG Stream: "Wanyamana Mapambazuko"
MPEG Stream: "Na Tu Penda Sana"
MPEG Stream: "Vita"

DARSOMBRA Eternal Jewel (Public Guilt) cd 12.98
Break out the headphones, relax the body, and close the eyes, it's another one from the devastatingly droney and dark Darsombra, whose debut Ecdysis disc we really liked a couple years back. We like this just as much, maybe more. There's a great deal of melancholic, mesmeric beauty in Darsombra's isolationist grinding and evil ambient shimmer. We can imagine Darsombra's human operator, Brian Daniloski from the Maryland metalcore band Meatjack, up late at night alone in his home studio, lights dim, wreathed in smoke, hunched over his guitar and synth and effects and whatever else he uses to conjure this music, willing himself off into another place, out into the void of space, riding the dense waves of his own creation, returning only at dawn with another track for this album finished.
Let's discuss these tracks, but not in order... The echoey minimalism of "Drops Of Sorrow" is simply glorious, it's Riley or Reich from a psychdronedoom perspective. Or perhaps krautrock's Achim Reichel & The Machines playing Black Boned Angel!? Elsewhere, there's more gloom and glory, from the hushed sinister soundtrack melodies of opener "Auguries" to the haunting, spacey drone-whispers of "Night's Black Agents" - this disc's longest track at 17:34, reminding us of the 'Vox Insecta' work of old AQ fave Q.R. Ghazala. Then, with an intro of ommming voices (or synth) there's "Lamentings / Auguries", featuring sparse melodic guitar weepery buried beneath fuzzed out layers of deep, electronic drone and distortion. Again, this definitely sounds like it would make good soundtrack material for some eerie, arty Italian horror flick. And further cementing our love affair with the abstract attractions of Eternal Jewel, the calmly vibrating "Incarnadine" brings some rays of light to this disc at its very end, with its peacefully repetitive clusters of gentle chimings over a quiet drone.
Packaged by Public Guilt in a nice black, gothically graceful gatefold sleeve, this is definitely recommended. Imagine Expo '70 cloaked in black, performing a seance with Tony Conrad and Lustmord, and you'll have an idea of how much we must like this!
MPEG Stream: "Night's Black Agents"
MPEG Stream: "Drops Of Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Lamentings / Auguries"

WOVEN HAND Ten Stones (Sounds Familyre) cd 14.98
Oh, how we wish sometimes that we had more time to spend with some of the records we review. In some cases, it's an hour or two, maybe 2 or 3 times through an album, sometimes, unfortunately, it's even less than that. With so many records, it's not always possible to totally immerse yourself, and some music requires that sort of immersion, for it to be fully appreciated, for the sounds to open up, the layers to peel back, revealing the music's beating heart. Such is the case with the music of David Eugene Edwards, formerly of 16 Horsepower, now spreading his dark apocalyptic folk gospel via Woven Hand.
The music of Woven Hand, as is evidenced by past aQ reviews (3 of the past 4 WH albums, well, now 4 out of 5, were aQ Records Of The Week, and when we try to figure out why the other one wasn't, for the life of us, we just can't), is the rare music that moves and inspires, sends shivers down our spines, gives us goosebumps, brings us to the edge of tears, a music powerful and personal, and so so intense. The sounds of Woven Hand, while gorgeous, are also ominous and haunting, the message even moreso. Edwards' lyrics deal almost exclusively with death and damnation, sin and salvation. He, more than any modern performer is the rock equivalent of a revivalist preacher, testifying like his life depended on it, and perhaps it does. The music backing up Edwards' passionate vocals, is a dark swirl of backwoods folk, of gothic rock (not to be confused with goth-rock), sweeping cinematic soundscapes, old time blues, lush and almost orchestrated, strings moan, sweet sad melodies are plucked out on old pianos, or unfurled from wheezing harmoniums. Woven Hand is the sound of some old dusty ghost town, or some strange traveling minstrel, set up on the back of a rickety old wagon, playing for coal miners, and forest folk, lit from below by flickering firelight, shadows dancing behind the band like some sort of mysterious back up band of spirits.
Ten Stones remains true to the first few books in the Gospel of the Woven Hand, from the first few notes, this could be nothing else, Edwards' super dramatic rich velvety croon, the tone of the guitars, those melodies, minor key yet shot through with some sort of hopeful warmth, some ineffable otherworldly glow, the one thing that is different, is just how rocking some of this is, almost heavy at points, the guitars thick and growling, the drums pounding and frenzied, strings singing, but all kept in check by Edwards' vocals. This new found heaviness is not a new direction, just another arrow in Edwards' musical quiver, as many of the songs still slither and crawl through those lost backwoods of tarnished souls and wasted lives, the twang left to drift in wide open spaces as often as it's wrapped around the heft of crunch and bluster. The record does manage to move in unexpected directions, the accordion driven filthy blues jam that is "White Knuckle Grip", or the moody torch song shimmer of "Quite Nights Of Quiet Stars", the pounding bluegrass buzz of "Kicking Bird", but even those anomalous excursions, somehow fit perfectly into the long winding musical road of Ten Stones. The last three tracks finish off things about as perfectly as possible, "Kingdom Of Ice" is total apocalyptic drama, the twang of banjo beneath a buzzing drone, Edwards's spitting fire, "His Loyal Love", a swoonsome, murky drift of soft smeared guitar buzz, shuffled percussion, and haunting reverb drenched vocals, the entire song wreathed in a swirling gauzy fog, and finally the untitled closer, a deep whizzing, nearly static drone, long tones slowly shifting, thick distorted guitar rumble and sweet soft tones, shimmering and spread out into a kaleidoscopic soft focus blur.
Another stirring apocalyptic missive, from one of the few, true remaining musical prophets, and even if your soul doesn't need saving, Ten Stones will have you wishing it did.
Musical salvation is at hand!
MPEG Stream: "The Beautiful Axe"
MPEG Stream: "Horsetail"
MPEG Stream: "Not One Stone"
MPEG Stream: "Kingdom Of Ice"

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ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE COSMIC INFERNO Journey Into The Cosmic Inferno (Very Friendly) cd 17.98
Here we go once more, (yet) another journey into the cosmic inferno. One worth taking, again and again. We're already pretty darn tanned from it. It seems like just last week (actually, on list #299, so four weeks ago) we had a new live AMT disc, Pink Lady Lemonade on Riot Season. Now here's the first studio document from this latest AMT lineup, featuring new drummer/vocalist/cosmic shaman/etc., Pikachu, also of Afrirampo. Those who have Pink Lady Lemonade will note that, on the back cover of this, the band's still wearing those ridiculous matching Hawaiian shirts/shorts (in Pikachu's case, a dress) with palm trees, flowers, sailboats, and beaches on 'em. Weird. As always.
And as always, they deliver the psychedelic hippie rock freakout goods. And this time, with a fair amount of structure. It's divided into several "movements" which make it seem especially composerly.
Track one, "1st Movement: Cosmic Inferno's Gate" is perhaps so titled not only 'cause it's the first track, the entrance to the album, but also 'cause a good portion of it features a scraping string-drone (or is it a squealing horn?) of some sort that sounds a bit like a creaky door being slowly, very slowly opened.
Then -boom- the 2nd Movement kicks in. A heavy, lumbering riff and lotsa spacey FX. Vocals eventually enter the fray, singing the praises of the "Master Of The Cosmic Inferno". It's starting to sound a lot like a J.A. Caesar album from the '70s, one of those wild psychedelic theatrical soundtrack productions. If you're a Japanese psych nerd you may have heard of 'em. Solar Anus covered one of their songs, as well. Someday hopefully we'll list some reissues. But we digress. Anyway, this track goes a lot of places over its nearly 23 minute length, ranging from frenzied guitar squiggle to gentle female vocal lullaby. Quite the tour de force.
Then, a mellow interlude. This third movement is called "Cosmic Blood Feast". Sounds like half a Roger Corman double feature, or their tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis. Droning horn and plinking bells. Quite nice. It's the calm before the storm of "4th Movement: Ecstasy Into The Cosmic Inferno", a whirling dervish buildup of distorted snake charmer guitar and ecstatic (indeed) vocal chant. Which brings us to track, er, movement 5: "Usisi", much more folky and melodic. And then the album wraps up with "6th Movement: Shalom Cosmic Inferno" and it's back to the acid guitar wailing from Kawabata that really pays the bills. Whew! Altogether, it's about everything you could want from a journey into the cosmic inferno. Even if you haven't been on board the AMT train this whole time for every last release, this one might be a good one to pick up, though your tolerance for some of the more wild vocal excesses here, when Pikachu really gets riled up, might be a factor in that decision.
MPEG Stream: "Master Of The Cosmic Inferno - Heart Of Earth"
MPEG Stream: "Ecstasy Into The Cosmic Inferno"

ALPS, THE III (Type) lp 19.98
The latest from Bay Area new-kraut-folk-age combo Alps, finds the band sounding more high fidelity than ever, and more kraut than folk, which in both cases suits them big time.
For those new to Alps, a rundown of several members should help give you an idea of where their sound is coming from: our very own Scott Hewicker (Troll), Alexis Georgopoulos (Arp, formerly of Tussle) and Jefre Cantu (Tarentel, Colophon, J.C. Ledesma). But Alps is definitely more than the sum of its parts, their sound is quite varied, expansive, even epic at times, but simultaneously, they manage to craft a sound simple and solid, based as much on rhythm and texture as on song and melody.
On past releases, Alps were a much more ramshackle concern, which at the time was definitely a big part of their sound, and thus set them firmly amongst the lo-fi cd-r drone folks scene, their sound a sort of ghostly Appalachia, mixed with longform drone music, muddy muted ambience, minimal soundscaping and plenty of lo-fi buzz and hiss much of the record mired in a corrosive murk, that only added to their dark dronelike vibe. The move to Type Records, coincides, perhaps not coincidentally, with a sonic shift, where once was abstract and low fidelity, is now rhythmic, and propulsive, looped and repetitive, and most importantly, glistening and glimmering, the sound crystal clear, and this time the dreaminess doesn't come from poor recording, it comes from the compositions, and the arrangements, and a super nice sounding recording courtesy of Phil Manley of the Champs and Trans Am. The core members of Alps also have a keen interest in new age music. Not the Deep Breakfast sort of schlock that most seem to equate with the genre, but instead more the sort of inner space, dreamy drift of Tangerine Dream, Deuter, Steve Hillage and the like. And those sounds are all over III as well.
The opener is a gorgeous looped soundscape of repetitive guitar figures, and glistening chimes, almost like a dreamfolk Steve Reich, bits of Appalachia, big buzzing synths, strummed zithers, a gorgeous melancholy melody played out over the course of five and a half minutes. The second track finds the band getting their kraut on, channeling Neu! Or Agitation Free but through a much more washed out and weary space rock, like Hawkwind gone new age. Distant drifting vocals, all manner of layered buzz, distorted guitars buried in the mix, space-y FX, very tranquil and mesmerizing. The follow up "Cloud One" finds Alps revisiting their folk roots, taking strummed acoustic guitars, and simple piano, and draping them over a woozy melody and a super spare abstract rhythm. "Trem Fantasma" is a barely there whisper of spaced out dronemusic, Gloriously wreathed in musical mystery, drifting piano, fragmented guitars, some soft sixties 'ladada' vocals, another dreamy drifter that threatens to spirit the listener away to some sun dappled green grassed knoll. "Labyrinths" is another new age / krautrock meander, washed out and shimmery, the drums the only thing keeping the rest of the song from just floating away, playful melodies, that sound like Perry and Kingsley rendered in shades of grey. The next few tracks are more abstract, sounds swooping in and out, rhythms, if there are any, buried beneath soft layers of sound, everything hushed and minimal, until album closer, "Into The Breeze", which sounds just like the title would have you imagine, breezy, soft focus, the drums, simple and stripped down, shimmering steel string guitar, that ever present piano, the melody wistful, the production hazy and a little woozy, effects swirling in the background, the drums gradually becoming more and more tripped out, before fading out completely, leaving just the guitar and the piano to drift heavenward, through a field of soft shimmer and the glistening afterglow of the sounds that came before.
The more we listen to III, the more obvious the new age-isms become, which is not a bad thing at all, it wraps the proceedings, no matter how krautrocky or folky or droney, in a sweet swirl of moonlit dreaminess, turning each song into its own sort of otherworldly mesmer.
LIMITED TO ONLY 400 COPIES ON VINYL!!!!! (& the compact disc version is coming soon, but not out yet...)
MPEG Stream: "A Manha Na Praia"
MPEG Stream: "Hallucinations"
MPEG Stream: "Cloud One"

ANDUIN Forever Waiting (smtgltd) lp+cd 12.98
Better known (or perhaps more realistically, not really known at all) as the man behind aQ faves Souvenir's Young America, Jonathan Lee steps out on his own, trading in his brooding harmonica flecked metallic post rock, for something a little less post rock, a lot less metallic, but no less brooding OR harmonica flecked. The thing with SYA that really set them apart from so many others in the ever expanding army of Neur-Isis clones, is that they approached their sound from a pretty unique direction, of all those bands they are definitely the least metal, instead infusing their sound with plenty of dusty Morricone-isms (due in no small part to the harmonica) and a desert-y almost soundtracky vibe akin to Scenic or Calexico. It's still dynamic and epic and sweeping, but with more
twang, more subtle shading, slide guitar, just more evocative in general.
The opening track of Lee's first solo foray starts out right away with harmonica, maybe the same harmonica as on the SYA record since the liner notes explain that those harmonica's are sampled, but the result is much the same, the instrumentation may be different, a slow whirling churn of textured low end, and buried muted melodies, but that mournful harmonica over the top brings it right back to some barren windswept street, the sky overhead clear, the sun beating down, everything cloaked in a layer of dust. This is drone music, or dark ambience, but Lee demonstrates his unique sonic approach expands well beyond his rock band.
The second track eschews the harmonica, but is no less cinematic, weird melodic fragments, drift on thick swells of low end, a strange melody is twisted and draped over the top, the track peppered with strange sounds, like buttons being pushed, or tapes being rewound, or splashing water, hard to say what, but it adds a strange haunting texture to the already mysterious soundscape. The harmonica returns one track later, and we're once again transported right back to that lonely stretch of desert. This time though, there is some skittery rhythm, and another layer of low end, all rubbery and warbly, shimmering beneath the surface. The rest of the record wanders similar paths, exploring equally haunting soundscapes, crumbling distorted guitar, smeared into a soft drone beneath a lilting minor key melody, lurching processed rhythms floating in stretches of hiss and shimmer, deeeeeeep bass rumbles and pulses, peppered with fragmented melodies, one track transforms into a sound not that far removed from the Souvenir's mothership, slow motion guitar grind, skittery drums, moaning distant melodies, all wound into a super tense slow burning epic.
Two tracks here feature guests, the first is a name most aQ customers are probably familiar with by now, Jasper TX, whose contribution is quite subtle, adding extra low end, introducing some subtle textural chop and shuffle, adding a bit of an Oval vibe to an already murky underwater drift, the other is another aQ fave, Xela, aka Type records head honcho John Twells, who does a serious number on his track, adding all manner of shortwave interference, warm smears of hiss and static, haunting disembodied vocals, thick distorted crumbling guitars, verging on a Nadja vibe partway through, before slipping back into the mesmerizing moodiness of the rest of the record. Definitely not a run of the mill drone, or ambient record. Anduin definitely puts about 90 percent of cd-r floorcore dronemusic to shame, this drone approached like songs instead of sounds, this is the sort of record that blossoms with more listens, headphones are mandatory, dig deeper, get lost, let the sounds swallow you whole, carry you off. ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED.
Packaged in a beautiful handscreened sleeve, and includes a cd as well (not a cd-r) for your iTunes or Discman.
MPEG Stream: "For Francis Bacon (Part 1)"
MPEG Stream: "For Francis Bacon (Part 2) ((Xela Mix))"

ARCKANUM Antikosmos (Moribund Cult) cd 16.98
We've long been fans of Swedish one man black metal band Arckanum. Even those who haven't heard his music, probably remember the 'band' photos, which always featured a cloaked creature with a deformed troll-like face, huge hook nose, and carrying a massive staff. Some folks were put off by this bit of theatricality, probably giving them visions of the much cheesier Mortiis. But then they were missing out. This Swede kicked out the classic black metal jams, nothing avant, or experimental really, barring the occasional ambient interlude, but just pure raw grim blackness. With a lo-fi production and a great crusty black sound, Arckanum released 3 full lengths in the late nineties, and since then, it's been nothing but a handful of splits and eps. So we were pretty excited for the first Arckanum full length in ten years, and we were not disappointed.
The sound, at its core is similar to the classic Arckanum sound, but the production is massive, the guitars thick and monstrous, the drums pounding and brutal, the whole vibe is much more sleek and streamlined and 'produced', but thankfully manages to retain most of its grimness and blackness, although now the music is imbued with a power never present before, and if anything, dare we say it, a new found groove.
We've heard this record compared to discs by Craft and Inquisition, among others, but we can't help hearing a little Khold, which as far as we're concerned is actually a good thing. Take the album opener, after a creeped out drone-y intro, and a swirl of guitar buzz and cymbal sizzle, the song launches into a furious blast, which sounds punkier and crustier that we remember, and again, groovier. It has much to do with the chord progression, as on the surface this is still all blasting beats and buzzing guitars, but then the deal is sealed with the bridge, where the guitars and drums lock into a weird droney, almost poppy part that sounds like it could have come from a Torche song! And that vibe, those melodies, those subtle touches are present throughout, even at its most intense and furious, the band easily will slip in a subtle, yet impossibly catchy hook or phrase, almost like they don't even know they're doing it, some mysterious musical force manifesting itself, hidden among the black brambles and jagged harsh heaviness. Then there's a track like "Rokulfargnyr", which is primarily a strange clipped staccato guitar chug, the drums locked in, peppered with dynamics, but it almost sounds like some sort of fractured math rock. Even when the song kicks in for real, the stop start guitar, the super technical drumming, eventually gives way to more soaring melodic buzzing blackness. "Nakjeptir" is all eighties groove and chug, laced with cool stretches of black dissonance. "Eksortna" is just guitar, distorted and melodic, unfurling a stately court-of-the-king style melody,
while closer "Formala" is classic blackened doom, very spacious and sprawling, with some weird drumming, a killer main riff, and an outro of demonic murmurs and buzzing distorted rumbles.
This disc has been getting crazy play around here, and has had us revisiting the older records as well, which sound even better than we remember. Lots of folks we know have been talking about Antikosmos as BM record of the year, and while we still have other contenders to consider, we're definitely inclined to agree that this could very well crack the top ten. Maybe even the top five...
MPEG Stream: "Svarti"
MPEG Stream: "Daudmellin"
MPEG Stream: "Rokulfargnyr"

ASTATKE, MULATU Mulatu Of Ethiopia (Worthy) cd 24.00
Finally! This amazing disc of fantastic Ethiopian grooves available on CD!
By now we're all pretty familiar with Mulatu Astatke, what with Ethiopiques #4 and the LP reissue of his Ethio Jazz album he's practically a household name by now (at least around here). I'm kidding of course, but rabid fans of the inimitable funk/soul/groove sounds from Ethiopia no doubt place him pretty high on the short list of the greatest from the period. And what's better is that "Mulatu of Ethiopia" contains entirely exclusive tracks. Yep, that's right, none of these tracks are on any of the discs in the Ethiopiques series (though there are two reworkings of tracks - "Dewel" and "Munaye" - from Ethiopiques #4). The album itself, a reissue of a 1972 release of the same title, was recorded by Astatke in the U.S. during his tenure here and until now it fetched high prices on the collector's market. Given Astatke's experiences working in the U.S. with American jazz and Latin jazz musicians it should come as no surprise that it sounds nothing like anything else among the myriad Ethiopian groove reissues. For one, it's super smooov' (in a good way) with Mulatu picking up his mallets and playing vibes through it all and the recording - which must have been done at some swank U.S. studio - is ultra lush (what's that? You say you can hear the bass?) The music on this album totally sounds like a soundtrack to some long lost Michael Caine political intrigue film. You can almost see the cigarette dangling out of Caine's mouth as he drives around in an Austin Healey tailing a bad guy. On Mulatu Of Ethiopia, Astatke is accompanied by a pretty tight ensemble, much smaller than the orchestras of the Amha recording era. The backbone of his accompaniment is an uber funky organ/electric piano that sounds at times like they've got a wah wah pedal hooked up to it. Also included in the ensemble is electric bass, drums, percussion and plenty of soloing assistance from saxophone, flute and trumpet. HIGHLY recommended, but act fast 'cause, as with so many things, we don't know how long this will be available.
MPEG Stream: "Mascaram Setaba"
MPEG Stream: "Kasalefkut-Hulu"

AXTON, HOYT My Griffin Is Gone (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
Wow! The Omni Recording Corporation reissues another gem in the form of this druggy 1969 West-Coast Pop-Americana masterpiece by enigmatic country legend Hoyt Axton. Son of a Nashville insider who wrote "Heartbreak Hotel" for Elvis, Axton cut his teeth in the Greenwich village folk scene, becoming better known as a songwriter than a singer, scoring a big hit for The Kingston Trio with "Greenback Dollar". But it wasn't until a little film called Easy Rider featured one of his songs, "The Pusher" performed by Steppenwolf, that Axton got his biggest break. Signed to Columbia Records, he immediately began working on My Griffin is Gone, a startling socially conscious document of drug withdrawal (LSD and pills) and war that is barely concealed under kaleidoscopic lyrics and blissful orchestral folk rock arrangements of spacey organs, soaring strings and sitar rock-outs. Like Euphoria covering Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left or Bill Fay doing The Notorious Byrd Brothers, this is full of that wistful melancholy, stunning songcraft and pointedly poetic self-examination that we love in records from this period. Not a good plan for a money-making hit record, but perfect for those great lost cult records that we can't seem to get enough of. This reissue augments the original album with 12 rare bonus tracks of demos and singles, 8 of which are previously unreleased, including his demo recording of "The Pusher". Essential for psych-roots-folk fans of all persuasions. God Damn!
MPEG Stream: "Way Before The Time of Towns"
MPEG Stream: "Kingswood Manor"
MPEG Stream: "San Fernando"
MPEG Stream: "The Pusher"

BAKER, JOHN The John Baker Tapes (Trunk) lp 16.98
If 79 tracks over two volumes was a little too much to digest of John Baker's strange and jazzy electronique miniatures, than this vinyl version might be just the thing for you, as it condenses the most interesting 25 tracks from both volumes.
Delia Derbyshire may embody the otherworldly beauty and mystique behind the sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but John Baker was its alchemical heart. Who else could take a simple tone from air being blown over a bottle and make it into a warm and electrifying panorama of melodious sound? In this LP, we find TV adverts, library pieces, jazzy soundtracks, radiophonic pieces and home recordings as well as an interview on how he made the sounds contained here, and his broadcast obituary. Baker had a knack for melody, and often imbued his mechanically made recordings with a warmth and playfulness that his more mathematically-inclined contemporaries lacked. The jazz and library compositions (made for the Southern and Peer International organizations) are similar in form and sound to Basil Kirchin and Michael Garrick (two other Trunk luminaries), urgently spright and pastoral, sometimes soft and spacey. Yet he could also establish veils of mystery and drawn out suspense in his carefully composed themes. Our favorite in particular is "Jazz Advert" a track we suspect Broadcast or Stereolab must have been very aware of. However, Baker's real talent is brevity. With most of the tracks contained here lasting under a minute, he evokes a complex and engaging sound world that is perfectly encapsulated within its miniscule timeframe.
Covering his entire musical career from 1954 up until his death in 1985, and exhaustively culled from boxes and boxes of often unmarked tapes, this is a great and essential purchase for anyone interested in early British electronic music.
MPEG Stream: "Codename"
MPEG Stream: "Vendetta: The Sugar Man"
MPEG Stream: "Jazz Advert"
MPEG Stream: "Piano Strokes"

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER Untitled (Gnarled Forst) lp 14.98
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer have become the band du jour of the deathdirgedronedoom scene, their records disappear in a heartbeat, we were lucky to get 25 of this new one, it's already out of print and sold out at the label.
This sick love for BSBC makes perfect sense the second the first filthy note comes oozing out of your speakers, this is harsh, hellish, abstract black black ambience. Take the slowest sickest Khanate song, strip away the drums, slow down the vocals to a raspy gurgle, add later after layer of filth and crust and grime and you'd be getting closer to whatever subterranean pit these anti-musical miscreants crawled from.
There's two side long tracks, each previously released as insanely limited cassettes, remixed and remastered for this release, with additional sounds from Chris Dodge of Spazz and aQ pal Matt Waldron from Irr. App. (Ext.). The A side begins with slowed down vocals, a monstrous demonic murmur, slithering over a grim landscape of high end hiss and deep tectonic rumbles, distant tones pulse and throb, all manner of crash and scrape and crunch, the track building slowly to a frenzy of hellish howls, thick sheets of white noise, crumbling walls of distortion, grinding washes of thick, dense buzz and whir, a seriously fucked up, freaked out expanse of post industrial noisemusic, thick with drones and haunting textures and undulating layers buried beneath the skree. The B side begins with a low resonating drone, a thick, serpentine rumble, that is eventually subsumed by a symphony of buzz saws and crackling fires and collapsing buildings and grinding scrapes and processed vocals and malfunctioning tape machines, all wound into some sort of hellish high end ur-drone, before slipping back into another shimmering expanse of upper register skree, eventually drifting back into something much more mellow but no less ominous and intense, a creepy low end drone, field recordings, crackle, whispers, evokes hiding in the woods, terrified, as something stalks you, muted growls, the crack of dried branches underfoot, the whisper of leaves falling to the ground, all set to the boom of distant explosions. Intense, and in its own way, sort of sickly beautiful.
Akin to Gnaw Their Tongues, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Alkerdeel, the more abstract and dismal end of the doomdirgedrone spectrum.... this definitely takes all that and pushes it even further, darker, noisier, more dismal and way more grim.
Packaged in plain white sleeves, with a screened image affixed to the front, a black and white printed inserts, pressed on white vinyl, plain white labels. SUPER LIMITED. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. We only got 25 COPIES, once these are gone that's it!

CALEXICO Carried To Dust (Quarterstick) cd 14.98
A while back, we thought it would make an excellent April Fool's Day New Arrivals List, to have all the reviews written not by staffers, but by our Moms! The logistics proved a bit too tricky, but some Moms were definitely into it, especially Andee's Mom, Gail. Now without airing too much dirty laundry, teenage sons and Moms often clash, and in many cases it has to do with music, in my (Andee) case, it was heavy metal, of course. And what's a Mom to do when her son starts dressing weird and wearing spikes and listening to that devil music?! Well a lot has changed in 20 years, and now Gail is a regular rad music aficionado, putting other Moms to shame. She even hung up on me once because she was watching a special on VH1 about heavy metal. Man would the sixteen year old me have a meltdown! Well, it just so happens, that Gail is a big fan of Tucson boys Calexico, so we figured we'd get her to weigh in on their new record. Thanks Mom! Here's what she has to say:
My son, Andee has been quite generous over the years, giving me cds I like and request, cds he THINKS I should like, and then there's Calexico, a band we both like. Neither of us can remember what sparked my interest in this band, but since I now live in Tucson, I appreciate their fascination with the Southwest, and their fusion of country, Latin and folk (I am, after all, a '60s gal!). Ironically, I will see them live on September 20th at a Democratic fundraiser, at the Rialto Theater in Tucson. Take that, teenage Andee!
Other than their newest release, I only have 2 of Calexico's albums, The Black Light and Hot Rail, and like them both, even though I think they are quite different from each other. There's an evocation of place in their songs, which to me is one of the most appealing elements of their music. In Carried to Dust, a beauty from start to finish, I was transported from the first track, "Victor Jara's Hands", to a road trip somewhere near the border, a la Thelma & Louise, in an old convertible, music blaring, hiding a beer between my legs, and feeling young, happy and free. I don't know who Victor Jara is or was, but the verses are sweet and melancholy and then the chorus soars with horn fanfare. Definitely feel-good music!
"Two Silver Trees" morphs into an entirely different mix of instrumentation and vocals. I can't help but think they were influenced just a tad by the opening music from The Sopranos, but perhaps I'm hearing what others won't.
My favorite track has to be "The News About William". Flowing, but desolate... I'm lying on my chaise lounge looking at the amazingly bright stars in a gorgeous blue/black Tucson night sky, letting the music of Calexico spirit me away.
MPEG Stream: "Victor Jara's Hands"
MPEG Stream: "The News About William"

CALEXICO Carried To Dust (Quarterstick) lp 14.98
A while back, we thought it would make an excellent April Fool's Day New Arrivals List, to have all the reviews written not by staffers, but by our Moms! The logistics proved a bit too tricky, but some Moms were definitely into it, especially Andee's Mom, Gail. Now without airing too much dirty laundry, teenage sons and Moms often clash, and in many cases it has to do with music, in my (Andee) case, it was heavy metal, of course. And what's a Mom to do when her son starts dressing weird and wearing spikes and listening to that devil music?! Well a lot has changed in 20 years, and now Gail is a regular rad music aficionado, putting other Moms to shame. She even hung up on me once because she was watching a special on VH1 about heavy metal. Man would the sixteen year old me have a meltdown! Well, it just so happens, that Gail is a big fan of Tucson boys Calexico, so we figured we'd get her to weigh in on their new record. Thanks Mom! Here's what she has to say:
My son, Andee has been quite generous over the years, giving me cds I like and request, cds he THINKS I should like, and then there's Calexico, a band we both like. Neither of us can remember what sparked my interest in this band, but since I now live in Tucson, I appreciate their fascination with the Southwest, and their fusion of country, Latin and folk (I am, after all, a '60s gal!). Ironically, I will see them live on September 20th at a Democratic fundraiser, at the Rialto Theater in Tucson. Take that, teenage Andee!
Other than their newest release, I only have 2 of Calexico's albums, The Black Light and Hot Rail, and like them both, even though I think they are quite different from each other. There's an evocation of place in their songs, which to me is one of the most appealing elements of their music. In Carried to Dust, a beauty from start to finish, I was transported from the first track, "Victor Jara's Hands", to a road trip somewhere near the border, a la Thelma & Louise, in an old convertible, music blaring, hiding a beer between my legs, and feeling young, happy and free. I don't know who Victor Jara is or was, but the verses are sweet and melancholy and then the chorus soars with horn fanfare. Definitely feel-good music!
"Two Silver Trees" morphs into an entirely different mix of instrumentation and vocals. I can't help but think they were influenced just a tad by the opening music from The Sopranos, but perhaps I'm hearing what others won't.
My favorite track has to be "The News About William". Flowing, but desolate... I'm lying on my chaise lounge looking at the amazingly bright stars in a gorgeous blue/black Tucson night sky, letting the music of Calexico spirit me away.
MPEG Stream: "Victor Jara's Hands"
MPEG Stream: "The News About William"

CIRCLE X Prehistory (Blue Chopsticks) cd 14.98
First proper full length from this mysterious seventies outfit, who formed in Kentucky (some argue that Circle X were the first punk band from Louisville), the band eventually relocated to the Big Apple where they became a small part of the burgeoning no-wave underground, a scene at the time that consisted of bands like Mars and DNA, they would later graduate into the second wave of NYC noisemakers like Swans, Sonic Youth, Cop Shoot Cop, Live Skull and others.
Unlike the raw primal fury of their debut ep, Prehistory, originally released in 1983, is much more restrained and rhythmic, the drums tribal and trancelike, the arrangements less like songs and more like rituals, the guitar abstract and angular, the bass locked into mesmerizing loops, the vocals gloomy and emotive, the mood dark and depressing, the drums very reminiscent of Southern California tribalists Crash Worship, in fact, much of Prehistory references the ritualistic drum jams. But Circle X, due in no small part to the company they keep, injected plenty of moody miserablism into their decidedly gothic sprawl, a strange hybrid of chaotic post punk, junkyard crash and clatter, and dark depressing almost new wave. Jagged guitars are tossed about by frenzied percussion and buzzing low end synth drones, melodies are mostly angular and atonal, although here and there the band do inadvertently slip into something bordering on catchy and lovely, wild vocal caterwauls wrap themselves around, flurries of intense drumming, and long drawn out rhythms, Jandekian guitars surface and blurt out some strangled melody before sinking back into the mire, it's definitely a strange sonic miasma, a quick listen reveals mostly chaos, but beneath it all, the band had some strange twisted pop sense, which somehow holds the whole rickety thing together.
MPEG Stream: "Current"
MPEG Stream: "Pre-History Part I"

COMAS, THE Spells (Vagrant) cd 14.98
Comparing a band no one has ever heard of to Neutral Milk Hotel, right out of the gate, is usually the kiss of death. NMH are such an untouchable entity at this point, that they barely qualify as indie rock, or whatever you want to call them. They are Neutral Milk Hotel, and nothing else. And in their wake of course have come a million wannabes, very few of them coming anywhere close.
So while The Comas don't necessarily sound like NMH, they do share some common sonic characteristics, especially the weird crunchy harmonic soaked electric guitars, that sound acoustic half the time, and drive the songs ALL of the time. The second we threw this on, first thing we thought was NMH, but only for a second, as the record soon sprawled into all sorts of other sonic avenues. We also hear plenty of Flaming Lips, as well as a ton of the Swirlies. And if you're anything like us, Neutral Milk Hotel + the Flaming Lips + Swirlies = our new favorite pop record! But not super new, this came out last year, but we only just discovered it recently and have been listening to it nonstop.
The aforementioned crunchy guitars, super distorted processed leads, wild blown out drumming, scratchy raspy emo boy vocals, soaring angelic female vocals, cool off kilter arrangements, swooshing effects, and HOOKS galore. And while we may have been listening to this record over and over endlessly, more often than not, it's the opening track "Red Microphones", that gets locked on repeat, sounding like a super charged fuzzy Elephant 6 power pop freakout, easily one of the catchiest jams of the year. Of any year.
WAY recommended for all pop kids, or any one needing to feed their jones for smart rambunctious crunchy fuzzy pop.
MPEG Stream: "Red Microphones"
MPEG Stream: "Hannah T."
MPEG Stream: "Stoneded"

COMMON EIDER, KING EIDER Figs, Wasps And Monotremes (Root Strata) cd 12.98
Record number two from the peculiarly monickered Common Eider, King Eider, the one man project of Mr. Rob Fisk, formerly of Deerhoof, currently of Badgerlore, and much like the first disc, Figs, Wasps And Monotremes, is another haunting missive of long drawn out drones, and minimal folk mesmer.
The intro is a smoldering shimmer of scraped strings, wavery falsetto vocals, and all manner of overtones and harmonics, mysterious and hypnotic, we would have been quite happy if it had gone on just like that for the record's entire 32+ minutes, but the record soon shifts to something more songy (only slightly though), deep distant swells, dense soft drones and more ethereal falsetto vocals, all drift over insistently sawed strings, the string unfurling an almost looped sounding rhythmic melody. The record drifts lazily after that from spare melancholic reverb drenched sun dappled soft folk, all shimmery and washed out, to still more keening high end drones, looooong tones allowed to howl and buzz and slowly decay before being overtaken by still more growling, scraped strings, sounding almost like a 20th century string quartet slowed down to no beats per minute, to fractured free folk, steel string buzz, angular abstract riffage wrapped in haunting gauzy lo-fi hum, to super intense, almost Sunroof! worthy sheets of high end ur-drone, the notes crumbling and distorted and gorgeously blown out, and back to more introspective folky flutter.
A gorgeous sprawling, abstract record, the listener drifting dreamily from song to song, sound to sound, sinking ever deeper, falling in slow motion, Common Eider's blurred soundscapes moving past, like a film slowed way down, so each frame flickers gently before slipping away, allowing another to take its place. Absolutely lovely.
Gorgeous packaging too, as with all Root Strata releases, a three panel white cardstock sleeve, printed in silver ink, adorned with images of fruits and branches and a platypus!
MPEG Stream: "Wasp Tunnels (Intro)"
MPEG Stream: "Monotreme Mom (For Jamie & Andrew)"
MPEG Stream: "Brown Trumps White (Harry's Mix)"

CONIFER Crown Fire (Important) cd 14.98
If we had to pick a favorite, out of all the post rock / math rock / post metal hordes, a sound we do admittedly dig a whole lot, and one we can't seem to get enough of, Maine's mighty Conifer would be right there at the top. Which is saying something, as up until this brand new full length, we'd only heard from them twice, their debut, and a split with Ocean. As compared to some of the other bands who have released 2, 3, 4 maybe more records in the same amount of time. The first Conifer disc was fresh when it came out, taking classic math rock and beefing it up with huge swells of Neurosis crush, but the thing with Conifer is that they never completely buried that post rock vibe, even at their most metallic, when they were slipping into full on doom territory, they hung on to those loping rhythms, those fractured melodies, and figured out a way to infuse those elements into the roiling heaviness. On the debut we were hearing Slint and Bastro and Seam as much and as often as Isis or Neurosis, probably even more so.
In that way, the sound of Conifer hasn't changed all that much, their sound is still rooted heavily in mathrock, the metal elements more adorning the postrock instead of the other way around. In fact more than ever, they sound like a nineties mathrock band supercharged and transported to the oughts. Even at their heaviest, they don't get HEAVY, as in metal heavy, they get louder, and more dynamic, more intense, the sound gets fuller and more expansive. And this time around the band we can't help but hear all over this record is Polvo. The guitar parts are all woozy and warbly and angular and sort of seasick, the opening track is the perfect example, it almost sounds like some metal band covering the opening track from Polvo's Cor Crane Secret, with its multiple parts, its liquid arrangements, the clean guitars, layered and indeed woozy, the drum part and the arrangements, loping and mathy and not a little bit groovy. We hate to go on and on about mathrock and Polvo, cuz it could all be a big ol' coincidence, but we doubt it. Every song on Crown Fire is mathy and melodic, sometimes locking into repeating figures for just a tad longer than would be comfortable for most bands, opening up and drifting through wide open spaces, all glimmering harmonics and shuffling rhythms, backwards guitars floating in a sea of muted soft drones, tripped out almost Pink Floyd action here and there, complete with space-y synths and fluttery flutes. "Into The Gauntlet" almost sounds like a heavier Codeine, a bit doomy, with a strange lurching arrangement beneath glistening sparkling chimes, and flurries of shuffling snare drum and floor tom. Hard to say what it is exactly,
as it should be with music, but regardless, this is definitely a new high for a genre that becomes more and more overpopulated every day. Whenever we find ourselves listening to one of these new post rock / metal hybrids, as much as we love metal, and we do, we find ourselves longing way more for the intricacies and arrangements and dynamics of the post rock side of the equation, it's too easy to just turn it up and let downtuned guitars chug, and Conifer prove that you can make a super heavy, super catchy, epic record, without even bothering with faux metal chug, which is something else for sure.
If that weren't enough, the record closes with the 13 minute title track, featuring Eugene from Oxbow on guest vocals (normally Conifer are instrumental). The result is pretty excellent, and finds the band, doing their best Oxbow, a sort of abstract bluesy groove, that over the course of the song gets a little bit mathier and more complex, while Eugene sing-talks, howls, mewls, wails, growls, shrieks, moans, The track is super spare until about halfway through where it dials up the metal, offering up being churning chords and pounding drummage to support Eugene's increasingly unhinged and manic vocals, the song building to a furious climax, before drifting out in a haze of whispered mutterings and fractured electronics. It's a pretty awesome track for sure, but for us, it somehow works better when taken almost as a separate record. The first 6 tracks are so perfect together, a brilliant 38 minute post-math-metallic-rock suite, which just so happens to come with an equally brilliant bonus single song, 13 minute ep, featuring Conifer backing up Oxbow's Eugene Robinson.
However you slice it, WAY recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Surface Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Cruciform Empennage"
MPEG Stream: "Crown Fire"

DE DEYSTER, EDMOND Selectie 02 (Ultra Eczema) lp 32.00
Volume two of these recently discovered long lost recordings of seventies synthesizer music from a mysterious Belgian musician named Edmond De Dyster. Like the first volume, these pieces were discovered on unmarked reel to reel tapes in a box marked simply with the year, 1975. Discovered by Ultra Eczema head honcho Dennis Tyfus, these recordings, along with those on the now out of print first volume, are only part of a trove of unreleased, and for the most part unheard recordings De Dyster made in private, who seemingly had no intention of releasing them, in fact, even his family didn't know he had been making recordings.
None of this mystery would be worth anything if it weren't for the music, which is weird and wonderful, raw and primitive, all analog synthesizers, almost like a lo-fi BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The sounds are tripped out and abstract, bleeps and bloops and beeps and sine wave tones, and crumbling distorted rhythms, plodding ominous low end melodies, spooky squalls of glitch and squelch, reverbed squiggles, ghostly tones, haunting and otherworldly like a Theremin, here and there some new age flutter, deep soft swells, fuzzy staticky streaks of buzz, muted rhythmic thumps, that low end creeping and slithering through clouds of swirling tones and shimmering textures, all set adrift in wide open expanses of distant rumble and soft fuzzy whir. Amazing stuff. Think Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler, Battiato, Schulze, Heldon. And you may as well add De Deyster to that list. Anyone into experimental electronic music, should absolutely check this out.
Who knows how many other lost boxes of tapes or mysterious music makers lurk in bedrooms and basements out there? Probably more than we might imagine...
Gorgeously packaged in a hand screened, extra thick jacket, with a full color printed insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.

DEAD REPTILE SHRINE Burning Black Infinity (Antihumanism) cassette 8.98
We're always  going on and on about the weirdest, most fucked up black metal bands ever, even elsewhere on this list, we review the new one from Tasmanian one man band Striborg, and declare it maybe the weirdest yet. But there's weird, and then there's Dead Reptile Shrine, who beyond being weird, are barely even black metal, the metallic elements far outweighed by the fractured folk and total whatthefuck elements, and the blackness, well that infuses pretty much every sound they produce, just not in the way most folks are used to or most metalheads want. Instead, DRS do their own thing, and their own thing is some fucked up mix of dark dronemusic, detuned free folk, stumbling chaotic black metal, some orchestral bits, tortured vocals, all wound into a confusional world of black rituals and mysterious sonic otherworlds. While we anxiously await the forth coming double cd on tUMULt, we have THREE new tapes to tide us over, two reissue of long out of print rarities, and another brand new album, to be released soon on cd and vinyl as well, but for now on the oh so cult cassette format. Each of these is limited to 400 copies, we got a bunch, 30 or so, but odds are those will go fast and we probably won't be able to get more.
Burning Black Intensity is the new album, and offers up a taste of what will be found on the soon to come sprawling tUMULt 2cd full length, and if BBI is any indication, then two whole cds of this stuff is going to DESTROY. This record begins with some creepy, orchestral Peter And The Wolf type sounds, strings and percussion, sampled we assume, while DRS croon over the top, offering up wavery clean vocals, strange incantations, and various other vocalizations, the result is truly twisted. This goes on for several tracks before the band launch into some black metal, but DRS black metal is a whole other thing, the drums buried in the mix, barely audible, the guitars strangled, and gnarled, buzzing, blurred and murky, dueling vocals, one a high howled screech, the other a rumbling demonic gurgle, both drenched in reverb, both howling maniacally, and relentlessly, while the guitars churn and the drums stumble, the whole thing lurching drunkenly, super raw and primitive and lo-fi and fractured and FUCKED for sure. The next track demonstrates that no matter how weird it gets, everything they do is deliberate, the guitars are thick and fuzzy, the drums simple but propulsive, the riff a near static black groove, the bass, pulsing and undulating, more typical black metal vocals screeching over the top, while way in the distance a voice shrieks hysterically, the two vocals all tangled up, the guitar spewing forth a super mesmerizing singular riff, totally hypnotic and trancelike, the vocals growing more and more unhinged. The next track is a murky muddy Wold style soundscape, melodies and guitars smeared and blurred into bleary eyed streaks of sound, the vocals an ominous rumble, the drums a chaotic blast beat, while the guitars swoon woozily, the whole track dizzy and druggy and weirdly dreamlike, the vocal eventually growing more and more warped, almost cartoonish, sing songy and almost operatic, wrapped in fluttery flutes and more distorted soft buzz.
Needless to say, this is brilliantly twisted stuff, totally wacked, outsider blackness, as true as any of the more classically TROO black metal, but unlike those, DRS are true only to themselves, any resemblance between their music and other black metal is not only coincidental it's a fluke, as most of this sounds like nothing you've ever heard.

DEAD REPTILE SHRINE Isth Narai Ja (Antihumanism) cassette 8.98
We're always going on and on about the weirdest, most fucked up black metal bands ever, even elsewhere on this list, we review the new one from Tasmanian one man band Striborg, and declare it maybe the weirdest yet. But there's weird, and then there's Dead Reptile Shrine, who beyond being weird, are barely even black metal, the metallic elements far outweighed by the fractured folk and total whatthefuck elements, and the blackness, well that infuses pretty much every sound they produce, just not in the way most folks are used to or most metalheads want. Instead, DRS do their own thing, and their own thing is some fucked up mix of dark dronemusic, detuned free folk, stumbling chaotic black metal, some orchestral bits, tortured vocals, all wound into a confusional world of black rituals and mysterious sonic otherworlds. While we anxiously await the forth coming double cd on tUMULt, we have THREE new tapes to tide us over, two reissue of long out of print rarities, and another brand new album, to be released soon on cd and vinyl as well, but for now on the oh so cult cassette format. Each of these is limited to 400 copies, we got a bunch, 30 or so, but odds are those will go fast and we probably won't be able to get more.
Isth Naral Ja was one of two full lengths released in 2002, but whereas N.t.K. was a proper DRS release, Isth Naral Ja was a three track, 65 minute, all ambient record, originally given away with another disc, and later reissued, but both times in incredible limited amounts. While much of DRS's output is truly twisted, sometimes to the point of sounding a bit goofy to the untrained ear, the sounds found on Isth, while still twisted, are woven into what seems to be a much more serious soundworld. Epic sprawling expanses of whirring low end, deep throbbing bass, strange disembodied voices, fractured truncated guitar melodies, very haunting and peculiar, incantations surface throughout, long long long streaks of sound, trance inducing minimal rumbles, hissing almost industrial high end, long stretches of hushed murmured blackness, that bass pulse creepy and recurring, the whole thing very cinematic and evocative of some grim black wood, or some abandoned house, or some vast black sea, seemingly serene on the surface, but with who knows lurking beneath.
Isth manages the difficult task of being twisted and strange, haunting and mysterious, still embodying the musical ethos of Dead Reptile Shrine, while pushing the sound into new directions, without losing any of its power, any of its mystery, its blackness.
Whereas other DRS records are most definitely an acquired taste, this disc, while definitely still essential listening for DRS fans, would most definitely please the abstract drone and cd-r crowds. Tunnels, Bones Of Seabirds, Drommer, Expo '70, Nordvargr, Acre, Bonus, Encomiast, Starving Weirdos, Metal Rouge, Trollmann, folks who dig any or all of those might just dig this particular chunk of Dead Reptile Shrine black ambience.

DEAD REPTILE SHRINE N.t.K. (Antihumanism) cassette 8.98
We're always  going on and on about the weirdest, most fucked up black metal bands ever, even elsewhere on this list, we review the new one from Tsmanian one man band Striborg, and declare it maybe the weirdest yet. But there's weird, and then there's Dead Reptile Shrine, who beyond being weird, are barely even black metal, the metallic elements far outweighed by the fractured folk and total whtthefuck elements, and the blackness, well that infuses pretty much every sound they produce, just not in the way most folks are used to or most metalheads want. Instead, DRS do their own thing, and their own thing is some fucked up mix of dark dronemusic, detuned free folk, stumbling chaotic black metal, some orchestral bits, tortured vocals, all wound into a confusional world of black rituals and mysterious sonic otherworlds. While we anxiously await the forth coming double cd on tUMULt, we have THREE new tapes to tide us over, two reissue of long out of print rarities, and another brand new album, to be released soon on cd and vinyl as well, but for now on the oh so cult cassette format. Each of these is limited to 400 copies, we got a bunch, 30 or so, but odds are those will go fast and we probably won't be able to get more.
N.t.K was one of two full lengths released in 2002, originally a super limited cd-r, and yet another piece of the missing pieces puzzle that is the bizarre soundworld of Dead Reptile Shrine. The opener is a super creepy slab of ritualistic drone, the low end drenched in hiss and disrtortion, the vocals a harsh whisper, seriously haunting and intense, a murky mystery that soon gives way to a more 'traditional' DRS, a fractured buzz drenched fragmented black metal, ultra lo-fi, the guitars so distorted they almost sound like a solid hum, the drums a buried muffled thump, the vocals harsh and venomous, until they shift gears and become swoonsome wailing, the sound more Urfaust or Jandek, a wailing clean voice that goes from deep bellow to off kilter howl, as fucked up and out there as the music behind it. Later, the sound veers into all sorts of unimaginable territories, one track offers up a weird almost bouncy stumble, with sing songy clean vocals, underpinned by a super creepy death metal gurgle, the track like some blackened chunk of French outsider new wave, the vocals slipping from hysterical shriek a sort of creepy scatting, another track unleashes some super grim, old school raw plodding black metal, like Darkthrone and Von, but filtered through a broken boombox and a fractured psyche, while still another is a gorgeous black folk drift, all muted strum and mumbled melody, before it suddenly transforms into a stuttering dizzying off kilter doom, with some deep demonic vocals that sound almost like Darth Vader, and another sounds almost like crusty punk, pounding riffage and simple drumming and weird nasally punk rock vocals. It's all over the place, but some twisted black thread holds it all together. We've mentioned it time and time again, but the music of Dead Reptile Shrine is not for the faint of heart, or even the black of soul, it's for the twisted, the warped, the musical misanthropes, in search of sounds mysterious and baffling, and no band was ever more of both than DRS.

DEATHSPELL OMEGA Manifestations 2000-2001 (Northern Heritage) cd 15.98
It's only been a year since we last heard from Deathspell Omega, but it feels like forever. Their last record, Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum, still ranks as one of our favorite black metal records ever. A truly original blast of gnarled avant black metal, as true and grim and buzzy and black as any black metal we've heard, but rife with strange chords, and distinctly non-metal phrasings, convoluted arrangements, an incredible raw black metal record, all tangled up with something much more fractured and experimental. The record before that, Kenose, was even more far out, transforming their black buzz into something approaching a blackened Slint, a strange twisted metallic post rock.
This disc however takes us was back to the beginning of this century, and compiles a handful of super rare splits and compilation tracks, from the disc they shared with Mutiilation, their split with Moonblood, and the Black Crushing Sorcery compilations. The sound here, based on the dates, and the fact that these tracks predate new vocalist Mikka Aspa from Clandestine Blaze and Fleshpress joining the band, are sonically much more in line with their earlier records Infernal Battles and especially Inquisitors of Satan. The first two tracks from the Mutiilation split find the band right at the cusp, clinging to their grim raw roots, but allowing their music to sprawl, the chords get more and more dissonant, the arrangements more complex, the overall sound thicker and more lush, but still rough and black. The three tracks from the Moonblood split go back to 2000 and thus sound much more raw and straight ahead, total early nineties Norwegian BM worship, a definite Darkthrone vibe for sure, but is suits them, the soaring buzz, the blasting beats, all wound up into long epics, peppered with woozy midtempo breakdowns, the riffs slippery and atonal, the overall sound a super smoldering lo-fi blackness. The final track from the Black Crushing Sorcery is more of the same, another solid chunk of classic nineties sounding black metal, insectoid guitar buzz, furious blast beats, even a weird punky Darkthrone breakdown partway through.
Essential and classic, another glimpse into the past, revealing more of the black roots that would eventually take hold and produce the fearsome black beast that is Deathspell today.
MPEG Stream: "Insanity Supreme"
MPEG Stream: "Black Crushing Sorcery"

DEATHSPELL OMEGA Manifestations 2002 (Northern Heritage) cd 15.98
As we wait patiently for a new Deathspell Omega, we have not one, but two archival releases to hold us over, one, reviewed elsewhere on this list, is a collection of splits and compilation tracks, and this one, well, this is the one DSO the troo fanatics have been waiting for.
The music on the other disc, Manifestations 2000-2001, is all previously released, and while most folks probably never got their hands on the way too limited originals, those recordings have definitely been floating around. But the music on this disc, Manifestations 2002, is all previously unreleased, and unless you're seriously well connected, this is essentially a brand new Deathspell album. These tracks were originally recorded for two different releases, several for a split lp with Cantus Bestiae, which never materialized, and the rest, were intended to be DSO's contribution to the Crushing The Holy Trinity comp. For whatever reason, these tracks never made it, and the band recorded a single 22 minute epic to take their place. But thankfully, these tracks were preserved, and are finally seeing the light of day, or rather, the black of night.
And regardless of where these tracks were headed for, they play pretty solidly as a proper DSO album. Filthy and furious, frenzied and relentless, a flurry on insectoid buzz lightning speed blast beats, harsh bile drenched vokills, but it is Deathspell, and this is about the time their sound began to change, so amidst all this buzz and blast, are strange loping midtempo sprawls, slippery woozy angular riffs, notes colliding and shimmering in fields of weird almost-grooves, melodies and harmonies twist and transform, their sound simultaneously demonic and weirdly pretty, but buried under avalanches of black fury, pounding almost punky breakdowns slip smoothly into impossible fast blurs, brief moments of near poppiness surface amidst roiling seas of choppy black grind, but it's still 2002, so instead of defining their sound, those elements become just another part of the heaving monstrous whole, and infuse even the most straight ahead black blasts with the sort of twisted avant vibe that would eventually become the core of DSO's new direction.
MPEG Stream: "Tyrants And Slaves"
MPEG Stream: "Gloria - Diabolus Absconditus"
MPEG Stream: "Monument Of Hate"

DIPLO Top Ranking Santogold (Mad Decent) cd 12.98
Top Ranking Santogold, mixed by Diplo, is a full blown Santogold medley. So if you were into her latest release, you'll definitely be skankin' to this ragga, pop, dub influenced mega mix which ties some of the Santogold favorites, b-sides, remixes and mash-ups together into a rude 35 track mixture of gold goodness. The mix runs seamless from start to finish with plenty of overlapping blends that somehow someway work wonders together. Picture Santogold vocals, singing/rapping over the likes of dubstep wonders Benga and Skream's shakey slumpers or the Celtic synth grooves of electro pop jam band Ratatat, with added appropriate yet unsuspected jams from Devo, The Dixie Cups, and The Clash mashed against Cutty Ranks, Sister Nancy, and Three Six Mafia betwixt and between, what!? Oh and did we mention, a little Sir Mix-A-Lot action for good measure? Trust us, the line-up looks semi-disaterous but Diplo definitely makes it work effortlessly. We dare you to stay in one place while this album is a bumpin'! Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: SANTOGOLD (SWITCH REMIX) "ANNE"
MPEG Stream: THE DIXIE CUPS / MISSY ELLIOT "IKO IKO"
MPEG Stream: SANTOGOLD FT. M.I.A. (RADIOCLIT RMX) "GET IT UP"
MPEG Stream: SANTOGOLD FT. AMANDA BLANK (DIPLO RMX) "IM A LADY"

FLYING LOTUS 1983 (Plug Research) cd 11.98
We fell so hard for the latest Flying Lotus release, Los Angeles, that we knew we had to go back and give the proper attention to his debut. We'd heard bits and pieces of it before but never really got to spend any quality time with. Until now.
Proving that his latest great record was not just some fluke, 1983 offers up for display lots of the roots and promise that would blossom into the powerful cosmic instrumental hip-hop/electronica that made the latest Flying Lotus release one of our favorites of the year. This disc, from a few years back, barely pales in comparison. While not quite as explosive and engaging as FL's newest record, it's still a skillfully crafted and delightful to listen to chunk of crunchy yet smooth flowing beats and melodies with equal nods to downtempo, hiphop, and electronica. Definitely the kind of record that should appeal to anyone into Madlib, Boards Of Canada, Prefuse 73 or even prime era Morr Music outings. Glad we took a moment to look back, as this is proving to be a record that deserves a home here at AQ and we hope on your shelves as well!
MPEG Stream: "1983"
MPEG Stream: "Orbit Brazil"
RealAudio clip: "Unexpected Delight (Feat. Laura Darlington)"

GIANT SAND Provisions (Yep Roc) cd 14.98
It's been a few years, Mr. Gelb, we've sure missed you! Your new album is absolutely wonderful, and not just because you've got Neko Case, M. Ward and Isobel Campbell on board this time around... although that definitely sweetens the deal!
Each of the thirteen songs slowly unwinds in the dusk hour shadows with the ever enigmatic Gelb occasionally bringing to mind a southwest desert sun-baked Leonard Cohen. While he definitely pulls out a few classic Giant Sand twangy eccentric yarns (particularly late in the album - "Belly Full Of Fire" and "Saturated Beyond Repair"), overall Provisions seems to be his most mellow, straightforwardly melodic and song structured work to date. Even when he drifts off into the downright cryptic and bizarre, the raw emotion and poetry of his music somehow still speaks straight to the heart. Some of the album's best moments feature are the most bare bones with just voice and piano ("Spiral"). Wow. You might recall the short lived superb collaboration that took place many years ago between Gelb, Lisa Germano, and Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino. OP8 was its name, and Slush was the title of their amazing album (it's still one of Cup's all time top faves!). Of any of the albums that the individual artists have released since, this new Giant Sand full length comes the closest to capturing that magic (albeit with different parties involved).
And attention all you new Calexico fans picking up the latest album from those fellow Arizonans, time for a little history lesson! Burns and Convertino were members of Giant Sand prior to forming Calexico. If you haven't checked GS out yet, you are missing out! Some early GS albums may initially seem impenetrably strange and more of an acquired taste, but you don't wanna miss this album!
Most certainly highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Without A Word "
MPEG Stream: "Increment Of Love"
MPEG Stream: "Spiral"

GODFLESH Streetcleaner (Kreation) lp 16.98
It's weird to think that amongst the legions of fans out there who LOVE Jesu, there are probably loads of folks who don't realize that Jesu was born out of the mighty behemoth that was Godflesh. Justin Broadrick, who started off in grind pioneers Napalm Death, made a quick pitstop in Head Of David, and eventually struck out on his own in Godflesh. These days, drum machines and metal are not strange bedfellows, but back in the day, this was some seriously what-the-fuck action. Metalheads and punk rockers alike were confused, but got over it pretty quick once they realized that Godflesh might just be the heaviest fiercest thing they had ever heard. And Godflesh at their heaviest was to be found right here, on Streetcleaner, adorned with the now iconic image of crucified men on crossed in front of a cascade of burning lava (a frame from the genius movie Altered States), this record, originally released in 1989, still sounds as fearsome as ever. And now that we have a handful of Jesu records to reference, it's easy to hear that some of the seeds that would eventually blossom into the dreamy shoegazy metallic bliss of Jesu, were present even back then, albeit buried beneath a black hole crush of churning downtuned riffage and blistering skull rattling programmed beats. Our old three sentence, 14 word review of this still says it best:
"One of the heaviest, scariest "metal" albums EVER. Drum machine doom death. Godflesh's best."
NOW ON VINYL!!! And holy crap if that cover doesn't look even more amazing all blown back up to its proper lp size!!
MPEG Stream: "Christbait Rising"
MPEG Stream: "Mighty Trust Krusher"

GROWING All The Way (Social Registry) cd 14.98
Growing have been on quite the hot streak as of late with each of their recent releases hitting the spot and pleasing our ears BIG TIME, with their soaring, mesmerizing, cosmic psychedelia. They keep the streak alive with All The Way, which finds the Brooklyn duo at their stuttering, looped, repetitive and hypnotic best. Almost sounding like a more focused and chilled out version of Black Dice, All The Way finds Growing continuing to explore outer dimensions of sound with a krauty disposition and space on their side. We really like how they've come to understand duration as their songs and records last long enough to spellbind with their propulsive sounds yet never overstay their welcome ending almost before you would like, so you're always ready to jump inside their orbit again. Very nice!
MPEG Stream: "Green Flag"
MPEG Stream: "Wrong Ride"
MPEG Stream: "Reconstruction"

HIGUMA Haze Velley (Root Strata) cd-r 8.98
Wholly enveloping, river soaked, fog piercing drone. Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and a previously unknown-to-us artist named Lisa McGee collaborate to bring forth cathartic ruminations in the form of ghostly guitar, softly sparring vocals, various percussive devices and an unnamable, innumerable catalog of various other instruments. The collaboration was a live improvisational affair, which the liner notes claim was recorded "in the valley." The appropriately and cleverly named album, Haze Valley, name checks one of our own neighborhoods here in San Francisco, Hayes Valley. Anyone who checked out and enjoyed any of the releases by Cloaks, White Rainbow (particularly the more sedate side), Barn Owl (obviously), or La Monte Young will be pleased with what they'll find here. Make no mistake about it, this is definitive dronemusic. While it is beautiful and has some structured elements, this is for the true trippers. Those looking for hummable hooks and such may find more satisfaction looking elsewhere, but for an immersive, spiritual headphones experience, this is your destination. It is also worth noting that the cover art was made by Evan, and its burgeoning crystal pyramid couldn't be more lovely or more perfectly suited to the sounds found herein. Drone freaks beware, this could easily take over your stereo.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!! These are the only ones we'll ever have...
MPEG Stream: "Crimson Cloud Ascension"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Bloom"

INCA ORE / GROUPER split (self-released) lp 11.98
Originally released as an insanely limited cassette, one that we sold out of in a matter of minutes, this gorgeous slab of gauzy sonic ephemera is finally available again, now on vinyl. Probably still limited, but at least most folks will actually get a chance to get one this time around.
As we mentioned in the original review, Inca Ore and Grouper are two of the few females currently kicking ass in the seriously dude oriented noise rock scene (Leslie Keffer and Valet are a couple others), and they approach their 'noise' with a distinctly different aesthetic, instead of walls of sound or sheets of distorted skree, the two focus on the sound of the human voice, their vocals cloaked in reverb and delay and echo, layering their blurred croons over swirling seas of smeared shimmery sound and delicate spidery guitars, wheezing organs and warm whirring buzz. Thankfully, together, the sound remains much the same, but blossoms a bit, two different, but complimentary voices, each with a knack for soft focus minor key melodies, each contributing their own particular style of washed out fractured folk, and the results are divine, fans of either band won't be disappointed, hushed and dreamlike soundscapes, dark, delicate cinematic ambience, gauzy and wispy, mysterious and haunting murky and muddy, a vast expanse of distant shimmery drones washing over abstract lo-fi song fragments and chunks of fragmented folks drifting in the abyss.

ISOLDE (ANDREW CHALK & ROBIN BARNES) All Things To Fall Like Marching Men (Penny Poppet) cd 24.00
A tape version of these recordings came and went in 2005, pressed in an edition of 30 copies. So, perhaps like most of you, we didn't even know this thing existed until Robin Barnes (one half of Isolde and proprietor of the Penny Poppet imprint) offered us this album. It's got a different title and different artwork, but we'll trust that it's the same set of recordings. The other half of Isolde should need no introduction. Andrew Chalk has long been at the very top of our list of favorite drone composers and sound artists for many, many years now. Big thick harmonic drones of the dark and sublime variety are what we have come to expect from Mr. Chalk; and the other recordings we had been able to acquire from the Isolde duo certainly delivered on that aesthetic. But this one is considerably different. Here, Barnes and Chalk augment their narcoleptic guitar picking with little more than the gilded halo of spring reverb and some uneasy sounds situated well into the distance. The two use plenty of space between their abstracted clusters of guitar pluckings, which only barely give hints to avant-blues strategies, even more abstracted than early Loren Loren Mazzacane Conners or the quieter Keiji Haino solo offerings. Vapor trails of sustained sound linger around these simple notes, occasionally merging in a placid drone more in keeping with Chalk's more well known sensibility. Somewhere in the distance, something bellows like a pack of wolves, which immediately makes us think Dead Raven Choir; then it percolates like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or even like a snippet of EVP. This makes for a really excellent recording, although something of a detour for Chalk. Limited to a mere 300 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Inferred Melody"
MPEG Stream: "Walkabout"

JABLADAV Primland (self released) cd-r 5.98
Primland was originally released as a super limited (100 copies) double cd, housed in a hand painted, custom built wood box, sealed with wax, and thus had a price tag to match. The box is now out of print, but Primland is now available as a much more affordable single disc, and while the box and the second disc may have been discarded, that hardly detracts from the impact of this serious slab of crushingly twisted blackness from one man black metal maven JabladavŠ
What began as an homage to legendary SF black metallers Weakling, and maybe even a joke (not a ha ha joke, more of a fucking around, we're bored so we might as well record some grim black metal joke) has pretty rapidly morphed into a serious black metal contender amongst weirdo black metal aficionados.
Jabladav is a one man band who owes as much to Weakling as they do to Black Flag. Their first release, Dead As Duck, was a gnarled Greg Ginn-ified blast of intense blackness, blown out guitar buzz, insane blasting drums, some killer riffing and huge heapings of black atmosphere, channeling Weakling through all sorts of random not-that-black business, drone, post rock, math rock, no wave, and yeah Black Flag. The thing was, whatever inspired it, was soon eclipsed by how fucked up and far out the finished product was. A baffling and fucking genius collection of convoluted black buzz. Hot on the heels of the debut, came a second disc, Black As Pitch, which was like part two of Dead As Duck, but expanding the sound, making it even more metal, more chaotic, the songs got longer, and way more complex, even introducing some intensely blackened ambience. Which led to the next record, 3K Hum, a mostly ambient affair, huge stretched out slabs of glacial blur, massive roiling low end rumble, shimmering black ambience, hypnotic and mesmerizing, and while ambient, still extremely dense and heavy.
As if that weren't an exhausting spurt of creativity, now, not all that much later, comes the latest from Jabladav, the even more expansive and twisted Primland, a hellish chunk of incredibly tangled black riffing, super blown out buzz drenched production, creepy keyboards, and deep dark ambience, super mathy drums, demonic vocals, all wound into super extended black jams, shot through with head spinning Ginn-ish squiggly leads, stop start riffing, but all strangely melodic, a moody mournful undercurrent beneath the roiling black heaviness. And the drums, shit, the drumming is insane, WAY up in the mix, louder than the guitars even, mathy and calculus complicated, like the guy was sitting at the top of a concrete stairwell in a 40 story building, each landing mic-ed, and then proceeded to hurl drum kit after drum kit into the black abyss, only in such a way that the resulting crash and clatter coalesced into impossibly deranged black rhythms.
But then out of nowhere, there'll be a track, all murky and muddy, lo-fi and practice space style, that sounds like it could be some lost nineties BM demo. EXCEPT, it's Jabladav, so even those tracks, are layered with slow doomy tones, deep rumbling chimes, and raspy vocals, threatening to swallow up the thrashing blackness below. The tracks are definitely tweaked, and damaged, and a little bit spaced out and acid fried, druggy and mathy, but at their core they are pure black, the riffs are blown out, recorded so loud and in the red, the chords threaten to crumble. The record careens wildly from stumbling doomic Burzum style lope, to manic crazed thrashing black blasts, often both in the same song, the strange production only adds to the mood and weirdness, the songs on Primland even more epic and far out and convoluted and fucked than any of the Jabladav we've heard before, which is saying a lot. WAY recommended black metal weirdness/brilliance.
MPEG Stream: "Black Snow"
MPEG Stream: "Lodona"
MPEG Stream: "Vin Den Orden Jag Levandre"

JACASZEK Treny (Miasmah) cd 15.98
Ah, the Miasmah label, can they do no wrong? Not if darkly moody, cinematic soundscapes are your thing. It you like stuff on Type, for whom Miasmah's boss records as Svarte Greiner, you'll like Miasmah's releases too. Previously, this Norwegian label has brought us several dreamily eerie (or eerily dreamy?) discs by the likes of Elegi, Gultskra Artikler, and (highlighted just a few lists ago) the latest from Jasper TX. Now, Polish electro-acoustic composer Michal Jacaszek makes his Miasmah debut. His rustling electronics are melded with classical strings (cello and violin played by Ania Smiszek-Wesolowska and Stefan Wesolowski) and, crucially, the lovely vocals of Maja Sieminska, which seem inspired by the liturgical chant of medieval 'early music'.
It's all quite intimately lonesome, and somber, and very beautiful. Sieminska's ghostly, gossamer singing sighs amidst those mournful chamber strings, humming glitch and crackling drone, and occasional electronic "beats" that sound more like drops of water, slowly dripping from stalactites... as if you're in some vast dark cavern, Sieminska's siren voice drawing you ever deeper into the catacombs, entranced. One of our new favorite drifting-off-to-sleep records, its many shades of grey so, so very gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Lament"
MPEG Stream: "Walc"

JACKMAN, VIKKI Whispering Pages (Faraway Press) cd 24.00
Andrew Chalk began his Faraway Press imprint less than a decade ago, hand-fabricating some of the loveliest packaging we have seen, created to house some of the loveliest drones we have ever heard. Almost all of the records on Faraway Press have been Chalk's solo records, with a couple of collaborations, and a few albums from Vikki Jackman, who had previously partnered with Chalk on a handful of records, most notably providing the source material for Chalk's Goldfall album. Her first album was Of Beauty Reminiscing, and this one Whispering Pages is the second - both of which enjoy Andrew Chalk's impeccable ear and additional production. Jackman's principle instrument is an antiquated piano, which clearly wears its age in its warbled tones and wooden creaks which Jackman has no interest in disguising. Her compositions are gossamer at best, with gently plinked clusters of notes leaving little more than impressionist marks. Where her previous outing took many of its Spartan cues from Erik Satie, Whispering Pages enjoys a greater amount of additional treatments: field recordings, drone fabrication, and even some digital pixel smear. Throughout the album, Jackman's soft focus piano flickers across shadowy rumbles, which while somber and nocturnal are never oppressively blackened. The bits of digital splutter which dot the drift and drone are a bit unusual from anything that Andrew Chalk touches, but it certainly does not detract from the delicate drama of this album. Think Tim Hecker judiciously remixing Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon. Be warned however, Whispering Pages is strictly limited to 300 copies.
MPEG Stream: "The Softest Blue"
MPEG Stream: "Never A Wave"
MPEG Stream: "A Summer Interlude"

JESU Why Are We Not Perfect (Hydra Head) cd ep 12.98
Not a brand new Jesu record, instead, this ep collects the three tracks from Jesu's split lp with Eluvium from last year, and adds two alternate versions to flesh it out a bit. Folks who missed out on that now out of print 12", or those amongst you who remain turntableless, will for sure want to pick this up, and Jesu fanatics, might just find this worth it for the two extra alternate takes. First the songs proper:
Three new songs from Jesu, and as if we didn't already see Broadrick and Co. heading in this direction, they've almost entirely jettisoned the heaviness, in favor of a blissy new wave-y drift. Really! No massive sludge, no blissed out crunch, in fact, most of this sounds like Jesu doing the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, all drift and croon and no crunch and pummel, but it's really nice, and pretty, and still suitably Jesu-like. Imagine Simple Minds or the Cure but raised on Slowdive and Chapterhouse and Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine, doing the theme song for Sixteen Candles 2008 (which if our calculations are correct would be more like Forty Candles). The first song would be a massive hit, sort of melancholy and romantic, dark and dreamy, but still sort of catchy and hopeful, like sunbeams barely making it through grey storm clouds. The final track sounds like it could be from that last scene in Sixteen Candles 2008, the one where the boy and the girl finally make it to the dance after all of the crazy mishaps and misunderstandings and are finally sharing that slow dance... lugubrious and fuzzy, and soft focus and so great actually. It's weird, and a bit unexpected, but as much as we love the glacial crush of past Jesu discs, this new-wave-y drift really suits them, which is a good thing, since they seem to be heading even more and more in that direction with each new release.
The two extra tracks are definitely not -drastically- different, but different enough certainly to make them worth having. "Farewell" gets even more washed out, the whole thing muted and over saturated, the chugging guitars, disembodied and more textural than heavy, the whole song suffused with chiming harmonics and sun dappled soaring bittersweet melodies. "Why Are We Not Perfect", the above mentioned Sixteen Candles 2008 closer, hews closely to the original, the change more in timbre and texture than anything, the vocals still weary and woozy, the beat a loping skittery shuffle, surrounded by shimmering clouds of effervescent streaks of warm buzz, swirls of backwards melody, all whirling softly and dreamily.
Beautifully packaged in a super thick oversized Japanese style mini lp cd jacket, with a thick printed inner sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Farewell"
MPEG Stream: "Why Are We Not Perfect"

KHOLD Hundre Ar Gammal (Candlelight) cd 12.98
We're huge fans of Norwegian black metallers Khold, who we've described in the past as a black metal Nirvana, which while perhaps simplifying it a bit too much, does essentially get at the root of their sound. The weird thing is we thought Khold were dead and gone. Before Khold were Khold, they were an equally kick ass, but sonically quite different outfit called Tulus. After several records Tulus got an image overhaul as well as a sonic one, and become Khold, their new sound much more, hence the black metal Nirvana reference, and their look, well as we've mentioned in past reviews, probably the coolest looking frontman we've seen, wearing some sort of black furry skirt, a black turtleneck, then face painted black just up to his nose, so it looks like some black entity is creeping up his body, the top half of his bald head painted white. The effect is quite striking. Anyway, we reviewed the most recent Tulus record a while back, assuming Khold were on hold, but it seems both bands can exist simultaneously, all the better for us!!
So Khold is back, and their sound is pretty similar, the riffs simple and almost groovy, the tempos a slow pounding chug for the most part, barring the occasional almost blast, the vocals a raspy howl, the drums simple and stripped down, the bass a deep throb, in fact the more Khold progress it's hard to say what even makes them black metal anymore beyond their pedigree. This new disc sound almost more punk than metal, some sort of crusty, metallic garage punk, albeit with a wicked huge percussion. The hooks aren't as obvious this time around, which on the one hand is a bit of a bummer, but on the other makes this record sound a lit meaner, and harder, and well, a bit more punk. Although repeated listens have definitely revealed some hidden killer hooks that stick in your head like crazy: the tangled little angular bridge in "Forrykt", the strange melodic almost post-rock-isms of "Rekviem". And weirdly enough the more we listen, the more the vocals start reminding us of Killdozer, who we LOVE. And the bottom line with any metal record, black or otherwise, is that it's all about the riffs, and the riffs here KILL.
This is probably not the kind of record that will appeal to most black metallers, way too groovy and punky, and not enough buzz or blast, but for the rest of you, who might be into some slightly blackened, heavy as fuck, catchy, punky metallic rock, Khold might be right up your alley.
MPEG Stream: "Forrykt"
MPEG Stream: "Hundre Ar Gammal"
MPEG Stream: "Der Kulden Rar"

KISS THE ANUS OF A BLACK CAT Nebulous Dreams (Conspiracy) cd 15.98
The sticker on the new record from longtime aQ faves Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, the project of musician / instrument builder Stef Heeren, compares the band to Current 93, Woven Hand, Richard Youngs and Comus. That's some serious company for sure, and typically we scoff when a band is compared to Comus, but in fact, we too have compared KTAOABC to the mighty Comus, an honor reserved for an elite few. And that comparison still stands, but this time around, it's not so much the urgent pagan folk vibe as the overall misanthropic feel, the new Kiss The Anus is the least song oriented, the most abstract, definitely the most doomy, with long stretches of thick droning noise, simple pounding drum plod, the vocals in most cases seem like an afterthought, just another layer of sound. The Woven Hand vibe is much more pronounced, but we also hear plenty of Codeine, some Skepticism, even some Earth and SUNNO))). This might be the record that turns a whole new crowd onto the freaked out apocalyptic doomfolk of Kiss The Anus.
The opening track is the perfect example. For nearly half of its 15 minutes, the track plays out like a doomier Sunroof!, a squall of high end skree, upper register tones, wailing and squealing, weirdly harmonious and soothing, a massive trancelike ur-drone underpinned by a drifting languorous bassline, and then the drums come in, simple and slow, powerful and subtly propulsive, It's like Birchville Cat Motel covering Codeine, until the high end fades out, leaving just the bass and drums, to slither along into the second half, where the vocals come in, a dead ringer for Current 93's David Tibet, offering up a haunting invocation, over a minimal doom drift, that is soon joined by piano, a second vocal, and builds to a bit of a dramatic climax before drifting off.
The second track begins as another strange doomdrone guitar workout, at least in the beginning, a moaning scraping landscape of low end swoops and drones and rumbles, atop which tribal percussion clatters restlessly, sounding not unlike Finnish forest folk Avarus, before slipping into a deep, synthy minimal drone, long wheezing tones, an ominous minorkey melody, accordion and pump organ beneath passionate vocals that soar dramatically, gorgeous and intense, and weirdly minimal and trancelike, and again, the Woven Hand vibe is uncanny.
The record finishes with the shortest, and least abstract, track of the bunch, but also maybe the best, and most Comus-y, simple fingerpicked acoustic guitars, plaintive vocals, reverby piano, all lowkey, offering up a deep shimmery counterpoint to the main melody, peppered with brief sort-of-choruses, with urgently strummed steep string guitar, haunting falsetto harmonies, subtle effects, strange ethereal production, the whole thing pagan and ritualistic, but still folky and lovely, super moving and powerful, a gorgeous bit of dark apocalyptic dream folk for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Between Skylla And Charybdis"
MPEG Stream: "Dyptich"

KISS THE ANUS OF A BLACK CAT Nebulous Dreams (Conspiracy) lp 15.98
The sticker on the new record from longtime aQ faves Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, the project of musician / instrument builder Stef Heeren, compares the band to Current 93, Woven Hand, Richard Youngs and Comus. That's some serious company for sure, and typically we scoff when a band is compared to Comus, but in fact, we too have compared KTAOABC to the mighty Comus, an honor reserved for an elite few. And that comparison still stands, but this time around, it's not so much the urgent pagan folk vibe as the overall misanthropic feel, the new Kiss The Anus is the least song oriented, the most abstract, definitely the most doomy, with long stretches of thick droning noise, simple pounding drum plod, the vocals in most cases seem like an afterthought, just another layer of sound. The Woven Hand vibe is much more pronounced, but we also hear plenty of Codeine, some Skepticism, even some Earth and SUNNO))). This might be the record that turns a whole new crowd onto the freaked out apocalyptic doomfolk of Kiss The Anus.
The opening track is the perfect example. For nearly half of its 15 minutes, the track plays out like a doomier Sunroof!, a squall of high end skree, upper register tones, wailing and squealing, weirdly harmonious and soothing, a massive trancelike ur-drone underpinned by a drifting languorous bassline, and then the drums come in, simple and slow, powerful and subtly propulsive, It's like Birchville Cat Motel covering Codeine, until the high end fades out, leaving just the bass and drums, to slither along into the second half, where the vocals come in, a dead ringer for Current 93's David Tibet, offering up a haunting invocation, over a minimal doom drift, that is soon joined by piano, a second vocal, and builds to a bit of a dramatic climax before drifting off.
The second track begins as another strange doomdrone guitar workout, at least in the beginning, a moaning scraping landscape of low end swoops and drones and rumbles, atop which tribal percussion clatters restlessly, sounding not unlike Finnish forest folk Avarus, before slipping into a deep, synthy minimal drone, long wheezing tones, an ominous minorkey melody, accordion and pump organ beneath passionate vocals that soar dramatically, gorgeous and intense, and weirdly minimal and trancelike, and again, the Woven Hand vibe is uncanny.
The record finishes with the shortest, and least abstract, track of the bunch, but also maybe the best, and most Comus-y, simple fingerpicked acoustic guitars, plaintive vocals, reverby piano, all lowkey, offering up a deep shimmery counterpoint to the main melody, peppered with brief sort-of-choruses, with urgently strummed steep string guitar, haunting falsetto harmonies, subtle effects, strange ethereal production, the whole thing pagan and ritualistic, but still folky and lovely, super moving and powerful, a gorgeous bit of dark apocalyptic dream folk for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Between Skylla And Charybdis"
MPEG Stream: "Dyptich"

LASCOWIEC Asgard Mysteries (Dark Hidden Productions) cd 13.98
We've been meaning to review something from this SF duo for a while now, the mysteriously monickered Z.V.H. and V.J.C, who make up the equally mysterious Lascoviec (formerly Angkor Vat). But their demos disappeared before we had the chance, and we've yet to receive the forthcoming split with Hungarian black metal masters Marblebog, but thankfully, Dark Hidden Productions has compiled their first two demos, Gesamkunstwerk and Gunshots Ring Out Over Vinland Streets, both originally released in 2006, onto one cd, and added a few bonus tracks to sweeten the deal.
Lascoviec traffic in droning, hypnotic, trance like black metal buzz, the guitars long washed out streaks, the vocals a distorted croak, often sounding like another layer of static, the melodies are melancholy and sorrowful, some tracks have programmed drums, pounding away machine like under a buzzy blurry blanket of epic majestic chordal whir, others are harsh and chaotic, with the drums lost int he mix, leaving just a thick undulating sheet of acid riffing and tortured vokills. There are plenty of clean guitars, and tranquil folky interludes, but just as many grinding ultra raw blackened dirges, the guitars thick and viscous, the vocals more of a animalistic hiss, the drums a buried throb, here and there dreamy washes of synth surface, but far from being tranquil, they're fuzzy and distorted, and slightly ominous, with a definite Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck vibe. Elsewhere the band craft weird sort of new wave sounding reverbed guitar jam, but still subtly creepy and haunting. Swirls of strings build ominous tension before exploding into super sharp jagged shards of weirdly blown out clean guitar riffing over relentless blastbeats.
And that's sort of what's so amazing about these guys, their sound varies so dramatically, from record to record, but even from song to song, sort of like the EEE stuff, the texture and the production are as critical as the songs and the riff, some are muted and murky and bassy and lo fi, others are sharp and angular, the guitars sonically are all over the place, sometimes soft and subtle, sometimes downtuned and sludgy, sometimes buzzy and brittle, the drums more often than not are buried WAY down in the mix, but that just makes the songs sound freer, as if they could fall apart or drift away at any moment.
Grim and gorgeous, twisted and intense, dramatic and a bit fucked up, long sheets of buzzed out bliss butted up against short sharp raw blasts of true blurred blackness, often getting all tangled up within the same song. What's not to like, this is some seriously amazing shit. Buzzy and black enough for the grimmest of warriors, but tripped out enough for folks into freaky outsider blackness.
Fair warning: Lasoviec are on Dark Hidden Productions, a label with dubious political leanings, and with definite ties to the Pagan Front, the hub for all things NSBM, aka National Socialist Black Metal. Although the band seem to be more concerned with themes cosmic and spiritual, nature and mythology, there are definite racist implications, the link is undeniable, so regardless of the band's stance, the label's is clear, and thus, another instance where the listener has to decide if the music trumps the possible unpleasant politics.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "Borghild Darkened"
MPEG Stream: "Outro"

LUCKY DRAGONS Dream Island Laughing Language (Marriage) cd 17.98
You are more likely to find Lucky Dragons performing in a small gallery or someone's living room or on an enchanted island then you are a conventional rock club or bar. Convention doesn't seem to be something Luke Fischbeck or Sarah Rara care much for and their music and vivid imagination is all the better for it. While this is a record that brings together so many ideas and influences it's strength is in how seamless and succinctly they do so. Opening with a dreamy snippet that recalls a daydream Boards Of Canada moment, the record then finds it's way into captivating and repetitive percussion that sounds like a Konono No.1 record interpreted by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. They have a very special ability to travel through both intense and wandering states with equal power and grace. It's amazing that they've made a record that can sound like the most relentless snake charmer recording one moment, a hip-hop inspired pulsating beat next, an ambient interlude that could be part of a Grouper record somewhere else but also a germinal techno jam you never want to end. While bringing in a wide range of styles and influences is not something so new, making a totally cohesive, pleasurable and transcendent album with all those influences is much more rare and with Dream Island Laughing Language, Lucky Dragons have done just that! Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Morning Ritual"
MPEG Stream: "Mirror Friends"
MPEG Stream: "Starter Culture"
MPEG Stream: "Desert Rose"

MACHINEFABRIEK & STEPHEN VITIELLO Box Music (12K) cd 14.98
Another new Machinefabriek, this one a collaboration with American musician, Stephen Vitiello, and this is a record where the concept is so genius, the music would be hard pressed to live up to the expectations. For this collaboration, with Machinefabriek in the Netherlands and Vitiello in the US, instead of sending files back and forth as is typical with long distance projects, the duo came up with a clever idea. Each picked a handful of objects, and sent the objects to the other with instructions to use nothing but those objects to craft a piece of music. Which seems simple enough until you see the list of items: bells, book, tin foil, buttons, crackle box (?), thumb piano, field recordings, rocks, speakers, broken record and cassettes. Each of them created two songs on their own, and would team up for a final piece using another box, full of even less obviously musical items, which we'll discuss in a second.
First, the two Machinefabriek pieces, number one, using just bells and tin foil and buttons, Machinefabriek, aka Rutger Zuydervelt, managed to craft a piece not all that different than stuff he's done in the past, bells being the main sound it seems, sometimes recognizable, other times blurred into warm fuzzy tones, super minimal, by the end the tones seem to have blossomed, expanded, the notes deep and resonant, the bells a distant shimmer. For his second piece, Zuydervelt, using field recordings rocks and speakers, crafted a very Jewelled Antler sounding soundscape of staticky crackle, muted scrape, distant hum, all very rough and raw, but partway through they transform into something much more clinical and cold, the field recordings taking center stage, an intense buzz, almost felt more than heard, bits of high end squiggle, distant voices, all over a deep dark shimmering whir. Quite nice. Like a more musical Ryoji Ikeda during the second half.
The first of Vitiello's pieces, using just a crackle box whatever that is and a thumb piano, is all sine waves and dog whistle tones, crackle and buzz, clipped clicks and processed static, the thumb piano, only audible now and again way off in the background, a mournful almost melody, drifting in a field of glitch and crackle. Vitiello's second track, utilizing broken record and cassettes (seems like he got the easier part of the bargain, as most of his items were sound oriented or sound makers), is a gorgeously blurred and woozy field of electronically altered voices and snippets of music, bits of crackle and pop, skipping looped fragments, all smeared into what sounds like fractured short wave broadcasts, chunks of glitchy buzz, muted melodic whirs, strange effects, by now I think we can safely assume that the objects sent weren't the only items used, as there seems to be much processing and loads of effects. Still gorgeous and abstract, but would have been neat too to see what these two guys could have done without a computer and all those effects. But it's a good thing, they were allowed to use effects and computers and things, cuz not sure what the last track would sound like without em, considering the objects for the final track, the collaboration, are chocolate sprinkles, tape, egg cutter, rice and a plastic bag. Listening to it now, hard to believe even with all that technology at their disposal, that these guys could conjure up something so musical, but they did, and it's fantastic, deep resonant tones, disembodied voices, shimmering chimes, deep swells of low end, plenty of crinkle and crackle and static, but all very warm, and haunting, dark and mysterious and most surprising of all, melodic. Easily the prettiest song on the disc. But now matter how hard we listen, we just can't seem to hear the chocolate sprinkles...
MPEG Stream: STEPHEN VITIELLO "Broken Record, Cassette"
MPEG Stream: MACHINEFABRIEK & STEPHEN VITIELLO "Chocolate Sprinkles, Tape, Egg Cutter, Rice, Plastic Bag"

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

MAYER, NATHANIEL Why Don't You Give It To Me? (Alive) cd 15.98
Damn. Not only was this here disc cooked up by a badass, totally STONED sounding R&B infused greasy garage rock n' roll band from Deeeetroit, featuring members of heavy hitters like the Black Keys (guitarist Dan Auerbach), Dirtbombs (bassist Troy Gregory), Outrageous Cherry (guitarist Matthew Smith), and the Sights (drummer Dave Shettler) but check the top billing - there's a bona fide, veteran black soul singer fronting this combo, maybe you've heard of him, maybe you haven't, but he's the real deal, Nathaniel Mayer. He had his first hit single, "Village Of Love", in the Top 40 back in 1962. We've had (but haven't yet reviewed) a pretty cool anthology of his '60s stuff, I Want Love And Affection, Not The House Of Correction. But we that certainly didn't prepare us for this. Don't call it a comeback, this is something else altogether. Ol' Mayer didn't sound like this back in the sixties. We mean, yeah, this IS retro, but also totally something that could only be made now, the unlikely meeting of a versatile, veteran voice and young 'uns who grew up worshipping the Stoogesy rock action, who bring a fresh dose of fuzz and loose, laidback druggy psych to the proceedings that's pretty special.
Even more special though, is Mayer's marvelously ragged, hoarse voice. Weary and burnished with time - you can hear every one of his 64 years. Yet he's also totally in command of it, butter smooth one moment, croakingly gruff the next, belting out the James Brown style "owwwws!" like he coined the phrase. Yeah, the man can sing. And lyrically, he's all about sex and desire. Beggin' his girl. "Why Don't You Give It To Me?" Sometimes, "Doin' It" (which is a nearly 9-minute, wasted wild wahwah'd jam). In keeping with Mayer's phlegmy voice, the whole album is wrapped in a lo-fi murk, adding to the battered, bluesy, psychedelic mood. One that we might compare to some of the more soulful obscurities on that ol' Chains And Black Exhaust comp. The 1995 solo album by LSD casualty and former Funkadelic, Tawl Ross comes to mind as well.
And we'll remind you ('cause you DO read his site, right?) that this was Julian Cope's Head Heritage Record of the Month back in May. This is actually a 2007 release (hey better to list it now than never) so maybe there'll be another one soon from Mayer and the boys, but we don't really know, since it was reported Mayer suffered a stroke earlier this year. Hope he's doing ok.
MPEG Stream: "White Dress"
MPEG Stream: "Everywhere"

METAL ROUGE Three For Malachi Ritscher (Root Strata) cd 12.98
Metal Rouge is an unlikely combo, as the two members live half way round the world from each other making music that does not lend itself to digital filesharing. Andrew Scott is the New Zealand citizen in the group, having worked with Nigel Wright in the past as Nest; and the Californian of Metal Rouge is Helga Fassonaki, who seems to be the globetrotter of the two with huge amount of exhibitions and performances on both sides of the Pacific. Andrew and Helga declare their intentions as being "concerned primarily with pure thoughtless formless now and its expression through sound" or rather, they improvise toward the drone supreme with plenty of detours along the way. Andrew's tools are the pedal steel and guitar pedals; and Helga's instrument of choice is a Persian dulcimer jacked up through plenty of FX pedals as well. After a handful of tapes and cd-rs, Three For Malachi Ritscher appears to be their first proper cd, with kudos going to ever impressive curatorial hands at Root Strata.
From a strictly aesthetic / geographic axis, Metal Rouge is the perfect sum of its parts, situating all of the free-noise / freak-folk aspects that we love about both LA's Not Not Fun scene and NZ's PseudoArcana label. So, through the psychedelic damage of their pedal steel and dulcimer duets, Metal Rouge weaves a post-krautrock / Dream Syndicate atmosphere of thumbing drones built out of arcing layers of spectral tones and spidery pluckings. Tones glisten and vibrate with that unsettled narcotic feel of Pocahaunted's disembodied vocals and drug-drone mantras, but these are WAY better. The two also have clearly been listening to Matthew Bower as there's a few cut-the-power conclusions to the soaring heights of their drone stupor, leaving us hanging in a dizzying limbo at the moment of silence. Very nicely done.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Anger, Awaken"
MPEG Stream: "Love, Awaken"
MPEG Stream: "Sorrow, Awaken"

MIJ Yodeling Astrologer (ESP-Disk) cd 14.98
Just when we thought all the weird dusty corners of strange and magical sounds had been uncovered from the vast archives of the ESP label, something new to us, shiny and unbelievably wonderful gets unearthed. MIJ is the strangely cryptic moniker of Jim Holberg, (or on second thought not so strange as we just realized, it's his name spelled backwards!) who was discovered in Washington Square Park on a hot summer day in 1969 yodeling and playing guitar by ESP label head Bernard Stoller. But this wasn't any country western or Swiss Alps yodeling, this was some freaked out high-keening spacey Martian kind of yodeling. The kind that cuts through time and space and penetrates your subconscious. Blown away by his street performance, Stoller invited Holberg into the studio the next day to record a full length album and in just three hours with an array of echo effects and a patient and agreeable engineer, the Yodeling Astrologer was born. Apparently Holberg had explained to Stoller that after being injured in an auto-accident that had fractured his skull and impaired his hearing, his perceptions became altered and he began to do things musically that he couldn't comprehend but they somehow worked, and indeed they do. With both voice and guitar reverbed to the nth degree, this is some Donovan meet Dreamies meets Curt Boetchner of The Millenium psych-folk magic. So awesome and beautiful, weird and dreamy, with well-written songs and just enough freaky yodeling that won't scare off the folks who might be put off by the concept of, well, freaky yodeling. We've been playing this nearly everyday, it's so good. So Highly Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Two Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Grok (Martian Love Call)"
MPEG Stream: "Never Be Free"

NASCIMENTO, MILTON Clube Da Esquina (Wolrd Pacific) cd 15.98
This is the one! If you've ever heard someone playing Milton Nascimento, some sweet soothing sounds dazzling your ears, chances are it was this record. As many of us can attest to, just picking out any Milton Nascimento record can be a bit risky as his entire back catalog is quite varied and there are some not so hot moments, but all sins are forgiven with this record, an album that we dare say ranks as one of our favorite albums of all time!
Clube Da Esquina is a stunning disc of psychedelic pop that manage to be as dreamy and pastoral as it is tropical and full of life. Bursting with warmth and rich color this is a record we will never get sick of. It's not psychedelic in an obvious look-how-weird-I-can-be way, but instead it's about a slow melting lull, soft swirls and subtle shifts in sounds. One moment it's the dreamiest most lovely song you've ever heard and the next the warm sun is shining and all you want to be doing is running and twirling in the sand. As lush, gorgeous and dynamic as anything Caetano Veloso has created. We can't praise this record enough! Lo Borges is the big unsung hero of this album, not even 20 years old when it was made he helped with many of the arrangements, sang and wrote many of the songs...
Truly a perfect album from start to finish, an hour long trip filled with sunshine and surprise, melody and sophisticated glory. It's no surprise that songs on this record have been covered by the likes of Savath & Savalas and Tortoise and Bonnie Prince Billy. As these are songs that will always sound so alive and of the moment. Undoubtedly it's a record that's had a huge impact on everyone from Devendra Banhart, The Shins, Eden Express, Beck, Brightblack, Vetiver, Jose Gonzales, etc. And a must have for anyone who loves folks like Veloso, Gerard Manset, Eduardo Mateo, Congregacion, Alceu Valenca, Serge Gainsbourg, The Beatles, Melting Glass Box, Magical Power Mako, etc. No matter how obscure or mainstream your tastes tend to be, this is one of those records whose beauty and genius just can't be denied. We know we're always telling you about so many amazing records that you really just can't live without, but this time (again!) we really mean it!
MPEG Stream: "Saídas E Bandeiras Nş 2"
MPEG Stream: "Cravo E Canela"
MPEG Stream: "Lilia"
MPEG Stream: "O Trem Azul"

NOISM +/- (Crucial Blast) cd 13.98
So here's the deal. Nothing is heavy enough for you. Nothing is fast or furious enough. Hardcore techno, drill and bass, none of those offer up the beats you need, none of that stuff kicks your ass. And grindcore, no matter how heavy or fucked up or insane, is just not brutal enough. Sound about right?
Have you been loving the Drumcorps shit, did you go nuts for that Drum:Machinegun comp? A damaged and delirious hybrid of metal and spastic blown out beats what you're craving? Well have we got the thing for you.
Japanese duo Noism. Two dudes, a guitar and a drum machine. And all hyperbole aside, this is probably the most fucked up, furious and frenzied grindmetaltechnowhatthefuck you will ever hear. Imagine Drumcorps remixing Orthrelm, but then the results tossed in a computer, chopped up and spit out double time. Or along those same lines, take your favorite grind records and spastic drill and bass 12"s, throw those in that same computer, smash them to bits (and bytes) and then compress them all into 21 minutes of face melting tech(no) metal fury. There are no songs really, well there are, but they, super convoluted fucked up alien 'songs', no 'arrangements' (see: songs). Just lighting speed riffing, squiggly guitars all over the place, blasting 300+ bpm beats that stutter and skip and skitter, all tangled up into a blurred grinding metallic beat heavy onslaught, it sort of sounds like free jazz played by a malfunctioning drummachine and a robot guitarist set on shred. Like if you had some computer that was meant to emulate the music of any performer, and you entered Masayuki, Takayanagi and Mick Barr and Venetian Snares, and it overloaded the program and cause the mainframe to fail, but somehow it still spit out a result, it might sound a little like this, Which Is, as far as our iron ears are concerned, a very very good thing. Recommended, if you think you can handle it...
MPEG Stream: "Man-I-C"
MPEG Stream: "DTM"
MPEG Stream: "Zaporojets"
MPEG Stream: "Death-Meta-Logic"

NORTH SEA, THE Gated Community (Root Strata) cd-r 8.98
Digitalis label boss Brad Rose returns with yet another release as The North Sea. If you've heard any previous releases, well, it may not matter. For this release, Rose crafts an almost entirely different experience. In the past, tracks were more of the field recording meets post-Fahey variety. Here, there are two long form drone tracks, much darker and more bleak than before. Hardly an instrument can be discerned within this gorgeous, blackened trancescape. This might be what it would sound like if Throbbing Gristle teamed up with Windy & Carl. We love coming up with ridiculous genre titles, so let's just call this post-industrial folk drone. And to be honest, there's even a good amount of ambient blackness here. As the effects pull the listener to and fro, you can never tell if you're somewhere in space or lost in an isolated peyote forest. Tense, heavy, paranoid, recommended.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Glowering"

PERHACS, LINDA Parallelograms (Sunbeam) cd 17.98
The psychedelic folk fans here at Aquarius (all of us!) are overjoyed that this brilliant obscurity is back in print, again - this time on the UK's Sunbeam label, with a couple more bonus tracks than even the previous expanded edition on Wild Places had!
Originally released in 1970, Linda Perhac's Parallelograms is a now-not-so-lost gem of lovely, delicate folk-psych songs in line with Joni Mitchell or Heart's folkier moments, gone waaay underground and mystic. For a long long time, although collectors held the record in great esteem, no-one knew anything about Ms. Perhacs at all. When the Wild Places label first reissued the album on cd some years ago they had to do it from a mint vinyl copy of the record. Later, they miraculously managed to track down Linda and got their hands on reel to reels dubbed from the original masters, along with a passel of bonus tracks - half a dozen of 'em, demos and alternate takes, which they included on their second cd edition. Along with that good stuff, some mysteries were answered. It turns out that, for instance, the popularly held belief that Perhacs was from Hawaii was incorrect. But she lived in the Pacific Northwest and California, so that's not too far off, really... They also confirmed that this was indeed her only recording. But if you're only going to make one record, having it be as good as Parallelograms is a neat trick. Her gossamer vocals encounter tripped-out electronic effects and gentle folk-rock backing, transporting the listener to a place not usually or easily reached in this day and age. There's a track or two that gets strangely coffeehouse beatnik on us, and sound a bit dated, but most of this is truely ethereal hippie folk-psych beauty unparallelled. Really nice, and recommended.
This new Sunbeam version ups the ante on the out of print Wild Places one. They've added two more bonus tracks: a 2005 interview on the BBC, and the previously unreleased "I Would Rather Love". It also includes liner notes from Perhacs herself. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Parallelograms"
MPEG Stream: "Hey, Who Really Cares?"
MPEG Stream: "Moons And Cattails"

PESTE NOIRE K.P.N. / La Sanie Des Siecles - Panegyrique De La Degenerescence (Transcendental Creations / De Profundis / Rosenkrantz) cd 13.98
A while back, it seemed like everyone, ourselves included, was totally obsessed with a French black metaller called Neige. Doesn't ring a bell? How about his shoegazey post-black metal outfit Alcest? Or his fuzzy black metal gone bliss pop combo Amesoeurs? His fracutured new wave black metal combo Valfunde? Or even his more 'traditional' black metal outfit Peste Noire? Yep, you got it now.
Been a while since we've heard from Neige, since then, he joined another 'dark metal' band, and he's also joined long time aQ faves Forgotten Woods. While that's pretty exciting, and we're always up for hearing more of what Neige has to offer. We also sort of wish he'd just cut down on the various side projects, so we wouldn't have to wait nearly as long for a new Amesoeurs, Alcest or Peste Noire record.
But while we wait patiently, we can now revisit the first Peste Noire full length, with the unwieldy title La Sanie Des Siecles - Panegyrique De La Degenerescence, finally reissued! We've been dying to list this, but until now we haven't been able to get enough. Above we call Peste Noire Neige's more traditional black metal group, but that designation is really relative, as the music of Peste Noire, while being black and buzzy and heavy and grim, is also totally tweaked, fractured and fucked up, rife with all manner of whatthefuck, from gorgeous sweeping melodies, to strange samples, so completely confusional arrangements, to bits of liturgical music mixed into the buzz, to some serious pop tendencies. But somehow it all works. That is if by works, you mean, constitutes one of the most awesomely fucked up lo-fi melodic outsider black metal records ever!! We raved about the latest Peste Noire a while back, the awesomely titled FolkFuck Folie, and everything we loved about that record (also just reissued) is present here as well, but if anything, all of those things are just, well, MORE. More fucked up, more freaked out, more melodic, more lo-fi.
Just take the opener, "Nous Sommes Fanes", begins with some record crackle, before the band lurches into a weird drunken waltz, sounding more like the Reeks And The Wrecks than any black metal. The guitars and drums swing woozily, the drums and cymbals super blown out, over the top, an ultra distorted guitar spins a web of damaged leads, before slipping into a strange moody post rocky drift, replete with big boomy reverb drenched chords. But then the second track kicks in, and we're back in more recognizable black metal territory, and even though it's buzzy and black, it is incredibly melodic, poppy almost, the melodies soaring and epic, the track is peppered with blasts of blasting grimness for sure, a bit of a crusty punk vibe all tangled up with the buzzing blackness, but even when the song is blasting blackly, close listening reveals all manner of melodic weirdness going on beneath the surface, and it doesn't stay below the surface for long, as the song shifts into loping minor key almost-dirge, before finish up how it started, with that strangely emotional super melodic soaring blackened buzz.
And so it goes, the band lurching from midtempo lope to roaring furious blast, to almost doomy plod, all strangely muddy and murky, the various parts twisted and gnarled into something totally unique. The guitars are incredibly varied, going from Ved Buens Ende like Slint-worship, to filthy Darkthrone-d crunch, to gorgeous almost folky finger picking, some serious moments of Opeth-y flutter peppered amidst the crusty blackness.
The second to last track "Dueil Angoisseus (Christine De Pisan, 1362-1431)" is all gorgeously bleak and buzzy, midtempo and melancholy, but then draped over the top is super clean, classical guitar, way up in the mix, that gives the track the strangest vibe, makes it sound strangely pretty. Finally, the disc finishes off with "Des Medecins Malades Et Des Saints Sequestres", which begins with a tangle of effects drenched hammer-ons, unfurling a haunting, off kilter melody, the drums a distant lo-fi pound, when the song kicks in, it's almost eighties metal, albeit filtered through a grim French black metal lens, but the riffing, so classic, and so cool sounding when cloaked in a filthy production and that demonic rasp. But this song too, shifts into some strange other space, and is suddenly
infused with what sounds like a wall of whirring organs, those hammer-ons return, and the song is some strange minor key doom pop epic, that flits back and forth between that eighties riffing, super distorted, and that sprawling metallic poppiness, before transforming into a blaze of super effected metallic chug, finishing off with a strange super distorted almost-jig (!), the drums huge and pounding, while the guitar plucks out a strange distorted melody, much like the opening track.
Needless to say (funny how we always say that after SAYing it for several thousand words), this is one of our favorite black metal records ever. Fucked up, but black and heavy, poppy and hook filled, but still grim and buzzy, if you loved FolkFuck Folie, you'll love this, if you dig Amesoeurs and Alcest but want to hear that sound dipped in filth and painted black, well then this will definitely do the trick. If this was brand new and had just come out, it would be, without a doubt, one of our records of the year (not just black metal either), but as it is, this is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL AND RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Nous Sommes Fanes"
MPEG Stream: "Le Mort Joyeux "
MPEG Stream: "Laus Tibi Domine"

POCAHAUNTED Island Diamonds (Not Not Fun) cd 14.98
Considering the buzz surrounding this LA drone duo, it's really surprising that this is the first Pocahaunted release we've actually listed! Not to mention the tons of cd-rs, tapes and lps these gals have put out already! (Well maybe not so surprising - we did write a review of their Peyote Road LP on Woodsist, but never listed it 'cause we ran out and it went out of print too fast). In any case, we're super happy to include this genre bending slab of stoned drone-dub on this week's list.
Island Diamonds, a reissue of a sold-out lp released on Arbor (see?) with added bonus tracks, is the latest album from these psychedelic sorceresses. And with the help of producer (and experimental electronica artist in his own right) Bobb Bruno from Polar Goldie Cats, they've really cooked up something special here. Dueling swells of wordless vocal hypnosis, all under the wing of brooding, trance inducing drones. We're reminded of Valet, but with dubby drum machine beats. The perfect balance between pop aesthetics, DIY urban groove and ominous, obscure psychedelia. Definitely new territory for these ladies, and for us. The cd comes beautifully packaged in a colorful digipak adorned with pictures of the band and the usual Not Not Fun collagey goodness. Pressed in an edition of 500, you know these will be gone in no time. Oh, and in addition to the 2 bonus tracks, there's also a music video you can play on your computer, that looks very much like it was made on someone's computer too.
MPEG Stream: "Ghetto Ballet"
MPEG Stream: "Riddim Queen"

PROSCRIPTOR 726 (Tarot Productions) cd 14.98
The first thing you notice about 726, the newest record from Proscriptor, drummer for Texan black metal alchemists Absu, is the cover. An homage to the classic Aphrodite's Child record 666, the numbers in a black square set on a field of red, the text in yellow. Aphrodite's Child for those who don't know was a Greek prog act, featuring a young Vangelis long before he would go on to become famous for his many film scores (Chariots Of Fire, Bladerunner, etc).
So what is a black metal drummer doing paying tribute to a strange, apocalyptic prog-psych record from the seventies? Well, loyal readers of the aQ list, will no doubt already know that Proscriptor is no normal drummer, and Absu was no normal black metal band. All of Proscriptor's solo recordings are far from black metal, more like some strange soundtrack music, fusing electronic music, New Age, dark ambience, but twisted and warped, either Proscriptor is just a really strange guy, or he has an insane sense of humor, or both. On past records he's covered The Flock Of Seagulls "I Ran", he's covered "Devil Woman", the Tubes "White Punks On Dope, and, wait a minute, an Aphrodite's Child song. It all starts to make sense now. Well, as much as anything having to do with Proscriptor can make sense.
So what exactly does 726 sound like? Past records have dabbled in crunchy Southern Rock with black metal vocals, strange female vocal-ed rock jams, haunting dronescapes, damaged new wave, but this is none of those. In fact we're a bit hard pressed to explain exactly what this is. The homage cover art is  the first hint. The record starts off with a sort of cheesy, New Age, eighties style jam, all processed drums, big reverby production, strange electronics, tangled distorted guitars, and washed out Steely Dan style keyboards. It sounds a bit like the end credit music for some eighties straight to video movie. The next track finds Proscriptor channeling Tangerine Dream, offering up a warm whirring dronescape, thick with effects and soft synths, and mysterious percussion, glistening shimmering chimes, very serene and meditative and New Age-y, until about halfway through when the synths get all rhythmic, and the sound again drifts back to some eighties sci-fi thriller, all propulsive synth grooves, and haunting minor key melodies. And so it goes, the rest of the record dabbles in both drawn out drone-y abstract new age, and creepy soundtracky new WAVE, falling somewhere between John Carpenter, Goblin, and yep, Vangelis. Dark and mysterious, creepy and drone-y, New Age-y AND new wave-y. Only the most adventurous Absu fans will dare tread, but folks into any of the above mentioned creatures of the night, or into more modern practitioners of the art a la Zombi, just might dig this a whole lot.
MPEG Stream: "The Germinian Ultimatum"
MPEG Stream: "Liquid Twilight"
MPEG Stream: "Venus Entrapment"
MPEG Stream: "Surfaces"

RODRIGUEZ Cold Fact (Light In The Attic) lp 32.00
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!! Sorry, it's expensive. But also limited to 1000 hand numbered copies, and we think already sold out at the label... Furthermore, it's on 180 gram vinyl, and also comes with a whole bonus 7" with the two tracks from his debut 1967 single, not found on the cd version! So, pretty deluxe. Here's what we said last time 'round when we highlighted that cd reissue also released by Light In The Attic:
Pop quiz! Quick: who's the "street poet" singer with no first name*, son of Mexican immigrants, born and raised in Detroit Michigan, whose debut album from 1970 sounded like a fuzz-soul-psych version of Bob Dylan and/or Donovan, and was an underground hit in South Africa of all places?? Duh, Rodriguez of course. It's about time his inexplicably obscure Cold Fact got the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves. Seriously, after listening to this for the first time, you'll feel like you just heard a bona fide '60s classic, and be amazed you had never heard these songs before. They ought to be all over "oldies" rock radio. It's ridiculous like that. Songs like "Sugar Man" and "I Wonder" seem like they should be fixtures of the baby boomer memory lane hit parade. It's so very of its era, "This Is Not A Song, It's An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues" is certainly a sixties song title, isn't it? Likewise "Rich Folks Hoax", "Hate Street Dialogue", and "Crucify Your Mind"... But, maybe he was just a little too freaky and right on, and (crucially) never got the right sort of record label support to become well known to the Woodstock Nation, though this album had some rather random, surprising success so far off in the Southern Hemisphere, in South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, which Rodriguez himself was unaware of for many years!
If left to his own devices, perhaps Rodriguez would have come off sounding a bit too much like Dylan. But Cold Fact was a "Theo-Coff" production, from the badass Motor City team of Mike Theodore and funk guitarist Dennis Coffey, and they helped accentuate the more underground and urban aspects of Rodriguez's sound. With his hip, Dylanesque poetry set amidst lush orchestration and gritty grooves, Rodriguez's Cold Fact is a super catchy, tripped out slice of street-level, soulful psychedelia, full of drug references and radical political critique. We alluded to "fuzz" above, but on the track "Only Good For Conversation" we mean FUZZ. That track's a stone(d) cold classic when it comes to heavy duty fuzz guitar crunch.
This reish comes in a nice digipack, with cover embossing and a big ol' cd booklet stuffed with text (liner notes, lyrics) and photos. One of the several cd booklet essays explains in part Rodriguez's unexpected appeal in South Africa - apparently, in that repressive society, it was due to the edgy, uncensored nature of his lyrics. "I Wonder", for instance, with its lines about "I wonder how many times you had sex / And I wonder do you know who'll be next" was considered so risque that if you were a teenager and wanted to be cool, you HAD to have this record. Apparently, many folks in South Africa thought of Rodriguez as being a star up there with the Beatles, and when they didn't hear more from him, all sorts of wild rumors spread that he'd died, been accidentally electrocuted, OD'd, or even committed suicide on stage! When, in fact, he simply had no idea how "big" he was in South Africa, and his recording career had stalled out elsewhere after his sophomore album, 1971's Coming From Reality (also soon to be reissued). Turns out he's still alive and well, today, and has actually gone to South African to pay arena (?!) shows in recent years.
In fact, when we've had album in the store before, it was only available on cd as an expensive import - from South Africa! So we're, again, super stoked that Light In The Attic put the effort in to do this long overdue, definitive domestic reissue.
*actually, his first name was Sixto, but he usually just went by Rodriguez.
MPEG Stream: "Sugar Man"
MPEG Stream: "Only Good For Conversation"
MPEG Stream: "Hate Street Dialogue"

SOMBRES FORETS Royaume De Glace (Sepulchral Productions) cd 13.98
Record number two from Canadian black metal depressives Sombres Forets, whose debut, was definitely one of our favorite black metal records of last year. A gorgeous blown out miserablist wash of black buzz that definitely gave other aQ faves like Make A ChangeŠ Kill Yourself, Xasthur and Burzum, a run for their money.
This disc takes that frosty washed out black sound and pushes it even further out, buzzier, fuzzier, more distorted and even more dreamlike. The brief opener sets the stage, thick swirls of keyboards throb and swell, the sound so blown out the notes distort as if burning from within, a sweet sad melody, wreathed in distortion and reverb, that quickly gives way to he record proper, the guitars thick and buzz drenched, churning over a wash of melancholy keyboards, which soar dramatically like a chorus of angels, adding a strange Arvo Part-ish vibe to the proceedings. But even minus those keyboards, the songs here, much like on the last record, are so moody and melancholy, but still super intense and powerful. Some tracks feature acoustic guitar interludes, with the acoustic guitar continuing on into the song proper, winding itself in and around the loping buzz.
The production is strange, at once thick and heavy, but also a bit murky and gauzy, the effect being that the record seems a bit blurred, a little washed out, which only adds to the lonely dreamy quality. Strip away the vokills, and the distortion, and these songs would most likely reveal themselves as heartbreaking minimal folk ballads, or depressive pop gems, but dip them in filth, wrap them in distortion, and run them through with harsh howls, and suddenly, your wallowing in some epic, majestic, depressive blackness. The final track is quite strange as well, all acoustic, a simple strummed minor key progression, peppered with occasional flurries of floor tom, some cymbal shimmer, but for the most part, simple and stripped down and strangely striking.
MPEG Stream: "The Forest"
MPEG Stream: "La Nuit"

STARVING WEIRDOS Spirit Activity (Root Strata) cassette 8.98
Brand new release from Humboldt County's finest sons, the Starving Weirdos. And their very first tape release. LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, we got about 15, so we won't go into too much detail, as SW stuff generally flies out of here anyway, so odds are these will be gone in a flash.
As if to commemorate their first tape, the band offer up a whole new sound. Well not a -new- sound exactly, instead, they take the subtle free jazz filigree that infused many of their other releases and shove it kicking and screaming to center stage. On the opening track, the band unleash some seriously freaky out-jazz, as free and chaotic as it gets, wild squalls of horns, the drums in full on kit-down-the-stairs mode, a swirling whirling dervish of sound. Some seriously off kilter speaker shredding jazz fury for sure. But after that opening salvo, things settle down a bit and get back to a more recognizably ramshackle SW sound, long stretches of abstract percussion, disembodied fractured folk strum, high end shimmer, rumbling industrial drones, moaning minor key melodies, chaotic tangles of soaring strings, plenty of abstract ambience and druggy drone-y floorcore, but with echoes of that opening track surfacing here and there, bits of skronk, woozy horn harmonies, but all deftly woven into the constantly shifting and swirling back drop.
Beautifully packaged, pro pressed and printed red cassettes housed in super thick multi panel offset printed sleeves. And again, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. We have 15 of those. You no doubt no what that means by now...
MPEG Stream: "Days Before Panic"
MPEG Stream: "Van Duzer"

STRIBORG The Foreboding Silence (Displeased) cd 14.98
For once being a grim cult mystery, whose records were practically impossible to find, Striborg has turned into an actual 'band', releasing a record every year, sometimes more than one, guesting on other folks' records, touring with SUNNO))).... you think the glare of the spotlight would have gone to his head, but thankfully, the music of Striborg, aka Sin-Nanna, is as bleak and twisted and fucked up as ever. So fucked up in fact that we are well aware that Striborg is not every metalhead's cup of tea, a quick look at the reviews on the Encyclopedia Metallum website reveals that a whole lot of people don't dig it, or more accurately probably, don't get it.
But as far as we're concerned, what's not to get?! Striborg create truly evocative, lo-fi black metal, that is as idiosyncratic as it is true and grim. The production has remained the same for over a decade, if anything it's gotten progressively more low fidelity and damaged sounding, the music instead of getting tighter and more polished has wandered further and further from traditional black metal tropes, which is precisely why we love it so much. For those new to Striborg, there are 15 or so other reviews on the aQ site that go into great depth, but in brief, Striborg is Sin-Nanna, who lives in the middle of a rainforest in Tasmania, and who crafts some of the most damaged and demented and freaky black metal we've ever heard. Bands like Furze, or Necrofrost, sound like Metallica next to the madness that is Striborg. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much, and this latest, newest Striborg might even, as impossible as it might seem, manage to outweird the preceding 15 or so releases.
Some things have remained the same, the artwork is appropriately abstract, nothing but pictures and drawings of forests, pictures and drawings of Sin-Nanna himself (including a random glamour shot on the back cover where he sort of looks like a high school goth or New Romantic!), pictures of caves, rivers, the sky and the moon, and not a whole lot else, minimal liner notes, but it's the musicŠ
Sin-Nanna implements a new arrangement this time, still leaning toward the loooong songs, but this time they are preceded by or separated by intros and intervals, most a minute or less, haunting keyboard ambience, bird calls and the sounds of the night forest, a strange sample from some film, laughing voices, male and female, melancholy marimba melodies, Bernard Hermann style strings, a child and a woman intoning some sort of incantation, reverb soaked piano, whirring shimmering cinematic drones, mournful horns, tinkling chimes, but as creepy and abstract as those are, they don't even hold a candle to the songs.
And the first proper song on The Foreboding Silence, "A Lonely Walk In A Desolate Cold Pine Forest", really might be the best (and most fucked) Striborg song EVER. Eleven minutes long, the track begins with an impossibly buzzy riff, that literally sounds like a swarm of insects, or a million kazoos, unfurling a chromatic wall of nearly static buzz, that shifts from note to note, creating a lurching jagged melody, over which totally dizzying atonal marimbas pulse and loop, sending the whole thing into a woozy sea sick spiral, the various melodies, far from complimentary, the whole thing sounding like it's gradually growing more dissonant, more out of tune, the drums stumbling in the background, the vocal a harsh shriek, it's so off kilter that with headphones on it will make your head spin. Eventually, the marimbas drop out, leaving the track to plod along doomily, the buzzing riff like the sound of a rainstorm on a tin roof, the song shifts tempos, slipping from plod to pound and back again, eventually locking into a repetitive outro, the drums simple, the guitars locked into a two note loop, punctuated by what sounds like thunder off in the distance, which gives the effect even more of the buzzing guitars becoming the sound of rainfall.
The title track is another tweaked masterpiece, the drums locked into an almost-groove, the guitar still in full insectoid buzz mode, underpinning the spewed demonic vox, and a strange gnarled almost Greg Ginn-ish guitar overdub. The drums are LOUD, way up in the mix, shifting from stumbling blast to relentless double kick, while the guitar buzz swirls and sways and slips back and forth right along with it. The biggest surprise here, besides the opener, is the closer, "Somnambulistic Nightmares Return", a lurching chunk of slow motion doom, with some serious guitar chug, and some simple drum pound, while beneath some sort of super intense reverberating low end drone surfaces and envelops the song, while over the top, some woozy clean guitar drifts in, offering up a mournful, mildly atonal counterpoint, resulting in one of the weirdest and strangely pretty Striborg songs yet.
What else needs to be said? If you have all of the other Striborg records, odds are you're a bit obsessed like us and probably need this one too, if you've yet to take the plunge, The Foreboding Silence is definitely a great place to start, and if you get hooked, or are feeling particularly daring, we have a bunch of other Striborg releases in stock, all twisted genius, all fucked and grim and fantastic, just ask...
MPEG Stream: "A Lonely Walk In A Desolate Cold Pine Forest"
MPEG Stream: "The Foreboding Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Somnambulistic Nightmares Return"

TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS / BEIRUT SLUMP Shut Up and Bleed (Atavistic) cd 16.98
Love her or hate her, Lydia Lunch will make an impression on you. Given her venomous poems, constant invectives, and perpetual bad attitude, it's pretty obvious that Lydia wants you to hate her. While she's not an artist without her charms, she'll probably hate you for loving her. She began a career of transgression and teeth-gnashing in the mid-'70s when she was a runaway teenager slumming around the crappiest parts of NYC and pissing off more people than not. Yet, she managed to sequester enough people to support her in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks - one of the seminal bands who defined No Wave. They were also one of the four bands who appeared on the highly influential No New York compilation, alongside James Chance & The Contortionists, Mars, and DNA. Teenage Jesus only lasted for three years, probably due to the fact that no one could tolerate the musical dictator that was Lydia Lunch. But the music itself probably did a fair share of damage upon the participants as Teenage Jesus produced hyper-abrasive, hyper-condensed songs through militant rhythmic stomps, screechingly atonal slide guitars, and Lydia's sharply barked vocals. James Chance was in fact one of the early members of the band, offering his blood-splattering sax as a suitable duet for Lydia's caterwauling.
While Teenage Jesus never managed a full-album (well, they barely managed to clock in a 20 minute live set!), there have been a number of collections of Teenage Jesus tracks. The 2008 compilation, Shut Up And Bleed, is unique by including tunes from Lydia Lunch's other band at the time Beirut Slump. Some of these tracks had appeared on another Lunch compendium, Hysterie, released way back in 1988, but they've never been on cd. In Beirut Slump, Lydia played the part of the lead guitarist, leaving the vocal rants to Bobby Berkowitz, whose growling and grunts were uncannily similar to those of Michael Gira on the early Swans records. With the dissonant organ stabs, scraped guitar noise, and jackbooted stomping, Beirut Slump must have been one of the unsung templates for Gira and Swans. Even 30 years later, this stuff is damn impressive.
MPEG Stream: TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS "Orphans"
MPEG Stream: TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS "Baby Doll"
MPEG Stream: BEIRUT SLUMP "See Pretty"
MPEG Stream: BEIRUT SLUMP "Case #14"

TEMBO, CHRISSY ZEBBY & NGOZI FAMILY My Ancestors (Hummingbird) cd 24.00
We've been getting all riled up over some hot Afro-rock releases lately, first from those killer Nigerian comps put out by the Strut and Soundway labels and then The Peace's Black Power reissue. But the lo-fi fuzz that's really rocking our world is this gem from Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi family, 1974's My Ancestors. Though included on the Love Peace and Poetry African psych compilation, Chrissy Zebby Tembo may not be so memorable from that because their track was the one instrumental track from My Ancestors, and though it's great, it's not as good as the tracks where Tembo sings. Like an odd hybrid of Malcolm Mooney from Can and Sabbath-era Ozzy Osbourne, Tembo's English delivery over these fuzzed-out groovers is the reason to take notice. Hailing from Zambia, same as The Peace and The Witch (another Afro-rock group we'd like to see get more affordably reissued), Tembo wails over these rhythmically charged but largely western-style rock structures. The best being the Sabbath gone to South Africa "Trouble Maker". In constant rotation, since this first arrived a few weeks ago, we've finally managed to get enough to share with our customers. Don't hesitate, this whole record kills!
MPEG Stream: "My Ancestors"
MPEG Stream: "Trouble Maker"
MPEG Stream: "Feeling Good"

THOU Tyrant (Gilead Media) cd 13.98
Slowly and oh so surely, more sludge oozes out... A couple weeks ago, we highlighted an album, Peasant, by this slow and low (and yet sometimes lovely) sludge-metal outfit from the swamps of Louisiana. Well, we had gotten THIS Thou in first, though, and after leapfrogging it to list the more recent Peasant we want to highlight Tyrant too. That's right, if you liked Peasant, you'll love Tyrant. Gilead Media is responsible for this cd, handsomely packaged in one of those miniature LP style gatefold sleeves, containing music originally released on (now out of print) vinyl last year by One Eye Records, plus two tracks that came as a tour-only bonus cd-r with that LP.
What we said about Peasant goes for its predecessor, too. Thou is ultra-doomic, super-gloomic all right, with crawling distorted riffage and wretched vokillz... they definitely share some DNA with neighboring NOLA sludgefathers Eyehategod, but there's also something warm and fuzzy about 'em too. Maybe that's not the intention (you wouldn't get that idea from their despairing, downer lyrics) but somehow their slabs of crunching, feedbacking heaviosity are infused with enough melody and softness and ambient quietude that the blanket of post-apocalyptic ash spewed by Thou is sorta snuggly, their brand of nuclear winter almost a cozy one. And that's what makes it such great doom, 'cause after all, what we're looking for in doom metal is the means to feel good about feeling bad. A pleasant fixin'-to-die dirge. Sharing the depression, rather than bottling it up, getting some kind of release even if it's the aural equivalent of slicing one's wrists and slowly bleeding away, or swallowing a bottle of pills and falling forever into deep deep sleep... doom metal is comfort metal, is one way of looking at it. Doom metal goes there so that you don't have to. Not that we're saying all doom metal fans are suicidally depressed, far from it. But we all have bummer days, and doom metal can take those feelings and turn 'em into something paradoxically positive. And that's what Thou do here, at least for us, with "life extinguishing elegance" as one of their songs puts it.
It's not just their sound, it's their songs. There's seven of 'em here, long ones, ranging from six and a half minutes to twice that long, lots of room for lots of interestin' twists and turns, albeit at a slow and steady pace. They fit plenty of post rock prettiness amidst their plodding and droning, along with faster parts and unexpectedly, trippingly melodic guitar lines. This is for fans of Jesu as much as Khanate, is what we're saying. Pelican and Isis too, but also Moss and Trees. And of course for all those who picked up Peasant from us already.
Best song title award of this list goes to track three here, "Fucking Chained To The Bottom Of The Ocean", by the way. And the song DOES live up to its title.
MPEG Stream: "Tyrant"
MPEG Stream: "With A Cold, Life Extinguishing Elegance"

V/A Death Before Distemper Vol. 2 (DC Recordings) cd 22.00
As early '80s electro pop and disco began their popular resurgence recently, it was only a matter of time before someone would find a way to pull it all together and create some sort of new synthesis. In fact, if you enjoyed any of the recent compilations we've carried of vintage French dark wave and post-punk, like Des Jeunes Gens Modernes, BIPP, or IVG, then we're pretty sure you'll like this as well, though it's music from the England of today. What's the difference? Overall, many of the tracks have the staccato, angular melancholy of those scenes, while retaining a more direct, propulsive, and dancey sort of momentum. There's also some definite space disco and hip-hop influence. Depth Charge presents a John Carpenter coming down on mushrooms epic that could be good friends with just about any Notwist song, then there's Kelpe with their skweee-ish take on the downtempo beats of groups like Boards of Canada. With sequenced live instrumentation, live bass, string sounds, and clean guitar riffs, The Oscillation later offer their Verve-like contribution - yes, as in the British pop band. All of the tracks on here have a sense of cohesion, but each project remains distinct enough, with ups and downs, to come across exactly how a good compilation should: a great mixtape. And sampler of sorts to the wares of the excellent DC Recordings label, the same folks who brought us the super cool Padded Cell and The Oscillation albums reviewed here recently, which you probably already realized. And most, maybe all, of the stuff here is previously unreleased, or remixed. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: DEPTH CHARGE "Castle of Doom"
MPEG Stream: KELPE "Shipwreck Glue"

V/A Death Before Distemper Vol. 2 (DC Recordings) lp 23.00
someone would find a way to pull it all together and create some sort of new synthesis. In fact, if you enjoyed any of the recent compilations we've carried of vintage French dark wave and post-punk, like Des Jeunes Gens Modernes, BIPP, or IVG, then we're pretty sure you'll like this as well, though it's music from the England of today. What's the difference? Overall, many of the tracks have the staccato, angular melancholy of those scenes, while retaining a more direct, propulsive, and dancey sort of momentum. There's also some definite space disco and hip-hop influence. Depth Charge presents a John Carpenter coming down on mushrooms epic that could be good friends with just about any Notwist song, then there's Kelpe with their skweee-ish take on the downtempo beats of groups like Boards of Canada. With sequenced live instrumentation, live bass, string sounds, and clean guitar riffs, The Oscillation later offer their Verve-like contribution - yes, as in the British pop band. All of the tracks on here have a sense of cohesion, but each project remains distinct enough, with ups and downs, to come across exactly how a good compilation should: a great mixtape. And sampler of sorts to the wares of the excellent DC Recordings label, the same folks who brought us the super cool Padded Cell and The Oscillation albums reviewed here recently, which you probably already realized. And most, maybe all, of the stuff here is previously unreleased, or remixed. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: DEPTH CHARGE "Castle of Doom"
MPEG Stream: KELPE "Shipwreck Glue"

V/A Okkulte Stimmen Mediale Musik : Recordings Of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007 (Suppose) 3cd 57.00
This 3cd boxset is a fantastical document of parapsychological research throughout the 20th Century, with recordings of purported demonic possession, glossolalia, precognition, poltergeists, and the already well documented Electric Voice Phenomenon. The latter had been the subject of research by noted parapsychologists Raymond Cass and Freidrich Jurgensen, whose work was collected on several cds released on the Touch label, one of which was the AQ perennial favorite The Ghost Orchid. The first disc of this set focuses on voices spoken through a person, who may not be conscious of the spirits controlling their words. There are several examples of demon possessed children, and a particularly creepy recording of a spirit medium who has contacted those who died in a plane crash and weeping through the medium to "move on." The second disc concentrates on Xenoglossy (the articulation of a language not known to the speaker) and Glossolalia (also known as 'speaking in tongues'), with examples of an English girl who speaks in an arcane form of Egyptian. There's also a few examples of Aleister Crowley famously channeling the Enochian language which the 16th Century mystic John Dee had also been known to conjure up. The third disc documents the sounds left behind by the spirits themselves, including paranormal music (that which has been transcribed from a deceased composer into the hands of a receptive living musician), the rappings of poltergeists within the walls, and the aforementioned EVP. A good deal of these recordings suffer from poor recording qualities that exacerbate the mystery of these spirit communications. From a strictly aesthetic point of view, we have long extolled the virtues of scratchy 78s, tape hiss, and surface noise as a patina of remarkable beauty and sublime power. This rusted sound makes things seems haunted to begin with, and then add the recordings of demons, ghosts, and other spirits, and we've got one thoroughly creepy and amazing document.
Includes extensive liner notes in both German and English.
MPEG Stream: "Jack Suttton Contacts Dead Airmen (1980s)"
MPEG Stream: "Banta Trance Speech (1948)"
MPEG Stream: "Spukfall Pursruck (1971)"

WAGONER, PORTER The Cold Hard Facts Of Life / Soul Of a Convict (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
"Who taught who the cold hard facts of life?" is the chilling question at the heart of this bitter tale of betrayal and revenge between husband and wife. It's also the title track of this Porter Wagoner two-fer which combines two early seventies concept records, The Cold Hard Facts of Life and The Soul of The Convict, providing a narrative arc of love, sin, murder, redemption and salvation. We absolutely loved The Rubber Room (also put out by The Omni Recording Corporation), an anthology of Wagoner's less known Southern Gothic sides that painted a much darker picture of the kind of singer we thought he was. Now that the man is gone at the height of a career revival, we get a chance to hear some of his best full lengths, recorded at a time of deep personal anguish. On this two-fer (which shares only five tracks with The Rubber Room anthology), he sings plenty, first about the consequences of cheating and then sings plenty more about the consequences of killing. Includes a cover of "Folsom Prison Blues" and six extra single tracks. Porter shows us once again he's a man to be reckoned with in this life or the next. As he queries at the end of "The First Mrs. Jones", "Did my little song scare you?"
Yes, yes it did.
Rest in Peace, Porter!
MPEG Stream: "First Mrs. Jones"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Hard Facts of Life"
MPEG Stream: "Boston Jail"
MPEG Stream: "Snakes Crawl at Night"

WEED s/t (Revisited / Phillips) cd 17.98
Obscure, awesome 1971 krautrock proto-metal reissued! And they're called Weed. Need we say more? As always, we will say more, 'cause we've got to mention that the heavy electric organ bombast on this album is cranked out by none other than Ken Hensley of Uriah Heep fame, over in Germany on vacation or something. He appears here under the fairly transparent pseudonym of "Ken Lesley"! Having mentioned that, we realize we should probably review some actual Uriah Heep albums on our site one of these days, but this did just get reissued so we're writing about it now. (Sooner or later we will write up some Heep, but suffice to say that their first five albums RULE, circa '70-'73, though they go downhill pretty steeply after that. If you dig Deep Purple and haven't checked out the early Heep, you should.)
Anyway, back to Weed. Thanks to Hensley/Lesley, they DO sound a bit like Uriah Heep, especially on the killer opener "Sweet Morning Light". Despite (sarcastic?) lyrics about "sun shining bright, on everything in sight" and other seemingly positive things, the singer's depressed delivery and the downer dirginess of the heavy, groovy music creates a much darker, doomier mood! It's kinda brilliant, that contrast. Elsewhere, this album features the more mellow, melancholic acoustic balladry of "Loney Ship", one blues rocker, "Slowin' Down", and several other sorts of organ-ornate melodic kraut prog jams. It ends with another heavy highlight, the song "Weed" itself, the album's longest track at 7:14. And it's an instrumental. With a crunching, exceedingly Sabbathy main riff, or is it Led Zep? Kicks ass anyways. For the first and last tracks alone, this disc is something anyone interested in proto-doom should hear.
Also, Weed should get some sort of award as one of the earliest overt "stoner rock" bands ever, just based on their name, right? Them and Leafhound.
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Morning Light"
MPEG Stream: "My Dream"

YOUNG WIDOWS Old Wounds (Temporary Residence) cd 14.98
Record number two from these Louisville sluggers (sorry), another slab of churning, bass heavy, noisy, groovy riff rock, landing somewhere between the Jesus Lizard and Karp, Harvey Milk and Caustic Resin, Lubricated Goat and Drive Like Jehu. In fact these guys sound like they were spawned from an AmRep Mom and a Touch And Go Dad, which is absolutely not a bad thing. Opener "Took A Turn" has one of the sickest bass sounds EVER, a roiling, crumbling super distorted groove that goes on and on and on, beneath the weary mush mouthed vocals, building tension like crazy, until he sings "Drums..." and then the drums come in, the bass still grinding away, and then finally the guitar drops, a thick blanket of melody over that near static bassline. "Old Skin" has a killer riff, a sort of downtuned Iron Maiden sort of thing, that is totally mesmerizing, and continues on though most of the song, even when the band is furiously pounding away. In fact, most of these songs consist of no more than two parts, but that's all it takes, this is blown out, heavy as fuck, sweaty, live and loud, with a definite nod to Bleach­era Nirvana.
This stuff definitely sound killer on record, but it's easy to tell these guys must destroy live, even moreso, knowing that these tracks were actually recorded at various locations, studios, practice spaces, live shows (on those you can sometimes hear the crowd), but they're not meant to sound live, just to sound LIVE, cuz most bands do play and sound better in front of a crowd, so the final tracks were culled from all of those recordings and performances, and the results speak for themselves, loud, heavy, intense and definitely live sounding. Anyone into the above mentioned bands will definitely dig this big time.
And wow, the packaging, super intense, multi folded, 8 panels, of varying length, all overlapping to form different versions of the cover image, hard to explain, you just gotta see it, super striking!
MPEG Stream: "Took A Turn"
MPEG Stream: "Old Skin"

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31 KNOTS Worried Well (Polyvinyl) cd 14.98
Ooohh. After four full lengths and a handful of eps, this Portland-based indie-pop-prog act has pretty much proven themselves a sure bet, for intelligent, complex, catchy music that's equally, seemingly effortlessly at ease with today's electronic glitch, '70s prog inspired bombast, and quirky post-punk groove. This latest, Worried Well does not break that streak. No worries, if you love the 31 Knots thing, like we do. Plenty of nervous piano, lush arrangements, noisy guitars, mathy drums, theatrical vocals, all the works in other words. True, some might find 31 Knots a bit too much, too pretentious or peculiar or puzzling or poncy or something. Personally, though, whatever 31 Knots is too much of, we want more. But maybe this one works better if you're already into their other albums as well. If you do, dive right in. And besides, you've gotta love an album where in one song ("Compass Commands") what sounds like a chorus of little girls yells "Kill or be killed!" in response to the singer's schoolteacher-ish question "Who can tell me the universal rule of thumb?".
MPEG Stream: "Certificate"
MPEG Stream: "Compass Commands"

ANKERSMIT, THOMAS / JIM O'ROURKE split (Tochnit Aleph) lp 17.98
A very interesting split LP for several reasons, not the least of which being the almost 20 years separating the two recordings. Thomas Ankersmit is a young composer, who splits his time between the saxophone and analogue synthesizers, having spent a good portion of his young career touring the globe with Phill Niblock. His performances are as transcendent as they are physical, with him tugging and re-plugging patch cables into his modular synth at a dizzying speed all the while generating a refined blur of arcing drones and potent electricity. Despite the sax, jazz, this is not! In many ways, Ankersmit's loping compositions resemble those early pieces by Jim O'Rourke, especially his impressive Scend and Tamper albums from the early '90s. So perhaps that's why a contemporary Ankersmit composition got teamed up with an archival (and possibly unreleased until now) piece from O'Rourke from that very time period.
Ankersmit's piece incorporates both sax and synth, with cracked electricity fizzing and popping with electroshock capacity only to be consumed by a laser beam of analogue synth tones swarmed by searing hiss of white noise. The saxophone appears as a sustained squawk of circular breathing techniques with the edges thoroughly roughed up by a litany of distortion pedals. O'Rourke's piece seems to be all guitar, with a midrange distortion enveloping the choppy riffs that eventually coalesce into a thick morass of drone-dirge that looks forward to the likes of Ambarchi and O'Malley, although not nearly as heavy. We've been told this is rare. We've been told this is limited. We can tell you this is great!

BURNING BRIDES Anhedonia (Cobraside) cd 14.98
4th album from these longtime, uh, 'neo-grunge' faves of ours. Though, we'll admit that this far along, we're wondering if it's diminishing returns time for the Burning Brides. Don't get us wrong, on the strength of Anhedonia, we still don't understand why this band isn't totally huge. Next to Dax Riggs (Acid Bath, Agents Of Oblivion, Deadboy and the Elephantmen), BB mainman, guitarist/vocalist Dimitri Coats is our favorite rockstar who isn't actually exactly a real, cover of the Rolling Stone rockstar... yet. In a perfect world, though, like maybe if he'd been born a few years earlier, and grown up in Seattle...
But, in actual reality, just how many albums are Coats & Co. gonna have to make before they get on the cover of Rolling Stone, y'know? They'd better pace themselves, and that's maybe what it sounds like they're doing here, putting out just another BB album. Which is pretty cool, mind you. Though they're more Foo Fightery these days, and less Bleach-era Nirvanalike.
The metallic leanings of their previous effort, Hang Love, have been dialed back a bit here, and likewise they're slick enough now we can't be calling this all that garagey. But BB are still kicking out the heavy hooky jams with soaring ready for radio melodies and fuzzy guitars, and it's the closest thing to good grunge you're gonna find this side of 1995. Fans should check it out, it's a dose of what you like. But, if you haven't heard BB before, we'd say start with Fall Of The Plastic Empire, their much rawer, more psychedelic debut.
MPEG Stream: "Lovesick"
MPEG Stream: "Summer Leaves"

BURNING BRIDES Anhedonia (Cobraside) lp 24.00
4th album from these longtime, uh, 'neo-grunge' faves of ours. Though, we'll admit that this far along, we're wondering if it's diminishing returns time for the Burning Brides. Don't get us wrong, on the strength of Anhedonia, we still don't understand why this band isn't totally huge. Next to Dax Riggs (Acid Bath, Agents Of Oblivion, Deadboy and the Elephantmen), BB mainman, guitarist/vocalist Dimitri Coats is our favorite rockstar who isn't actually exactly a real, cover of the Rolling Stone rockstar... yet. In a perfect world, though, like maybe if he'd been born a few years earlier, and grown up in Seattle...
But, in actual reality, just how many albums are Coats & Co. gonna have to make before they get on the cover of Rolling Stone, y'know? They'd better pace themselves, and that's maybe what it sounds like they're doing here, putting out just another BB album. Which is pretty cool, mind you. Though they're more Foo Fightery these days, and less Bleach-era Nirvanalike.
The metallic leanings of their previous effort, Hang Love, have been dialed back a bit here, and likewise they're slick enough now we can't be calling this all that garagey. But BB are still kicking out the heavy hooky jams with soaring ready for radio melodies and fuzzy guitars, and it's the closest thing to good grunge you're gonna find this side of 1995. Fans should check it out, it's a dose of what you like. But, if you haven't heard BB before, we'd say start with Fall Of The Plastic Empire, their much rawer, more psychedelic debut.
MPEG Stream: "Lovesick"
MPEG Stream: "Summer Leaves"

CALE, JOHN Paris 1919 (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
ALSO ON VINYL! We've been meaning to list this for a long time. One of those special records that so many past and present aQ employees hold close to their hearts. This is John Cale's orchestral pop masterpiece! Last list we made his collaboration with Terry Riley one of our records of the week and while this is a different beast all together it definitely shows what a wide range of musical genius Cale had going on during the early 70's. Paris 1919 is most certainly a pop record, but not just any kind of pop record. This is one that immediately transports you to the lavish and lush fantastical worlds these songs take place. Backed by a band featuring members of Little Feat as well as the UCLA Symphony Orchestra, Cale was able to create songs that somehow are as delicate and understated as they are glowing and baroque.
It's a record that always makes us want to wander along pastoral hillsides filled with the greenest grass, a cup of delicious hot tea in our hands as we twirl and daydream through the afternoon. Cale's voice has never sounded better, and it's for sure his most emotive and sensitive statement ever put to tape. It's amazing how many newer bands we love that for sure had to be influenced so strongly by this record. Just listen to The Hidden Cameras, Kelly Stoltz, Jens Lekman, Beck or Belle & Sebastian and you can hear the legacy of Paris 1919 in their songs. Total pop perfection!
MPEG Stream: "Paris 1919"
MPEG Stream: "The Endless Plain Of Fortune"
MPEG Stream: "Hanky Panky Nohow [Drone Mix] "

CLUSTER Sowiesoso (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Now on deluxe 180 gram vinyl!
This long awaited reissue of Cluster's stellar 1976 recording, Sowiesoso (So Not So So) sees Roedelius and Moebius at their most collaborative and creative. Recorded after moving to the tiny village of Forst from West Berlin, the progressive evolution of Cluster's solely improvised sound from free-form cavernous synth-scapes to percolating motorik pop structures had already been documented on their Zuckerzeit album from 1975. On Sowiesoso, that sound gets even more refined, with Moebius's machinist currents of whirs and klangs jutting up against Roedelius's serene Eastern pastoralism, resulting in a haunting mix of pensive ambient beauty that matches the darkly idyllic countryside pictured on the front cover.
So Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Halwa"
MPEG Stream: "Es War Einmal"

DARNIELLE, JOHN 33 1/3 Series: Master Of Reality (Continuum) book 10.98
Y'know this series of books, right? The 33 1/3 series, each one devoted to someone's (lots of people's) favorite album ever? We have a few in stock, and have listed a bunch in the past, from OK Computer to Meat Is Murder, most recently one about Slayer's Reign In Blood. All of 'em are pretty cool, if you're into the album in question, and sometimes even if you're not ('cause you then will be).
This one in particular has a lot going for it. Not only is it about one of the best albums by one of the best bands ever (sez Allan, excitedly jumping up and down), Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality. But it's written by our pal John Darnielle of Mountain Goats fame. He's an awesome writer. And, if you didn't know, a serious metalhead. He does a witty column, South Pole Dispatch, in the back of metal magazine Decibel each month, as a matter of fact.
In addition, John doesn't simply write a nonfiction, journalistic overview of the "behind the music" story of the making of this classic album. No, he takes this opportunity to do something a lot cooler and more creative - the book is actually a novel, written from the perspective of a teenage burnout in 1985. He's committed to a psychiatric facility, and writing in his journal all about his obsession with Master Of Reality, among other things. And it works as both a novel, and as rock crit too. This definitely illustrates an extra dimension to what we mean when we say Sabbath is "heavy."

DON CABALLERO Punkgasm (Relapse) lp 24.00
NOW ALSO ON VINYL!
You know these guys. A seminal outfit of the post rock ilk, one without whom... well let's just say there's a good reason they'll be namechecked in every Battles or Hella review we're or anyone else who knows what's what is gonna write. Pittsburgh's finest, the SCTV lovin' Don Cab, led by drummer extraordinaire Damon Che, are back with yet another lineup, and their second Relapse release (7th album overall if you count the singles comp). While the "metal" leanings of their 2006 Relapse debut World Class Listening Problem have been scaled back a bunch here, it's still another dazzling display of their trademark instrumental mathrock chops. Except, this time, it's not all instrumental! There's vocals on some (about a third) of these 14 tracks, and they're surprisingly melodious. (Maybe not so surprising if you've ever heard Che's other band, Thee Speaking Canaries, in which he sings and plays guitar.)
But don't worry, aside from the sometime singing, everything else is 100 percent Don Cab: Wise ass song title non sequiturs. Stop on a dime changes. Complex song structures. Unusual time signatures. Loud-soft dynamics. Proggy perplexity. And quite a lot of pretty parts too! Several tracks are much more harmonious than hectic, soundscapes with airy grooves and lulling, lovely vocals. But an album called Punkgasm can't be a total blissout, it's usually a bit busier. On most tracks, the guitars - sometimes bright and chiming, at other times heavy and distorted - mesh with precision into the spinning gears of Che's constantly percolating, plentiful percussion. Imagine a King Crimson "Projekt" gone indie rock, but better.
MPEG Stream: "Loudest Shop Vac In The World"
MPEG Stream: "Celestial Dusty Groove"
MPEG Stream: "Lord Krepelka"

EKEROTH, DANIEL Swedish Death Metal (Bazillion Points) book 34.95
Metalheads, buy this! Author Daniel Ekeroth, a Swedish death metal expert (and Swedish death metaller himself, from the band Incision) has collected and presented an invaluable resource with this book, a weighty tome indeed. Due to a dearth of information on this fairly specific subject, the material within was compiled via a practical attempt to synthesize an accurate retelling of the history of Swedish death metal, based on varying accounts in zines and such, then by bouncing those stories back and forth in interviews with key band members, label bosses, etc. The book itself begins by outlining the myriad of influences behind the Swedish sound: San Francisco Bay Area thrash, NWOBHM, and the Tampa Bay Florida scene. Keep in mind, this was well before the internet, so tape and zine trading, and word of mouth, were the only ways to find out about music. Thus some of these band members were true metal geeks. There are accounts of various artists' own early exposure to metal and some really interesting stories about a few of the early Swedish bands, obscurities crossing over from the hardcore punk scene and so forth. Gripping reading for anyone into the book's subject matter. The second half of the book covers the pinnacle and strength of the scene at its brightest. But then there was black metal, and Ekeroth details how it helped usher out the popularity of old school death metal. He also delves into subgenres like grind, death n' roll, and of course the melodic Gothenburg sound.
And then in the back, there is an incredibly useful, opinionated encyclopedia of (possibly) all Swedish death metal bands. Awesome! Complete with band members and releases, where Ekeroth substitutes the term 'deathography' for discography. And this book covers not only the big shots, like Dissection, Unleashed, Entombed, Marduk - hey their first record was recorded with Dan Swano and their first singer was the guitarist from Edge of Sanity - but there are tons of lesser known bands that the Ekeroth goes into detail about. Graphics-wise, there are tons of flyers, demo tape covers, cool pictures, and everything else relevant that you could possibly want in print. It's pretty sweet.
There's not much else to say, really. You know who you are. There are those that would read a 456 page book on the Swedish death metal scene, and there are those who would not. If you are one of those people who WOULD, or just want it as a rad reference point, you need this. In a word, it's totally fucking killer. Recommended! And by the way, this is the new, expanded (and cheaper than the import) US edition, with extra art and interviews.

ESQUIVEL, JUAN GARCIA Mexico Days (El) cd 17.98
You know that anyone who can count creative and talented folks like Brian Wilson, Matt Groening, Frank Zappa, and Stereolab as their biggest fans had to be doing something quite amazing with their music. Such is the case with Juan Garcia Esquivel, better known by just his last name, to all of us with a big love for the exotica sounds he helped make famous. This disc brings together his earliest recordings, which have been pretty impossible to find until this reissue, and even if you could find them, they would have been crazy expensive! His first album from 1957 Las Tandas de Juan Garcia makes up the first half of this cd and the second half is packed with rare singles and tracks from 78's that he recorded in Mexico from 1954-57. It's actually those songs that really stand out the most with their dazzling space age pop sounds bursting with flare and that special charismatic touch that Esquivel would soon make famous.
MPEG Stream: "Goya Universidad"
MPEG Stream: "To Love Again"

ETERNAL TAPESTRY Seas of Silk (Digitalis Ltd.) cassette 8.98
It's unreal how much awesome, trippy music is coming out of Portland these days. Either there's something funky in the water up there, or Portlanders just know how to keep it real. Real fucked up and tripped out that is. Either way, we couldn't be more happy about all the amazing things happening in Portland lately. And Eternal Tapestry is no exception. These dudes just rolled through town on a short West Coast tour, and they made sure to drop off a nice stack of goodies. This is their brand spankin' new tape on the Digitalis Ltd. label and we're super into it. Krauty, spaced-out, bluesy improv that hits hard. For those of you who don't know, Eternal Tapestry features the famed Bindeman brothers, Jed (Heavy Winged!) on drums and Nick (Jackie-o! and Tunnels) sharing guitar duties with Dewey Mahood. In the same vein as Parson Sound or Can, these guys have really nailed the art of weaving improv in and out of catchy riffs, really sweet. Sadly, this one's already sold out on the label's end and we only got 10 copies! So act now before it's too late!

FAIRPORT CONVENTION Unhalfbricking (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Newly reissued on vinyl!
The first four Fairport Convention albums are canon, no doubt about it. But while many may disagree with the inclusion of the first album, the one before Sandy Denny joined, and their full on embrace of traditional folk material on the fourth, Leige and Lief, pretty much all Fairport fans can agree that their second album, What We Did On Our Holidays, and third, Unhalfbricking are their very best. Thankfully Water has reissued both.
Unhalfbricking? What the hell does that mean? Perhaps the title was alluding to the transitional shedding of American rock elements that had featured more prominently on their first two records and laying the foundation towards redefining a traditional British sound. Sure there are still Dylan covers, in fact three of them, but the exiting of Ian Matthews brought in another Fairport stalwart, fiddler Dave Swarbrick which tipped the balance musically towards classic British folk. And what's more British than this cover? We think that's Sandy Denny's parents. So awesome! Of course, strong songwriting doesn't hurt, and Sandy Denny contributes her most famous song, "Who Knows Where The Time Goes" and the equally haunting "Autopsy". But the finest moment of the album (and prescient of their future sound) goes to the eleven minute take on the traditional tune, "A Sailor's Life". Rumor has it, that they recorded this song in a single take because Denny, suffering from a cold, didn't think she could sing it more than once (though she wouldn't stop smoking). It's definitely the band at their peak and one of the finest recordings they made. Unfortunately, as we mentioned in the "What We Did On Our Holidays" review, the band was cursed and this was the last record for teenage drummer, Martin Lamble, who died in a freak accident involving the band's van. This cemented their future foray towards traditional material as the band refused to play live any of the music that they previously recorded with Lamble. But it's the air of that legendary rock curse (which would also tragically claim Sandy Denny, eight years later) that gives the early music of Fairport Convention it's mysteriously bewitching and dark edge. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Autopsy"
MPEG Stream: "A Sailor's Life"
MPEG Stream: "Who Knows Where The Time Goes"

FAIRPORT CONVENTION What We Did On Our Holidays (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Newly reissued on vinyl!!.
The first four Fairport Convention albums are canon, no doubt about it. But while many may disagree with the inclusion of the first album, the one before Sandy Denny joined, and their full on embracement of traditional folk material on the fourth, Leige and Lief, pretty much all Fairport fans can agree that their second album, What We Did On Our Holidays, and third, Unhalfbricking are their very best. Thankfully Water has reissued both.
What We Did On Our Holidays is our definite favorite. If there were one classic British folk-rock record we could recommend, it would be this one, mainly because it's so unclassic sounding. Here is the band at their most adventurous and unsettled, moving into different territory with each song. Mixing covers of American songwriters Joni Mitchell and Dylan with a wide array of original numbers and spirited takes on traditional material, we're taken through a trip of lively blues stomps, eastern mysticism, ghostly ballads and the best pairing of male and female vocal harmonies from Ian Matthews and Sandy Denny. Fairport Convention had the blessing of being made up of many other talented songwriters and musicians as well, including Richard Thompson, Martin Lamble, Simon Nicol, and Ashley Hutchings, but they were forever cursed by never having the same line-up twice on any of their records. While replacing former co-lead singer Judy Dyble (Giles, Giles and Fripp, Trader Horne) with Sandy Denny definitely upped their musical profile, this was sadly the last record for Ian Matthews. He went on to found Matthew's Southern Comfort and then later pursue his own solo work, but it just wasn't on the same par as his work on the first two Fairport albums. This is arguably the best line-up they had which makes for our highest recommendation.
MPEG Stream: "Book Song"
MPEG Stream: "Tales In Hard Time"
MPEG Stream: "She Moves Through The Fair"

GRUBBS, DAVID An Optimist Notes the Dusk (Drag City) cd 14.98
Whoops, when we first hit 'play' we almost mistook this new David Grubbs cd for Codeine. Ultra slooow, ultra stark and ultra emotive. By the third song however Grubbs' kicks it up a few notches into jangly emo pop territory (think: Versus or Weakerthans). Very wistful and contemplative. And by the sixth and final track "The Not So Distant", he's set us adrift on an almost twelve minute long minimal guitar drone and percussion soundscape. Yes, he's a man of many musical hats and he keeps a number of them (mostly those of earthy muted hues) in constant rotation on An Optimist Notes the Dusk.
MPEG Stream: "Gethsemani Night"
MPEG Stream: "Holy Fool Music"

GRUBBS, DAVID An Optimist Notes the Dusk (Drag City) lp 15.98
Whoops, when we first hit 'play' we almost mistook this new David Grubbs cd for Codeine. Ultra slooow, ultra stark and ultra emotive. By the third song however Grubbs' kicks it up a few notches into jangly emo pop territory (think: Versus or Weakerthans). Very wistful and contemplative. And by the sixth and final track "The Not So Distant", he's set us adrift on an almost twelve minute long minimal guitar drone and percussion soundscape. Yes, he's a man of many musical hats and he keeps a number of them (mostly those of earthy muted hues) in constant rotation on An Optimist Notes the Dusk.
MPEG Stream: "Gethsemani Night"
MPEG Stream: "Holy Fool Music"

IKEDA, RYOJI 1000 Fragments (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
The first nine tracks of 1000 Fragments are not what you would expect from the Ryoji Ikeda of today. His contemporary installation work and accompanying audio documents have been researching pure frequency manipulation and psychoacoustic delirium with occasional bursts of Pan Sonic / Alva Noto ventures of post-techno rhythm. Albums like Dataplex or Test Pattern are uncompromisingly clean and conceptually simple; but in 1995, Ryoji Ikeda likened himself more a media provocateur than a minimalist technician. 1000 Fragments was originally released through Ikeda's own CCI label well over a decade ago and now enjoys the re-issue treatment care of Raster Noton. Those first nine tracks represent one of three distinct styles of work on 1000 Fragments, and collectively manifest as a frenzied media collage of disembodied voices, electro-shock noise bursts, and skittered militant rhythms, paralleling the dystoptic sound of Illusion Of Safety and The Hafler Trio from that same time period. The second section explores more sedate dronefield territory, still emerging from a post-industrial framework (again think Illusion Of Safety and The Hafler Trio albeit in their alchemical and gnostic guises) whose beating phasepatterns upon long-form tones refined from shortwave datastreaming anticipated where he would venture in many years later. The third chapter to 1000 Fragments is a subtle composition that weaves together the aerated reverb from what could be some forgotten choral piece by Ligetti. This finale is surprisingly delicate and beautiful for an artist best known for his cold, hard edges of pure electronica, although it has to be said that a track such as this does look forward to Ikeda's orchestral detour Op. While never intended to be a cohesive body of work, 1000 Fragments is an excellent overview of the origins of one of our favorite sound artists.
MPEG Stream: "What's Wrong"
MPEG Stream: "Zone 4"
MPEG Stream: "Luxus 1-3"

ILLUSION OF SAFETY Odds (Self Released) cd-r 12.98
A very rare document indeed, but somehow we managed to get a hold a very limited number of this tour-only cd-r originally released back in 2001. This is a collection of unreleased tracks from the seminal post-industrial and horror drone act Illusion Of Safety. The opening number finds IOS figurehead Dan Burke improvising with the violinist Theresa Marin Nakra, as the melancholic sweeps across the strings gets mangled through Burke's electronic synthesis and shortwave static. It ends up sounding like a much looser version of the Machinefabriek / Jasper TX filmic soundscape sound that we love so much. Elsewhere, Burke revisits a track from one of the early IOS cassettes, stretching out the pastoral if plastic ambience of his synthetic strings into a terrifying blur of unsettled distortion and post-Fennesz pixelated drone. Illusion Of Safety offers similar early examples of digital synthesis, including a soundtrack for an art installation of thickly collaged car horns, looking back to the maddening sound design of traffic jams from Jean-Luc Goddard's "Weekend." Limited to 200 copies of which we've got the final few copies.
MPEG Stream: "Live In Lowell"
MPEG Stream: "Paradise (is) Unlivable"

KISS s/t (Mercury / Casablanca) cd 10.98
"Whooohoooo, yeah!" Allan's kavalcade of Kiss reviews kontinues. Here's maybe where I should have started, which is where Kiss started, with their 1974 self-titled debut... at the time, record buyers who weren't already hip to the styles of the NYC glam scene were probably puzzled when they saw this album's cover. Why were these guys wearing that stupid makeup? Turns out Kiss were cleverer than people thought. From the get-go, they were aiming to be the "biggest band in the land", with this album being an important first step along the way, and then some.
There's ten tracks here. And y'know what? We bet in 2023, on their umpteenhundreth reunion tour, a blind, geriatric Kiss will still be playing a bunch of them. Likewise, any Kiss "best of" would have trouble not including, like, half this album. "Firehouse", "Cold Gin" (written by happy alky Ace of course), "Strutter", "Deuce", "Black Diamond", "Firehouse", "100,000 Years".... killer Kiss classics all of 'em. Harvey Milk covered "Deuce", you may recall, on Live Pleaser, and Kiss was definitely an influence on The Pleaser itself. Meanwhile, the Melvins too are of course mega Kiss fans, and already on this album you can hear some parallels: the slower and slower, lower and lower outro to "Black Diamond" could be them, and even the brief bouncy instrumental "Love Theme From Kiss" has a Melvins-y hook, though they'd play it considerably heavier.
But forget about Harvey Milk and the Melvins, ever consider Kiss's parallels with their heroes, the Beatles? A four piece band, the two main songwriters and vocalists on bass and rhythm guitar, but everyone (eventually even the drummer) writing -and- singing songs. And they all sang backup, with vocal harmonies and all. And take a look at the album cover again - looks a little bit like Meet The Beatles, which was apparently their intent. Of course, Kiss weren't the Beatles, so if they were gonna become the biggest band in the land (which they pretty much did, for a while) they had to make up the difference, with, well, makeup - and a loud n' proud stage show, pure glammy spectacle unmatched by any other band. And they got in on the ground floor of the up and coming heavy metal genre. Though Kiss can't be considered as a heavy metal band entirely... maybe the first pop, bubblegum metal band? They certainly weren't as heavy or serious as Black Sabbath. They rocked, all right, but on this album sounded more like Grand Funk Railroad, Aerosmith, or the James Gang (check out "Firehouse", Ace busts out some Joe Walsh sounding guitar licks on that one fer sure). Elsewhere on this debut, they hark back to rollicking '50s rock ("Nothing To Loose" and goofy cover "Kissin' Time", the latter of which also reminds us of the Beach Boys, it's sorta Kiss's "Surfin' USA"). Which is kool too, but they coulda left the latter off and it wouldn't have hurt the album any. All in all, a fine debut, standing the test of time as one of their best albums, full of some of their rawest rockers - and thus good place to start, if you haven't already!
Ok, so this is my fifth Kiss review in this series, and eventually the lesson of these reviews should be... you want 'em all. Maybe I'll stop after a half-dozen Kiss reviews and turn to essentials from other classic bands we haven't given enough attention to, like maybe Queen or Thin Lizzy or Uriah Heep...
MPEG Stream: "Deuce"
MPEG Stream: "100,000 Years"

LA IRA DE DIOS Cosmos Kaos Destruccion (World In Sound) cd 23.00
In our recent highlight review of No More Invention by the frantic French acid guitar punk band Gunslingers, we kinda bagged on all other modern day signings by the World In Sound label (as opposed to their rather better selection of reissues, of which we generally enthusiastically approve). Then we realized, that wasn't quite fair, 'cause besides the excellent Gunslingers, WIS has also put out good stuff by at least a couple other contemporary bands, both of 'em from South America, Peru to be precise. There's El Cuy (which we'll review when we can get more in, our supplier was out) and this one, La Ira De Dios.
We've actually stocked several earlier discs by this Peruvian power trio (sans reviews, sorry), so we knew we liked 'em. They rock it and roll it in a fat, fuzzed out "desert rock" style not unlike an Andean version of Kyuss, or Monster Magnet... Each track swirls dizzily with spaced out Hawkwindy electronic FX, while the band keeps on keepin' on, riffin' hard, hair and sweat a-flyin'. With their gravelly Spanish language vocals and command of psychedelic/Satanic drug things we also wouldn't understand, they also of course remind us of AQ faves Los Natas from Argentina. But while Los Natas sometimes get all gentle and proggy, these guys stick with the blown out, balls out rockin'. Pretty badass! The final track, a 13 minute trip called "Jamas Morire", is a category 5 stoner rock storm that definitely demonstrates that this album was not mis-titled.
MPEG Stream: "Velocidad"
MPEG Stream: "El Pacto"

LOVE AS LAUGHTER Holy (Epic) cd 13.98
While Sam Jayne might be best known for in Beck's band for the great One Foot In The Grave album (As well as being pictured on the cover), or being Isaack Brock's (Modest Mouse) best bud, but for us Sam Jayne will always be an important name in our record collections for the scrappy and catchy indie rock greatness he created with his band Lync in the 90's. Lync's album These Are Not Fall Colors will always be a bigtime AQ favorite, and in our minds one of the most underrated indie rock albums of all time! But in recent years Jayne has been busy with Love As Laughter, a band much more standard and straight ahead then anything Lync released. And maybe that's why we've never quite fallen in love with Love As Laughter like we did Lync. It's never had that urgency and spontaneous urgency that made Lync so endearing. But you can't be a teen forever and Jayne has grown up quite gracefully, making solid if not somewhat regular records that fit somewhere between Built To Spill and Band Of Horses.
MPEG Stream: "Holy"
MPEG Stream: "All Parts of Me"

METALLICA Death Magnetic (Warner Bros.) cd 16.98
The pros and cons of Metallica's new album, pretty much off the top of our heads:
Pro - It's literally AT LEAST a million times better than their last album, St. Anger.
Con - Of course, that might not be saying that much, since St. Anger was absolutely one of the worst albums ever made.
Pro - It's also much better than Load/Reload/whatever else they've done since the Black Album.
Con - That also didn't take much.
Pro - It's actually metal, which is what a Metallica album should be!
Con - James' singing is still still pretty 'chain wallet' though.
Pro - There's guitar solos this time around, they actually let Kirk play his guitar!
Con - They're still letting Lars play drums. And boy does he sound tired on some of this.
Pro - Produced by Rick Rubin.
Con - Rick Rubin producing Slayer in 1986 is not the same as Rick Rubin producing Metallica in 2008.
Pro - Definitely some decent riffs here. Parts of "The End Of The Line" are pretty badass ferinstance. We're also digging how chunky and speedy and thrashy the likes of "My Apocalypse" and "All Nightmare Long" get, amongst others.
Con - Lots of 'meh', sensitive dude parts too.
Pro - The digipack packaging is really nifty, with a die cut cover and cd booklet that gives a 3-D effect to the coffin shape depicted in the cover art.
Con - "The Unforgiven III". That's right. III.
Pro - Like old Metallica, most of the songs are at least 7 minutes long.
Con - Most of the songs are at least 7 minutes long.
Ok, enough. We were just trying to be funny with the last one.
Lots of pros, cons too. And maybe Metallica, with Napster and Some Kind Of Monster and Load and St. Anger and haircuts and everything, have made it impossible to be objective about them at all.
Basically, one reaction is that, hey it sounds something like old Metallica, and at this point, that's something to be thankful for! Of course, also at this point, if you want to listen to old Metallica, chances are you're gonna just put on Master Of Puppets or Kill 'Em All, or one of their other albums that are all pros, pretty much no cons...
Basically, the diehard '80s Metallica fans here at AQ are never gonna truly be happy with these guys again, unless Cliff comes back from the dead, but heck at least the average radio-listener, record-buyer is getting something fairly metal out of the deal, more metal than Metallica has been in a looooong time. If we're gonna get a new Metallica shoved down our throats, it could have been a whole lot worse. (They've proved it in the past.) Now, if they'd have done another Diamond Head cover on here, we really might be calling it a comeback. That would have been sweet. In the meantime, we WILL be spinning Death Magnetic, mentally weighing record review pros and cons but also unconsciously air guitaring and headbanging... whoops, were we doing that? To the new Metallica?? Shit, maybe we DO like this!
Oh and here's another pro: it's cool that Kirk is still rockin' the long hair, like he's still in Exodus or something, even though maybe he shouldn't. Getting close to the dreaded "Gallagher!"
MPEG Stream: "That Was Just Your Life"
MPEG Stream: "The End Of The Line"

MOGWAI Batcat (Matador) 12" 9.98
12" vinyl teaser for the new full length that drops next week. The title track is from the album, which if you're a Mogwai fan you'll be buying anyway. But the other two cuts here are non-album b-sides. One's got a great title ("Stupid Prick Gets Chased By The Police And Loses His Slut Girlfriend") and the other boasts guest vocals from the legendary Roky Erickson of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Though, if we didn't know it was him, we're not sure what we'd think.

MONOTONIX Body Language (Drag City) lp 12.98
Also we got this on vinyl, here's what we said about the cd last time.... First off, go see these guys if you get the chance. It's a crazed rock spectacle, kinda like DMBQ but more dangerous, or at least shirtless. They live up to the hype you may have heard about their live performances, that's for sure. This guitar/drums/vocals trio from Israel are very, very rock n' roll, and they know how to put on a show. Probably everyone who's ever seen them has a good story, likely to include the drummer soloing whilst simultaneously crowd surfing, and the band's wiry, longhaired, mustachioed frontman (who looks like a cross between Iggy Pop and Doug Henning) energetically scampering about, spilling many, many audience members' beers (grabbing 'em with his teeth and tossing them back over his head, usually, at least if they're served in plastic cups). Allan's Monotonix show story even involves a goat!
But, the question remains, does any of that translate on record? Well this six song, 24 minute Drag City debut should answer that question. It reveals some depth to the riffy, hard and heavy, good times rock they dish out at their shows, with more melody and intricacy certainly (surprisingly). The title track, ferinstance, is almost prog pop! Yet, they don't stint on the fuzzy guitar and pounding drums we were expecting either, so if you play it loud, you might manage to spill a beer or two on yourself at home. If you just see 'em live, what you'll remember is how they played, not what they played. But spin this a few times, and some of these riffs may get stuck in your bangin' head. However, Monotonix live is a tough act to follow, which is their own damn fault, and so this still seems a bit secondary, like, they've gotta make records, if only to have something to sell on tour. But it is nice to see that they've put some effort into this aspect of the Monotonix experience too, instead of totally coasting on their live insanity.
MPEG Stream: "Body Language"
MPEG Stream: "No Metal"

MORGEN s/t (Phoenix) cd 17.98
As heavy-ish late sixties psychedelia from the garage goes, this one-off 1969 album from Long Island's Morgen is a worthy contender. The b&w Edvard Munch "Scream" on the cover is perhaps a clue that this will be fairly dark and tripped out, and it is, with druggy lyrics like: "Come take a bite from my gingerbread house, and let your troubles fade away...". That's from the album's first (and we think bestest) track, a definite fuzz psych classic, "Welcome To The Void". The fuzz is so thick, you could cut it with a knife. The singer (who's a better guitarist) delivers some turned on tales of popular nursery rhyme characters, but mainly you'll be hearing fuzzzz. And there's lotsa wild guitar and more fuzz as the album goes on. For fans of Electric Prunes, Plastic Cloud, The Litter, etc. If you haven't found a previous reissue of this already, we now have this limited numbered edition put out in the UK by Phoenix.
MPEG Stream: "Welcome To The Void"
MPEG Stream: "Of Dreams"

NEGATIVLAND Presents Thigmotactic (Seeland) cd 13.98
Negativland's thirteenth album Thigmotactic is primarily the brainchild of founding member Mark Hosler with a supporting cast that includes the rest of the group as well as a few other particularly notable sound artists Thomas Dimuzio, Wobbly and our beloved former aQer Byram Abbott! According to the group this is their first "entirely song-based project... of electronic folk-pop noise songs". Hmmm, that description sounds conventional enough, does it? But of course we weren't fooled because even their most seemingly conventional of works is galaxies away from that of the common folk. As always can be expected from a Negativland release, they turn everything - be it low-brow and high-brow art and literature, pop culture, social traditions, politics, mundane everyday objects and products, not to mention other artists' works - on their collective head with a healthy dose of irreverence and mischief. It's a well documented fact that Negativland have a keen ear for melody too. Here in the spotlight, Hosler's frayed cardigan, rain-soaked puppy singing voice could easily be mistaken for that of an indie rock popster (a la Sebadoh, Pavement or Bright Eyes)! Of the album's generous seventeen songs, some sound like campfire or coffeehouse singalongs ("Extra Sharp Pencils"), some like the jumble that you hear when spinning the radio dial ("It's Not A Critique"), some like a b-side from a long lost Magnetic Fields 7" ("Basketball Plant" and "Lying On The Grass"), and some are more typically deliriously Negativlandish ("By Truck", "Virginia's Trip" and our current fave "Your Skin Is Gelatin"). A wryly witty, utterly tweaked, cut-up audio extravaganza with plenty of ear candy and lyrical absurdities. It includes a hefty 36-page booklet too! Doo dah!
MPEG Stream: "Lying On The Grass"
MPEG Stream: "Your Skin Is Gelatin"

PORTASTATIC Some Small History (Merge) 2cd 14.98
Mac McCaughan is really one of indie rock's true heroes. First there was his band Superchunk that helped define indie rock and helped put Chapel Hill on the map in the '90s. Then there's the label he runs, Merge, who have put out incredibly influential records by everyone from Magnetic Fields to Neutral Milk Hotel to the Arcade Fire. And then there's his so-called side band Portastatic who actually have been more active and prolific then Superchunk have in recent years. In many ways Portastatic served as his outlet for sketches and stripped down songs that maybe weren't meant for Superchunk yet still had his trademark vocal and guitar sound. This two disc set compiles a slew of singles, b-sides, demos and covers. We have to say while it's sort of an uneven collection there are some total gems on here, especially the covers, hearing Mac do The Undertones "Teenage Kicks" and Hot Chip's "And I Was A Boy From School" makes it all worth it. And despite a few tracks that cold have been left in the vaults, there are some total classic sounding Portastatic jams making this a must have for all bigtime Mac fans.
MPEG Stream: "Trajectory"
MPEG Stream: "Power Supply"
MPEG Stream: "And I Was A Boy From School"

PRAM The Moving Frontier (Domino) lp 16.98
Now in stock on vinyl too!!
Feels like it's been forever since Pram came out with a record, and while The Moving Frontier has been floating around Europe for the last year, it's finally getting its domestic release here in the States. Luckily they made the wait well worth it, as this is Pram at their most lush, vivid and cinematic. Sitting somewhere right between the melodic and bubbly elements of Broadcast and Stereolab and the moody elegance of Portishead, Pram have crafted a record that is much more concerned with creating an overall mood and sensation than it is being a vehicle for pop singles. In many ways Rosie Cuckston's breathtaking vocals serve as another layer to the rich instrumentation that shapes the record. And in fact a big portion of this record is instrumental. We can't help but think of what kind of dreamy and darkly whimsical film this could be the perfect score for. At times it would be the perfect soundtrack for some incredible underground version of a James Bond film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, other times its shimmering beauty and soft swirling psychedelia could be the perfect score for some lost Czech New Wave film of the '60s. As suspenseful and hypnotic as it is sophisticated and gorgeous, this is one of Pram's finest moments!
MPEG Stream: "Salt & Sand"
MPEG Stream: "Moonminer"
MPEG Stream: "The Silk Road"

PUNY HUMANS No One Will Ever Understand Our Genious (self released) cd 9.98
Longtime readers of the aQ list are probably well acquainted with Steven Schultz, a mad musical genius who over the years has released some of the most wacked, distrubed, and bafflingly genius records we've come across. But Steven moved to Japan, got married, and had a kid, so minus the occasional visit for some catching up and an SF burrito, he, and his music, have been basically awol. Well, during the last visit, we managed to get a handful of each of his releases, which we'll be doling out, one at a time, so new customers, and recent aQ converts, can experience the dizzyingly damaged musical world of Mr. Steven Schultz. Let's start with Puny Humans shall we...
What kind of an album would feature on its back cover a still from "The Big Lebowski" with Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, and John Goodman sitting at a bar in a bowling alley -- all wearing black metal corpse paint??!? And feature music that kinda actually *sounds* like that picture might sound?? One by the notorious Steven Schultz (of The History Of Vats, Stalin Claus Superstar!, Busuchan, and I Forgot To Get A Rap Name! infamy) and fellow musical mastermind/masturbator Jason Kocol, of course! "No One Will Ever Understand Our Genious" is a more than apt album title for this duo's output. Genious [sic] put to questionable use. Embarrassing but stoopid funny music nerd indulgence, with the boys' sick chops in metal, jazz, dance music and whatever else they choose to abuse making the likes of Mr. Bungle and Estradasphere and Frank Zappa seem like mere puppies next to these Puny Humans. A silly genre-shift every 1.5 seconds or so, with blasting metal giving way to kazoo blues interrupted by circus music then back to the metal but with tinkling bells and sampled interjections from Flava Flav and house beats and skits and the quiet storm etc. etc. etc. Good grief! The mind reels, the throat chortles. This is really over the top. There's skits (y'know, the producers talking like on a rap record) and they even stoop so low as to sample the Benny Hill Theme at one point. Yes, the dumb humor driving this is SO dumb and relentless that it might even be brilliant. I mean, can you argue with songs that actually live up to song titles like "Deicide At Their Mom's House", "Sweep-Picking The Flugelhorns", and "Wouldja Look At The Ass On That Mummy?". Nope, or at least you wouldn't want to waste your time. Of course, without the dumb humor this mighta been the best ridiculous meta-metal ever, like if they were Japanese or something and we didn't "get" the jokes. But with the humor, it still shows Mr. Bungle where to get off. We really can't help but like it despite ourselves. Trying too hard to be insane -- and succeeding!!
MPEG Stream: "Thorax, Ho!"
MPEG Stream: "Hey, There's Always Urine!"

SLAYER Reign in Blood (American) cd 14.98
Reign in Blood is one of the defining moments in metal. Specifically, pissed off technical thrash. Before Slayer, no one else was faster, more brutal, or controversial. Yet at the same time they managed to somehow translate their music into something commercially successful, which is as confusing as it is impressive. This, their seminal third album, produced by Rick Rubin in 1986, is what we think of when we think of Slayer. "Angel of Death," "Altar of Sacrifice," "Jesus Saves." If you're a metalhead - to any degree - you own this, or you need this. In fact, we're not going to go on too much about it because this shit makes its own case. For greater detail, you can always pick up a copy of the book about Reign in Blood from the 33 1/3 series. Slayer fucking rule, and this is one of their best records. Get on it!
MPEG Stream: "Angel of Death "
MPEG Stream: "Altar of Sacrifice"

SMOLEN, DAVE Malleable Laminates (Sprout And Flora) cd-r 8.98
Found a few more of these stashed away, probably the last copies we'll have...
A while back we reviewed a disc by a group called Flittermice Of Eld, a sort of abstract ambient drone homage to Darkthrone, in particular their classic track "As Flittermice as Satan's Spys", which of course ended up sounding nothing like Darkthrone at all, but kicked our asses nonetheless.
So what do these Flittermice do when they're not pulling apart black metal institutions and reshaping the bits into their own twisted little soundscapes?
Well, actually, sort of the same thing, just without the Darkthrone bits (although we can't say for sure there are no Darkthrone bits here). But Mr. Dave Smolen, he of the aforementioned Flittermice, here strikes out on his own, and the result is very similar to the sound on Flittermice, albeit a bit more minimal and electronic, a slow burning lowercase trawl through a soundworld of electronic crackle and minimal glitch and buzz, twenty minutes of drifting static discharge, bursts of high end shimmer and shift, layers of metallic reverberation drift through spacious expanses of whir and rumble, clouds of spacey FX swirl around disembodied shards of percussion and muted rhythms. Serene and ambient, but also dense and intense, like slithering through a lightning storm, or crawling through a field of electrically charged vibrating steel strings...
Weird and quite cool...
SUPER LIMITED!!! Of course, packaged in hand screened cardstock jackets housed in thick vinyl sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "Malleable Laminates"

TATE, DARREN A Strange Artifact (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
This is the second pressing of A Strange Artifact which dates to 2004. The second edition, like the first, comes by the way of Darren Tate's own Fungal imprint, although he's vastly improved the artwork with reproductions of Tate's stain-and-ink drawings adorning the sleeve. Given the limited nature of the original edition, this one is certainly new to us; and for better or for worse, the second one will soon depart from these doors.
Darren Tate has been a regular fixture here at Aquarius with his self-produced constructs of eccentric droneworks, although he's best known for his impressionist compositions with Andrew Chalk and Colin Potter, in Ora and Monos respectively. A Strange Artifact is a suitable title for this album, which Tate composed as a fictional piece of automatic music through accordion, guitar, and field recordings. The accordion tentatively seesaws a quizzical arpeggiation that when brought up to speed sounds like a primitive variation of Phillip Glass's early work, but mostly is a slow meander through notes providing something eerily carnivalesque like a Svankmajer soundtrack. Spindly guitar plucks float amidst the accordion, and subterranean field recordings churn in the distant. Perhaps this is the least droning piece we've encountered from Darren Tate, certainly one of the weirdest, too. Limited to 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "A Strange Artifact (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "A Strange Artifact (excerpt 2)"

TINY VIPERS Hands Across The Void (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
Back in stock!
Tiny Vipers is a lone lady, Ms Jesy Fortino, a drowsy dark folk songstress whose voice bears a striking resemblance to both Diane Gluck and Kim Deal. Very shadowy and very affecting. The fourth track "Forest On Fire" might be our favorite on this 7-song cd as the relatively conventional structure of the song is allowed to sprawl and dissipate out into a droning noisescape. Very cool.
MPEG Stream: "Campfire Resemblance"
MPEG Stream: "Forest On Fire"

TORRINI, EMILIANA Me And Armini (Rough Trade) cd 13.98
For her latest album, the Italian-Icelandic Ms Torrini reconfirms her lithe, limber voice's chameleon-like nature. She's shunned both her early personas -- the tweaked arty nymph persona a la Bjork and the smoldering chanteuse a la Portishead -- as well as her more recent Tori Amos-esque ivory-tickling songstress guise. No, you might've guessed we weren't fans of that turn of events! This time though she has opted for a much more swooning elegance a la Nina Persson and The Cardigans. Me And Armini offers an ultra dreamy, languidly groovy, and sleekly produced blend of late night pop and flowing folktronica that also brings to mind Beth Orton. That said, she takes a chance on an unexpected detour late in the album on the comparatively gritty song "Gun". Nevertheless consider it to be a minor bump in an otherwise lovely listen (and it's actually Allan's favorite track here, though it does stick out). Wonder where she'll go from here!
MPEG Stream: "Fireheads"
MPEG Stream: "Birds"

VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA My Gate's Open, Tremble By My Side (Lexicon Devil) cd 14.98
Back in print! And cheaper! First reviewed on list #182, four years ago, as follows:
This amazing record, previously LP only, finally gets the digital reissue from the until now primarily F/i oriented Lexicon Devil label. This one's for all you turntable-less folks and those of you who just may have missed out on this the first time around. But even those of you with the lp might have to pony up again, since there are 3 lengthy bonus tracks! Long, long, long pulsing drones, with strummed guitars, thrumming and warbling wind instruments and wheezing hurdy-gurdies. Classic Vibracathedral. At one point the mostly rhythmically free drone moves into a brief section that's surprisingly rocking for Vibracathedral Orchestra with drums beating out a steady 4/4 beat and lead by organ and electric guitar along with the usual saturation of droning accompaniment before settling back into a wash of gorgeously swelling drones once again. As always, totally mesmerising.
MPEG Stream: "Track 2"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"

WEREWOLF The Temple Of Fullmoon (No Colours) cd 16.98
Finally back in stock!! Yet more buzzy, drone-y, murky, frosty grimnity!!
Werewolf are a mysterious Polish horde who specialize in murky, brittle, lo fi grimness a la their countrymen Graveland. Huge guitars swirl and buzz, the rhythms veer from seasick waltzes to buzzing blackened blasts, thick walls of guitarfuzz and swirls of chaotic ambience create a dense foresty murk, where drums pulse and throb way down in the mix, like tribal war chants barely heard drifting like the stench of death on the wind. The vocals are a growling gargle, another layer of buzz in Werewolf's chaotic sonic squall, the cymbals splash and shimmer like acid rain eating away at everything it touches. This is more of that glorious loping buzzy droning black metal we can never seem to get enough of. The mix is so thick and overblown that the riffs eventually blur and smear, the whole record becoming a super buzzy trancelike drone. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Wolfish Famine Of Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Return Of Black Ravens"

WIRE, THE #296 October 2008 magazine 9.98
Every month, like clockwork, the UK's premier magazine devoted mainly to the sort of music we love cranks out another informative issue. Here it is again, with techno maven Richie Hawtin on the cover, along with the likes of Lucky Dragons, Benge, Runhild Gammelsaeter (of Thorr's Hammer and Khlyst), Ingrid Laubrock, and more. David Grubbs has the "Epiphanies" essay in the back, and Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers Temple does the "Invisible Jukebox" with Alan Cummings playing him the records. Pretty interesting. He spots Stockhausen and Gong straight off, taking more time with Ohkami No Jikan and Terry Riley, among others... Cummings stumps him with a tricky Afrirampo track. And there's a Helsinki scene report of special interest to certain AQ customers, since it's all about our favorite new musical movement, SKWEEE! Plus all the usual reviews and stuff.
Making this ish even more of a must buy than usual, it also comes with a free covermounted cd sampler, with stuff on it ranging from Grails to Moha!, cool.

WOLFSKULL Tannasg (Ruralfaune) cd-r 10.98
BACK IN STOCK. Final copies!!
The last we heard from Wolfskull was a super limited cd-r on Campbell Kneale's avant metal label Battlecruiser, a stumbling slab of Jandekian doom metal drone. Since then, there's been a split with Polish (by way of Texas) black folk ensemble Wolfmangler, and not much else... until now.
Tannasg is the latest installment from this New Zealand based outfit (we're thinking there's a distinct possibility that Wolfskull is in fact either PseudoArcana's Anthony Milton, or BCM's Campbell Kneale...) and begins like a page out of SUNN)))'s doomdrone playbook. A very Black Boned slow motion downtuned riff-fuck, glacial and thick, huge moaning notes and chords crumbling into black rumbles...
Track two though harkens back to the Battlecruiser release, with shuffling abstract percussion, wide open reverby room sound, simple acoustic guitar strum, a sort of super super mellow Dead C jangle jam, that never really goes anywhere, just sort of drifts and eventually fades out.
But that's the only calm in this storm, the rest of the tracks are variations on a crushing minimal sludge theme. From muted throbbing pulses, to hissy lo-fi Skullfower guitarscapes over practice space drums, to the 16 minute sludge pummel of "Shred Your Axe", with pounding drums, shrieking feedback, all over a fuzzy rumbling riff so distorted it almost sounds like a streak of blacknoise, to the final 4 minute finale, a blown out guitar drone, muter feedback, twisted into stuttering rhythms and throbbing pulses. Some seriously heavy shit for sure. Essential listening for the doomdronedeathdirge obsessive among you...
LIMITED TO 79 COPIES!!! (these are the last few!)
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"

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V/A Dr. Boogie Presents Shim Sham Shimmy (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98
Fuck Off. Fuck Off. Fuck Off... Sorry, we're just singing along with of the songs here. that's the title of one of the songs here. Kind of a novelty number by Slim Gaillard, recorded back in the forties, believe it or not. They never -quite- say "fuck off" in the song, well they do but it sounds like a clucking chicken or something each time. So they could get away with it. Heh heh heh. It's also known as "The Dirty Rooster".
So that's one good reason to buy this comp of old time boogie woogie rarities. There's 29 more cuts here, all of 'em lotsa fun and/or bluesy drinkin' music. If you liked the previous Dr. Boogie compilation on Sub Rosa, you'll dig this too. Listening to this, it's not too hard imagining yourself wandering into some roadhouse honky tonk down South, circa '46 or '52, grooving to the rough and ready sound of what wound up as rock n' roll not too long later.
The many artists found here include some well known names like electric blues guitarist Albert Collins, blues/jazz guitar great Lonnie Johnson, and pianist Champion Jack Dupree, along with plenty of amazing obscurities (the liner notes give what little information is available about some of these). From Bobo Jenkins to Guitar Slim Green, Ramblin Hi Harris to Papa George Lightfoot... they're all screaming 'n' crying about how life gets hard, it's a low down dirty shame, just can't understand it, she's taking all my money and I'm gonna kill that hen... and suchlike subjects.
MPEG Stream: ALBERT COLLINS & THE RHYTHM ROCKERS "Freeze"
MPEG Stream: SLIM GAILLARD "Fuck Off"
MPEG Stream: EDDIE SNOW "I'm Off That Stuff"

V/A Dr. Boogie Presents Shim Sham Shimmy (Sub Rosa) lp 15.98
Fuck Off. Fuck Off. Fuck Off... Sorry, we're just singing along with of the songs here. that's the title of one of the songs here. Kind of a novelty number by Slim Gaillard, recorded back in the forties, believe it or not. They never -quite- say "fuck off" in the song, well they do but it sounds like a clucking chicken or something each time. So they could get away with it. Heh heh heh. It's also known as "The Dirty Rooster".
So that's one good reason to buy this comp of old time boogie woogie rarities. There's 29 more cuts here, all of 'em lotsa fun and/or bluesy drinkin' music. If you liked the previous Dr. Boogie compilation on Sub Rosa, you'll dig this too. Listening to this, it's not too hard imagining yourself wandering into some roadhouse honky tonk down South, circa '46 or '52, grooving to the rough and ready sound of what wound up as rock n' roll not too long later.
The many artists found here include some well known names like electric blues guitarist Albert Collins, blues/jazz guitar great Lonnie Johnson, and pianist Champion Jack Dupree, along with plenty of amazing obscurities (the liner notes give what little information is available about some of these). From Bobo Jenkins to Guitar Slim Green, Ramblin Hi Harris to Papa George Lightfoot... they're all screaming 'n' crying about how life gets hard, it's a low down dirty shame, just can't understand it, she's taking all my money and I'm gonna kill that hen... and suchlike subjects.
MPEG Stream: ALBERT COLLINS & THE RHYTHM ROCKERS "Freeze"
MPEG Stream: SLIM GAILLARD "Fuck Off"
MPEG Stream: EDDIE SNOW "I'm Off That Stuff"

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

V/A Melenudos! (Gorilla) cd 24.00
Smokin' collection of Spanish groovers and rockers from the '60s and '70s. The opener from Rudy Ventura could get any disco floor shaking, past or present, while the rest of the record goes more in a catchy pop/rock direction with healthy doses of soul, funk and garage, reminding us a lot of that great Sensacional Soul collection we went crazy for a few years back. Barely any of these artists were familiar to us before except for maybe Los Shakers and Los Rollers, which is fine with us, as it's always exciting to get turned on to all sorts of awesome Spanish sounds we weren't hip to. The price tag might be a bit hefty, but luckily the songs on this collection are well worth the price of admission!
MPEG Stream: RUDY VENTURA "Sigo Sonando"
MPEG Stream: LOS SHAKERS "Pafff...Bum"
MPEG Stream: LOS ARCHIDUQUES "Lamento De Gaitas"

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

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

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE COSMIC INFERNO  "Hotter Than Inferno: Live In Osaka 2007"  (AMT)  dvd  21.00
AETHENOR  "Betimes Black"  (VHF)  cd/lp  13.98/14.98
AT THE HEAD OF THE WOODS  "Secrets Beyond Time & Space"  (Glass Throat)  cd 14.98
AURAL FIT  "II"  (PSF)  cd  22.00
AZRAEL  "Obdurate / Unto Death"  (Moribund)  cd  14.98
BLACK ANGELS  "Doves/ Drone"  (Light in the Attic)  7"  6.98
BOSTON SPACESHIPS  "Brown Submarine"  (Guided By Voices)  cd  14.98
BRIGGS, ANNE  "s/t"  (Water)  cd  15.98
BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT  "Motion to Rejoin"  (Matador)  cd  13.98
CAPTAIN BEYOND  "Dawn Explosion"  (Friday Music)  cd  15.98
CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE  "Town Topic"  (Tomlab)  cd ep  10.98
COSMIC FORCE  "Ghetto Down"  (Truth and Soul)  12"  8.98
DEATH VESSEL  "Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us"  (Sub Pop)  cd  13.98
DIPLO  "I Like Turtles"  (Mad Greasy)  cd  9.98
DISKJOKKE  "Staying In"  (Smalltown Supersound)  cd  16.98
DRY RIB  "Whose Last Trickle"  (Hyped To Death)  cd  12.98
DUNGEN  "Satt Att Se"  (Subliminal Sounds)  12"  16.98
DUSK & BLACKDOWN  "Margins Music"  (Keysound Recordings)  cd  15.98
ELAHI, OSTAD  "Destinations"  (Harmonia Mundi)  cd  26.00
EMPEROR MACHINE  "What's In The Box"  (DC Recordings)  12"  13.98
FREE POP ELECTRONIC CONCEPT, THE  "A New Exciting
Experience"  (Vampisoul)  cd/lp  23.00/25.00
FREEDOM'S CHILDREN  "Astra"  (Shadoks / Normal)  cd  17.98
FREEDOM'S CHILDREN  "Battle Hymn Of The Broken-Hearted
Horde"  (Shadoks / Normal)  cd  17.98
FREEDOM'S CHILDREN  "Galactic Vibes"  (Shadoks / Normal)  cd  17.98
FUCK BUTTONS  "Colours Move"  (ATP)  12"  10.98
FUCKED UP  "Crooked Head"  (Matador)  7"  3.98
FUNKADELIC  "Funkadelic"  (4 Men With Beards)  lp  16.98
FUNKADELIC  "Maggot Brain"  (4 Men With Beards)  lp  16.98
GAMMELSAETER, RUNHILL  "Amplicon"  (Utech)  cd  16.98
GAYE, MARVIN  "What's Going On"  (Vinyl Lovers)  lp  31.00
GILLESPIE, DANA  "Box Of Surprises"  (Rev-Ola)  cd  17.98
GZA  "Pro Tools"  (Babygrande)  cd
HAMPEL, GUNTER (GROUP)  "Music From Europe"  (ESP-Disk)  cd  14.98
HAWKWIND  "Space Ritual Sundown V. 2"  (Abstract Sounds)  2cd  14.98
HEALTH  "Triceratops/Lost Time"  (Lovepump)  12"  14.98
HEAVENSORE  "Asmodai"  (Utech)  cd  16.98
HILL, ZACH  "Astrological Straits"  (Ipecac)  cd/lp  16.98/22.00
HIROSHIGE, JOJO & MASONNA  "The Last Destruction Noise: At Namba
Bears, Osaka, 2007.12.29"  (Alchemy)  dvd-r  14.98
ICE CUBE  "Raw Footage"  (Lench Mob)  cd  17.98
IDA  "My Fair, My Dark EP"  (Polyvinyl Record Co.)  cd ep/12" 10.98/11.98
IKEDA, RYOJI  "See You At Regis Debray (OST)"  (Syntax)  2cd  23.00
JEPSON, WARNER  "Totentanz and Other Electronic Works, 1958 -
1973"  (Melon Expander)  cd  19.98
JOHANNES, EERO  "s/t"  (Planet Mu)  cd/2lp  14.98/17.98
JUDAS PRIEST  "Nostradamus"  (Epic)  2cd  17.98
KELPE  "Ex-Aquarium"  (DC Recordings)  cd  22.00
KRYSMOPOMPAS  "Heute Schlafen - Morgen Aufwachen"  (S-S Records)  2lp 19.98
KULTIVATOR  "Barndomens Stigar"  (Mellotronen)  2cd  28.00
LADYTRON  "Velocifero"  (Netwerk)  cd/2lp  16.98/24.00
LANDED  "How Little Will It Take"  (Load)  cd+3"cd  15.98
LOVE  "False Start"  (Universal)  cd  16.98
LOVE  "Out There"  (Universal)  cd  16.98
MASTERS, MARC  "No Wave"  (Black Dog Publishing)  book  29.95
MERZBOW  "Eucalypse"  (Soleilmoon)  cd  28.00
MOGWAI  "The Hawk Is Howling (Deluxe Edition)"  (Matador)  cd+dvd  15.98
MOGWAI  "The Hawk Is Howling"  (Matador)  cd/2lp  13.98/17.98
MUSLIMGAUZE  "Armsbazzar"  (Essence Music)  cd  17.98
NAGASI NI TE  "Yosuga"  (Jagjaguar)  cd  14.98
NELLY  "Brass Knuckles"  (Universal Records)  cd  15.98
NEW YEAR  "s/t"  (Touch & Go)  cd  15.98
NISENNENMONDAI  "Tori / Neji"  (Smalltown Supersound)  cd  16.98
O LEVEL (TEENAGE FILMSTARS)  "A Day In The Life of Gilbert and George:
1977-1980"  (Artpop!)  cd  17.98
ORCHESTRA BAOBAB  "Made In Dakar"  (Nonesuch)  cd  17.98
PADDED CELL  "Word Of Mouth"  (DC Recordings)  12"  11.98
PENTEMPLE  "s/t"  (Southern Lord)  cd/lp  15.98/16.98
PERFORMING FERRETS  "No One Told Us"  (Hyped To Death)  cd  12.98
PINHAS, RICHARD / MERZBOW  "Keio Line"  (Dirter Promotions)  lp  42.00
PLANKTON WAT  "Crystal Wizard"  (Stunned)  cd-r  8.98
PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND  "s/t"  (Eclipse)  lp  21.00
PLASTICIAN  "Rinse: 06"  (Rinse)  cd  21.00
PLUSH  "Fed"  (Broken Horse)  cd  21.00
PLUXUS  "Solid State"  (Kompakt)  cd  16.98
POMASSL  "Spare Parts"  (Raster-Noton)  cd  17.98
PRICE, MELVYN  "Rhythm And Blues"  (Waxpoetics)  cd/lp  16.98/21.00
PRURIENT  "Cocaine Death"  (Hospital)  cd  15.98
RAGLANI  "Of Sirens Born"  (Kranky)  cd  14.98
RICHTER, MAX  "24 Postcards"  (Fat Cat)  cd  14.98
ROEDELIUS, HANS-JOACHIM & TIM STORY  "Inlandish"  (Gronland)  cd  14.98
SALVATORE  "Days of Rage"  (Racing Junior)  cd  37.00
SERENA-MANEESH  "S-M Backwards"  (Smalltown Supersound)  2cd  28.00
SEVEN THAT SPELLS  "Black OM Rising"  (Beta-Lactam)  cd  26.00
SIGH  "A Tribute to Venom"  (The End)  lp+cd  22.00
SILVER APPLES  "s/t"  (Phoenix)  lp  34.00
SILVER JEWS  "Silver Jew"  (Drag City)  dvd  15.98
SLOAN  "Parallel Play"  (Yep Roc)  cd/lp  14.98/25.00
SNAKE FLOWER 2  "Renegade Daydream"  (Tic Tac Totally Records)  cd 11.98
SOLVENTS  "Manresa Castle"  (self released)  cd  9.98
SPRING HEEL JACK  "Songs & Themes"  (Thirsty Ear)  cd  16.98
TEN KENS  "s/t"  (Fat Cat)  cd  14.98
TIME, THE  "Pandemonium"  (Paisley Park / Reprise)  cd  13.98
TOTH, JAMES JACKSON  "Waiting In Vain"  (Ryko)  cd  14.98
UNEARTHLY TRANCE  "Electrocution"  (Relapse)  cd  15.98
V/A  "More Dirty Laundry: The Soul Of Black Country"  (Trikont)  cd 19.98
V/A  "My Own Wolf: A New Approach To Ulver"  (Cold Dimensions)  2cd 22.00
V/A  "Parlez Vous Pop"  (Bureau)  cd  19.98
VEGETABLE ORCHESTRA  "Remixed"  (Karmarouge)  cd  17.98
VIVIAN GIRLS  "s/t"  (In The Red)  cd  13.98
WALKMEN  "You & Me"  (Gigantic Music)  cd  12.98
WAX POETICS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 2  book  39.95
WEE  "You Can Fly On My Aeroplane"  (* (Asterik))  cd  14.98
WHITE LIGHT CIRCUS  "Break The Circuit"  (DC Recordings)  12"  13.98
Z'EV VS PITA  "Colchester Arts Centre"  (Mego)  cd  17.98

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ABOUT MAILORDER


Please place your order via our website.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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


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

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SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} on the way to us now...
Yoshi Wada "Off The Wall" cd reissue on EM Records
Witchfinder General "Resurrected" cd on Buried In Time And Dust/Nuclear War Now!

----} September 23rd
Oxbow "Fuckfest" cd reissue on Hydrahead
La Dusseldorf cd reissues on Water ("s/t", "Viva", and "Individuellos")
USAisamonster "Space Programs" cd on Load
Ovo "Croce Via" cd/lp on Load

----} September 30th
Group Inerane "Guitars From Agadez (Music of Niger)" cd on Sublime Frequencies
Blood Ceremony "s/t" cd on Candlelight
Capricorns "River, Bear Your Bones" cd on Candlelight
Roots Manuva "Slime & Reason" cd/lp on Big Dada
Caina "Temporary Antennae" cd on Profound Lore
Akimbo "Jersey Shores" cd on Neurot
Eero Johannes "s/t" cd/lp on Planet Mu (skweee!!!)
Virus Syndicate "Sick Pay" cd on Planet Mu
Vivian Girls "s/t" cd/lp on In The Red
Tindersticks "Hungry Saw" cd on Constellation
Stephen John Kalinich "A World Of Peace Must Come" cd on Light In The Attic
Misery Index "Traitors" cd on Relapse

----} also in September
Missy Elliott "Block Party" cd
Ironsword "Overlords Of Chaos" cd on Shadow Kingdom
Bible Of The Devil "Freedom Metal" cd on Cruz Del Sur

----} October 7th
Deerhoof "Offend Maggie" cd/lp on Kill Rock Stars
Marnie Stern "This Is It And I Am It..." cd/lp on Kill Rock Stars
Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra "Secrets Of The Sun" cd reissue on Atavistic
These Arms Are Snakes "Tail Swallower And Dove" cd on Suicide Squeeze
Crystal Antlers "s/t" cdep on Touch And Go
Polvo "Cor-Crane Secret" lp reissue on Merge
Jay Reatard "Matador Singles '08" cd/lp on Matador
Fucked Up "The Chemistry Of Common Life" cd/2lp on Matador

----} October 14th
Dead C "Secret Earth" cd/lp on Ba Da Bing
Faxed Head "From Coalinga To Osaka: Live..." cd on Mimicry
Early Man "Beware The Circling Fin" cdep/10" on The End
Jarboe "Mahakali" cd/deluxe cd on The End
v/a "1970's Algerian Proto-Rai Underground" lp on Sublime Frequencies
The Alps "III" cd/lp on Type
Book Of Black Earth "Feast" cd on 20 Buck Spin
Samothrace "Life's Trade" cd on 20 Buck Spin
Skull Defekts "Drone Drug" lp version on Actual Noise
Winterfylleth "Ghost Of Heritage" cd on Profound Lore

----} October 20th
Skepticism "Alloy" cd on Red Stream

----} October 28th
Hammers Of Misfortune "Fields/Church Of Broken Glass" 2cd on Profound Lore
Crystal Stilts "Alight Of Night" cd/lp on Slumberland
Der TPK (Teenage Panzerkorps) "Games For Slaves" lp on Siltbreeze
Adam Payne "Organ" cd/lp on Holy Mountain
Cobra Verde "Haven't Slept All Year" cd on Scat
Last Step "1961" Planet Mu
Red Snapper "Pale Blue Dot" cd on Lo
White/Light "Black Acts" cd on Smells Like
Larkin Grimm "Parplar" cd on Young God
Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power & The Amorphous Strums "Dark Developments" on Orange Twin

----} November 11th
Helios "Caesura" cd/lp on Type
Peter Rehberg "Work For GV 2004-2008" cd on Editions Mego
Luomo "Convivial" cd on Huume
Circus Devils "Ataxia" cd/lp on Happy Jack
Free Blood "Singles" cd on DFA

----} November 18th
v/a "The Jewelled Antler Library" 4cd box set on Porter Records
La Otracina "Blood Moon Riders" cd/lp on Holy Mountain
MGR Y Destructo "Amigos De La Guitarra" cd/lp on Neurot
KK Null "Oxygen Flash" cd on Neurot

----} December 12th
B. Fleischmann "Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung!" cd/lp on Morr Music

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later
Girl Talk "Feed the Animals" cd on Illegal Art
Combat Astronomy "Dreams No Longer Hesitate" cd
Combat Astronomy "Earth Divided by Zero" cd
Ovens "s/t" cd on tUMULt
Diamatregon "Crossroad" cd on tUMULt
Amocoma "Go To Hell" cd on tUMULt
The Memories Attack "s/t" cd tUMULt
Conifer "Crown Fire" cd/2lp on Important
Tecumseh "Avalanch & Inundation" cd/lp on Important
Moha! "One Way Ticket To Candyland" cd/lp on Rune Grammofon
Rosetta "Wake/Lift" vinyl version
Makoto Kawabata & Michishita Shinsuke "Basement Echo" cd on Important
Cold Sun "Dark Shadows" lp+10" reissue on World in Sound
Coh "Strings" 2cd on Raster-Noton
Necrofrost "Blackeon Lightharvest" cd
Mariana Topley-Bird w/ Dangermouse
Loren Chasse & Michael Mnortham "Otolth"
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
The Heads tba 2cd 'best of' on Leafhound
Gore reissues on Southern Lord
Black Boned Angel / Nadja collaboration cd/lp 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 ŕ tęte de chou" cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
Kath Bloom "Terror" cd on Chapter
Iro "Tamafuri" cd on PSF
Diza Star "Contact High Diza Star" cd on Fractal
DDAA "Action and Japanese Demonstration" cd reissue on Fractal
Wolfgang Voigt "Freiland - Klaviermusik" 12" on Profan
When "Are You Silent" cd on Jester
Stomu Yamash'ta cd reissues on Esoteric Recordings (including "Floating Music" & "Man From The East")
Sean Smith "Eternal" cd on Ultra Hard Gel
Plastikman "Rine 06" cd on Rinse
Jonas Reinhardt "s/t" cd on Kranky
Deerhunter "Microcastle" cd/lp on Kranky
v/a "Eccentric Soul: The Young Disciples" cd on Numero Group
Hototogisu "Pale Fatal Sister" 2lp on Important
Risto "Live!" cd on Fonal
Sperm "Shh!" lp reissue on Destijl
Jandek "Glasgow Sunday 2005" cd on Corwood
Jazzfinger "The Sun's Golden Blood" cd on Beta-Lactam Ring
Troum "Eald-Ge-Streon" cd/2lp/2cd on Beta-Lactam Ring

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IAMINDUST 2008


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3

Death of the West [San Francisco]

NOMMO OGO (Sf BAY AREA)

Forms of Things UNknown [San Francisco]

THOMAS DIMUZIO (San Francisco)

Asianova (TAoS, nEW mEXICO/SAN fRANCISCO)

Post Scriptvm [Brooklyn, NY]

AMBER ASYLUM (SAN FRANCISCO)

WINSTON TONG / LX RUDIS (SF Bay Area)

Free-Form Multi-Artist Collaborative Set


SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4

James Goode [San Francisco]

PARLOUR MUSIC COMMUNICATIONS (lOS aNGELES)

Ethos [Austin, TX]

Nux Vomica [San Francisco]

ILLUSION OF SAFETY (Spanning the Globe)

Voice of Eye [Taos, New Mexico]

KWISP (San Francisco)

Free-Form Multi-Artist Collaborative Set

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5

A.S. [SF Bay Area)

Bloodbox [Seattle]

Troum [Bremen, GERMANY]

AIDAN BAKER (Canada)

NADJA (CANADA)

Ure Thrall [San Francisco]

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NADJA tour!!!

Oct 3 @ tba w/ Troum & Tecumseh - Portland, Oregon
Oct 5 @ i.am.indust2008 festival (Aidan Baker + Nadja sets) - Oakland, California
Oct 6 @ Stork Club w/ Tecumseh & Maleficia - Oakland, California
Oct 7 @ Hemlock w/ Kris Force & Tecumseh - San Francisco, California
Oct 8 @ Relax Bar w/ Tecumseh - Los Angeles, California

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The Argus Lounge 3187 Mission (@ Valencia) San Francisco
Sat Sept 20th, 9pm, $5.00

Thomas Dimuzio http://www.thomasdimuzio.com/
Noel Von Harmonson http://www.sfweekly.com/2006-05-31/news/noel-s-noise/
Big Baby Tiger Tears http://www.myspace.com/bigbabytigertears
White Pee http://www.myspace.com/whitepee

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottSallyAntaeusCameronFrankandJon