STARS OF THE LID Music For Nitrous Oxide (Sedimental) cd 14.98
Before there were a million 'drone' records, before every other person had their own cd-r drone music label, before anyone with a computer and a cd burner had their own 'drone project', and well before all it took was holding down a few keys on a keyboard or leaning a guitar against an amplifier to become an underground sensation, there was Stars Of The Lid. Armed with little more than a couple guitars, some effects and a four track, the duo of Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie were capable of crafting incredibly lush and expansive dronescapes unlike anything we'd ever heard. Quietly channeling the druggy drift of Spacemen 3, the blissful ambience of Brian Eno and the processed guitar based landscapes of post-Loop project Main, the duo conjured up long sprawling expanses of near static guitar drift, crumbling distortion and shimmering feedback sculpted into billowing stretches of soft swirling sound. Sites set high, even their early works aspired to the modern minimalism they would eventually master, but well before the group enlisted extra players and string sections and incorporated flutes and pianos and began crafting multi movement minimal epics, equal parts Arvo Part and Morton Feldman, the band's sound was much more raw and immediate, much more lo-fi, but somehow managing to sound lush at the same time, music so perfectly crafted it seemed to transcend its source. A gorgeous, living organic world of sound, evocative and cinematic, dark and brooding, soft and utterly beautiful.
Originally released way back in 1995, Music For Nitrous Oxide was the very first Stars Of The Lid release, and it's sound can be summed up by one of the song titles: "Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy". Apparently, so did strange samples, bizarre snippets of dialogue, and most importantly, thick smears of distorted guitar. Total bedroom ambient bliss, but light on the 'ambient', the music on Nitrous Oxide is anything but ambient, it moves and flows and buzzes and howls, the sound is not smooth, it's raw and rough, distorted and warped, the production low on fidelity, but heavy on hazy, gauzy, washed out shimmer. This is almost like the sound of old SUNNO))) records, with all the distortion removed. Slow motion riffage, unfurling lazily into thick tendrils of dark melody, textures and timbres stretched and smeared and smoothed and blurred, tape hiss everywhere, but instead of an impediment, the hiss is alive, swirling and undulating, another layer of warm whir, giving the sounds more texture and more grit. There is percussion, but it sounds like someone tapping on the body of the guitar, then slathering it in reverb and delay. The sounds of trains and cars driving by surface here and there, as do bursts of radio and short wave interference, but the core of all these pieces is delicately and perfectly arranged bits of guitar, whether they be looped streaks of whispery high end, or deep rumbling slabs of crumbling low end, the guitars are looped and repeated and all tangled up with other complimentary loops, allowed to spread out, to expand, to fill up the speakers and overflow, or to trickle out like a summer stream.
The sound shifts from hushed whisper to thick dense almost chaotic swirl, often in the same song. Deep bell like tones drift in wide open expanses of dreamily dramatic soft focus buzz, thick, super distorted guitar buzz is wound around a simple barely there drum beat, cymbals sizzle in a thick roiling black sea of disembodied and fragmented riffage, while elsewhere rubbery low end warbles beneath strange creaks and scrapes, swallowed whole by the occasional wash of blurred distorted buzz, and finally the sound of rainfall surrounds deep lush rumbling chords as they create an almost choral drone for perhaps one of the most moving pieces of drone music ever, certainly an impossibly perfect way to end the record.
Captivating, mesmerizing, one minute soft and shimmery, the next dense and heavy, but always perfect, always personal and intimate, always mysterious and utterly magical. The name Stars Of The Lid comes from the strange images you see when you close your eyes, electrical impulses, mysterious shapes and textures, and never has a name so perfectly reflected the sound of the band so named, and rarely, has band so perfectly represented something so ineffable in sound. Practically perfect. And absolutely essential.
MPEG Stream: "Adamord"
MPEG Stream: "Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy"
MPEG Stream: "Goodnight"

TELESCOPES, THE Singles Compilation 1989-1991 (Mind Expansion) cd 15.98
Here's an easy one, anyone who bought those Loop reissues we made Records Of The Week back on list 307, should probably pick this up too. If you dig Loop and Spacemen 3 and Jesus And Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, then the Telescopes druggy dirgey spaced out garage rock will definitely find an honored spot alongside those aforementioned outfits.
Formed in 1987, the Telescopes first release was a split with Loop oddly enough, a flexi disc released with a fanzine, pretty auspicious beginning for sure, yet ever since, they have constantly and continually been overshadowed by their drone rock brothers in arms Spacemen 3 and Loop. Which is weird considering how similar their sounds are.
Similar they may have been, but the Telescopes always seemed much more rocking and heavy and WAY more noisy that either, but were definitely not averse to the occasional blissed out Spacemen style druggy drift, or some metallic Loop-ed pound. But those moments were scattered amidst a minefield of amp destroying ear drum splitting spaced out noise rock, with a definite grunge element. Re-listening to these tracks now, it definitely sounds like the seeds that spawned Mudhoney and some of the more raw and rocking early Sub Pop bands.
Pretty much every Telescopes record is worth owning, but this singles collection is especially transcendent, gathering up some of their earliest singles, which means raw and lo-fi, and fuzz drenched, and noisy as fuck and gloriously poppy, and HEAVY, always on the verge of total collapse. Killer hooks doused in distortion, verse chorus verse imploding into a squall of psychguitar freakout and total off-kilter drum damage. Every space filled up with wild streaks of lightning bold feedback, drums and guitar locked into killer stop start grooves, the vocals drenched in distortion, yowling and growling, some serious Stooges infused space rock garage mayhem.
But the band did mellow a bit as time went on, so the second half of the disc offers up another side of the band, groovy tripped out almost paisley sounding sixties jangle drift, pretty strummed soft pop, blissy shoegazey shuffle, lush Beatlesesque shimmer, but still plenty of warbly organ, some surprising banjo, fuzzy reverb, everything in a softly druggy haze.
We reviewed the Telescopes Altered Perception record a while back, another collection of sorts, and while the first two tracks are indeed the same, those are the only two tracks to be found on both. Which means not only is THIS essential, but odds are you're probably gonna want that one too. Cuz as far as we're concerned you can never have too much blurry and buzzy and druggy spaced out noisy garage-y psychedelic drone rock in your life. EVER.
MPEG Stream: "The Perfect Needle"
MPEG Stream: "Sadness Pale"
MPEG Stream: "You Can Not Be Sure"

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ALKERDEEL De Bollaf! (Universal Tongue) 3"cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The long overdue return of these Belgian musical miscreants, whose last release, the super limited tape and then not so limited cd Luizig, was a huge favorite around these parts, and why the hell not, a blown out blackened smear of in the red doom dirge weirdness, that we compared to folks like Ash Pool and Akitsa and Ancestors. But that had a lot more to do with the quality of the sound, the timbre and tone, the brutally lo-fi recording, the music itself was much more twisted and blurred and tangled and whatthefuck.
For this two song follow up, Alkerdeel change gears pretty dramatically, opening up with nearly 4 minutes of super spare stripped down doom. The guitar distorted, but surprisingly clean by Alkerdeel standards, the drums a simple funereal plod, until finally the vocals swoop in, a hellish shriek, WAY up in the mix, before just as quickly drifting off, leaving the same skeletal doom, but this time, the guitar explores a bit more, more melody, more sprawling ambience, and again, the vocals come in and the track shifts gear into a pounding lo-fi midtempo dirge, all buzzy guitar, stumbly drumming, growled howled vocals, even a stretch of buzzing blastbeat blackness, before fracturing into something more mathy and woozy and off kilter, and for the remainder of the track (a long one at 13 minutes) slipping from super dirgey atonal crawl, to furious frenzy of chaotic buzz, to blurred washed out blackness. Pretty awesome stuff. This time we might add to the above mentioned bands outfits like Moss and Bunkur and the like, much doomier this go round.
But then band go and follow up with an Ildjarn cover, total raw and primitive buzz drenched black metal d-beat pound. As crusty and punk rock as it is kvlt and grim, simple pounding drums, hypnotic almost looped sounding riffage, even a sort of double time more punk rock second half, the whole thing laced with perfectly yowled whiskey soaked crusty vokills.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! We managed to get the last 20, it's already out of print, so once these are gone, they are gone forever. Packaged in a cool mini 3" dvd style plastic clamshell case, full color insert, each one hand numbered of course.
MPEG Stream: "De Bollaf!"
MPEG Stream: "Natt Og Take - Nattens Ledestjerne (Ildjarn)"

BIBLE, JEREMY & JASON HENRY Vryashn (Gears Of Sand) cd-r 11.98
Here be the sad sounds of drowning. This Ohio-based pair has quietly amassed an intriguing catalogue of digitally treated dronemusic and manipulated field recordings, with Vryashn being maybe the best so far, oozing with a gorgeous subaquatic melancholia. Aside from all of their sound design tricks, the piano is the central instrument on Vryashn with its notes stretched and elongated into sinewy tones. While the treatments are quite similar to what Brian Eno did on Thursday Afternoon and to what Jonathan Coleclough achieved on Period, Bible and Henry attack the piano with much greater force through their heavy handed arpeggiations on the lower register keys. When wrapped into the slow-motion whirlpool of oceanic reverb and and cyclical drone construction, the brooding notes of the piano sound as if they are the last notes being played by some madman trapped on the ship slowly sinking into the depths of the Black Sea. Tactile bits of organic scrapes and cracklings sweep across the stereo field and dissolve into the ever deeper and blacker void of the waters below. Like Gavin Bryars' similar opus on oceanic collapse, The Sinking Of The Titanic, there is a sublime beauty to these sinking sounds. Recommended, for sure!
RealAudio clip: "jbjhvryashn1.mp3"
RealAudio clip: "jbjhvryashn2.mp3"

BORIS WITH MICHIO KURIHARA Cloud Chamber (Pedal) cd 21.00
By itself, the name "Boris" on a new release creates a not-inconsiderable level of excitement amongst the heaviness-heads and Japanophiles 'round these parts. Add "with Michio Kurihara" to the cover and, well, the excitement, it's off the hook. You know what we mean, 'cause chances are, if you're reading this, you're already a Boris fan. And probably also are familiar with guitarist Kurihara from his 2006 collaboration with Boris, on the very wonderful Rainbow (he also guested on the more recent Smile, as well).
While Rainbow was a fairly song-oriented affair, with many moods and plenty of melodiousness, THIS new get-together is one for those of you into HUGE squalls of amps on 11, heavy duty GUITAR FREAK OUT. You won't really notice much in the way of, like, vocals on here. Or drums, for that matter. It's all about the motorpsycho guitar(s), which can sometimes sound more like airplane engines here (with, maybe, Neil Young flying the plane). Like we said, a guitar freakout. Not a stretch, of course, for Boris, who have albums with names like Feedbacker and Amplifier Worship, after all. And teamed up again with noted psychedelic axemaster Kurihara (White Heaven, Ghost) we're not surprised at all that they went for such a heavy, freeform guitar-centric sound. One that should be of instant appeal to anyone who's personal guitar gods are folks like Caspar Brotzmann, Keiji Haino, or China's Li Jianhong. Or, well, let's put it this way - at its mellowest, we could compare this to Nadja and/or SUNNO)))... the clouds in this Cloud Chamber are big but not exactly fluffy.
There's but two tracks here, both of lengthy, "side-long" duration (18:53 and 17:30). The first, "Cloud Chamber I", begins with deep pulsations of subtle sub-bass, building and building, joined by skree, skullflowering into psychedelic sheets of drone, culminating with what comes close to sheer white noise at the end. Even at its grinding-est, though, delicate feedback trails caress one's ears amidst the din. "Cloud Chamber II" simply starts off grindingly distorted, fuzzing and buzzing with divebomb attacks. But then proceeds to get even heavier - louder - and noisier!! By not much more than three minutes in, it sounds like something (everything!) in the recording studio is beginning to vibrate and collapse, you can imagine sparks shooting from the amplifiers, cabinets toppling, walls shaking, brains melting. And of course they just keep upping the ante on this destructo-, distorto- delic assault. A thing of literally devastating beauty... which physically reaches a peak at about the 13 minute mark, a point where it could easily be mistaken for the extreme electronic likes of Masonna, then suddenly quieting into blissed-out ambience for the final four minutes of this track. Sweet.
And this limited edition (1500 copies) Japanese import is packaged nicely, with some nice, stylishly subtle "advanced" design that, well, makes it look like a Japanese import.
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Chamber I"
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Chamber II"

BURNT HILLS Tonite We Ride (Flipped Out) cd 9.98
Been a while since we've heard from Burnt Hills. Our fault entirely. They may have been absent on the list, but they have most definitely not stopped releasing records, or partaking in a weekly jam at the Burnt Hills HQ, which is where we assume this massive psych jam blow out was captured on tape.
For those new to Burnt Hills, the group seems to be an ever changing collective, sometimes a duo or trio, other times, like here, expanded to a seven piece, heck they even got someone on XYLOPHONE this time around. No that you'd really be able to tell. The sound of Burnt Hills is a sonic mushroom cloud of grinding psych guitar squall, practice space drums, throbbing earthquake bass, all woven into a sprawling space-psych-kraut jam that could have gone on forever. Heck it could have started weeks ago, as the track opens jarringly mid-jam, just explodes right into it, expanding into a hazy, woozy, effects drenched expanse of druggy psych bliss. Folks who eat up every last thing by Acid Mothers Temple, Heavy Winged, Titan, all that modern psych shit, have no excuse for not being crazy obsessed with these guys too. Equal parts all those bands as well as plenty of Hawkwind, Monster Magnet, German Oak, Boris, White Heaven, just imagine a dingy black lit basement, packed to the rafters with amps, and a bunch of folks hunched over their instruments, probably high as a kite, channeling some mysterious otherworld spirits through the speakers into physical sound, into THIS, whatever this is.
You can almost imagine the whole neighborhood gathered around this unassuming house in the suburbs, clad in slippers and robes, bleary eyed and a bit terrified, staring at BH HQ, a dilapidated little house that seems to be coming alive, the whole thing shaking on its foundations, emanating kaleidoscopic lights, emitting a deafening roar unlike anything these normal folks have ever heard. They call the authorities, the police, the F.B.I., but by the time they arrive, the house is dark, and quiet, and empty.
Absolute ear candy for psych-kraut maniacs into blown out heavy psychedelic space rock freakouts, which as far as we're concerned should really be just about everyone reading this.
MPEG Stream: "Tonite We Ride (excerpt)"

CAINA Temporary Antennae (Profound Love) cd 13.98
We were super into the first couple records from UK black metal outfit Caina, especially their entry in the HP Lovecraft 3" cd-r series, but then after that we sort of lost interest, not sure what it was exactly, the records started sounding more acoustic, more folky, not that we're opposed to that, it just wasn't doing it for us. So we almost skipped this new disc completely, but boy are we glad we didn't. Another instance that has us wondering what the hell we were thinking, and giving us cause to go back and see if maybe we just weren't way off the mark.
Because Temporary Antennae is really something else. Heavy, and folky, and creepy, and pretty goddamn weird. Beginning with some rumbling black ambience, assembled from what sounds like chants and guttural vocalizations, culminating in an incredibly freaky processed voice, leading us into the first song proper, a killer start stop blackened groove, that almost sounds like Led Zeppelin mixed with Lurker Of Chalice. We had compared Caina to Lurker way back when, and it still sort of applies. If you consider Lurker to be the gothier doomier creepier less distinctly black metal side of Leviathan. The sound her is definitely black, but not buzzy and blasty, instead, the guitars almost jangle, the voice is deep and dramatic, and the arrangement is more epic, almost post rocky, with haunting majestic melodies, warm reverb drenched ambience, all very moody and dour, another black metal band that seems to be leaning heavily toward old school slowcore. But filtering in all sorts of doom and folk and various other unlikely elements.
And so it goes with Temporary Antennae, simple skeletal drum machine rhythms beneath glimmering fx laden shimmer, haunting operatic vocals, all giving way to a super slow, but surprisingly not 'heavy' funereal doom, rife with clean guitar, and fucked up bellowed vox, atonal off kilter blasting blackness stutters into a lurching arrangement that makes it sound more like Ved Buens Ende than anything more traditionally black, and again, shot through with moody mathy clean guitar, crooned vocals, processed shoegazey guitars, and out of the blue drum machine throb and pulse, there's even what sounds like some eighties FM radio new wave, all synthy and poppy and jangly, which gradually transforms into something much heavier, like Jesu or Nadja, the same sort of M83 fuzziness, and then suddenly the record will shift again into a brooding gothic pop, all mournful melodies and spare drumming, guitar harmonics and distant hazy shimmer, only to change gears again moments later, taking the shape of a sort of melancholic sadcore jangle, like Mazzy Star or The For Carnation, and for the next few songs, the sound shifts, continually slipping from jangle to shimmer to drift, but never really returning to anything remotely metal, but by that point, you don't really want it to, you're in some sort of blissed out trance state, which is precisely the point.
Only the most adventurous and pop savvy metalheads are gonna dig this. Even at its heaviest, things are still pretty fuzzy and jangly and pretty, but if you've been digging stuff like Alcest and Amesoeurs, then this might just hit the spot.
MPEG Stream: "Ten Went Up River"
MPEG Stream: "Willows And Whippoorwills"
MPEG Stream: "Tobacco Beetle"

CIRCLE Tyrant (Latitudes / Southern) 2lp 17.98
We made the cd version of this Circle disc our Record Of The Week a while back, only for it to go out of print WAY quicker than anyone expected. So now, Tyrant is available once again, for a limited time, on vinyl, a double lp to be precise. But again, like all Latitudes stuff, very very limited, and add to that the fact that it's Circle, well, you should know what that means. Here's what we had to say about Tyrant when we first got it WAY back in 2006!! Be sure to read to the end though, as there's some extras with the lp edition....
BRAND NEW CIRCLE ALBUM!!! TYRANT!! INCREDIBLY LIMITED LATEST INSTALLMENT IN THE LATITUDES SERIES!!! IT'S HERE!!!!
Okay, just wanted to get your attention. We've been waiting for this for a long, long time. As have many of you, we imagine. We've all been loving the Latitudes series of ultra limited releases from bands like Ginnungagap, Shit And Shine, the Grails, Ariel Pink, Sir Richard Bishop... so when we heard that Finland's gods of metallic hypno drone rock were going to do one, we were so psyched, and so we waited anxiously, but patiently, until finally, after months of waiting, they arrived, just a few days ago, and as if we even have to tell you, IT'S AWESOME!!!
But this declaration of awesomeness does require a bit more elaboration, as Circle have a wide variety of awesome sounds: murky propulsive modern day krautrock, wild guitar heavy NWOFHM proto-metal, extended ambient drones, loping mesmeric jazzy shuffle, it's really hard to know where the band will head next. As if it were too much to wish for, Tyrant, somehow manages to combine all of their disparate sounds into one practically perfect whole, and some of us are declaring this our favorite Circle record in ages (no mean feat, since their last one, Miljard, was fantastic, a Record Of The Week too). Three 15 minute tracks, each one a slow building epic, droning, dense, dark, hypnotic, but each with its own unique elements.
The opener, "Screaming Luovutus", is an endlessly looping space rock drone mantra, a relentlessly throbbing bassline, haunting little swirls of fluttering keyboard melody, little bits of guitar filigree, simple propulsive rhythmic shuffle, all woven into a endlessly throbbing krautrocky swirl, when suddenly over the top strange whispery demonic growls surface, super distorted, another layer of fuzzy sound, howling and whispering all ragged and harsh, almost like Circle covering Abruptum or a black metal Necks, if that makes any sense. Dizzying and weirdly heavy, a black ambient krautrock drone groove, if such a thing were possible. And if it were, you know Circle would be the ones, ahem, ARE the ones to make it happen.
The second track, with the very metal title "Steel Torment Warrior", is maybe the least metal of the batch. A super creepy, almost jazzy, soundscape, of muted rumble, bursts of super effected dubbed out drums, flurries of spaced out FX, hushed hissed vocals, splattery free jazz skitter, warbly, seasick guitar tangles all wrapped in a druggy blissy ambience. It's like a less propulsive Necks, a damaged jazzy shuffle looping into infinity, but twisted into a uniquely Circular shape.
The closer, with the even MORE metal title of "Amputation Crusade", is the grooviest and space rockiest of the three, a simple darkly melodic guitar figure, loops lazily above a slow slithery bassline and a super laid back, barely there rhythmic shuffle, like Can or Faust in extreme slow motion... you can hear the Necks again, but the band add some extra druggy fuzz guitar, and the laid back riffing is pregnant with the possibility of imminent explosion. Strange vocals lurk below the surface, the whole thing an epic trawl through some jazzy black space rock soundscape. Near the end, things build to a bit of a subdued climax, the guitars ringing and chiming, the drums pounding a bit more, very epic and majestic, but still somehow muted and laid back, petering out into a creepy little coda of guitar FX and gurgling monster vocals...
Wow. Seriously, we love Circle and everything, more than most folks, but this disc is an absolute killer!! Heavy and droney, groovy and jazzy and completely epic and mesmerizing and amazing!!
Comes packaged in the usual black and white Latitudes diecut 12" sleeve, includes the same black and white insert from the cd, featuring the band posing with spiked gauntlets in front of Stonehenge!!! Well, actually, in front of the chainlink fence in front of Stonehenge, which somehow makes more sense. The inner lp label has two strange NWOFHM / Tyrant (the 't's in tyrant are battle axes of course) hooded knights. And as if that weren't enough, the second disc is a PICTURE DISC, one side features the Stonehenge band photo blown up, the other side is an image of... well, an lp, in fact the -other- record in the set, complete with the hooded knights in the center and printed record grooves, which while actually being playable grooves, seem to be there just for show....
Either way, one more chance to pick up this kick ass Circle record, and on vinyl to boot!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Screaming Luovutus"
MPEG Stream: "Steel Torment Warrior"

CLOAMA & BLUTLEUCHTE s/t (Anima Arctica) cd 14.98
Another mysterious musical missive from Finland, record number two of alchemical magickal dronemusic and deep otherworldly black ambience from a group that features members of one of our favorite Finnish combos, the mighty Dead Reptile Shrine (who have a new double cd coming out on tUMULt this year). We raved about the last C+B disc, a collection of raw and primal sound rituals, not all that far removed from the music of countrymen Tiermes.
Separated into 4 suites, Cloak Of Fire, Cloak Of Doom, Cloak of Darkness, and Cloak Of... um.. well Cloak Of Cloak oddly enough, this disc is in fact a reissue of a long out of print cd-r, originally released in an edition of 100 copies. As with the other Cloama & Blutleuchte disc, the sounds here are dark and ominous, rumbling and whirring and shimmering, but this is not mere ambient music, or drone music, there is much more going on, texture and noise, and all manner of difficult to describe sonic happenings.
The drone is for sure the root of the sound, but that drone is twisted and stretched out, wreathed in strange effects and peppered with bursts of hiss and buzz. Some tracks are simple sprawling black blurs, while others, incorporate haunting sung spoken vocals, simple tribal percussion, a bit like a more raw and freaked out Muslimgauze, while others are thick grinding walls of distortion, dense crumbling heaviness, shot through with haunting melodies, and creaking groaning crunch, as well as strange voices and snippets of conversation, and still others are rich swirls of blurred soft focus colors and slowed down riffs, mysterious crawls through vast expanses of deep stellar buzz. String sections wrap around military speeches, industrial percussion is buried beneath seas of grinding metallic shimmer, long long stretches of deep hushed thrum, and haunting chantlike vocals, all culminating in what sounds like a hissy, washed out, black metal blur, a swirling digitized buzz laced drone, that slows and thickens until it becomes an ominous flickering downtuned dirge-y drift.
Gorgeous packaging, the booklet filled with all manner of symbols and landscape photos as well as some seriously strange liner notes.
MPEG Stream: "Cloak Of Fire (Part I)"
MPEG Stream: "Cloak Of Fire (Part II)"
MPEG Stream: "Cloak Of Cloak (Incarnation)"

CLOUTER, ISOBEL & ROB MULLENDER Myths Of Origins : Sonic Ephemera From East Asia (And/OAR) cd 13.98
File this one right next to your Alan Lamb discs of singing telegraph wires and the Broken Hearted Dragonflies album on Sublime Frequencies, as the British sound art duo of Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender have presented us with some seemingly implausible recordings of 'booming sand.' These are monotone frequencies generated by an avalanche of a sand dune under just the right environmental conditions. Such sounds have been reported in numerous times and places with Marco Polo recounting them on his excursions to China, and with Charles Darwin finding similar sounds in the deserts of Chile! At the onset of one of their recordings, we hear Isobel huffing and puffing up to the top of a massive sand dune, before she puts her ears to the ground (quite literally) in order to locate the origin of the rumbling drone. Such a bracketing episode of human presence is very useful to frame the stillness of the desert even as the booming sound resonates through the landscape. It also helps to distance these natural sounds from their manmade doomscape kin of a lowslung bass slumped in subharmonic stupor against a rumbling amplifier. Aside from these impressively heavy recordings, Clouter and Mullender offer some additional recordings from elsewhere in Asia: hissing textures from windswept sand comingling with cicadas buzzing in the summer sun, and a Tibetan prayer wheel revolving through its wooden cycles of creaks and moans. These are good extracts of pure phonography, but pale next to the thoroughly impressive booming sand phenomenon.
MPEG Stream: "Baoritaolegainuoer Natural Booming"
MPEG Stream: "Dune 3 Descent"
MPEG Stream: "Kotohiki-Hama/Kotogo-Hama Beaches"
MPEG Stream: "Tibetan Prayer Wheels, Xiahe"

CLP Supercontinental (Shitkatapult) cd 17.98
CLP is probably a new name to most everybody, but the group's pedigree might ring some bells, as one half of the duo used to do time in Funkstorung. The sound of CLP has very little on common with the IDM funk of Funkstorung, instead, the sound of CLP is a wild and kick ass mix of old school hip hop, Miami bass, crunk, electro, ghetto-tech and the sounds of the Dirty South. The result musically, is kinda nuts, the ultimate dance party, and quite possibly one of the coolest, and maybe best hip hop records we've heard in forever, equal parts Missy Elliott, Timbaland, 2 Live Crew, Hyphy, and fuck knows who else. The duo used Myspace to track down obscure and unknown rappers from all over the world, primarily in the US and South Africa, which just pushes it over the top.
Every track is different, but they all share some sonic similarities, beats that slip from skittery to block rockin, fuzzy basslines, blown out distorted synths, soaring strings, stuttery grooves, off kilter loops, and some hooks that kill, if this wasn't some obscure hip hop record on Shitkatapult, this would and SHOULD be all over the radio. And the rapping is all over the place too, from sultry and sinister to goofy and over the top, from robotic bark to woozy laidback druggy drawl, but it all works, perfectly. Instead of skits, there are some musical interludes, that end up sounding just as off kilter as the songs themselves.
Not sure what else to say, other than hip hop record of the year. Last year? This year? Probably both...
MPEG Stream: "Flash Bakk (Featuring Rayzaflo)"
MPEG Stream: "I'm So Trill (Featuring Tunde Olaniran)"
MPEG Stream: "Party Hardy (Featuring Yo Majesty)"
MPEG Stream: "Spaceballs (Featuring Spoek, Damaged Good$ And Cerebral Vortex)"

COLD NORTHERN VENGEANCE Domination and Servitude (Bindrune) cd 11.98
Although, from their not particularly atypical name and logo, you might expect just another business-as-usual Nordic black metal horde, corpsepainted and kvlt-y, this is NOT just another BM (or, USBM in their case as they hail from New Hampshire) band. Nosirree. We figured that out right away, when the vocals started up on "A Dangerous Wayfaring" and weren't a grim rasp, but rather a faux-British accented chorus. The more usual sort of guttural gruffness also soon appears, but CNV had piqued our interest, and we kept listening with curious anticipation that was quickly rewarded by this album's unexpected and unusual blend of underground black metal, goth rock, and industrial. Actually CNV also had our attention 'cause this comes from the same label, Bindrune, who last brought us Blood Of The Black Owl's A Feral Spirit, another unique and experimental metal offering.
This isn't quite as weird as that record, but this eclectic effort certainly captivates chaotically with majestically catchy riffage, Gobliny soundtrack synths, clean vocal singalongs, and even all-acoustic mellow moodiness ("The Shores Of New England"). Our favorite element though is what might be termed their Satanic industrial sound, with sampling and sequencing, the best example of which is "The By-Paths To Chaos", a rhythmic exercise in sinister, cut-and-paste percussive clockwork. Very cool. Hail Cold Northern Vengeance!!
MPEG Stream: "A Dangerous Wayfaring"
MPEG Stream: "The By-Paths To Chaos"
MPEG Stream: "A Past Forgotten"

DEATHSPELL OMEGA Veritas Diaboli Manet In Aeternum: Chaining The Kacheton (Norma Evangelium Diaboli / Ajna) cd ep 11.98
Finally, after waiting and waiting, a brand new Deathspell Omega record. Or track. OK, record. Same difference really. One single sprawling massive 22 minute epic with more parts and compositional complexities than most bands can cram into a record three times as long. And it's the perfect blend of DSO's two disparate sides, their grim and gnarled, frosty, thrashing buzzy black side, and their more obtuse, mathy melodic post rock side. In the past, it seemed like the band would lean heavily in one direction or the other depending on the record, Kenose with it's total slavish and apparently unintentional Slint worship, and then FAS, which seemed to ditch those post rock proclivities in favor of something much more old school.
So it was pretty much a toss up where the band would take their sound, and weirdly enough, this is almost exactly what we were hoping for. A perfect hybrid of the two, with no clear delineation, each side, those battling influences, blurring and bleeding into one another, confusionally bafflingly brilliant, bursts of furious grinding black buzz lead directly into warped stretches of spidery clean guitars and lurching impossible rhythms, soft hushed whispered interludes obliterated by thick roiling black riffery, only to slowly melt before our eyes, twisting and almost detuning, the guitar parts very Polvo-esque, strange tunings, almost skeletal sounding, until the band offer up some impossibly dense complicated BM fury, stop start arrangements, INCREDIBLE drumming, the guitars totally unhinged, but still weirdly catchy. Songs this long are always difficult to pull off, for the best of bands, either parts get recycled, the band repeats itself, or it gets tiresome and then it's a matter of waiting for the song to end. But nothing like that here. So many parts, all thematically and musically linked, but all totally unique, the guitars especially, seem to come to life, like some black weed, while the drums inhumanly stay locked in perfectly. The track shifts from intense frenzy, to woozy groove, to lumbering doom, to jagged mathy stutter, and back again, there even seems to be some horns happening, reminding us of later period Gore.
Even as a musician, it baffles the mind, how anyone is capable of conceiving music this dense and complex and subtly melodic, let along performing it. This just might seal the deal, as if it wasn't sealed already, Deathspell Omega just might be the most progressive, most avant, and fuck it most mind blowing black metal band on the planet right now. Period.
DSO's twenty two minute track is actually from a split, released in conjunction with a new record from countrymen S.V.E.S.T., reviewed elsewhere on this list, and equally as essential, and vinyl folks, you are in luck, both the DSO material and the S.V.E.S.T. songs, while released as separate cds, are available together on a single lp!
MPEG Stream: "Chaining The Katechon (Excerpt)"

S.V.E.S.T. Veritas Diaboli Manet In Aeternum: Le Diable Est Ma Raison (End All Life Productions) cd ep 12.98
Released In conjunction with the new Deathspell Omega ep (reviewed elsewhere on this list, and both are available together on a single lp, also on this list), Veritas Diaboli Manet In Aeternum heralds the return of an old favorite, French duo S.V.E.S.T., who strangely enough haven't released a proper record since 2003 (2005's Coagula compiled older demos), but within 30 seconds, we were totally reminded exactly why we loved these guys so much. And they're a perfect foil for Deathspell, their sound equally fractured and convoluted and fucked up, but where DSO go for something darker and moodier and more melodic, S.V.E.S.T. go in the other direction completely, spitting out frenzied swaths of blurred buzz and wild squalls of intense tangled blackness. These three tracks, are so awesome, we almost, and we're well aware of the sacrilege involved here, but we just might like them as much as, if not even more than the Deathspell half of the split.
Their sound is hard to describe. The first track opens with a dizzying swirl of squiggly guitars, woozy riffs, wild splattery drumming, that seems already like it's bordering on total meltdown, yet that's just the intro, and the band launch into a frenzied assault even more fucked up and dense, but pepper it with cool little melodies and parts that almost sound Viking, albeit buried beneath a roiling black blowout. The guitar does these cool little descending trills, the song lurches and stutters, the drums are relentless, mind blowingly fast and heavy and intricate, until part way through, the sound shifts, and there's a bit of doomy crawl, before leaping right back into the fray. Throughout, there are bursts of total drumming chaos, extra guitars howling and adding yet more layers of buzz. It's so thick and heavy and dense, it takes close listening to pick out all the amazing stuff going on beneath the buzzy black surface.
The second track continues on in much the same vein, with the guitars even more twisted and gnarled, the drums still relentlessly mathy and intricate, slipping from total chaotic black noise, to stumbling groove, to cool pounding dirge, the drums leaping out from the mix, the guitars thick and raw, but soaring majestically at the same time. The sound manages to be epic and classic and technical while also murky and lo-fi, the sounds all blurring together, a heaving mass of constantly shifting blown out blackness, still rife with all manner of tangled little melodies, and sweeping epic ambience.
The closer is short and sweet, the weirdest and creepiest of the bunch, beginning with a staccato machine gun burst of drums and riffage, before slipping into a swirling high end guitardrone, all woozy and overlapping, disembodied riffs and smeared melodies, dizzying and mesmerizing, growing more and more intense, the drums barely there, just those high end guitars glowing hotter and hotter, until finally, the drums kick in, and the track resolves in a totally twisted soaring post rock black metal what the fuck epic outro, that fades out WAY too soon. Holy shit. These guys need to deliver a full length ASAP. and we definitely don't want to wait another 6 years.
As mentioned above, S.V.E.S.T.'s three tracks are actually half of a split, released in conjunction with a new record from Deathspell Omega, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and equally as essential.
And again, vinyl folks, you are in luck, both the DSO material and the S.V.E.S.T. songs, while released as separate cds, are available together on a single lp!
MPEG Stream: "Et La Lumiere Fut, Comme Un Coup De Scalpel"

DEATHSPELL OMEGA / S.V.E.S.T. Veritas Diaboli Manet In Aeternum (Norma Evangelium Diaboli / End All Life Productions) lp 24.00
The long awaited split from two of our all time favorite black metal outfits, Deathspell Omega and S.V.E.S.T.! Weirdly enough, each band's half of the vinyl split was also released on a separate cd, so if you're a digital kind of person, you're gonna have to buy both cds, and believe us it's well worth it, just read on. But if vinyl is your thing, then you're in luck, cuz both halves, all the material from both cds, is contained on this here lp.
Up first, Deathspell Omega:
Finally, after waiting and waiting, a brand new Deathspell Omega record. Or track. OK, record. Same difference really. One single sprawling massive 22 minute epic with more parts and compositional complexities than most bands can cram into a record three times as long. And it's the perfect blend of DSO's two disparate sides, their grim and gnarled, frosty, thrashing buzzy black side, and their more obtuse, mathy melodic post rock side. In the past, it seemed like the band would lean heavily in one direction or the other depending on the record, Kenose with it's total slavish and apparently unintentional Slint worship, and then FAS, which seemed to ditch those post rock proclivities in favor of something much more old school.
So it was pretty much a toss up where the band would take their sound, and weirdly enough, this is almost exactly what we were hoping for. A perfect hybrid of the two, with no clear delineation, each side, those battling influences, blurring and bleeding into one another, confusionally bafflingly brilliant, bursts of furious grinding black buzz lead directly into warped stretches of spidery clean guitars and lurching impossible rhythms, soft hushed whispered interludes obliterated by thick roiling black riffery, only to slowly melt before our eyes, twisting and almost detuning, the guitar parts very Polvo-esque, strange tunings, almost skeletal sounding, until the band offer up some impossibly dense complicated BM fury, stop start arrangements, INCREDIBLE drumming, the guitars totally unhinged, but still weirdly catchy. Songs this long are always difficult to pull off, for the best of bands, either parts get recycled, the band repeats itself, or it gets tiresome and then it's a matter of waiting for the song to end. But nothing like that here. So many parts, all thematically and musically linked, but all totally unique, the guitars especially, seem to come to life, like some black weed, while the drums inhumanly stay locked in perfectly. The track shifts from intense frenzy, to woozy groove, to lumbering doom, to jagged mathy stutter, and back again, there even seems to be some horns happening, reminding us of later period Gore.
Even as a musician, it baffles the mind, how anyone is capable of conceiving music this dense and complex and subtly melodic, let along performing it. This just might seal the deal, as if it wasn't sealed already, Deathspell Omega just might be the most progressive, most avant, and fuck it most mind blowing black metal band on the planet right now. Period.
And then S.V.E.S.T.:
The return of an old favorite, French duo S.V.E.S.T., who strangely enough haven't released a proper record since 2003 (2005's Coagula compiled older demos), but within 30 seconds, we were totally reminded exactly why we loved these guys so much. And they're a perfect foil for Deathspell, their sound equally fractured and convoluted and fucked up, but where DSO go for something darker and moodier and more melodic, S.V.E.S.T. go in the other direction completely, spitting out frenzied swaths of blurred buzz and wild squalls of intense tangled blackness. These three tracks, are so awesome, we almost, and we're well aware of the sacrilege involved here, but we just might like them as much as, if not even more than the Deathspell half of the split.
Their sound is hard to describe. The first track opens with a dizzying swirl of squiggly guitars, woozy riffs, wild splattery drumming, that seems already like it's bordering on total meltdown, yet that's just the intro, and the band launch into a frenzied assault even more fucked up and dense, but pepper it with cool little melodies and parts that almost sound Viking, albeit buried beneath a roiling black blowout. The guitar does these cool little descending trills, the song lurches and stutters, the drums are relentless, mind blowingly fast and heavy and intricate, until partway through, the sound shifts, and there's a bit of doomy crawl, before leaping right back into the fray. Throughout, there are bursts of total drumming chaos, extra guitars howling and adding yet more layers of buzz. It's so thick and heavy and dense, it takes close listening to pick out all the amazing stuff going on beneath the buzzy black surface.
The second track continues on in much the same vein, with the guitars even more twisted and gnarled, the drums still relentlessly mathy and intricate, slipping from total chaotic black noise, to stumbling groove, to cool pounding dirge, the drums leaping out from the mix, the guitars thick and raw, but soaring majestically at the same time. The sound manages to be epic and classic and technical while also murky and lo-fi, the sounds all blurring together, a heaving mass of constantly shifting blown out blackness, still rife with all manner of tangled little melodies, and sweeping epic ambience.
The closer is short and sweet, the weirdest and creepiest of the bunch, beginning with a staccato machine gun burst of drums and riffage, before slipping into a swirling high end guitardrone, all woozy and overlapping, disembodied riffs and smeared melodies, dizzying and mesmerizing, growing more and more intense, the drums barely there, just those high end guitars glowing hotter and hotter, until finally, the drums kick in, and the track resolves in a totally twisted soaring post rock black metal what the fuck epic outro, that fades out WAY too soon. Holy shit. These guys need to deliver a full length ASAP. and we definitely don't want to wait another 6 years.
LIMITED OF COURSE. And it would be hard not to think, even only nine days into the new year, that this wasn't gonna be the best black metal record of '09. We'll see...
MPEG Stream: DEATHSPELL OMEGA "Chaining The Katechon (Excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: S.V.E.S.T. "Et La Lumiere Fut, Comme Un Coup De Scalpel"

ELM Woven Into Light (Blackest Rainbow) cd-r 7.98
Second solo record from our very own Jon Porras, half of dronefolk duo Barn Owl, after his first disc on Digitalis, Bxogonoas, sold out in a matter of days. This one is crazy limited too, so if you want one, better be quick.
Woven Into Light is more of the glorious same, a druggy, bleary eyed hybrid of slow shimmery free folk and deep minimal dronemusick, taking later period Earth somewhere much dreamier and darker. Muted twang and deep smoldering shimmer, all stretched out in diaphanous sheets across heavy clouded moonlit skies. Spidery tendrils of skeletal guitar spread out like branches on leafless trees, but rather than sounding wintry, Porras wreathes his guitars in soft billows of warm whir, gauzy and lightly blurred, where other bands might turn these downtuned tones into something doomy, Porras lets them drift wraithlike, the sound windswept and barren, the sound of flickering lights above the never ending expanse of desert.
Occasionally, the guitars wind into thick sinewy streaks of coruscating buzz, spitting sparks but still wreathed in a halo or reverb and delay, soft whispery strum transformed into squalls of muted psychguitar and slow shifting almost symphonic buzz. The sound touches on some familiar territory, Sunroof!, Fear Falls Burning, Earth, Nadja, Birchville Cat Motel, and the like, there's some hints of Morricone, Scenic, but Elm most definitely occupies it's own magical mysterious sonic space.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. and if past releases are any indication, these will sell out quick, and there's a good chance this might be the last copies we ever see...
MPEG Stream: "Rising Smoke Woods"
MPEG Stream: "Fog Water Shroud"
MPEG Stream: "On Golden Wings"

ET CETERA s/t (Long Hair) cd 27.00
1971 strikes again. Holy moly, the planets must have been extra-aligned that year. Here's a krautrock classic from '71 that kinda fell through the cracks (though not the cracks in the cosmic egg). Well, it's certainly been lauded by some but we'd never heard it before now, anyway. In fact, this is its first time on cd, apparently, and we're glad to have it! Wild stuff here, a trip indeed, starting off with a serious dose of crazed, freakout action for synth and drums entitled "Thursday Morning Sunrise". Seriously psychedelic jamming jazz weirdness, like Sun Ra gone heavy. The synth squiggles and squeaks, growls and grumbles, and drums tumble and splatter, for almost 12 minutes. Some sunrise! But if you think that this is gonna be an album of improvised, uh, "drug jazz" (which it is, in part), you'll be surprised by what's to come on this disc... lovely acoustic guitar melodies ("Mellodrama Nr. 2 A"), faux-Eastern bliss-out vibes ("Raga"), and spoken word beat poetry set amidst angelic vocal arrangements ("Lady Blue")... like we said, a trip! But then again, all this eclectic awesomeness - from moody jazz to ethnic groove to fuzzy acid rock instrumentals - isn't all that unexpected in a krautrock band, especially one featuring members of Embryo and Exmagma, as well as mastermind Wolfgang Dauner (of The Oimels fame). They deliver the goods with a great deal of groove and gusto, making music both beautiful and bizarre... it could be the soundtrack to some avantgarde psychedelic art film from the '70s, like a Jodorowsky epic. Despite the not-so-cheap import price, this is a recommended reissue, done right. Snazzy, colorful cover, remastered sound (from original masters), 3 lengthy & quite excellent bonus tracks, liner notes... the works!
MPEG Stream: "Thursday Morning Sunrise"
MPEG Stream: "Lady Blue"
MPEG Stream: "Tau Ceti"

ETHEREAL WOODS Kenilworth (Supernal) cd 15.98
We've always been pretty into Ethereal Woods and their twisted strain of eco-black metal. But regardless of their political agenda or lyrical themes, their root sound was something much more raw and immediate, a sort of blackened thrash, not super furious and fast, and not really super fucked up, more sort of pounding and loping and midtempo, but EW most definitely do have their specific peculiarities (are there any bands on Supernal who don't?), and that stuff is fully evident here.
"Approaching The Castle By Night" begins all moody and minor key, a sort of brooding intro before the band launch into some seriously heavy thrashing black metal. A bit chaotic, and fiercely furious, the drums wild and off kilter, the vocals weirdly sung / grunted, complete with a cool crunchy chugging breakdown, until the band whip out the synths and head heavenward with a stretch of swirling waltzy epic pomp, the drums suddenly a shuffle the guitars strumming beneath the soaring synths, and then back again, as if that was just some Mr. Hyde shit, it won't happen again. But oh it will. Again and again, and that's precisely what makes this record, and Ethereal Woods more than just some British black thrash outfit.
"Le Plesannz En Mary" begins with another surprisingly melodic intro, some post rocky blissy guitars over tangled tribal drumming, and then some super dramatic Goblin-y synths, before slipping back into something a bit more black metal. But even then the arrangements are fractured and not at all typical, a bit mathy, and a bit fucked up. Then there's "An Elizabethan Fantasy", that begins like some warped power pop jam, before settling into a more blackly dour groove, but never quite shedding that strange hooky intro. The drums here are especially strange, stuttery and hiccuppy and skittery. And once the song really gets rolling, there are all sorts of strange dynamic stops and starts, a really damaged sort of lurching post doom or something.
And so it goes for the rest of the record, plenty of weirdly poppy blackness, lots of warped keyboards, those gruff growly vocals draped over soaring epic guitars, and tangled up with strange stumbling drums, culminating in what might just be our favorite track, "Woodnymph", a sprawling 10 minute epic, whose main refrain is a ridiculously catchy ascending reach-for-the-heavens sort of majestic riff, paired with really abstract drumming, and a killer Sabbathy groove in-between, but that's only the beginning, over the next 10 minutes the track shifts from blissed out shoegazy doom, to lumbering crunchy chug, the total furious black thrash, and finally back to that awesome opening riff.
Way recommended, but only for those who like their black metal warped and twisted and poppy and pretty much not that black at all...
MPEG Stream: "Approaching The Castle By Night"
MPEG Stream: "Le Plesannz En Marys"
MPEG Stream: "An Elizabethan Fantasy"

FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN Black Trenchcoats & Swastikas 'n Shit (Panaxis) cd-r 12.98
Regarding the title and the cover art here, Ferrara Brain Pan - the lone pilot of San Francisco's obscurant project Forms Of Things Unknown - is taking the piss out of the perennial flirtations of Nazi culture found in experimental and post-punk musics over the past 30 or 40 years. It's an odd form of humor, but one that stops at the cover art, never to be brought up within these eccentric and disparate tracks that harken back to the early days of United Daires. Whimsical collages, complete with bongo-boy rhythms and cut-up vocal samples (which really could be an extract from Nurse With Wound's Funeral Music For Perez Prado), are juxtaposed against icy cold electronic tone workouts that draw from the precisely constructed, psychoacoustic experiments of Ryoji Ikeda or John Duncan. Ferrara also interjects his favorite instrument, the bass clarinet, on a few somber pieces that warp the brassy notes of a maudlin funereal passage into air raid sirens. As beautiful as some of these pieces can be, Ferrara's deft use of electronics and the digital razor blade is all the better. All of these tracks are demos, outtakes, or compilation rarities, including the Forms Of Things Unknown contribution to the Nurse With Wound remix album of Two Shaves And A Shine. While there is a disjointed quality to the album, this is a well needed investigation into this music of this seldom heard musician.
MPEG Stream: "Interrupted by Interior Design, Part 1: Speculum (for Marcel Duchamp)"
MPEG Stream: "Interrupted by Interior Design, Part II: From Here to Parker Posey"
MPEG Stream: "Quadrilateral"
MPEG Stream: "Elegy"

GLASS CANDY Deep Gems (Italians Do It Better) cd 13.98
While lots of B-side collections end up being mostly throwaway or forgettable tracks, we think we might be loving this collection of odds and ends from Glass Candy even MORE than their latest full length, Beat Box, which we already liked a lot. You can tell they must have been listening to lots of late-night cosmic disco and some great cold/synth-wave when they recorded these tracks as they really nail both of those sounds perfectly.
The combination of Johnny Jewell's great musical chops and Ida No's sizzling, sexy and detached vocal delivery is pretty much ideal. The sound of Deep Gems is pretty similar to Beat Box, even though these are all outtakes and B-sides, which makes it the perfect companion for folks already loving the album proper.
An unlikely contributor, Eyvind Kang, adds his violin and viola playing on a few tracks, but make no mistake this collection is all about slow burners and smoke filled late night dance floor grooves.
MPEG Stream: "Something Stirring In Space"
MPEG Stream: "Geto Boys"
MPEG Stream: "The Beat's Alive"

INCA ORE / ARGUMENTIX / TUNNELS / GHOST TO FALCO Post-Alarmist Drunken Safari (Oms-B Records) lp 12.98
Super limited lp sampling the current state of Portland underground sounds, with a couple well known outfits, and a couple brand new ones (at least to us), all paying tribute to a long lost Portland band called Alarmist.
Up first is Inca Ore, who most folks are probably familiar with, and her tracks here are lovely as always, dark and contemplative, lo-fi bedroom folk, deep bell-like tones and whispered vocals, the whole thing super hushed with weird rubbery bass and of course tone of reverb and delay. The strange thing, is that in between these super quiet songs, are super raucous crowd noise, people shouting and howling and cheering, it's weirdly jarring.
Up next is Argumentix, and for most folks it will definitely be an acquired taste. Beginning with some strange a capella almost off key vocalizing over a backdrop of murky crumbling distant drones, which quickly gives way to some super lo-fi hip hop (!), lots of bleeps and bloops and strange, sort of goofy rapping. A little bit Magnetic Fields actually. The last few tracks are chunks of abstract noise, weird ambience, clicks and buzz drone, and another bunch of goofy crooning vocals. Argumentix might take a few more exposures to win us over completely.
The flip side begins with Ghost To Falco, who we had heard OF, but never heard. Beginning with some random banter, and then a poem, we weren't sure what to expect, but then the band slips into some dark mopey slowcore, a bit reminiscent of The For Carnation, spidery guitars sad mumbled vocals, muted percussion, shuffling drums, dark and moody and quite nice, before slipping into a more traditional sounding, but no less dark sort of indie folk.
Finally, long time aQ fave Tunnels returns, but instead of deep long drones, or abstract freaked out psychfolk, he offers up something else entirely, starting things off with a wild squall of blown out psychguitar, but then adds some seriously tweaked, strangled mewly vocals. Hot on the heels of that comes some skittery new wave moaned vocals, gloomy synths, robotic drum machine, before the sound shifts again and becomes a sort of unhinged cabaret super dramatic deep vocals, lots of percussive crunch, all very over the top, yet still gloomy and goth and dark.
Weird record. And all over the place even for a 4 way split. Almost plays like a recording of some strange stage production, with bands maybe trying stuff they might not normally, or more likely channeling the spirit of Alarmist, who we have not heard, all a bit campy and very over the top in places, but balanced by the darker more somber bits.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in nice thick silk screened sleeves. Includes photocopied inserts with liner notes and track info.

INCAPACITANTS Box Is Stupid (Pica Disk) 10cd box 117.00
Man, sometimes this business of actually "reviewing" things just seems superfluous...or ridiculous... or even supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. All those terms apply in the case of this, a TEN cd box set by Japanese noise band Incapacitants, that says "Incapacitants Box Is Stupid" right on the front of it fergoshsakes. That's the title, in silvery metallic print on the lid of the black cardboard box that contains these ten compact discs full of sheer, unrelenting, exploding, horrible grinding noise by one of the most extreme Japanese noise bands in the biz. What more need we say? Other than to explain that Box Is Stupid, released on Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk label, heroically collects the contents of the duo's cassette-only releases from the nineties, stuff released in limited editions that we'd never seen or heard before. And they're all "remastered from the original master tapes" (which you might find to be a pretty funny statement after hearing this). Each cd comes in a cardboard sleeve, bearing graphics from the original cassette releases, or sometime a color photo of the actual cassette(s). The discs are: Stupid Is Stupid [Studio Materials], Stupid Is Stupid [Live Materials], Extreme Gospel Nights, Ad Nauseam [Edition Mikawa], Ad Nauseam [Edition Kosakai], Ad Nauseam [Edition Live], D.D.D.D., The Tongue, Cosmic Incapacitants, and I, Residuum. That's about XX hours of dense, dynamic, uber-distorted NOISE. Also packed in the box is a thick, 40 page booklet, with full color photos from various spasming live Incapacitants actions, and liner notes printed in both English and Japanese from fans/fellow musicians Otomo Yoshihide (Ground Zero, ONJO, etc.) and Jim Sauter (Borbetomagus), as well as personal band histories from both members of Incapacitants, founder Toshiji Mikawa and loyal sidekick Fumio Kosakai.
Otomo's essay is entitled "I Love The Incapacitants More Than Anything"!! He doesn't think Box Is Stupid. To him, Incapacitants are the ultimate questing expression of what got him into improvised music and noise to begin with, the legacy of Japanese free jazz masters Masayuki Takayanagi and Kaoru Abe. Elsewhere in these essays, we learn that Eye from the Boredoms was once Mikawa's collaborator in Incapacitants, early on before Kosakai joined. We also find out from Mikawa why they're called Incapacitants (it's worth quoting: "The term is a military one used to designate the various kinds of chemical substances which can be used in times of war or terrorism, not to injure or kill enemy combatants, but rather to render them incapable of resistance. My intention was consciously extreme - to attack the audience's auditory canals with my noise and thus render them incapable of fighting back."). It's clear from their writings that Mikawa and Kosakai both bring a lot of serious thought and artistic passion to the noise they make. And clear from the noise they make that they are INSANE. Just kidding. While listening to Box Is Stupid might drive some folks mad, others of us will find it almost psychedelically trance-inducing.
Incapacitants is not only beloved by Otomo Yoshihide, but they're also Allan here at AQ's all time favorite Japanese noise group. Why? Maybe he was smitten by the sharp graphics of their Alchemy label cd releases. Maybe he likes the idea of two middle-aged, mild mannered, slightly chubby Japanese professionals indulging in freaked out electronic mayhem. Maybe they ARE the noisiest. And maybe it just makes sense to pick a favorite Japanese noise artist, 'cause it would be tough to keep up with 'em all. Heck you could go broke trying to buy every Merzbow release, for example. (Though, Allan does own the 50-cd Merzbox, as do several others of us here at AQ.) While Box Is Stupid isn't a fetish object quite on the scale of the Merzbox, it still pushes many of the same absurd noise-lovin' buttons. Gotta have it, if you're a real Incapacitants fan. In fact, that's the definition of anyone who would buy this!
MPEG Stream: "Stupid Is Stupid"
MPEG Stream: "Bitter Insect"

ITHDABQUTH QLIPHOTH Fyre Walk With Me (Thou Shalt Kill!) cd 14.98
Black metal logos by their very nature are cryptic, for most impossible to read, a jumble of squiggles and spidery lines and upside down crosses, pentagrams, sharp angles and jagged edges. But once translated into actual letters, the magic is lost, it's usually BLOOD something, or DEMON something, or perhaps a very common word with wintery connotations, or some variation of the word forest. But what of the band with no 'logo', as their very name is an impossibly tangled web, whose letters have no right to be side by side, an unpronounceable jumble that somehow still manages to evoke mystery, to conjure up images of darkness and despair, even though we've never met anyone who knows how to actually pronounce it?
Such is the case with Russian duo Ithdabquth Qliphoth, who are another one of those bands who have long been aQ black metal favorites, but whose records we were never able to attain in enough abundance to review on the list. Until now.
But it's not just the name that makes these guys a mystery. Three long multi part songs, each an epic suite, with titles like "3 142 742 836 021 Times Hotter Than Earthly Fire", and "Your Fucking Creation Is Bleeding Away" or "Thy Omnislaying Revelation". And instead of names, the two band members are represented by strange Anthony Braxton like diagrams, many of the lyrics appear to be in Hebrew, and include shapes as well as words, and then the sound, at once raw and buzzing, furious and hateful, at the same time strangely melodic, the record begins with a jumble of samples, church organ, yodeling, the sound of terrified screams and the sound of fire, until the band lurch into action, a woozy midtempo black buzz, underpinned by a relentless double kick, strange processed inhuman vocals buried in the mix, all wreathed in a gauzy haze, even when the band switches gears and channels some classic Norwegian buzz, they still sound weirdly off kilter, a bit like Katatonia crossed with Immortal crossed with Burzum, but way more twisted. The melodies haunting and mournful, the guitars buzzy, but still dripping with effects, as if the whole record was being broadcast from within a fog filled cave.
The three song suites are just that, not single epic tracks, but each, three shorter tracks somehow linked, lyrically, thematically, hardly matters, they seem quite varied but do manage to flow into each other, from moody melancholia to blown out super distorted blackness, from weirdly melodic to harsh and raw, IQ take these opposing forces and tangle them up into something gloriously confusional. The opening track of the second suite, "Introduction To Burning Death" is a dramatic shift from the almost relentless onslaught of the opening salvo, a loping melodic metallic groove, that gives way to a half time, even more melodic breakdown, all epic and doomy, and almost dreamy, before shifting gears into a weirdly groovy, almost punky jam, that reminds us a bit of Khold, but super charged , with the relentless double kick drumming, and a harsh distorted ambience wrapped around the whole thing, By the third part of the second act (each act is numbered 0., 00. and 000. by the way) the band have returned to something much more gnarled and truly black, but still shot through with streaks of melody and melancholy. Which segues smoothly into the final 3 part suite, from furious epic black buzz, to grinding downtuned crunch, to soaring melodic blur, to crunchy chugging chaotic mathy pummel, to brief folky drift to warped doomy dirge, sounding almost like a black metal Paradise Lost for a moment, before ending everything with several minutes of crumbling distorted blackened drones, deep resonant tones, gurgled voices, strange percussive crunch, blurred rumbles and what almost sounds like some super distorted ping pong, all buried beneath layer after layer of smeared bleary black buzz.
Packaged in 6 panel black and white digipacks adorned with all manner of symbols and lyrics and mysterious liner notes. LIMITED TO 777 COPIES. Every one hand numbered in silver ink.
MPEG Stream: "Qliphothick Lesser Pentagram"
MPEG Stream: "Introduction To Burning Death / 3 142 742 836 021 Times Hotter Than Earthly Fire"

KULTIVATOR Barndomens Stigar (Mellotronen) 2cd 28.00
We're always on about '70s prog. Well what about prog in the '80s? Here's a nice example, though it's from the very early in the decade (recorded 1980, released 1981) so it's practically '70s anyway. A rather obscure Swedish outfit called Kultivator, whose sole album Barndomens Stigar (which boasts a b&w engraving on the cover by none other than conceptual artist & experimental musician Leif Elggren) blends the quirky herky jerky of prog complexity with blissful melody, tilting at times towards the twee whilst menacingly muscle-flexing at others. There's sizzling instrumental solo sections, and also much in the way of delightful female vocals (mostly wordless ba-ba-ba's).
Kultivator were a quartet, with lots of Fender Rhodes electric piano, as well as other organ and synth keyboards. Also recorder and/or flute. And on occasional backing vocals, a boy's choir. Yup, very proggy indeed. Armchair prog percussionists are provided with their fair share of air-drumming opportunities, percolating energetically as the drumming here does!
All those keyboards create a moody, slightly jazzistic sound which reminds us a bit of the brilliant Bo Hansson, '70s Swedish prog royalty. There's also a definite Magma influence at work (the thick bass riffing and martial drumming in the middle of "Kara Jord" for instance, leading some to go so far as to label Kultivator a genuine "zeuhl" band), and you'll hear hints of traditional Scandinavian folk music as well. Further reference points: fellow Swedes Samla Mammas Manna and Kebnekajse, also '70s UK prog like Genesis and Gentle Giant, RIO a la Henry Cow, and specifically Canterbury groups like Soft Machine, among others. Guess that's what happens when you make prog in 1980, with a whole previous decade of genius from which to draw inspiration! Although Kultivator, um, certainly cultivated their own unique spin on what came before. We'd also say this is a good one for folks who enjoyed the modern day Swedish prog of Gosta Berlings Saga, reviewed here last year.
This brand-new reissue on the Mellotronen label features three bonus tracks added to the original LP's eight cuts, plus a whole extra bonus disc, called Waiting Paths, featuring four songs recorded by the now-reunited band in 2006. Since they already seemed a bit "out of time" (& we don't mean rhythmically!) even back in '81, it's no surprise that this more recent material sounds like a more modern Kultivator... but not that much more modern. Also included in this nice digipacked reissue, a big booklet with vintage photos and lengthy liner notes. Prog-lovin' AQ customers, check this out!
MPEG Stream: "Grottekvarnen"
MPEG Stream: "Barndomens Stigar"

LIGHT OF SHIPWRECK In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream (Gears Of Sand) cd-r 11.98
Light Of Shipwreck, while a long time favorite around here, has always been a tough outfit to describe. In the past we've compared the sound of LoS to Wolf Eyes, This Heat and the Necks, but that only scratches the surface. There was all sorts of blurred digital shimmer, dubby beats, lurching almost metallic heaviness, it really was a wild assemblage of sounds, but they were somehow woven into something listenable, heck, more than listenable, something pretty fucked up and far out.
So finally, another full length, and as we might have expected, while some of those references still apply, In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream is a whole 'nother beast.
Two loooong songs, the first clocking in at nearly half an hour, and beginning with a strange cacophony of industrial clatter, warm low end pulsations, a sort of muted noisescape, that manages to be heavy, but strangely soothing, until the drums come in, and then it's just chaos, programmed beats careen all over the place, skittering and pulsing beneath a suddenly active swirling squall of moaning feedback, of grinding metallic crunch, a dark billowing cloud shot through with bits of melody, chunks of throbbing bass, but for the most part the sounds is an ever shifting cloud of hiss and buzz and blur surrounding a looped skeletal beat. Eventually all of the skitter and pound, the skree and crunch slough off, leaving a gorgeous heaving river of low end drones and layered buzz, thick and dense and blackened, slowly drifting like some sonic black tar, until the sound again shifts, more of the low end falling away, leaving a gleaming and glistening shimmer, all soft edged high end that is swallowed up by the darkness almost as quickly as it emerged. The track buzzes and crawls, a moaning drone behemoth, before it finally dissipates leaving nothing but a spectral whisper.
The second track, slightly shorter at 21 minutes, is another multi part epic. This one a gloomy gothic sprawl, again, a sky full of dark clouds, wrapped around more off kilter programmed skitter. The tones thick and heavy, moaning and groaning, like the sound of hellish beasts letting out their final wails of anguish, or some blackened city crumbling to dust, with nothing but the drums to play it out. Weirdly tribal and raw, it could almost be some super obscure eighties goth rock combo, jamming out, drugged out of their gourds, unfurling some impossibly otherworldly murk jam, but it too gives way to something more ethereal and ephemeral, the drums still present, more as echoes, eventually dropping out completely, leaving nothing but shadowy tones to drift weightless in a sky full of FX. Weird as hell, even for a band who already traffic in the weird, but if you're into droney heavy fucked up ambient drum heavy noise drenched weirdness, then In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream should definitely hit the spot.
MPEG Stream: "In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream I"
MPEG Stream: "In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream II"

LUTOMYSL De Profundis (Supernal) cd 15.98
Not sure how it happened, but we've never listed any records by Ukrainian one man black metal horde Lutomysl. Even though most of the black metal folks, ourselves included, are WAY into Lutomysl's furious black metal buzz. So let's remedy that shall we...
Sonically similar to many of his countrymen, Drudkh, Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Lucifugum (of which he was once a member), Astrofaes, Blood Of Kingu... etc. Lutomysl spews raw blasting grim Ukrainian black metal of the sort we never seem to tire of, buzzing chainsaw guitars, blasting double kick beats, harsh vokills that go from weird and mysterious clean singing to full on suicidal shriek, and a surprising amount of dynamics, lots of twisted convoluted transitions, strange off kilter rhythms, all wound up into the otherwise seemingly straight ahead grim blackness. But like other Ukrainian BM, there is also plenty of melody, even at its harshest and most frenzied, the riffs are catchy, and often unravel into something almost folky before exploding back in a furious onslaught of buzz and howl.
The songs are peppered with distinctly un-black metal breaks, giving the songs a seriously avant / progressive vibe here and there, which nicely balances the relentless lightning fast drone drenched buzz that constitutes the core of Lutomysl's sound. There's also plenty of bass, or at least low end, which as we've discussed before is rare in black metal, and probably goes a long way to making this record sound so thick and heavy.
Grim and kvlt and necro, and just weird enough to keep it interesting, essential for fans of all things black and Ukrainian, and heck, probably pretty worthwhile if you just need a buzzing black soul crushing blast of sonic fury.
MPEG Stream: "Thou Shalt Shine!"
MPEG Stream: "The Blade Of Reality"
MPEG Stream: "Peace Is Not Found (Ode To Lucifer)"

MADLIB Speto Da Rua: Dirty Brasilian Crates Vol. 1 (Mochilla) cd 14.98
We're often a little wary when hip-hop producers and DJs make mixes that seem all about showing off what an awesome record collection they have.
But on the other hand, we've always been fans of Madlib's many productions and we are of course rabid fans of Brasilian music in all forms, so there's plenty to love about this latest mix. Collected during the same trip to Recife documented on the dvd Brasilintime: Batucada Com Discos we reviewed a while back, this is the first in a series of six mixes of the most obscure corners of Musica Popular Brasileira: Folkloric Chants, Samba, Bossa, and Tropicalia. There are only a couple of songs we recognize, but we've been playing this non-stop since we got it as it's a mind-melting hour long trip that unveils one solid gem after another.
MPEG Stream: "Speto Da Rua 1"
MPEG Stream: "Speto Da Rua 2"
MPEG Stream: "Speto Da Rua 3"

MOUNT EERIE WITH JULIE DOIRON & FRED SQUIRE Lost Wisdom (P.W. Elverum & Sun, Destroyers & Releasers Of Music & Worlds) lp 16.98
One of our highlights from the last list (and oneof Andee's new favorite records) now available on vinyl:
Mount Eerie has always been a bit hit or miss for us, same with the Microphones, both musical projects of the quite prolific Phil Elverum. The sound tends towards a hushed downer bedroom folk, simple instrumentation, heartfelt lyrics, vocals almost whispered, but various record have twisted that sound into different shapes, especially in the Microphones, where Elverum would add bursts of distorted psychedelic rock, jagged guitars, or horns, or Stereolab style Moog buzz, but the thing with the Microphones was that the sound was always better than the songs it was wrapped around. With Mount Eerie, it seemed Elverum was exploring a more intimate side to his sound, his Sentridoh to the Microphones' Sebadoh. But even then, we were never totally taken with any of the Mount Eerie releases. At least until now.
Lost Wisdom is absolutely gorgeous. We're tempted to credit the addition of Eric's Trip's Julie Doiron, but while that's a HUGE part of it, the songs here are fantastic. Recorded beautifully, wonderfully arranged. At times it sounds like an acoustic Built To Spill covering the first Iron & Wine record, if that makes any sense. Acoustic guitars, some subtle distorted crunch, simple barely there percussion, it's mostly about the vocals, Elverum and Doiron creating amazing harmonies, each wandering off on their own here and there, before returning once again only to get all wrapped up in each others' melodies. Sweet and sorrowful and sad, dreamy and melancholy, Elverum slips from warm soft croon to fluttery falsetto, Doiron's voice is fantastic as always, so melodic and rich, but also raw and rough around the edges, passionate and the perfect foil to Elverum's sad boy swoon. And the songs are gorgeous. Minor key and strangely lush for being so stripped down. The opening title track is worth the price of admission alone, just listen to the sound sample, so dark and beautiful, so wistful and haunting, a strange arrangement, full of tension and release, and some gorgeously obtuse melodies, even some strange room clatter in the background that ends up sounding like as much a part of the song as any of the instruments. We've been playing this whole record like crazy, but that first track, wow, just might be one of our favorite songs of the year.
WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Lost Wisdom"
MPEG Stream: "Voice In Headphones"
MPEG Stream: "You Swan Go On"

MUNRO, CHARLIE QUARTET Eastern Horizons (Votary) cd 24.00
When you think of legendary sixties jazz, you probably don't think of Australia, but this 1967 disc from Charlie Munro and his quartet might just change all that.
Arguably one of the most important jazz groups to emerge from Australia, Munro's Eastern Horizons most definitely predates other more well known Eastern Influenced jazz discs of that era, and is just as good. It's definitely free jazz, but the skronk level is quite low, in fact much of the record is moody and muted, due in no small part to the presence of cello and bass violin which add a warm wistful quality to many of the songs. Plus there's marimba and vibraharp as well as "brushes on record cover" (!).
Record opener "Islamic Suite" definitely sets the tone, with the horns emulating Eastern instruments, the melodies appropriately Eastern as well, based on an Arab scale according to the liner notes, long form ragas, drones, that slip smoothly into some more traditional sounding bop, but even then, the Eastern influence is still strong. "Malahari Raga" is in fact based on an Indian raga and begins all woozy and swoony, before the drums kick in double time and the song is tranformed into something much more skittery and jazzy. Many of the remaining tracks are delicate and dark, fluttering flute over warm fluid basslines, muted trumpets and lush marimba melodies, until "Minimum", a sprawling free jazz jam, where the horns finally let loose and go wild, pausing briefly for an awesome extended drum solo. There's one more mournful jazzy ballad before the record closes with another chunk of jumpin' jive, skittery rhythms, soaring horns, and an awesome bass solo outro. Killer stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Islamic Suite"
MPEG Stream: "David"
MPEG Stream: "Minimum"

NADJA / ATAVIST / SATORI Infernal Procession... And Then Everything Dies (Cold Spring) cd 13.98
This record was pretty much custom made for most of you. A three way split of extreme heavy bliss out dream doom, featuring the WAY too prolific Nadja, who continue to get a pass, because we STILL can't get enough of -that- sound, the not nearly prolific enough Atavist, and a new name to add to the list of bands to obsess over, Satori, a duo featuring the head honcho of the always awesome Cold Spring label who made this disc happen.
Not sure if there was a reason for this three way split, a tour or something, or maybe it's just cuz the three bands fit pretty nicely together, whatever the reason for this happening, we're glad it did.
Starting with Nadja, who again offer up a gorgeously gauzy sprawl of Jesu meets M83, all super distorted crumbling melodies, lurching buried in the mix drum machine, weary ethereal vocals, melancholy minor key melodies, wrapped into an awesome chunk of doomed metallic slowcore, lots of dynamics and texture, a loooooong slow build a la Godspeed, with an epic and triumphant climax. So good. One of the best Nadja track yet maybe.
Atavist do their own sort of doom thing, this time a skeletal mathy post rock, clean guitars spread out over spare drumming, very Slint-ish, all spidery and delicate, until a minute or so in, when the hammer falls, shrieked blackened vox, super distorted crumbling guitars, pounding percussion, a strange flurry of off kilter jagged mathiness, before it's back to the moody Slinty sprawl. Eventually, the track becomes blown out and so in-the-red all the instruments seem to melt together, until the band unfurl a blackened post metal jam that might sound more at home on a Deathspell Omega record, culminating in a gorgeous almost symphonic sounding high end coda.
Finally, Satori, who have a lot to prove in such esteemed company, take an entirely different tack, with processed garbled vocals, over distant whirring drones, a creepy hellish machinelike soundscape of post industrial hiss and grind, deep rumbling swells, thick hissing walls of muted buzz, buried melodies, disembodied voices and buried melodies, all very grim and apocalyptic, think MZ412, Lustmord or Wolf Eyes, some seriously haunting and harrowing black ambience.
Packaged in a multi paneled black and white jacked and housed in a plastic sleeve. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: NADJA "Time Is Our Disease"
MPEG Stream: ATAVIST "Certitude"

NARROWS, THE Benjamin (Wantage USA) cd 12.98
BACK IN STOCK! This Record Of The Week from May, 2007 is still awesome and not in nearly enough folk's collections...
It's been ages since we've heard from Bellingham Washington's Narrows, whose last two (and only two) records, Alligator and The Skull At Life Size, were huge AQ favorites. Our Narrows obsession was solidified by a mindblowing show at the Hemlock where the band laid waste to all post rock past and present in a matter of 30 or 40 minutes, managing to rock so hard, even with the frontman / guitar player seated the whole time. A mix of lurching loping metallic bombast and lilting whispery post rock moodiness, not like the current crop of metallic post rockers though, no the Narrows were something much more unique... all the best parts of nineties mathrock, June Of 44, Slint, Rodan, but filtered through that weird Bellingham outsider vibe (also responsible for Reeks And The Wrecks) and lovingly wrapped in some serious skull crushing riffage. And of course songs. Killer songs. Moody and mournful, personal and emotional, and catchy as all get out.
We had sort of given up on the Narrows, we knew there was a record in the works, but they sort of seemed to drop off the musical map completely, until all of our fears were assuaged by the sudden appearance of this here brand new full length, that is somehow even better than their first two discs, heavier, prettier, weirder....
Beginning with the nine minute near perfect post rock epic "The Sasquatch", a sequence of big groaning downtuned riffage, huge pounding drums all wrapped around a strange insistent loping groove, with wailed super emo vocals, like a prettier Melvins almost, or a resurrected Engine Kid, some Unwound, a little bit of Sub Pop, a little Amrep. These super dynamic nine minutes might as well go on for 90 minutes as far as we're concerned.
The second track, the even longer "Last Of The Norsemen", is all slithery slowcore, with crooned sadboy vocals, spidery guitar melodies, shuffled drums, until the crashing chorus, a gorgeous minor key stop start lurch, along the same lines as Codeine's "Cave In", with burbling underwater bass added to the mix, and a convoluted mathy arrangement, before drifting back into the moody lope of the first few minutes, peppered with strange slippery guitar chords and unexpected dynamics, somehow totally off kilter and alien sounding, but super catchy and melodic and surprisingly pretty!
"Quellish" is up next with its serpentine distorted crunch and crashing blown out drumming, letting up here and there for some muted shuffle and croon, before the bombast is brought in again, a super emotional musical seesaw, that manages to subvert the tired loud-soft-loud-soft thing and turn it into something new and exciting sounding.
As if the deal wasn't already sealed for best post-math-whatever-rock / slowcore record ever already, they finish it off with the heartwrenching "Over and Out", a sort of damaged Pinback on horse tranquilizers mathy groove, with big booming Albini-ish drums, over blooping underwater bass, and slithery minor key distorted guitar melodies, and a super subtle hook to die for. The song has a wicked, super dramatic coda with crumbling distorted riffing, and super emotional leads, yeah LEADS, what self respecting post rock band can whip out the leads and bring you to your knees without sounding the least bit cheesy? Can't think of very many (or any really)... but The Narrows pull it off effortlessly. There's an "Over and Out" part two, but it's more sort of a coda, that now burned into your ears/heart/soul melody is pulled apart, wrapped in some twangy Morricone-ish guitar, some tinkling music box like keyboards, and allowed to unfurl lazily into the distance, becoming more and more abstract and indistinct, culminating in seven minutes of silence... Needless to say one of our favorite new records, pushing all our buttons, old math rock, new post rock, metal, pop, heavy, pretty, strange... Absolutely and utterly recommended (as is seeing these guys live if you get the chance)!
MPEG Stream: "The Sasquatch"
MPEG Stream: "Last Of The Norsemen"

NATH, PANDIT PRAN Earth Groove: The Voice Of Cosmic India (Change / Mississippi) lp 11.98
***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***
Like a Pavlovian bell, just the mere utterance of this vinyl-only Portland label gets everyone aflutter, ready to eagerly acquire, no matter what the sounds contained inside. We suppose if they put out a record solely of sounds made by cement mixers, back-hoes or traffic noises and packaged it in a sweet homemade album cover with nostalgic photos of antique construction equipment, and called it something like "My Heart Belongs To The Public Works", we'd sell out of them just as fast as their awesome compilations of pre-war blues or their reissues of obscure post-punk groups. As cool as that actually sounds, the not one, but TWO Mississippi releases we have this week are both super stellar and we know everyone is going to want at least one if not both of them.
Earth Groove is a reissue of the debut 1968 recording by Master Hindustani classical singer Pandit Pran Nath. Considering his major influence on the giants of twentieth-century minimalist composition and drone music of all forms, as well as the amazing dearth of available recordings on cd let alone on vinyl, this is a MUST HAVE!! Featuring two fantastic side long ragas, Raaga Bhoopali designed for meditation after sunset and Raaga Asavari designed for meditation after sunrise, this is spiritual music of the highest order made for the purpose of destroying negative energy. But it is its amazing sounds of buzzing tamboura drones and tabla rhythms with Pran Nath's perfectly intonated and slowly unfolding vocal style that should please all fans of otherworldly cosmic sounds.
Master of the Kirana Ghirana school, it is believed that Pran Nath spent five years of his life in a cave perfecting his austere intonated singing style. Heavily emphasizing the alap, the opening section of the raga that is unmetered, improvised and unaccompanied (except for the tamboura drone), that sets up a slow tempo and can often last more than an hour. Pran Nath's unwavering adherence to the principles of his vocal style was not that popular to the ears of modern Indians, but it is this recording that reached the open minds of minimalist composer La Monte Young and visual artist Marion Zazeela who persuaded Pran Nath to move to America and start his own school of music in New York. Just rattling off the names of his top students shows what an indelible influence Pran Nath was to late twentieth century music: Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine, Henry Flynt, Jon Hassell, Douglas Leedy, Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, Jon Gibson, Yoshi Wada, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, W. A. Mathieu, Sufi Pir Shabda Kahn, Catherine Christer Hennix, and Simone Forti. Enough said.
After being completely enraptured with the extensive and expensive double disc Midnight we reviewed a while back, some folks may not have had the time or means to see what we were raving about, so it's really nice to have this perfect and affordable introduction to Pran Nath's intense and penetratingly beautiful sound world, while they last!

NECROPLASMA My Hearse, My Redemption (Satanaic Propaganda) cd 13.98
This is not a new record, but we have been dying to review something, ANYTHING, by these terrifying Swedes, and this is as good a place to start as any, their debut full length from 2002. Folks familiar with Swedish black metal will probably at least have a rough idea of what they're getting into, Watain, Marduk, Kill (in fact Kill and Necroplasma share a member or two), you know, fast and furious and frenzied and fucked up, but you'll doubtfully be prepared for just how intense and heavy and utterly soul crushing Necroplasma really are.
Beginning with a weird fuzzy Brainbombs-ish bassline, the band almost immediately launch into an impossibly blasting onslaught, lightning fast blastbeat, super blown out distorted bass (which is probably what makes this sound so fucking heavy, most black metal records have ZERO bass), wild insectoid guitar buzz, inhuman throat shredding demon vokills, only the occasional breakdown, where just the main riff is unfurled only to be obliterated seconds later by the band lurching into yet another frenzied attack.
Within all this blasting and buzzing, there is some seriously twisted shit going on too, within the title track there are some strange stretches of muddy muted tribal weirdness happening, "Heavens Above" is a fucked up lurching dirge that sounds almost like an entirely different band, until the sound suddenly launches into a hyperspeed blast, the opening riff for "Blessed By Him" is a dead ringer for Bastro's "Shoot Me A Deer", the same sort of muted damaged chug, but none of that stuff is what Necroplasma are all about, those are merely drops of black blood in NP's sonic cauldron of crusty filth and sick buzz, a fantastically fucked up and utterly relentless black metal assault that makes the music of most of their compatriots sound downright tame in comparison.
MPEG Stream: "Abyssic Infernum"
MPEG Stream: "Shallow Voices"
MPEG Stream: "My Hearse, My Redemption"

NEHIL, SETH & JGRZINICH Stria (Erewhon) cd 14.98
Strangely enough, we had never managed to get any of these records in stock when it originally came out in 2002 as the companion to the now out of print album Confluence, which had been released on the Intransitive label. Stria is one of many collaborative projects between these two impressive sound artists, straddling the realm of dronescape delirium and dislocated field recordings. Seth Nehil and John Grzinich first began working together in the humidity of Austin, Texas in the revolving door collective of Alial Straa, which also proved formative for Michael Northam and Olivia Block. But as all of these folks wandered to various corners of the globe (Grzinich in Estonia, Nehil to Portland, Block to Chicago, and who the hell knows where Northam currently calls home), the collaborations have become impressively focused projects, even as they take several years to complete. Like its companion piece, Stria centers upon the idea of resonance, spread across three longform pieces. The first of which collects various bowed tones from a huge ensemble of musicians and twists them all into a sinewy mass of slowburning drones and gradual progressions. The reference in the liner notes to Alvin Lucier makes complete sense in view of this impressive dronesmear crescendo on par with anything that Jonathan Coleclough or Organum had mustered. The second piece is more in keeping with Grzinich's recent work with clattering stone and found objects in concrete bunkers, as scrabbling sounds and tactile noises echo back and forth against murky atmospheres. The final piece returns to the drone work with motors agitating long thin wires with phase shifting oscillations and eerie turbulence rattling what otherwise would be some very pretty ambience, but instead becomes a sublime listening experience. An excellent piece of work all around.
MPEG Stream: "Tome Gather"
MPEG Stream: "Arboreal"
MPEG Stream: "The Mirrored Corner"

OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD Polished Glass Autobahn / Galactic Masada (Dirty Knobby) 7" 4.50
For those of you who haven't heard, Birchville Cat Motel is no more. Similarly, BCM mainman Campbell Kneale has also decided to close up shop on his long running Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. But fear not, 'tis not the end, merely a new beginning.
Taking on the name of a recent Birchville record, Kneale will be henceforth known as Our Love Will Destroy The World. Quite emo actually, but then BCM was always pretty emo stuff, especially in the drone / dirge / noise field. And if you throw on the B side of this the debut offering from the newly christened OLWDTW, it may seem to you like has changed. Another glorious BCM style sprawl of looped guitars and processed melodies, layered textures, swooping backwards pulsations, tangled bits of guitar and fragmented chunks of soft noise all blurred and smeared into a gorgeous woozy dreamy expanse of soft focus free noise bliss, would have fit just fine on any of the recent BCM records, if anything, it's slightly more pretty.
But flip the record over, and you'll see that maybe everything has changed after all. A weird nineties style Warp Records groove, all skittery robotic funk, with warped gurgly basslines, but also some weirdly out of place strummed acoustic guitars, all buried beneath constantly shifting layers of looped and processed sounds. A bizarre mashup of blissy free folk and alien dancefloor groove that sort of works. Will definitely hit the spot for folks who have been digging the dancier sounds coming out of the Astral Social Club camp. Curious to hear where Kneale takes his Love next.
And as is the case with many a 7" single, no indication as to whether it's meant to be played on 33 rpm or 45, we're going with 33, sound a bit more 'right' that way, but you never know, at 45, one side gets all high end and Sunroof!-y, while the other gets manic and spastic and almost skweee-like. Pick your poison.

OVSKUM s/t (Raging Bloodlust) cassette 5.98
While we wait patiently for the long awaited first proper lp release (reissuing some of the previous cassettes) from Italy's obscure black metallers Ovskum, coming soon on the newly launched Obscure Origins label, we're graced, or cursed perhaps by what is essentially a new full length from these masters of mysterious blackened mood music. Four tracks, nearly 40 minutes, of a sound that really can hardly be compared to any other black metal groups. A gorgeously blackened languid doom, abject and miserable and suicidal, but also hauntingly pretty, the guitars clean, seemingly floating over a bed of buzz, tangled minor key melodies, the drums a barely there pound, the whole sound so weary and woozy, the vocals appropriately anguished and howled, but way back in the mix, it's the guitars that weave the magic here, lots of harmonics, spare almost post rock guitar lines, the sound not so much loping as sort of slowed down and dragging, like listening to Make A Change Kill Yourself, with someone pressing the finger down on the vinyl, lethargic and warbly, black, and sorrowful, and haunting and almost otherworldly. A bit like a less distinctly doomy Skepticism, or maybe like a black metal Mazzy Star or something. That same sort of gauzy shoegazey quality, but not the way most bands use that quality to get all blissy, Ovskum take that sound somewhere much more abstract and dark, a truly creepy, haunting, mopey blackened slowcore. So fucking great.

PAVEMENT Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed. (Matador) 2cd 15.98
By the time we reached Pavement's Brighten The Corners, the band had ceased being a fucked up lo-fi noise drenched fractured pop underground phenom, and had transformed into something much more respectable. They embodied nineties college rock, they were most definitely indie rock darlings big time. But to be fair, with what sounded like a bid for commercial success, the band did manage to retain plenty of their snarky humor, and the hooks and catchiness that used to be buried under sheets of white noise or recorded from within a tin can on a dictaphone, are now on display for all to see, the sound lush and thick and polished and rocking and heck, it suits them. The opening one two punch of "Stereo" and "Shady Lane" is pretty tough to beat. "Stereo" with it's crunchy guitar, and goofy lyrics about Geddy Lee, and Shady Lane, with it's lilting sing songy main melody, and that super simple guitar line that is more catchy than you might thing at first. And a gorgeously, slightly atonal chorus seals the deal. Fuck it, by this time, we had made peace with the fact that the band would never make another Westing or Slanted, and all that was left to do was to luxuriate in Pavement's twisted crafty pop genius, and so we did. And so we are again. Pop music has definitely changed a lot in the last decade, so it's refreshing to hear this stuff again, and it's comforting to realize just how great it still sounds. The record proper is peppered with some weirdness, some fractured production, some strange druggy jams, some sung spoken Velvets style jams, but those are all part and parcel of Pavement's weird lovable pop universe.
As with past deluxe reissues. Brighten gets all the bells and whistles, a gorgeous digipak, housed in a fancy diecut slipcover, a HUGE booklet with essays and liner notes and track info and tons of photos, and of course, a shitload of B-sides and unreleased tracks, a whole extra disc in fact, including some BBC sessions, a Clean cover (!), some live tracks, live on the radio performances, the aforementioned multitude of B-sides and two versions of the Space Ghost Theme!!!
MPEG Stream: "Stereo"
MPEG Stream: "Shady Lane / J Vs. S"
MPEG Stream: "Transport Is Arranged"
MPEG Stream: "Date w/ IKEA"

PLASTICIAN Beg To Differ (Terror Rhythm) cd 24.00
Debut record from this legendary UK grime / dubstep DJ, and it's just more of that sound we just can't get enough of, dark brooding basslines, skeletal skitter, that loping instantly recognizable dubstep groove.
Take "Vio-lent", which begins with some haunting cinematic strings, locked into strange loops, while the beat stutters right along side it, and some seriously ominous low end rumbles up from below. This is like horror movie grime, like a dubstep Gravediggaz. Same goes for "Shallow Grave" another creepy grimy jam, the bass a ghostly presence lurking behind the shuffling beat, peppered with disembodied voices and smashing glass. "Japan" takes the same elements but mixes in some traditional Japanese instruments for some dark and moody Eastern style dubstep. "Hocus Pocus" is super spare and sparse, the only melodic element being a looped fuzzy bass riff and sirens wailing in the distance.
But the dubstep slips into grime territory with the addition of seriously grime-y gangstas Skepta and Frisco, on "Real Things", the two duel wildly, their tongue twisting flows all tangled up with the fractured dubbed out electro underneath, and then there's "Intensive Snare", which is a grime hit if there ever was one. A killer hook heavy groove, a wicked catchy chorus, and some killer vocals from Skepta, while beneath him the bass buzzes and rumbles, and the drums throb and shuffle. Fucking awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Shallow Grave"
MPEG Stream: "Vio-Lent"
MPEG Stream: "Intensive Snare"

PORN + MERZBOW And the Devil Makes Three (Truth Cult) cd 17.98
Woah. Somebody somewhere just had a fantasy come true, and it's got nothing to do with the bondage photos that often adorn Merbow releases. It's Japanese noise master Masami "Merzbow" Akita jamming with American stoner rock outfit Porn, who feature none other than the mighty Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. Also Tim Moss on guitar, and heaviness engineering guru Billy Anderson on bass! Add in the Seldon Hunt art/design and this promises to be quite heavy, or noisy, or both. Definitely both, though it sounds much more like a Merzbow record than anything else. Shrieking electronic skree all over the place, with some plodding boombastic drums and heavy guitar riffs struggling through the dense muzzzzzz. Kinda what you might expect!
There are a dozen Roman numeral numbered tracks, each one individualized with Merzbow's noise dynamically varied and vibrating, from crinkum-crankum glitch to high pitched whine to howling, whooshing zapping. Porn's contributions (occasionally) add more structure and momentum. Distorted (natch) vocals surface at one point, the drumming speeds up.... or at other times, despite Porn's presence, the Merzbovian brutal harsh noise simply takes over entirely.
There's certainly precedent for Merbow to mix it up with "rock" music. His Hard Lovin' Man album some years back featured samples of Deep Purple, ferinstance - and of course let's not forget about his couple collaborations with Boris!! Maybe, like those, Porn + Merzbow will be a "gateway drug" for some stoner/doom fans to get into the total noise thing (note however that Merzbow here is far more extreme than his relatively subtle performance on Rock Dream with Boris).
Also, as (in principle) Merzbow fans, but ones often overwhelmed by his prolific output, we're quite partial to his collaborative efforts, giving high marks to recent discs he did with Keiji Haino and Richard Pinhas, juxtapositions like this one which somehow enhance the effect of Merbow's noise aesthetic.
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "VI"

PORN + MERZBOW And the Devil Makes Three (Truth Cult) lp 19.98
Woah. Somebody somewhere just had a fantasy come true, and it's got nothing to do with the bondage photos that often adorn Merbow releases. It's Japanese noise master Masami "Merzbow" Akita jamming with American stoner rock outfit Porn, who feature none other than the mighty Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. Also Tim Moss on guitar, and heaviness engineering guru Billy Anderson on bass! Add in the Seldon Hunt art/design and this promises to be quite heavy, or noisy, or both. Definitely both, though it sounds much more like a Merzbow record than anything else. Shrieking electronic skree all over the place, with some plodding boombastic drums and heavy guitar riffs struggling through the dense muzzzzzz. Kinda what you might expect!
There are a dozen Roman numeral numbered tracks, each one individualized with Merzbow's noise dynamically varied and vibrating, from crinkum-crankum glitch to high pitched whine to howling, whooshing zapping. Porn's contributions (occasionally) add more structure and momentum. Distorted (natch) vocals surface at one point, the drumming speeds up.... or at other times, despite Porn's presence, the Merzbovian brutal harsh noise simply takes over entirely.
There's certainly precedent for Merbow to mix it up with "rock" music. His Hard Lovin' Man album some years back featured samples of Deep Purple, ferinstance - and of course let's not forget about his couple collaborations with Boris!! Maybe, like those, Porn + Merzbow will be a "gateway drug" for some stoner/doom fans to get into the total noise thing (note however that Merzbow here is far more extreme than his relatively subtle performance on Rock Dream with Boris).
Also, as (in principle) Merzbow fans, but ones often overwhelmed by his prolific output, we're quite partial to his collaborative efforts, giving high marks to recent discs he did with Keiji Haino and Richard Pinhas, juxtapositions like this one which somehow enhance the effect of Merbow's noise aesthetic.
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "VI"

REED, RICK Celestial Mudpie (self released) 3cd-r 30.00
Rick Reed isn't really doing himself any favors by calling this anthology of his electronic compositions 'Celestial Mudpie', but if you have the opportunity to sit down with the man for a drink (and you really should!), the title suits his personality perfectly. A Texas gentleman with a bawdy side to match his ever charming demeanor, Rick Reed does not exude the bookish reclusiveness one might attribute to an avid consumer and composer of delirious if occasionally claustrophobic smears of analogue electronics fashioned after the likes of Klaus Schulze, Arcane Device, and Conrad Schnitzler. It's a little strange that Reed has been off the radar here at Aquarius for all these years, as he's released a handful of recordings through Ecstatic Peace, Elevator Bath, and Beta-Lactam Ring. He's also developed a close working relationship with the avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, having scored several soundtracks. As relative newcomers to his work, we were flabbergasted at how good Reed has been over the years thanks to this fantastic compendium of works that date back from the past 2 decades. His primary instruments are Moog, sine-wave generator, and shortwave radio which must go through innumerable analogue treatments and filters before entering the domain of the digital workstation. Rarified atmospherics and spectral transmissions dominate his compositions which can start as hypnotizing electronic meditations on the music of the spheres before accelerating to a dramatic crescendo of blistered vibration, gaping drones, and some Broken Flag teeth gnashing menace found on the earlier works. He's included both tracks from a recent picture disc LP released on Elevator Bath (for those not inclined to vinyl), as well as several of those excerpted soundtracks for Ken Jacobs, plus some works dating back as far as 1986. Each of the three discs come with a hand-painted piece of artwork of densely sprayed paint, that somehow does not reek of petrochemicals. Kudos to Reed for not stinking up the joint. And kudos to Reed for such impressive work.
MPEG Stream: "Dreamz"
MPEG Stream: "Hidden Voices Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Vermillion"

TETREAULT, MARTIN / KID KOALA Phon-o-victo (Les Disques Victo) cd 15.98
By now, most readers of the aQ list know just how much we love the turntable, and all the non musical sounds associated with it, hiss and crackle and pop, skips and scrapes, we've reviewed records featuring turntables without records, recordings of ONLY the surface noise of lps, we love it. So of course we love folks like Philip Jeck, Martin Tetreault and Strotter Inst., who have truly stretched the boundaries of turntable as instrument, but our first exposure to what could be done with a turntable, as was probably lots of folks', was via hip hop and DJs. aQ used to be the source for all things turntablism, Qbert, Invisbl Skratch Piklz, and especially Kid Koala, who had amazing DJ skills, but gave them his own distinct spin (remember the Charlie Brown "I gotta rock" jam?, Or the warbly record player horn solos?). For whatever reason, that stuff seemed to fade back into the underground, or the more under, underground, whatever happened, we hadn't heard a peep from Kid Koala in almost 3 years.
But what a return! Two masters of the turntable, both approaching it from different backgrounds and with different influences, a dizzying mash up of textures and beats, of loops and song fragments, a live multiple turntable jam session captured on tape, and holy shit is it good.
Scratchy old jazz records begin to skip before morphing into big booming low end rhythms, wild drum solos are looped and layered, strange voices surface and then fade away, scratches are transformed into bird calls, blurred streaks of melody, crackle everywhere like rainfall, gorgeous sheets of low end buzz underpin skittery squiggles and jagged shards of hiss, effects drenched scratching unfurls like wild spaced out psychedelic freakouts, groovy fractured funk assembled from strange voices, nature records, and who knows what else, left to drift through a sea of haunting rumbles and mysterious grinding noise, finishing off with a wild assemblage of manipulated voices, super minimal click and thump beats, deformed music box melodies, and a symphony of scrapes and scratches and pops and clicks. Really amazing stuff. Weird and dark and playful and wild. Turntable freaks will dig this big time.
MPEG Stream: "Drum-o-scope"
MPEG Stream: "Pluto attack (la revanche des exclus)"
MPEG Stream: "The DJ Factory turn crazy"

TONIUTTI, GIANCARLO Qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik (Alluvial Recordings) cd 12.98
Well, it's about fucking time! During the past two and half decades, this uncompromising Italian sound artist released only two solo records and a handful of noteworthy collaborations, all of which had earned him a reputation for incredible compositions nestled within an intellectual framework dealing with semiotics, esoteric languages, psychogeography, cosmology, and plenty of other topics that are way above the heads of 99% of everybody else. For all of Toniutti's high-falutin' ideas, his sound design isn't nearly as obtuse as you might think. There is an expressionism to Toniutti's work that you might also find in Xenakis' electronic works or Chris Watson's high quality field recordings, although Toniutti's idiosyncrasies make it difficult to draw apt comparisons. So with the release of Qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik, Toniutti has finally issued something new. Almost 19 years after the last proper full length album, and 11 years since the last major collaborative project. There have been entire careers that have risen and then fallen during that span of time, and Giancarlo quietly toiled away with his research into dying languages and an occasional flurry of recording which only now has been resolved. The title itself translates from Nuxalk, an indigenous Canadian language, if you must know.
As for music, Toniutti built an instrument which he calls a 'rattle-harp' out of a large piece of found metal, several long thin pieces of wire, and some bones. The sounds that emanate from this instrument are haunted drones and rattles which create an unsettled ground of activity that is anything but static. Sure, the surfaces of these shadowy subharmonic thumbs and oceanic tone bursts could fall into the darkened ambient catageory that we love so much; but as Toniutti slips the layers against each other, unnerving ruptures in frequency provide a woozy feel to these occluded drones. Even at low volumes, these tectonic rumblings can be very potent.
At the time of this writing, Toniutti has announced a slew of archival recordings including his bleak electronic album La Mutazione which Broken Flag released back in 1985, as well as a 3lp set for Vinyl On Demand; and yes, there might even be another new record. So, Giancarlo Toniutti does not appear to be the Kevin Shields of noise culture, rather just a highly exceptional composer with a pretty sizeable time gap in his discography.
MPEG Stream: "Qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik"

USAISAMONSTER, THE Space Programs (Load) cd 15.98
More spiraling, spastic yet melodic punk-prog from this radical Brooklyn band - radical both politically, and in the, like, "rad, dude!" sense of the term. A mere two-piece (with the occasional guest helping out on a couple songs herein, when the use of trombone and throat singing became necessary), The Usaisamonster draw comparisons to Lightning Bolt but go off in a lot more directions fancy and fantastical than that band. Maybe, imagine a hectic hybrid of Lightning Bolt, Koenjihyakkei, Heavy Vegetable, Deerhoof, Sun City Girls, and Uz Jsme Doma... Certainly opener "Cocaine Wedding" sounds something like that. Though later in this album, Usaisamonster mellow out a bit (never, however indulging in much of the campfire hippy folk stuff that imbalanced some of their previous albums).
"Above All It's The Songs" is the title of one such mellower song here, one that comes the closest to being playable on '70s AM radio of anything these freaks have done, which is not too close of course. And above all it IS the songs we love 'em for, Space Programs simply being another fine collection of the Usaisamonster brand of bizarre but sincere-sounding songsmithery. Done with distorted stabbing guitars, catchy quirky rhythmic grooves, deliberate vocal chant (a la Om), sudden changes (from gentle placidity to roiling frenzy), and interesting, odd lyrics (as always evincing their interest in Native American heritage).
MPEG Stream: "Cocaine Wedding"
MPEG Stream: "Frozen Rainbows"

UTON Violin Massage Vol.2 (Oms-B Records) cassette 5.98
Okay Finnish forest freeks, we only got a few of these, and it's CRAZY limited anyway, only 55 copies made, so we'll make this brief, even though it's pretty dang rad.
We're used to all kindsa craziness from Uton, from dark drones to wild fractured folk, from dirgey noise rock to pretty shimmery ambience, but the title should be your first clue that this is none of those.
This is indeed some serious violin massage, in fact you might as well change violin to vioLENT as this is some serious wild and wooly scrape and skree. According to the label, "Nothing is used besides a violin, de-tuned, abused", which is pretty much what this sounds like, but whereas that makes it sound almost unlistenable, the truth is that the sound here is pretty hypnotic, weirdly atonal and brittle, indeed a bit harsh, but not really that far removed from the classic minimal violin freakouts of Henry Flynt, albeit a tad more fractured and primitive. But heck if you like those Flynt discs, with their relentlessly sawed violin and screech detuned and deconstructed avant bluegrass, then you might be just the candidate for an Uton Violin Massage!
Nice printed sleeves, every one hand drawn and painted, every one different and each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 55 COPIES!!!!

V/A Oh Graveyard, You Can't Hold Me Always (Mississippi) lp 11.98
***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***
Like a Pavlovian bell, just the mere utterance of this vinyl-only Portland label gets everyone aflutter, ready to eagerly acquire no matter what the sounds contained inside. We suppose if they put out a record solely of sounds made by cement mixers, back-hoes or traffic noises and packaged it in a sweet homemade album cover with nostalgic photos of antique construction equipment, and called it something like "My Heart Belongs To The Public Works", we'd sell out of them just as fast as their awesome compilations of pre-war blues or their reissues of obscure post-punk groups. As cool as that actually sounds, the not one, but TWO Mississippi releases we have this week are both super stellar and we know everyone is going to want at least one if not both of them.
Oh Graveyard, You Can't Hold Me Always is Mississippi Record's third (and arguably best) compilation of obscure gospel recordings. But instead of focusing on church revival songs featured on Life is a Problem, or the personal redemptive blues of Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long, here we have a compilation of joyous private pressing recordings from the sixties and seventies featuring mostly small family vocal groups and band ensembles, like the Mosby Family singers, Straight Street Holiness Group, Laura Rivers, Rev. Lonnie Farris, Radio Four, Joe Townsend, White Family, Silver Quintette, James Carter & The Mighty Stars, Farris and Williams, Traveling Echoes, Brother Willie Eason, Happy Travelers and an anonymous final track that sounds like either small children or munchkins singing "We Shall Overcome". Often sounding like they were recorded on street corners or in small community halls or city shelters, we can imagine that like the picture on the cover, these songs were recorded with the whole group surrounding one microphone. Although there are a few old school blues moments, there is a greater emphasis here on R&B and soul motifs than on previous gospel comps. Many of the songs feature mostly just guitar and bass, with the guitars playing out chiming circular riffs in an almost Afro-Caribbean vein, suggesting that many of the tracks were recorded far outside American urban centers (there's no liner notes, so we're guessing). One sweet instrumental track features some very nice Hawaiian-style slide guitar. This is a stunning collection of gospel tunes, amazing for its atypicality, showcasing an innocent simplicity and a transcendent independent spirit.

WHITE MEDAL Tread The Earth: Demo 08 (Grief Foundation) cassette + patch 11.98
The return of White Medal. And that's MEDAL not METAL. There's nothing god fearing or white or light or positive or hopeful about the sound this grim horde spew forth. We had their 7" a while back, and it was a primo slab of blown out almost industrial sounding blackness. Like a black metal Godflesh, crossed with maybe some of the more raw stuff like Bone Awl or Ash Pool, but with a bit of post rock epic-ness mixed in. Not sure how all that stuff worked together but it did. We dug it big time.
So now here's release number two, this time a super limited cassette / patch combo, limited to 100 copies, and finds the band going in a bit more of a raw, old school black metal direction. Beginning with an awesome washed out creepy ambient intro, all clean guitar shimmer and dark moody creep, the band soon launch into a full on buzzy pound, the guitars murky and muddy, the drums a buried in the mix plod, the vocals weirdly effected, the whole thing gloriously gurgly and lo-fi, almost d-beat sounding at times, with some cool languid and woozy folky interludes.
The flip side is much more frenzied and furious and somehow even more-lo-fi, total washed out black buzz murk, everything wreathed in hiss and distortion and buried in an all mids and lows and no highs mix, making the sound almost sludgey and doomy even though the band is blasting frantically. So blurred and smeared, that the buzz and blast gets smudged into droning epic blackness, that occasionally slips back into crunch and chug, but more often swirls and shimmers, if the sound was even a tiny bit more washed out or even a little bit more lo-fi this could have ended up an awesome blackdrone record. Killer stuff. We definitely need to hear a full length from these guys one of these days.
Comes with a cool cassette sized embroidered black and white patch, featuring the band name, the legend: Tread The Earth, and a cool image of a strange skeletal figure wielding a scythe over a garden of what appears to be body parts.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!!! We got about 20, and after that we will not be able to get more.

YATHA SIDHRA A Meditation Mass (Revisited / Brain) cd 21.00
BACK IN STOCK! We blew through these last time, and only now got more, but who knows how long this batch will last...
Holy shit!!! This has to be our krautrock (re)discovery of the year. Definitely contender for krautrock reissue of the year!! We have been listening to this NONSTOP since it came in. We had heard OF Yatha Sidhra, a German group whose only record, A Meditation Mass, was released in 1974, but until now we had never actually heard it. Apparently the record was massive flop which is utterly shocking hearing this now. Everything we could want in a krautrock record, loooong tracks, simple tribal percussion, flute all over the place, simple effected guitar, crooned almost chantlike vocals, squalls of totally heavy super distorted freaked out psychedelia, wild drumming, tons of effects, as well as long stretches of tranquil drift and fluttery folky shimmer.
The opening movement of the Mass begins with all manner of rumbles and drones, before it slips into a lilting laid back groove, all soft guitar curlicues, spare percussion, warm languid bass, and flittering flute, the track drifts lazily, occasionally erupting into ultra brief psychedelic blowouts, the flute howling, a cacophony of frenzied drumming, only to settle right back into the mellow drift. The second movement is a little more active, the drums more propulsive, piano draped over deep dubby bass, and the flute fired up and swooping wildly, jazzy but still pretty krautrocky.
The third movement is probably our favorite, clocking in at 12 minutes, the song starts out by returning to the opening groove, loping bass, fluttery flute, spare guitar, the drums a bit more aggressive, some angular guitar solos, all wrapped up in tripped out FX, eventually the song shifts into a more upbeat shuffle, the drums getting wilder and more chaotic, the guitar going nuts, spitting out psych leads all over the place, until the band locks into a serious blowout, the guitar white hot, the drums freaking out, the bass swooping back and forth, everything doused in so many effects the whole track seems to crumple and crumble under the weight, flanger and phaser and echo have everything totally tripped out and druggy, the drums and flute engage in a wild battle, a free jazz krautrock psychedelic frenzy, before finally simmering down, and slipping into a super soft lazy lope, the flute floating over a deep bass and minimal drum workout, finishing off with another drum vs. flute freakout, everything again dripping with echo and delay, as of the whole band was slipping deeper and deeper, moving further and further away.
The final movement, revisits the opening, the band slip smoothly back into that original groove, the guitars way more effected, the drums a bit more tribal, the flute still drifting above it all, the whole band locked into a totally dreamy, blissed out krautdrone drift, with the instruments dropping out one by one, eventually leaving just the guitar, wreathed in effects to shimmer and finally fade out.
So freaking amazing. Boggles the mind that these guys, and this record aren't spoken of in hushed reverence and worshipped along with Can and Faust and all the other krautrock legends. Hopefully that will change with this reissue, and even if it doesn't, at least we know how mysterious and magical A Meditation Mass really is...
Packaged in a super spare digipak, with a big book of liner notes (in English and German) and a bunch of photos.
MPEG Stream: "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Part 3"

ZOMBY Where Were U In '92 (Werk Discs) cd 17.98
What if the ravers hijacked dubstep!? Well the UK's Zomby has done just that and we couldn't be more thrilled. We've selfishly been loving their 12"s but never were able to get enough to list, but with their debut full length we knew we had to make sure to let the world know just how much we love us some Zomby! Most faithful AQ list readers know that how much we dig so much of the dubstep that's come out in the last couple years, but we will also be the first to admit that it's a genre that can tend to get very same-y, so Zomby's sound here is so refreshing and invigorating, especially in a scene that was in some dire needs of some playful spirit and a bit more flamboyant charisma.
Imagine Benge mixed with Deee-Lite and you start to get the idea of what kind of ecstatic territory Zomby is dancing, stomping and having so much fun all over. The title of the record makes no apologies for their love of the early '90s rave/house scene yet they give it a nuanced facelift dipped in the sweat of dubstep that pretty much blows away anything we can remember coming out of that scene. While so many dubstep artists are so dark and serious, often to the point of self-parody, Zomby brings a levity and sense of play to the table that's not only much needed but he also imbues his sound with so much spirit and soul. We imagine this blasting at after-partys in the dressing rooms of everyone from Pinch to the Basement Jaxx. It's so cool that someone has found a way to bring the dark and brooding elements of dubstep that we love and light them on fire with dance floor hi-jinks and an wickedly irreverent spirit. So damn good!
MPEG Stream: "Euphoria"
MPEG Stream: "Fuck Mixing, Let's Dance"
MPEG Stream: "B With Me"

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ARC Arkhangelsk (Epidemie) cd 15.98
We almost managed to do a list with only ONE Aidan Baker record, but found a stash of these hidden away in the closet and have actually been meaning to list them for a while now. Only have a handful, so these might be the last copies we see for a while.
Arc just so happens to be the the drone / free jazz / krautrock improv trio Baker heads up, the three members employing guitar, flute, percussion, electronics and multiple drumkits to produce the peculiar brand of avant amorphous outsider krautdrone that made their first disc, The Circle Is Not Round, such a hit around here.
Four sixteen and seventeen minute tracks, the first a glistening glimmering long form metallic shimmer, laced with rainfall like percussion, skittery snares, long stretches of glitched out electronics, muted barely there rhythms. The second starts off like a less jazzy Necks, lots of space, softly strummed guitars, strange scattered percussion, soft swarms of electronic FX, backwards swoops, processed cymbal sizzle, subtly ominous and haunting, eventually the drums explode and the pound out a reverb drenched rhythm, while the guitars grow thicker and slightly more propulsive, eventually blissing out and fading out completely. The final two tracks are quite similar, beginning as deep soft shimmers and building in intensity until they become these reverb heavy tribal free jams, thick with droned out shimmers, and layers of fuzzy gauzy ambience, sort of like the Swans meets the Necks, or a blissed out Einsterzende.
Not the sort of stuff we're used to from Baker, but definitely cool, and certainly a bit more challenging than much of his more soothing blissed out drone / dirge output. If you dug the other one, you'll for sure dig this, and if you're looking for something a bit abstract, a bit jazzy, a bit krauty and a bit drone-y, then this could well fit the bill.
Packaged in a striking sepia tone 6 panel digipack style sleeve, and again, we have very few copies, so when we sell out, please be patient while we try to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Relicary"
MPEG Stream: "The Valley Of Dry Bones"

ARMPIT Mano O Mano (Rhizome) cd-r 8.98
We love Thee Armpit. Don't get to type that nearly enough, but it's true, this NZ drone combo, the strangely named Armpit, is in fact one of our favorites, every record we've gotten our hands on has offered up a bounty of dark and drone-y delights, and this one is no different. Well, actually it is a bit, in that we've actually had these here for quite a while, they somehow found there way into a corner in the closet and were only unearthed now after maybe a year or more of slipping through the cracks. All that means is that there's a good chance these might be impossible to restock, and very well may be out of print, so if you're a fan of Thee Armpit, like us, then do yourself a favor and don't dawdle, cuz these will most likely disappear right quick.
But if you do manage to get your hands on one, you'll be in some serious lo-fi free drone soft noise heaven. These guys have been known to rock out Dead C style now and again, but this disc tends toward the more introspective, long washed out fuzzy drones, fractured bedroom folk, all strummed guitar and tape hiss, warbly music box drift, super spare folky drift, fractured tape experiments, all very murky and muddy and woozy and gauzy and dreamy and weirdly pretty. Armpit freaks (c'mon, you know that's you!) are gonna want this for sure. But anyone into the folkier Dead C stuff, the Finnish forest folk, and all the sort of bedroom lo-fi 4-track stuff will definitely dig this as well.
Again, CRAZY LIMITED, get one while you can...
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 11"

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Summer's Seething Pulse (Mar/ino) cd 14.98
This long out of print disc, one of our favorite Birchville discs, is available again, briefly, not sure how, but we dug up 5 or 6 copies of this, and figured there were probably a few folks who might have missed out on it, so here it is, one more time...
Our hyper prolific buddy Campbell Kneale returns with another piece in the puzzle that is Birchville Cat Motel. Three extended tracks, over 50 minutes! The first track displays the harsher side of our normally mild mannered noisenik, with warm white noise that slowly gets its jagged edges smoothed off until the raw spiky skree becomes a warm muted roar. Track two finds us in much more familiar territory. 30 minutes of what sounds like bells and chimes, that are stretched into a warm wash of overtones and reverberations, with occasional clatter and buzz bobbing to the surface. Gorgeously meditative. Track three sounds like an indie rock band caught in Kneale's sticky web, trying desperately to pick out notes on their guitars, struggling against the thick, unyielding pull of oblivion. Shimmering feedback and rumbling drones occasionally let a stray note or chord make it to the surface, but those are quickly swallowed up by the murky morass.
MPEG Stream: "Sleep June Slope"

BLACKSHEEP s/t (Doubtmusic) cd 16.98
Japanese label Doubtmusic is, a heart, a jazz label. But usually on the fringes. Outside stuff like reissues of Masayuki Takayanagi, and improv rock crossovers like that recent Nambajazz album featuring Seiichi Yamamoto, ex-Boredoms. And there's lots of Doubtmusic albums featuring the adventurous Otomo Yoshihide of course.
But here's a Doubtmusic disc that's pretty much straight up jazz, definitely with a wild improv edge at times, but nice jazz nonetheless. From a trio of piano, baritone sax and trombone, all players no doubt noted in the Japanese underground jazz scene but not well known to us.
16-minute opener "Sky Clippings And Spinning Fragments" is lovely and lyrical, then skronky and squall-y, by turns. As is the rest of this disc. Their rhythms get pretty crazy too. If jazz gives you a headache, this is not the cure. But if you like jazz, with a sense of noirish danger and outright noisiness, this is quite enjoyable.
Swank Doubtmusic packaging as usual, this time the digipack looking like an airmail letter.
MPEG Stream: "Sky Clippings And Spinning Fragments"
MPEG Stream: "God's In His Heaven, All's Right With The World"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Dolores (PIAS Recordings) 2lp 42.00
FINALLY AVAILABLE ON (IMPORT) VINYL!
Imagine a blackened, funereal dooooooom band like Skepticism or Nortt morphed into the jazz idiom (after having kissed a frog, or some fairytale scenario like that), playing their slow, sad music in a smoky Berlin jazz club. The sound is jazz (electric piano, organ, vibes, sax, double bass, trap kit...) but the feeling is doom. That's our usual shorthand for describing the unique music made by longtime AQ fave, Germany's Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. Here at last is their eagerly anticipated 5th album, Dolores (not named after the San Francisco street near us, presumably). If you're fans like we are, you know what to expect, it's just as ponderously "heavy" as a "jazz" band can be. No, not loud, not harsh, not noisy. The opposite of all that. Rather, whisper-quiet, glacially slow, and spacious, with sparse snare hits keeping time like a wound-down clock ticking off the eternity between 2 minutes to midnight and the witching hour itself. Doomsday so slowly arrives on a velvety bed of somnolent deep bass notes, and the cool slinky tones of vintage Fender Rhodes. Cymbals shiver in a dark haze of ambient drones near to silence. Several of the songs are infused with the warmth of tenor or baritone sax breathes gorgeous expiring breaths. It's all so sad and woeful and achingly beautiful, Bohren nodding off, their fragile melodies trickling like tears, and by the end you may find you have shed a few too.
This newest Bohren differs mainly from their previous Ipecac outing Geisterfaust by being composed of somewhat shorter, sweeter tracks, ten in all, in about an hour. But it is, again, an-ever-more-perfected example of why Bohren is one of our all time favorite bands, especially at twilight and late at night...
MPEG Stream: "Staub"
MPEG Stream: "Orgelblut"
MPEG Stream: "Still am Tresen"

BON IVER For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98
Although we've been listening to and loving the Bon Iver debut For Emma, Forever Ago, somehow we neglected to review it this past year! Shame on us! In case you somehow missed it too, here's a chance for all of us to get caught up with and snuggle up to this terrific album by the fireplace during these chilly winter months. And, it's just now also available on vinyl. Very much at home on the Jagjaguwar label, main man Justin Vernon is sorta the male equivalent to the label's head mistress, sweet chanteuse Julie Doiron. Utterly bittersweet folksy introspection expressed in some mighty fine songwriting. Definitely also for fans of the gentle bristled, warm intimate voices of Will Oldham and Iron & Wine. So nice!
MPEG Stream: "Flume"
MPEG Stream: "Skinny Love"

BON IVER For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar) lp 14.98
Although we've been listening to and loving the Bon Iver debut For Emma, Forever Ago, somehow we neglected to review it this past year! Shame on us! In case you somehow missed it too, here's a chance for all of us to get caught up with and snuggle up to this terrific album by the fireplace during these chilly winter months. And, it's just now also available on vinyl. Very much at home on the Jagjaguwar label, main man Justin Vernon is sorta the male equivalent to the label's head mistress, sweet chanteuse Julie Doiron. Utterly bittersweet folksy introspection expressed in some mighty fine songwriting. Definitely also for fans of the gentle bristled, warm intimate voices of Will Oldham and Iron & Wine. So nice!
MPEG Stream: "Flume"
MPEG Stream: "Skinny Love"

BRUCE CARKISS Definitive Edition (Skulls Of Heaven) cd-r 8.98
A greatest hits of sorts from these Wisconsin noisemakers. After several outrageously limited self released albums, mostly given to friends over the course of 4 years, this psycho redneck power electronic duo have remained almost totally unheard until now.
You did see the words power electronics above, so you know this ain't gonna be no easy listening, in fact, this is some seriously difficult listening, but surprisingly enough not in a harsh noise sort of way, this isn't just a continuous wall of Merzbowian white noise, the sounds here are surprisingly listenable, warped and cracked and damaged and fucked up, but for the iron eared, surprisingly pleasant. Jagged shards of fractured synths, chopped into strange rhythms, radio broadcasts buried in effects, loops colliding and overlapping, dense clouds of detuned instruments, amp buzz and tape hiss, howled distorted vox, some almost songs, tons of melting tones, babies crying over throbbing low end rumbles, thick billowing sheets of pulsating distorted crunch, tangled melodies so dense and blurred they become one huge squirming amorphous lump, distorted percussion, damaged tape player rehearsal tapes, and whatever the hell else these guys could come up with, all pulled apart, and jammed back together into heaping piles of thick droning, fucked up free form percussive and FX laden noise.
Definitely cool stuff, and for folks averse to truly harsh noise, Bruce Carkiss might just be your entree into a filthy, grimy, crusty soundworld you only dreamed about.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 5"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN & MURMER Husk (ICR) 2cd 24.00
NOW AVAILABLE: THE DOUBLE CD VERSION!!!
We've made hundreds of references to Jonathan Colecough when alluding to quality drone work that has passed through the store. That said, it's been a while since we've had any new recordings from Mr. Coleclough, so we thought we'd dig up one of his best records. And what do you know? ICR had a handful of the DOUBLE DISC versions of Husk that we thought went out of print years ago! Here's what we have to say about the original disc (the 2nd disc is just as good!):
Jonathan Coleclough and Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) met around 2003 after contributing works to the same compilation. Soon after, Coleclough began making regular contributions to McGinley's weekly radio series Framework for Resonance FM in London; and their continued communication sparked the interest for a collaboration. Much of the music found on Husk originated from semi-improvised sessions using source material as refrigerators, thunderstorms, sheep, car horns, ferryboats, windblown sand, and crackling charcoal; and it's a crap shoot to discern which of these electrically blurred drones hails from an overheating kitchen appliance or from farm animals. Not that any of that really matters, as the art of Coleclough and McGinley is in their alchemy, transforming the commonplace into the celestial (albeit, a very dark and very cold heavenly body). Throbbing drones of low end harmonics are joined by secondary sustained timbres which undulate as polyamorous tangles, spreading rhizomes, and slippery knots bristling with tactility and spotted with plenty of hints of the organic. Each of the four tracks proposes a variation on glassine drones counterpointed by rasping textures, at times hedging for the subdued drama of smoldering crescendos and others the sublime stare at glacial immobility. Coleclough's work has always been exceptional, and his collaboration with Murmer is no different! Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Husk"
MPEG Stream: "Fieldwork"
MPEG Stream: "Germ"

DE SALVO Mood Poisoner (Rock Action) cd 21.00
BACK IN STOCK! This twisted heavy fucked up masterpiece, one of Andee's favorite recordsof last year, available again...
Not sure how many folks remember the late great Stretchheads, a Scottish quartet who kicked up a serious din back in the early nineties, fast heavy and so fucked up, culminating in the genus Pish In Your Sleazebag album, a record of total percussive grinding chopped up, dubbed out heavy heavy weirdness. Not sure what those guys have been doing for the last couple decades, but at least a few of them have resurfaced in De Salvo, whose first disc Mood Poisoner has just come out on Mogwai's Rock Action label. But don't let the Mogwai connection mislead you, this is not any sort of brooding post rock shoe gazey shit, this is super abrasive, ultra technical, harsh and brutal, grinding, chugging metallic post punk hardcore heaviness. Imagine Black Flag, Converge, Coalesce, Butthole Surfers and of course the aforementioned Stretchheads, all pulled apart and tangled up into a whole new whirling dervish of hardcore metallic fury.
But it's not just heavy for heavy's sake, there are melodies all over the place, the arrangements are tight, and super complex. Some tracks slip into slithery almost stoner rock, others into lurching doom, but for the most part the sound here is jagged and relentless, stuttery start stop riffage, freaked out drumming, the vocals a harsh high yelp slipping from Jesus Lizard howl to Cradle Of Filth shriek, more often some impossible mix of the two, and yeah, cool guitar harmonics lacing the churning chug, the drums and bass locked tight into super staccato bursts, flurries of double kick, brief stretches of woozy prettiness, but always quickly swallowed up by a wall of crumbling corrosive blown out rrroooaaar. There are hooks, everywhere, the more you listen the deeper they sink, and the more those wounds bleed and fester. The opener is like a super charged tech metal Halo Of Flies, or like Converge's Jane Doe and Brutal Truth's Need To Control melted down and covered by the Refused. Just listen to the sound samples. Heavy record of the year, easy. And another fearsome export from Scotland (see Black Sun on the last list!), that has us dying to hear more.
MPEG Stream: "Brown Flag"
MPEG Stream: "Tonguescraper L & Li"
MPEG Stream: "Ripper Situation"

DRYER / HEULE / LINDSAY Idea Of West (Creative Sources) cd 13.98
When we first got this record in, we thought we had it totally figured out. Just take a look at the lineup: Tony Dryer, an accomplished double bassist and former touring member of the Flying Luttenbachers, Jacob Lindsay, local clarinet free-jazz virtuoso, and last but not least, Jacob Heule, a member of SF's only acoustic free/death/grind duo Ettrick! So naturally we figured this record would be a chaotic frenzy of fierce free jazzy madness. And while it is definitely loosely composed and rather abstract, the trio delve into some unexpected territory here. We checked out Heule's website and he describes the Idea of West as an album of "quiet and static acoustic musical territories explored through the pragmatic application of compositional and improvisational structures". Damn, and we thought we had this one figured out!
"In Order to Reroute the Wind" starts things off on a rather minimal note. Rickety scratching and scraping that sound like creaking boats swaying in a harbor of sizzling electric waste. Quiet industrial, barely there type of sound meanderings, a reserved and delicate sound for these ferocious free jazz contemporaries. On first listen, the jazz aesthetic of Idea of West is a bit hidden underneath a more ambient guise. Don't get us wrong, this sounds more like a jazz collaboration than a drone/ambient record, but it defiantly lacks the smack you in the face ferocity of other releases put out by these dudes. But that doesn't mean Idea of the West isn't an awesome piece of work in its own right. On the contrary, the trio confidently evolve Idea of West into a beautifully arranged aural invitation into a strange world of alchemic precision and skilled musicianship. Like a sorcerer who meticulously adds ingredients to a potion, paying careful attention to every detail in hopes of casting the perfect spell, these dudes play with close attention to detail. The record builds up and dissipates as the trio feed off each other's playing, letting chance determination sculpt their meditations into a hauntingly beautiful sonic narrative. Perfect for those of you aQ-addicts open to the weirder, more mystical side of free jazz!! And most certainly recommended by us!
MPEG Stream: "Before There Was Mass"
MPEG Stream: "Light From Another Light"
MPEG Stream: "Meant And Memory"

EOH Wormy (Diagnosis...Don't!) 3" cd-r 10.98
Thought we were all out of these, but found a little stash of these noisy little gems tucked away ion the back room. One more chance to snag one...
Another blast of glorious noisy weirdness from the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis...Don't! label, this time from the strangely name EOH (named for Rob from the Daturas' son Max's imaginary friend! cool), a trio of drinking buddies (featuring Rob from the Daturas) who channel their drunken unruliness into recording session after recording session. This 20 minute chunk of dark drones and abstract free noise was culled from hours and hours of wild drunken recording, and the results are surprisingly cohesive and listenable. Still dense and noisy and intense, but with a soft touch. More whisper than roar, more drone than screech. A Wolf Eyesian industrial murk march. Dense swirling layers of thick pulsing guitar distortion, wavering and warbling in thick sheets laid over everything, peppered with occasional cymbal crashes and what sounds like some sort of throat singing. This is some seriously massive ur-drone shit. Huge industrial wastescapes, abstract spare stretches of low end rumble swirling like black fog over ruined landscapes of damaged amplifiers and detuned guitars. Haunting, and desolate but strangely lovely. Essential listening for the drone obsessed among you.
Packaged in thick textured paper grey mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
And as always, this is SUPER LIMITED, and odds are we won't be able to get more. We did get a whole bunch, but don't let that keep you from ordering it now or you'll be kicking yourself when these are gone...
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 2"

FINAL SOLUTION, THE Brotherman OST (Numero Group) lp 17.98
NOW ON VINYL!!!!!
Leave it to the Numero Group to dig up a soundtrack so lost that the film it accompanies was never even made. Cut back to 1975, when the blaxploitation film era was at its peak before its downhill slide from socially uplifting noirs to clowning ninja-pimp buffoonery, and you have the seeds of a film in the making. A former gangster turned preacher who robs the robbers and gives to the poor. Brotherman! But first, before casting, before even finishing the script, what's needed is a Grade A soundtrack. Cue guitarist, songwriter and arranger Carl Wolfolk and his fledgling Chicago-based vocal group, The Final Solution. Dipping into the SuperFly well, but with enough uniquely inventive guitar work that allows it to stand apart firmly on its own, Wolfolk created an amazing score of songs and instrumentals that still sounds remarkably fresh and non-cliched. Using flamenco style funk guitar flourishes that stab around the four part harmonies, Wolfolk interjected socially smart song-writing with sweet Northern soul nuances. Unfortunately, the plug was pulled on the film before even a still was shot, leaving Wolfolk to carry around his masterwork for more than 30 years, hoping someday the music would be released. Well, Brotherman, your time has come!
MPEG Stream: "Brotherman"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Ready For Love"
MPEG Stream: "No Place To Run"

FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN Cross Purposes (Panaxis) cd-r 12.98
BACK IN PRINT!
Cross Purposes is chock full of weird, spooky music from longtime AQ patron and obscure music-maker Ferrara Brain Pan. Yes, that's his name - but here he goes by the Forms Of Things Unknown moniker, a suitably vague and creepy name for this disc of Gothic dark ambient experimentation, that seems to be vying for retroactive inclusion on the famed Nurse With Wound list.
The first track, evocatively named "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit", is sixteen minutes of sinister drone and wind instrument dolefulness. On this album, Ferrara plays bass clarinet, flutes, recorders, saxophones, along with various other mostly archaic and/or ethnic instruments - and electronics too of course. Perhaps to illustrate that FoTU's influences are eclectic and extend back further than the goth/industrial heyday, "Black Candles..." is followed by an anonymous 14th century composition in both instrumental and vocal versions - the vocal by lovely soprano Shannon Wolfe, not Ferrara. It's somewhat sombre, but not scary like the first piece. Rather beautiful. Then, again shifting gears and displaying esoteric influence, this disc's next cut turns out to be a moody cover of "Stupid Blood", a song from the Beast Box album by Howard Devoto's post-Buzzcocks band Luxuria. With one Bob Ayres handling the portentous baritone vox, and Ferrara's horns and flutes, this track could just as easily be taken as a tribute to Peter Hammill's Van Der Graaf Generator! Ferrara concludes Cross Purposes with an unreleased track of elegaic dark ambience with haunted flute melodies floating on top of deep, slow motion thuds upon a drum and windswept atmospherics. Gone is the inclusion of Steve Stapleton leaving a message on Ferrara's answering machine, but that was probably an unneccessary trifle from the first edition anyway. The bonus track on this version is a much stronger, albeit less star-studded, attraction.
MPEG Stream: "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit, Part I: Risen, The Judas Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Mariam Matrem, Part II (Vocal Version)"
MPEG Stream: "Mesozoica [bonus track]"

GURU GURU UFO (Wah Wah) lp 27.00
This legendary krautrock jam finally available again on vinyl!!!
What it is exactly that constitutes Krautrock is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedelia ever recorded. UFO is the former band's debut effort. Fans of heavy psych, German rock of the '70s, and free improv jams will consider this absolutely essential. And chances are, those fans already own this, or they simply haven't found a copy yet...
Repetitive, hypnotic, transcendent. And at the same time jarring. This is a fist full of mushrooms being shoved through the speakers. Embrace it.
MPEG Stream: "Stone In"
MPEG Stream: "Der LSD - Marsch"

MABUSES, THE Mabused! (self-released) cd 16.98
Another one of our recent pop favorites finally back in stock...
We'd been going through a sort of Shimmy Disc revival lately, digging out all of our old favorites, the first Gwar record, Bongwater, Dogbowl, Jellyfish Kiss... We had sort of forgotten how good all that stuff was. One of our favorites though was this little Brit pop gem by a band called The Mabuses. One of the most perfect slabs of clever hook filled pop ever. The track, "Kicking A Pigeon", has to be, all hyperbole aside, one of the greatest and most lyrically bizarre pop songs EVER. So much so that on hearing it, Allan went on a tear trying to track a copy down for himself (and fear not, Andee is trying to figure  out a way to reissue that record on tUMULt!). 
We were sort of just enjoying this pop flashback, when our pal Brian at WFMU emailed to inform us that not only were the Mabuses still in fact a band, they were playing shows AND had a brand new record. So we got in touch with the band and here it is, a glorious new record from one of our favoritest pop bands, The Mabuses. 
There's no point in comparing the sound of this record to the Shimmy Disc one, since most folks probably missed it entirely, but for those who remember, the sound is relatively unchanged, lush and slightly twee, jangly guitars, soft horns, strings, all very lush and classic sounding, with clever lyrics and dreamy vocal harmonies, but with some BITE too. Some songs are super washed out and dreamy, others are angular and propulsive. The sound borrows from much that came before, but manages to distill it all into something, that once you've been Mabused, can sound like no one else. Bits and pieces of bands like the High Llamas, Steely Dan, Robyn Hitchcock, Cardinal, Jellyfish, that classic Flying Nun sound... that should give you a rough idea...
Every song here is a pop gem, but "Byayaba" might be the new "Kicking A Pigeon", a super catchy riff, sharp edged and distorted, the vocals doubled and delivered in a commanding baritone, like a pissed off more punk rock Magnetic Fields, then there's the strange garden party strings and horns jam of "Garden Devils", the fuzzy slithery grind of "Russian Roulette" featuring Kramer on bass, the harpsichord pounding Jellyfish jam of "Seasider"... it's just all so good...
To be totally honest, on first listen we couldn't help but compare Mabused! to their self titled record on Shimmy Disc, but the more we listen, the more this disc has grown on us, unfolding like a garden full of strange and wonderful flowers, and now, it seems to be permanently stuck in our players. Total pop nirvana! So so recommended. 
Gorgeously packaged too, a super elaborate die cut digipak, with a massive fold out poster / lyric sheet.
MPEG Stream: "Dark Star"
MPEG Stream: "Seasider"
MPEG Stream: "Mirth"

MOSS Cthonic Rites (Aurora Borealis) 3lp 49.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We have exactly THREE COPIES of the super limited, and LONG OUT OF PRINT, -TRIPLE- lp version of Moss' Cthonic Rites. That's right, the double lp PLUS a whole extra lp! We never listed these, we got a handful for pre-orders, but we somehow ended up with three extras, so first three mailorders get em.
This long time AQ dooooooooom classic now available on vinyl, a deluxe gatefold TRIPLE lp, with all new artwork, including killer gatefold black and white grimnity from AQ customer and mind blowing artist Justin Bartlett, also a massive poster with more eye popping Bartlett brutality. Also includes a mysterious parchment insert, one side adorned with cryptic drawings and runes, unreadable text and evil diagrams, and some original text from Seldon Hunt on the other...
Abject, miserable, mournful, agonized, anguished, tortured and tormented ultra mega doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! That's right. We've officially reached an all time high in o's (40 in case you were counting), and an all time loooooow in DOOM. Every time we hear from these crushing creeps they've pushed it even further into the deep dark damnable depths, forcing us to add more and more o's. That's right, it's the return of Moss, the UK's heaviest, slowest, sludgiest slow motion downtuned doom metal behemoth. Moss take the paint peeling acidic abrasiveness of Khanate and combine it with the warm suffocating murk of bands like Skepticism or Thergothon, or even AQ faves Nadja (who did a split with Moss a while back). Ultra minimal and nearly static in its sludginess, with the simple caveman plod of the drums the only thing keeping this from turning into a full on drone, this is like one HUGE riff, pulled and stretched into two epic streaks of fuzz and pound, with vocals that might even give Alan Dubin from Khanate a bit of a fright, like a demon howling through a mouthful of broken glass and rusty bottlecaps, teeth black with the blood of a thousand vanquished souls, the sound that finally comes out is a noxious black cloud that causes everything it touches to wither and die, totally blown out and so harsh it makes our throats sore just listening to it.
But like the best sludge / doom, there is some sort of subtle melodic undercurrent going on, maybe it's deliberate and these guys are on some whole other musical level or maybe it's just some chance occurrence, some strange alignment of overtones or some lucky bit of abstract composition, it hardly matters, the end result is somehow both hauntingly beautiful and horrifically harsh, there's definitely some dark beauty hidden beneath Moss' black sludge exterior, but the joy of music like this is the fact that the music's beauty is buried and bruised, battered and brutalized, the sonic search for the beauty within is like wading waist deep through boiling hot pitch, ears plugged with hot tar, all the while being showered from above by the tears of angels.
MPEG Stream: "Crypts Of Somnambulance (excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "The Gate (excerpt)"

NO NECK BLUES BAND Clomeim (Locust) 2lp 29.00
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!
The label goes on and on about how this latest No Neck Blues Band record is a watershed moment, a defining release in their oeuvre, a new sound, a clarity of vision never heard before on past releases, but we have to say we simply don't agree. At this point NNCK are in a privileged position, one they most assuredly earned, a position of power for sure. They just do what they do, theirs a sound that borrows from many sources, but that is distilled into something utterly unique, so yeah, they do what they do, but they do it better than ANYONE else. Period. Maybe that's what the label was actually trying to say before they got bogged down in artspeak. Regardless, this is another fantastic NNCK missive, one that sprawls across lots of genres and sounds, but manages to stay together by force of will and the innate talent of the players who have been honing their craft in this setting, with these players for nearly 15 years. And it shows.
The record begins like the rock band equivalent of an orchestra tuning up, guitars twang and detune, percussion clanks and thumps, everything drifts aimlessly, but as the track progresses, the various pieces seem to slowly flow together, a female voices surfaces, and croons over the settling chaos beneath, eventually leaving the chaos to sort itself out, a bit like a more serene forest folk combo, accordions wheeze (or is that a harmonica), guitars shimmer and squiggle, the drummer offers up washes of cymbals and eventually a slow simple stripped down groove, and without even realizing it, the whole mood and sound has shifted, and we're in some twangy meandering moody krautrock slowjam, that builds gradually to a seriously psychedelic crescendo, before the next track explodes with a flurry of skronky horns and maniacal vocalizing (a la Yoko), and woozy slide guitar, that track eventually builds to a strange sort of jazz metal blowout, pounding drums, growled demonic vocals, the slide still slithering all over and those Yoko like vocals still going crazy, definitely the toughest track on the disc. But maybe the most interesting.
The rest of the disc slips seamlessly from slow burning outrock sprawl, to propulsive space rock groove, to super minimal scrape and thunk, to wah wah guitar drenched soft pop balladry, to glimmering abstract free jazz freakout, to super tripped out psych rock weirdness, to gorgeous swirling soft focus dronemusic, but the thing is, within those various sounds, NNCK, twist everything all up, adding all kinds of sonic detritus, haunting noises, mysterious rumbles, ghostly voices, droning buzz, swirling ambience, adding extra layers, uncomfortable harmonies, taking perfectly pretty melodies and pulling them apart, in lesser hands, the whole structure would crumble, but NNCK possess only greater hands, perfect to hold it all together, and shape and stretch and form those sounds into something distinctly and utterly No Neck.
MPEG Stream: "Silurist"
MPEG Stream: "The Coach House"
MPEG Stream: "Ministry Of Voices"

NORDVARGR Helvete (Eternal Pride) cd 21.00
Finally back in stock!
The return of black ambient darklord Nordvargr. A quick look at the aQ website reveals a long love and appreciation for the dark art of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, from his early days in black ambient terrorists MZ412, to more recent guitar based dronemusik, to his collaborations with MZ412 Drakh, heck, Andee even released the last Nordvargr / Drakh disc on tUMULt. Needless to say, for folks into dark drones and ambient blackness, sinister soundscapes and bleak and abject sounds, it's hard to do any better than Nordvargr. 
While the last few discs have displayed a renewed interest in the guitar, with a much more song oriented approach, Helvete finds Nordvargr returning to the miserablist blackdrone world of his past, offering up some seriously intense and caustic brutality, a collection of grim, utterly hellish soundscapes, all crumbling low end, cavernous black rumbles, haunting mysterious blackness, a definite old school industrial vibe. This disc has been anxiously anticipated due to the fact that Leviathan's Wrest contributes vocals to one track, and his demonic croak is totally unmistakable. He growls and gurgles ominously over deep black drones and all manner of distorted crash and crunch, some seriously frightening stuff for sure. If you think stuff like Lustmord is way too lightweight, then this is definitely for you.
"Dronevessel Part II" is a harrowing expanse of dense metallic low end buzz, sprawling like the roots of some gnarled black tree, impossibly heavy and suffocatingly black. "Part III" begins with a series of strange grinding metal klaxons, before slithering back into the pitch black from whence it came. Drakh offers up vocals on "Exit Cult, Enter Hell", a super distorted snakelike hiss, draped over a crumbling churning black sonic sea.
The final track begins with almost a minute of near silence, before a raw metal buzz surfaces, stumbling blast beats, buzzing riffage, harsh demonic vocals, some full on lo-fi grim black metal for a brief moment, but it quickly blackens and slips back into sinister grimnity. But beyond that brief dalliance with the black blast, this is indeed a soul consuming black hole of sound.
This is easily one of the darkest, heaviest, scariest black drone discs EVER. And we don't make that proclamation lightly. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "I Helvetet I"
MPEG Stream: "Conjugation To Him"

PENTAGRAM Review Your Choices (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
'70s semi-survivors Pentagram, one of the only truly O.G. doom metal outfits still somewhat extant, their legend only growing in recent years, more people getting into them, hordes of Witchcraft fans prominent among 'em. When Review Your Choices first came out in 1999, Pentagram were not quite as "hip" a band as they are now. So lots of folks who missed out before should be happy it's been reissued, along with its 2001 follow-up Sub-Basement, together the one-two-punch of a (temporarily) revitalized, turn-of-the-century Pentagram. Both albums now come in styley digipacks, with 2 bonus tracks each.
Here's our original review of Review Your Choices: The long-awaited new album from doom metal legend Bobby Liebling and his cult band Pentagram, one of the most ancient bands in the genre (not much younger than their lords Black Sabbath themselves). Indeed, about half of the tunes on this album were originally recorded as demo tracks back in the mid-'70s when Gene Simmons and KISS took an interest in the Pentagram boys and were trying, unsuccessfully, to get them signed to their Casablanca label. Both the old stuff (recently rerecorded of course) and the newly-written stuff on here resound with an authentic '70s/Sabbath vibe (right down to Bobby's vocals, which sound like Ozzy at his most demented and troglodytic!). Imagine taking records by the heavy likes of Saint Vitus, Trouble, and Blue Cheer and mixing them in a bowl with several boxes of Count Chocula (the cereal paid homage to in the booklet photo spread!) and a quart of way-past-its-expiration-date milk. That's the curdled, dark and soggy breakfast of champions served up by Pentagram on Review Your Choices. What a way to start your day, or perhaps to end it all.
Not much more to say other than, a classic, full of Pentagram necessities old and new. The killer, slide-y main riff on "Megalania". The cheerful insanity of "Gilla?". The old, old utter classic "Forever My Queen".... all of it, really! The bonus tracks are alternative takes of album tracks, and their production or lack thereof is pretty raw, but then again the album proper has its own "gluey" production eccentricities... either way these tracks sound plenty doomy!
Now, since the release of these two albums, Pentagram fans have been exposed to more of the band's original '70s recordings via the two First Daze Here comps that Relapse put out. If you have those, you'll certainly recognize many of the songs on Review Your Choices and Sub-Basement. But not only are these recordings of 'em quite worthy in their own right (some of these versions being our preferred ones for sure), these albums also contain plenty of circa-Y2K penned Pentagram material that's equally worthy.
MPEG Stream: "Living In A Ram's Head"
MPEG Stream: "Review Your Choices"

PENTAGRAM Sub-Basement (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
'70s semi-survivors Pentagram, one of the only truly O.G. doom metal outfits still somewhat extant, their legend only growing in recent years, more people getting into them, hordes of Witchcraft fans prominent among 'em. When Review Your Choices first came out in 1999, Pentagram were not quite as "hip" a band as they are now. So lots of folks who missed out before should be happy it's been reissued, along with its 2001 follow-up Sub-Basement, together the one-two-punch of a (temporarily) revitalized, turn-of-the-century Pentagram. Both albums now come in styley digipacks, with 2 bonus tracks each.
Here's what we said about Sub-Basement when it first appeared: There's been a lot of activity lately from these semi-legendary lords of doom, surprising coming from a band that's been around for about thirty years and has dwindled down to only two members! But (thankfully for all fans of dark, doomy heavy metal) founder/frontman Bobby Liebling and henchman/drummer/guitarist/bassist Joe Hasselvander have been busy bees, following up their well-received 1999 album Review Your Choices with this new slab of heaviosity. As with Review, they mix newly penned songs (by Joe) with old, unrecorded '70s compositions by Bobby. This new disc might be even better than Review, though, 'cause Bobby's vocals aren't as weirdly affected. Sub-Basement is a solid addition to the hallowed (and rapidly expanding) Pentagram catalog, filled with killer songs and atmosphere. They masterfully combine droning, monolithic moments of almost SUNNO))) like proportions with utterly rocking vintage '70s riffage. Although they're not Sabbath clones, they mine similar territory, fitting in as well with (former) contemporaries like Captain Beyond and Dust. But at this point, if you've listened to these guys enough, you can't say that they sound like anything other than themselves - always an amazing achievement for any rock band! The Pentagram sound revolves around Bobby's unique voice/personality and eccentric songwriting choices that only could be made by folks fully centered in the heavy, psychedelic seventies. Let's hope they hang around for another 30 years! (Although, by the wretched looks of Bobby in some of the pictures in the booklet, that's not too likely!)
Well, eight years later Pentagram's still around (totally new line up, though - no Joe, only Bobby on board from this era), apparently with some rare gigs coming up. And who knows, hopefully we'll hear another album from 'em someday, since it's now been a while since their last one, 2004's Show 'Em How...
The bonus tracks on this one are raw outtake versions of tracks not from the Sub-Basement sessions, but from the Review Your Choices album, again.
MPEG Stream: "Buzzsaw"
MPEG Stream: "Sub-Basement"

ROSE, AJA & GABRIEL SALOMAN Lightning/Spider/Grey (Herjazz Noise Collective / Diadem Discos) cassette 9.98
As if we weren't totally blown away by their first release, Aja Rose and Gabriel Saloman (who is one half of the late Yellow Swans) have once again conjured up some of the most shimmery and gorgeous lo-fi ambience around. Two sides of live collaborations recorded last year in Portland, distant voices and guitar passages ring out, the faint sound of haunted bell towers ringing miles away, glowing horizons warm with evening's fading light. Really captivating stuff here, mysterious clanging and ominous reverbed hush, a band of ghost gypsies passing through the darkened woods. So good. Too bad it was LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Of which we have about 8 left. Gorgeous handmade packaging you sort of have to see to believe. Each one hand numbered.
Apparently this will be reissued on vinyl later this year, we'll relist it then and give it a bit more love and more of an extensive description, for now, quickest on the draw gets the prize...

SLAGMAUR Domfeldt (Inferna Profundis / Nocturnal Woodlands Productions) cd 15.98
We sold out of these right quick when we reviewed it a few lists back, but got a handful more in, one of Andee's favorite black metal records of last year, back in stock...
We've been in intrigued (and a bit obsessed) with these Norwegian black metal weirdos for a while now. Frontman Aatselgribb, always sporting a white magistrate's powdered wig, usually a hat, and some sort of old fashioned garment, big wide cuffs, flowing coats, very striking, but pretty what the fuck as well. The covers and band photos are routinely super dramatic staged shots with the band members preceding over some sort of tribunal, or standing with arms outstretched batlike in the orchestra pit at an opera. On top of all that, Aatselgribb's sidekicks in Slagmaur are called General Gribbsphilser and Lt. Warder.
There are two other proper full lengths, neither of which we've been able to track down to list, both packed with buzzing blackness, haunting industrial stomp, soaring symphonic pomp, and all manner of gothic ambience. Domfeldt is the band's demo from 2007, reissued on cd for the first time, and as most people's entree into the sick soundworld of Slagmaur, it's a pretty great one.
After a dense swirling drone intro, like a symphony of swarming insects over a tuning up orchestra, the band launch into a sound that hovers somewhere between a depressive lurching black metal dirge, a Godflesh like industrial stomp, and woozy tripped out blackened doom. The guitars buzz and soar, not way up in the mix, sort of muted and off in the distance, the drums, machinelike and motorik, everything wreathed in a haunting murky oppressive ambience, the melodies ascending and descending maniacally, the whole sound very seasick and warped sounding, in the distance, strings sing, the vocals a harsh raspy croak, atonal piano pounds somewhere down in the mix, the rhythms sounding almost martial at times, elsewhere horns moan ominously, random bits of percussive clunk and clatter drift on heaving seas of twisted muted riffage, guitars unfurl prickly detuned sort-of-leads, the sound shifts from hellish circus, to stripped down new wave-y doom, to gothic crush, to 16rpm black metal, to fucked up SST inflected doom. It's pretty tough to describe. It's too slow and fucked up to really be pure black metal, but it's too black and twisted to be doom or anything else. At times it sounds a bit like The Cure if they were raised on Abruptum and Burzum, and fed loads and loads of bad acid and PCP. Some moments sound like a more specifically metal Gnaw Their Tongues, but for the most part Slagmaur do their own thing, a fucked up, sick and twisted, and gloriously damaged and demented thing. Yet another new name to add to the ever expanding aQ canon of super fucked outsider blackness. Needless to say (but we will anyway), absolutely essential.
MPEG Stream: "Vandalens Hevn"
MPEG Stream: "Gnager"

SUSANNA Flower Of Evil (Rune Grammofon) cd 17.98
Here's a second collection of cover tunes by songstress Susanna Wallumrod (also of .... And The Magical Orchestra fame)! With her hushed lilting melancholic interpretation of a remarkably diverse selection of songs such as Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", ABBA's "Lay All Your Love On Me" (we'd have hoped for "Dancing Queen" or "Mamma Mia", but it wasn't to be!), Prince's "Dance On", Black Sabbath's "Changes", Roy Harper's "Forever", Will Oldham's "Joy And Jubilee", Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", Nico's "Janitor Of Lunacy", and Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More", it's easy to think of her as a Norwegian equivalent to Cat Power, but with perhaps a bit of a broader appeal a la Lilith Fair or Tori Amos! Quite lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Jailbreak"
MPEG Stream: "Lay All Your Love On Me"

TRENCH HELL Southern Cross Ripper (Hells Headbangers) cd ep 10.98
They had us at "Trench Hell". (Could do without the rape-themed cover art though.) Anyway as you might guess from the band name, album title, and record label, this is raw thrashing metal from Down Under, old school in the early '80s style of Venom and Hellhammer. And boy howdy, do these youngsters do it well. Trench Hell ROCKS. We gotta describe 'em the same way we'd have done for Venom back in the day - they take the speed demon, white line fever rock n' roll of Motorhead and jack it up, making it extra evil and filthy sounding in the process.
Buzzsaw guitar riffage, echoey blown out production, violent battery, throat ripped vox (with lots of Tom G. Warrior style ugghs), backing screams of utter damnation... what's not to like? If you're into the old school extreme, that is. You'll be spinning this six song ep again and again in a frenzy of headbanging lust. Even if you don't spin it again, at least you were briefly a cool, badass metal dude (or dudette) for the 22 minutes you had it on.
MPEG Stream: "Southern Cross Ripper"
MPEG Stream: "Last Rites"

WAVVES s/t (Woodsist) lp 14.98
NOW ON VINYL!
We've got ourselves a new obsession! We knew very little about Wavves before we put this disc in but oh my god once we did we became so instantly addicted. This is some TOTALLY BLOWN OUT beach party crusty pop that's as bombastic as it is so totally catchy. We think they're from San Diego and that makes perfect sense, cause these songs just make you want to skate and hang out by the ocean getting baked by the sun and throwing caution to the wind. Imagine No Age and Thee Oh Sees collaborating together or what it might sound like to play the Beach Boys and JFA at the same time. This is some seriously gritty grimey pop that makes you glad you still have that shitty car stereo, as this was meant to be blasted in the most lo-fi blown out way possible, while driving around getting lost in these sun soaked washed out anthems. Filled with such contagious youthful exuberance it's making us feel like we're 19 again, in the best possible way.
There is such a bold urgency to this record, it grabs your attention and never lets go and we never want it to. As soon as it's over we pretty much only want to listen to it over and over again. We're reminded a bit of Holy Shit, Abe Vigoda, and the great and often overlooked 90's noise-pop outfit Further. But what makes Wavves so addictive is that they aren't a one trick pony, the few atmospheric electronic interludes and slower spacey tracks are just as potent as their wide eyed and full throttle jams. We've got a feeling there is a great future ahead for Wavves and what a totally awesome way for it to start. So rad!!!
MPEG Stream: "California Goth"
MPEG Stream: "Wavves"
MPEG Stream: "Spaced Raider"
MPEG Stream: "Side Yr On"

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V/A Rusty Axe: Under The Axe Volume 4 (Rusty Axe) cd 6.98
This awesome slab of crusty filthy black buzz back in stock!
The world is full of massive metal labels, Century Media, Relapse, Metal Blade, each home to hundreds and hundreds of bands, lots of bands we love, but plenty we could certainly do without. There are way more tiny little metal labels doing their own thing, WAY below the commercial radar, each cultivating their own unique little scene, based on a combination of location, style, and in the case of Rusty Axe, a totally brilliant, massively fucked and utterly idiosyncratic DIY approach to metal music. Every little while, Rusty Axe release a super cheap label sampler and every time we are totally blown away by the sheer weirdness and genius of the bands they dig up.
This time around (volume 4!) there are way more familiar names than usual, but that in no way makes this comp any less appealing. In fact the known names will still seem pretty obscure to all but the most obsessive metalheads: The Wizar'd, Godless, Enbilulugugal, Black Vomit, V.A.C.K., Tjolgtjar, Marks Of The Masochist, and that's really about the only bands we know. Other until-now-unknown-to-us bands include Sermon Of Foulness, Trasher, Dead... Again, Sacrificial Blood, Talk Sick Earth, Esprit Derange, Brobdingnagian, Infinite Missiles, well we could go on and on, needless to say, for adventurous metalheads, this is the shit! Heavy on the black metal, but with plenty of doom and noise and fuzz and buzz and howl.
Highlights include: a new track from aQ faves Black Vomit, purveyors of True Sheffield Black Psychedelia, which hear means a plodding blown out wall of buzz, peppered with fucked up effects and creepy inhuman vox, so heavy and in the red, it manages to almost slip into shoegaze territory. Almost. Toil offer up some lo-fi blackness, rife with classic metal riffing, but some seriously fucked up howled vocals and some tangled confusional leads. The Wizar'd cover Witchfinder General, the drums stumble gloriously, the guitars SO buzzy and hot, the vocals like a karaoke Zeeb Parkes. Enbilulugugal don't disappoint (do they ever?) with some retro thrash, but rendered all scribbly and lo-fi with INSANE vocals that sound like a million pterodactyls. Infinite Missiles are all old school retro punky thrash, with killer riffing and shouted vocals. Gaiman offer up the 'short version' of their track, which clocks in at almost 8 minutes, a sluggish Burzumy trawl through sonic black swamps with some gurgling underwater vokills and a bit of Viking riffage here and there. V.A.C.K. offer up some maniacal basement black metal, furious drumming, buzzsaw riffs and howled hellish shrieksŠFuck, who are we kidding, all the tracks here rule, not all of them will have us running out to track everything down by the band, but in the context of this comp, they are all pretty darn near perfect, in their own totally fucked and fractured, demented and damaged way.
MPEG Stream: SACRIFICIAL BLOOD "Lethal Dose (NME Cover)"
MPEG Stream: TOIL "Distorted And Venomous Visions"
MPEG Stream: ENBILULUGUGAL "Reeking Of Diseased Goatbile"
MPEG Stream: BLACK VOMIT "Demons In The Black Smoke"

V/A Singing At The Moon (Singing Knives) cd 11.98
BACK ROOM FIND!!! Dug up 5 or 6 of these awesome comps, grab em while you can...
A killer comp from the fairly new Singing Knives label, a who's who of underground cd-r artists, only a few of which we've actually heard, a bunch of which we will most definitely be trying to find more music by. Not sure exactly what the theme of this comp is, maybe all these folks have records coming out on SK, or maybe it's just a killer mix tape, either way, it's a beauty and flows really well. One of those comps that sounds like it could be the best record by the best (and obviously most eclectic) band ever....
From the super blown out ultra distorted Eastern buzz of Tirath Singh Nirmala to the haunting gypsy folk of The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden to the murky string buzzing drone of Bridget Hayden to the burbling underwater drift of Ben Reynolds to the simple stripped down moody folk of the Feather Gatherers to the flute flecked spacey krautrocky drone (fuck yeah!!!) of the Michael Flower Band and every stop in between. Those and a handful of equally pretty and buzzy and droning tracks from Peril Hill, Chora, McWatt, Directing Hand, James Green, Inecto School, Nalle, Tau Emerald and the Big Eyes Family Players might not have you singing at the moon, but at the very least will have you in absolute headphone mixtape bliss!
MPEG Stream: TIRATH SINGH NIRMALA "Singing At The Moon"
MPEG Stream: ONE ENSEMBLE OF DANIEL PADDEN "Low Clowns"
MPEG Stream: BEN REYNOLDS "Golden Arm"

V/A Six Doors - A Housepig Compilation (Housepig) cd 7.98
Back in stock!
From the label that brought us the amazing Unicorn cd-r we reviewed a while back and the WAY too limited Lhasa Shore Leave (don't ask, long gone!) comes this compilation of 'ambient music' or 'drone music', various artists exploring ambience in their own unique way, giving that glorious drift and drone we love so much subtly different spins. And the results are pretty darn amazing.
First up is Unicorn, who unleash a totally creepy and gorgeous funereal trudge through warms swells of sound and huge reverberating low end pulses, like standing on the side of a black river beneath a sky of ash, as a barge piled high with bodies drifts by. Tendrils of backward guitar drift by like smoke from funeral pyres, everything speckled with little glitchy sparkles like sun refelecting off the water.
Then comes Japanese sound technician Aube, whose modus operandi is the use of a single item or element for all the sounds on a track. This one is called "Shackle" but it's hard to imagine any sort of shackle or chain being used to produce these sounds, but Aube routinely baffles us with is deft sonic manipulation. "Shackle" is a long drawn out chorus of electronic cricket chirps floating above a dense tapestry of glistening dog whistle high end, all warped and warbly like listening through a cracked kaleidoscope.
Bastard Noise show their softer side, a surprisingly restrained (for these guys at least) rumbling swirl of hissing black metal voices, creaking, keening feedback, thick warm drones, and soft shimmering whir, definitely intense and threatening, but simultaneously gorgeous and dreamy.
Next up, Luasa Raelon, who we've never heard of, but we definitely need to hear more. A thick slab of slow swelling ambience, grand and ominous, soft distant distorted guitar shimmer drifts beside jagged slabs of muted white noise and smeared percussion. Lovely!
The next track features one man noise outift Guilty Connector teamed up with Zeni Geva guitarist Tabata for an intense and cinematic dronescape, guitars and synths and electronics, all tangled and twisted, into a long slow, low expanse of moody sonic exploration.
Finally, finishing things up is Oblong Box, who unfurl a soft subtle cavernous rumble, like feeling your way through the pitch black, whirls and whorls of dark sound and low end vibrations shimmer and spread out like ripples in a tarpit.
An essential batch of ambient drone for sure!
MPEG Stream: UNICORN "Sleeper Wave"
MPEG Stream: AUBE "Shackle"

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CHATTERBOX: BIOGRAPHY OF A BAR SAN FRANCISCO 1986-1990 dvd 19.98
SF music scene vets will no doubt fondly recall the days of the Chameleon Lounge bar which was located on Valencia Street a few blocks away from aQ. It was a beer-soaked and black velvet painting festooned underground rock haven through most of the '90s. These days that spot is now occupied by a considerably less gritty and tattered bar called Amnesia. However, you'll score super duper old school cred points if you can remember the venue that predated the Chameleon... The Chatterbox!... even more so if you have some first hand memories of your own! And if you do happen to have some of your own then you're probably in this documentary, aren't you?
Most of us here at aQ were either still underage back then and/or hadn't made our way to the Bay Area yet. So unfortunately we weren't privy to the club's glory years circa 1986-1990, but we all can now catch a time machine-esque sneak peek via this film. Just shy of two hours long, it's packed with plenty of live rawk footage and vivid grass roots interviews galore with the likes of Hewhocannotbenamed, Boom (of Boom & The Legion Of Doom), Ginger Coyote, Blag Dahlia, Gary X Indiana, among many many others. It seems like they left no stone unturned, interviewing everyone and his dog! It makes for a wildly colorful patchwork of recollections! And it gives equal love to the music acts, the staff and the patrons, conveying the beloved neighborhood bar's strong sense of community, and offering a vivid raw glimpse of the late '80s SF music scene.
The dvd's layout and content really captures the feel of a well-worn zine from back in the day. Y'know, cut'n'pasted together with love and very rough around the edges, almost like it was assembled in the wee hours at the Kinko's on Market Street (back when it was open 24 hours). Plus a highlight of the dvd's extras is a 'jukebox' with tunes by Dwarves, SF Dogs, Jackson Saints, Short Dogs Grow and ten others!

FULCI, LUCIO The Beyond (Grindhouse) dvd 23.00
What happens when you open a hotel that rests on one of the seven gateways of hell? Let me tell you - eyes will be gouged out, skin burned off, heads melted away, humans will be crucified and spiders will eat out tongues (and lets not fail to mention all the flesh-eating zombies). Thank Satan himself that Lucio Fulci's masterpiece THE BEYOND is back on the racks, rereleased just in time for a Merry Xmas (whoops, we should have listed it last month!). This gored-out unrated, uncensored, nauseatingly unyielding version of said splatter masterpiece now features a 5.1 surround sound experience, providing live bleeding from the eerie score by Fabio Frizzi (The Gates Of Hell, Manhattan Baby, Zombi 2). With an intro and commentary by actress/screamer Catriona MacColl. A must see film for those who like to test how dark their visuals can get.




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ABSU "Tara" (Agonia) picture disc 26.00
ABSU "The Third Storm Of Cythraul" (Agonia) picture disc 26.00
ACID MOTHERS GONG "Live At Uncon 06" (Voiceprint) dvd 21.00
ANGEL "Hedonism" (Editions Mego) cd 17.98
ANNEXUS QUAM "Osmose" (Captain Trip) cd 33.00
ARCADION "s/t" (DC Recordings) 12" 13.98
AURA NOIR "Hades Rise" (Peaceville) cd 15.98
BARRACUDA, RANDY & MESAK "Black Vaseline" (Harmonia) 12" 16.98
BLACKOUT BEACH "Skin Of Evil" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
BLANK DOGS "The Fields" (Woodsist) cd ep/lp 11.98/14.98
BULLWACKIES ALL STARS "Black World" (Wackie's) cd/lp 17.98/17.98
BUNNY BRAINS, THE "What Makes You Think You Can Save Yourself (From Yourself)?" (self-released) cd-r 13.98
BURROUGHS, WILLIAM S. "Break Through In Grey Room" (Sub Rosa) cd/lp 14.98/16.98
CAPRICORNS "River, Bear Your Bones" (Candlelight) cd 14.98
CARCASS "Reek of Putrefaction" (Earache) cd 16.98
CAUSE CO-MOTION! "It's Time!" (Slumberland Records) cd 9.98
CHICO MAGNETIC BAND "s/t" (Nosmoker) lp 32.00
CHROME "Alien Soundtracks" (Noiseville) cd 16.98
CHROME "Half Machine Lip Moves" (Noiseville) cd 16.98
CHROME "Third From The Sun" (Noiseville) cd 16.98
COLOSSAL YES "Charlemagne's Big Thaw" (Ba Da Bing) lp 13.98
CRAIG, CARL & MORITZ VON OSWALD "Recomposed By" (Universal) 2lp 42.00
CRYSTAL CASTLES VS. HEALTH "Crimewave" (Different / Last Gang) 12" 16.98
CYBOTRON "Implosion" (Aztec Music) cd 24.00
DJ / RUPTURE "Uproot" (The Agriculture Records) cd 16.98
DRY RIB "Whose Last Trickle" (Hyped To Death) cd 12.98
DUSK & BLACKDOWN "Margins Music" (Keysound Recordings) cd 15.98
FURSAXA / THE JUNIPER MEADOWS "split" (Foxglove / Digitalis) cd-r 7.98
GIRTH "Sleeper, Awaken!" (Web of Mimicry) cd ep 10.98
HILMARSSON, HILMAR ORN & SIGUR ROS "Angels Of The Universe" (Fat Cat) cd 12.98
HULL, SCOTT "Requiem" (Relapse) cd 15.98
JEPSON, WARNER "Totentanz and Other Electronic Works, 1958 - 1973" (Melon Expander) cd 19.98
JOURNEY TO IXTLAN "s/t" (Aurora Borealis) cd 17.98
JUANECO Y SU COMBO "Masters of Chicha Vol. 1" (Barbes Records) cd 15.98
KAMPFAR "Heimgang" (Napalm) cd 16.98
KAWABATA, MAKOTO & MICHISHITA SHINSUKE "Sex, Voyage, and Echo Chamber" (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 17.98
KID 606 "Die Soundboy Die" (Tigerbeat 6) cd/lp 10.98/24.00
KOZELEK, MARK "Finally" (Caldo Verde) cd 15.98
LARSEN "Le Fever Lit" (Important) cd 14.98
LARSEN "LLL" (Important) lp 27.00
LEMONADE "s/t" (True Panther Sounds) cd 14.98
LOW "Secret Name" (Kranky) lp 16.98
LOW "Songs for a Dead Pilot" (Kranky) lp 11.98
LOW "Things We Lost in the Fire" (Kranky) 2lp
MARKOWSKI, VINCENT "Dirty Capsules" (DC Recordings) 12" 13.98
MAXIMUM JOY "Station MXJY" (Victor) cd 42.00
MGR Y DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS! "Amigos De La Guitarra" (Neurot) cd 14.98
OUTLAW ORDER "Dragging Down The Enforcer" (Season Of Mist) cd 16.98
PAYNE, ADAM "Organ" (Holy Mountain) cd/lp 13.98/14.98
PERFORMING FERRETS "No One Told Us" (Hyped To Death) cd 12.98
POTOP "Channels" (Iron Pig Records) cd 13.98
RACEBANNON "IV: Acid Or Blood" (Southern) cd 14.98
RILES, ZAK "s/t" (Important) cd 14.98
RYAN, COLLIE "The Hour Is Now" (Sebastian Speaks / Yoga) lp 13.98
SANHEDRIN "s/t" (Breathing Bass) cd 19.98
SERENA-MANEESH "S-M Backwards" (Smalltown Supersound) 2cd 28.00
SEVEN THAT SPELLS + KAWABATA MAKOTO "Cosmoerotic Dialogue With Lucifer" (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 17.98
SILVER DARLING "Your Ghost Fits My Skin" (Crossbill) cd 11.98
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE "RTZ" (Drag City) cd 16.98
SPACEMEN 3 "DJ Tones" (Space Age Recordings) cd 16.98
STEREOLAB "Peng" (Too Pure) lp 14.98
STEREOLAB "The Groop Play Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" (Too Pure) lp 14.98
STOOGES, IGGY AND THE "Raw Power" (Sundazed) lp 21.00
STOOGES, THE "Gimme Some Skin" (Get Back) cd/lp 17.98/16.98
SUN RA & HIS SOLAR ARKESTRA "Horizon" (Art Yard) cd 21.00
SUNKEN FOAL "Fallen Arches" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES "Tail Swallower And Dove" (Suicide Squeez) cd 14.98
THOR "Keep The Dogs Away" (Scratch Recordings) cd 14.98
TIPSY "Buzzz" (Ipecac) cd 16.98
TWITCH, JD "10 Inches Of Fear" (RVNG International) 10" + cd 16.98
V/A "Afrobeat Nirvana" (Vampisoul) cd 16.98
V/A "Art Of Field Recording Volume II" (Dust-To-Digital) 4cd-box 68.00
V/A "Highlife Time" (Vampisoul) 2cd/2lp 28.00/30.00
V/A "Maximum Freakout" (Past & Present) cd 17.98
V/A "Nice Ass 001" (Nice Ass) cd-r 8.98
V/A "Nu Afrobeat Experience" (Eko Star) cd 16.98
V/A "Oz Days Live" (Oz) 2cd 29.00
V/A "Roaring Blue: The Return Of The Instro-Hipsters Vol. 3" (Psychic Circle) cd 17.98
V/A "Skull Disco (2) Soundboy's Gravestone Gets Desecrated By Vandals" (Skull Disco) 2cd 24.00
VAJRA "Live" (PSF) cd 16.98
VAMPIRE WEEKEND "The Kids Don't Stand A Chance" (XL Recordings) 7" 5.98
VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR "Time Vaults" (Abstract Sounds) cd 13.98
VILE CHERUBS "The Man Who Has No Eats Has No Sweats" (Afterburn) cd 13.98
VILLALOBOS, RICARDO "Amazordum" (Perlon) 12" 14.98
VILLALOBOS, RICARDO "Vasco" (Perlon) cd 17.98
VIRUS "The Black Flux" (Season Of Mist) cd 15.98
WALLACH, JEREMY "Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music In Indonesia, 1997-2001" (The University Of Wisconsin Press) book 24.95
WOOFAH "Issue #3" magazine 10.98
ZEITKRATZER / CARSTEN NICOLAI "Electronics" (Zeitkratzer) cd 17.98
ZEITKRATZER / KEIJI HAINO "Electronics (3)" (Zeitkratzer) cd 17.98


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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    $4.75 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 $4.75 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 at the $6.50 rate. 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 ("First Class International"). 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" category and see the price for "First Class International". 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" category and see the price for "Priority Mail International". 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound. 1 lp is usually a little over 1.5 pounds.)


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" category and see the price for "Priority Mail International", which is the way insured packages are sent. 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound. 1 lp is usually a little over 1.5 pounds.)

For example: for a one-pound package worth $18 going to England, shipping without insurance is about $11.00. But with insurance, the shipping / insurance total is over $26.00!

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 :
-------------------------------- We accept the following credit cards: Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex. We will not charge your credit card until your order is ready to ship.
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 also accept payment by Paypal. If you opt for this payment method, we will send you a paypal total and payment instructions as soon as we've confirmed your order with you. Please do not send payment until you have received human contact from our mailorder department. We cannot take personal checks for mailorder, sorry!


QUESTION?
-------------------------------- Email the mailorder department: mailorder@aquariusrecords.org
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SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} on the way to us now
Morkobot "Morto" cd on Supernatural Cat
Solitaire "Predatress" cd on Ektro
v/a "European 60's & 70's Pop Groups Made In France Vol. 2" cd on Magic Records

----} January 13th, 2009
Journey To Ixtlan cd (maybe lp too) on Aurora Borealis

----} January 21st
Six Organs Of Admittance "RTZ" 2cd/3lp on Drag City
La Otracina "Blood Moon Riders" cd/lp on Holy Mountain
MGR Y Destructo "Amigos De La Guitarra" cd/lp on Neurot
MV & EE with the Golden "Drone Trailer" cd/lp on DiChristina
Colossal Yes "Charlemagne's Big Thaw" cd on Ba Da Bing
Animal Collective "merrywether post pavillion" cd on Domino 

----} also in January
Slough Feg "The Slay Stack Grows - Early Demos and Live Recordings" 2cd on Shadow Kingdom Records
Wino "Punctured Equilibrium" cd on Southern Lord
Cattle Decapitation "The Harvest Floor" cd on Metal Blade

----} February 4th
Aethenor "Faking Gold And Murder" cd on VHF
Astral Social Club "Octuplex" cd on VHF

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

----} February 17th
Vetiver new cd on Sub Pop
v/a "Dark Was The Night (Red Hot Compilation)" 2cd/3lp on 4AD
Beirut / Realpeople "March Of The Zapotec" 2cd on Pompeii
Boston Spaceships "Planets Are Blasted" cd/lp on GBV, Inc.

----} also in February
Oaken Throne 'zine issue #6
Wildildlife "Peas Feast" 12" vinyl version on Crucial Blast
Amber Asylum tba cd on Profound Lore
Psyopus "Odd Senses" cd on Metal Blade
Saros "Acid Plains" cd on Profound Lore
Zombi tba cd on Relapse
Irepress "Sol Eye Sea" cd on Translation Loss

----} March 10th
Circle "Saturnus Reality" dvd on No Quarter

----} also in March
Amesoeurs tba cd on Profound Lore
Deftones "Eros" cd on Warner Bros.

----} also in April
Loss "Despond" cd on Profound Lore

----} also in May
Bloodhorse "Horizoner" cd on Translation Loss
Minsk tba cd on Relapse

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later
Doktor Kettu "Soft Delerium" cd on Super Metsa
Absu new cd on Candlelight
Grumbling Fur (Guapo + Jussi from Circle) cd
Der TPK (Teenage Panzerkorps) "Games For Slaves" lp on Siltbreeze
Adam Payne "Organ" cd/lp on Holy Mountain
Zeitkratzer & Terre Thaemlitz "Electronics" cd on Zeitkratzer
Elder Utah Smith "I Got Two Wings" cd+book on Casequarter
Oxbow "Fuckfest" cd reissue on Hydrahead
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
Rosetta "Wake/Lift" vinyl version
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
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
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
Risto "Live!" cd on Fonal
Sperm "Shh!" lp reissue on Destijl
Jazzfinger "The Sun's Golden Blood" cd on Beta-Lactam Ring
Troum "Eald-Ge-Streon" cd/2lp/2cd on Beta-Lactam Ring
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Mitleid Lady" cd/lp on Latitudes
Slough Feg "Ape Uprising" cd on Cruz Del Sur
Intrusion "The Seduction Of Silence" cd on Echospace
KTL "IV" cd on Editions Mego
Pan American "White Bird Release" cd/lp on Kranky
Der TPK (Teenage Panzerkorps) "Games For Slaves" lp on Siltbreeze
Last Step "1961" cd/3lp on Planet Mu
v/a "Noise Room" cd on Soniq
Distance "Repercussions" on Planet Mu
Country Teasers / Ezee Tiger split lp on Holy Mountain

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Recent press...4 Stars, Time Out NY // "Haunting." Stephen Holden, NY Times // "The next best thing to witnessing a powwow between Phil Spector and Werner Herzog." Village Voice

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
Portrait of music's best kept secret
Landmark Theatre's SF/Berkeley engagement begins January 23
LA just announced for Nuart February 27


After thrilling film and music fans at the Berlin, London, SXSW and Tribeca Fests as well as a successful UK theatrical release, Stephen Kijak's Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, the exquisitely realized portrait of a great musical enigma, perhaps the best kept secret in modern music, continues its US release with a run in San Francisco & Berkeley - don't miss it!

Directed by Stephen Kijak   
Associate Producer Gale Harold
Executive Producer David Bowie  

www.scottwalkerfilm.com

TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBMJ79ly3B4

from Friday, January 23 at
LANDMARK'S LUMIERE (California @ Polk) and SHATTUCK (Shattuck @ Kittredge in Berkeley)
www.landmarktheatres.com for showtimes & tickets
Director Stephen Kijak in person Friday night at Lumiere and Saturday night at Shattuck, prime-time screenings, for Q&A's

Featuring Scott fans: David Bowie (Executive Producer), Radiohead, Sting, Brian Eno, Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Alison Goldfrapp, Johnny Marr (The Smiths, Modest Mouse), Marc Almond, Ute Lemper,  Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins), Gavin Friday, Dot Allison and many moreŠ

"This definitive portrait of rock's most fascinating and elusive outsider has pretty much everything you could possibly want from a music doc."
***** (Highest Rating) Time Out, London

"Like the best music documentaries, SW30 blends grace and mystery.  It should delight longtime Walker fans and introduce him to new ones."
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

Scott Walker achieved a fame rivaling the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the mid-60's and had the looks and the voice to be one of the biggest singing stars of all time, on par some believed, with Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra.  But instead of turning to Las Vegas for fame and fortune, Scott turned for inspiration to the films of Ingmar Bergman, the existentialist novels of Sartre and the tortured chansons of Jacques Brel and became a different creature altogether. A musician at once out of step with current trends and light years ahead of them, he morphed into one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in rock history.
 
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man is the first-ever documentary film about Scott Walker's career and music, tracing his evolution from jobbing bass player on LA's Sunset Strip to his meteoric rise to fame during London's Swinging 60's as lead singer of The Walker Brothers (remember, The Sun 'Aint Gonna Shine Anymore?) and as a brooding, crooning solo artist, through to his current status, at 64, as one of the most astonishing and important sound-makers of the last 30 years. This film charts the artistic journey (and the transcendent voice) of one of the most uncompromising and respected figures in music today and presents a rare look inside the most bizarre recording session (the recent "The Drift" album) ever captured on film. SW30 is a visually & structurally inventive film that subverts the typical rock-doc narrative to deliver not just the journey of a songwriter but a meditation on the creative process itself.

Comments from Celebrated Fans

"Scott really should be recognized as not only one of our great composers, but great poets as wellŠand I have to say it's humiliating to hear thisŠyou just think 'Christ we haven't got any further!' I just keep hearing all these bands that sound like bloody Roxy Music and Talking Heads. We haven't got any further than this. It's a disgrace really!"  
--Brian Eno

"A staggering movie! Scott Walker is one of my all time favorite musicians and the movie is big and generous and totally absorbing. An introduction to the beautiful and radical work of a genius." --Laurie Anderson

"30 Century Man is a fascinating and entertaining exploration of one of the most extraordinary careers in pop culture. I have rarely seen a biographical documentary that is able to make the viewer experience the perspective of a devoted fan, a concerned friend, and a complete stranger at the same time. Like Scott Walker himself, this film is an absolutely unique." --Atom Egoyan


Time Out London's 50 Greatest Music Films Ever ­ ranking: #13
#4 on UNCUT Magazine's 20 Best Music DVDs of 2007
DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR: 2007 ­ The Irish Times
BAFTA nomination 2008 (for Producer Mia Bays, Carl Foreman Award)


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I Wanted Every Day To Last Forever
short films by Irwin Swirnoff (2003-present)

film installation at Right Window @ ATA
992 Valencia / 21st
Jan. 11th - 31st
opening reception Sunday Jan. 11th 5-8

ATA screening Sunday Jan. 25th 8pm
opening musical guest: Mira Cook
www.myspace.com/miracook


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Coconut 
Aero-mic'd 
Elm

Hemlock Tavern
Thurs. Jan. 15th 9pm
1131 Polk Street


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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickJonandAndrew