NAHVALR s/t (Enemies List) cd 13.98
Black metal by its very nature is fairly isolationist, especially considering that one of the mains strains consists of one man bands holed up in their bedroom / attic / shed / shack / cave, shunning humanity, sunlight, any sort of personal interaction, filtering all of that negative hateful energy into their grim black buzz. Even proper black metal groups, with more than one member, are often quite tribal, kvlt-like you might even say, performing sonic rituals in some dimly lit rehearsal space, channeling all manner of dark energy and creating music both bleak and brutal, evil and cathartic. That sound, created by a group, is still intensely personal and to a certain degree is created more out of a need to create, than a need for adoration or success.
But what if you turned that whole dynamic completely around. Removed all aspects of kvlt-ishness, of individualism, what if you created a black metal horde open to anyone, anyone with an amp and a guitar, or even just a computer, could record tracks, and contribute to what would eventually be woven into the first open source black metal record.
And here it is, masterminded by the guys behind gloomy bliss metal duo Have A Nice Life, Nahvalr is indeed, as far as we know the very first "open source" black metal band. Parts and songs were solicited online, contributed via email, handed off in person, donated anonymously, and eventually the HANL guys took all the various tracks and deftly assembled them into this buzzing black behemoth. And there is in fact, plenty of buzz obviously, layer upon layer of crushing downtuned insectoid buzz, but also loads of creepy ambience, weird warbly doomy bits, super lo-fi blasts of near white noise, insane grinding drum machine stutter, haunting black ambience, deep ominous rumbles and softly glowing shimmers, weird chanted vocals, industrial scrape and pound, blown out blissed out blackened drifts of crumbling soft noise, it's all very schizophrenic, but it doesn't at all sound like a hodge podge, it sounds more like a truly expansive sprawling chunk of demented abstract black metal weirdness. Which is precisely what it is. It just so happens that there's way more than 4 or 5 guys "in the band."
Some songs are so steeped in buzz it sounds like records by Ildjarn, Velvet Cacoon and Wrath Of The Weak all being played simultaneously, other tracks are loosed from their black metal moorings and sound like Skullflower, thick sheets of sound, spaced out noise drenched ur-drones, others are gloomy and darkly melodic, simple guitarlines unfurling over streaks of feedback, howled anguished vocals, and shimmering black drones, while still others are furious dense blasts of raw, noisy black metal, in the red, speaker destroying missives from hell, swirling and roiling and churning maniacally, but often splintering into creepy doomic crawls or fucked up abstract Abruptum like blackened soundscapes.
The record begins with a sample of conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Art Bell, talking about digging a hole to hell in Siberia, before launching into blown out super saturated black metal blast, but the source material is so varied, that even the parts that sound like black metal on the surface, have so much going on just below, twisted warbly melodies, keening wails, disembodied voices, textures and layers, so immersive and expansive, headphones are like X-ray goggles, revealing a whole other world hidden to the casual listener. The record then swerves from warped slow motion ambient doom, to soundscapes of high end skree and garbled guitarnoise, to grinding blacknoize fury, to downright gorgeous blissy drones and all the other various sonic stops mentioned above. Not at all typical black metal, instead, more of a weird sound experiment, based around black metal tropes, and created with a core of buzzing blackness, but allowed to sprawl WELL past the usual boundaries that define the genre, creating something extraordinary yet still distinctly black in the process.
MPEG Stream: "Chorus Of Blasphemes"
MPEG Stream: "Bloodflood"
MPEG Stream: "Black Elk Speaks, Chokes, And Dies"

FRIPP & ENO (No Pussyfooting) (DGM) 2cd 16.98
What more could be said about these two Fripp & Eno records than we've already written in countless Expo '70, Growing and Aidan Baker reviews? That's because these records are pretty much ground zero for all of the dark dreamy drifty processed guitar / tape / synth drone that we can't ever seem to get enough of. Perhaps there are other earlier influential touchstones such as Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, perhaps Stockhausen and Terry Riley as well, but none seemed to have come so totally out of nowhere from two relatively mainstream players as these two records. Manuel Gottsching, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music all came a little later.
After every other Eno solo album and collaboration (from Cluster to David Byrne) has been reissued, we are lucky enough to finally see both of these classic releases newly 24-bit remastered by Fripp himself reissued on his DGM imprint. These have never sounded better! No Pussyfooting even contains an extra disc featuring both tracks in reverse and a 40 minute bonus track of "The Heavenly Music Corporation" recorded at half speed that we know all our customers into glacial doomy drone will want, nay, need to own! Even if you own this record already, you may just need to buy it again for the stellar extra material!
It's easy to take for granted nowadays the influence of Brian Eno as the "godfather of ambient music", but in 1973 before he had even released his first solo record, Here Come The Warm Jets, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno were mainly known for their previous roles in King Crimson and Roxy Music respectively. Then this mysterious record parenthetically titled (No Pussyfooting) appears with its cryptic cover, a sort of ultra-modernized take on a hermetic alchemical engraving depicting the two artists (Eno at his most androgynous) looking in opposite directions, sitting in a small mirrored room with no doors reading tarot cards on a mirrored table with what sort of looks like a line of coke (?), next to a mirrored guitar in a mirrored case in the corner, a translucent mannequin and an antique silver radiator behind them under glass shelves filled with old books. The back cover showing the same scene with both artists and tarot cards missing. With its two side-long awesomely titled tracks "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and "Swastika Girls", what kind of music would this be? Rock? Prog? Glam? No one probably would realize until they purchased it and brought it home, that it would be this organically cerebral deep listening experience of the highest order. It's kind of a downer that we have such easy access to information nowadays, because when this came out, it was a true mystery object, which added to its esoteric appeal. But it still is to an extent, as numerous listens over the years still never fail to captivate, or confound how exactly the sounds are being made. Apparently,utilizing a system later dubbed, Frippertronics, two reel to reel tape decks were used to allow audio elements to be added onto a continuing tape loop building up dense layers of sound that would slowly decay as it turned around the decks' playback head. On "The Heavenly Music Corporation" layers of deep synth drones are layered in phased washes with Fripp's unique bowed guitar sound ringing ascending solo lines on top that sometimes loop and sometimes don't. Eno wrings out what sounds like synth lines in counterpoint to Fripp's part in similar tones so that at times it gets harder to tell who is making what sound as the piece intensifies. "Swastika Girls" starts with high pitched cascades of processed piano like tones with scraping synth squelches looping in counterpoint, before low rising bass notes and Riley-ish piano repetitions appear. Then Fripp's searing guitar crash-lands into the mix almost disrupting the whole process, but somehow it all works. Much more distorted and dissonant than "The Heavenly Music Corporation", it doesn't take the process for granted that everything will sound harmonious but remains still somehow cohesive, though far from easy listening.
While the backward tracks are equally amazing, they highlight a different kind of listening experience altogether. The seams show a bit more, the entrance and exit of new sounds more abrupt, but still strangely alien. Their inclusion here came from out of the listening experience of their first (and probably only) complete UK radio broadcast in 1973 courtesy of the late John Peel. Because the tapes were stored "tail out" but played as though they were stored "front out", the broadcast played the music in reverse. When Eno called in to say the music was being played backwards, he was met with a "that's what they all say" response.
But the real bonus of this deluxe package is the 40 minute "half-speed version" of "The Heavenly Music Corporation". When there were 16 2/3 rpm options on early record players, a lot of young guitarists would use the speed to slow down 33 1/3 rpm records to learn and practice their favorite guitar lines. Here it makes the drones so deep and heavy, Fripp's guitar lines more crushing, the layers creep and slither sounding like it could be one of the weird drone cd-r's we sell tons of. If it was in a black sleeve with skulls on it, and was called Skulled Space Outrosphere or Radiant Black Blood, and sealed with wax or wrapped in twine, and was limited to 100 copies, we'd sell a million of em (well, okay... 100!!). Sooooooooooooo Recommended and Essential!
MPEG Stream: "The Heavenly Music Corporation"
MPEG Stream: "Swastika Girls (reversed)"
MPEG Stream: "The Heavenly Music Corporation (half-speed)"

FRIPP & ENO Evening Star (DGM) cd 15.98
What more could be said about these two Fripp & Eno records than we've already written in countless Expo '70, Growing and Aidan Baker reviews? That's because these records are pretty much ground zero for all of the dark dreamy drifty processed guitar / tape / synth drone that we can't ever seem to get enough of. Perhaps there are other earlier influential touchstones such as Tony Conrad, and La Monte Young, perhaps Stockhausen and Terry Riley as well, but none seemed to have come so totally out of nowhere from two relatively mainstream players as these two records. Manuel Gottsching, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music all came a little later.
After every other Eno solo album and collaboration (from Cluster to David Byrne) has been reissued, we are lucky enough to finally see both of these classic releases newly 24-bit remastered by Fripp himself and reissued on his DGM imprint. These have never sounded better! While this reissue doesn't feature any bonus material, we still think it's a must have for any fan of kosmiche experimental drone music. If you haven't owned this before, now is the time!!!!!
Judging from the cover and title of 1975's Evening Star, it would be easy to dismiss this as a generic new-age record by Shadowfax or Mark Isham. It does look a bit Windham Hill-ish. But while its more melodic and dreamy than No Pussyfooting, this is certainly not pure relaxation music. It's way more cerebral and at times quite unnerving. Teaming up with Fripp once again after releasing three brilliant solo pop albums (Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, and Another Green World), Eno started concentrating on his ambient period culminating later that same year in what would be his first solo ambient record Discreet Music. Using the same dual tape machine system as on No Pussyfooting, the tracks here feel more composed and purposeful. Starting with "Wind on Water", layered washes of phased high toned analog synths and flittering guitar drones pulse like a breathing entity before the Cluster-like piano figures of the stunning title track, "Evening Star" emerge augmented by a ringing guitar arpeggio and one of the most gorgeous Fripp solos ever put to tape. This track is like an early predecessor to Eno's soundtrack work for the NASA film Apollo, almost a decade later. So beautiful! The next couple of tracks delve further into gentler territory, with "Wind on Wind" being an excerpted version of a piece later included on Discreet Music. But the nearly thirty minute final piece, "An Index of Metals" returns us to the dark intense drone of No Pussyfooting. Sounding more metallic and cosmic than anything on that record, "An Index of Metals" with its deep resonant pulsations and expansively spatial guitar work at times sounds like the melting magma of a dying star, or Edward Artemiev's coldly terrifying soundtrack work for Andrei Tartovsky's Solaris. Awe-inspiring yet very chilling! So Essential!
MPEG Stream: "Evening Star"
MPEG Stream: "An Index of Metals"

GORE Hart-Gore / Mean Man's Dream (Southern Lord) 2cd 17.98
Holy shit. GORE! Easily one of our favorite heavy bands EVER. We raved about the separate 2lp reissues last list, but we figured we'd wait for the cds to show up before bestowing Record Of The Week status upon them. Now combined as one massive double disc document collecting the first two albums and then some from this Dutch instru-metal group, who forged an incredible minimal metallic legacy that would go on to influence loads of our favorite bands. In fact, aQ would quite possibly be a whole different kind of store if it wasn't for Gore...
This is the sort of review that is so intimidating. Records we have loved for years and years, listened to hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, and then to finally have to put into words what it is that makes these so good, so special, whatever it is that makes these two of our favorite records EVER!!!! How much do we love these records? Well, whenever we would find one used, we would buy it just to give it to someone who needed to hear it, so much so that Andee at one point was even talking to the band about a comprehensive career spanning box set. But why you ask? Difficult to explain, hearing them is enough, even decades after they were originally released, folks who have never heard Gore, are usually sold after ONE song. Sometimes it doesn't even take that long. Just listen to "Mean Man's Dream" below, we'll wait....
See what we mean? So heavy, repetitive, mesmerizing, hypnotic, angular and abrasive, but impossibly catchy, groovy even. Listen to the other tracks, you won't be able to stop, you'll need to hear them all.
Gore fanatics will need these no matter what, and most heavy music fans have probably at least heard OF Gore, if not heard them once or twice, so they too might also want to pick these up. But we might as well start with who the heck this Gore band is anyway, and why should we care...
Gore were a Dutch instrumental power trio trafficking in ultra minimal heaviness, like an even more minimal Melvins, but sans vocals, their songs made up of one, maybe two riffs, pounded out over and over, a bit like a more metal, proto-Circle.
Hart Gore and Mean Man's Dream are the first two Gore records, but play like part one and part two of a single song cycle. Crushing, pummeling, heavy as hell, repetitive, motorik, but weirdly melodic and impossibly catchy, we can't stress enough how massive and seminal these records were and are. Gore created and mastered a sound that would go on to influence countless heavy bands, and yet, somehow, these two records decades after their initial release, still sound YEARS ahead of their time, masterpieces of heavy rock, of minimal metal, of proto-math metal, of hypno rock, this, as they say is THE SHIT.
For now, all we can say, is if you are at all into heavy music, these records are about as essential as it gets, your life will be changed, the way you look at music, what you consider heavy, how you hear other heavy bands, all of that will change, for the better. Trust us.
For Gore fanatics, like us, these are ESSENTIAL, the new designs are gorgeous, incorporating the timeless original album covers with new drawings and a beautiful super stylized layout. The cd includes a big booklet, packed with liner notes, the story of Gore, tons of rare photos, and most importantly, both discs come with a whole mess of live tracks from the same era! Unreleased and unheard until now!
BUY THIS NOW! YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY. THIS COULD BE YOUR NEW FAVORITE BAND! AND C'MON SOUTHERN LORD! KEEP THE GORE REISSUES COMING. WREDE! LIFELONG DEADLINE! MEST! SLOW DEATH! WE WANT, NAY -NEED- THEM ALL!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Mean Man's Dream"
MPEG Stream: "Search"
MPEG Stream: "Extirpation"
MPEG Stream: "To The Gallows"

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AGITATION FREE Malesch (Revisited) cd 17.98
Here's two long time AQ Krautrock favorites - the first and second albums by Berlin band Agitation Free - that have been previously available as cds on the Spalax, and then on Garden Of Delights labels. But now krautrock reissuers Revisited have done even newer reissues, which is great 'cause we LOVE these records and we're glad of an excuse to list 'em again, especially since the previous edition has been unavailable for some time now. Also, Revisited has found some bonus tracks to include on each!!
So, for those unfamiliar with Agitation Free, here's the deal... They got their start as a hippie commune band, with ties to Guru Guru, Tangerine Dream, and Amon Duul. Their debut, Malesch (Arabic for "it doesn't matter, take it easy"), is a true cosmic Krautrock classic, blending the spacey psych of Pink Floyd and fellow krautrockers Ash Ra Tempel and Popul Vuh with a flair for Eastern "exoticism". Plus, in the intertwining guitars, you'll find some hints of the American West Coast psych sound (yes, even a little Grateful Dead -- but don't let that scare you off). The album was recorded in 1972 not long after the band was sent on a tour of the Middle East by the Goethe Institute, and incorporates field recordings (decades before the likes of Godspeed You Black Emperor!) from their trip: the bustle of Cairo streets, desert winds, calls to prayer, friendly airline pilots... These tapes are a key element of this record's appeal (along with their sheer talent for jamming and their synth and electronic experimentation). Oh, and some great Hammond organ sounds too. Basically, this is a fantastic album of mostly instrumental psych / drone / ethnic rock, that's generally mellow but powerful too. Whether to the Great Pyramids of Egypt (where the album cover was shot) or to inner space, "Malesch" portrays a true trip indeed. So recommended.
The bonus track here is a definite bonus: a 15 minute live cut from Munich in '72. And there's a Quicktime movie video bonus as well, the band at Sakkara in Egypt, near the pyramids! Making this krautrock essential, even more essential.
MPEG Stream: "Pulse"
MPEG Stream: "Rucksturz"

AGITATION FREE 2nd (Revisited) cd 17.98
Here's two long time AQ Krautrock favorites - the first and second albums by Berlin band Agitation Free - that have been previously available as cds on the Spalax, and then on Garden Of Delights labels. But now krautrock reissuers Revisited have done even newer reissues, which is great 'cause we LOVE these records and we're glad of an excuse to list 'em again, especially since the previous edition has been unavailable for some time now. Also, Revisited has found some bonus tracks to include on each!!
The ethnic influence that so defined Agitation Free's debut is not as much a factor on 1973's Second - but both the West Coast style guitar jamming AND the way-out-there electronics experimentation really come to the fore. Again, mostly instrumental (one exception being the ominous, electronically treated reading of an Edgar Allen Poe poem that forms the last track, backed by gloomy Mellotron-led prog rock), psychedelic, trippy stuff, utterly gorgeous. Electronically created environmental sounds, wild and spacey synths, and relaxed, melodic guitar are all to be found here in abundance. Second was the second great album from this brilliant, often overlooked, Krautrock band. After Second they departed the scene with their excellent swansong live album, Last (not yet reissued by Revisited), though some other posthumous live/archival documents have subsequently been released as well.
The bonus track included here is "Laila '74", a nearly 8 minute live version of the album track(s).
MPEG Stream: "Dialogue And Random"
MPEG Stream: "Haunted Island"

AHOUSEN s/t (PSF) cd 16.98
"Lunatic avant-free-rock, honed in guerrilla street performance" we're told. Hmm, we know the streets of Tokyo are crowded, but we bet Ahousen cleared the block they were rockin'. Of course, had we been there to see 'em, we'd have stayed put in the street, digging Ahousen big time. This is some serious psychedelic guitar grit, drum tumble, distorto-bass trudge, avant-sax blat, and angsty-screamy vocal burble, from a Japanese band we first heard on PSF's Tokyo Flashback vol. 6 comp. The guitarist, Katsu, played in a band called Lizard back in the '70s, the drummer is Tail from Suishou No Fune. The quartet is rounded out by Suu on sax and vocals, and Akira on bass. Dunno what other bands they may be from, but being part of Ahousen seems cool enuff! Wild and wooly but also sometimes achingly melodic and melancholic, Ahousen (aka Ship Of Fools in English) is part free jazz, part psych rock, and part Japanese folk. It's like Albert Ayler meets Blue Cheer. Or Musica Transonic with sax and a hint of Enka.
Beginning auspiciously enough with the energetic onslaught of "All Creatures", Ahousen's self-titled debut consists of four tracks in total, ranging in length from 7 minutes to an epic 28 ("Ophelia", which occupies the 2nd half of the album, certainly is a dramatic performance, compelling throughout, moving from moments of delicate frolic to heavy duty freakdom). Speaking of drama, even in the album's less fierce, more folky moments (like on the relatively lovely "A Leaf"), Suu's nervous breakdown, primal scream vocals up the emotional ante on everything else, his extreme outbursts being a major element of Ahousen's sound, and impact. Compared to other Tokyo Flashback style acts we like from the Tokyo psych scene, such as LSD-march and Up-Tight, these guys somehow sound more '70s underground, and more OUT there - in part due to the free jazz factor, in part due to those vocals... Radical. Fans of Fushitsusha and Kaoru Abe now have a dream date. And let's not limit ourselves merely to Japanese references, anyone into intense underground noisemaking from like likes of, I dunno, Raccoo-oo-oon, might want to sail into the maelstrom with this Ship Of Fools too. Pretty fantastic.
MPEG Stream: "All Creatures"
MPEG Stream: "A Leaf"

ASVA What You Don't Know Is Frontier (Southern) cd 14.98
What You Don't Know Is Frontier is the second release from this heavy droning super group and it's insanely awesome. Densely layered glacial pools of buzzing heaviness, it's no surprise that Asva consists of members of Burning Witch, Goatsnake and SUNNO))) among others. An expansive pallet of guitars, percussion, organs, electronic wind instruments, and vocals, all plunge the listener into a battle between crumbling civilization and the redeeming light at the heart of the storm. Unlike many heavy drone bands who are easily weighed down by a lack of dimension within their music, Asva manages to swiftly guide the listener in and out of finely choreographed movements that unfold with precision musicianship. This is definitely not simply "another drone record" that should be overlooked or dismissed. The range of textures and attention to detail is key here. What You Don't Know is Frontier unfolds more like a soundtrack then a drone record, a refreshing attempt at broadening the genre into a more honest, accessible art form. Highly recommended for fans of anything HEAVY.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

ASVA What You Don't Know is Frontier (Southern) 2lp 23.00
What You Don't Know Is Frontier is the second release from this heavy droning super group and it's insanely awesome. Densely layered glacial pools of buzzing heaviness, it's no surprise that Asva consists of members of Burning Witch, Goatsnake and SUNNO))) among others. An expansive pallet of guitars, percussion, organs, electronic wind instruments, and vocals, all plunge the listener into a battle between crumbling civilization and the redeeming light at the heart of the storm. Unlike many heavy drone bands who are easily weighed down by a lack of dimension within their music, Asva manages to swiftly guide the listener in and out of finely choreographed movements that unfold with precision musicianship. This is definitely not simply "another drone record" that should be overlooked or dismissed. The range of textures and attention to detail is key here. What You Don't Know is Frontier unfolds more like a soundtrack then a drone record, a refreshing attempt at broadening the genre into a more honest, accessible art form. Highly recommended for fans of anything HEAVY.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

AURAL FIT II (PSF) cd 16.98
Another of several new PSF titles new in stock, and this one's a BRUTE. Holy moly. Deafening sandpaper for the ears... and we love it, just like we love the likes of Skullflower, Aufgehoben, and Cadaver In Drag, all of whom share the same sonic sandpapery, amped up overload absurdity of this band. Aural Fit, you may recall, if you read our list attentively or are especially tuned in to the Japanese underground, had a track on the Tokyo Flashback 5 comp, followed by a self-released full-length (now out of print) that we recommended some years back to fans of Boris and Earth looking for an even more extreme dose of heavy-duty, doomy dirge. On this new disc, Aural Fit still do the dirge, some of the time, remaining ultra-heavy all of the time. But, their sound has gotten even more "cacophonic and dense" so that it's ridiculous the band's called, merely, Aural Fit. More like Aural Apocalypse! They're not having a fit, they've having a catastrophic explosion. The sound of mechanical monsters on the march, lumbering through the smoking ruins of civilization, crushing and killing anything that hasn't already fled or been vaporized by their initial onslaught. It's four tracks, 38+ minutes of feedback, distortion, pounding percussion, and buried screams. Punishing noise rock, psych rock insanity. Utterly blown-out freak-outs, so in-the-red that your shuddering stereo speakers would be glowing if you looked at 'em through infrared goggles!
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 2"

BETTY BOTOX Mmm, Betty! (Mule Musiq) cd 16.98
Betty Botox is none other than JD Twitch, one half of Scotish super-duo Optimo. Yes, they named themselves after the Liquid Liquid song of the same name, and you may remember them from the inimitable Kill the DJ series a few years back. The one that had beats and mashups of everything from Laibach to Arthur Russell to Sun City Girls to Ricardo Villalobos - in a DANCE mix! Huh?! Anyway, this disc compiles various re-edits and remixes completed by Ms. Botox himself. Whatever you do, don't get scared. Yes, this is music you can dance to, but it has mixes of fucking Hawkwind and that Italian industrial group Pankow. Remember them? This guy is digging pretty deep, and thanks to artists like this we still have some faith in dancing. Did we mention that there's even an edit of The Jellies "Jive Baby on a Saturday Night?" Well, listen in as Ms. Botox warps and rearranges this super weird, psychedelic disco trip-fest. Hell, we might even bust out our eye-liner if and when he decides to tackle Fini Tribe's bizarre cover of "I Want More" by Can. Yes, that really happened. Fans of fun, this is for you.
MPEG Stream: THE JELLIES " Jive Baby On a Saturday Night"
MPEG Stream: RESIDENTS "Diskomo"

BLACK BUG, THE Life Is A Whore (Boomchick) 7" 6.98
The first 7" by this dynamic duo, was a serious blast of synth drenched post riot grrl fury, all new wave garage stomp and ass kicking punk rock genius! Record number two dials back the synth and new wave elements and ups the swaggery garage vibe, with these two new tracks. The A side features the boy half of this duo on lead vocals, shouting out a staccato invective over a groovy swinging garage jam, sounding a bit like a more upbeat Brainbombs, which is NEVER bad, simple, stripped down Pussy Galore / Royal Trux style RAWK.
The flipside finds Lily back on the mic, lamenting about how she knows she's not the prettiest girl but she doesn't need to hear that from YOU, all over another bad ass garage blues jam, some serious riot grrl revamped, a KILLER main riff, an amazing hook, all murky and muddy and blown out, fierce throaty, angry girl vox, if only the White Stripes were this bad ass.

BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW Drippers (70s Gymnastics) cd ep 11.98
Black Moth Super Rainbow have made quite an impact in the last couple years with their crunchy and poppy take on analog electronic pop, a sound that falls so near the more playful side of Boards Of Canada, and has us imagining what it might sound like if Air covered Daft Punk, using busted up old equipment, the result would have to be oh so charming and satisfying.
Drippers is essentially a collection of outtakes and unreleased tracks, but this is no throwaway ep. In fact we've been playing this nonstop, loving how thick and distorted the sounds here are and marvelling at BMSR's ability to conjure up such catchy and washed out electronic pop delights. The fact that they got Mike Watt to play on one of our favorite tracks ("Black Yogurt") has us even more smitten. Complete with a scratch n' sniff cover, this is music that engages all the sensations and keeps us coming back for more and more.
(FYI, 10" vinyl version forthcoming...)
MPEG Stream: "Black Yogurt (Featuring Mike Watt)"
MPEG Stream: "We Are The Pagans (Dandelion Gum Outtake)"

BROWN JENKINS Welcome The Bitterness (God Is Myth) 3"cd-r 8.98
Latest entry in God Is Myth's ongoing series of 3"cd-r homages to horror author H.P. Lovecraft, and this one was really a no-brainer, inevitable considering the mysteriously monickered Brown Jenkins in fact took his name from a Lovecraft story (as did about a million other bands, but Brown Jenkins is one of the stranger ones) and whose music is obviously influenced by Lovecraft's writing. And according to the liner notes, Brown Jenkins is also influenced by Joy Division, Burzum, Bethlehem, Voivod, Godflesh, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Slayer, Merzbow, Gang Of Four, etc. Sounds like our kind of metal band. And BJ is in fact our kind of metal band, as we've gone on and on about in past reviews of Brown Jenkins full lengths, all of those disparate influences wound into a dark and gloomy blackened metal, that hardly adheres to the strict tenets of BM, instead, stretching them to their limits, incorporating blissed out drones, odd off kilter chords, strange melodies, as well as shades of pop, new wave and goth, but all wound into something distinctly, if not traditionally, BLACK METAL.
So here, Umesh, aka Brown Jenkins, gets to honor the man who plays such an important part in his music.
The sounds here are not particularly Lovecraftian, the lyrics are though, the music itself is twisted and angular, obtuse chords, mid tempos, the guitar not so much buzzing as thick and layered with lots of finger picking, melodies and chords shifting, more loping than blasting, the Voivod influence is especially prevalent here, tightly wound, almost new wavish at points but more sort of dark and moody, washed out, black metal for sure, but more mathy than buzzy. The closing track sounds like a black metal Codeine, a moping slowcore wrapped in jagged shards of black metal guitar, a descending melody, melancholy and minor key, before slipping into something more propulsive but no less 'downer'.
Like the full lengths, this is challenging off kilter stuff, especially for the grim black hordes, but it's most certainly buzzy and black enough to push all those black metal buttons, while remaining melodic and moody enough to fit on that mixtape right between Codeine and Seam.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. Already sold out and out of print. We got only TWENTY, we tried to get more, but that's all they would let us have, and like past installments these for sure disappear quick. Packaged in a normal slimline cd case, with black and white covers, liner notes and lyrics, and a sepia printed cardstock insert with a photo and a brief biography of Lovecraft.
MPEG Stream: "Broken "
MPEG Stream: "Second Silence"

CATALYST, THE Marianas Trench + 9 (The Perpetual Motion Machine) cd 8.98
We had the one sided 12" version of this here disc a while back, but now it's been reissued with those 4 songs, as well as a whopping 9 more from an earlier lp and a split with fellow noisemakers Mass Movement Of The Moth. So all you record impaired folks can finally dig in to this monstrously noisy slab of post punk rrroooaaar.
This is some seriously crushing, heavy, post hardcore stoner grunge screamo heaviness coming at you straight from Richmond Virginia. Grinding, pummeling, super distorted and angular post punk, but with some serious groove, and vocals that go from howled to screeched to crooned (well almost), killer riffs, filthy and heavy, pounding drums, mathy and chaotic, think Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid, Mudhoney, Halo Of Flies, the Melvins, lots of AmRep, some Sub Pop, and here and there, Nirvana at their noisiest and heaviest. 
Definitely old school, and can't help but remind us of the good old grunge days, but it's hyped up, and filtered through a more modern take on post screamo hardcore, some seriously heavy, hooky ass kicking stuff. 
Way recommended.
MPEG Stream: "This Bike Is A Gravity Bong"
MPEG Stream: "Kyle Vs. Robocop"
MPEG Stream: "Proceed With Caution"

CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO Rodante (ZZK) cd 16.98
Chancha Via Circuito is not only the train that Pedro Canale rides back and forth from his hometown to nearby Buenos Aires, it's also the name he's chosen for his dubbed out, free flowing, and more nuanced and minimal approach to "Cumbia digital." We've been entranced with this record since the very first time we heard it, as it's equal parts soothing and moving, slow burning and dance inducing. We're reminded a lot of the great Mad Professor vs. Massive Attack outing No Protection, as it has that same blend of cut and paste dub, along with more recent blasts from that Cumbia scene. In fact it wouldn't surprise us if Gang Gang Dance had gotten a copy of this before they recorded their latest record as it has that same kind of tripped out and late night dance vibe they latched on to. This is exactly what you would want blasting from the speakers in a club as you waited for M.I.A. to take the stage, or in your ears as you roam late night streets, moving at ease as these seductive beats intertwine perfectly with the flashing lights of the cars zooming by.
MPEG Stream: "Damas Gratis Dub"
MPEG Stream: "Aldo Benitez- Dia Libre (Chancha Via Circuito Remix)"
MPEG Stream: "Zorzal (Ft. Sol De Oliveira)"

CLEAN, THE Compilation (Little Axe / Mississippi) lp 12.98
Another cool release from one of our new favorite labels, Mississippi, or VIA Mississippi records, as it's technically on a label called Change, the same label that released that Irma Thomas lp a while back. But whatever, as far as we're concerned it is Mississippi Records, which means it's a cool record, available on vinyl for the first time, or the first time in ages, pressed on nice vinyl and in thick sleeves, for a nice price.
This time around it's New Zealand's legendary pop combo The Clean. Their Compilation album originally released on Homestead way back when, which collects all of the band's early essential recordings. Who the heck are The Clean you ask? Well, here's the lowdown from another of our reviews: The history of the legendary New Zealand indie label Flying Run quite literally begins with The Clean. Impressed by a slew of The Clean's live performances in their home town of Dunedin, New Zealand back in 1980, Roger Shephard began Flying Nun, simply in order to release the band's first single "Tally Ho." That song, an upbeat but simple post-punk number that crashed together jangling guitars and persistent organ melodies, surprised everybody with a considerable amount of commercial success in New Zealand, and became one of many songs by The Clean that found enthusiastic audiences in the US during the college rock days of the '80s, offering a quirky, exotic alternative to staples like REM, the Replacements, Robyn Hitchcock, and Elvis Costello.
Formed in 1978 by the Kilgour brothers David and Hamish, The Clean never stooped to the depths of the Gallagher brother's public fisticuffs; but the band - which flushed out its membership with Robert Scott and (in the early days) Peter Gutteridge - spent more time broken up than together. Yet, their eternally catchy pop songs became the blueprint for almost all of the other Flying Nun bands (in part due to the numerous Clean related projects on Flying Nun, including The Bats, The Great Unwashed, Bailter Space, Snapper, Stephen, and others).
The Clean's Compilation runs through their early releases, including "Tally Ho," the "Boodle Boodle Boodle" ep, the "Great Sounds..." ep, and a few more. Edgy yet unswervingly optimistic, these songs were sloppy four-track recordings of monomaniacally simple rhythms, cacophonously jangly guitar melodies, and happy-go-lucky vocals.
For folks who already have the recently released Anthology two disc set on Merge, there is a lot of overlap, in fact most of this stuff is on that comp, but obviously this has been out of print for years on vinyl, and while Compilation is just that, a collection of eps and singles, it somehow manages to function as a proper album, tight, short, sharp and nearly perfect!

CLOAK OF DISPLACEMENT This Is The Only Way (self released) cd-r 8.98
Some of you might remember Gargotheron, whose cd-r we reviewed a while back, a blurred baffling black metal horde from Arizona, whose sound was grim and raw, primitive and pummeling, spastic and hyper kinetic, octopoidal drumming, insectoid riffing, we described it as "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt", so what might we expect from Cloak Of Displacement, a strange ritualistic avant doom offshoot of the mighty Gargotheron? How about long expanses of processed downtuned guitar drone, gurgled distorted vocals, abstract riffage and clouds of glitch and buzz and electronic interference, brief bursts of in-the-red ultra distorted noise drenched black metal. And more fucked up weirdness. We're tempted to describe it as a black metal Faxed Head, but it's not quite so purposefully damaged, although it's plenty demented. There are stretches of almost prettiness, in the guise of sprawling low end buzz, a little Earth (circa 2), a little Khanate, a pinch of SUNNO))), but filtered though some sort of sick Abruptum like sonic ritual, in fact ritual is an apt description, as the performance was literally part of a REAL ritual, with a real live witch performing incantations and spells, at one point snipping locks of hair from the various band members while they recorded, even the packaging, sealed with wax, have been cursed, so open at your own peril!
Grim and fucked up, mysterious and abstract, definitely essential listening for ambient noise metal freeks into stuff like Abruptum, Emit and the like, but also might hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed, Khanate, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Vulture Club and other purveyors of minimal blackened filth.
Packaged in a hand stamped black envelope, sealed with wax, hand numbered, LIMITED TO ONLY 45 COPIES! We took most of those, inside a hand written missive from Cloak Of Displacement, to YOU.
MPEG Stream: "Storm Conjuring Improvisation"
MPEG Stream: "The Dissident"

DARKESTRAH The Great Silk Road (Paragon Records) cd 12.98
Latest release from one of the strangest and most unique black metal bands around. How many groups, black metal or otherwise can you think of that hail from the tiny country of Kyrgyzstan? We actually couldn't think of any, although apparently there are at least three black metal bands. How many grim buzzing BM outfits can you think of fronted by a female? Not many we'd bet. Or how many black metal bands incorporate traditional Middle Eastern instruments into their sound? Again, the answer is not a whole lot.
So thus we have Darkestrah, a female fronted black metal trio from Kyrgyzstan who we've raved about in the past, but who seem to only get better and better with each record.
The production this time around is amazing, so thick and heavy and polished, but without losing any of the ferocity. The songs are multi part epics, slipping from woozy midtempo dirge to blackened blast, frontwoman Kriegtalith's vokills a harsh demonik shriek, the songs rife with melodies and hooks, managing to be both blasting and brutal, but catchy and epic. The coolest part though is how the band mix in traditional folk instruments and vocal techniques from Kyrgyzstan into the songs. While much of that is used as intros, gorgeous stretches of plaintive mournful throat singing and deep shimmery rage like strum, those instruments and sounds also surface within tracks, fluttering woodwinds hovering over churning black buzz, strange lilting folky melodies wound into otherwise straight ahead blasts. It turns the record into something much more haunting and mysterious and so unique. So easy to get lost in the buzzing drones and Middle Eastern melodies... The Great Silk Road is quickly becoming one of our most listened to new BM records...
MPEG Stream: "The Silk Road"
MPEG Stream: "Inner Voice"

DARKTHRONE Frostland Tapes (Peaceville) 3cd 29.00
Released to coincide with the band's 21st anniversary (!!!), Frostland Tapes collects a bunch of super sough after rarities, lost and live recordings and most importantly (at least for Darkthrone fanatics), the unreleased instrumental version of their Goatlord album.
As much as we're tempted to say every metalhead probably should own almost anything these guys release, this one, while pretty fucking excellent, might just be more of a 'For Fans Only' sort of thing. Although if you've never heard Darkthrone before, and want to jump in way back at the beginning, and experience the band through rough lo-fi live recordings or raw primitive demos, then hell yeah, this will definitely do the job. But if that sounds a bit too intense of an introduction, then try either Transylvanian Hunger or A Blaze In The Northern Sky, we guarantee you'll be hooked, you can always come back for this one later!
For the rest of you, who have all the records proper, odds are you're gonna want this too... the 1988 Land Of Frost demo, the 1988 A New Dimension demo, the Thulcandra 1989 demo, the legendary 1989 Cromlech demo, a 1990 show recorded live in Denmark, and of course a rare instrumental version of Goatlord recorded in 1991. Lots of songs you know, some you probably don't, varying degrees of fidelity, but c'mon it's Darkthrone, the more raw the better!!!!
Housed in a super fancy hardcover book style package with tons of rare photos, liner notes and a funny (aren't they all?) interview with Fenriz...
MPEG Stream: "Land Of Frost"
MPEG Stream: "Thulcandra"
MPEG Stream: "The Watchtower"
MPEG Stream: "A Blaze In The Northern Sky"

DAVILA 666 s/t (In The Red) cd 13.98
Imagine if the Dead Boys, the Stooges or Black Lips were from Puerto Rico and you'll begin to have an idea of the raucous fun and mighty punch that Davila 666 pack into their In The Red debut. It takes a lot to really move us when it comes to modern day garage rock as we find much of it a bit stale and burnt out, but god damn we can't stop listening to this record! There is such a pure excitement to these sounds, and enough of a range in Davila 666's music to truly make them stand above the crowd. It's not just the novelty of singing in Spanish, but you can tell these are guys who have an awesome appreciation for a wide range of garage sounds from the punk to the pop, and the few slower tracks on here are like some lost 4-track tapes of sessions produced by Phil Spector in a Puerto Rican garage in the late '70s. This is the band you would dream of seeing play at a house party, it could make even the most jaded and sullen of souls jump with joy. Luckily all you have to do is throw this on and the party comes right through the speakers. So damn good!
MPEG Stream: "Basura"
MPEG Stream: "Tú"

DEAD C Golden Canine (Ba Da Bing) 12" 15.98
NZ noise rockers the Dead C were just here, and they had a little stash of super limited tour 12"s, of which we managed to get a big handful, 25 or 30, but that's it. Once these are gone, they are gone gone gone.
The recordings are live, no info on when or where, but the sound is murky and lo-fi and muddy and washed out and with any other band that would be a bummer, but that's the sort of production that perfectly suits Dead C's particular sound, especially live.
The A side begins with a thick throbbing distorted guitar drone, for minutes, before the drums finally kick in, a propulsive krautrock beat that lasts all of 20 seconds before slowing down and dropping out. Hmm, false start? Sounds cool regardless, as the guitar drone continues on and the drums once again join the fray, and the band locks into a loose but groovy psychedelic New Zealand krautjam, the guitars so muddy and indistinct, they sound almost like a static drone, a constant buzz beneath the drums, before those drums drop off and the track finishes with a woozy shimmery drone.
The B side is a gorgeous haunting creep, a black sonic fury, all pulsating guitars, growling low end and muted abstract drumming, with stuttery feedback spread out over the heavy detuned sprawl. The whole side so minimal and hypnotic and ominous and beautiful.
SUPER LIMITED. Packaged in plain black 12" sleeves.

DEATHROW / MOLOCH Echoes In Eternity (Tour De Garde) cassette 5.98
We've become a little obsessed recently with Ukrainian one man band Moloch. A quick look at Encyclopaedia Metallum reveals about 30 or 40 releases, 5 or 6 of them BOX SETS! Unfortunately most of them limited to 50, or 40, some even less than 10. So we've been on the hunt for at least one record we could get enough of to review on the list. We have our sites set on a cd full length, which we should be able to have in stock soon, but while we've been searching this little black gem showed up, and thus, will most likely serve as your introduction to the mighty Moloch.
Of his 30 or 40 releases, only a handful are black metal, the rest are split between dark ambient, and noise. So the black metal records end up being infused with both ambient drones and black noise.
But before we get to Moloch, we have Deathrow to contend with, a one man band from Italy, that one man also being a member of Frostmoon Eclipse, Ad Hominem, Kult, Nocternity and a whole bunch of others. For this split, Deathrow offer up some gorgeously lush black ambience, thick roiling clouds of buzzing synth, shimmering organs, pulsing low end rumbles, all woven into slow moving creepscapes, almost like Goblin at 16rpm.
Moloch too chooses a path of blacker ambience, and offers up some grim necro rituals recalling the strange abstract blackened mood music of Abruptum, but far from being harsh, this is a dark and haunting journey through some fog shrouded underworld, all deep sonorous tones, mysterious creaks and thumps, dense swells of distorted low end, streaks of minor key melody, everything blurred and indistinct, distant anguished howls, tinkling marimba like chimes, warm washes of crumbling chordal whir, animal grunts and growls, reverb drenched detuned piano, all super cinematic and soundtracky, conjuring images of boarded up old houses, of black swamps, strange shapes drawn by moonlight filtering through the trees, of abandoned streets, dank cellars, of caves lit by flickering firelight, of nighttime, of darkness, of loss, misery, pain, loneliness, and hell.
WAY recommended. And if all goes well we'll be able to track down that Moloch full length, and you can discover his even blacker side for yourself.

DEERHUNTER Microcastle / Weird Era Continued (Kranky) 2cd 14.98
Due to a little thing called the inter-webs (we've never heard of it), the tracks for Deerhunter's long-awaited follow-up to last years much loved Cryptograms were prematurely leaked. So to give us cd buyers more bang for their buck, they recorded an EXTRA full length, called Weird Era Continued, and released the two discs together for a single disc price. Very nice of them! This time around they fused their pop sensibilities and their more experimental hazy dronescape leanings together into songs that recall the best of classic 4AD shimmer with sixties wall of sound pop. There isn't too much difference between the two records, but the song-writing is strong enough and the production nuanced enough to keep our attention through both. While we might have liked some more spacier instrumental moments like the ones found on Cryptograms, it seems Bradford Cox has begun to channel his more experimental side into his other project, Atlas Sound, where it is actually better suited. Still this is pretty damn solid!
MPEG Stream: "Agoraphobia"
MPEG Stream: "Neither of Us, Uncertainly"
MPEG Stream: "Dot Gain"
MPEG Stream: "Calvary Scars II / Aux Out"

DNA DNA on DNA (No More Records) 2lp 22.00
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!! Limited edition double vinyl, to be precise, with three "newly discovered songs exclusive to this lp". Plus two live encores from the band's final CBGB's appearance. Here's our review of the earlier released cd version:
It's been a quarter century overdue. But finally, all of the good DNA material has finally been gathered in a single collection. There may have been Japanese bootlegs floating around, and there was that terrible live record that came out on Avant about a decade ago. But DNA on DNA is the definitive collection; and its release will probably squeeze more than a few of those seminal No New York compilations LPs onto the eBay market.
DNA, of course, was the No Wave band that Arto Lindsay assembled with the help of percussionist Iuke Mori and keyboardist Robin Crutchfield, both of whom were self-professed non-musicians at the time. A mere 9 months after the birth of DNA, Crutchfield left and was replaced by former Pere Ubu bassist Tim Wright. The two line-ups of DNA manifested vastly different sounds. For the first line-up, Lindsay coupled his autistic guitar cacophony with aggressive barks and snarls of thoroughly fragmented lyrics which in turn were propelled by Crutchfield's double fisted pummel on his keyboards and More's equally Frankensteinian percussive lurches. The early DNA sort of sounded like an unholy coupling of Damo Suzuki, Sonny Sharrock, and Captain Beefheart attempting to compress all of their ideas into a two minute punk context. Recent bands like the Numbers have attempted to replicate the DNA ethos, but have devolved into ironists sneering at the audience instead of capturing DNA's frightening abstract expressionism and psychic alienation.
The second DNA line-up with Tim Wright on bass embraced a far more painterly approach. Rather than replicating the antifunk cubic sounds of Crutchfield's Moog, Wright produced calligraphic bass lines with a sinewy pelvic grind that infused a bizarre sensuality to the tortured sounds of Lindsay's guitar 'n' vocal shrieks. No net loss/gain there.
While Mars clearly had their highlights, they quietly imploded, Lydia Lunch dropped the shock treatment of Teenage Jesus in lieu of the cartoonish noir of Queen of Siam and Eight Eyed Spy and James Chance went onto parody himself as James White, DNA were consistently the best of the No Wave bands; and it's about damn time that this document came out. Clearly there are a lot of contemporary bands who should be shamed into calling it quits with the release of DNA on DNA, and there should be many more people who should be blown away by just how good DNA were.
MPEG Stream: "You & You"
MPEG Stream: "Size"
MPEG Stream: "Taking Kid To School"
MPEG Stream: "Action"

EARTH The Bees Made Honey in the Skull of the Lion (Southern Lord) 2lp 31.00
FINALLY! The most recent Earth album on vinyl, but this ain't just any old vinyl, even by Southern Lord standards, this is so deluxe it's off the charts. Metallic gold ink on faux leather hardcover, like an old fashioned, and very big Bible, inside the lps are attached like pages in a scrapbook, loads of full color artwork, but the most important thing about this limited vinyl version, and perhaps the most frustrating, is the extra bonus track, available only here. More gorgeous sunbaked gospel flecked blues, languorous guitars, minimal drums, with horns and slide guitar, so beautiful and fits perfectly with the record proper. And again, only available here. Limited to less than 5000 copies, which seems like a lot, but for Southern Lord, and Earth in particular, it's probably not nearly enough. Here's what we had to say about The Bees when it first came out:
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slowmotion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
MPEG Stream: "Omens And Portents I: The Driver"
MPEG Stream: "Rise To Glory"
MPEG Stream: "Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine)"

EL GUINCHO Alegranza (XL) cd 13.98
We were given a heads up about El Guincho months ago by a customer who was in the store while we were playing Panda Bear. He asked us if we knew El Guincho, when we said no, he told how we had to hear it and it would blow us away and how he was like the Spanish version of Panda Bear. So now several months later El Guincho is finally seeing his record released in North America on XL, and we have to say once again, that sometimes our customers are often way more hip and in the know then we are, because this is proving to be a total store favorite! There is a huge Panda Bear influence at play but with a much more full on party sensation. And a distinct lo-fi Manu Chao vibe as well. This isn't headphone music, this is a record meant to come blasting out of speakers. We hear such a wide range of influences, especially the surging sonic sensations heard in Congotronics, all riled up for full pleasure.
If Panda Bear ever got to be captain of a party cruise we're pretty sure this is what it would sound like to be on that ship. Sign us up!
MPEG Stream: "Antillas"
MPEG Stream: "Kalise"
MPEG Stream: "Prez Lagarto"

EL-G Tout Ploie ((K-RAA-K)3) lp 15.98
We didn't know a whole lot about El-G, aka French pop weirdo Laurent Gerard, other than he was supposed to be sort of like a twisted modern day Serge Gainsbourg, and hearing this now, that's really not that far off the mark, he even has a female foil to further cement the Gainsbourg comparison. Mix in some Animal Collective weirdness, some Kemialliset foresty folk, and you'd be getting close.
French ballady folk is definitely the core of Gerard's sound, but the tracks here vary wildly, compiled as they are from a handful of super limited previous releases. But a quick sampling reveals laid back French pop, breezy and dreamy, brushed snares, subtle electronics drifting over finger picked guitars, fractured blues drenched in wheezing organ and random percussion, peppered with deep bassy throbs and grunted garbled vocals, Abstract fractured folk, soft female vocals over shimmery organs, rubbery basslines and howled male background vox, the final track of the A side builds from a folky whisper to a soaring layered drone, all buzzing tones and warbly organ, strangled guitar leads and lurching low end melodies. The rest of the record hovers close-ish to French folk and pop, but tweaks them just enough to keep it interesting, at one point converting the main riff from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" into a backdrop for some ethereal crooning. Cool stuff. Definitely recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as the softer side of freak folk and the weirder side of French pop.

ELECTRIC WIZARD / REVEREND BIZARRE split (Rise Above) 12" 17.98
Odds are most folks who would be into this record, won't even make it this far in the review, they'll just grab one. For doomlords and ladies, this really needs no description other than the names of the two bands, Finland's dead and deceased Reverend Bizarre, whose post mortum release schedule rivals Tupac's, and UK masters of downtuned sub-Sabbathian stoner sludge, Electric Wizard. Each band offers up a sidelong track of crushing doom drenched heaviness, each coming from their own distinct direction.
The sound of Electric Wizard is something special, in some ways so derivative, so sonically similar to about a million other bands, but the second it comes on, it could be no one else. A testament to their doom mastery for sure, and this is primo doom, a slowly unravelling main riff, lurching and lumbering, melodic vocals settled way down in the mix, languorous stoned leads over the top, thick swirls of psychedelic organ, and endless spaced out drug drenched jams, Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet meets Sabbath, but slowed way down and dirtied up, culminating in a nearly drumless melting riff outro, the guitars slowing down, the riff crumbling, squalls of psychrock leads, thick whirring organs, the song eventually grinding to a halt after droning on and on and on. Awesome.
Reverend Bizarre counter with their own extended slab of plodding doom genius, spaced out riff, pounding drums, vocals slipping from guttural howl to ominous whisper, but this is RB, so it's bound to get bizarre, and it does, with a chanted midsong ritual, soaring clean almost operatic vocals invoking demons over a woozy melodic lope, before slipping into an almost krautrock like groove, before lo and behold, the song flips and the second half of the track is BACKWARDS!!! Hypnotic and creepy, the sounds whooping and shimmering, the vocals a demonic gurgle over the top, very tripped out and dizzying, a weirdly blackly psychedelic outro from these twisted doomic Finns. Who we would say we miss like crazy since they broke up, but they haven't really stopped releasing records quite yet...
Pressed on what appears to be black vinyl with bits of glitter in it, with a garish seventies horror exploitation cover, a saucy lady cutting up another saucy lady on some black altar, candelabras and skulls, long velvet gloves and capes, knee high leather boots and way too much makeup, but fear not sensitive ones, the exposed crotch (right beneath the grinning skull) is covered by a little pentagram, and the sliced nipple by a little black circle. Phew!!

ENSEMBLE ECONOMIQUE At The Foot Of Nameless Roads (Digitalis) cd 12.98
Not so much an ensemble as it is the work of one of the Starving Weirdos, the one who also records in the equally cool RV Paintings. Although it's unclear why the new monicker was necessary, besides the fact that it's a solo record, since the sound is not all that far removed from the Weirdos', which is no bad thing, if anything, the sound on At The Foot Of Nameless Roads is like a more intimate, more hushed take on the Weirdos' abstract avant ambience. Where the SW sounds like a handful of guys bathed in shadows, around a roaring fire, banging on mysterious objects, coaxing sounds out of big old hunks of electronics and busted musical instruments, the sound of EE, is more tranquil, movements measured and precise, lit not by fire, but by moonlight, or soft sunlight filtered through grey clouds. A series of longform dronescapes, shimmering smoother out high pitched skree spread out over layers of burnished hum. Deep metallic shimmers create fields of swirling overtones and buried melodies, delicate tendrils of washed out buzz spread out like a crack in the ice, creating intricate patterns that when viewed from afar are barely visible, but up close reveal all manner of shapes and designs, dense fields of looped percussion get tangled up with reverberating tones and overlapping chunks of fragmented melody, drums are dubbed out and delayed to the point that they almost become a static blur, and finally the sound of a crackling fire underpins hushes whispered dronelike ambience.
This is after all, for all of it's various sounds and timbres, arrangements and processes, a very minimal drone record, and a quite varied and lovely one at that.
Cover art by Tarentel's Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "At The Foot Of Nameless Roads"
MPEG Stream: "Mud Banks Shine In Broken Shards"
MPEG Stream: "Light Reflects As Seagulls Dive"

ENSLAVED Vertabrae (Nuclear Blast) cd 14.98
Talk about "Black Meddle"! That recent album from Chicago black metallers Nachtmystium got a lot of attention, in part for its (quite honestly) self-proclaimed Pink Floyd influence. But if there's one black metal band in the world who REALLY remind us of the psychedelic hypnosis of late '60s, early '70s Pink Floyd, it has to be Norway's mighty Enslaved.
Here they are with their 10th full length album, and once more, we bow down to them. Man, they make it look easy, triumphing again and again, always delivering the deathly blackened Viking post rock prog metal with such power and utter perfection. Over the years, they've gotten more and more proggy and Floydian, and Vertebrae is the ultimate in that direction - so far. If you liked their previous record Ruun or before that, Isa, you should be well pleased with Vertebrae. It's a progression, no major stylistic shift, just another solid Enslaved album, complete with clean vocal harmonies, black metal rasps, lulling atmospheres, wicked riffing, mathy structures... all coexisting intelligently and emotively in these compositions. The guitars and keys are often bright and shimmering, yet despite the melodiousness, a Nordic grimnity pervades. Indeed, the 2008 edition of Enslaved seems -serious- in a way that some of their quirkier, earlier forays into Viking-prog territory maybe weren't (well, a band wearing tunics and tights, as they used to do, really shouldn't take themselves too seriously). Rockin' and rollin' is still in their blood (take it from Allan, who saw 'em live earlier this year at SXSW, not once but twice, the second time right after Harvey Milk and Torche!), for sure you'll bang your head to much of this, but Vertebrae is also "head" music in the headphones and deep thoughts sense too. Simple, sorta New Agey song titles like "Clouds", "New Dawn", "Reflections", "Center" should be some clue to this. Though "New Dawn", for instance, is actually an example of the storming black metal violence that strikes a balance with Vertebrae's more pensive, post rockish moments.
Not to harp on the Pink Floyd thing too much, but you'd swear that they somehow got ol' David Gilmour to do some guest guitar soloing on album's third track, "Ground". And 'cause they make us think of Pink Floyd so much, that means they also remind us of another amazing Floyd-infused, proggily original metal band, the late (?) great Voivod... But regardless of those comparisons (and also ones we could make to some fellow Scandinavian acts with '70s prog influences, like Opeth and Amorphis), Vertebrae is obviously, and awesomely, an album only Enslaved would, or could, make.
NB. By the way, did you know that Enslaved's vocalist/bassist/most-Viking-looking-dude Grutle, is or was involved in something called Tangerine Funk??
MPEG Stream: "Clouds"
MPEG Stream: "Ground"
MPEG Stream: "New Dawn"

ENSLAVED Vertabrae (Indie Recordings) 2lp 33.00
Talk about "Black Meddle"! That recent album from Chicago black metallers Nachtmystium got a lot of attention, in part for its (quite honestly) self-proclaimed Pink Floyd influence. But if there's one black metal band in the world who REALLY remind us of the psychedelic hypnosis of late '60s, early '70s Pink Floyd, it has to be Norway's mighty Enslaved.
Here they are with their 10th full length album, and once more, we bow down to them. Man, they make it look easy, triumphing again and again, always delivering the deathly blackened Viking post rock prog metal with such power and utter perfection. Over the years, they've gotten more and more proggy and Floydian, and Vertebrae is the ultimate in that direction - so far. If you liked their previous record Ruun or before that, Isa, you should be well pleased with Vertebrae. It's a progression, no major stylistic shift, just another solid Enslaved album, complete with clean vocal harmonies, black metal rasps, lulling atmospheres, wicked riffing, mathy structures... all coexisting intelligently and emotively in these compositions. The guitars and keys are often bright and shimmering, yet despite the melodiousness, a Nordic grimnity pervades. Indeed, the 2008 edition of Enslaved seems -serious- in a way that some of their quirkier, earlier forays into Viking-prog territory maybe weren't (well, a band wearing tunics and tights, as they used to do, really shouldn't take themselves too seriously). Rockin' and rollin' is still in their blood (take it from Allan, who saw 'em live earlier this year at SXSW, not once but twice, the second time right after Harvey Milk and Torche!), for sure you'll bang your head to much of this, but Vertebrae is also "head" music in the headphones and deep thoughts sense too. Simple, sorta New Agey song titles like "Clouds", "New Dawn", "Reflections", "Center" should be some clue to this. Though "New Dawn", for instance, is actually an example of the storming black metal violence that strikes a balance with Vertebrae's more pensive, post rockish moments.
Not to harp on the Pink Floyd thing too much, but you'd swear that they somehow got ol' David Gilmour to do some guest guitar soloing on album's third track, "Ground". And 'cause they make us think of Pink Floyd so much, that means they also remind us of another amazing Floyd-infused, proggily original metal band, the late (?) great Voivod... But regardless of those comparisons (and also ones we could make to some fellow Scandinavian acts with '70s prog influences, like Opeth and Amorphis), Vertebrae is obviously, and awesomely, an album only Enslaved would, or could, make.
NB. By the way, did you know that Enslaved's vocalist/bassist/most-Viking-looking-dude Grutle, is or was involved in something called Tangerine Funk??
MPEG Stream: "Clouds"
MPEG Stream: "Ground"
MPEG Stream: "New Dawn"

FENNESZ Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08" (Touch) cd 16.98
Strange that we've never written anything about this album, the second album from Vienna's guitar 'n' laptop rock star Christian Fennesz. Originally released on Mego back in 1999, this album has gone through several pressings, fortunately always preserving the same core tracklisting, although the art has shrunk down to a digipack for the 2008 edition on Touch. The two albums that came after this album - Endless Summer and Venice - may stand as his perfect albums, one obviously summery and the other decidedly wintery; if anything, this is his shoegaze record, as he deftly wrangles with hurricane-strength distortion and tempers that with a post-MBV blur of narcotic auditory bliss. Throughout, Fennesz merely alludes to melody buried beneath all of the fuzzy drones and tempestuous noise, with pixel pointed interludes indicative of the signature Mego inflorescence for digital errata that he and Pita helped define. This is clearly the album that was the major inspiration for Tim Hecker and his digiscapes of guitar drones and 8-bit noise; but this album also bridges back to earlier pioneers of electronic adventurousness such as Main (especially Motion Pool) and The Hafler Trio (like Intoutof). If you've not checked this out, there's no better time than the present.
MPEG Stream: "010"
MPEG Stream: "013"
MPEG Stream: "014"

FUNEREAL MOON Satan's Beauty Obscenity / Grim... Evil... (Autopsy Kitchen) cd 13.98
The first thing you notice about Funereal Moon, a long running black metal horde from Mexico City, is main man Impure Ehiyeh's amazing corpsepaint, each eye in the center of a black upside down cross, a pentagram in the center of his forehead, his nostrils painted huge and animal like, the mouth outlined like a dripping bat, the whole face lined with cracks, making him appear as some 100 year old demonic black metal ghoul. Which suits the music, as their sound is totally unhinged, a raw, lo-fi, fucked up grim black metal that has more in common with a band like Necrofrost than any of the classic Scandinavian elite, which is most definitely a good thing. Murky, mysterious, stumbling, damaged, the guitars washed out and muted, the vocals a raspy croak, the drums solid and simple, the whole sound twisted and off kilter, the sounds panned dramatically from left to right, so sometimes the band swerves back and forth making the music totally dizzy and unhinged.
This collection gathers up 4 newish tracks from 2007, and 5 more tracks from a 1996 demo. The first four tracks are, as described above, woozy, and gloriously fucked up, long stretches of Abruptum-like ambience get all tangled up in blasting black weirdness, giving way to droning plodding black doom, finally turning into some strange sort of spaced out abstract psychedelia, growled vox over noodly reverbed guitars and swirling spaced out effects. Weird, and so cool.
It's the older stuff where it gets REALLY weird. The guitars impossibly processed and lo fidelity, pulsing like some strange electronic transmission, the vocals even more croak-like, doused in echo, it's an intro of sorts, but maybe our favorite track here. The next track is more straight ahead, but again the production is insane, the vocals louder than anything else, the drums and guitars tumbling and roiling way down in the mix only occasionally exploding to the surface. It's all very droney and hypnotic and textural. And somehow it only gets weirder, culminating in a seriously amazing and fucked up two song finish, first, the tripped out "The Lust", with its stumbling tribal drumming, its droning electronic buzz in place of guitars, and haunting female spoken words, while a voice growls and grunts demonically in the background, and another female moans in ecstasy! And finally the 11 minute "I Came From Darkness To Conquer", a woozy synth drone, with some troll like vocals over the top, what sounds like programmed drums and flute (?), the vocals get weirder and weirder, high pitched and alien one second, growled and cookie monster like the next, finally the drums drop out, and the record closes out with synthesized strings and an orchestra of growls and grunts and howls, easily one of the most seriously fucked up ambient black metal rituals ever.
If you read this far we shouldn't even have to say it, but yet another essential record to add to your collection of freaked out, far out, damaged and demented, confusional and inspired genius black metal what-the-fuck. Which means ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!
MPEG Stream: "The Last Prophecy"
MPEG Stream: "Black Sphere"
MPEG Stream: "Witchery"
MPEG Stream: "Forbidden Rites"

GARETH HARDWICK / TAIGA REMAINS split (Low Point) 10" 12.98
Another split record featuring two aQ faves, each offering up a sidelong slab of dreamy dronemusic, with each giving it their own subtle twist.
Taiga Remains, aka Alex Cobb, head honcho of the Students Of Decay label, unleashes a deep reverberant drone, all shimmery metallics and soft low end swells. As the track progresses though, the sounds gets more and more dense, thickening, sprawling, becoming more ominous, the bass deepening, within this viscous flow, lurk buried melodies, steel string buzz, super deep melodic rumbles that surface like some massive sea creature before slipping back under. Near the end the sound becomes almost orchestral before finally flickering out.
Gareth Hardwick takes the other side, and his sound is much more tranquil and gentle than the Taiga side, but still similar, almost like the same piece, just stripped to its essence, warm languid layers drifting to and fro, unfurling a soft slow motion melody, melancholy and wistful. About halfway through, electric guitars join in, pulsing and buzzing over the soft shimmery drift, adding an ominous edge, layer upon layer, constantly shifting, overtones appearing and disappearing, the whole thing warm and thick and mesmerizing. Almost metallic but managing to remain somehow soporific and soothing.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in a plain green sleeve, and VERY VERY LIMITED!

GNAW THEIR TONGUES For All Slaves A Song Of False Hope (Burning World) cd ep 13.98
Latest ep of cinematic doom dirge black ambience from this freaky one man band, and like past missives, this stuff is gorgeous, sick, confusing, heavy, fucked up, noisy, mysterious, cinematic, epic, disturbing and totally brilliant.
It's supposedly an ep, but it's almost an hour long, and for most folks an hour of this punishment is all you could take.
Check out some of our other Gnaw reviews, to read our gushing descriptions of the super evocative sound world GTT is able to conjure up, we wrote endlessly about bleak barren wastelands, charred bodies, horrific site and sounds, it's almost easier to describe the images and ideas that this music evokes that it is to describe the sounds themselves. But we'll have a go.
Imagine Abruptum scoring films and you might have a rough idea: strings soar, horns moan and bleat, industrial percussion is laced throughout, vocals are disembodied guttural howls, melodies creep through blackened soundscapes of buzz and pound, opening up into expanses of creak and clatter, laced with samples and found sounds, all floating above a sea of tense dronemusic, everything wrapped in swirling clouds of black sludge, and doomic rumbles. The clouds occasionally part, revealing some intimate moment, whether musical and dramatic, agonized wailing, or some strange dialogue, usually tangled up with some gloomy melody, some stumbling rhythm, before exploding again into a cacophonous blast of epic cinematic blacknoize.
This record doesn't deviate too much from past releases, which is just fine with us, it sounds like we're just digging deeper into the scarred psyche behind Gnaw Their Tongues, the most notable difference might be the presence of more sampled strings, and the record's closer which is a gorgeous buzzing midtempo black metal dirge, that manages to sound grim and raw, but also weirdly melodic and emotional.
GTT is one of the few bands who manages to create an absolutely unique sound, an impossible doom / black metal / ambient hybrid that fuses all of those various sounds perfectly into something that is both all and none of those. And as always, garish artwork, this time a topless woman preparing to emasculate a supine nude man, and of course song titles like "The Uncomfortable Silence In Between Beatings" and "My Womb Is Barren And I Want Revenge".
Fucked up and genius and thus absolutely recommended.
MPEG Stream: "For All Slaves A Song Of False Hope I"
MPEG Stream: "The Uncomfortable Silence In Between Beatings"
MPEG Stream: "A Fiery Deluge"

GRAILS Doomsdayer's Holiday (Temporary Residence Ltd.) lp 16.98
Now on vinyl!
As Grails continue to grow and develop, they move further and further away from the various other groups and scenes they tend to be most associated with, deftly carving their own distinctive sonic niche, one that incorporates post rock, doom metal, world music, psych rock, jazz, drone, in less capable hands it would be a mess for sure, and Doomsdayer's Holiday while definitely all over the map is hardly a mess, all the various sounds and songs somehow woven into a surprisingly cohesive whole.
The opener definitely sets the stage, with some strange animal call, the beating hooves of horses, super blown out drums, swirling drones and buzz, and then some angular Marc Ribot style guitaring, the track sounding like a post apocalyptic heavy metal Tom Waits jam that builds into a cinematic crescendo, albeit one wrapped around a very Maiden-esque guitar part. Confusing for sure, but pretty damn exhilarating. The track ends with the drums getting all dubbed out and everything melting back into just the sounds of thundering hooves.
But then out of nowhere, the second track begins with some sort of horn, playing a distinctly Middle Eastern melody, the drums kick in, the guitars come crashing down, and again, it's like some metallicized Sun City Girls or something. Like Neurosis covering Torch Of The Mystics, perhaps! Eventually the track morphs into a jazzy psychedelic breakdown, and then a super spacious guitar flecked dronescape. Awesome stuff, but as we mentioned, definitely difficult to describe. The is a record by a band at the top of their game, with the time and money to experiment, and some of the stuff here sounds like the band exploring, but thankfully most of it works pretty really well. There are long drawn out folkdrone jams, with fluttering flute and meandering steel string guitars, there's slow burning psychedelic space rock, strange interludes of jazzy free drumming and glitched out electronics, field recordings and space-y ambience, some metallic chamber jazz (not sure how else to describe it), some killer Eastern tinged mathy post rock, still more sweeping epic Godpseed like vistas, deep dark guitar drones that morph into haunting apocalyptic doomfolk, finally finishing off with the longest track on the record, the 8 minute "Acid Rain", a wide open wander through a glimmering sun drenched world of soft psychedelic rock, the guitars all shimmery and warm, the melodies ebullient and effervescent, before slipping back into a warm swirl of soft drones and glistening harmonics, a surprising finish to a surprising record.
MPEG Stream: "Doomsdayer's Holiday"
MPEG Stream: "Reincarnation Blues"
MPEG Stream: "Acid Rain"

HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE Fields / Church Of Broken Glass (Profound Lore) 2cd 14.98
First, there was The Bastard. The ultimate over the top power metal/black metal rock opera, as far as we're concerned. Ok, so Andee here at AQ put it out on his tUMULt label... but that simply proves that he/we really like it (not that that's WHY we like it). Still Hammers' best, wethink. But their follow up The August Engine was pretty killer too. And the same with their third album Locust Years, which we hailed as the first ever fantasy metal album that was also a contemporary political allegory (about Bush and the Iraq War). With that record, Hammers settled with regal grace into a new phase, with the significant addition of '70s styled Hammond organ, taking their prog leanings to ever proggier heights, the raspy black metal aspects of their sound discarded long ago. And this new release from the acclaimed San Francisco metallers is definitely a continuation of that, despite some major lineup changes in the Hammers camp since Locust Years came out in 2006.
Of course, mainman guitarist John Cobbett (Ludicra, ex-Slough Feg) is still the with the band. Also drummer Chewy Marzolo, and keyboardist Sigrid Sheie. But now there's a new set of singers. Hammers, as you may know, have always flaunted operatic/theatrical, male and female vocals, intertwining in their compositions. There's been a few different female singers (who also played bass) over the years, but the clean male vocals until now had been handled solely by Mike Scalzi of Slough Feg, who has a distinctive voice to say the least. Taking over the female role is Jesse Quattro, a trained singer who definitely holds her own in the tradition of Hammers' female vocalists. You won't notice much difference there, though she may well be the best they've had. She doesn't play bass, however, so they've got Ron Nichols in to handle that task. More difficult, perhaps, for Hammers, was replacing Scalzi, who left to concentrate entirely on Slough Feg. Patrick Goodwin (of Dirty Power and Pansy Division) stepped up into Scalzi's shoes and while his voice is definitely different, not having the weird presence or booming depth Scalzi's, he's a capable melodic singer, yearning and emotive, and maybe his less idiosyncratic style fits better with Hammers' current direction. Long time fans will definitely notice a difference, though, and some will roll with it, some won't. Certainly the Hammers of The Bastard aren't the Hammers here.
So, now Hammers Of Misfortune obviously have a lot to prove on this new album - or, actually, albums. That's right, as if to really rise to the occasion and make a statement, they've released a double album, or what they'd have us believe is two separate albums, Fields and Church Of Broken Glass, packaged together. Each one gets its own cover art, you flip the gatefold digipack over to see each one, in the style of an old Ace Double paperback (the cover shown here is that of Fields). Though we were a bit bemused to discover that since the seven cuts on Fields clock in at just over 37 minutes, and the five songs on CoBG total about 35, it actually would have been possible to fit 'em both on a single disc! At least Profound Lore isn't making you pay any extra for this two-cd concept. And, since HoM's music can be so exhaustively epic, full of complex arrangements and keyboard busy-ness and cryptic lyrics, it's actually easier on the listener to have two shorter cds to digest than one exceedingly lengthy one, really!
As well, each disc has its own theme, a rural/urban dichotomy between Fields and Church Of Broken Glass. The best example of the latter being the moody 10 minute epic "Butchertown", painting this very city's streets in sinister fairytale shades. (Urban decay, blight and fright being territory previously explored by Cobbett's black metal outfit Ludicra, as well.) If we know Cobbett, there's probably a clever narrative or allegory at play here, encompassing both discs, leading from song to song and one disc to the next, but Hammers lyrics are poetically vague enough that we haven't puzzled it all out yet exactly. You could look at their recent interview on the Pitchfork website for more insight if you wish. We again get a political vibe from some of this, and do have the idea that Fields starts off about the plight of peasant farmers in Afghanistan, beginning with the three-part, 16-minute suite of "Agriculture", "Fields", and "Motorcade". See what you make of these lines, from the latter: "Escorting friendlies, a walk in the park/Unlock the cages as soon as it's dark/Motorcade motorcade easy to mark/Send in the snipers to swim with the sharks/Breadline is burning, the headcount's a joke/Soon they'll be feasting on mirrors and smoke/Motorcade motorcade horses to show/Fish in a barrel and ducks in a row". Hmm. And Hammers manages to turn that into singalong catchiness!
Fortunately, even with the ambitious scale of this latest project, and all the new members in the band, fans will find that Hammers hasn't changed too much, still full of blazing guitar solos and stop on a dime dynamics, memorable riffs and melodies and exquisite harmonies, musical theater moments and multilayered vocals - all the over the top-ness we love about 'em. Perhaps though the progginess has gotten even proggier, more flowery... We're reminded of Kansas, actually! Well, Kansas mixed with Megadeth, maybe. With a healthy helping of that rollicking, Deep Purplish Hammond organ first introduced on previous opus the Locust Years, as we said. And if you're into 'em for the female vocals, you won't be disappointed at all.
So, what should be Hammers' sales slogan for this album - New and Improved? Well, no, we can't quite go there, what with our feelings about the The Bastard. Well, how about Two For The Price Of One! Sure. And how about Thinking Man's (and Woman's) Metal? Definitely. But we get the idea that slogans and soundbites and all those mass media manipulative aspects of modern commercial culture are exactly what Hammers Of Misfortune stands against, so we'll just leave it with, well worth checking out.
Oh, and Hammers fans of the vinyl-buying persuasion, please note that this is also going to be coming out on lp (several of them of course), via the 20 Buck Spin label...
MPEG Stream: "Agriculture"
MPEG Stream: "Rats Assembly"
MPEG Stream: "Butchertown"
MPEG Stream: "Train"

HECKER, TIM Norberg, Sweden (Room 40) cd ep 21.00
Unlike the majority of other soundmakers, Canadian Tim Hecker takes his sweet time with releases, a 10" here, a full length there, rarely more than a single release a year, which makes the appearance of a new Hecker record a huge deal, even if it's just a live ep, like this one.
Recorded in Sweden, this ep covers more ground in 20 minutes than most other artists cover over several records, in fact, much of these parts, in lesser hands would be milked and stretched out to fill up a whole album. But Hecker lets the sounds dictate the direction. Almost as if the sounds were alive, growing, blossoming, dying, changing shape transforming, endlessly shifting with Hecker there simply to nurture and guide.
The sound is one that has become familiar to us, gauzy, blurry, buzzy expanses of muted digital glitch, disembodied melodies, sepia toned ambience, organic and electronic woven into swirling shimmering soundscapes.
Here what begins as an Oval like sweep of glimmering chimes and washed out whir, quickly develops into something much more weighty, the chimes swallowed up by a warm whirring blur, a softly churning, slowly crumbling wall of blissed out guitar buzz, the buzz very gradually dissipating, leaving just the hiss and the whir, to drift like gossamer clouds in a deep blue sky. The sounds become softer and softer, muted and murky, underwater sounding, allowed to pulse and ebb and flow and sway softly back and forth, under a delicate patina of electronic crackle, an ultra distorted guitar way down in the mix unfurling ribbons of gnarled prismatic crunch, spread out over the hushed shimmer below, like the icy crust on a dying sun. Finally the hiss takes on a life of it's own, pushing all of the other sounds under the surface, the hiss made up of all manner of skipping static and layered white noise, impossible musical in its own right, the perfect climax to a surprisingly bracing expanse of buzzing blissful ambient sound.
MPEG Stream: "Norberg, Sweden (excerpt)"

HERRMANN, BERNARD Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (El / Cherry Red) cd 17.98
This is a reissue of a 1957 broadcast of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's classic tale of future shock that launched countless sci-fi movie references from THX-1138 to Wall-E. Adapted for radio, narrated by the author with a score by Bernard Herrmann, this broadcast harkens back to the classic Orson Welles War of The Worlds radio era, while creating a chilling picture of the future that still rings true. What makes it most chilling is Herrmann's wonderful score which is featured by itself on the first 9 tracks. Consisting of harpsichords and glockenspiels, the score is light but impressionistically foreboding, reminding us a bit of the soundtrack to TV's The Prisoner, and other beautifully creepy scores of British horror movies. Brrrrrr!
MPEG Stream: "Track 4"
MPEG Stream: "Track 6"
MPEG Stream: "Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Part 2"

HOLTKAMP, KOEN Field Rituals (Type) cd 15.98
Here be the first full length album from Mountains-man Koen Holtkamp. You may recall we got in (and sold out) his contribution to the A Room Forever series of LPs commissioning artists to match a field recording on one side with a sympathetic composition on the other. Where his offering there was a dark-hued, ominous crescendo of crackled drone sourced from acoustic guitar, Field Rituals has its head in the clouds. Holtkamp begins the album with a lovely round of brightly rendered acoustic guitar finger picking with some tricked out ring modulation effects giving each of the tones a sun-flecked glow and funhouse mirror curvature. Sustained drones from loops of melodica and harmonica mutate into an ersatz harmonium with the soaring overtones and sweeping fluctuations of tonalities gently crashing into each other. The loops every once in a while coalesce into a rhythmic underbelly, but mostly they settle as a effervescent bubbling of overlapping delay patterns and softly shimmered ambience. On top of all of this, Holtkamp dapples everything with his shimmered guitar and occasional crackles of tactile objects (he mentions water, seeds, ice, and paper) as well as field recordings of giggly children romping in a playground. The effect is somewhere between the immaculate pieces from Keith Fullerton Whitman's recordings and the bright-eyed naturalist wonder of the Jewelled Antler camp. Really gorgeous stuff from the ever impressive Type label.
MPEG Stream: "Bear Bell"
MPEG Stream: "You Mean The World To Me"
MPEG Stream: "Night Swimmer"

HOLTKAMP, KOEN Field Rituals (Type) lp 23.00
Here be the first full length album from Mountains-man Koen Holtkamp. We got in (and sold out) his contribution to the A Room Forever series of LPs commissioning artists to match a field recording on one side with a sympathetic composition on the other. Where his offering there was a dark-hued, ominous crescendo of crackled drone sourced from acoustic guitar, Field Rituals has its head in the clouds. Holtkamp begins the album with a lovely round of brightly rendered acoustic guitar finger picking with some trickedout ring modulation effects giving each of the tones a sun-flecked glow and funhouse mirror curvature. Sustained drones from loops of melodica and harmonica mutate into an ersatz harmonium with the soaring overtones and sweeping fluctations of tonalities gently crashing into eachother. The loops every once in a while coalesce into a rhythmic underbelly, but mostly they settle as a effervescent bubbling of overlapping delay patterns and softly shimmered ambience. On top of all of this, Holtkamp dapples everything with his shimmered guitar and occasional crackles of tactile objects (he mentions water, seeds, ice, and paper) as well as field recordings of giggly children romping in a playground. The effect is somewhere between the immaculate pieces from Keith Fullerton Whitman's recordings and the bright-eyed naturalist wonder of the Jewelled Antler camp. Really gorgeous stuff from the ever impressive Type label.
MPEG Stream: "Bear Bell"
MPEG Stream: "You Mean The World To Me"
MPEG Stream: "Night Swimmer"

HOTOTOGISU & BURNING CORE STAR s/t (Yik Yak) lp 14.98
This collaboration could have gone one of two ways, both equally appealing, blissed out and drone-y like the Burning Star Core albums that we've made records of the week in the past, or noisy and chaotic like most of the Hototogisu records we've reviewed. And while here and there this definitely falls somewhere right in between, for the most part, this falls squarely on the noisy side of things. Which is to be expected, guitars, electronics, voices, drums, percussion violin, Moog, objects (!), acoustic appraiser (!!), it would be no small feat to tie all that stuff up into something droney and composed. But then these folks excel at letting loose, unleashing sounds, unfurling huge clouds of blurred buzz, sending streaks of high end sparking into the atmosphere, conjuring up all manner of sonic demons with these slow shifting ur-drone rituals.
The drums are mostly scattered and abstract, but when they do lock into a groove, the sound briefly transforms into a sort of krautnoise jam, before coming loose again and drifting heavenward, sprawling out and raining sonic debris upon the swirling sea of abstract clatter and pulsing buzz drenched hum below.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!!

ILLUSION OF SAFETY The Need To Now (Experimedia) cd-r 14.98
2008 marks the 25th year for Illusion Of Safety. Once an ensemble of misanthropic electron engineers, Illusion Of Safety has effectively reduced itself down to a single member in Dan Burke who has arrived at the silver anniversary with some of his best work produced throughout the sprawling Illusion Of Safety catalogue. There was the Quell & Sedition 10", the In Session cd, and now this small edition cd-r, all of which are exemplary versions of the Illusion Of Safety signature sound for psychologically challenging compositions. The Need To Now is more of a blackened cosmic headspace music, with all of the psychedelic flourishes that burst out of Klaus Schulze or Expo '70 turned towards something much much darker and much more brooding. There is oblivion in front of you when you are floating alone in outer space, and Burke presents that sublime fiction replete with wonder and horror. For all of the bleak subtext of the album, Burke keeps things very subtle preferring to focus on the minimalist dronesmear ruptured with occasional detours. The shadow and vacuum of Illusion Of Safety's aerosolized drone always has something ominous just outside of earshot, something lurking the corners of those corroded metal tones and already eerie passages of sci-fi incidental music slowed way the hell down. Illusion Of Safety breaks up the long-form drones with tense glitch workouts that could be an extract from a CoH production, with all sorts of misfired squiggles, poorly grounded bursts of electricity, and erratic charged samples; but unsettled ambience overcomes each of these crescendo like a creeping suffocating fog of toxic gas. It's an austere and powerful record, in spite of the many subtle twists and turns. Fucking incredible is what The Need To Now is. Limited to a mere 150 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Temporary Amnesia"
MPEG Stream: "A Purpose"
MPEG Stream: "Remember"

INCA ORE Birthday Of Bless You (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
Latest from this one woman dreambliss outfit, and it's a soft focus washed out doozy. It seems like Grouper and Inca Ore are constantly competing to see who can craft the dreamiest slab of disembodied pop, of ghostlike ambient shimmer, and with every release from each of them, we find ourselves proclaiming a winner, until the next disc shows up, and there's a new winner, and on and on and on.
But really, we're the big winners in this made up competition, as we can't get enough from either. Both utilize vocals as their main sound source, but both have spread their wings, incorporating more and more instrumentation, creating sprawling expanses of gorgeous blurred ambience. And part of the magic is that the sounds are often smeared to the point that it's difficult to tell what is voice and what is instrument.
This latest Inca Ore record is maybe her most song based yet, and it totally suits her. She has always been adept and creating atmospheres and textures, but her knack for hiding catchy melodies and soft pop gems amidst all the drift and murk is really coming through. The opener here is absolutely heartbreaking perfection. Minor key and washed out, with a vocal line, that distorts perfectly, adding unexpected texture, a hidden hook that lodges in your head, the vocals drifting on the glistening minimal soundscape in the background, when the vocals fade out, leaving just the music, it's so utterly sad and funeral, but still fuzzy and dreamy.
She covers Merle Haggard and makes the song totally her own. We could go song by song and describe the record in detail, but where's the mystery in that. The first song, and the description above should be enough to suck you in. But once you're in, let yourself go and drift off into Inca Ore's haunting hallowed soundworld.
Beautiful full color covers, printed 12"x12" inserts, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! (Well, actually, some of the copies we have, which we got directly from Ms. Inca Ore herself, are from an earlier, self-released pressing. Same record, slightly different cover art. The copy you get will be randomly chosen.)

JABLADAV Primland II (self released) cd-r 10.98
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 two much more affordable single discs, the first of which we reviewed a few lists back, a serious slab of crushingly twisted blackness, this is the second disc, the abstract ambient accompaniment to the first disc's more furious fucked up heaviness. But in its own, way just as intense and black.
Whereas Jabladav typically sounds a bit like some gnarled tangled up hybrid of Black Flag and SF black metal legends Weakling (Jabladav began as an homage to Weakling in fact), this second Primland disc is something else all together, a collection of sprawling dronescapes, thick with crumbling drones, black ambience, abstract piano, long drawn out epics, expansive worlds of bleak and blackened mystery. Think MZ412 or the more recent Nordvargr / Drakh collaborations, this is brooding, haunting, malevolent minimalism, but shot through with plenty of texture and mood, layered sounds woven into organic slow moving black drifts, bits of percussion surface here and there, jarring amidst the bleak slow shifting backdrop, streaks of sound that resemble strings, the piano pounding out doomy almost-melodies, drones swelling and throbbing and pulsing beneath, some of the layers processed into dizzying loops, super hypnotic and truly strange.
One track does flirt with heaviness, offering up a sport of crumbling dirgedrone, but wrapped in static, and grinding electronics, oozing over deep dreamy swells, disembodied squalls of processed noise, so distorted they threaten to blow your speakers, before being reeled in, and swallowed whole by an impossibly thick wall of dense black hole low end, shot through with glimmering upper register tones and streaks of fragmented melody.
The final track is like a slow motion raga, all hypnotic buzz and slow burning minimalism, the speed shifting subtly throughout, the track oozing and swerving and slithering, playing tricks on the listeners ears, invoking a glorious disorienting sort of audio sea sickness, woozy and druggy, and strangely irresistible.
No metal to be found here, but that's not the point, taken with disc one, this completes Jabladav's high concept Primland epic, a massive chunk of confusional outsider black art, combining dense blackened minimalism with cracked and damaged black metal weirdness, the two halves somehow reflected in each other, both able to stand on their own, but together, making up a singular organic sonic entity.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "Primland"
MPEG Stream: "Faith"

JECK, PHILIP Suite. Live In Liverpool (Touch) lp 15.98
What to say about Philip Jeck that we haven't already. Easily one of our favorite modern music makers. Most definitely, our favorite turntablist / old vinyl manipulator. What Jeck does is so far beyond simple DJ-ing, so much more subtle and creative than most turntablism, he is a composer, a sound sculptor, as adept live as in the studio, maybe even more so, able to create gorgeous soundscapes of crackle and hiss, to conjure up emotions, and energy, from fragments of other folks' recordings, all on the fly. The evidence is right here, a live recording from 2006, just Jeck, a roomful of turntables, a handful of effects, and a box of old records. We've yet to actually see Jeck perform live, but it must be mesmerizing, an act of not just creativity, but also agility, 5 turntables, 10, 20, more, each locked into it's own loop, all the various loops overlapping, creating rhythms, melodies, textures, SONGS.
The five lengthy tracks here, all woven together into one ever evolving whole, are masterful exercises in sound manipulation, so deftly managed, that it's nearly impossible to recognize these sounds as records on turntables. Take the opener "Press", with it's swirling sea of effected shimmer, and rain-like record crackle, the warm whirs and deep soft swells, minor key melodies surfacing from minimal background drones, all manner of reverbed percussion, like the echo of water droplets in a shower, shuffling rhythms, distant keening high end tones, snippets of voices, brief squalls of barely restrained chaos, building to a noisy finale, before slipping into a minimal hushed pulse. Totally breathtaking. "Intro Roll" takes up where "Press" left off, taking those same sounds but moving in a different direction, opting for something more ominous, darker, more textured, more rough, the crackle and hiss even more prominent, but this time rife with buried high end melodies giving the whole track a distinctly haunting vibe. "Live With Errors" adds a strange looped marimba like melody over the top, and an off kilter shuffling rhythm, which slips from murky and muted, to blown out and distorted, before slipping into "All That's Allowed", which begins with a low end pulse, that is soon surrounded by dramatic soaring strings, and streaks of shimmering crackle, very dramatic and emotive, before finishing off with "Chime Chime", which seems to be a version of "Chime Again" from Jeck's Sand album, and like the title suggests, is a sea of processed and looped chimes, glimmering, tinkling, bell like tones drifting all sun dappled over a looped abstract rhythm, bass soon drifts in, a bit of metallic percussion, some steel string fragments, before fading out, laving just a very soft, minimal drift, all the sounds muted and right beneath the surface, growing quieter and quieter until they disappear completely. So totally gorgeous, mesmerizing, and again, breathtaking.
Vinyl only, beautiful Jon Wozencroft photos and layout as always, LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES, some on clear vinyl, some on colored, it's random so please don't ask for a particular color.

KAHN, JASON & ASHER Vista (And/OAR) cd 13.98
This is a pairing that we didn't expect; and without a doubt, we didn't expect it to be so good. Jason Kahn is an American ex-pat living in Switzerland, having made a smooth transition from the percussive ends of improv into a drone heavy minimalism that often derives from the resonant frequencies of snares and floor toms. Earlier in 2008, Kahn delivered a transcendent live set at the San Francisco Art Institute with little more than an amplifier, a drum head, and some basic electronics. Asher Thal-Nir has impressed us with his ultra-quiet renderings of whispered field recordings and gauzy atmospherics, on par with some of the best work from Bernhard Gunter (what ever happened to that guy, anyway?). The album begins with rasping din of soft metals like aluminum or copper rattling against each other. For those familiar with Kahn's work, this tactile acoustic noise sounds just like one of his feedback systems transmitted through his drum kit; however, the sources for this album are all field recordings. Asher provided the environmental sounds from the back alleys of Boston, with ventilators, heating units, and other motors that ceaselessly rumble in the urban landscape. Kahn picked the far more pastoral sounds of Lake Zurich. It's almost as if Asher decided upon sounds better suited to Kahn's aesthetic and Kahn to Asher's sensibility. In any case, the huge rumble of subharmonics from Asher's industrial field recordings becomes this leaden cloud that weighs very heavily upon the recording. The fastidious production work between these two subtly shifts the clamorous frequencies into singing overtones, resembling a Ligetti chorale at times or a Pandit Pran Nath harmonium drone at another. But by the end of the record, the thick drone collapses into a vibrating black hole with ripples of negative energy fading into the soft patter of those lakeside field recordings. Definitely for fans of Phill Niblock, John Duncan's drone work, and Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion. Very fucking cool.
MPEG Stream: "Vista (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Vista (extract 2)"

KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT / SUNROOF! split (Fat Cat) lp 13.98
Latest in this long running series of split 12"s, each volume's number in the series denoted by the number of holes punched in the plain white cover, this volume thus being number 19! And this time number 19 is the magic number as both bands sharing the split are LONG time aQ faves, Kemialliset Ystavat from Finland, and Sunroof!, the more droned out and blissy project of Skullflower's Matthew Bower. Both groups sound amazing as usual, but display different sounds than we're used to here.
Let's start with Kemialliset, whose usual sound is a gloriously ramshackle abstract foresty folk, and it still is, sort of, but it sounds like someone in the group got a computer (or at least finally figure out how to use one), as this is easily the most polished sounding KY record yet, and the most rife with strange electronics and effects, but by no means does that mean it's less out there, in fact it's probably the weirdest and most twisted KY record yet.
Woozy twisted lullabies, warped music box melodies, haunting vocal harmonies, it's still foresty and folky, but way more fractured, with strange edits and tons of swirling effects and electronics, way more experimental and abstract, pretty and lilting for sure, but totally twisted. The final track is fantastic, a playful groove, only mildly effected, hypnotic and beautiful, but still a bit off kilter.
The flipside finds Sunroof!, one of our favorite purveyors of glistening high end ur-drone, and technically these tracks still qualify but they're a bit more abrasive and harsh, the opener is brittle and caustic, a field of shrieking feedback, and hiss drenched high end, sputtering horns(?) and all manner of NOISE. The second track is all warped radio transmissions, still droney and minimal, buried beneath a sea of pulsating buzz. And the final track explodes with sheets of corrosive buzz, all high end, grinding and fuzz drenched, a mighty ur-drone bordering on Merzbow territory, but always with a haunting melodic undercurrent that transforms what could be near white noise into something thick and layered and organic and in some strange abrasive way, quite beautiful.

LAZER CRYSTAL Hot Pink BMC / National (HBSB - 2X) 12" 11.98
First there was Warhammer 48K, then there was Cave, now there is Lazer Crystal. That's right those crazy noisemakers from Chicago have gone and got themselves a brand new band with a brand new sound. Fans of Cave and WH48K might be a bit thrown, but most likely only for a second, as the sound of Lazer Crystal was definitely hinted at in sounds of both those bands, especially Cave.
It may look like a 12". And it is, but there's only one song on each side, with most of each side being the runout groove, but fear not, there's plenty of sound to be found! Super ghetto spray painted cover art, tiny scrawled photo copied insert, all leading us to drop the needle and get bowled over by LC's wild lo-fi electro krautrock jams. Think total eighties John Hughes soundtrack new wave, all tangled up with electronic Kraftwerk style Krautrock. Analog synths buzz over fuzzy grooves, machinelike beats pound and pulse while vocoder-ed vocals swoon and swoop all over the place.
The flipside introduces some Bryan Ferry like crooning to the proceedings, the perfect compliment to the lurching synth drenched new wave krautrock what-the-fuck beneath. Groovy, danceable, weirdness that kicks a surprising amount of ass!!!
Anyone into all those French new wave reissues we've been digging lately, or any of the more modern dance floor destroyers, will probably find the perfect place for this in their next DJ set.

LEE, SHAWN AND CLUTCHY HOPKINS Clutch of The Tiger (Ubiquity) cd 16.98
Another cryptically groovy release from the mysterious Clutchy Hopkins. This time a long distance tape exchange collaboration between Hopkins and multi-instrumentalist and troubadour Shawn Lee. We're not sure what Lee's input is here, because this sounds just like the other Clutchy releases, with funky cinematic organ and drum breaks augmented by jazz guitars and flutes. Reminds us of Money Marks early releases as well as his work with the Beastie Boys, who funny enough are among the latest folks rumored to be the actual Clutchy Hopkins. Hmmmmmm......
MPEG Stream: "Dollar Short"
MPEG Stream: "Across The Pond"
MPEG Stream: "Indian Burn"

LESBIAN / OCEAN split (Roadburn / Senor Hernandez) 10" 15.98
We've mentioned it before, but it definitely bears repeating. It's always good to print the speed a record is meant to be played at. If your band is slow and sludgey, droney and dirgey, then odds are it will sound good at both 45 -and- 33, and if you're like us, you'll probably think it sounds better slower, dirgier, heavier, so we're gonna review this split at 33, cuz it sounded better that way. If it was meant to be played at 45, well, everything we're about to say, only slightly higher pitched and a bit faster.
Lesbian are from Seattle and feature a bunch of dudes who have done time in other heavy bands, most notably Asva. They released an awesome album on Holy Mountain a year or two ago. And here, they offer up one track of classic sounding doom, at least at first, soaring minor key guitars, wrapped around crushing drums, harsh demonic vox, strangely haunting and pretty, but as the song develops it gets weirder and weirder, introducing some blasting double kick, some old school eighties style chug complete with guitar harmonies, and some streaks of blurred almost-black metal. Like Khanate meets Iron Maiden, but weirder, and even cooler than that already sounds.
The flipside is a new track from Ocean, from Maine, not to be confused with THE Ocean from Germany, the sound here is brooding post rocky metal, a simple strum, all murky and Godspeedy, slow building, before exploding into a churning low slung sludge, that at 33 is thick and viscous, but maybe slightly less so at 45. Heavy and murky and pummeling, before giving way to a pretty droned out abstract outro.
Packaged in sturdy full color sleeves, pressed on thick opaque yellow vinyl, and most likely limited.

LILYS Zero Population Growth (Darla) cd 10.98
This is not new, but its a favorite record we've never carried before and we managed to get our hands on a few copies to list, not sure if we'll be able to get more, so you know the drill...
We can't say we were huge fans of the Lilys, the Philadelphia based outfit led by Kurt Heasley. Their constant genre switching from MBV shoegaze to Oasis-style brit pop to electronic music never held our focus for very long. Yet this one record, a minor one in Lilys overall discography, recorded for the Darla label's Blissed Out series in 1999, is the one that holds up the best for us. Which is funny, because the Blissed Out series was created for invited bands to experiment with their sound. The best in the series included AMP, Windy and Carl, and Fuxa, but the Lilys one is our favorite, because they use the forum to dive head first into full blown Krautrock worship. Over 6 long instrumental tracks, they channel Neu!, Cluster, Kraftwerk and Faust (the cover art sort of apes Faust IV, albeit badly) with great efficiency and verve. We admit that at this point in time, it's not the most original sound, but for a one-off album, Lilys do it so spot on in a way that displays their obvious influences yet still sounds fresh and enjoyable. And nearly a decade before Arp, Cloudland Canyon, and countless other bands were fishing from the same well. Yeah!
MPEG Stream: "Escape"
MPEG Stream: "The Law"
MPEG Stream: "Sharper Laws"

LOVE Out There (Universal) cd 16.98
There is almost a curse in creating something that so many people praise as "genius" and as your "defining moment". Such is the case with the legacy of one of the best west coast psych bands of the '60s, Love. For most people the story of Love begins and ends with Forever Changes, their undeniably classic album from 1967, a record that's been included on all sorts of best album of all time lists and has been the subject of entire books and magazines articles. Rightfully so, as it really is one of those classic timeless records that we turn to time and time again. But sadly the attention Forever Changes now attracts has obscured the fact that Arthur Lee (essentially the driving force of Love) created a whole lot of other amazing music that's not on Forever Changes. Lately we've been spending lots of time with Love's 1969 outing Out There which was originally released as a double lp and was pretty much a commercial flop (as was Forever Changes when it first came out!)
After disbanding and changing lineups almost every year in the late '60s and into the early '70s Love was pretty much the vehicle for the enigmatic world of Arthur Lee (who for some funny reason calls himself Arthurly in the credits of this record). Out There contains some of Lee's most devastating material, songs like "I'm Down" paint such a moving and sad portrait of the internal anguish that haunted Lee throughout a lot of his life. This disc really is all over the place, containing more playful and breezy tracks like "Run To The Top" and quite possibly one of our favorite Love song of all time, the ultra dreamy "Willow Willow", as well as the smart ass and anti-military "Discharged", the twelve minute percussive freakout of "Doggone" and the Hendrix like rocker "Stand Up".
While it's not without a few misses this still is one of the best records in the Love back catalog and strong proof that there is more to the story and Arthur Lee's genius than just Forever Changes.
MPEG Stream: "Willow Willow"
MPEG Stream: "Stand Out"
MPEG Stream: "Run to the Top"

MACHINEFABRIEK Huiswerk (Ketchup Cavern) 7" 9.98
Not one, but two new Machinefabriek releases this time around, both on the smaller side, a 3" cd-r elsewhere, and this one song 7", both great as always, both limited as always, and depending on how full your Machinefabriek shelf is at home already, both quite possibly essential.
This new single features a single track spread out over two side, a gorgeously minimal guitar workout that reminds us of another aQ fave, Part Timer, with it's sleep guitar figures, wreathed in digital glitch, bits of crackle and streaks of hiss, every now and then a thick distorted guitar surfaces, only to drift off again, leaving lots of space for that lonely guitar to drift through. Stuttery, skipping, sudden moments of near silence, but all peppered throughout a slowly unfurling expanse of warbly woozy fractured folk, soft and pretty, spacious and minimal, the glitchiness mostly adding texture, rarely interrupting the song's dreamy drift.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

MACHINEFABRIEK Rusland (self released) 3"cd-r 9.98
Second of two releases from Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek. This 19 minute piece is a collage of live performances, woven deftly into one single organic soundscape, lots of space, and distant shimmer, simple reverbed guitars, deep Jeck-like swells of soft focus fuzz, dark low end rumbles that slip into a slow drifting loopscape of field recordings and warm melodic whirs, of smoother out record cackle and deep drones, brief moments of found sound, coughs, footsteps, eventually transforming into hushed whispery blur, peppered with thick resonant thuds, a muffled piano perhaps or an effected guitars, more mysterious voices, all very funereal and mysterious drifting off to near silence before finishing off with a woman singing a song in some other language. It's basically everything we love about Machinefabriek boiled down to a lean 19 minutes, the various performances fitting together like puzzle pieces, so much that it's impossible to tell where one ends and another begins.
Incredibly nice packaging, an accordion like full color fold out, with gorgeous photos, and liner notes, includes a link to a website where you can download a 25 minute bonus track, of course, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Rusland"

MALVEILLANCE L'Appel Du Neant / Le Froid Du Nord (New Scream Industry / Sabbathid / Suffering Jesus Productions) cd 14.98
What's more evil and metal and "I don't give a fuck about humanity" that slapping on some corpse paint and lurking in the forest for a perfectly grimm band photo? What's more cult than strapping on a bunch of spikes and spitting fire, while a photographer expertly captures the 'ritual' on film? What's more anti-social and BROOTAL than dousing yourself in blood, leering evilly at the camera, and holding as still as possible until the timer clicks and the camera catches your pure evil for eternity?
Well how about just waking up, stepping in front of the mirror on your closet door, and snapping a picture of yourself in all your first thing in the morning, PINK tightie whiteies (pinkies?), socks, baseball jersey and bedhead, frowning grumpily and holding the digital camera in front of you in the mirror? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING. Fuck posing and preening and make up and all that, nothing is more grim than the antisocial miscreant captured in his home, where he makes his sick sounds, and where he hides from all the filthy scum outside his front door. The colorful bedspread, the wood paneling, the vinyl tile flooring, the framed pictures above the bed, that stuff is all more intimate and personal and ultimately EVIL than any amount of forests and spiked armbands and bullet belts. Sorry for the rant, we're just a bit obsessed with the band photo on this Malveillance collection, which does in fact feature Mr. Malveillance in a t-shirt and pink undies, scowling at the mirror in his bedroom. Fucking awesome. And somehow, that sort of symbolizes the music of Malveillance pretty perfectly as well. Simple, stripped down, raw. Think Akitsa, Ildjarn, Bone Awl, that sort of super primitive
blasting crusty brutality. But with Malveillance that sound is even more punk, more pummelingly straight ahead. ONE riff over and over and over, repeated to death, the vocals a raspy howl, the drums a D-beat pound, the production raw and lo-fi but still heavy and filthy and grimy and totally BAD ASS. In some ways, it reminds us a bit of a more punk, more blackened Brainbombs.
This is actually a collection gathering up two previous releases from 2005 and 2006, as well as a handful of bonus tracks from a little earlier. The crazy thing is, there are 7 or 8 RAMONES COVERS! And what's even weirder is they sound perfect, like they could be actual Malveillance jams, all filthied up, sped up, doused in buzz and grit, they sound pretty evil and grim, even the "hey ho" parts manage to sound a bit menacing.
What more to say. We love this shit, and Malveillance does it as good, if not better than the rest, plus any metalhead with the balls to pose in pink undies and short hair on their record, deserves to have the grim corpse painted hordes bowing at their feet for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Effrondrement"
MPEG Stream: "Coup Final"
MPEG Stream: "Dans Le Sang"
MPEG Stream: "Eat That Rat (Ramones Cover)"
MPEG Stream: "The KKK Took My Baby Away (Ramones Cover)"

MAMALEEK Fever Dream (Furusiyya Recordings) lp 14.98
We went a little crazy for the first Mamaleek record, a way too limited cd-r, packed with blown out blissed out shoegazey black metal, head spinning ultra technical metallic grind, and gorgeous blurred black ambience. That record was so intense, so gloriously fucked up, so complex and confusional, it really seemed like an impossible record to top, but this latest record, the first Mamaleek vinyl release, definitely does its best, and in some cases succeeds big time.
Like the record opener, "I Can't Stay Behind", which begins with some creepy sample, a mysterious voices, the sound of horses, then suddenly, speaker shredding blasts of start stop black grind, a haunting lull between each, before finally launching into full on hyper speed black buzz, but with weird interludes, moaning clean vocals, stuttering drum machines, a strangely almost indie rock arrangement, but shredded and shattered, cool loping arpeggiated breakdowns, the guitars impossibly distorted, the sound WAY in-the-red, the creepy intro sample resurfacing throughout.
That indie rock sensibility runs through the whole record, but is deftly twisted into much blacker shapes. The second track, is an almost looped single part song, very hypnotic, partway through keyboards surface, all sunbaked and swoonsome, and while the track remains buzzy and abrasive, those keyboards help transform the sound into something more akin to a black metal M83.
And that side of the band seems to be the most prevalent this time around, trading in much of the brutal grind and twisted blast of the first record for something a bit more melodic and sort of pretty. Gnarled fragmented and fractured angular crunch is butted up against almost loungey piano, and random Japanese vocal snippets, murky industrial rhythms underpin groovy acoustic guitars, grim buzz gets warped and twisted and draped over swinging jazz, and it almost works, but is all the better for not quite working, the result a seriously twisted mash up. And the jazz element runs through to varying degrees, so much so that there's even a Charlie Parker cover, done pretty straight, only the guitars are a bit distorted and a little off, and there are some harsh black vokills that were most likely not in the original, seriously twisted and tweaked. Elsewhere, Mamaleek unfurls drone drenched near static black metalscapes, weaves loping drum machine grooves beneath coruscating super distorted guitar melodies, incorporates what sounds like seventies FM radio rock into otherwise grim blasting blackness,
The closer is more M83 style washed out woozy drift, skittering drum machines, wheezing accordions, shimmering strings, warm and sun dappled, wreathed in crackle and hiss, until the song shatters into a full bore freakout, a squealing fractured nearly white noise free jazz blurred metal outro, that is as kick ass as it is utterly confounding.
If anything this record is WAY more varied, more experimental, less cohesive, but not in a bad way, the sounds all manage to fit together in one epic, seriously demented whole, but this time it's a much wilder ride, not for the faint of heart, or the unadventurous. But much like the first record, fucking amazing and WAY recommended.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, and housed in ultra deluxe sleeves, with striking and subtle, spot varnish inking.
MPEG Stream: "I Can't Stay Behind"
MPEG Stream: "Go Into The Wilderness"
MPEG Stream: "Paar Rosy"

NAMBAJAZZ The Gun (Doubt Music) cd 16.98
We just got a few new titles in from Japan's Doubtmusic label, which specializes in the outer margins of "jazz" and other avant garde sounds. This one is perhaps of particular interest to underground Japanese music freeks as it's a duo that features none other than guitarist Yamamoto Seiichi, of Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, and Rovo fame, among many projects. His partner in crime is percussionist Yoshigaki Yasuhiro (from Ground Zero, Altered States, Rovo, ONJO, and others). These guys are old pros when it comes to making an awesome, interesting racket.
As you'd expect, it's a disc of somewhat splattery skronk - but quite listenable by skronk standards! There's a certain sort of catchy, chaotic logic to this duo's jittery, jumbled improvs, all performed live, the ten tracks here selected from several Nambajazz shows for this hour-long disc. Some subtle and moody, others utter stompers. Frantic this can be, but also foot-tappin'. Those looking for tangled, heavy-duty Takayanagi style blowouts need look no further than track 3 to get their ears peeled back. Amped-up guitar mayhem and octopoidal bashing in full effect! Elsewhere, the duo's music, led by Yamamoto's innovative and invigorating guitar playing (and "misc."), takes lots of other surprising twists and turns... ferinstance, track 9, "Ten-Kwaurou" ("An Air Corridor"), works in a bit more melody, even snatches of some classical pieces, in the midst of a satisfyingly shambolic, mathrock workout. Definitely one for any fan of Yamamoto's out-guitar stylings, as well as Zornophiles, Improvised Music From Japan subscribers, Boredoms nerds, etc... you know who you are....!
MPEG Stream: "Nakan-zuku (Above All)"
MPEG Stream: "Ani-hakaran-ya (To My Disbelief)"
MPEG Stream: "Ten-Kwaurou (An Air Corridor)"

PIOULARD, BENOIT Temper (Kranky) cd 14.98
Portland? This doesn't sound like Portland! Hey, this guy isn't even French! What gives?
Well, Benoit Pioulard is but a pseudonym for a young avant-folk tunesmith named Thomas Meluch, who now lives in Portland, Oregon yet grew up in Michigan. His gauzy dream-pop has much in common with those sounds that spilled out of Michigan with Windy & Carl, Fuxa, Auburn Lull, and even Veronica Lake beginning just over a decade ago. There is a decided craftsmanship that further distances his work from the shambolic affairs that dominate his current hometown, yet this album is not without its narcotic impressionism through his gauzy smears of ambience across his wistfully strummed acoustic guitar numbers. Temper is his second album released through Kranky, and that's a damn proper place for the man. Well, yes, Windy & Carl do release records through Kranky; but his work also fits along very well next to Stars Of The Lid and Labradford. The album's opening cut "Ragged Tint" is atypically urgent in its doubletimed elliptical fingerpicking which speeds past Pioulard's vocals which are sort of like mumbling Stephen Merritt if we could make that sound like a very good thing. A heartbreakingly sad glockenspiel melody tumbles into the chorus of the song, tempered with reverb and delay to match the hue of his dreamy drone-pop. The rest of the album is set at a languid pace, more in keeping with the first Iron & Wine record, complete with lo-fi bedroom recordings and sad little ditties strummed across his acoustic guitar girded with softened Boards of Canada rhythms. Each of his songs are effortless, beautiful, melancholic, and totally worth getting stuck in your head. He brackets each of his songs with softly treated field recordings made on a well-worn walkman that has never had its heads cleaned. So the rainstorms and birdsongs are cast in a mottled gray fog of thick tape hiss, which turns bleary and sad through Pioulard's treatments. As one customer who bought this record from us said, "it's too pretty not to buy!"
Ooh! The vinyl version of Temper also comes with his first album on Kranky, Precis.
MPEG Stream: "Ragged Tint"
MPEG Stream: "Ahn"
MPEG Stream: "Sweep Generator"
MPEG Stream: "Golden Grin"

PIOULARD, BENOIT Temper / Precis (Kranky) 2lp 16.98
Portland? This doesn't sound like Portland! Hey, this guy isn't even French! What gives?
Well, Benoit Pioulard is but a pseudonym for a young avant-folk tunesmith named Thomas Meluch, who now lives in Portland, Oregon yet grew up in Michigan. His gauzy dream-pop has much in common with those sounds that spilled out of Michigan with Windy & Carl, Fuxa, Auburn Lull, and even Veronica Lake beginning just over a decade ago. There is a decided craftsmanship that further distances his work from the shambolic affairs that dominate his current hometown, yet this album is not without its narcotic impressionism through his gauzy smears of ambience across his wistfully strummed acoustic guitar numbers. Temper is his second album released through Kranky, and that's a damn proper place for the man. Well, yes, Windy & Carl do release records through Kranky; but his work also fits along very well next to Stars Of The Lid and Labradford. The album's opening cut "Ragged Tint" is atypically urgent in its doubletimed elliptical fingerpicking which speeds past Pioulard's vocals which are sort of like mumbling Stephen Merritt if we could make that sound like a very good thing. A heartbreakingly sad glockenspiel melody tumbles into the chorus of the song, tempered with reverb and delay to match the hue of his dreamy drone-pop. The rest of the album is set at a languid pace, more in keeping with the first Iron & Wine record, complete with lo-fi bedroom recordings and sad little ditties strummed across his acoustic guitar girded with softened Boards of Canada rhythms. Each of his songs are effortless, beautiful, melancholic, and totally worth getting stuck in your head. He brackets each of his songs with softly treated field recordings made on a well-worn walkman that has never had its heads cleaned. So the rainstorms and birdsongs are cast in a mottled gray fog of thick tape hiss, which turns bleary and sad through Pioulard's treatments. As one customer who bought this record from us said, "it's too pretty not to buy!"
Ooh! The vinyl version of Temper also comes with his first album on Kranky, Precis.
MPEG Stream: "Ragged Tint"
MPEG Stream: "Ahn"
MPEG Stream: "Sweep Generator"
MPEG Stream: "Golden Grin"

PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND s/t (Prophase) cd 14.98
The lp is almost already gone, soon out of print, but fear not, like a burning black sun plummeting from the heavens comes a digital version of this blown out blast of drugged out garage stomp space rock...
The welcome return of the mighty Plastic Crimewave and his druggy spaced out SOUND. Another vinyl only missive from the outer reaches of whatever galaxy these guys call home. Unequal parts Stooges, Monster Magnet, Hawkwind and the Butthole Surfers. Freaked out murky space garage jams, with plenty of psych guitar crunch, woozy, drone-y melodies, wild squiggly leads, plenty of groove and swagger, snarled vocals that remind us of Crazyhead or Zodiac Mindwarp (how are those for obscure references), all wound up into swirling buzzy blowouts, that go from slow burning throb to heart of the sun freakout, the guitars unfurling distorted streaks of sound, the drums solid and steady, the bass spreading out like a thick black fog. Been digging the Heads, White Hills, Titan and that stuff, and somehow missed out on Plastic Crimewave? Now's your chance to catch up.
The second side finishes off with a super long, sprawling space kraut dirge, that sounds a bit like a more psychedelic Circle, looped and reptitive and hypnotic, tons of effects, a repeated riff, the background a ever increasing swirl of buzz and whir and reverb and delay, the whole track seeming to slow down and melt into an oozing ambience, that drifts and shimmers and rumbles before fading out completely.
What more do you need to know? If you're jonesing for a druggy tripped out krautdrone space rock fix, you've come to the right place...
MPEG Stream: "(I Am) Planet Crushing"
MPEG Stream: "Dead Island Boogie"

RODEN, STEVE A Slow Moving Boat (In Between Noise) 3" cd 7.98
Here's a new lil' 3" treat from the always-interesting LA-based experimentalist Steve Roden. It offers a view of land through a ship's dirty window... three black marks on the glass evoke the 'noise' of worn film as Roden's voice falls below the waterline. This song, "A Slow Moving Boat", has come to life through several poetic transformations described in a short text on the cd sleeve. Taking field recordings he made of a ship's hull in Norway, Roden has used them as guide for his voice as he hummed along to the drone, then replaced the original field with a recording of bowed banjo. As with all of the 'concepts' that drive Roden's work, this one is absolutely gentle... a subjective way of framing and eliciting a creative gesture that, in this case, deftly makes its way back to a ship as a commissioned soundtrack for an FM Staten Island ferry broadcast. The voice on this 15 minute piece ebbs in and out of itself, Roden intoning beautifully at both a high and a low register while the banjo buzzes and flutters. Strangely, as hand-made and human as this music is, it seems to leave its maker behind as it blows out of reach of land...
MPEG Stream: "A Slow Moving Boat"

SAMOTHRACE Life's Trade (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
For fans of the heavy, it has been a pretty good year! Cough, Thou, Trees, The Wounded Kings, Asva, et. al. And it just seems to keep getting better and better. Here's one of our latest slow, low, doooooomed-out faves, brought to us by the ever-reliable, ultra-heavy 20 Buck Spin label. Samothrace offer up 4 long tracks of mournful, slo-mo sludge on their debut full length Life's Trade. This not-so-merry band of black stone wielders hail from Lawrence, Kansas but recorded this in Chicago with producer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Buried At Sea, Indian, Minsk, Rwake, Nachtmystium... he knows his heaviness!). They're not the first band to employ emotive loud-soft dynamics, post-rock style, but they do it quite well, and it sounds fantastic, this whole album exuding utter dismal despair. And, hopefully, provoking some form of catharsis. Everything - the guttural vokills, the effects-blanketed guitars - are weary, weeping, wailing lamentations echoing across the Midwestern prairie, finding common cause with our favorite funereal doom from Finland, British doomdeath of the '90s like My Dying Bride, and fellow sludge lords like Atavist and Ocean. Not bad company to keep, if not clinically depressed.
Sometimes it seems that bands move too far away from metal and get into some kinda mediocre, boring post-rock middleground. Like -- fuck, dude, where's the metal? However, Samothrace manages to stay heavy even while incorporating other elements. The thing is, it's not metal with something else thrown in, they take other things and make them metal. At times it's quite pretty and melodic. It's like His Hero is Gone (Fifteen Counts of Arson era) mating with the gorgeous new works by Earth. There's many long, exquisite stretches of mellowed out beauty, calm and quiet, to lull the listener before being bulldozered by fat fuzzed riffage in a more metallic, stoner mode, which sometimes flows into some sweet, Iommi-envious soloing. Samothrace's loping lethargy and mopey melody is such that even at its most crushing, the band's music still seems suffused with the sunset's psychedelic twilight rays, or perhaps radiates its own comforting warmth, somehow. If that speaks to you, grab a copy, spark one, and turn it up. You'll want this one loud. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "La Llorona"
MPEG Stream: "Cacophony"

SAMOTHRACE Life's Trade (20 Buck Spin) 2lp 22.00
For fans of the heavy, it has been a pretty good year! Cough, Thou, Trees, The Wounded Kings, Asva, et. al. And it just seems to keep getting better and better. Here's one of our latest slow, low, doooooomed-out faves, brought to us by the ever-reliable, ultra-heavy 20 Buck Spin label. Samothrace offer up 4 long tracks of mournful, slo-mo sludge on their debut full length Life's Trade. This not-so-merry band of black stone wielders hail from Lawrence, Kansas but recorded this in Chicago with producer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Buried At Sea, Indian, Minsk, Rwake, Nachtmystium... he knows his heaviness!). They're not the first band to employ emotive loud-soft dynamics, post-rock style, but they do it quite well, and it sounds fantastic, this whole album exuding utter dismal despair. And, hopefully, provoking some form of catharsis. Everything - the guttural vokills, the effects-blanketed guitars - are weary, weeping, wailing lamentations echoing across the Midwestern prairie, finding common cause with our favorite funereal doom from Finland, British doomdeath of the '90s like My Dying Bride, and fellow sludge lords like Atavist and Ocean. Not bad company to keep, if not clinically depressed.
Sometimes it seems that bands move too far away from metal and get into some kinda mediocre, boring post-rock middleground. Like -- fuck, dude, where's the metal? However, Samothrace manages to stay heavy even while incorporating other elements. The thing is, it's not metal with something else thrown in, they take other things and make them metal. At times it's quite pretty and melodic. It's like His Hero is Gone (Fifteen Counts of Arson era) mating with the gorgeous new works by Earth. There's many long, exquisite stretches of mellowed out beauty, calm and quiet, to lull the listener before being bulldozered by fat fuzzed riffage in a more metallic, stoner mode, which sometimes flows into some sweet, Iommi-envious soloing. Samothrace's loping lethargy and mopey melody is such that even at its most crushing, the band's music still seems suffused with the sunset's psychedelic twilight rays, or perhaps radiates its own comforting warmth, somehow. If that speaks to you, grab a copy, spark one, and turn it up. You'll want this one loud. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "La Llorona"
MPEG Stream: "Cacophony"

SEA AND CAKE, THE Car Alarm (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
It's hard to believe that The Sea And Cake have been around for almost fifteen years now. That's making us feel pretty old, but it's also reminding us what unsung heroes of the indie scene these guys really are. They're a bit like that good friend you don't necessarily see all the time but when you do you are immediately reminded how special they are and how comfortable around them you feel.
Over the course of all those years The Sea And Cake have never let us down, always releasing records both breezy and confident, often imitated but never duplicated, a singular sound and vision that Sam Prekop, Archer Prewitt, Eric Claridge and John McEntire have made so much their own.
Car Alarm finds them in top form, much like Pinback and Stereolab, the Sea And Cake are a band who don't stray too far from the template they've seemingly perfected, but instead concentrate on continually creating rich and well constructed songs and albums within that framework, music that will stand the test of time and remain unaffected by passing fads. The Sea And Cake were never the most hip or cool or crazy band so we weren't surprised to see Vice magazine dissing them so hard in a recent issue, because in so many ways the band represent everything that is not flashy, shocking or schlocky. Instead it's about the music, about substance and integrity, always delivering a breath of fresh air in a musical world polluted with so many wannabes trying way too hard. The Sea And Cake never sound like they're trying to be anything that they are not, their music always just flows with such perfect ease. And Car Alarm proves once again that the band have not lost any of their charm or musical sophistication, and in fact they are sounding better than ever!
MPEG Stream: "Weekend"
MPEG Stream: "Aerial"

SEVEN MILE JOURNEY The Metamorphorsis Project (Pumpkin Seeds In The Sand) cd 11.98
Ambient post rock bands are a dime a dozen these days, and bands who sound more like Godspeed that Godspeed ever did at this point probably outweigh the legions of Neur-Isis clones. But every once in a while, bands manage to remind us just why we fell in love with that sound in the first place. Danish quartet Seven Mile Journey definitely take that sound to whole 'nother level, brooding, epic, cinematic, like post rock without the rock, a sort of abstract filmic chamber music constructed from rock instrumentation.
Slow building, slow burning, so tense and intense, moody and mysterious. The drums are kept to a minimum much of the time, more for propulsion and flourish than actual beat making, but when the drums do come in, they come in hard and then drive the song, while the other instruments weave lush tapestries of sound, minor key swells, lilting overcast melodies, buzzing strings, simple piano parts draped over keening moaning minimal soundscapes, jangly guitars drifting amidst warm whirring lowercase drones, in some cases the songs build to incredible climaxes, like staring into the sun, everything blinding and chaotic and exploding like some sonic supernova, others just smolder, glowing from within, never quite easing up on the built up tension.
Fans of the usual post rock culprits - Godspeed, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky - will have very likely just found their new favorite bands, although for us, the band are at their best when they mix it up, removing the drums, spreading out the sound into impossibly emotional and moving imaginary soundtracks, ratcheting up the tension, building and building and building. Epic, transcendent and beautifully cathartic.
MPEG Stream: "Theme For The Elthenbury Massacre"
MPEG Stream: "The Catharsis Session"

SHINING PATH Take You So Low So You Can Fly So High (Planaria) lp 14.98
Killer vinyl reissue of a long out of print cassette from the Shining Path, aka Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff, brother of our very own Irwin.
Originally released on T.B.T.D and now long gone. Sort of taking off from where Shining Path's first Holy Mountain release left off, these guys take synths, vocals, organs, hurdy gurdy, drum machine and guitar and whip them into a blown out krautrock, wild noise space rock frenzy, some baffling mix of Can, Hawkwind, High Rise and Suicide, that sounds perfect together, a confusionally brilliant wild eyed blowout. Total WTF? free psych heaven! From the opening burst of blown out heart-of-the-sun psychrock meltdown, to a stretch of spacious drifting, mesmerizing motorik fuzzstomp, to the final chunk of weird drum machine driven, electronic krautdrone, these guys are absolutely melt minds and destroy speakers, and we can't get enough. The flipside is another burst of furious dubbed out druggy psych, this batch of tuneage recorded live in Brooklyn in 2006 with guests Little Howlin' Wolf and Peter Barry. Recommended of course.

SILENTIST s/t (Celestial Gang) lp 12.98
There are weird bands, and then there is Silentist. Originally described to us as a classical pianist playing along with a metal drummer kicking out insane blast beats, it ended up being not nearly that simple, and in fact it was even better that that description would have led us to believe, sounding much more like a weird grind metal band who just happened the have a lead pianist.
So after three eps, we have the very first Silentist lp, and it's as weird as we remember, maybe even weirder, and somehow even better. As of this writing, it's been playing for about 5 minutes, and EVERY customer in the store has come up to see what the heck we're playing, a few who were digging it, and a few who were seriously confused. And rightfully so. Imagine doom metal crossed with cabaret, classical music and grind metal, that description alone would lead you to believe that hearing it might do your head in, and actually hearing it, well, it just might, this is some totally insane, totally unique, and absolutely fantastic stuff.
Beginning with solo piano, the record starts of dark and dolorous, melodic and mysterious, but soon the pianist begins playing a bit more wildly, the drums kick in, and the shrieking vocalist soon follows, and suddenly it's some insane black metal / free jazz / whatthefuck hybrid. Imagine Dave Lombardo jamming with Lubomyr Melnyk and Gaahl from Gorgoroth on vocals. Or a grindcore reimagining of "Flight Of The Bumblebee", but all of those descriptions are really too reductive, this is some serious next level shit. Epic and majestic, sometimes sounding like a piano-led Swans... other times sounding like classical black metal, really quite difficult to describe, which in most cases means they're doing something right.
Anyone into weird heaviness or heavy weirdness, this is most definitely for you.

SKEPTICISM Alloy (Red Stream) cd 10.98
It's so difficult for a doom band to carve out a totally unique sound. Slow, check. Downtuned, check. Plodding tempos, check. Growled vox, check. Nothing to do but get slower and lower, but you can only get so slow or so low, before the music stops being actual sound and instead turns into some sort of physical thing, like a big molten lump of mysterious blackness. Plus, odds are, in a name-that-tune style test, most of us would be hard pressed to tell one ultra doom band from another funereal doom band, or one doomdirgedrone outfit from another slow motion sludge combo. But then there's Skepticism, who even after 17 years, and some dramatic sonic shifts, still sound like no one else. Their warm washed out blend of chugging ultra low guitar and warm church organ-like keyboards, their haunting atmosphere and otherworldy production, sound like NOBODY else.
Way back in the beginning, the way we described Skepticism was like this: imagine a doom metal band jamming out in a church basement, while upstairs the organist practices, playing some haunting liturgical hymns, now imagine a recording made right outside the church's stone walls, so the metal is muted and murky, the pipe organ warm and thick and muffled, so weirdly heavy, but dreary and dreamy. We also at one point described Skepticism as black metal meets Labradford. Both are pretty accurate we think.
It's interesting that such a heavy, low end band would NOT have a bass player, but like all the other records, Skepticism employ just guitar, drums, and keyboards, but once you hear it, a bass would just muddy it up, the sound is already perfect, a dark shimmering heaviness as ethereal as it is crushing. The band's recordings gradually grew less lo-fi, thickening and becoming heavier and heavier, but without losing their distinctive sound. It's been 5 years since the last Skepticism record, Farmakon, and in that time, the band have once again subtly altered their sound, incorporating a bit more classic doom, a bit more propulsion as well, a little more 'chug', varying the sound more than ever, but around these new elements is still wrapped that thick, warm black Skepticism sonic monk cloak.
The strangest song is probably "March October", with its clean guitar, it's lurching chug, and it's almost drinking song like vocals, howled by a singer who we can't help but imagine is covered in sabre tooth tiger pelts, sporting a black beard to his waist, a massive mountain of a man, leading us on a brave march into certain death. The whole record is epic and majestic, funereal and crushing, morose, atmospheric and dismally, depressively beautiful. Anyone at all into bands like Esoteric, Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Corrupted, Evoken, Boris, Khanate, Eyehategod, Cavity, Electric Wizard, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Thou, Trees, Otesanek, Fleshpress, Monarch, Nihill, Monument Of Urns, Atavist, Noothgrush, Catacombs, Winter, should either already love Skepticism, or should buy this, and then buy every single thing they've ever recorded, because as much as we love all of those bands, we just might love Skepticism the most...
MPEG Stream: "The Arrival"
MPEG Stream: "March October"

SKULLFLOWER Circulus Vitiosus Deus / Circle Of Serpents / Valley Of Scorpions (Turgid Animal) 3cd box 53.00
Massive dose of divine Skullflower noisiness this time around, a brand new vinyl only release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this right here, a long in the works, super limited, hand assembled TRIPLE cd (not cd-r) boxset featuring all new material, over three hours or buzzing noise, abstract riffing, and all manner of brilliant sonic fuckery.
Not sure which disc comes first, but we'll start with Circle Of Serpents, and right off the bat, we're greeted with a glorious looped riff, reminiscent of Exquisite Fucking Boredom or Orange Canyon Mind, locked and looped and played over and over and over, while in the background all manner of melodies and melodic fragments, swoop and swoon and howl and keen, a swirling abyss over which a fuzzy minimal metal loop is locked on repeat. But don't expect the whole disc to be riff based, the second track explodes in a wall of grinding crumbling blown out noise drenched chaos, and as if we weren't already mixing it up enough, track three offers up some full on ultra grim blasting murky black metal, Skullfower style! We knew Bower dug the black metal, and always hoped something would come of it, so here you go, raw and buzzy, a stuttering drum machine blast beat, riffs blurred and smeared into abstract streaks, vokills buried in the mix, all barreling though clouds of effects and crumbling noise. The rest of the disc slips from epic, sun dappled Sunroof! like effulgence, tortured Abruptum style black ambience, thick distorted classic Skullflower wall of rrrrooooaaaar, strange fractured bagpipe industrial rhythm noise jams, thick warm blissy shoegazey guitar drones, and more. Easily the most varied, the weirdest, the most listenable, and quite possibly the best Skullfower record we've heard in years, and that's just the first disc.
And thankfully, the other two discs hold up just as well, super varied, and noisy and heavy, rife with drones and riffs and ragas and blasts of black metal, strange rhythms, mysterious percussion, doomy dirges, layers of guitars everywhere, dense and thick and corrosive and abrasive and warm and pretty and fucked up and furious and dreamy, all over the map, somehow all held together by some nearly impossible to decipher masterplan, but why try to understand, it's not necessary to enjoy this, in fact it's better to just luxuriate in the massive soul swallowing sound, and simple give in as you drift further and further, deeper and deeper.
Matthew Bower who is Skullfower describes it like this:
"Leitmotivs and keys get twisted and mangled and return with the dread anticipation of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence in a cycle of upheavals and lacerations, beginning and ending interwoven in an occult pantheistic tapestry that posits a gateway from the rational universe of gods creation into universe b, for spirits that can tune to the bleak, gorgeous vision SF has been channeling since tribulation.
Comes in a cardboard box with silver foil blocked slipcases featuring sigils/glyphs/runes that are both symbols and aspects of the working, and 15 visual fragments that can be arranged in conjunction with the sounds to make spells, koans, traps, resonances to help bring about the sacred alignments that the music aims toward.... indeed a valuable tool for dark meditation, and lefthand tantra".
That's right, 3 cds in silver embossed sleeves, in a hand painted cardboard box, each hand painted by Bower himself, also included a bunch of color inserts, as well as liner notes, the whole thing LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Vexed Abyss"
MPEG Stream: "Lungs Of Hell"
MPEG Stream: "Xipe Totec"

SKULLFLOWER Taste The Blood Of Deceiver (Not Not Fun) lp 16.98
First vinyl in ages from the mighty Skullflower, and much like the triple cd box reviewed elsewhere on this list, the new SF sound finds Skullflower mastermind mixing the two distinct sides of his sound, the looped hypnotic riffy side, and the free abstract noise side, and the results are pretty fantastic, forging a new sort of noise drenched, proto metal abstract free drone psychedelia, and of course incorporating all kinds of other sounds, like black metal buzz, and minimal industrial percussion. The lp is the perfect addendum to that massive triple album box, serving almost like a 4th disc in the set, covering similar ground, but with its own particular twist.
Side one opens with that distinctive abstract-krautrock, metallic-psychedelic riff that only Skullfower seems to be able to pull off, looped and repetitive, but slowly shifting, almost imperceptibly, over a swirling morass of distorted buzz and feedback drenched howl, noisy and heavy but strangely meditative. The follow up shifts gears and offers up a buzzing wall of sound with soaring high end melodic streaks over the top, and what sounds like vocals buried WAY down in the mix. Hot on the heels of that one comes an awesomely droning psych rock dirge, this time with drums, and an incredibly catchy and surprisingly melodic main riff, woozy and druggy, but sounding like some classic eighties metal riff, just Skullflower-ed. And so it goes, the tracks shifting from chiming ritualistic dronemusic to buzzing abstract ambience to noisy almost-industrial plod and back again. And we're digging it big time. These two most recent releases might just be our favorite Skullflower records since Exquisite Fucking Boredom on tUMULt!

SLOMATICS Kalceanna (Spirit Of Division) cd 9.98
It's really crazy how many little scenes there are all over the world, scenes that could very well remain hidden forever, so many bands, some insanely amazing bands, who are perfectly happy to just play shows locally, release cd-r's now and again, never to be heard outside their little circle. Some scenes are particularly rich, bursting at the scenes with kick ass groups that deserve to be heard by folks all over. One such scene that we've been particularly smitten with, is over in the UK, Leeds we think. Their most famous export, at least around aQ, is Like A Kind Of Matdor, who released their first, and only record posthumously on Andee's tUMULt label. A crushing slab of flute flecked accordion laced doom prog. Which leads us to the Slomatics, another incredibly heavy, crushing and pummeling doom behemoth, hailing from the very same scene, and due to have a split 12" with LAKOM come out someday. Their sound is slooooow and doooomy and heavy, but unlike the prog tendencies of their LAKOM scenemates, the Slomatics traffic in a sound more Melvins-y, more sludgey, think Grief, Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Harvey Milk, Electric Wizard at 16rpm, that sort of thing, but a bit more abstract, a little more spaced out, repetitive, the sound layered and dense, a bit psychedelic, but still at its core, heavy, brutal, slow and sludgy. There are some brief moments of off kilter mellowness, clean guitars, loping drums, but those moments don't last long, quickly obliterated by another wall of lurching, lumbering crush. Some of the heavy parts are laced with almost buried wailing leads, and the vocals are howled and heavily reverbed, but not of that really matters as much as the riffs, and the riffs here are amazing, downtuned, blown out crumbling and MASSIVE.
Our favorite thing about the Slomatics besides their crushing heaviosity? The line in the liner notes that reads: "Middle-aged professionals by day, aggro-sludge losers by night"!
Heavy, heavy, heavy, and so very recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Griefhound"
MPEG Stream: "By Thor"

STEEL PULSE True Democracy (Elektra / Rhino) cd 12.98
One of our favorite albums, and another one we realized to our dismay that we didn't have in the store or on the website, so we thought we'd share our love of this record with any of you who aren't already familiar with this classic.
At their prime, Steel Pulse were without a doubt the best reggae band to come out of the UK, with great songwriting skills, social consciousness and songs bursting with energy and packed with infectious hooks. They were such a huge influence on so many bands in the punk and new wave world, that they were often asked by bands like The Clash, The Police, The Stranglers and Generation X to go on tour with them. In fact, much of the Police's early sound is SO obviously influenced by the music of Steel Pulse. True Democracy is really one of those records that crosses genre lines, while very much a reggae record it's amazing how many people who thought they weren't into reggae at all, heard this record playing and couldn't resist getting caught tight in its irresistible grasp. It's a record that never loses its charm or its ability to sweep us of our feet as we always walk a little faster, feel a little more free, and move with more purpose whenever we have it blasting in our ears. Originally released in 1982 and it still sounds as fresh and vital as ever!
MPEG Stream: "Ravers"
MPEG Stream: "A Who Responsible?"
MPEG Stream: "Worth His Weight In Gold (Rally Round)"

STERN, JOEL Objects Masks Props (Naturestrip) cd 16.98
This is bizarre in every sense of the word. Naturestrip is a label that has dedicated itself to propagating all sorts of composition through field recording, with sound artists like Tarab and Loren Chasse crafting impeccable scores directly from the earth, and rural psychedelic practitioners like Leighton Craig and Eugene Carchesio crafting skeletal song against an environmental backdrop. Australian filmmaker and sound artist Joel Stern has taken his field recording tactics into an unusual place of thickly collaged signifiers with hints of song, rummagings for texture, and straight recordings from out the in the field. It sort of comes across as a ramshackle radio play, as if some genius lunatic outfit like the Starving Weirdos were given permission to fuck around in the INA-GRM studios. Stern offers up some improv clamor in the woods with sticks, twigs, and bird chorus playing equal part in the noise with squeaking horns, concertina strum and squabbling noises. He's also found scraping upon styrofoam, and steel springs for an unnerving background of skincrawling textures that counterpoint tension-loaded pops of long wire manipulation and the occasional heavenly ring of chimed bells. Feral dogs bark and howl in the rain while Stern overlays a simple melody line from a thumb piano coaxed into harmony with a distant chanting of unknown origin. He's at his best when an unsettled musicality seeps through the field recordings; and perhaps he saves his best for last, with the plaintive strum across the guitar and harmonica set against a distant wailing of children becoming a tragic end to this Fellini-esque album. Remarkable to say the least.
MPEG Stream: "Dead Lakes"
MPEG Stream: "Fortitudes End"
MPEG Stream: "Panda Box"

V/A Downer Rock Genocide (Audio Archives) cd 17.98
We know people who work at other record stores give each other gifts of music for birthdays and Christmas. Makes sense, that's what they love, right? But from another perspective, there's something just a little too easy about that... "here, I bought you this from the store where we all work". So, 'cause of that, here at AQ we don't have much of a tradition of giving cds and lps as presents.
But, Allan was thankful that Andee broke with tradition last year and mailordered him a copy of this hard to find cd for Xmas. (Andee got himself one too, of course). And now we've finally managed to contact the label directly, over in England, and order a few to sell here at AQ as well.
Definitely any lover of early '70s proto-metal heaviness needs to put this on their wish list. Downer Rock Genocide is a collection of super rare tracks by some really obscure heavy psych/prog acts who kicked around the same scene as early Black Sabbath. And it's pretty darn killer. There's 16 tracks by 14 bands, here they are: Flying Hat Band, Clear Blue Sky, Necromandus, Egor, Monument, Iron Maiden, Gnidrolog, Iron Claw, Red Dirt, Slowbone, Bram Stoker, Hackensack, Bum, and Writing On The Wall. We'd heard of some but others were new to us, unearthed from way down deep in the murky underground of decades past.
Too many gems here to talk about 'em all, but we'll mention a few... Flying Hat Band (2 tracks from them, from a never released 1973 album) was where Glenn Tipton slung his axe before joining up with Judas Priest. No wonder they hired him! We'd never heard FHB's stuff before, and already this comp is worth it just for the badass rockin' doom of their first cut, "Seventh Plain". It's like Comus meets Judas Priest! Clear Blue Sky, who also contribute two demo tracks, is one of the bands we -had- heard before (their album is a Sabbathy treat). And Sabbath lovers will really want this for "Nightjar" by the Tony Iommi produced Necromandus, easily that band's heaviest and best track. So good.
What else? The Iron Maiden on here is NOT the Iron Maiden you're familiar with, it's another, earlier band with the same name but a much doomier disposition. Actually who they really sound like is Wishbone Ash, Argus-era, all folky and epic. Gnidrolog is another one we knew, a great, super dramatic prog act in the vein of Van Der Graaf Generator, who offer up their doomiest "Long Live Man Dead". Red Dirt are a gruff slice of raw, primitive bluesy heaviness, that just got Cup to remark "that music has hairy balls!". Iron Claw kick out the jams big time on "Lightning" from a 1971 cassette only release, Egor tear it up on the blown-out live track "Street" also from '71, Hackensack deliver some wild fuzzed out soloing and wailing vocals on their kick ass cut "River Boat" circa '72, and Bum bring us the pagan "God Of Darkness" from way back in '68. Did Sabbath hear these guys? All of it good stuff for fans of bands like Sabbath, Budgie, Leaf Hound, High Tide... and Witchcraft today. Give yourself the gift of downer rock.
Some of these tracks are from albums, many are demos or archival live recordings. So sound quality varies, but not the occult-inspired, heavy-riffing, proto-metal awesomeness.
MPEG Stream: FLYING HAT BAND "Seventh Plain"
MPEG Stream: NECROMANDUS "Night Jar"

V/A Eccentric Soul: The Young Disciples (Numero Group) cd 16.98
By the late 1960's East St Louis, Illinois had seen better days. Hit hard by poverty, crime, drug addiction and gang activity, it was really important for teens to have a safe place to hang out, and a positive outlet for creativity. No one understood this better then Allen Murray, a seasoned musician from the area who was semi-famous for his past work with the likes of Ray Charles and Ike Turner. He started a really inventive program at The Southside Community Center, where youth could come and sing and play music in his program called The Young Disciples.
With an amazing stable of musicians and fresh new voices on the mic, most for the first time, he really created an amazing musical world while also offering salvation to so many teens in East St Louis. What's even more remarkable is how damn good the music they made was. This was not some sort of amateur hour soul, in fact before we even knew the whole back story to this record we just thought it was another amazing lost soul label getting the primetime Eccentric Soul series attention it deserved. These songs are just dripping with warmth, soul and unfiltered funk. Another total winner from the Numero Group and such a cool program that Murray developed, we only wish it was being used as a template in cities across the country today!
MPEG Stream: THE DEBONETTES "Tears"
MPEG Stream: LAVEL MOORE "The World Is Changing"
MPEG Stream: GEORGETTES "Hard Hard"

V/A Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long (Mississippi) lp 11.98
The folks at Mississippi Records most definitely have good taste in reissues, picking lost, rare, and just plain cool stuff to get reissued on vinyl, but as good as they are at simply picking stuff to be reissued, they're even better at creating compilations, mix tape masters, whose skill at curating collections is way beyond reproach. Just have a look at some past Mississippi comps: I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Life Is A Problem, Last Kind Words, Love Is Love, Lipa Kodi Ya City Council. Everyone darn near perfect, packaging, song selection, sound, feel, vibe, pretty much everything, every aspect. Some major label with tons of money should swoop in and hire all these folks and get them to do what they're already doing, just with way more resources.
For now though, we're perfectly happy to dig into a new Mississippi comp every few months, and thus, we're super excited about the latest release, another collection of old time gospel and blues called Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long. And it's of course fantastic, an amazing compilation of artists, some well know, others not so, but it's the song selection, the sequence, it's like a mix tape, and as we said above, Mississippi are the masters.
The opener is amazing, and already has us looking for more from Bukka White, his voice rough raw and ragged, but still rich and soulful, backed by some amazing female vocalists, the sound lush and rich, wreathed in old record crackle. Then there's the amazing Bessie Johnson, who has a truly unique voice, a distinctive croon, haunting and throaty, draped over a minimal background, but it hardly matters, her voice is powerful enough to carry any song. Blind Mamie Forehand offers up a gospely number, simple steel string guitar and her deep soulful voice. The Edward Clayborn track sounds super old, the static and hiss almost as loud as the music, but it only makes it sound that much warmer and gorgeously timeworn and weary. Folks heavily into the blues, probably know all of these artists, maybe the songs too, but for some of us, who only have a cursory knowledge, these comps, this comp, offer up an amazing glimpse into another time, a world of sound and songs both personal and passionate, powerful and mesmerizing.
And as we all know, there's nothing quite like getting an amazing mixtape, crammed with songs and sounds that not only mesmerize, but often have you desperately searching for more from the various artists. Mission accomplished. Another winner from Mississippi.

V/A Singing For Life: Songs Of Hope, Healing, And HIV/AIDS In Uganda (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 16.98
This is one of those records that reminds us of how totally powerful and intense music can be, affecting people in such deep and meaningful ways. Faced with how the HIV/AIDS crisis has devastated so much of Africa, a movement in Uganda has arisen to use music, dance and performance as a means to address, educate, empower and raise awareness in the community about all aspects of the epidemic. While there are many records made for good causes, and plenty of projects with the best of intentions, this is one with music as raw, true and intense as the cause and the people it serves. The sound is mostly vocal driven a capella numbers accompanied only at times by hand claps, raw percussion, and sounds of nature. So cool. This is not some feel good watered down benefit record, the songs are powerful and have titles that translate to "Death Killed All The People", "The Graveyard Is Our Home", "AIDS Finished Us" and "Is Someone There?". The intensity and raw honesty is felt so directly in the tone and resonance of every one of these songs. Comes with a 36 page booklet filled with information and translation of all the songs, this whole collection is proof that music does have the ability to enlighten, educate and empower.
MPEG Stream: MEETING POINT KAMPALA "Abange Ab'eno? (Is Someone There?)"
MPEG Stream: BUKONA WOMEN'S GROUP "Silimu Okutumala! (AIDS Finished Us!)"
MPEG Stream: WALYA SULAIMAN & PADA "Eitu Lilimuki? (What Is In The Luggage)"

V/A Sprechen Sie Pop? (Bureau) cd 17.98
Whether from Poland, American, Hungary, the UK, or France, there was a moment in time in the '60s and '70s when everyone making pop music was hoping to have a big hit in Germany. So even if they had NO idea what they were singing, they went into the studio hoping to tap into the lucrative German market and make it big auf Deutsch. Luckily so many of these tracks were also some of the most sophisticated, sassy and snappy pop songs being recorded in any language, or at least that's what this disc makes us think.
This comp brings together some of the totally shining moments in German-language pop from across the globe like France Gall, Barbara, Sandie Shaw, Paul Anka, Antoine, Kati Kovacs, AQ Hungarian favorites Illes, and a bunch more, amazing examples of some of the most fun and infectious pop for which fans of ye-ye delights and those In-Kraut sound collections will fall hard, for sure.
There's a similar compilation we received recently, called Parlez Vous Pop?, that's essentially the French equivalent of this collection. Unfortunately, other than a couple tracks, that comp was much more suited for coffee house background music, but THIS ONE we can enthusiastically recommend!!
MPEG Stream: KATJA HOLLäNDER "Er Heisst Peter"
MPEG Stream: ILLéS "Hier Stand Die Sonne Hoch"
MPEG Stream: DIE SKALDEN "Du Hast Mich Lieb"

V/A Sprigs Of Time: 78's From The EMI Archive (Honest Jons) cd 17.98
When we said in a recent review that Honest Jon's was giving Dust-to Digital a run for its reissue money, we weren't kidding. Here's yet another example...
Utilizing the vast archive of 78's from the EMI vaults, Honest Jon's presents a collection of pre-global musical magic. Taking a much broader approach than Dust-to-Digital's Victrola Favorites and Black Mirror compilations which focussed on the randomness of one person's or one group's private collection, Sprigs of Time offers more nuanced cultural examples of regional sounds. Beginning with a recording of the English Sound Table, and ending with the sound of the "Gas All Clear" bell, this collection spans the years 1903 to 1957 and features thirty tracks ranging from Tamil laughing songs, early British Folk, American Tin Pan Alley, Lebanese Rumba, Georgian Piano Rolls, Gamelan music, Japanese Court Music, Chinese Opera and songs of Bengali beggars. An amazing mix of sounds and songs and easily the best collection in the Honest Jon's catalog so far. Awesome!
MPEG Stream: JONUZI ME SHOKET "Vome Kaba"
MPEG Stream: BENODINI DASSI "Khambaj"
MPEG Stream: NOUBAR BEY & PARTY "Fantaisie Maggiar"
MPEG Stream: VENGOPAL CHARI "Different Kinds of Motor Car Noises"
MPEG Stream: FATMA EL CHAMEYA SUDANEYA "Gawadallah"
MPEG Stream: MALIJO AND PARTY "Muliranwawo"

V/A Sprigs Of Time: 78's From The EMI Archive (Honest Jons) 2lp 22.00
When we said in a recent review that Honest Jon's was giving Dust-to Digital a run for its reissue money, we weren't kidding. Here's yet another example...
Utilizing the vast archive of 78's from the EMI vaults, Honest Jon's presents a collection of pre-global musical magic. Taking a much broader approach than Dust-to-Digital's Victrola Favorites and Black Mirror compilations which focussed on the randomness of one person's or one group's private collection, Sprigs of Time offers more nuanced cultural examples of regional sounds. Beginning with a recording of the English Sound Table, and ending with the sound of the "Gas All Clear" bell, this collection spans the years 1903 to 1957 and features thirty tracks ranging from Tamil laughing songs, early British Folk, American Tin Pan Alley, Lebanese Rumba, Georgian Piano Rolls, Gamelan music, Japanese Court Music, Chinese Opera and songs of Bengali beggars. An amazing mix of sounds and songs and easily the best collection in the Honest Jon's catalog so far. Awesome!
MPEG Stream: JONUZI ME SHOKET "Vome Kaba"
MPEG Stream: BENODINI DASSI "Khambaj"
MPEG Stream: NOUBAR BEY & PARTY "Fantaisie Maggiar"
MPEG Stream: VENGOPAL CHARI "Different Kinds of Motor Car Noises"
MPEG Stream: FATMA EL CHAMEYA SUDANEYA "Gawadallah"
MPEG Stream: MALIJO AND PARTY "Muliranwawo"

WATAIN Casus Luciferi (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
AT LAST, back in print. We haven't had this crucial black metal album for a couple years now, the original Drakkar version (reviewed on list #203) is out of print. But now Seaon Of Mist has licensed it for a domestic reissue WITH A BONUS TRACK - so if you missed it before, get it now! They just were through here on tour, bloody tour, and hopefully you didn't miss that either... (we did, we were working, it was a list night!). Here's what we said about this Satanic masterpiece originally:
Like Anaal Nathrakh's debut The Codex Necro, we first saw this release reviewed (and awarded Album of the Month honors) in the UK's monthly extreme metal bible Terrorizer, long before we were actually able to track down copies to sell. Our suppliers either didn't know what it was, or had already sold out of the few copies they possessed. But now, we have finally gotten a hold of a few and thought we ought to let you know... Basically, Sweden's Watain are a blazing raw blackened metal monster, thrashing and buzzing and blasting. Sinister melodies bleed from behind cracks in the band's armored exterior. We're strongly reminded of Immortal and especially Dissection, with "Where Dead Angels Lie" haunting these proceedings for sure. At first our reaction was, yeah, this IS pretty good...but then, an undefinable X-factor started to emerge, as the album progressed and Watain's sounds sunk in and we realized that this was more than just pretty good. There's a constantly complex and subtle "shifting" going on Watain's songwriting, a layering of riffs amid the band's blur of speed that just takes it to another level. It's fierce and exquisite black metal mastery on display here. Maybe it's easy to go a certain distance with the black metal thing, y'know initially all you need is the right distorted guitar sound and raspy vocals and occult lyrics, the image and the musical basics. But once those black metal "signifiers" are in place, and a certain standard of competence is achieved, the playing field is level. Going the extra league (with Satan) as Watain do here is rare and impressive. Nicely done (as is the packaging!).
PS there's a picture disc vinyl reissue supposedly coming too, but we haven't gotten ours yet... fingers crossed...
MPEG Stream: "Puzzles Ov Flesh"
MPEG Stream: "The Golden Horns Of Darash"

WHITE HILLS A Little Bliss Forever (Drug Space Records) lp 17.98
First vinyl release from these NY based drug addled space rock explorers, featuring a new member and a somewhat different sound. The new member is Kid Millions, drummer for the band Oneida, whose most recent disc, Preteen Weaponry, was a huge hit around here. But the addition of Millions doesn't signify a shift towards the abstract rhythmic heaviness of Oneida, instead, White Hills seem to have gone in the opposite direction, ditching some of their heavy freak out tendencies, and instead sprawling languorously, letting the instruments unwind, the songs unfurl, laid back, blissed out, far out, and endlessly drifting space rock, heavier on the space than the rock.
Two sidelong jams, the first, is thick with wah guitars, but those guitars are suspended in wide open stretches of whir and hum, wreathed in reverb, and allowed to drift and shimmer, the drums are the steadiest part, alternately jazzy and shuffling, subtle and propulsive, the recording and production is raw and immediate, almost like a rehearsal space demo, but it definitely suits the sound. The track wanders and meanders, like a super stripped down Hawkwind, until the various sounds become enveloped in soft clouds of spacey FX and buzzing synths, a crescendo of sorts, but the track never explodes, never gets heavy, it's almost like a field recording of some eternal space jam, a neverending sonic entity that continues forever in both directions, backwards until the birth of the universe, forward into infinity, we're just offered a glimpse as it passes us by.
The flipside is a bit dirgier, more garagey, a sort of stripped down Stooges-y stomp, but slowed way down, until it's almost a doomy dirge, more clouds of spaced out FX, this time a bit more raw, the sound a bit heavier, but still more spacey and abstract, the second half of side two a tripped out ambient bliss out, layers of drones and buzz, whirling beneath random minimal effects and some creepy looped vocals.
LIMITED TO 333 COPIES. White sleeves with paste on art, front and back, inside a red vellum insert, we did get a whole bunch of these, but as with most White Hills releases, they'll probably go pretty fast, and odds are we won't be able to get more.

WOE A Spell For The Death Of Man (Stronghold) cd 10.98
Debut full length from this East Coast one man black metal band, and from note one, A Spell For The Death Of Man reveals itself as something not even remotely typical, a distinctly different, and surprisingly melodic take on the old blast and buzz. The opening minute or two of the nine minute "Solitude" is just guitar, all soaring mournful and minor key, playing out a distinctly post rock riff, unfurling lazily, wreathed in reverb, majestic and epic, sorrowful and distinctly indie, gradually growing slower and slower, before stick clicks bring on the blackness, a furious tangle of squiggly buzzsaw riffage and blasting beats, buried blackened shrieks. Somehow, even though on the surface the song seems to have switched gears completely, elements of the intro remain, within and beneath the roiling heaviness, lending the music a distinctly 'indie rock' vibe, especially when the track shifts again, and suddenly it sounds a a little like Superchunk or Seam, only supercharged and blackened and Satanized. Not to say this is super poppy and jangly, but it is, sort of. Once you hear it, it's tough to ignore, but then why the heck would you want to? Folks with a super limited musical scope, say, ONLY metal, probably won't hear it as much, especially if they're open to more melodic stuff like Alcest or Amesoeurs, but for those who maybe didn't grow up listening to only metal, as we're guessing is the case with Woe mainman (and only man) Xos. Just wait until the breakdown near the end, when that opening riff is wrapped around some muffled chugging, and some dense tribal drumming, suddenly it's equal parts Husker Du, Bastro and black metal.
The rest of the record is a bit more traditionally black, but even then, with galloping rhythms and dizzying black riffage, the songs still manage to sound strangely melodic, and in some super abstract sense, kind of poppy. But again, all of this pop and jangle and post rock, is totally tangled up with some seriously dense thrashing and super heavy, blasting black metal. It's that unlikely mix that makes Woe sound so different, and makes this record so awesome, deftly balancing the grim and the kvlt with the moody and hooky and melodic. The record closes with an even less black metal number than the opener, strange angular midtempo minor key guitars, plodding drums, very postrock / mathrock, the vocals still in black metal shriek mode, but draped over a lilting almost dirgey slowcore groove, definitely pretty, and a bit woozy and mysterious, but still heavy, and just the slightest bit black.
Fans of more melodic blackness will definitely dig, while dabblers and newbies might have just found the perfect black metal gateway drug.
MPEG Stream: "Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "Alone With Our Failures"
MPEG Stream: "Memento Mori"

XELA / NORTH SEA Electronic Music Vol.1 (Rite) lp 19.98
Couldn't really think of a much better match up. Xela, aka John Twells, who runs the Type label, and North Sea aka Brad Rose, who runs the Digitalis label, both explore similar sounds and sound making in their respective groups, as well as the various releases on their respective labels. This might be the first time these two have shared a record, but hopefully not the last. Perhaps the Volume 1 in the title does in fact hint at future volumes...
Xela gives us two track of his particular 'electronic music', and it sounds, thankfully, much like his more organic music, a bit more abstract perhaps, a lot less doomy, but just as mysterious and evocative, long sweeping soundscapes made up of sculpted hiss, and buried high pulses, ultra minimal but thick and layered, peppered with buried streaks of feedback, fragmented melodies, what sounds like manipulated samples from other songs, all manner of glitch and buzz, deftly woven into two movements, the first, noisy and staticky, powerful and intense, but still strangely pretty, the second, much more abstract, beginning as a whisper, a barely there drift of found sounds, before drifting forward, and accumulating various sounds as it goes, building to a strange and haunting piece of active ambience, very cinematic, haunting and again, in it's own difficult way, quite lovely.
The North Sea continues on in the same direction as the last few releases, ditching much of the folk and flutter, for churning low end crunch. At this point it does seem that perhaps the title Electronic Music was not necessarily meant literally, cuz at least to our ears this sounds like big heaving slabs of downtuned guitar, glacial doomdronedirge, roiling swirls of rumble and buzz, eventually breaking down to something much more ambient, an ominous blackened drift, rife with bits of electronic glitch and swirling space-y FX, before finally transforming into something much more blown out and blissful, a sort of static soft noise jam equal parts Tim Hecker and Aidan Baker, smeared and blurred into one smoldering expanse of soft focus heaviness. Quite gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in plain white sleeves, hand stamped, the text mostly in Cyrillic.

YEK KOO Psychic Atonement For Land Deaths (Digitalis) cd-r 9.98
Be warned. This is another one of those tiny, tiny, tiny editions from Digitalis; and it's undoubtedly out of print from the source. Yek Koo is the solo project of Helga Fassonaki, the Los Angeles half of the trans-Pacific duo Metal Rouge, who blew us away with their last record on Root Strata. She follows a similar path as Metal Rouge on Psychic Atonement For Land Deaths, mining a deconstructed post-Krautrock vein all the way down to its droning core. It's all voice and lapsteel on this album; and not surprisingly, she shares more than a few similarities to the freeform atmospherics of Heather Leigh Murray (Taurpis Tula, ex-Charalambides) or even to the earlier Grouper albums. Much to her advantage, Fassonaki uses her voice with a restrained panache when it comes to these distant siren songs bathed in thick clouds of reverb and delay. The lapsteel itself melts into magical cascades of bliss out drones, roughly swirled ambience, and sustained chords. Everything comes together into three gorgeous longform pieces of seductively creepy feral drone work. Fans of Fursaxa, Grouper, and Charalambides should not miss this one! LIMITED TO 81 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Holy Migration"
MPEG Stream: "Freedom Inside Her Clothes"

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CELER Nacreous Clouds (And/Oar) cd 13.98
Celer is the husband and wife team of Dani Baquet-Long and Will Long, who currently reside somewhere down on the Southern California coast. They've released a handful of well-received ambient recordings on Spekk and Infraction, and they've found a good home on And/OAR for this driftscape of tapeloop interplay. As for the title, a nacreous cloud is found in the upper regions of the atmosphere at the polar regions. Well past sunset and well before sunrise, these clouds showcase a radiant brightness against an otherwise darkened sky; and it's this particular phenomenon that forms the inspiration for Celer's album of the same name. Having stretched the tones of various instruments into languid looping drones and bliss-out ambience, Celer presents 37 short tracks which actually work really well as a single composition, given the gentle flutter and restrained attack from all of their sounds. References abound to William Basinski's ambient work, Aidan Baker's soft focus facets, and of course the seminal work of Brian Eno.
MPEG Stream: "80,000 Feet"
MPEG Stream: "Diphenhydramine"
MPEG Stream: "5:59 AM"

CHARLES ATLAS Social Studies: An Introduction To Charles Atlas (Howells Transmitter) cd-r 6.98
Only available here at aQ! Even if you're already well-acquainted with Charles Atlas (the band, not the bodybuilder!), you won't want to miss this 'introduction'. It's an absolutely lovely summer-melting-into-fall sort of album. Breezy but not lightweight, drifting melodic tendrils of horn, piano and organ are accented by chiming vibes. Despite the gentle chill of melancholia, the whole proceeding is warmed by lots of reverb and warbled by lots of tremolo. Sure to appeal to fans of Sea & Cake and High Llamas!
MPEG Stream: "Antiphon"
MPEG Stream: "The Snow Before Us"

DODOS, THE Beware Of The Maniacs (self-released) lp 13.98
Now On Vinyl!
Meric Long, the man behind The Dodos, was calling his band The Dodo Bird for a spell, which just so happened to be the title of his debut cd-r release which we carried earlier this year (which was billed as a Meric Long album). Now they go by the abbreviated The Dodos. Confused? Well, all you need to remember is that Meric Long along with percussionist Logan Kroeber are The Dodos. Their engaging music makes keeping them in mind and heart as easy as pie!
As far as we can tell unlike their namesake they are neither feathered and flightless nor extinct. In fact, from the sounds of this, their first full length cd, these Dodos are flourishing, blossoming, ready to take flight. With his contemplative lyrics, terrific songwriting and rich arrangements of vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, percussion and... trombone(!), Long more than makes good on the impressive promise he showed on his debut. Throughout the proceedings he exudes a warm charm and confidence and an occasional willingness to gently nudge the boundaries of the acoustic folk singer/songwriter terrain. Jeff Mangum and John Darnielle, set a place at the table for The Dodos!
MPEG Stream: "Beards"
MPEG Stream: "The Ball"

FOTHERINGAY 2 (Stamford Audio) lp 39.00
Now on Vinyl!
The first (and before now, only) Fotheringay album from 1970 is one of our favorite records of the British folk era, but they were a group that from the beginning seemed like they were never meant to last. Led by a post-Fairport Sandy Denny and her husband, former Eclection guitarist Trevor Lucas, Fotheringay was more like a temporary dalliance away from the larger entity of Fairport Convention with Denny departing for solo stardom (and tragedy) after their first album, and most of the other members joining Fairport later on. A second album was in the works but never completed, well, until now that is! The Fledg'ling label has gone to great lengths to rescue the shelved tapes and restore the tracks to their seventies British folk glory. The sound is incredible and typical of Joe Boyd and using a light touch, sounds like a lost artifact from a previous era. While these are mostly traditional tunes and covers, their are five original compositions including two from Sandy Denny that have been little heard before now. We can't say that it betters the first album, but there are plenty of great songs for fans of this era. Named after the castle where Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded, it's interesting that after 38 years when this recording was started and long after it's two principle members have passed on, that the ghosts of the past are singing once more.
MPEG Stream: "John The Gun"
MPEG Stream: "Eppie Moray"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Thread and Golden Needles"

GANG GANG DANCE Saint Dymphna (The Social Registry) lp 14.98
This big time aQ fave, and highlight from last list, now available on lp!!!
Over the course of several years Gang Gang Dance have made the evolution from totally whacked out and hard to describe collage of sound weirdness to slowly injecting more structure and carving out actual songs while still keeping an aura of mystique and playful experimentation in their sound.
Saint Dymphna pushes their evolution with even more structure and a kind of hypercolor sheen providing a psychedelic soundtrack that sounds a bit like Kate Bush performing at an all night psychedelic rave. Its evident that for the first time in fully realized form the band is really embracing the last word of its moniker, making music for the kind of late night dance parties we'd love to frequent. Maybe it's some of the band members' strong involvement in late night culture as DJ's and partiers over the last few years that has helped shape this exciting shift in their sound. You can tell they've been listening to lots of the most interesting dance music around as there are healthy hints of Bhangra that pop in and out of the songs on Saint Dymphna as well as a more nuanced take on what lots of the Italians Do It Better camp (Chromatics, Glass Candy) have been up to lately. But what made us originally fall in love with Gang Gang Dance is still present, their true sense of adventure and a fearless ability to merge influences that usually seem so disparate, into a seamless whole. Not many other bands could have a record with a song that sounds so much like the mostly swirly moments of My Bloody Valentine ("Vacuum") followed by a song with Tinchy Stryder on the mic for a track that would be at home on M.I.A's latest. That is the true beauty of Gang Gang Dance, they really understand how to blend and merge color and sound to create something that can takes on its own life. We've just begun to immerse ourselves in this record and so far we are loving the ride, and we have a feeling that this one will be on nonstop play in the weeks and months to come!
MPEG Stream: "Bebey"
MPEG Stream: "Vacuum"
MPEG Stream: "House Jam"

HOLLAND, JOLIE The Living & The Dead (Anti) lp 17.98
Now on vinyl!!
Ms Jolie Holland has never been a shy wallflower, but we've never heard her sound as gutsy and world-weary womanly as on this, her fourth full length! Whereas her first two albums (Catalpa and Escondida) were hushed timeless jewels set in wistful earthy rural landscapes and perhaps intended to be listened to in small intimate gatherings, her last album Springtime Can Kill You brought more of the city folk and country rock into the fold, and The Living & The Dead continues forth. Stellar guests include M. Ward and Marc Ribot! Her sparkling performance here might be likened to a coming together of Cat Power, Lucinda Williams and Lisa Germano. Fans of those fine artists, definitely check this out! As well, on songs like "The Future" she almost sounds like a female Conor Oberst... not a bad thing in our books! Highlights: "Palmyra" and "Fox In The Hole" and the giddy album closer "Enjoy Yourself".
MPEG Stream: "Palmyra"
MPEG Stream: "Fox In Its Hole"

JOBRIATH s/t (Collector's Choice Music) cd 13.98
As you might expect from "the world's first openly gay rock star" (or make that would-be rock star), the music of seventies singer Jobraith is pretty darn glammy and campy, a blend of '70s hard rock histrionics and even more overtly showtune tendencies (Jobraith had performed on Broadway, actually, in the musical Hair, and was also a trained classical pianist), full of over-the-top pop and not-so-ambiguous sexuality.
He's part David Bowie (very much David Bowie!), part Marc Bolan, part Elton John, part Mick Jagger, even part Bee Gees (that high voice)... You can hear all that for yourself on these two new cd reissues of Jobraith's two Elektra albums, his notoriously overhyped self-titled debut from 1973 and its '74 follow-up, Creatures Of The Street. We'd gotten familiar with Jobraith via an earlier collection, Lonely Planet Boy, which featured songs selected from these two records, but it's nice to hear 'em in their entirety, and it turns out that comp missed out on a few of the many gems to be found among Jobraith's compositions.
Unfortunately the Jobraith story is a tragic one, his career fizzling after these two albums (both expensive flops), his brushes with fame always far-fetched and fleeting, Jobraith ultimately dying in obscurity, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, in 1983... though about ten years later, according the the story recounted in the liner notes, Morrissey tried to find Jobraith to take him on tour, unaware that he'd passed away long before.
So, while in retrospect there's for sure a patina of sadness over Jobraith's music, it's better tribute perhaps to Jobraith's memory to enjoy these albums in the fun, flamboyant spirit in which they were intended.
Both albums have their merits, we don't know if we could choose between 'em. The debut boasts the oh-so-Bowie "Space Clown", along with the piano-ballad bombast of "Be Still" (somewhere, this MUST have been a hit). You can party down to the proto-disco prog of "World Without End" or the funky "Earthling", and rock out to the fuzzy "Rock Of Ages" or the braggadocious "I'm A Man". There's also a bunch more piano-y crooner tunes on the softer side: "Inside", "Blow Away", and "Movie Queen", all quite good (the latter, quite, umm, gay as well).
Creatures Of The Street perhaps veers even further into campy, cabaret territory than the debut (or maybe it's just that "Dietrich/Fondyke" is so much that way) but also offers up a fair bit of rockin' and also just plain weirdness. At times we're reminded of Sparks, and one of the best tracks here is a folky, quirky, quite catchy number entitled "Scumbag"! Other standouts include melodramatic opener "Heartbeat" and the walk on the wild side that is "Street Corner Love". As with the debut, there's plenty of piano, plenty of orchestration, and plenty of drama... The image/identity conscious Jobraith was always striking poses, both on album covers and in his lyrics.
While the world wasn't ready for Jobraith back in the '70s (even though his music is oh-so-'70s), obviously we've come a long way since then. Jobraith's excesses can be forgiven (those of his management too) and his cult status can only grow, as his actual music is still quite a kick. Heck I was in a bar the other night and the DJ was playing "I'm A Man"! Good to have these both individually reissued on cd at last, with liner notes by Ritchie Unterberger (author of, among other things, the excellent Unknown Legends Of Rock n' Roll, which didn't include Jobraith but probably should have).
MPEG Stream: "I'm A Man"
MPEG Stream: "World Without End"
MPEG Stream: "Movie Queen"

JOBRIATH Creatures Of The Night (Collector's Choice Music) cd 13.98
As you might expect from "the world's first openly gay rock star" (or make that would-be rock star), the music of seventies singer Jobraith is pretty darn glammy and campy, a blend of '70s hard rock histrionics and even more overtly showtune tendencies (Jobraith had performed on Broadway, actually, in the musical Hair, and was also a trained classical pianist), full of over-the-top pop and not-so-ambiguous sexuality.
He's part David Bowie (very much David Bowie!), part Marc Bolan, part Elton John, part Mick Jagger, even part Bee Gees (that high voice)... You can hear all that for yourself on these two new cd reissues of Jobraith's two Elektra albums, his notoriously overhyped self-titled debut from 1973 and its '74 follow-up, Creatures Of The Street. We'd gotten familiar with Jobraith via an earlier collection, Lonely Planet Boy, which featured songs selected from these two records, but it's nice to hear 'em in their entirety, and it turns out that comp missed out on a few of the many gems to be found among Jobraith's compositions.
Unfortunately the Jobraith story is a tragic one, his career fizzling after these two albums (both expensive flops), his brushes with fame always far-fetched and fleeting, Jobraith ultimately dying in obscurity, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, in 1983... though about ten years later, according the the story recounted in the liner notes, Morrissey tried to find Jobraith to take him on tour, unaware that he'd passed away long before.
So, while in retrospect there's for sure a patina of sadness over Jobraith's music, it's better tribute perhaps to Jobraith's memory to enjoy these albums in the fun, flamboyant spirit in which they were intended.
Both albums have their merits, we don't know if we could choose between 'em. The debut boasts the oh-so-Bowie "Space Clown", along with the piano-ballad bombast of "Be Still" (somewhere, this MUST have been a hit). You can party down to the proto-disco prog of "World Without End" or the funky "Earthling", and rock out to the fuzzy "Rock Of Ages" or the braggadocious "I'm A Man". There's also a bunch more piano-y crooner tunes on the softer side: "Inside", "Blow Away", and "Movie Queen", all quite good (the latter, quite, umm, gay as well).
Creatures Of The Street perhaps veers even further into campy, cabaret territory than the debut (or maybe it's just that "Dietrich/Fondyke" is so much that way) but also offers up a fair bit of rockin' and also just plain weirdness. At times we're reminded of Sparks, and one of the best tracks here is a folky, quirky, quite catchy number entitled "Scumbag"! Other standouts include melodramatic opener "Heartbeat" and the walk on the wild side that is "Street Corner Love". As with the debut, there's plenty of piano, plenty of orchestration, and plenty of drama... The image/identity conscious Jobraith was always striking poses, both on album covers and in his lyrics.
While the world wasn't ready for Jobraith back in the '70s (even though his music is oh-so-'70s), obviously we've come a long way since then. Jobraith's excesses can be forgiven (those of his management too) and his cult status can only grow, as his actual music is still quite a kick. Heck I was in a bar the other night and the DJ was playing "I'm A Man"! Good to have these both individually reissued on cd at last, with liner notes by Ritchie Unterberger (author of, among other things, the excellent Unknown Legends Of Rock n' Roll, which didn't include Jobraith but probably should have).
MPEG Stream: "Heartbeat"
MPEG Stream: "Scumbag"

LEWIS, JENNY Acid Tongue (Warner Bros) cd 14.98
Acid tongue?! Well, from the sounds of her latest album it's not residing in Ms Rilo Kiley's mouth. Her voice is as sweet and smooth as ever, however, the album itself is certainly asking for one thorough tongue lashing. On it, she's taken a flying leap into the syrupy slick pool of adult contemporary. Aaaaiiiieee! And the guest appearances of Chris Robinson, M. Ward, Zooey Deschanel and Elvis Costello (heck, these days he's the king of the genre!), don't help one bit. Someone in Hollywood must've thought this was a good idea. A shudder inducing shame.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sand"
MPEG Stream: "Pretty Bird"

MOJO issue #179 October 2008 magazine + cd 9.99
It's not just more metal magazines that we have started stocking. At long last, we're also now regularly gonna be carrying the mighty MOJO magazine. Another British publication (why are so many of our favorite music mags from England? The Wire, Terrorizer, Classic Rock...). Mojo, as you may know, covers the pop/rock scene from the past to the present, usually delving into rock history (the '60s, '70s, '80s...) while also covering all the latest, hippest indie rock sensations. For the music lover/AQ customer who's not just only into floorcore cd-rs and black metal cassettes and drone vinyl, it's gonna have plenty of stuff you'll want to read about, in fascinating depth.
This October issue: Queen on the cover (they have a new album, with Paul Rodgers replacing the late Freddie Mercury, though we're a little nervous to hear it). Inside: Dave Gilmour, The Last Shadow Puppets, The Fugs, Bon Iver, and more. Reviews, news, all that good stuff. 154 big colorful pages of it. Plus, there's a cover-mounted cd (in a jewel case!) featuring exclusive cover versions of songs from the Beatles' White Album.

NACHTMYSTIUM Assassins (Black On Black) lp 26.00
NOW ON VINYL!! Gatefold sleeve import. What we said about the cd:
Illinois' "psychedelic black metallers" Nachtmystium are back with their eagerly anticipated (and somehow controversial) new full-length album for big new label Century Media (after several on Southern Lord). The underground is abuzz, and we couldn't wait to hear it, being big fans of their previous album, Instinct Decay (and intrigued by their recent Worldfall ep, featuring a couple unexpected covers). Probably what's controversial isn't their psychedelic musical direction, which we already had major clues about from the catchy, buzzy, dreamy, E-bowed and bizarre Instinct, but just that Nachtmystium are moving on up from the underground, getting more "indie" scene attention... for instance, a review on Pitchfork, who even wonder if this is really a black metal album. The fact that Pitchfork is even writing about it, makes all the "true" black metallers wonder the same thing. But whatever, yes it's a black metal album, albeit one with lots of Moogy synths and backwards tape effects and even some saxophone (from Yakuza dude) on the three-part, 12 minute "Seasick" opus that ends this disc, and other left field, post/prog/psych rock twists and turns. There's a track ("Away From The Light") of pure ambience. But also quite a few tracks of pure black metal brutality. And beautiful blends of both.
Overall, Nachtmystium mostly remains a raging black metal beast, dosed with spacey FX. Think (later) Satyricon meets Neurosis, maybe, with the controls set for the heart of a dead black sun. Really, if black metallers can deal with the likes of Sigh and Arcturus and gone-prog Enslaved, they can't possibly have a problem with Nachtmystium. In fact, quite the opposite!!
And as far as we're concerned, this is possibly Nachtmystium's best yet. Certainly best produced, and most ambitious. The fullest realization to date of this band's genre-bending progression. And the punny title is pretty clever. Black Meddle, get it? You do if you're a Pink Floyd fan. And it's not the only Pink Floyd reference here. We're not sure that if Pink Floyd circa Meddle were to have made a black metal album it would sound like this, or even if this is supposed to be Nachtmystium's best guess at what that would sound like, but the inspiration at any rate has worked to create something pretty special. There's utter blasting blackened riffarama with rasping vokills, moody stretches of instrumental psychedelic '70s space-out bliss, and, well, what more do you need to know? Already sounds like a thumbs-up AQ item, right? We have always wanted post rock bands like Pelican to be just a bit more metal, and Nachtmystium shows that can work perfectly from the other direction. Recommended. What will Pt. 2 hold in store we wonder?
MPEG Stream: "Assassins"
MPEG Stream: "Ghosts Of Grace"
MPEG Stream: "Code Negative"

OSANNA L'uomo (Warner Music Italy) lp 37.00
Another one of our all time favorite Italian prog records, by one of our all time favorite Italian prog bands, reissued on vinyl! The cds have ben out of print for ages, so it seems this might be the only way to get this for now...
"Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band", is how we boldly described Osanna in our review of another Italian prog rock fave, Il Balleto Di Bronzo. We've now got Osanna's L'uomo in stock on vinyl, so you can judge for yourself. Even limiting our discussion to the realm of Italian prog, it would be difficult to claim that Osanna are objectively better than the also amazing likes of Il Balleto, Le Orme, Area, New Trolls, Franco Battiato, Goblin, I Teoremi, RDM, Museo Rosenbach, etc. But, Osanna do somehow combine the key elements of what we like about those bands and prog in general into these three crazy, colorful records, and thus deserve our hype. Ripping flute and sax solos, heavy psych guitar, powerful vocal choruses, hard rockin' prog drumming, weird musical changes and juxtapositions, electronic synth experimentation... Catchy, fun, fucked up prog from five nutty Italians, who want to rock out as much as be arty and display their adept musicanship.
The wonders of Italian prog have been revealed to us in a gradual process of discovery -- finding a used cd with a cool cover, or reading somwhere about another strange band, or getting a recommendation from a friend or customer. Neither of us grew up in Italy, or had a geeky older brother to hand down his PFM and Goblin LPs. In the case of Osanna, Andee's the one who came across 'em first, while travelling in Japan, actually. Rather randomly, the guy from the Boredoms-meets-St. Vitus doom/trance band Solar Anus (released on Andee's tUMULt label) gave Andee a tape of Osanna to take home, promising him he'd like it. Well, Solar Anus dude knew whereof he spoke! Soon we were on-line, trying to track down the LPs, or cd reissues. Not long thereafter, Andee and Allan both possessed the complete works of Osanna. Ever since we've been super psyched to share our Osanna-excitement with you, our prog-lovin' customers... Actually we hope that self-proclaimed "prog" dedication is not necessary for enjoyment of Osanna, as we think that these discs are good and weird and silly enough for AQ-customers into whatever sort of musical extremity (experimental, krautrock, psych, metal, classic rock) to dig.
Osanna's 1971 debut "L'Uomo" may be the most song-oriented of the first three 'essential' albums, their Crimson and Tull influences easy to spot. They sound a bit like a proggier, Italian version of Mexican contemporaries Dug Dugs, if that's of any help -- equally into weird psychedelic effects, hard rock, and pop. A couple of the poppier songs are sung in English, and those might result in a few uncomfortable moments of "what am I listening to here?" panic. But the sheer exuberance and fuzzed out riffing of "L'Uomo" as a whole can't be argued with!

RELIGIOUS KNIVES The Door (Ecstatic Peace) cd 12.98
Wow, the perfect garage kraut blues for a generation of post-everything youth hungry for something to rock out to. One part free and trippy and one part industrial and weird, here is a band that represents the East Coast jam band effortlessly. Michael Bernstein and Maya Miller, members of the noise/drone outfit the Double Leopards, team up with Nate Nelson (Mouthus) on drums and Todd Cavallo on bass, for a stripped-down session of head-nodding jammers. The Door pays homage to the alchemic aspects of krautrock while setting forth a new chapter in the noise-rock agenda. Stripped down rhythms driving beside ripping guitar licks, lush '60s organ flutters, and mumbly apathetic vocals that don't sound too far off from the vocals of producer Thurston Moore. The door is catchy in a strikingly weird way, like listening to a '60s pop record through a fucked up underwater amp. Any fans of creepy damaged pop will not want to miss this killer record!
MPEG Stream: "Downstairs"
MPEG Stream: "Basement Watch"

SAVAGE Loose 'N Lethal (Krescendo Records) cd 16.98
Ready for some galloping rifftasy?? We could be reviewing the new Early Man ep (and we will) but for your metallic delectation this week, we'd rather present you with a reissue of an old fave, a relatively obscure NWOBHM classic. If you don't know what NWOBHM means (and we mention it often enough, like in our Rogue Male reviews recently), this will clue you in with an ace to the face - even though Savage never quite made it up there with more famous New Wave Of British Heavy Metal brethren like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard*, ferinstance. And if you do know what the NWOBHM is, and love it, then this is for you. No need to hesitate. Savage's 1983 debut (they had some other, later releases, but basically blew their wad here, and how) is utterly a classic, even just on the strength of the lead-off track alone, "Let It Loose" (misidentified on the back cover tracklist here as "Letting Loose", d'oh). And the rest of the album is full of quality, crunching metallurgy too, oh yeah. Noted metal scribe Martin Popoff rates it a 10 out of 10, comparing it to the best of Saxon, Witchfinder General, Grim Reaper, & Diamond Head (we'd say it comes closest to the latter). He's quite right, this IS one of those 10/10 NWOBHM stormers that can do no wrong, unquestionably when it comes to "Let It Loose", crackling with electric energy, which sets the tone for a whole disc of white hot, speaker trashing, youthful shred, Savage sounding quite savage indeed, while maintaining the NWOBMH's reputation for pint-draining, party-hardy catchiness.
Need more recommendation? How 'bout that Metallica in their early days used to cover two of this album's songs live?! Lars knew his NWOBHM neckwreckers after all!
Aside from the aforementioned typo, this is an ok reissue, though there's no liner notes included in the cd booklet. Lyrics yes, but no liner notes, what's their excuse? We expect thorough liner notes in our reissues, people! The previous reissue of this on Neat had liners from the guy that did the awesome Mad Maxish cover art! At least this does include the same 3 bonus tracks, taken from Savage's 1979 and '80 demos.
*no, Def Leppard don't suck. Their first few albums are pretty great.
MPEG Stream: "Let It Loose"
MPEG Stream: "On The Rocks"

SKULL DEFEKTS, THE Drone Drug (Actual Noise) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL!! Limited to 500 silkscreened copies. With a coupon for free digital download of the album, with an extra track, one we're pretty sure was included on the prior cd version of this on Release The Bats, which we reviewed thusly:
Holy drone!! This is not at all what we expected from these guys, but then, most Skull Defekts records tend to confuse or confound. Which is pretty much why we love them so. And who are we to turn up our noses art a sonic surprise, especially when that surprise is DRONES. Big thick buzzy snarling crumbling blown out low end buzzing writhing brain melting, ear drum crushing, rib cage rattling, speaker destroying drones. Skull Defekts are no stranger to the drone, and the fact that they called this record Drone Drug, should have been a clue, but the band, who in the past have been heavily rhythmic, have discarded pretty much everything except for the drone. No beats, no riffs, no recognizable instruments, nothing but deep dark drones. 
This is a seriously heavy record. Dense and brutal, four extended tracks, each an exercise in tension, long form extended tones, but within these, stretched out sounds, much like dronelord Phill Niblock, the various layers are surprisingly active, throbbing and pulsing, and twisting and slithering and buzzing and whirring and shimmering, the sounds rough and raw, bits crumbling and emitting grit, slipping into fuzzy drift and then slipping back into a solid endless throb. The power of the drone is divine, and when harnessed, like this, with volume, and texture, and timbre, the music is a physical presence. Headphones come to life and encase your head in an organic black cocoon of sound, speakers unfurl thick flows of sonic tar, laying supine, eyes closed, you're soon buried alive, beneath layers and layers of resonant rumbling sound. And it is divine.
This is powerful, earth shifting, massive minimal music. Not sure if these sounds come from synths or guitars, electronics or sine wave generators, malfunctioning effects pedals or a microphone lowered into the center of the Earth (we're leaning toward the latter), the result is something so primal and organic, so primeval and timeless, the act of listening seems to alter the listener's molecular structure, transporting the listener to an alternate universe, made entirely of sound, where our bodies are transformed into sound waves, our souls escape their mortal shackles and reveal themselves to be pure, deep drones. So awesome. 
MPEG Stream: "Bone Tone"
MPEG Stream: "A Drone Drug"

STARGAZER'S ASSISTANT, THE The Other Side Of The Island (Aurora Borealis) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK! We listed the new Stargazer's Asst. cd on Utech last list, here's their previous disc from earlier this year back in stock again as well...
The Stargazer's Assistant is the work of David J. Smith, who many of you might recognize as one of the masterminds behind modern day prog outfit Guapo, or his slightly more esoteric project Miasma & The Carousel Of Dead Horses.
The Other Side Of The Island is not just the name of this record, but a series of sculptures created by Smith from wax and coal and copper and lead (one example is the creepy image on the record's cover). A series of shapes with a deep backstory, the Earth, and the world beneath the surface, the rock and soil, the time that all of those layers of rock represent. These sculptures were part of an installation, for which The Other Side Of The Island is the soundtrack. And unlike the over the top progginess of Smith's other projects, the music here is a dark and mysterious soundworld, an audial representation of the above concepts, a journey into the depths below, and it sounds like it.
Utilizing harmonium, prepared guitars, percussion, tapes, samples, electronics and piano, Smith, along with his Miasma bandmate Daniel O'Sullivan, have crafted a truly scary chunk of buzzing doomy drone. We're not talking SUNNO))) or anything like that, no this is much more cinematic and expansive, more abstract and ambient, no riffs to be found, but guitars crunch and grind, wail and ring out.
The record opens with random bits of guitar scape and piano plonk, hovering over a deep dark swirling abyss, the track builds in intensity, the various elements growing more and more aggressive, darker and more ominous, the low end especially grows blacker and thicker, and eventually coalesces into a doomy drifting psychedelic ambience.
After a brief two minute interlude of industrial scrape and clatter, and some dreamily tripped out backwards vocals and guitars, the band slips right back into the second half of the opening track, a sort of slow burning spaced out style krautrock drift, all extended drones, and wordless vocals, buzzing coruscating electric guitars adding still more layers of psychdrone shimmer, a gorgeously smoldering ur-drone beneath a slithering slippery distorted riff, that flits and flutters like some restless spirit.
Definitely for fans of freaked out free folk, dark abstract ambience and the heart of the sun bliss out sound of krautspacedronemusick like Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Expo 70, and the like...
MPEG Stream: "The Other Side Of The Island Pt. 1 (Excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "The Other Side Of The Island Pt. 2 (Excerpt)"

SUISHO NO FUNE Prayer for Chibi (Holy Mountain) lp 15.98
Now on vinyl! Well, partially anyway. This lp features two lengthy tracks ("Becoming A Flower" and "Till We Meet Again") selected by the band from the full version of Prayer For Chibi released as a double cd earlier this year. It's their first ever vinyl release, so presumably they picked their favorite songs from Prayer for it. Here's what we said about the whole 2cd edition previously, for those who don't already know all about Suishou No Fune:
There's been a batch of cool releases recently from this underground Tokyo flashbackin' "bleak-folk" duo, including live albums on both the aRCHIVE and Important labels. How best to follow those up? How 'bout with a two-disc, two-hour studio set on Holy Mountain, all the more room for the Suishou two (Pirako and Kageo, both on guitar and vocals) to sprawl out and let their heavy lidded (if not quite heavy) psychedelia bleed so bleakly and beautifully, including a few tracks previewed in live versions, like "Cherry" and "Til We Meet Again". Even if you haven't heard those, if you've heard any Suishou No Fune chances are you know what you're in for... the usual Suishou blend of fragile vocals wailing ever so gently over meanderingly melodic string strum and amp hum, a downer droney trance-out that's super languid and echoey, relaxed and Rallizesized.
The extended, lethargic and lovely lo-fi shimmer that Suishou No Fune conjures is embellished by some percussive rattling ritual at the opening of "Prayer", and enhanced elsewhere by occasional amped-up moments of distortodelic heaviness ("Resurrection Night" being a solid sixteen-minute example), though it's generally far to the softer side of countryfolk Boris and Acid Mothers Temple (for instance). We can guess you'll be filing this with your Shizuka, LSD-march, and Nagisa Ni Te cds... that is, filing it only after playing it over and over quite a bit, lost in a hypnotic reverie each time.
Prayer For Chibi was recorded with the help of Steven Wray Lobdell (David Redford Triad, Faust) and the cd booklet features Japanese-to-English translations of all the lyrics by the always helpful in that regard Alan Cummings, lyrics full of flowers, dreams, rain, stars, fireflies, and la la las...

TERRORIZER issue #175 magazine + cd 9.99
October's installment of essential extreme metal reading material is here. While we read (and now regularly stock) some other monthly metal magazines (including the excellent upstart Decibel and old standby Metal Maniacs), THIS is the one that we've been addicted to longest and love the most.
This issue has Viking superstars Amon Amarth on the cover, and inside has interviews as well with the likes of Benediction, Cannibal Corpse, Iced Earth, Kampfar, and our doomy Finnish pal Albert Witchfinder of Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P), The Puritan, and Armanenschaft. There's also stuff about Blood Ceremony, Anata, Testament (doing the "Hard Of Hearing" feature), and others. Plus a loving look back at Nocturnus's crucial sci-fi-death-metal opus The Key, a scene report on Greek black metal, tons of reviews, a label profile on Profound Lore, and plenty more besides. Oh, and a huge "folk special" section. Well, folk-metal that is. They delve specifically into "Irish Pagan Metal" (talking to Proscriptor from Absu and Mike Scalzi from Slough Feg, as well as some actual Irish bands), "Finnish Folk Metal" (including mention of one band from Portugal...), and Neofolk. Whew! There's a lot in this ish worth checking out. And let's not forget the free, cover-mounted cd sampler, with 21 tracks from several bands in this issue and others too.

WASTELL, MARK Vibra #2 (Longbox) cd-r 13.98
BACK IN PRINT!!! Proprietor of London's 323 Sound shop and protagonist in the New London Silence movement that bridges the ethos of minimalism within the scope of Birtish improv and academic composition, Mark Wastell is a figure whose name has been popping up more and more in recent months. Vibra #2 is a limited edition CD-R release of his solo work upon a tam-tam. In fact, the gong he used for this recording was previously owned by the late Roger Sutherland, to whom this album is dedicated. In softly tapping this gong, Wastell offers an exceptional drone construction of soft resonant timbres, clouds of natural metallic reverberation, and harmonic shimmers that give the impression of electronic treatments, even when Wastell used no such devices. The slow pacing of Wastell's performance adds to the languid almost submariner haze of the recording, providing something of a mix between Thomas Koner and Stockhausen's tam-tam composition Mikrophonie. Beautiful stuff! It's limited to 200 copies, so this might be the last time we're able to get copies...
MPEG Stream: "Vibra No. 2 (extract)"

WAX POETICS #31 magazine 9.99
Another awesome issue of one of the best music magazines around. This time out, AQ favorite Shuggie Otis is on the cover and there's a really interesting interview with him inside. Also featured are MF Doom, Slick Rick, Larry Coryell, Mickey Dread, Os Mutantes, and Patrick Adams. Nice memorial pieces on Isaac Hayes, Roy Shirley and Jerry Wexler. We could go on and on as we really do read Wax Poetics cover to cover and it's one of the few music magazines we always keep around as they lend themselves to repeated reads and second looks.

WHITE / LIGHT Black Acts (Smells Like Records) cd 13.98
Last year these guys teamed up with Robert Lowe, aka Lichens, for a killer collab on Holy Mountain that left us floored. Black Acts harbors the same type of synthy, visual drones that come reeling out of White/Lichens, only this time around the White/Light boys weave their brand of bliss into more desolate territory. The Chicago duo manage to conjure an impressive brand of dark analog hypnosis, like waking up in the middle of the desert to a shimmering pyramid mirage made of sound and light. Even while parts of the record hint at the early minimalist legacies of dudes like La Monte Young and Henry Flint, there is a subtle buzzy edge to these songs that set them apart from the work of their predecessors. The record opens with creeping high end crunch that builds into a pulsing haze of all-encompassing droooone. More low-end, distorted swells of heavy bass kick in and, man, talk about headphone dreamland. These dudes really know how to rocket a listener into another dimension. As the record spins the duo cover all kinds of territory, cosmic feedback bleeps from the cockpit of a spaceship, orchestral beams of long-winded swells, single note droners that leave you dazed and entranced. A heap of bodies on the cover and a heap of guitars, pedals and amps on the back, the artwork is cryptic and elusive, perfect for a beautifully arranged record of analog dreamscapes for the mellow minded.
MPEG Stream: "Dassin"
MPEG Stream: "Discipline"

WOVEN HAND Ten Stones (Sounds Familyre) lp 13.98
Finally in stock on vinyl, the recent Record Of The Week from Woven Hand!
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"

YETI #6 magazine 11.95
Seems like only yesterday we got Yeti #5. Well, it was actually March of this year, but by Yeti standards that IS practically yesterday. So it seems that Yeti is finally on a more normal release schedules, which is good news for fans, like us, who hated the interminable wait between dispatches from Yeti HQ, each missive a gorgeous perfect bound mag packed chock full of art, and music, and interviews, and art, and photography, and always bundled with a kick ass cd, packed with tons of tracks from cool bands. This issue is no different.
Let's give a quick run down of what's in the magazine:
An interview with David Fair of Half Japanese about his cut out paper art, and several pages featuring various examples, an interview with New Zealand pop heroes The Clean, the art and music of Mingering Mike, an outsider artist who crafted his own record jackets, even going so far as to make fake price tags and label stickers, an interview with the Vivian Girls, an article on folk photography and old time post cards, Sic Alps and Eat Skull interviewed and then interviewing each other, a piece about music in NYC in the seventies and eighties, photos by Ted Barron, an archival interview with the Sun City Girls, an interview with novelist and photographer Peter Doyle, an interview with A.R.E. Weapons' Thom Bullock about DISCO and some of his various projects, as well as plenty of original fiction, art and even some poetry.
The cd this time around features tracks from The Great Unwashed, The Clean, Crystal Stilts, Ilyas Ahmed, Sun City Girls, Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, Times New Viking, Eat Skull, Devendra Banharts's Megapuss and more more more. All for a measly $12.00. Not bad. Not bad at all...

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V/A Entering The Levitation: A Tribute To Skepticism (Foreshadow) 2cd 18.98
In honor of the first new Skepticism record in 5 years, we figured we oughta relist this tribute to Skepticism, easily one of the best tribute albums we've heard in ages, some of the covers are just as good if not better (okay, maybe not better, but damn close) than the originals! Some of our favorite doom bands take on their masters, as well as a whole mess of new bands we hadn't heard until this here collection...
The world may be full of doom and gloom, and your shelves may be bursting at the seams will all manner of slow motion sludge and funereal dirges, but there was a time, when true doom wasn't so easy to come by, the world wasn't prepared for slow motion misery and abject musical miserablism, but we were, and we hunted and searched, and thus we discovered Finland's Skepticism. The heaviest, most beautiful, most perplexingly atmospheric music we had yet encountered. It was so washed out and dreamy it was barely metal. So slow and pretty it almost sounded choral. We described the music of Skepticism as sounding like sitting in a church, while a doom metal band practiced in the basement, the huge thudding crush, barely audible through the floor, the sounds intertwining with the warm whir of the church organ, some strangely spiritual sonic confluence, that was as magical as it was mysterious.
And it wasn't just us. The sound of Skepticism spoke to all sorts of people, metalheads, doomlords, drone freeks, weirdo music obsessives, and it made perfect sense, as it was all those things, metal, doom, drone, weird. Add to that, lovely, haunting, creepy, ominous and absolutely fucking brilliant.
So here we have a double disc tribute to the masters of slow motion doomed beauty, from a handful of bands, as with most comps, many we'd never heard of, a few we were already big fans of. And also with tributes, how do you pay tribute to a music that is already so perfect? Do you try to sound as much like it as possible, or change it into something else entirely? Somehow, all of the bands here have managed a little bit of both, enough that this is a gorgeous and epic funereal doom record all the way through. Pretty enough to appeal to folks who just like their music dark and dreamy, but heavy enough to mesmerize the blackest hearted of metalheads.
Right out of the gate, Nest (who we'd never heard of) offer up a 14 minute version of a track off the first Skepticism, and do their own sort of blissed out reverential dronedoom version which might be our favorite track on the comp. Stretches of lilting acoustic guitars over rumbling drones, separated by shimmering keyboards and slow plodding muted riffs, so soft it's barely metal at all, more a sort of droning slowcore. Much like the original, but even more soft and shimmery.
The rest of disc one, offer up more traditional doom versions of Skepticism classics, but each twisted and tweaked enough to be a good fresh listen. The final track on disc one, "The Organium" by Oktor, might be the weirdest, a sort of industrialized, mechanical stumbling doom lurch, with sung / spoken deep crooned vocals. Weird but super cool.
The highlight of disc two is of course Rigor Sardonicous, who we of course LOVE, and who do a killer version of "Chorale", beginning with backwards guitars, which eventually morph into a massive downtuned dirge, with that mournful melody buried in the mix, and the strangely loud cymbals we love so much (see some of our other RS reviews about that). The other groups on the second disc definitely take their liberties, Calmsite, turn their track into almost death metal, Aarni give Skepticism a folky makeover, and It Will Come, start out slow and sludgy, but then slip into some sort of drifting post rock slowcore. It's all pretty awesome. How bad could it be starting with Skepticism songs after all?! But either way, this is an awesome collection of intense and beautiful, slow sad heavy dooooooooom, that most definitely does Skepticism proud.
MPEG Stream: RIGOR SARDONICOUS "Chorale"
MPEG Stream: MONOLITHE "Edges"
MPEG Stream: SHROUD OF BEREAVEMENT "Forge"

V/A Radio Phnom Penh (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
Another all time aQ fave, and essential world music document from Sublime Frequencies, back in print, back in stock and available again!
We know you love that Cambodian rock. And you know what? We love it too. Of late there seems to be an obsession with it; between the 4 Cambodian Rocks collections, the Cambodian Cassette Archives and Dengue Fever, we've had a pretty good run of it thus far. But now Sublime Frequencies is upping the ante with a collection unlike all those that preceded it. While the Khmer Rouge did a pretty good job of wiping out all the original performers, along with thousands of other innocent people and displacing the population of Cambodia, it couldn't completely wipe out the music. The original cassettes, still floating around are still being played on the radio to this day. Except that they aren't always played in strictly original form. Most stations, with the exception of the state run AM one, have taken to playing re-mixed versions of the songs with overdubbed instrumentation ranging from guitars and drums to synth keyboards in an attempt to keep the music fresh with the younger generations of listeners. This collection includes both the un-mixed originals taped off of the state run AM station and the re-mixed versions from the FM stations. Those of you already well suited with the previously released Cambodian rock collections will certainly get a kick out of several cuts here (some of which are most certainly completely different recordings from the ground up). Much more even than the Khmer Rocks releases, this collection has a great deal more variety of tunes (not just the garagey numbers), including some that feature traditional instruments, or at least traditional sounding. One tune in particular features just vocals and solo electric guitar which could easily be the Cambodian Lightnin' Hopkins. Additionally, Radio Phnom Penh differs greatly from the other discs in the Radio series on Sublime Frequencies in that not only are the songs allowed to play all the way through, in their entirety for the most part, but there's only very brief station ID's and disk jockey talking included.
MPEG Stream: "Blondie In Khmer Camouflage"
MPEG Stream: "Street Guns And Studio Drums"
MPEG Stream: "Sign-Off/The Venerable Anthem"

V/A Radio Thailand: Transmissions From The Tropical Kingdom (Sublime Frequencies) 2cd 16.98
One of our favorite of the Sublime Frequencies compilations finally back in print and available again!!
Of all the Sublime Frequencies collections, the various 'Radio' compilations are definitely our favorites. But at the same time they are also maybe the most problematic, It seems somehow disingenuous to travel to another country, turn on the radio, record several hours worth of music and sound, come home, put those recordings on a cd and then sell them. Not just disingenuous but quite possibly dishonest. It also seems a little weird to be thrilled by all the 'crazy' sounds we hear on the radio in these various countries. A guilty pleasure, very much that aspect of cultural tourism. "The music there is SO WILD!! And SO WEIRD!!" And it seems inconceivable that someone from some other country would come to the US, and do the same thing, returning to their countries to release discs packed with shock jocks, and crappy pop music, and morning zoo's and dry NPR discussions and modern rock and Loveline. But you never know. Although part of the reason that something like that would probably NOT happen, is that American culture, from the music to the clothes to the television shows, is already so invasive, there's probably not a corner of the world where people aren't discussing Lost or Paris Hilton or Brad and Angelina's baby or rocking out to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the music and culture of these other countries does not have the same sort of universal reach. So it is actually quite a thrill to hear all of this amazing music, all of these voices, ads and commercials and songs. It's absolutely fantastic. It's just worth thinking about all that other stuff once in a while and realizing that in a sense, even just listening to these discs, we are guests, and we are digging the work and art, the livelihood and passion of hundreds of musicians and vocalists and deejays and artists. And we are digging it. A whole lot.
The first few 'Radio' compilations were a little too schizophrenic, only allowing us to hear a few seconds of a song before the dial was spun and we were bombarded by some new burst of musical randomness. It was pretty amazing in a totally overwhelming ADD short attention span sort of way, but they rectified that, realizing it was just as dizzying but way more satisfying if we got to hear whole songs. So here we are.
Radio Thailand, two whole discs culled from 15 years of recordings, captured between 1989 and 2004. A wonderfully confusional blur of Thai radio craziness, and crazy it is. A glorious hodge podge of everything under the sun, including cheesy eighties Indian disco, bizarre Thai arena rock, with wailing guitar leads, and murky Casio style rhythms, English language radio announcements, funky hip hop rock with guttural Muppets like vocals and a braying donkey chorus, complete with Knight Rider synths, Thai style Miami bass, with bumping beats and rapid fire rapping, goofy funky ska, groovy late night lounge funk, old soundtrack music, fuzzy, old school soul with big boomy drums and sweet horns, weird American style rapid fire commercials, distorted shortwave transmissions, haunting otherworldly piano, what sounds like Thailand's answer to Humpty Hump, but with wild swaths of LOUD synthesizer, full on sitar jams, Japanese style pop, sixties girl group harmonies, groovy exotica, radio dramas, solo blues vocals, and all sorts of traditional Thai musics mixed in with this dizzying barrage of music and voice and sound.
So totally amazing!
MPEG Stream: "Lam Barometer"
MPEG Stream: "21st Century Perspiration"
MPEG Stream: "543 Years Ahead of YOU"
MPEG Stream: "Giant Catfish Fry"
MPEG Stream: "Krung Thep Marketing"
MPEG Stream: "Space Station Hilltops"

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----* DVD's :
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ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE COSMIC INFERNO Hotter Than Inferno: Live In Osaka 2007 (AMT) dvd 21.00
We only managed to grab a small handful of these, the latest dvd document of everyone's favorite Japanese psych rock unit doing their cosmically infernal thing. Like it says, live at the Bears club in Osaka, August 3rd, 2007, performed by an AMT lineup including new female recruit Pikachu from Afrirampo. Also, there's a guest appearance by Masonna! He's credited with synthesizer, vocal, and rock'n'roll star...
NTSC, region free dvd.




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----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed :
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If you want to order one of these, just search on the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart!

ATAVIST "Alchemic Resurrection" (Rise Above) 10" 17.98
ATLANTIS "s/t" (Revisited/Vertigo) cd 17.98
ATTESTUPYA "Tjalen / Den Stora" lp 23.00
AUDIO KOLLAPS "Panzer" (Epistrophy) cd 16.968
AURA NOIR "Hades Rise" (Peaceville) cd 15.98
BAHIMIRON "Southern Nihilizm" (Moribund) cd 14.98
BASTIEN, PIERRE "Visions Of Doing" (Western Vinyl) cd 14.98
BLITHE SONS, THE "The Great Orthochromatic Wheel" (Family Vineyard) lp 14.98
BLOC PARTY "Intimacy" (Atlantic) cd 14.98
BLOOD CEREMONY "s/t" (Rise Above) lp 29.00
BOOK OF BLACK EARTH "Horoskopus" (Prosthetic) cd 14.98
BOSTON SPACESHIPS "Brown Submarine" (Guided By Voices) cd 14.98
BRUHIN, ANTON "Vom Goldabfischer" (Algamarghen) cd 21.00
BUNNY BRAINS, THE "What Makes You Think You Can Save Yourself (From Yourself)?" (self-released) cd 13.98
CAPRICORNS "River, Bear Your Bones" (Candlelight) cd 14.98
CAPTAIN BEYOND "Dawn Explosion" (Friday Music) cd 15.98
CHESNUTT, VIC, ELF POWER & AMORPHOUS STRUMS "Dark Developments" (Orange Twin) cd 15.98
COH "Strings" (Raster-Noton) 2cd 23.00
COSMIC FORCE "Ghetto Down" (Truth and Soul) 12" 8.98
CRADLE OF FILTH "Godspeed On The Devil's Thunder" (Road Runner Records) 2cd 23.00
CRAIG, CARL & MORITZ VON OSWALD "Recomposed By" (Universal) cd 36.00
CROWNING GLORY / THE GATES OF SLUMBER "Dead Man's Paradise / Riddle Master" (Rise Above) 7" 10.98
CRYSTAL STILTS "Alight of Night" (Slumberland Records) cd 13.98
CULT OF LUNA "Eternal Kingdom" (Earache) cd 13.98
CYBOTRON "Implosion" (Aztec Music) cd 24.00
DARKER MY LOVE / MOCCASIN "s/t" (I Hate Rock N' Roll) 12" 11.98
DEAD C, THE "DR503 / The Sun Stabbed EP" (Jagjaguwar / Ba Da Bing) 2lp 22.00
DEAD C, THE "Eusa Kills / Helen Said This" (Jagjaguwar / Ba Da Bing) 2lp 22.00
DENNY, SANDY "The North Star Grassman And The Ravens" (Universal Island) cd 13.98
DIANOGAH "Qhnnnl" (Southern) cd 14.98
DIGITAL LEATHER "Sorcerer" (Goner Records) cd 10.98
DIPLO "I Like Turtles" (Mad Greasy) cd 9.98
DJ / RUPTURE "Uproot" (The Agriculture Records) cd 16.98
DUSK & BLACKDOWN "Margins Music" (Keysound Recordings) cd 15.98
EARLY MAN "Beware The Circling Fin" (The End) cd ep 8.98
FALL OF THE BASTARDS "Dusk Of An Ancient Age" (Kreation Records) lp 14.98
FANNYPACK "Ghetto Bootleg" (Tommy Boy) cd 14.98
FAXED HEAD "From Coalinga To Osaka: Live In Japan 1985" (Web Of Mimicry) dvd 14.98
FIVE OR SIX "Acting On Impulse" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
FRIGHTENED RABBIT "Liver! Lung! Fr!" (Fat Cat) cd ep 10.98
GILLESPIE, DANA "Box Of Surprises" (Rev-Ola) cd 17.98
GIRL TALK "Feed The Animals" (Illegal Art) cd 15.98
HAINO, KEIJI "Koitsukara Usetaitameno Hakarigoto (The 21st Century Hard-Y-Guide-Y Man)" (PSF) cd 22.00
HARRY PUSSY "You'll Never Play This Town Again" (Load) cd 15.98
HILL, ZACH "Astrological Straits" (Ipecac) cd/lp 16.98/22.00
HORRORS, THE / SUICIDE / NIC VOID "Shadazz / Radiation / Rocket U.S.A." (Blast First Petite) 10" 15.98
HUNX AND HIS PUNX "You Don't Like Rock N Roll / Gimme Gimme Back Your Love" (Rob's House Records) 7" 5.98
ITAL TEK "Cyclical" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
IXXI "Assorted Armament" (Sigilla Malae) cd 15.98
JAMES DIN A4 "Fistel Rose" (Pingipung) cd 21.00
JEPSON, WARNER "Totentanz and Other Electronic Works, 1958 - 1973" (Melon Expander) cd 19.98
KAISER CHIEFS "Off With Their Heads" (Universal / Motown) cd 12.98
KAMPFAR "Heimgang" (Napalm) cd 16.98
KAWABATA MAKOTO "We Don't Know Where We Came From" (Important) lp 23.00
KAWABATA, MAKOTO & MICHISHITA SHINSUKE "Sex, Voyage, and Echo Chamber" (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 17.98
KEEP OF KALESSIN "Kolossus" (Nuclear Blast) cd + dvd 13.98
KULTIVATOR "Barndomens Stigar" (Mellotronen) 2cd 28.00
LAMBCHOP "OH (ohio)" (Merge) cd 14.98
LANDED "How Little Will It Take" (Load) cd+3"cd 15.98
LIQUID LIQUID "s/t" (GR2) cd 12.98
LOVE "False Start" (Universal) cd 16.98
LUCIFER'S FRIEND "s/t" (Universal) cd 17.98
M83 "Digital Shades (Vol.1)" (Mute / Goom) cd 14.98
MAX, AGATHE "This Silver String" (Xeric) cd 16.98
MERCURY REV "Snowflake Midnight" (YepRoc) cd/lp 15.98/21.00
MERZBOW "Eucalypse" (Soleilmoon) cd 28.00
MOUNTAINS "Mountains Mountains" (Catsup Plate Records) lp 14.98
MOUTH OF THE ARCHITECT "Quietly" (Translation Loss Records) cd 14.98
NISENNENMONDAI "Tori / Neji" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98
NOTWIST, THE "Boneless" (Domino) 7" 5.98
OXBOW "Lover Ungrateful" (Midmarch Records) 7" 7.98
PEGATAUR "Eternal Flight" (For Once Records) cd 13.98
QUINTRON "Too Thirsty 4 Love" (Goner Records) cd/lp 12.98/13.98
RACEBANNON "IV: Acid Or Blood" (Southern) cd 14.98
REATARD, JAY "Matador Singles '08" (Matador) cd/lp 13.98/14.98
REINHARDT, JONAS "s/t" (Kranky) cd 14.98
RICHTER, MAX "24 Postcards" (Fat Cat) cd 14.98
RUSSELL, ARTHUR "Love Is Overtaking Me" (Audika) cd 16.98
SCSI 9 "Easy As Down" (Kompakt) cd 16.98
SEGALL, TY "s/t" (Castle Face) cd 13.98
SERENA-MANEESH "S-M Backwards" (Smalltown Supersound) 2cd 28.00
SERPENTCULT "Weight Of Light" (Rise Above) lp 27.00
SEVEN THAT SPELLS "Black OM Rising" (Beta-Lactam) cd 26.00
SPARKS "Whomp That Sucker" (Oasis) cd 22.00
SPRINGSTEEN, BRUCE / SUICIDE / BEAT THE DEVIL "Dream Baby Dream" (Blast First Petite) 10" 15.98
SQUAREPUSHER "Just A Souvenir" (Warp) cd/lp 14.98/22.00
STOOGES, THE "Gimme Some Skin" (Get Back) cd/lp 17.98/16.98
SUN RA "On Jupiter" (Art Yard) cd 17.98
SUN RA "Sleeping Beauty" (Art Yard) cd 17.98
TELESCOPES, THE "Singles Compilation 1989-1991" (Mind Expansion) cd 15.98
TEN KENS "s/t" (Fat Cat) cd 14.98
TERAKAFT "Akh Issudar" (World Village) cd 21.00
TIMES NEW VIKING "Stay Awake EP" (Matador) 7" 3.98
TOBACCO "Fucked Up Friends" (Anticon) cd/lp 14.98/14.98
TRENIERS, THE "This Is It!" (Rev-Ola) cd 15.98
TRUTH AND JANEY "Erupts!" (Vintage) cd 14.98
USAISAMONSTER "Space Programs" (Load) cd 15.98
V/A "Afrobeat Nirvana" (Vampisoul) cd 16.98
V/A "Delta Dandies: Dance Bands In Nigeria 1936-1941" (Honest Jons) cd 13.98
V/A "Like Black Holes in the Sky: The Tribute to Syd Barrett" (Dwell) cd 14.98
V/A "Messthetics #106" (Hyped to Death) cd 14.98
V/A "Messthetics Greatest Hiss (#110)" (Hyped to Death) cd 14.98
V/A "My Own Wolf: A New Approach To Ulver" (Cold Dimensions) 2cd 22.00
V/A "Parlez Vous Pop" (Bureau) cd 19.98
V/A "Sounds of She" (Pet Records) cd 14.98
V/A "Space Oddities: Alexis Le-Tan & Jess Present A Compilation Of Rare European Library Grooves 1975-1984" (Permanent Vacation) cd 32.00
VEGETABLE ORCHESTRA "Remixed" (Karmarouge) cd 17.98
VETIVER "More of The Past" (Gnomonsong) cd ep 6.98
WAX POETICS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 2 book 39.95
WAY OF THE CROSS "Mind Of The Dolphin" (Phoenix) lp 16.98
WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON "Love & Lamentation" (Pogus Productions) cd 14.98
WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON & RICHARD YOUNGS "Veil (For Greg)" (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98
WINTERFYLLETH "Ghost of Heritage" (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
YAMASHTA, STOMU / STEVE WINWOOD / MICHAEL SHRIEVE "Go" (Esoteric) cd 22.00
YAMASHTA'S, STOMU RED BUDDHA THEATRE "The Man From The East" (Esoteric) cd 21.00

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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

----} real soon we're hoping / on the way to us now
Earthless "Live At Roadburn" 2cd on Tee Pee
Bixobal magazine #5
 
----} November 4th
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Dolores" cd on Ipecac
Oxbow "Fuckfest" cd reissue on Hydrahead
Cave / California split 10" on Permanent Records
Danielson "Trying Hartz" 2cd on Secretly Canadian
Wino "A Bottle Of Pills With A Bullet Chaser" 2cd on Temporary Residence Ltd.
Andrew Burnes "Telescope" 12" in the Table Of The Elements Guitar Series
David Daniel "I-IV-V-I" 12" in the Table Of The Elements Guitar Series
Red Snapper "Pale Blue Dot" cd on Lo
Der TPK (Teenage Panzerkorps) "Games For Slaves" lp on Siltbreeze
Adam Payne "Organ" cd/lp on Holy Mountain
Last Step "1961" Planet Mu 

----} 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
Behemoth "Ezkaton" cd on Metal Blade

----} 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

----} also in November
Mudhoney/Mugstar "Sonic Attack Trilogy v.1" split 7" of Hawkwind covers on Tresmat
Acid Mothers Temple/White Hills "Sonic Attack Trilogy v.2" split 7" of Hawkwind covers on Tresmat
Kinski/Bardo Pond "Sonic Attack Trilogy v.3" split 7" of Hawkwind covers on Tresmat
Blood Ceremony "s/t" cd on Candlelight
Capricorns "River, Bear Your Bones" cd on Candlelight

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

----} February 15th, 2009
Bunkur "Nullify" cd on Displeased

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later
Fennesz "Black Sea" cd on Touch
Jacob Kirkegaard "Labyrinthitis" cd on Touch
Kid606 "Die Soundboy Die" lp+cd on Very Friendly
Zeitkratzer & Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto) "Electronics" cd on Zeitkratzer
Zeitkratzer & Terre Thaemlitz "Electronics" cd on Zeitkratzer
Zeitkratzer & Keiji Haino "Electronics" cd on Zeitkratzer
Jandek "London Tuesday" cd on Corwood
Elder Utah Smith "I Got Two Wings" cd+book on Casequarter
Blank Dogs "The Fields" cd/lp on Woodsist
Wavves "s/t" cd/lp on Woodsist
Hammers Of Misfortune "Fields/Church Of Broken Glass" 2lp version on 20 Buck Spin
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
Rosetta "Wake/Lift" vinyl version
Necrofrost "Blackeon Lightharvest" cd
Mariana Topley-Bird w/ Dangermouse
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
The Heads tba 2cd 'best of' on Leafhound
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
Sean Smith "Eternal" cd on Ultra Hard Gel
Plastikman "Rine 06" cd on Rinse
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
Earthless "Live At Roadburn" 2lp on Tee Pee
Witchfinder General "Resurrected" cd on Buried In Time And Dust/Nuclear War Now!
Conifer "Crown Fire" 2lp version on Important
Polvo "Cor-Crane Secret" lp reissue on Merge
Slough Feg "Ape Uprising" cd on Cruz Del Sur
Slough Feg "The Slay Stack Grows - Early Demos and Live Recordings" 2cd on Shadow Kingdom Records

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Relay at The Lab

Aquarius Records is co-sponsoring the performances that are happening in conjunction with the Relay exhibition at The Lab, right down the street from us here in San Francisco. While all of the gigs are well worth checking out, make sure to stop by during gallery hours to check out our own Jim Haynes' installation.

There's a bunch of performances from people we love who don't make it over to this side of the world all that often.

Thursday, November 6:
Thuja, Tomutonttu (aka Jan Anderzén of Fonal Records), and Jaakko Tolvi (from Lauhkeat Lampaat)

Friday, November 7:
Howard Stelzer (of Intransitive Recordings), Jim Kaiser + Angela Hsu, and Jon Porras (from Barn Owl and here at Aquarius Records!)

Saturday, November 8:
Robert Millis (rare solo set from half of the Climax Golden Twins), Loren Chasse + Keith Evans

Each of these performances starts at 8 PM and costs $8.00.

The Lab
1948 16th Street at the corner of Capp Street
San Francisco
http://www.thelab.org

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To complicate matters, there's another show of note on Saturday, November 8. This one in the East Bay for tape hiss, noise, heavy drones, and bad intentions.

Howard Stelzer, Jim Haynes, and Gerritt Wittmer

Misanthropic Agenda
426 Jefferson St.
Oakland, CA

9 PM, $5.00

http://www.misanthropicagenda.com

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CHRISTMAS ON MARS (Flaming Lips movie)
opens 10/31/08 - 11/6/08

WILD COMBINATION (Arthur Russell documentary)
11/6-11/13

Roxie
3117 16th St (at valencia)
www.roxie.com

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KALX presents

JEREMY JAY (K Records)
Musee Mecanique
dance party jams played by:
Donuts Disco DJs
DJ Nane Names (Ian Svenonious)
and Irwin (kusf / sleeves on hearts)

Thursday Nov 6th 9pm - Rickshaw Stop


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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottSallyAntaeusCameronandJon