SOROR DOLOROSA Severance (Todestrieb) cd 14.98
Soror Dolorosa is a band that will confound many of those trolling the internet for any number of '80s deathrock / darkwave obscurities. You could easily slip Soror Dolorosa - with its Goth name, its monochromatic artwork, the theatrical vocals, the rhythmic savagery - next to the likes of Christian Death, Specimen, The March Violets, and The Virgin Prunes, and none would be the wiser. Of all the '80s references to make, Clair Obscure (while very well, obscure) is probably the closest, if that French band had been much better in grafting songs to match the ritualistic deathrock throb.
The biggest surprise here might not in fact be that this is new and not some archival eighties lost gem, but that it is in fact the project of Nuit Noire drummer Andy Julia, who has also played in Peste Noire, Mutiilation and other grim black combos. None of which would at all prepare you for the glorious cold wave miserablism found here, Julia has such a distinctive croon, and the band conjure up such an amazing batcave new wave gloom, it sounds like it has to be from the eighties.
The guitars shimmer and chime, the bass is thick and throbbing, the drums are simple and propulsive, the sounds is spacious, lots of reverb and delay, but it's all about the vocals, a mournful dramatic croon, somewhere between Ian Curtis and Andrew Eldritch. In fact, this totally channels the spirit of the Sisters Of Mercy, as well as the Virgin Prunes, the Fields Of The Nephilim, the Cure all that awesomely epic gothic darkness we grew up on.
But as we know, it's easy to just emulate a sound, any band can sound like their favorite band of old, that phenomenon is responsible for at least several scenes and sounds. But that music, that classic sound, is as much about songs as it is about sounds. We often lament, that songwriting seems to have been supplanted by the mere act of being in a band, of making the right noises.
And it's in that way that Soror Dolorosa stand out from all the other cold wave wannabes, they write amazing songs, filled with incredible melodies, hooks galore, the basslines as memorable as the vocal lines, dramatic, intense, personal, emotional, the vocals oozing with pathos, the songs themselves rife with parts and pieces that are incredibly catchy, when the vocals drop out, you're still hearing them in your head, you find yourself humming along to the bass, or slipping away from the vocals and getting lost in the shimmering reverbed riffage.
The whole record is fantastic, but opener "Beau Suicide" is maybe one of our favorite cold wave jams ever, past or present, so dark and driving, with a main riff to die for (the sort of riff Interpol has spent their whole career trying to come up with), a cool jagged angular guitar freakout midway through, an incredible and impossibly melodic bassline, and one of the coolest, most intense, and unforgettable vocal lines, so good. Just this track gets played so much in the store it's beginning to feel like the aQ theme song. Then there's the nearly 12 minute closing track "American Chronicle", a lilting, super dramatic gloom pop epic, with long stretches of dour drift, the guitar unfurling gorgeous echoey melodies, the vocals more emotional and anguished than anywhere on the record, which is strange, since the music is perhaps the prettiest and most melodic.
Needless to say, absolutely required listening for folks who like their pop gloomy, their eighties revivalists depressive and dark, and who count any of the above mentioned bands in their personal pantheon. And while we love the current revival of lo-fi new wave goth garage pop, Cold Cave, Blank Dogs, Gary War, Zola Jesus, etc... Soror Dolorosa has supplanted them all and now seems to be the record we can NOT stop listening to.
MPEG Stream: "Beau Suicide"
MPEG Stream: "43 Degrees"
MPEG Stream: "Dare Me"

MOUNT EERIE Wind's Poem (P.W. Elverum & Sun - Creators / Destroyers Of Music) cd 14.98
If there's one thing musicians, and heck, even fans of music hate, it's a dabbler. Someone well established in one arena who decides to dabble in some other sound or scene, often 'slumming', experimenting with a sound or style that they would never integrate into their actual sound. And no one hates dabblers more than metalheads, who came up with a new name for those dabblers, POSERS.
But without a little dabbling, music would remain stagnant, genres would go on forever unchanged, or more likely would die out because everything would have been done. The key is two fold, to dabble, or experiment respectfully, and to then incorporate those borrowed sounds into something new, and original, that while heavily indebted to the new sounds, is also firmly rooted in the original sound. It would make no sense for some punk band to just switch gears and come out with a country record (although it has happened), one would question that band's integrity for sure, how serious could they have been about punk if they could just chuck it for something else without a thought? It makes more sense for that band to infuse their punk with some twang, or add some slide guitar to the thrashing howl, and already, even just describing, it sounds way more interesting.
Needless to say, we were WAY skeptical when we heard that there was a Mount Eerie 'black metal' record in the works. We were never that into Mount Eerie, or the Microphones, it took the recent collaboration with Julie Dorion to win us over, and that record remains one of our favorites. But we had been reading about Mount Eerie mainman Phil Elverum discovering Xasthur and getting the black metal bug. Which is fine, that's sort of what this store is all about after all, but there's a difference between just digging black metal, and suddenly adding black metal to your dark bedroom folk. In theory it sounds like an intriguing combination, but we remained skeptical...
Which proved to be unnecessary, cuz wow, this is a strange and beautiful beast of a record. Right from the start, the title track explodes in a squall of thick corrosive buzz, where does a folky learn to kick up a sound like that? And since BM is not his first musical language, the result is truly unique and strange, there are some lurching strange arrangements, and then of course the black metal is peeled back to reveal some soulful crooning, and the hybrid is just as cool as we hoped it might be, a mournful sad boy Sebadoh like croon, buried amidst heaving walls of crumbling buzz, that explode into furious clouds of caustic crunch, only to recede once again, revealing those sad boy vocals again, and some strange plodding drums alongside a moaning minor key main melody, and the cool thing is, Elverum's distinct melodic style, immediately recognizable since we listened to Lost Wisdom so much, is perfectly fused with the buzzy blasts and blackened atmosphere. Really really cool. And that's only the first track.
As mentioned above, the key to successful dabbling is not abandoning your original sound, since theoretically, the music you make, you make because that's the sound you hear in your head, and your heart, and Elverum continues to craft gorgeous brooding dark folk, the second track, is a wheezing organ driven drone, with hushed angelic vocals, and a haunting deeeeep drone outro, which leads right into a gorgeous reverb drenched bit of mist shrouded drift, all spidery guitars, and warm whirring distant keyboards, and more crooned vocals, all subtly sinister and harrowing, but quite beautiful.
Fear not, that opener was not just a one shot. "The Hidden Stone" is another super distorted blast of blackened heaviness, and again, the magic here is that the buzz and fuzz is wrapped around distinctly UN-black metal melodies and song structures, the result sounds like a blackened Mount Eerie, lilting and sorrowful, but simultaneously distorted and blown out. And the record continues to strike the perfect balance between drifting, droney melodiousness and blackened buzzy crush, the best moments being when the two are fused, which thankfully is most of the time.
"The Mouth Of Sky" unleashes some incredibly cool, over saturated hyper distorted guitars and what sounds like processed cymbals, weaving them into a loping dark melody, the result is a super heavy, noise drenched, metallic shoegaze-y psychedelic blow out, the sort of track we wish was about 10 times longer. "(Something)" clocks in at a little over two minutes, and is obviously an experiment, but is one of our favorite tracks, a super strange, heavily panned, crunchy, distorted rhythmic, looped dronescape which gives way to a soft, shimmery, glistening dreamscape. "Lost Wisdom Pt. 2" is another killer blast of black folk buzz, about as frenzied as any of the blackness here gets, but divided into a strange lumbering tempo, which gives the whole song a sort of seasick vibe, lurching and lumbering and so EPIC, before all the distortion is stripped away, leaving just hushed vocals, a warm distant buzz, and some muted distortion, and the immediately recognizable melody from the original "Lost Wisdom", and finally the record finishes off with a long sprawling slow motion drone-folk drift, the bed of which is all warm organ and softly strummed acoustic guitar, interrupted only briefly before a slow motion explosion of super processed cymbal shimmer, leads into a gorgeous, outro of dark dreamy Neil Young-ness, finishing off like a Mount Eerie record should, haunting, resonant, mournful and melancholy.
Not sure what else to say. It should speak volumes that we were so skeptical and so cynical, and were actually not even all that interested in hearing this, and now here we are proclaiming it our Record Of The Week. We stand before you humbled, but happy, with ears full of this strange confusional sound. Which makes sense really, as lots of our favorite metal these days is some sort of hybrid, some strange mix, or twisted take, and while we will always love the primitive blasting raw buzz of true black metal, we'll never get tired of people pushing that sound, one of our FAVORITE sounds, in new, exciting and unlikely directions. And we definitely can't think of anything less likely than indie folk and black metal...
Incredible packaging, the cd a fold out full color oversized accordion style matte finish booklet, with frosty forest images on one side, lyrics and liner notes on the other, the band name and album title in reflective gold metallic ink. The lp similarly deluxe but a fancy gatfold jacket instead.
MPEG Stream: "Wind's Dark Poem"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Trees"
MPEG Stream: "The Mouth Of Sky"
MPEG Stream: "(Something)"

MOUNT EERIE Wind's Poem (P.W. Elverum & Sun - Creators / Destroyers Of Music) 2lp 24.00
If there's one thing musicians, and heck, even fans of music hate, it's a dabbler. Someone well established in one arena who decides to dabble in some other sound or scene, often 'slumming', experimenting with a sound or style that they would never integrate into their actual sound. And no one hates dabblers more than metalheads, who came up with a new name for those dabblers, POSERS.
But without a little dabbling, music would remain stagnant, genres would go on forever unchanged, or more likely would die out because everything would have been done. The key is two fold, to dabble, or experiment respectfully, and to then incorporate those borrowed sounds into something new, and original, that while heavily indebted to the new sounds, is also firmly rooted in the original sound. It would make no sense for some punk band to just switch gears and come out with a country record (although it has happened), one would question that band's integrity for sure, how serious could they have been about punk if they could just chuck it for something else without a thought? It makes more sense for that band to infuse their punk with some twang, or add some slide guitar to the thrashing howl, and already, even just describing, it sounds way more interesting.
Needless to say, we were WAY skeptical when we heard that there was a Mount Eerie 'black metal' record in the works. We were never that into Mount Eerie, or the Microphones, it took the recent collaboration with Julie Dorion to win us over, and that record remains one of our favorites. But we had been reading about Mount Eerie mainman Phil Elverum discovering Xasthur and getting the black metal bug. Which is fine, that's sort of what this store is all about after all, but there's a difference between just digging black metal, and suddenly adding black metal to your dark bedroom folk. In theory it sounds like an intriguing combination, but we remained skeptical...
Which proved to be unnecessary, cuz wow, this is a strange and beautiful beast of a record. Right from the start, the title track explodes in a squall of thick corrosive buzz, where does a folky learn to kick up a sound like that? And since BM is not his first musical language, the result is truly unique and strange, there are some lurching strange arrangements, and then of course the black metal is peeled back to reveal some soulful crooning, and the hybrid is just as cool as we hoped it might be, a mournful sad boy Sebadoh like croon, buried amidst heaving walls of crumbling buzz, that explode into furious clouds of caustic crunch, only to recede once again, revealing those sad boy vocals again, and some strange plodding drums alongside a moaning minor key main melody, and the cool thing is, Elverum's distinct melodic style, immediately recognizable since we listened to Lost Wisdom so much, is perfectly fused with the buzzy blasts and blackened atmosphere. Really really cool. And that's only the first track.
As mentioned above, the key to successful dabbling is not abandoning your original sound, since theoretically, the music you make, you make because that's the sound you hear in your head, and your heart, and Elverum continues to craft gorgeous brooding dark folk, the second track, is a wheezing organ driven drone, with hushed angelic vocals, and a haunting deeeeep drone outro, which leads right into a gorgeous reverb drenched bit of mist shrouded drift, all spidery guitars, and warm whirring distant keyboards, and more crooned vocals, all subtly sinister and harrowing, but quite beautiful.
Fear not, that opener was not just a one shot. "The Hidden Stone" is another super distorted blast of blackened heaviness, and again, the magic here is that the buzz and fuzz is wrapped around distinctly UN-black metal melodies and song structures, the result sounds like a blackened Mount Eerie, lilting and sorrowful, but simultaneously distorted and blown out. And the record continues to strike the perfect balance between drifting, droney melodiousness and blackened buzzy crush, the best moments being when the two are fused, which thankfully is most of the time.
"The Mouth Of Sky" unleashes some incredibly cool, over saturated hyper distorted guitars and what sounds like processed cymbals, weaving them into a loping dark melody, the result is a super heavy, noise drenched, metallic shoegaze-y psychedelic blow out, the sort of track we wish was about 10 times longer. "(Something)" clocks in at a little over two minutes, and is obviously an experiment, but is one of our favorite tracks, a super strange, heavily panned, crunchy, distorted rhythmic, looped dronescape which gives way to a soft, shimmery, glistening dreamscape. "Lost Wisdom Pt. 2" is another killer blast of black folk buzz, about as frenzied as any of the blackness here gets, but divided into a strange lumbering tempo, which gives the whole song a sort of seasick vibe, lurching and lumbering and so EPIC, before all the distortion is stripped away, leaving just hushed vocals, a warm distant buzz, and some muted distortion, and the immediately recognizable melody from the original "Lost Wisdom", and finally the record finishes off with a long sprawling slow motion drone-folk drift, the bed of which is all warm organ and softly strummed acoustic guitar, interrupted only briefly before a slow motion explosion of super processed cymbal shimmer, leads into a gorgeous, outro of dark dreamy Neil Young-ness, finishing off like a Mount Eerie record should, haunting, resonant, mournful and melancholy.
Not sure what else to say. It should speak volumes that we were so skeptical and so cynical, and were actually not even all that interested in hearing this, and now here we are proclaiming it our Record Of The Week. We stand before you humbled, but happy, with ears full of this strange confusional sound. Which makes sense really, as lots of our favorite metal these days is some sort of hybrid, some strange mix, or twisted take, and while we will always love the primitive blasting raw buzz of true black metal, we'll never get tired of people pushing that sound, one of our FAVORITE sounds, in new, exciting and unlikely directions. And we definitely can't think of anything less likely than indie folk and black metal...
Incredible packaging, the cd a fold out full color oversized accordion style matte finish booklet, with frosty forest images on one side, lyrics and liner notes on the other, the band name and album title in reflective gold metallic ink. The lp similarly deluxe but a fancy gatfold jacket instead.
MPEG Stream: "Wind's Dark Poem"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Trees"
MPEG Stream: "The Mouth Of Sky"
MPEG Stream: "(Something)"

VELVET CACOON Atropine (Full Moon Productions) 2cd 11.98
It takes a lot to be "controversial" these days, even if you are a black metal band, and it's unlikely at this point that we would have to be the ones to tell you about all the craziness that has shrouded Velvet Cacoon since God knows when, so we're just not going to bother. What we can tell you is this: Atropine actually does exist, we got it, and while it may not be exactly what anyone was prepared for, it is no doubt an intense piece of work, one that cannot be listened to as mere background noise and instead requires lots of focus and patience for the full, um, "experience". The biggest surprise here is the absolute, 100 percent absence of any actual metal, with Velvet Cacoon's droning ambient side taking over for a colossal two hour suite of dissociative, druggy as fuck BLISS. Atropine's subtleties are also its greatest qualities (though to be fair, they are its only qualities), because this is only going to make even the slightest amount of sense if you stick around for the whole trip, and there's no way that will happen if you're blasting it in your car on the way to work. You're probably gonna want to turn off the lights, break out some sort of mind altering substance, close your eyes, let the tones take over, and contemplate your complete nothingness in the universe. It's difficult to imagine what exactly is influencing Velvet Cacoon (other than a whole lot of drugs), because this stuff is clearly coming from somewhere else, and whatever bullshit may or may not be true, at the end of the day it only really makes sense to judge them by their music, which is powerful and evocative in ways so many other bands will never achieve. Then you realize that the mysteries surrounding the duo are pretty much legitimized by the strangeness of their music alone.
"To find out how, insert." With these words printed on disc 1, we did just that, and we were off. Opener "Candlesmoke" kicks off the long journey, beginning with a low rumbling and semi-rhythmic white noise followed by a slowly creeping spectral ambience. Things are calm, but dark, and possibly a bit sinister. Your mind conjures thoughts perfectly captured in Velvet Cacoon's artwork: hazy images of lonely trees in unfathomable wildernesses, bits of nature peering out of grey expanses. It's hard to discern what instruments are actually making the noise, but none of that really matters, because before long it's like your floating in a mountain lake looking up at the stars. The piece is murky and majestic, and just as you begin to detect a pattern resembling an actual "song", things simply fade away into eternity. With "Funeral Noir," we were expecting Velvet Cacoon to rip our faces off like in the good old days, but nope. The song begins to bloom out of the cavernous ambience with static-y background crackles and super slow fuzzed out heaviness way off in the distance. The emphasis, however, is on the blankets of atmosphere, and though the song is pretty much formless, it manages to sound incredibly sad and evoke feelings of loneliness and separation from the world. "Graveside Sonnet," writhes with movement, but definitely not within the traditional methods of songcraft. Rather than trying to control the music and color it with any traces of human personality, the band instead appears to accept the will of its subconscious and let the song simply go where it will. The first disc closes with "Dreaming In A Hemlock Patch," which begins the first moments of its 37 minute (damn!) existence with almost total silence. Then, true to its title, you fall into a trance and journey deep into thought, as stuttering sounds, uh, stutter about, moving you forward and sending you way off into the atmosphere. A barely noticeable pulsing rhythm comes in around the six minute mark, but you are now totally lost and removed from time and location. And guess what? No one else exists. Crackling sounds continue, and a foggy drone takes over everything in its path. The song is a bit reminiscent of the minimalism of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, but even more minimal. Even so, it's scope is massive and sleep inducing, and if for some reason you wanted to stop a 37 minute track, say, 20 minutes in, you can't, you can only accept it. The noises change shape and shift to other directions, and an undefinable but very psychedelic sound takes over, moving like a heartbeat before slipping away. Pretty cosmic stuff. And, holy fuck, that's only disc 1!
The second disc begins with "Nightvines," which perfectly exhibits Velvet Cacoon's ability to establish a sound that would best be described as "nautical." With a vaguely bell like drone and a sound that seems to emerge out of a thick mist, you get the feeling of drifting evenly along in unknown waters. A definite coldness prevails, and the sound has a quality that is almost like breathing. "Nocturnal Carriage" is the sound of being lost, its catatonic drones sounding like a ghostly choir buried deep under layers of fog. It brings to mind Popul Vuh's "Aguirre," only stripped of all its melodic definition with just the ambience intact. It's like that last moment of consciousness before sleep sets in, with that last moment being prolonged for 27 minutes, like walking around in total blackness, and it fades out like a dream that will continue forever. The shortest track, "Earth And Dark Petals," makes you think of forces from within the earth trying to make their way out of the ground and into the world, struggling to define themselves within the overwhelming hugeness of nature, only briefly before the final track, "Autumn Burial Victoria," which seeks to sustain the drones all the way to infinity. At around the 10:30 mark, there is a muted percussive crash, just once, but that's really the only other thing that manages to seep out. The album concludes very softly with sounds that are almost not there. When it ends, maybe you'll wake up, or maybe you won't.
Whew. Listening to Atropine, as in "really" listening to it, takes some dedication, but the results are rewarding enough for anyone up to the task. There will most likely be a serious bitchfest in the works from those expecting the blown out shoegazing fury Velvet Cacoon built their name on. But crying over something like that overlooks just how essential the more subdued sounds of Velvet Cacoon have been since the beginning, and in the event that it's not a total hoax, the band should be delivering an actual "metal" album in the near future. Until then, zone out and give yourself up to the unexplored regions of your mind with Atropine.
MPEG Stream: "Candlesmoke"
MPEG Stream: "Funeral Noir"
MPEG Stream: "Nightvines"
MPEG Stream: "Autumn Burial Victoria"

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AEMAE And Tongueless, I Can Conjure You At Will (Black Horizons) cassette 6.98
It's always been an easy criticism to make of people like Christian Marclay, Michael Gendreau, Otomo Yoshihide, or any artists whose main instrument is the abused turntable, that they should be only releasing their work on vinyl. The Bay Area's tactical noisenik Brandon Nickell (aka Aemae and the mastermind of the stalwart Isounderscore label) has taken to addressing this criticism through a different medium, with this recording, loaded with tape warble, presented on, yep, you guessed it, tape. Given the fate of all cassettes to eventually fail through tape breaks or jammed wheels, the sound of a warble always causes the listener to pause: is the tape gonna break? Is there something wrong with the tape deck? It is that sound with its lurching gate which opens And Tongueless, I Can Conjure You At Will. Applied to an uneasy drone splayed with harmonic undercurrents, this seasick swelling of tape warble abruptly stops upon a mangled collage stitched together from the results of some vocal exorcism. These guttural utterances and demonic utterances are intensely fucked-up expressions of digital manipulation. The closest thing we could think as a comparison would be Stalaggh reworking their infernal screams through the Hafler Trio's early collage techniques. After this nightmarish assault, Nickell is more restrained through a series of crumbling drones that again work well with the medium's noise, hiss, and static. Supposedly, this is going to be the final recording that Nickell will produce as Aemae, instead recording from here on out under his own name. Only 111 copies of this cassette-only release are in existence.

ANCHISKHATI CHOIR Polyphonic Voices Of Georgia (World Audio Foundation / Soul Jazz) cd 17.98
This is the second release for the amazing new Soul Jazz subsidiary label World Audio Foundation, devoted to new recordings of far-flung sounds from around the globe. The first was the Carnival Music of Eastern Cuba, an amazing recording, we'll hopefully list next time, if we can keep it in stock! But this beautiful recording of Sacred Polyphonic Vocal Chants out of the Republic of Georgia by the all male Anchiskhati Choir is equally amazing! Polyphonic singing dates back to pre-Christian times, but was readily adopted for Georgian Orthodox liturgical services, the second oldest Orthodox Christian Church in the world dating all the way back to the first century. Polyphonic singing involves two styles, one where two alternating male singers sing over a drone sung by a male chorus, and the other where three independent vocal lines are sung simultaneously to produce an array of consonant and dissonant chords. Probably the most well-known example of Georgian Polyphonic singing is the traditional folk song "Tsintskaro", featured in Werner Herzog's film version of Nosferatu, as well as Kate Bush's "Hello Earth" from her album Hounds of Love. Maintained over centuries as an oral tradition, The Anchiskhati Choir are the world's leading exponents of this incredible musical form, and after listening to it, it's not difficult to understand why it was proclaimed by UNESCO to be "one of the Oral and Intangible Masterpieces of Humanity".
MPEG Stream: "The Angels In Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "A Mercy Of Peace"

BACHELORETTE My Electric Family (Drag City) cd 14.98
We somehow missed the boat on the first two Bachelorette albums but now that the band has landed on Drag City, all the folks who slept on Bachelorette will finally get a chance to experience the utterly charming musical magic of this multitalented New Zealand songstress.
Bachelorette employ a keen pop sensibility as well as a fresh use of electronics, all the while finding inspiration in distinctly left-field musics, creating songs that are so totally engaging and memorable. You can definitely here bits of Broadcast, Bjork, and Goldfrapp, but Bachelorette rises is so much more than her inspiration, easily soaring over the mostly underwhelming hordes aiming for the same sound. The strength of Bachelorette is how she absorbs all sorts of disparate sounds and ideas ('60s psych-pop, Delia Derbshyre-esque electronics, girl groups, and we can't help but think that her song "Mindwarp" might be a tip of a hat to Patrick Cowley's classic hi-nrgy classic of the same name) and deftly weaving them together into so many different musical landscapes, which makes the whole album totally coherent, songs that flow with an ease and assured seduction that has us under her spell. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "The National Grid"
MPEG Stream: "Mindwarp"
MPEG Stream: "Long Time Gone"

BILLY BAO Sacrilege (Afterburn) cd 15.98
A killer cd compilation from Spain-via-New-York noise rocker and audio experimentalist Billy Bao, whose May 08 lp we made Record Of The Week, and whose Dialectics Of Shit we reviewed recently as well. This cd collects that Dialectics lp, as well as a handful of earlier releases. The whole thing is packaged in a jewel case, then wrapped in sandpaper and sealed shut with duct tape. Here's a review of the Dialectics lp, now cd, and after that we'll give a quick rundown of the other stuff compiled here.
So first up is the wonderfully titled Dialectics Of Shit, and we're happy to report, that while the horns that were all ovr May 08 seem to be M.I.A here, everything else is present and accounted for, BIG TIME. A gloriously filthy, in-the-red, sludge fueled noise drenched monster. Weirdly produced, super chaotic, rife with sharp angular skree, pounding Neanderthal drums and a growled phlegmy vocal that seethes maniacally. All that stuff is locked around single, KILLER riffs, each track, a looped hypnotic crush, that riff pounded out over and over and over and over, while the various other elements swirl and careen all around it.
Insane bursts of grinding crunch, thick sheets of Merzbowian hiss, long stretches of brittle jangle and thump that will suddenly get swallowed up by a blown out wave of sub sonic low end, or a cloud of white noise will well up obliterating everything in its path, all the while the bass and drums 'groove' churns away, often emerging from one of those disruptions a whole different beats, a sort of muted murky bit of surf guitar, some weird twang, everything off kilter and woozy and noisy and INTENSE. The guitars are sharp and jagged and rough edged, slippery and warped, the riffs seem to be melting, or crumbling to pieces before your ears, the whole record a stumbling, lurching, blackened dirge noise behemoth. All the while, little hooks, and insanely catchy flourishes surface here and there, keeping the record weirdly catchy, and almost poppy occasionally, the sound is schizophrenic, about faces all over the place, sudden edits, overlapping sounds that don't seem to fit (but somehow do), voices all tangled up in guitar melodies tripping over struggling drum pound, everything on the very edge of total collapse, somehow held together in one massive speaker destroying chunk of tweaked and twisted heaviness.
The weird thing when you finally see these tracks in your cd player, is that all the songs are of an exact length, almost all the songs on Dialectics are 3:00 long, the two songs from the ep are exactly 10:00 each, and all ten of the tracks from the 7" are exactly 1:00 long. Weird.
ANyway, the Fuck Separation ep from 2007 is two ten minute long jams, the whole thing, all twenty minutes made up of the same riff, a killer for sure, looped and locked and pounded out over and over and over, while the vocals howl, the sound shifts from sharp and jagged to murky and muddy, only near the end, does it begin to unravel and fall apart in a glorious pile of broken beats shrieking feedback, the riff never letting up until the very very end.
The Accumulation 7", also from 2007, follows a similar pattern, locking into a single sludgey garage-y Brainbombs style groove, while the vocals howl and mewl, and the sound gets more and more brittle and noise and fucked up until it devolves into a blonw out nearly white noise damaged psych free-for-all.
Incredible stuff. Heavy and heady, fucked up and freaked out and damaged and demented, and some of the best shit we've heard in forEVER.
MPEG Stream: "I Am Billy Bao, Right Here Right Now!"
MPEG Stream: "Tight Ass Bleeds"
MPEG Stream: "I Am A Mirror / Putrefied Egos"
MPEG Stream: "Borders Of Mass Deception"
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"

CAMPBELL, CORNELL The Gorgon Dubwise (Jamaican Recordings) cd 14.98
We all love our dub deep and heavy, all rolling bass and echoing drums. But we also love it when it sounds like deep space transmissions, all tinny and faraway sounding, like the sweetest Lovers Rock emitting from a tiny transistor radio floating around the stratosphere. Echoing in a Doppler effect as the voice pings off the planets, intensifying then receding. And what a voice! Cornell Campbell is not as well known here but his soulful falsetto has graced countless dub records. He's best known for a series of "Gorgon Rock" albums he cut with producer Bunny Lee in the early to mid-'70s, that mixed heavy Rasta Roots with Lovers Rock and various covers often with biblical themes. This release covers various sessions in 1974 during which he worked out dub versions of his best songs with key rhythm players like Robbie Shakespeare and Ansel Collins. A great dub obscurity truly worth your time!
MPEG Stream: "My Whole Dub Down"
MPEG Stream: "Never Let You Dub"
MPEG Stream: "100 Pounds of Dub"

CAMPBELL, CORNELL The Gorgon Dubwise (Jamaican Recordings) lp 14.98
We all love our dub deep and heavy, all rolling bass and echoing drums. But we also love it when it sounds like deep space transmissions, all tinny and faraway sounding, like the sweetest Lovers Rock emitting from a tiny transistor radio floating around the stratosphere. Echoing in a Doppler effect as the voice pings off the planets, intensifying then receding. And what a voice! Cornell Campbell is not as well known here but his soulful falsetto has graced countless dub records. He's best known for a series of "Gorgon Rock" albums he cut with producer Bunny Lee in the early to mid-'70s, that mixed heavy Rasta Roots with Lovers Rock and various covers often with biblical themes. This release covers various sessions in 1974 during which he worked out dub versions of his best songs with key rhythm players like Robbie Shakespeare and Ansel Collins. A great dub obscurity truly worth your time!
MPEG Stream: "My Whole Dub Down"
MPEG Stream: "Never Let You Dub"
MPEG Stream: "100 Pounds of Dub"

CASH, TOMMY Rise And Shine (Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
It seems like most of the recent reissues on Omni have had a distinctly kitsch element to them: Lorne Green, Dee Mullins, Gil Trythall's Country Moog, but there are plenty of lost country classics that Omni have given new life to, records by Hoyt Axton, Porter Wagoner and others, and now this, a cd collecting two classic lps from Tommy Cash, younger brother of the man in black. And one listen is all it takes, there's no mistaking that voice, it definitely ran in the family.
These songs are fantastic, classic country for sure, but unlike the dark desperado gunslinger jailbird jams of his big brother, the songs of Tommy were much more working class, often extolling the virtues of the working man, more traditional, and thus always overshadowed by his older brother. So much so that until recently, we didn't even know there was a Tommy Cash, and had never heard either of these records, although we had heard "Six White Horses" we just somehow never realized it was Tommy Cash. A brooding bit of storytelling country, a tribute to the fallen greats, JFK, MLK, a dark and gorgeous timeless country classic for sure. Then there's "Rise And Shine", another total classic, with a strange horn fanfare peppering the otherwise traditional twang, with a chorus that will stick in your head forever. And there's 28 more songs, a fantastic collection, once you get into it, the similarity vocal-wise to Johnny begin to fade, but every once in a while some turn of phrase, or some specific pronunciation, will remind you that this is indeed the little brother of the man in black.
Deluxe Omni packaging, tons of full color vintage photos, original album art reproduced, new liner notes, reprinted original liner notes and more!
MPEG Stream: "Six White Horses"
MPEG Stream: "One Song Away"
MPEG Stream: "Rise And Shine"
MPEG Stream: "The Honest Truth"

CATALYST Swallow Your Teeth (The Perpetual Motion Machine) cd 9.98
This killer slab of blown out noise rock ferocity, NOW ON CD!!
These guys must destroy live. Check out the picture on the sleeve, wild frenzied sweaty kids mid-mosh, a bloodied microphone, and then of course there's the music, a fucking skull crushing unholy post punk noise rock racket that manages to take all the stuff we loved about Sub Pop and AmRep and nineties noise rock and amp it all up two thousands style. A little bit of screamo, a bit of post hardcore, but really, these guys could have come straight out of 1995, cuz they just don't make shit like this anymore. Only, they do. Catalyst does, and it sounds as good as it ever did.
Heavy as fuck, catchy as fuck, wild tribal drumming, buzz drenched super distorted riffage, howled vocals, soaring choruses, plenty of mathy breakdowns, a little bit off groove, hooks galore, warped woozy guitar harmonies all tangled and melodic reminding us big time of Drive Like Jehu, and heck, they even have a song called "Lars Ulrich's 1986 Funeral (It Should Have Been You)".
We raved about their previous record Marianas Trench, which we still have a few copies of, but this one is even better, heavier, catchier... We often lament the lack of actual BANDS, y'know, bands that write songs, there's so much dronemusic, and experimental ambience, and free folk improv, and blackend buzz, and we do love all that, but sometimes nothing hits the spot like an actual rock band, pounding away on actual instruments, sweating, bleeding, leaping off the stage, rolling around on the floor, and spitting out actual songs. Of course it helps when the band is this bad ass and the songs rule this hard, so if you've been hankering for some seriously heavy post punk noise rock in your life, and who amongst us HASN'T? Well, then these guys should definitely hit the spot.
MPEG Stream: "I Hate The Future"
MPEG Stream: "Lars Ulrich's 1986 Funeral (It Should Have Been You)"
MPEG Stream: "Assholier Than Thou"

CATHODE TERROR SECRETION, THE Spectre of History's Design (RRR Records) lp 21.00
Holy shit is this awesome. Some sort of super dense, ultra distorted, noise drenched electronic grind, not at all what we expected from RRR, well, maybe the noise part, but this is just so awesomely heavy and intense and face meltingly brutal.
Long swaths of grinding glitchy electronic drones give way to buzzing frenzied gabber-like hyperspeed grind, which in turn gives way to lurching noisecapes of sculpted distorted crunch and maniacal almost black metal shrieks, all wreathed in sheets of feedback, buried beneath layers of grit and grime, everything laced with malfunctioning electronics, fractured effects, and shrieking sine wave like tones. There do seem to be songs, but the various tracks and parts just ooze and sprawl into each other, a heaving massive expanse of constantly shifting heaviness, gnarled and twisted, and fractured and freaked out. Spaced out ambience wraps itself around long slow creepy drones, laced with more sine waves and haunting chantlike voices, full on digital hardcore blow outs pepper stretches of completely fried blasts of melting metallic damage, everything laced with weird samples, children's voices, folky percussion, mysterious vocals, all quickly swallowed up by glitched out slabs of corrosive heavily effected buzz, and shot through with garbled underwater alien vox and buried machinelike blast beat pound. Fucking awesome. Probably the heaviest, most freaked out slab of electronic hypergrind-blacknoize we've ever heard.

CHURCH OF MISERY Houses Of The Unholy (Rise Above) 2lp 30.00
We actually got these in a while ago, back when we listed the cd version, but the covers got crunched in the mail, so we've been waiting patiently for replacement covers from overseas and they've just now arrived. So now, FINALLY, this killer slab of serial killer stoner sludge is available here on vinyl!!
How much you love Church Of Misery depends on two things, how you feel about massive super rocking ultra crushing downtuned stoner sludge, and how you feel about serial killers. Cuz with Church Of Misery, you get a blown out, in-the-red, druggy, metallic mix of the two. The serial killer aspect is probably easier to overlook, it manifests itself mostly as artwork and song titles, although most of the tracks also have samples of newscasts, or radio broadcasts, detailing the exploits of whichever killer is the focus of the song. For some of us, those samples are cool and creepy, and just add to the band's riff rocking menace, but for others, it's a just a dumb distraction.
We obviously fall into the former camp, especially considering that element is nothing compared to the MUSIC, which just continues to get heavier and heavier and groovier and groovier with every record. Incredible riffs, a guitar sound that devours everything in its path, pounding drums, and some of the gnarliest howled throat shredding vocals EVER. Not to mention plenty of twisted blues, wild shredding leads, groovy wah guitars. We mentioned in the review of the last CoM record, that the sound reminded us a bit of ZZ Top, albeit a supercharged ultra metal version, and that sort of groovy Southern fried vibe pervades everything here, but Houses is even more intense, more aggressive, especially the vocals, the best comparison we could come up with is equal parts ZZ Top, Eyehategod, Black Sabbath (of course) and Boris at their most wildly psychedelic and hard rocking, with some sort of Demonic Phil Anselmo on vocals. And Boris fans, Church Of Misery rock out big time here, trading in much of the sluggish sludge for blown out amp destroying full rock action, so fans of later Boris, if you can imagine them a bit more sloppy, a lot more furious and frenzied, and WAY more heavy, then this stuff will definitely hit the spot.
But fear not, those who yearn for sludge, there's still plenty of lurching, lumbering doomy groove, a la Acrimony, Bongzilla, Buzzov-en, Sourvein, but all tangled up with the more rocking parts, and wild freaked out guitar jams. PLUS, for all you proto metal obsessives, they even do a killer version of "Master Heartache" by Sir Lord Baltimore!
The more we listen to it the better it sounds. The riffs kill, the songs rule, total headbanger bliss.
And for those who DO care, the killers this time around are: Charles Starkweather & Caril Ann Fugate, Richard Speck, Richard Trenton Chase, Albert Fish, James Oliver Huberty and Adolfo De Jesus Constanzo. And as always, awesome packaging. Each song/killer gets its own page in the booklet, every one designed like an old worn Blue Note album cover, and the cd itself, printed to look like a dusty old slab of vinyl.
Totally and utterly recommended. One of our favorite metal records of the year so far for sure.
MPEG Stream: "El Padrino (Adolpho Constanzo)"
MPEG Stream: "Shotgun Boogie (James Oliver Huberty)"
MPEG Stream: "The Gray Man (Albert Fish)"

COLTRANE, ALICE Huntington Ashram Monastery (Impulse) lp 15.98
This is one of those records that was nearly impossible to track down for years, so we are beyond happy for this vinyl only reissue to finally surface. Recorded in 1969 right after her great debut, A Monastic Trio, Huntington Ashram Monastery is an album that ranks right near the top of the amazing legacy of music that Alice Coltrane left us. Playing piano and wielding her majestical harp in a magnificent trio that featured Ron Carter on Bass and the wonderful and sadly recently passed away Rashied Ali on drums and percussion. So much thought, love and devotion was put into every single note that Alice Coltrane recorded, and Huntington Ashram Monastery is such utter proof of that. No wasted notes, or throwaway moments. You can't lay the needle down on these grooves and not be moved and transported to another plane of consciousness. This is truly sacred, essential and transcendent music. Beyond recommended!

D.A. Odeon (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 22.00
Of all the dark, drone-y, druggy synthiness that's been popping up lately (and believe us, it's a LOT), this lp from mysterious Los Angeles duo D.A. is most definitely our favorite. A heady collection of dark and dreary, lush and spaced out sci-fi synth creep that tapes into classic Goblin soundtrack music, the best John Carpenter scores, and mixes in plenty of modern lysergic lo-fi experimentation, conjuring up some of the most tense and dramatic and hypnotic sounds we've heard in ages.
Like some strange mix of Zombi and Expo '70, but with a hint of new age-y drift that makes these songs sound like they could only be the music from some lost eighties film, only the visuals could never hope to match this haunting otherworldly music.
Looped synths are looped into slow shifting swells, pulsing over a bed of softly swirling minor key tension, alien tones, blurred buzz and dense shimmery drones, shot through with moody melodies, laced with super spare abstract percussion and everything wrapped in a gauzy warmth, total kraut drone new age soundtrack bliss.
The second side changes gear toward the end, evolving into a sound akin to Godspeed meets Zombi meets SUNNO))), a thick thick buzz wrapped around twisted looped melodies and all sorts of simulated haunted forest sound effects, growing ever more harrowing, ominous and dramatic, and surprisingly, yet subtly heavy.
The flipside is much more minimal and abstract than the A side, but no less intense and mysterious. Reverbed piano is sent drifting into blackness, tons and tons of space, softly wheezing organs, deep muted tones, that distinctly eighties sounding bass pulse, long thick swirls of softly distorted synth buzz, tinkling high end tones, all of that gives way to another thick, and surprisingly heavy space synth drone, a starlit slow motion swirl, abstract, super space-y, dark and emotional, tense and INtense, it still boggles the mind that filmmakers aren't constantly on the lookout for groups like this, whose cinematic soundtrack ambience is way more compelling and original and ruling than 90 percent of the music that actually ends up in movies. But who needs the movies, best to just throw this on, close your eyes, and let these sounds ooze into your consciousness, creating a fantastical and unreal world all for you, populated with far out sights, worthy of these far out sounds.
Incredible hand silk screened, ultra thick card stock sleeves, LIMITED TO 400 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

DESOLATION WILDERNESS New Universe (K Records) cd 14.98
Hailing from Olympia, Washington, Desolation Wilderness create hazy dreampop that's the perfect twilight of summer soundtrack. With shimmering guitars, breezy vocals, infectious melodies swirled amongst the fog and haze, this record has been reminding us of so many bands we love, like Chapterhouse, Spiritualized, The Chills, 764 Hero, Galaxie 500, Sparklehorse, Ride, etc. While there is a definite shoegaze element to their sound, the songs also have a spark and punch to them. We also can't help but think of a very awesome and underrated '90s band from Los Angeles called Strictly Ballroom who similarly found enticing ways to evoke this kind of daydream nation. New Universe is one of those records that's perfect for so many occasions - the long ride home, the blissed out late night walk through the city, the lazy Sunday afternoon... Desolation Wilderness pleases on so many levels!
MPEG Stream: "Boardwalk Theme"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Fade"
MPEG Stream: "You Hold A Power Over Me"

DIAL M FOR MURDER Fiction Of Her Dreams (Tapete) cd 17.98
Here's a question that gets tossed around here more and more in recent months: Is this new or old? Given how many bands who make druggy, atmospheric ritualism could have produced those sounds in 1972 or 2009 with equal aplomb. The Amen Dunes record Dia (2009) and Warlus' Songs album (1975) make for an interesting case study. Over the past twelve months, there's been another resurgence of black clad, post-punk thanks to some of the dour Goth reissues from Sacred Bones, which fit neatly next to the spunky Joy Divisionisms of Blank Dogs and the moping, black eyeliner tunes of this weeks ROTW Soror Dolorosa. Those could also be addressed with that same question: is this old or new? In the case of the dark, moody sounds of Dial M For Murder, the answer is, as hard as it might be to believe, "new."
Citing Joy Division and the Chameleons as their references, Dial M For Murder end up in a place remarkably close to Interpol. The vocalist David Ortenlof really does come across like Interpol's Paul Banks on a good chunk of the tracks, and almost like Mark Edwards from My Dad Is Dead on the others. Musically, the dark jangliness of the guitar and the punchy basslines situates around tight drum machine programming coming across like Ratatat reworking Joy Division singles. Gothic and haunting, but propulsive and poppy, really really cool stuff for sure.
MPEG Stream: "YouCan'tHaveMe"
MPEG Stream: "OhNo!"
MPEG Stream: "There'sNothingLeftToSee"
MPEG Stream: "NYC (NowYouCare)"

DIAL M FOR MURDER Fiction Of Her Dreams (Tapete) lp 17.98
Here's a question that gets tossed around here more and more in recent months: Is this new or old? Given how many bands who make druggy, atmospheric ritualism could have produced those sounds in 1972 or 2009 with equal aplomb. The Amen Dunes record Dia (2009) and Warlus' Songs album (1975) make for an interesting case study. Over the past twelve months, there's been another resurgence of black clad, post-punk thanks to some of the dour Goth reissues from Sacred Bones, which fit neatly next to the spunky Joy Divisionisms of Blank Dogs and the moping, black eyeliner tunes of this weeks ROTW Soror Dolorosa. Those could also be addressed with that same question: is this old or new? In the case of the dark, moody sounds of Dial M For Murder, the answer is, as hard as it might be to believe, "new."
Citing Joy Division and the Chameleons as their references, Dial M For Murder end up in a place remarkably close to Interpol. The vocalist David Ortenlof really does come across like Interpol's Paul Banks on a good chunk of the tracks, and almost like Mark Edwards from My Dad Is Dead on the others. Musically, the dark jangliness of the guitar and the punchy basslines situates around tight drum machine programming coming across like Ratatat reworking Joy Division singles. Gothic and haunting, but propulsive and poppy, really really cool stuff for sure.
MPEG Stream: "YouCan'tHaveMe"
MPEG Stream: "OhNo!"
MPEG Stream: "There'sNothingLeftToSee"
MPEG Stream: "NYC (NowYouCare)"

DUCKTAILS Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 21.00
Ducktails is another one of those bands that went to zero to sixty in no time, in terms of releases. Before, it was a tape here, maybe a 7" there, now every week brings a new slab of Ducktails' twisted tropical pop, but hell, we're not complaining one bit.
Especially this time, as Landscapes might just be one of the strangest Ducktails record yet, The first track is what we've come to expect, and dig big time, swirling lo-fi, tropical soft fuzz pop, antiquated drum machine, warbly synths, playful woozy sun dappled melodies, plenty of tape hiss and amp buzz, definitely raw and muddy but also weirdly lush.
That, however, is just the first song, from there on out, Ducktails bounces wildly from sound to sound, all held together by a strange hard to describe thread that runs through all the songs here, keeping this from being just a mish mash of sounds and songs, and instead smearing it into a crazy yet cohesive dizzying drift through some seriously tweaked eighties retro future fuzz Ducktails dream pop. Weird buzzing Eastern sounding new age gives way to some groovy hard pop, with warped guitars, lots of flange, rad leads, like an alternative dimension instrumental lo-fi Loverboy (?), before switching gears and unfurling some looped almost African sounding warble, which then transforms into fuzzy jangly blissed out garage pop, then falsetto crooned jangle and swoon, then a bit of bluesy bedroom slow jam and finally a wicked, twisted late night infomercial soundtrack, all of the sights and sounds in Ducktails' soundworld hazy and shimmery and otherworldly and gloriously washed out.

DUCKTAILS / JULIAN LYNCH split (Underwater Peoples) 7" + dvd-r 8.98
Yep, another Ducktails joint, and it's a goodie. Maybe our favorite mode of sonic Ducktalia, the sort of faux eighties outer space new age drift. These days nobody does it better. Bleary eyed, sparkly, glimmery, glistening, crystalline, otherworldly new-age-wave, bloops and bleeps and softly effected melodies, all woozy and warbly and oh so dreamy.
Julian Lynch is the garage bliss pop new kid on the block, but what we've heard so far has been pretty awesome, and these two jams demonstrate just why folks are suddenly all aflutter about this guy. The first track is a warped minimal soundscape, breathless vocal drones draped over detuned twang, which eventually builds to a sort of stumbly wah wah garage pop dirge. The second track sounds like a warped Beach Boys 45 spinning at 16 rpm, fuzzy and washed out, more of that twisted and looped wah guitar, some almost-funky bass, and some surprisingly lush harmonies that brighten up the murk just a bit.
Comes with a dvd-r, featuring a bunch of videos too...

EXPLORERS Bermuda Telepaths (Not Not Fun) lp 13.98
What hath the Skaters wrought? In the wake of that group's ever expanding body of work, both as a duo and each member solo, has risen a whole movement of musicians channeling similar sounds and melding many of the same influences into that ethereal collaged anti-pop that the Skaters if not invented, popularized. A symptom of today's MySpace world, where the minute one group, or one sound, gets hyped, a million bedroom 4-trackers take it upon themselves to do something similar. See the recent lo-fi garage pop explosion for example. But heck, stealing from the bands you love is a tried and true rock and roll tradition, the key being stealing from bands YOU LOVE, not from bands that are suddenly popular and you want to be popular too. That shit is transparent. That's why in an avalanche of wannabe's there are always a few who shine, whose creativity had seemingly lain dormant just waiting for a trigger. Sometimes hearing a sound, makes you realize that someone else hears the same sort of sounds you've been hearing in your head.
This could all be bullshit, but the second we first threw on this Explorers records, we couldn't help but think of the Skaters. But like any good band, taking influence from another, it's not the sounds you steal or the ideas you borrow, it's what you do with them that counts, and the Explorers definitely do their own sort of fractured soundscapery as good as, if not even better than their forebears. Layered tangles of tones and squiggly melodies, wheezing textures and buried stumbling drumloops, a swirling soft chaos of blurred sounds smeared into streaked landscapes of broken tape deck new age, deep dense outer space buzz and washed out dream drone, the sift from sound to sound is sudden and sharp, like flipping the channel or changing the station. Imagine the sound of sound remote research station, all the machines left running, whirring in the darkness, pointed heavenward, as they sample and intercept transmissions and broadcasts from alien worlds and alternate dimensions. Gloriously tripped out and deliriously druggy. For fans of the Skaters for sure, but also anyone into weird and wonderful, freaked out and far flung sonic explorations (they don't call them Explorers for nothing apparently).
LIMITED TO 330 COPIES.

FINAL Reading All The Right Signals Wrong (No Quarter) cd 14.98
Finally on cd, the most recent Final, with 4 extra tracks, each a reworking of one of the proper album tracks, some of them definitely different enough to make it well worth while...
A brand new record from Mr. Justin Broadrick, formerly of Godflesh, presently of Jesu, as well the sole member of this, his long running project Final. Originally an experimental solo guitar project, and actually maybe STILL an experimental solo guitar project, Final has definitely changed over the years, lately sharing more in common with Jesu than anything, the same sort of blissy drift, washed out drone drenched shimmer, but in Final, those elements are blurred into something more ambient and less propulsive, more soundscape-y and less post metal.
Four long tracks (not counting the four remixes on the cd), each slow building and slow burning, the first all soft ethereal melodies over a grinding crunching minimal drone, those two elements all tangled up, with the melodies eventually blossoming into epic atonal harmonies, sheets of sound like a symphony of car horns, smoothed into something much more listenable but no less clamorous and chaotic, definitely reminds us of Sunroof! near the end.
The second track starts out all SUNN-y, a crumbling distorted downtuned dirge, although within that dirge lurks some surprising melody, and this track too builds to a blissed out high end shimmer, overlapping tones, washes of synthy warmth, bits of buzz and glitch, lovely, but still softly abrasive.
The flipside begins with some sort of abstract doom, thick, jagged chords, ringing out, and allowed to nearly fade out completely, before the next one comes crashing down, lots and lots of space, in the background a strangely active swirl of skree, streaks of feedback, shards of feedback, sine waves and upper register whir, roiling and churning beneath the lumbering riffage.
And finally, the record finishes off with something altogether different. Something pretty and strummy and yes, shoegaze-y, but weirdly looped and hypnotic sounding, as if they took a chunk from a Jesu track, a pretty undistorted bit, then doused it in effects and set it on repeat, allowing it to slowly shift, but to lock into a mantra like loop, so gorgeous, could have used a whole 'nother side of this stuff for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Right Signal"
MPEG Stream: "Wrong Signal"
MPEG Stream: "Right Signal (Alt. Mix/Edit)"

FLAMING TUNES (GARETH WILLIAMS AND MARY CURRIE) s/t (ReR) cd 21.00
Finally one of the legendary lost This Heat related recordings gets its first proper release! Originally released as a tape in 1985, recorded by This Heat's Gareth Williams and Mary Currie and friends, shortly after Williams left This Heat, Flaming Tunes is a gorgeous, quirky collection of lo-fi experimental moody textural avant pop, originally conceived as something totally removed from the much more abrasive and rhythmic music he made in This Heat. Unavailable ever since its original cassette release, minus a bootleg which included the tape in its entirety but described it as This Heat's final demo recordings, Flaming Tunes in some ways reminds us of Charles Hayward's Camberwell Now project, in that some of the sounds are familiar and still somewhat This Heat sounding, but the record is much more vocal based, and song oriented, resulting in a sound, that while appealing to This Heat obsessives, offered a whole new window into Williams' approach to sound and songwriting, and in that, a once removed glimpse of some of the elements that helped make This Heat what it was.
The record opens with a looped piano wrapped in sizzling electronic buzz, peppered with strange bursts of sonic crunch, stuttery fragmented rhythms, not hard to see why folks believed this could be a blueprint for new This Heat material. But the second song is more of what Flaming Tunes is all about. Tunes. Sing songy weary vocals over plonked piano, squeaking horns, skittery percussion, lots of drones, plenty of tape hiss and amp buzz, definitely lo-fi, some cool synth melodies, the sound definitely reminiscent of the first two Brian Eno records or that classic Flying Nun sound, bands like the Tall Dwarfs or the Pin Group or This Kind Of Punishment or The Children's Hour or even the Dead C at their most poppy. And that's the sound that makes up most of Flaming Tunes, a hazy, gauzy, low fidelity (but strangely lush) bedroom pop, lots of piano, wreathed in reverb, warm warbly bass, occasional strings, programmed rhythms, detuned tangles of minor key guitar, plenty of jangle and chime, with intermittent forays into cool abstract experimentation, but even then, those tracks still sound a little song-y and don't at all disrupt the flow of the record. "Raindrops From Heaven", with a field recording of rainfall, insects, beneath some clattery, muted parlor skitter, or the brooding muddy piano drone of "It's Madness" with its disembodied vox and haunting creepy creaking Victorian vibe, with sampled strings and mysterious textures, before the record closes with a surprisingly Beatles-esque ballad called "Generous Moon", that sort of classic pop, rendered a little bit warped and woozy, the guitars twangy, and the background melodies a sea of whirring keyboards, locking into a looped dreamlike dirge before finally fading out.
So nice. This Heat fanatics will flip for sure, and no doubt some have tapes or bootlegs of this already, but it sounds so much better now, and comes in a super deluxe digipak, with tons of photos, artwork and liner notes. And even if you've never heard This Heat (what the hell is wrong with you?), this will still appeal to folks into twisted dark lo-fi pop.
MPEG Stream: "Another Flaming Tune"
MPEG Stream: "A To B"
MPEG Stream: "Raindrops From Heaven"

GLASS, PHILIP Koyaanisqatsi (OST) (Orange Mountain Music) cd 21.00
Philip Glass's first commercial success and enduring classic soundtrack is available once again and in its original completed form (76 minutes) for the first time on cd. Glass's score to Godfrey Reggio's sublime 1983 film, Koyaanisqatsi (the Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance") is a perfect marriage to the film's altered time sequences of fast-moving clouds and sped-up machine-like urban scenes of traffic and city-life. The repetitive arpeggios and slowly undulating shifts of patterned movements give off the sensation of static motion enhancing the film's captivating majestic qualities. But even without the visuals, the score by itself stands the test of time, and its longer unabbreviated format renews the film's pointed silent protest against the out-of-control pace and shortened attention spans of our so-called civilization. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Koyannisqatsi"
MPEG Stream: "Resource"
MPEG Stream: "Vessels"

GLAZE, BRIAN Green Living (World Famous In SF) cd 11.98
Even though he resides right here in the Bay Area we knew very little about this Brian Glaze character when we first got in this new release of his, but oh damn is that about to change, as this is becoming one of those records that we can't seem to stop listening to. Channeling so many eras of warped pop delight, Brian Glaze has made a record that's as fun as it is smart, and as catchy as it is fulfilling. There is for sure a similar aesthetic and delivery to some of our favorite warped popsmiths like John Maus and Ariel Pink, but Green Living totally has its own thing going on. '50s pop colliding with psychedelic rock that's soaked in new wave electronics. We hear a bit of what The Gris Gris might sound like if they began to pull from more varied influences. Psychedelic disco pop? Deconstructed multigenerational pop genius? We're not sure exactly what to call it but we know that we LOVE IT!
MPEG Stream: "Leader of the Band"
MPEG Stream: "Bad News"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Ashes"

GLAZE, BRIAN Green Living (World Famous In SF) lp 11.98
Even though he resides right here in the Bay Area we knew very little about this Brian Glaze character when we first got in this new release of his, but oh damn is that about to change, as this is becoming one of those records that we can't seem to stop listening to. Channeling so many eras of warped pop delight, Brian Glaze has made a record that's as fun as it is smart, and as catchy as it is fulfilling. There is for sure a similar aesthetic and delivery to some of our favorite warped popsmiths like John Maus and Ariel Pink, but Green Living totally has its own thing going on. '50s pop colliding with psychedelic rock that's soaked in new wave electronics. We hear a bit of what The Gris Gris might sound like if they began to pull from more varied influences. Psychedelic disco pop? Deconstructed multigenerational pop genius? We're not sure exactly what to call it but we know that we LOVE IT!
MPEG Stream: "Leader of the Band"
MPEG Stream: "Bad News"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Ashes"

GNAW THEIR TONGUES All The Dread Magnificence Of Perversity (Crucial Blast) cd 13.98
We're running out of superlatives, not to mention overly poetic descriptions of filth and blackness and depravity, to describe this one man cinematic black doom noise outfit, but with every record, Mories, the man behind the beast, offers still more glimpses into what lurks below, or within, the sound an ever evolving cloud of black energy, rendered audible in shades of pummeling drum plod, of downtuned melting riffs, of howled and shrieked vocalizations, of Bernard Hermann like strings, all stretched and blurred and smeared and tangled into a veritable symphony of black bleak heaviness.
It's difficult to classify, as every song tends to slip seamlessly from Wolf Eyes like industrial soundscapery, to Godflesh like metal machine crunch, to lurching Abruptum like black ritual, to almost classic sounding black metal buzz, to haunting cinematic dark ambience, each of those elements fully realized, but then hurled into a black sonic vortex, where along with all the various other sounds and shapes and colors it gets mangled and tangles and spewed out on the other side as some almost living thing, a music that is at once threatening and caustic, harrowing and hateful, but also weirdly melodic and almost classical sounding, a definite case of black(ened) beauty.
For those new to the filth encrusted soundworld that is Gnaw Their Tongues, a brief survey of song titles: "My Orifices Await Ravaging", "The Stench Of Dead Horses On My Breath And The Vile Of Existence In My Hands", "The Gnostic Ritual Consumption Of Semen As Embodiment Of Wounds Teared In The Soul", the album title: All The Dread Magnificence Of Perversity, the crown of thorns / blood splattered / bondage cover art, should all give hints as to what sort of sinister sound lurks inside, but again, all of that could point to something much more puerile and simplistic, the sound of Gnaw Their Tongues is something altogether more refined, if a word like that could be applied to something this hellish, but it does sound refined, and composed, epic and majestic, for every bit of sluggish heaviness, there's another part that is hauntingly beautiful, or strangely serene, it boggles the mind how someone creates music like this, it must come from some deep, dark, black part of the soul, and while we ourselves might fear such a place in ourselves, we can't help but be enthralled and obsessed with the sort of sonic darkness that lurks in others.
WAY recommended, as with past GGT releases...
MPEG Stream: "My Orifices Await Ravaging"
MPEG Stream: "The Stench Of Dead Horses On My Breath And The Vile Of Existence In My Hands"
MPEG Stream: "The Gnostic Ritual Consumption Of Semen As Embodiment Of Wounds Teared In The Soul"

GRASSLUNG In Bad Fields (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98
We've only heard just a couple of recordings from Jonas Asher; but those we have heard - the UW Owl LP done with Jochen Hartmann and the split release under Asher's Grasslung moniker - have been outstanding pieces of analogue electronics that run the gamut from the glumly sublime to the dourly ominous. This super limited edition cassette from the local imprint Black Horizons slants more to the blackened electronic side of Asher's aesthetic. A turgid, low-end pulse marches through the first side of In Bad Fields, much like an even slower version of Wolf Eyes' cancerous rhythms. Sinewaves and speckles of electro-magentic static flicker through the lurching pulse. The second side fashions those bass rhythms into an unsettling roar whose surfaces get abraded through a similar undercurrent of static found on the first. Very dark stuff.
Given that Asher's Phaserprone label produced some of the finest letterpressed editions of artwork well suited in its iron hued colors and post-industrial iconography, Black Horizons had to come up with something special for Asher's first release outside of Phaserprone. The artwork is a nice silver-offset print job on a darkened metal-colored paper, and the whole cassette is encased in a hand-cut plastic slipcase. Watch out for the blackened nail hiding in the packaging, too. Really cool!
The tape is a C20 and is limited to 100 copies, or thereabouts!

GUDNADOTTIR, HILDUR Without Sinking (Touch) cd 16.98
Hildur Gudnadottir has such a way with the cello, able to create such utterly moving music that is filled with nuance and texture but that is also so deeply emotional. Hailing from Iceland, Gudnadottir's resume includes collaborations and partnerships with the likes of Pan Sonic, Mum, Sigur Ros, Angel, BJ Nilsen, etc. It's so nice to get to hear her take center stage, carefully crafting a sound that is about as moody and beautiful as music really gets. Perfect for those eternal gray days we are faced with so often in San Francisco, this is a record we put on when we just want to get lost in the fog and haze. There is very nice and subtle processing throughout the album as well, and here and there Gudnadottir tries her hand at the zither with stunning results. Johann Johansson adds organ on a few tracks as well, and fans of HIS best work as well as music by folks like Sylvain Chauveau, Philip Glass, Michael Cashmore, Joan Jeanrenaud and Colleen should for sure check this out. Truly elegant and intensely resonant. And thus highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Erupting Light"
MPEG Stream: "Overcast"
MPEG Stream: "Into Warmer Air"

JOYCE WITH NANA VASCONCELOS & MAURICIO MAESTRO Visions Of Dawn (Far Out) cd 15.98
Recording in Paris in 1976, legendary Brazilian songstress Joyce teamed up with percussionist Nana Vasconcelos (he has worked with everyone from Milton Nascimento to Don Cherry) and multi-instrumentalist/producer Mauricio Maestro to create this truly stunning record of textured psychedelia, laced with the colorful flourishes of samba and Tropicalia, the immediacy of acid folk and a wonderful mystical haze that seems to permeate the entire album.
For some reason, Visions Of Dawn was never actually released, at least until now, which is shocking as this really is one of the best, if not THE BEST Joyce records we have ever heard. You can hear here the sounds that would influence generations of performers, even decades later, like Juana Molina and Samara Lubelski, both of whom would largely base their sound and style on the magical music of Joyce. From start to finish this is an unbelievable album, it starts with more of a samba-pop vibe, but as the record progresses the rich mood and atmosphere of the instrumentation along with the breathtaking vocals begin to swirl in the air, floating through the clouds and refracting the sunlight. This record really belongs in the pantheon of the best discs by folks like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Milton Nascimento. Visions of Dawn is truly a lost classic!
MPEG Stream: "Banana"
MPEG Stream: "Nacional Kid"
MPEG Stream: "Jardim Dos Deuses"

KEELHAUL Keelhaul's Triumphant Return To Obscurity (Hydra Head) cd 15.98
We've always loved Keelhaul. How could we not? We love noise rock, and math rock, and KH are pretty much straddling the line between the two, spitting out dense, mathy bursts of grinding crunchy proggy metallic heaviness.
The cool thing about KH is that while they are super technical, and their songs are complex and convoluted and confusional, it never sounds wanky, these are just killer songs that happen to have a million parts crammed into each one, and the band aren't into singing, so they only do it once in a while, and they mostly just want to rock, it just so happens that their rocking involves strange time signatures and super tight instrumental workouts. In a lot of way, these guys sound a bit like a way more metal Polvo, which needless to say is awesome. The same sort of post rock vibe, sounds to these ears they the melodies sometimes get all Eastern and not typically rock sounding too.
Past records reminded us of groups like Neurosis or Coalesce, even Mastodon or Coalesce, but now with this, their first record in 6 years, we're hearing way more of a noise rock vibe, AmRep, Helmet, Tar, that sort of thing, but unlike those bands, this is way more complicated and heady, maybe like if the Champs teamed up with Lightning Bolt, went back in time and released a record on AmRep in 1992, but even that doesn't do this justice, there's a weird power metal vibe too, soaring melodies and catchy not-quite-choruses balancing the twisting serpentine compositions and the lurching pound and downtuned chug. However you slice it, these guys STILL RULE.
MPEG Stream: "Pass The Lampshade"
MPEG Stream: "Glorious Car Activities"
MPEG Stream: "Everything's A Napkin"

LITURGY Renihilation (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
These guys sent us an lp a long while back, and somehow we totally slept on it. Not sure why, a 12" x 12" image of a cloudy sky, the sun glinting in the background, and the words "PURE TRANSCENDENTAL BLACK METAL" writ large in big black records across the front, and inside, just what the cover promised some seriously buzzing blazing blackness. It's not surprising these guys found there way to 20 Buck Spin, a pretty good fit for sure for this NY horde.
Unlike the blissed out blackened ethereal transcendentalism of the lp, back when Liturgy was a one man bedroom black metal band, Renihilation finds Liturgy expanded to a 4 piece, and the sound is much more raw and organic, still blown out and pretty blissy, goddamn soaring and epic in fact, but it sounds more like a proper rock band, although the drumming is still inhumanly fast, and the band lock into these cool, weird, and very un-black metal sounding high end trills, that only make the sound that much more mysterious and mystical. The band claim some unlikely non-metal influences, but as you get into Renihilation, it's easy to hear that there's way more going on here than Ulver or Darkthrone worship, the band slipping into lurching, almost mathy breakdowns, incredible dynamics, that almost sounds like Harvey Milk at 78rpm, the sort of stop start, sway and lumber, that only works if the band is tight as fuck.
These songs are not super long either, but they feel majestic, and sprawling, and never ending, in a good way, the guitars are frantic, the drumming relentless, the guitars seem to exist only in the upper registers, like wild psychedelic leads transformed into some sort of blackened tremolo picking, so instead of black metal, these jams almost sound like modern classical compositions, like Arvo Part composing for black metal band, when a song ends, you feel exhausted, and drained, like at the end of a long journey, but before you can even catch your breath, the band explode into action once again. And before you know it, they're locked into another high end blast of extreme tension, no let up, no slipping into acoustic interludes, it's almost like the musical version holding your breath, soaring as high and for as long as (in)humanly possible, so when the band does pause briefly, it knocks you on your ass, of when they switch gears and get all spacious and dynamic, it nearly blows your mind.
When we first got this, we only listened to it a couple times, and thought it was pretty cool, but on repeated listens it is proving itself to be truly transcendental, and unlike almost all of the other black metal out there, and is quickly becoming a contender for black metal record of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Pagan Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Mysterium"
MPEG Stream: "Ecstatic Rite"

LLOYD, DALE Akaska For Record (Elevator Bath) picture disc 17.98
Strange that we haven't posted anything about Dale Lloyd in previous lists, but this is a man whose influence should be well known throughout the experimental and sound-art communities. Lloyd runs the And/OAR label, which specializes in environmental soundscaping with a few subsidies that push toward an electronic-pop context. Even so, the last full album from Mr. Lloyd emerged well over five years ago. This album continues in Elevator Bath's very impressive series of picture discs, which began in 2008 with releases of corroded drones from our own Jim Haynes and kosmiche brainmelting from Rick Reed. Lloyd's work is an excellent companion to these two releases. One of the two sides opens with a modulating hiss that harmonizes with a sinewy drone and gets punctured by a series bone-numbing electrical charges for something that could have some unsavory context had it been generated by John Duncan, but then again it could be a field recording of a grain-slew with minor post-production techniques. In fact, each of the pieces on Akasha For Record have this sense that they could be the results of well-situated field recordings like those of Tarab or Eric La Casa, as the smudges and grittiness of these recordings allude to such strategies. Another track shimmers like the vibration of a loose piece of metal on an industrial HVAC, with the timbres generating a surprisingly fluid and beautiful resonance like something Andrew Chalk would actively seek out. There's greater evidence of field recordings on the tracks that do feature the roar of surf and a cold wind intermingled with the softened white noise of sand getting pushed around. Lloyd had devised this album to complement the crackles that get magnified through the picture disc - a medium which notoriously wears heavier than most pressings of vinyl. The album certainly works well with its medium. Beautiful stuff, and super limited to 216 copies.

MAEROR TRI Myein (Waystax) cd 16.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Maeror Tri was a legendary German band that forged a mighty sound of corrosive, post-industrial dronescaping throughout the '90s before moving onto the equally impressive drone-based project Troum. Myein was one of the first cds by Maeror Tri, originally released by ND Records and housed in an unusual, oversized triangular sleeve. Now that this has been reissued through Waystyx, Myein enjoys a slightly less cumbersome, but no less appealing matte black, die-cut sleeve with a gold envelope housing the disc. Myein opens with a black cauldron of swarming guitar drones that steadily increases the atmospheric pressures over the course of the opening track before cracking in a burst of seething noise. Maeror Tri follows this with one of their more melodic interludes, extending a melancholic descending chord progression into a haunted mantra. The final entry on Myein finds Maeror Tri at their most sprawling, amorphous, and shadowy with an undulating ocean of dark dark drones littered with flanging sounds. We can only hope that Myein is the first of many reissues from Maeror Tri's hard to find back catalogue. Excellent!
MPEG Stream: "Phlogiston"
MPEG Stream: "Desiderium"
MPEG Stream: "Myein"

MAMMUT s/t (Long Hair) lp 33.00
Now available on vinyl!
The Long Hair label digs up another kool krautrock obscurity for reissue here, one that Andee and Allan both happened to have heard already via a previous cd edition. It's an album that we're now glad to be able to get to list (with a bonus track!). Originally released on LP in 1971 (natch) on a tiny label with the wonderful name of Mouse Trick Track Music, this one-off rarity is a bit of a trippy gem, groovy and flutey and fuzzy. And plenty weird too, as is evidenced by the album's odd song titles, each with the word "Mammut" in them:
"Bird Mammut" (indeed featuring birds twittering, and birdsong like flute flutter, amidst propulsively grooving drumming), "Classical Mammut" (a brief interlude of whooshing wind, crying baby, placid piano), "Mammut Ecstasy" (hippy chant, fuzzed out guitar heaviness), "Footmachine Mammut" (laidback groove, what sounds like a lively dinner party in the background, with clinking percussion/wine glasses, more guitar soloing), "Short Mammut" (kinda like "Mammut Ecstacy", but shorter), "Shizoyd Mammut" (shrieking vocals, organ jamming)... and that's just side 1. Side 2 actually consists of just two songs, longer, more lyrical ones, including the 13+ minute psychedelic tour de force "Mammut Opera", that's both dramatic and rather lovely.
The whole thing, the way it combines the acid rock guitar action with Hammond organ, flute, and even field recordings (both outdoor and indoor it would seem), sorta sounds like a demented Deep Purple dosed on drugs, jazzily jamming away at some hippy party place in the Black Forest (where the were, recording in the studios of jazz label MPS). It's more groovy than heavy, but they let loose with some wild guitar riffery now and then, as well as dabbling in some (Beatles inspired?) songiness, particularly on the second half of the record. Krautrock aficionados should definitely investigate! And, especially as we know they overlap, Acid Mothers Temple fans too! There's definitely a precursor to AMT's funny freeform freakout vibe going on here. Specific krautrock comparisons could be to some of the previous Long Hair reissues like Et Cetera, Kollektiv and Wolfgang Dauner's The Oimels.
This new vinyl reissue, just like the cd version we already highlighted, includes the aforementioned 5 minute bonus track ("Da Du Da", recorded by these musicians in '69 for a compilation album, leading to the formation of the Mammut band/album project).
MPEG Stream: "Bird Mammut"
MPEG Stream: "Mammut Ecstasy"

MAYYORS Deads e.p. (self released) 12" 10.98
People have been freaking out about the Mayyors for ages now. Before we had even heard them, we knew we HAD to hear them, cuz that's what everyone we knew was telling us. Then we were lucky enough to get them to play our South By Southwest showcase, and whattayaknow? Everyone was right. They destroyed, wild and punk rock, and a little new wave, and s upper distorted and weirdly poppy, pretty much exactly what we could have hoped for. One person we knew even flew from another state JUST to see the Mayyors, and managed to see them play 8 or 9 times. And loved every single minute of it.
We got a bunch of these 12"s a while back, and they sold out in a heartbeat, before we could even get it reviewed. We got a few more, but then those too were gone in a flash. So the band finally repressed another batch, so now here's your chance, however fleeting to snag one of these 4 song 45 rpm 12"s, same as the first pressing, but now in plain white stamped sleeves, instead of the first pressing's gross dirt covered jackets, but it's the sound that matters, and the sound here is ferocious. Snotty, snarly, fuzzy, punky, noisy, catchy, druggy, crumbling ultra distorted guitars, wild pounding drums, yowled effected vox, tons of feedback, FX all over the place and THICK corrosive buzzing bass that drives EVERYTHING. Imagine maybe a poppier, less fucked up more new wave Rusted Shut, that same sort of chaotic noise rock, that while druggy, manages to be a bit tighter and a whole lot less on the verge of total collapse, while remaining awesomely chaotic.
The final track might be our favorite, the same sort of revved up Brainbombs style dirge, supercharged, and eventually growing more and more and more distorted and in-the-red, culminating in what might just be the raddest post-Buttholes drug rock noise guitar freakout EVER.
We did get a ton of these, but they'll probably go quick, and the band did say they would press more if this pressing sold out, but it could mean a bit of a wait if you don't grab one now.

MIDDLETON, MALCOLM Waxing Gibbous (Full Time Hobby) cd 14.98
As the first few songs from Malcolm Middleton's latest album burst forth, you sorta get the feeling that he's thrown off the sadsack shackles of past dour hopelessness. The feverish tempo of many of these songs suggests that he might've come to the realization that too much time has been wasted mopin' around, and he's pulled up his socks and gotten a move on. The fantastic opening tune (and clear choice for the first single off the album) "Red Travellin' Socks" had us imagining what the world would be like if the New Pornographers had blossomed out of Scotland instead of Canada. 'Tis buoyant, beautifully produced pop with soaring female backing vocals that's as infectious as can be. Sure there's still the occasional song during which Middleton's spirits droop and his shoulders slump under the weight of the woes of his heart and soul as well as that of the rest of the world. Need proof? Give "Ballad Of Fuck All" a spin! Yeah, the title sez it all. He's never been one to mince words. As well there are a few endearingly dorky moments when the parts don't quite seem to fit - such as the introduction of programmed beats and/or a bleep-bloop synth line (as on "Zero") into the predominantly folksy acoustic setting. On the other hand, the same additions to songs such as "Box And Knife" work beautifully! Day in and day out, Middleton seldom disappoints! Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Red Travellin' Socks"
MPEG Stream: "Box And Knife"

MIIKE SNOW s/t (Downtown) cd 14.98
We usually don't pay too much attention to mainstream music mags, especially when they're pushing something as the next big thing, so we're not sure how exactly we ended up hearing this record from Miike Snow, a Swedish trio, not a person, but apologies to whoever wrote the recommendation, and whatever magazine printed it, cuz this really is fantastic. Totally quirky, super lush pop, that if we had to summarize these guys in a nutshell, we'd probably describe them as Animal Collective meets Phoenix, maybe with a little TV On The Radio mixed in (especially in the almost Peter Gabriel sounding vox), although we have seen them described as Animal Collective meets A-Ha, which might be not that far off either.
But however you describe them, the sound is amazing. Super lush, glimmering almost orchestral pop, with gorgeous vocal harmonies, buzzy synths, minimal programmed rhythms, little flurries of electronics, swirling ambience, tinkling pianos, a glistening production, and incredible hooks, the first three tracks have this record so frontloaded the rest of the songs barely stand a chance, but somehow they do manage to hold their own, which is saying a lot, just give the three sound samples a listen and you'll know exactly what we mean.
We probably haven't dug a major label mainstream pop record this much since Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and you know how much we love(d) that one, so needless to say, for the pop kids this one comes highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Animal"
MPEG Stream: "Burial"
MPEG Stream: "Silvia"

NITE JEWEL Want You Back (Italians Do It Better) 12" 9.98
Nite Jewel's album Good Evening is shaping up to be one of our favorites of the year, so we were super excited for these new bedroom jams on her second 12", released on the always great Italians Do It Better label. Taking her hazy lo-fi spaced out slow jam sound to even greater heights of smoky delight. "Want You Back" might just surpass "What Did He Say" as her most infectious song yet! Still somehow infusing a shoegazey and dazed vibe into her coming down from the dance floor grooves. The B-side "All Out Of Order" finds her using a vocoder for maximum slow burn effect, and it's pretty rad that she also included a version of the song in Spanish. As much as we've been playing this we also can't take our eyes off the 12"s cover with its saturated colors and faded image that reminds us of the classic look of 12"s by groups like the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. All the way around, an awesome release!

OBSERVATORY, THE Dark Folke (self released) cd + book 17.98
We should probably stop being surprised when we discover records we dig and groups we love are in fact made by or made up of long time aQuarius customers. It makes sense after all. People who are obsessed with cool weird music are often the same ones who make it. We should also probably stop marvelling about what a small world it is, similar to the above sentiment, it makes sense that people into the same sort of weird shit would gravitate toward each other.
So thus, it makes perfect sense, that The Observatory, who hail from Singapore, count at least one long time aQ mailorder customer as a member, and thus it should also make perfect sense, that The Observatory's eye popping, ultra deluxe hardcover silver inked book packaging was designed by none other than Justin Bartlett, another aQ customer, and the man responsible for the first bad ass installment in our Artist Edition t-shirt series. So now that we're no longer surprised, and all finished marvelling, we can get to the music.
The Observatory are difficult to describe. Their sound is lush, and dark, and mysterious, woozy and softly psychedelic. The core traditional band instruments are augmented by what sounds like a whole mess of other random instruments. The songs sprawl, the seem to ooze and creep and drift. Mark Ribot like angular guitars are draped over a Bohren like dirge, sunshiney almost Beach Boys harmonies are woven into a slowly swirling synthscape, drums are minimal and spare, the songs shift into soft mysterious dreampop, with Theremins, steel string guitars, and hushed crooned vocals, more of those glorious harmonies, before drifting back into something more croonsome, until some crunchy guitars come in, and the song splinter into a dizzying grinding circus gone haywire sort of psychedelic freakout, finally slipping back into something much more tranquil and soft and poppy.
At their core, these guys (and gals) are definitely a pop band, but their tendencies definitely lean toward something much more avant and out. Jangly, shimmery, poppy, and folky for sure, in fact, this is most definitely 'dark folke', but it's informed by much more than just folk music. Dramatic strings sing and soar, ethereal female vocals drift over spidery strum and buzz, strange bits of shortwave interference, reverbed piano plinks, all draped over the band's lush dark folky almost chamber pop, so dreamy and divine.
Did we mention the packaging? WOW. A 7" x 7" black clothbound hardcover book. The front and back printed in metallic silver ink, inside 14 pages of lyrics and Justin Bartlett's gorgeously creepy pen and ink drawings, like some nightmarish children's book, so over the top and deluxe, not sure how they manage to sell it for so cheap, needless to say, grab one quick before they realize they can't and the price goes way up, or more likely, they sell out!!
MPEG Stream: "Omicron"
MPEG Stream: "A Shuffler In The Mud"
MPEG Stream: "Blood Rising"
MPEG Stream: "Ephemeron"

OM Conference Live (Important) lp 17.98
Second live record from this post-Sleep duo, this one a live recreation of their 2006 Conference Of The Birds album, recorded live in New York last year, giving most people their first earful of new drummer Emil Amos, courtesy of epic post rockers the Grails, replacing long time Om drummer Chris Hakius, who was also in Sleep with Om bassist and vocalist Al Cisneros.
The drum switch is pretty dramatic, where Hakius was a bruiser, who pounded his kit, Amos is much more refined and restrained, jazzier for sure, his parts busier and skittery than the Hakius' Conference originals.
"At Giza" is a low slow rumble, mantra like and haunting, doomy for sure, but more abstract than crushing, the bass rubbery and almost clean, unfurling slow motion grooves, the drums a stripped down shuffle, the vocals reverbed and clean and way up in the mix, everything hushed and hypnotic. It's not until nearly 3/4 of the way through that the distortion kicks in and the band let loose, and that Sleep pedigree becomes apparent. And while in some ways, Amos's drumming makes the sound less obviously 'heavy', it also pushed it in new, almost proggy directions, adding more complexity and counterpoint, and things get seriously frenzied and frenetic, with a distinctly Ruins-worthy coda.
The flip side, "Flight Of The Eagle", is not that far removed from the original, minus the slightly different drumming style, the sound is still plenty sludgy, droney, groovy, druggy, hypnotic and HEAVY.
Thick diecut jackets, the printed inside sleeve visible through the diecut, pressed on ultra heavy vinyl. And yeah, most definitely limited.

PACIONE, ADAM Dobranoc (Elevator Bath) picture disc 17.98
Adam Pacione's blissed ambience has quietly enthralled us over many years now; and he continues his relationship with the exceptional Elevator Bath label, who has issued this wondrous album through an ongoing series of picture discs that previously included work by Rick Reed, our own Jim Haynes, and Dale Lloyd (reviewed elsewhere on this list). Pacione claims a bunch of sources for Dobranoc, including guitar, field recordings, analogue synth, Moog filters, and shortwave radio. He seems intent on extracting particular, harmonious colors from each of those materials and working them into a monochromatic blur of softened dronescaping and hushed ambience. The faintest of half-melodies work through Pacione's stately compositions; and it's easy to become lost in these extended moments on Dobranoc. Throughout, Pacione streams a series of delicate textures that could be snow coming through the radio, or it could be a light shower of rain that settles behind much of Pacione's sustained tonal flutterings. No matter the source, the slight abrasions of these sounds act as a ghostly counterpoint to the purity that Pacione gets out of his drones. The resulting wanderings through his radiant soundfields have much of the sense of mystery that Zoviet France managed on Shadow Thief Of The Sun or that emerged from the more minimal explorations of Stars Of The Lid. The picture disc features two blurred macro-lens images sporting oversaturated colors abstracted through the lens; and these are suitable visuals to accompany Pacione's ethereal work. Limited to 268 copies.

PERNICE, JOE It Feels So Good When I Stop (Novel Soundtrack) (Ashmont) cd 13.98
Much like the Young Accuser 7" reviewed a couple lists back, It Feels So Good When I Stop is another Joe Pernice release related to his forthcoming novel. The Young Accuser 7" was a not-imaginary record, by the imaginary band in Pernice's novel, channeling a more rocking vibe than we're used to from him, but on It Feels So Good When I Stop, Pernice takes on a bunch of covers, forming what is essentially a soundtrack to his novel. Some of the tracks seem to be actually mentioned in the story (based on the handful of readings interspersed between the songs here), while others seem to just be songs that informed its writing or heck, that Pernice just digs.
Del Shannon, Sebadoh, Tom T. Hall, Allan Sherman, Todd Rundgren, Plush, Dream Syndicate, Sammy Johns and of course The Young Accuser. Pernice manages to make all the covers here sound like his own, his voice wispy and delicate, the instrumentation minimal, the song choice ideal for his style, Del Shannon's "Found A Little Baby" is one of the highlights, joined by the rest of the Pernice Brothers, if it wasn't a cover, we'd be proclaiming it one of the best Pernice / Pernice brothers tracks ever. The Sebadoh cover manages to make the original sound even slower and sadder. The instrumental version of one of the Young Accuser jams from the Sub Pop 7" is also pretty great (with the Pernice Brothers again), and Todd Rundgren's "Hello, It's Me" seems like it was written for Pernice, stripped down and gorgeously vulnerable.
Not sure if this has us wanting to read the novel necessarily, but it sure has us hankering for another Pernice Brothers record. Or how about a Scud Mountain Boys reunion! Regardless, a beautiful collection of songs for sure.
MPEG Stream: "I Go To Pieces"
MPEG Stream: "Soul And Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Hello It's Me"

PERSISTENCE IN MOURNING The Undead Shall Rise (At War With False Noise) lp 15.98
Upon first glancing at The Undead Shall Rise, we just assumed it was, ya know, another metal record. That all changed within the first two seconds or so, and before long we realized we were being confronted by one of the most bizarre metal records we've heard in some time, and nothing could really prepare us for the utter weirdness pouring out of this record's filthy grooves, so weird in fact, that we weren't even sure what speed the record was supposed to be played at (it's 33, we decided). Closer inspection revealed that this is, in fact, a concept record about... ZOMBIES!!! YES!!! Conveniently separated into two movements, Before (Side A) and After (Side B, duh), the album plays out like a nightmarish piece of cinematic horror. Filthy, molten guitars, subsonic doom bass, and the kind of vocals that make small children cower in absolute terror weave a story of the post-Zombie apocalypse, while, not surprisingly given the theme, Italian-inspired synths swirl about like an inescapable disease ready to take you straight to hell. The intense demon croaks (or zombie croaks, more appropriately) are just about as uncomfortable and vile as you could ever hope for, and the heaps of creepy ambience and the overall spaciousness of the recording help to add a truly disconcerting vibe. While much of the record plays out as an abject, lumbering doomscape, there are other moments that almost bring to mind Neil Young's soundtrack to Dead Man. Obviously for a record about zombies to succeed, it needs to recall a certain loneliness and sense of despair - check. The record makes you feel like you have lost all sense of control as the zombies fuck shit up and make existence generally unpleasant. So, if that's your idea of a good time, you may have just found your favorite new record.
Limited to an insane 250 units, each copy of The Undead Shall Rise also comes with a hand scrawled note covered in movie blood, conveying the narrator's last moments before everything goes to shit.

PERVERTS s/t (HBSP-2X) 7" 7.98
In a relatively short period of time, Ty Segall has developed a totally recognizable style of super blown out garage punk that we just can't seem to get enough of. And a lot of you must feel the same, cuz the records keep pouring out and selling like crazy.
So it was quite fitting that when we first played this in the store a customer immediately asked "So what Ty Segall project is this?" and he was right on, because even though the Perverts are even more in-the-red and fucked up and punk sounding than Segall's other records, it still has his immediately noticeable rad guitar playing and wild vocals all over it. We dig how Segall is following in the tradition of old school punk and the early days of vintage garage rock where folks would put out singles almost every month, and have a billion different side-projects. Lucky for us everything he's been doing is sounding so great so we say, go ahead and keep on being the hardest working man in blown out garage rock!

PISSED JEANS King Of Jeans (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
King Of Jeans? Not sure what that title is about exactly. Now, King Of PISSED would make a lot more sense! What with all the scuzz and scowl found on this loud, noisy record. Though the Pissed Jeans aren't always pissed, sometimes just more, like, bummed. As on the album's final cut, "Goodbye (Hair)", a song about going bald.
By the way, just thought of this, is there some sort of pun going on the band's name, could it be read Pissed Genes as well? Dunno.
Anyway, this album, the PA punk troupe's third (2nd for Sub Pop, where they definitely belong, in the tradition of shitkickers like Green River), is another good 'un. On it, they bring back more of the catchiness that caught our ears on their debut Shallow, while not sacrificing any of the ugliness and avant-rock anguish heard on Hope For Men. Nope, this new slab of heavy punk pounding is chock full of all the feedback guitar skree and vokill rants that Pissed Jeans always bring to the party, sounding partway between Tad and the Jesus Lizard. Of course Black Flag is also another obvious comparison! And like we said, a lot of this is catchy as fuck, that is if you can call choruses consisting of barely-human "bleeeargh!" catchy. Or all the spastic lurching n' doomed lumbering. We also like the spacey FX that pervade "She Is Science Fiction". Most songs are in the 2-3 minute range, though there's exceptions, like the seven and a half minute "Spent", a Melvins-y, My War style dirge.
For fans of the Flag and other '80s punk past, contemporary scuzzers Vee Dee, some of the more extreme of the current "shitgaze" crowd, and of course Pissed Jeans' previous output. Duh.
MPEG Stream: "False Jesii Part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Half Idiot"
MPEG Stream: "She Is Science Fiction"

PISSED JEANS King Of Jeans (Sub Pop) lp 13.98
King Of Jeans? Not sure what that title is about exactly. Now, King Of PISSED would make a lot more sense! What with all the scuzz and scowl found on this loud, noisy record. Though the Pissed Jeans aren't always pissed, sometimes just more, like, bummed. As on the album's final cut, "Goodbye (Hair)", a song about going bald.
By the way, just thought of this, is there some sort of pun going on the band's name, could it be read Pissed Genes as well? Dunno.
Anyway, this album, the PA punk troupe's third (2nd for Sub Pop, where they definitely belong, in the tradition of shitkickers like Green River), is another good 'un. On it, they bring back more of the catchiness that caught our ears on their debut Shallow, while not sacrificing any of the ugliness and avant-rock anguish heard on Hope For Men. Nope, this new slab of heavy punk pounding is chock full of all the feedback guitar skree and vokill rants that Pissed Jeans always bring to the party, sounding partway between Tad and the Jesus Lizard. Of course Black Flag is also another obvious comparison! And like we said, a lot of this is catchy as fuck, that is if you can call choruses consisting of barely-human "bleeeargh!" catchy. Or all the spastic lurching n' doomed lumbering. We also like the spacey FX that pervade "She Is Science Fiction". Most songs are in the 2-3 minute range, though there's exceptions, like the seven and a half minute "Spent", a Melvins-y, My War style dirge.
For fans of the Flag and other '80s punk past, contemporary scuzzers Vee Dee, some of the more extreme of the current "shitgaze" crowd, and of course Pissed Jeans' previous output. Duh.
MPEG Stream: "False Jesii Part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Half Idiot"
MPEG Stream: "She Is Science Fiction"

PRINCE FAR I Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 3 (Pressure Sounds) cd 15.98
AQ's summer of dub continues! You may have noticed that lately we've been dipping into the vaults, coming up with some pretty amazing classic reggae and dub records that we never had the chance to list before, and while they may not be new, we think they totally deserve attention and anyone who missed out on these before most definitely deserves another chance to lay their ears on these divine sounds.
Earlier this summer we gushed about some classic releases by Black Uhuru and Horace Andy, and this 1981 outing by the legendary Prince Far I ranks right up there when it comes to deep grooved free flowing dub. Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 3 leads off with Prince Far I's commanding outerspace vocals that make us imagine what it might have sounded like if Afrika Bambata cut a dub record inside Thunderdome. The rest of the album is mostly instrumental top notch dub with some female vocals sprinkled sparingly throughout, with the main focus remaining on all the weird textures, electronics, tape speed fuckery and just flat out delicious dubby delights! Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 3 sort of serves as this perfect bridge using the early roots of '70s dub as its foundation but pushing forward a new vision of the possibilities of dub. So damn good!
MPEG Stream: "Shake The Nation"
MPEG Stream: "Plant Up"
MPEG Stream: "Low Gravity"

REATARD, JAY Watch Me Fall (Matador) cd 13.98
For whatever reason, we've never reviewed a record by Jay Reatard, which considering the hype surrounding him these days is somewhat surprising, and even though we dug his old band the Lost Sounds quite a bit, we were never all that interested in his solo stuff.
We're kind of kicking ourselves now, cuz if this new one is anything to go on, this shit is SO up our alley. Frantic, jangly, propulsive, power pop. And, yeah, garage rarely enters into it, this is total old school power pop, big guitars, killer hooks, and Reatard's high whiney vocals that have always been perfect for this sort of pop.
If we had to draw a comparison, it would be the Buzzcocks and the Cardiacs. The classic punk pop smithery of the Buzzcocks, and the frenetic high vocal-ed, almost proggy spazzpop of the Cardiacs. And at its most frenzied and caffeinated Reatard reminds us of the Toy Dolls too. Which should give you a good idea of what this stuff sounds like.
The first three tracks are a pretty perfect 1-2-3 pop punch. The first single opens up the record, "It Ain't Gonna Save Me", a total jangle pogo punk pop jam, with a stripped down verse and a soaring anthemic chorus, and a cool angelic vocal bridge that is total Cardiacs. "Before I Was Caught" sounds like it came straight off some Rhino post punk compilation, total classic old school eighties new wave pop, with a hook to die for, and awesome chiming guitars. And finally "Man Of Steel", another very Cardiacs sounding jam, but with a cool woozy guitar part, and a robotic new wave verse, skittery drums, and yet another super catchy, ever ascending chorus. Thankfully, the rest of the record is just as great. Not a stinker in the bunch. And the more we listen, the more the later tracks begin to shine, one of those discs where every track is a possible favorite. Watch Me Fall is definitely one of our biggest surprises, we listen to it DAILY, and it has us backpedalling like crazy, tracking down and checking out all those other Reatard discs we passed by the first time around...
MPEG Stream: "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"
MPEG Stream: "Before I Was Caught"
MPEG Stream: "Man Of Steel"

REATARD, JAY Watch Me Fall (Matador) lp 14.98
For whatever reason, we've never reviewed a record by Jay Reatard, which considering the hype surrounding him these days is somewhat surprising, and even though we dug his old band the Lost Sounds quite a bit, we were never all that interested in his solo stuff.
We're kind of kicking ourselves now, cuz if this new one is anything to go on, this shit is SO up our alley. Frantic, jangly, propulsive, power pop. And, yeah, garage rarely enters into it, this is total old school power pop, big guitars, killer hooks, and Reatard's high whiney vocals that have always been perfect for this sort of pop.
If we had to draw a comparison, it would be the Buzzcocks and the Cardiacs. The classic punk pop smithery of the Buzzcocks, and the frenetic high vocal-ed, almost proggy spazzpop of the Cardiacs. And at its most frenzied and caffeinated Reatard reminds us of the Toy Dolls too. Which should give you a good idea of what this stuff sounds like.
The first three tracks are a pretty perfect 1-2-3 pop punch. The first single opens up the record, "It Ain't Gonna Save Me", a total jangle pogo punk pop jam, with a stripped down verse and a soaring anthemic chorus, and a cool angelic vocal bridge that is total Cardiacs. "Before I Was Caught" sounds like it came straight off some Rhino post punk compilation, total classic old school eighties new wave pop, with a hook to die for, and awesome chiming guitars. And finally "Man Of Steel", another very Cardiacs sounding jam, but with a cool woozy guitar part, and a robotic new wave verse, skittery drums, and yet another super catchy, ever ascending chorus. Thankfully, the rest of the record is just as great. Not a stinker in the bunch. And the more we listen, the more the later tracks begin to shine, one of those discs where every track is a possible favorite. Watch Me Fall is definitely one of our biggest surprises, we listen to it DAILY, and it has us backpedalling like crazy, tracking down and checking out all those other Reatard discs we passed by the first time around...
MPEG Stream: "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"
MPEG Stream: "Before I Was Caught"
MPEG Stream: "Man Of Steel"

RENDERERS, THE Monsters And Miasmas (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98
It's been a while. The last we heard from this veteran New Zealand indie rock downer pop band (formed around the nucleus of husband and wife duo Brian and Maryrose Crook) wasn't even a Renderers' album, it was 2008's excellent Renderizors disc Submarine, a droney collaboration with fellow, more experimental kiwis the Sandoz Lab Technicians. Before that, you have to go back a few years to the nineties for their albums on Flying Nun, Ajax, and Siltbreeze. Although, some of us here heard 'em in person not long ago, 'cause they played the AQ/WFMU SXSW showcase in Austin this spring, and also made it out to San Francisco not long after, on the way back to NZ.
Live, they were surprisingly heavy, offering amped-up psych-storms something like Bardo Pond. On record, they explore their quieter side too, but this does have plenty of electric psych action, rocking out on tracks like "Fu Man Chu" and "Feels Like Fun", numbers laced with feedback and distortion that would definitely find favor with fans of Neil Young (most of whom have never heard of The Renderers, unfortunately for them). And by the end of the nearly nine minute "Harvesting The Sea", total mayhem erupts, Hawkwind-y electronics doing battle with billowing guitar noise, a la Comets On Fire. Their psych proclivities are also heard on the more hushed tracks like "Sargasso Sea", which finds The Renderers meandering into the blackness and bleakness inhabited by Japanese acts like Suishou No Fune.
Monsters And Miasmas is an album that mixes weary country/folk balladeering with reverby underground rock and roll, providing not just a dark vibe but also honest to gosh memorable melodic songs. Brian Crook's vocals are slightly nasal and remind us of Bob Dylan or Tom Petty just a bit, while Maryrose Crook's singing is sweeter but no less depressive in tone. When she does sound somewhat hopeful, it's still in regard to topics like how she'd prefer living at the bottom of the sea. Meanwhile, the first thing out of Brian Cook's mouth on this album are lyrics about falling into a very deep hole. This is definitely The Renderers we know and love.
MPEG Stream: "Fu Man Chu"
MPEG Stream: "Deep Hole"
MPEG Stream: "Five Good Hours"

ROEDELIUS, HANS-JOACHIM Durch Die Wuste (Bureau) cd 17.98
Now also reissued on cd! Durch Die Wuste was the first solo outing by Hans-Joachim Roedelius of Cluster/Harmonia fame, and originally came out in 1978 on the always impeccable Sky label. Melding his tastes for classical composition, spaced out ambience, and electronic rock possibilities, this album found Roedelius simmering in warm rolling waves that just invite you to get lost and daydream in their subtly hypnotic pull. What's most amazing and compelling about this album is how organic it all sounds. Years before folks were really getting a grasp of how to intertwine traditional instrumentation with electronics, Roedelius was doing it masterfully. We're also so taken by the divine percussive quality that rises to the surfaces on lots of the album, especially the record's last two songs where Roedelius manages to play the drums himself and creates an amazing orbital groove that we could listen to forever. Durch Die Wuste manages to combine both his more dark and outsider tendencies with his ability to create the ultimate in shimmering cosmic bliss. We can't believe that some of us had never heard this record before, we are so beyond happy that it's been reissued as this stands up against any of Cluster's breathtaking moments. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Johanneslust"
MPEG Stream: "Mr. Livingstone"
MPEG Stream: "Regenmacher"

SEGALL, TY Horn The Unicorn (HBSP-2X) lp 16.98
Awesome odds and ends collection from mighty lo-fi garage rocker, Ty Segall. Horn The Unicorn includes his first cassette which forecasted the fucked up brilliance to come, as well as the recent and way out of print Skin 7" which we never managed to get. Also within the grooves of Horn The Unicorn, you'll find Segall's songs from a split cassette with Superstitions, as well as a few tracks that have never appeared anywhere else before.
By this point you probably already know that when it comes to impassioned, stripped to its core and way in the red garage rock it just doesn't get a whole lot better or more exciting then Ty Segall. It's pretty awesome to see how hard Segall is working, playing shows in town almost every week solo or in one of his bands, and busting out new songs at the same ferocious speed without sacrificing quality. You might recognize a few of these tracks even if you didn't get to hear them in their original incarnations the first time around, as some of them have been re-recorded and reworked on both of Segall's proper albums. We have to say though, that we kind of love how those songs sound here in their original even more raw form. While this collection gives folks a chance to grab so many songs that have gone out of print, there's no saying how long this vinyl collection will stay in print itself so better act fast to avoid losing out again.

SHITS AND GIGGLES Trick Or Treat (Free Dope And Fucking In The Streets) lp 17.98
***Ariel Pink alert!!!!*** ***Total mind-fuck alert!!!***
Shits And Giggles is a brand new band that features Ariel Pink alongside the mutant sonic terrorists the Vas Deferens Organization. While everyone in the world seems to be biting on Ariel Pink's brand of outsider pop, recently, it's kind of awesome to see him take a total left turn and create a completely different, but equally warped sonic beast.
Shits And Giggles wander in a musical landscape that feels like it's being beamed over from a different galaxy. Collapsing fucked up jazzy rhythms melt into plunderphonic like excursions while taking turns into psychedelic funk and other worldly whatthefuckness. All totally insane yet somehow still so damn compelling and weirdly trance inducing. You can hear how records by Negativland, Nurse With Wound, John Oswald, Throbbing Gristle, Muslimgauze, Wicked Witch, Sublime Frequencies, etc. have seeped their way into Shits And Giggles' subconscious, and no doubt about it this is a uniquely distorted musical adventure. Vas Deferens Organization are some of the folks who run the totally awesome blog Mutant Sounds, so it's no surprise that they have found their own way to create some completely tripped out magic of their own. Even though it's nothing like an Ariel Pink album there are still moments, the production, specific sounds, certain melodies and phrases, that are still so recognizably Ariel Pink. A total must have for Ariel Pink fans and everyone else into the demented done right!

SIC ALPS A Long Way Around To A Shortcut (Drag City) lp 21.00
Now available on VINYL!!! Which is especially good, as the cd is out of print and no longer available, so grab one of these while you can...
All the better, since it's been out of print in the cd format for a while. Here's what we said about it when we did have the cd:
We've long been extolling the kick ass retro distorto pop virtues of SF's own Sic Alps. A series of awesome lps, 7"s, cassettes, all way too limited and gone in a flash.
Well, A Long Way Around To A Shortcut compiles almost all of those out of print goodies, here's a list: the Description Of The Harbor 12", the Strawberry Guillotine 7", the Semi-Streets 7", the Teenage Alps cassette, the Soft Tour In Rough Form 12", a track from the Hip Hop Shop Sweepers comp and one unreleased song. Whew! That's 26 tracks, in less than an hour, a joyous chunk of noisy, distortion drenched noisepop, lilting, falsetto vocals, detuned guitars, plink plonk piano, everything soaked in reverb and delay, gloriously ramshackle and DIY. And on vinyl now too no less!!
The disc opens with a Strapping Fieldhands cover (definitely one of Sic Alps' sonic forefathers) that begins all pretty and minor key and evolves into a super abstract field of high end ambience, random percussive clatter and feedback. From that point on, the disc offers up short and sharp track after track, acoustic guitars, woodblocks, maracas, shakers, simple drums, more piano, sing songy Lou Reed-ish vocals, super tinny electric guitar, blown out distortion, awesome druggy fuzz, woozy grooves, buzzy distorted old school garage rock, acid fried psych pop, and lots and lots of NOISE. It's no coincidence that Sic Alps shared members with other noisepop locals like Iran and the Coachwhips. Fans of those bands will definitely dig this stuff too.
Messy, chaotic, wild and wooly, rocking and weird, stripped down and distorted, fuzzy and noisy, what more could you want?
MPEG Stream: "Description Of The Harbor (Strapping Field Hands)"
MPEG Stream: "Strawberry Guillotine"
MPEG Stream: "And What Came Next"
MPEG Stream: "Arthur Machen"

SIC ALPS L. Mansion / Superlungs My Supergirl (Slumberland) 7" 4.50
Sic Alps just keep getting better and better. This new jam "L. Mansion" is definitely one of our favorites so far. Cool and stripped down, acoustic guitar and shuffling drums, a killer vocal line, lots of 'woooooo's, a rad reverbed piano 'solo', sounds like an acoustic version of some classic post punk / new wave jam from the eighties. The flipside is a cover, of Donovan's "Superlungs My Supergirl". We were pretty much convinced that Terry Reid's version was UNTOUCHABLE, and while Sic Alps' take on this classic doesn't quite measure up, it's still plenty bad ass, and they definitely give it their own flavor, super distorted lo-fi guitars, big booming drums, pounded piano, softly crooned vocals, some wild psych leads, plenty of feedback, and all wrapped in an awesomely buzzy wall of sound production.

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE Luminous Night (Drag City) cd 14.98
An abundance of Six Organs this week! Ben Chasny not only has this great new album out, but there's also a vinyl-only split 12" with Azul (aka his old pal L) on the Japanese psych label PSF we're reviewing too. The full-length record at hand, Luminous Night, is indeed a stunner, and more or less what we've come to expect from the reliable Mr. Chasny.
It opens with the orchestrated, slightly precious folk-prog of "Actaeon's Fall (Against The Hounds)", an all-instrumental intro to this delicate and dusty album, a track that's sad yet hopeful, with a Morricone-esque arrangement. The next song "Anesthesia" brings in Ben's hushed but strong singing, and that's how it goes here, folkish balladry (like ferinstance on "The Ballad Of Charley Harper", though there's plenty of drone n' distortion layered o'er that one, and elsewhere) interwoven with moody instrumentals, all of it with a Western Gothic meets Eastern Psych vibe. Next up, "Bar-Nasha" leans towards the Eastern side of the equation, a tapestry of fingerpicking, flute, and hand percussion, but Ben's vocals have all the melancholic solemnity of apocalyptic alt-country act Woven Hand, in fact, his deeper voiced singing here, as on this track, reminds us weirdly enough of someone from another Xtian band, vocalist Eric Wagner from classic doom metallers Trouble. (Who can be psychedelic sometimes, but not like this!).
Regarding the instrumentals, the longest track here, "The River Of Heaven", is a ritualistic ceremony like Japan's Ghost getting mopey, and "Cover Your Wounds With The Sky" is a lovely dense drone piece, sounding a lot like something from Steven R. Smith's latest record, Cities (yet to be reviewed by us, but really good, by the way).
We've mentioned almost all the tracks here, and rest assured that the others are quite nice too, making for a haunting Six Organs Of Admittance album that should satisfy his fans old and new. We figure most of you fall into the former camp, but anyone yet to experience this artist should give Luminous Night a listen and likely you'll become one of the latter.
MPEG Stream: "Bar-Nasha"
MPEG Stream: "The River Of Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "The Ballad Of Charley Harper"

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE Luminous Night (Drag City) lp 15.98
An abundance of Six Organs this week! Ben Chasny not only has this great new album out, but there's also a vinyl-only split 12" with Azul (aka his old pal L) on the Japanese psych label PSF we're reviewing too. The full-length record at hand, Luminous Night, is indeed a stunner, and more or less what we've come to expect from the reliable Mr. Chasny.
It opens with the orchestrated, slightly precious folk-prog of "Actaeon's Fall (Against The Hounds)", an all-instrumental intro to this delicate and dusty album, a track that's sad yet hopeful, with a Morricone-esque arrangement. The next song "Anesthesia" brings in Ben's hushed but strong singing, and that's how it goes here, folkish balladry (like ferinstance on "The Ballad Of Charley Harper", though there's plenty of drone n' distortion layered o'er that one, and elsewhere) interwoven with moody instrumentals, all of it with a Western Gothic meets Eastern Psych vibe. Next up, "Bar-Nasha" leans towards the Eastern side of the equation, a tapestry of fingerpicking, flute, and hand percussion, but Ben's vocals have all the melancholic solemnity of apocalyptic alt-country act Woven Hand, in fact, his deeper voiced singing here, as on this track, reminds us weirdly enough of someone from another Xtian band, vocalist Eric Wagner from classic doom metallers Trouble. (Who can be psychedelic sometimes, but not like this!).
Regarding the instrumentals, the longest track here, "The River Of Heaven", is a ritualistic ceremony like Japan's Ghost getting mopey, and "Cover Your Wounds With The Sky" is a lovely dense drone piece, sounding a lot like something from Steven R. Smith's latest record, Cities (yet to be reviewed by us, but really good, by the way).
We've mentioned almost all the tracks here, and rest assured that the others are quite nice too, making for a haunting Six Organs Of Admittance album that should satisfy his fans old and new. We figure most of you fall into the former camp, but anyone yet to experience this artist should give Luminous Night a listen and likely you'll become one of the latter.
MPEG Stream: "Bar-Nasha"
MPEG Stream: "The River Of Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "The Ballad Of Charley Harper"

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE / AZUL split (PSF) lp 23.00
One of two new records this list from long time aQ fave Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs Of Admittance. This one is super limited, maybe the first vinyl release we've gotten on godhead Japanese label PSF, and features one super dense abstract sidelong jam from Six Organs on one side, and a whole batch of groovy shimmery soft psych folk grooves on the B-side from a Japanese group called Azul. For those of you, who like us, had never hear of Azul, it's the new project of Hiroyuki Usui, who long time aQ list readers might remember as one half of the August Born, an earlier collaboration with Chasny, as well as being the man behind legendary folk psych outfit L, whose Holy Letters album was a past aQ Record Of The Week!
So here they are, Chasny and Usui, together again, each doing their own thing on their own side of this lp. Chasny's jam is a weird one. A sprawling slow burning drone, all crunchy and warm and gristly, over which muted guitar scrabble scrapes and skitters, melodies surface here and there, but they're minimal and murky, the whole sound is distant and abstract, a droney almost-raga, shot through with little tangles of fragmented Appalachia, eventually growing into something much more epic and cinematic, with what sounds like strings, Eastern sounding melodies, before a heavy psych coda, chunky super distorted riffs, weary, haunting double tracked vocals, all over a sea of swirls and squiggles, finally giving way to a weird warped riffy outro. Really cool.
The Azul side is WAY more laid back. Groovy, woozy, super sixties sounding, psychedelic, but soft and hazy and a little stoned sounding, hits of that classic Summer Of Love sound, a little Santana, lots of hand drums, warm tinkling vibes, soulful vocals, lazy late afternoon vocals, breezy and a little blissy, a few of the tracks inject a little jazziness, some skronky horns, fluttery flutes, shimmering gongs, but for the most part, it's all steel string guitars, draped over sun dappled arrangements and wreathed in fuzzy clouds of soft focus psych.
Gorgeous packaging. Blue and yellow psychedelic drawings on the sleeve, bizarre characters and warped shapes, lots of texture and detail, wrapped in a printed vellum Japanese style obi. And as you might have guessed. EXTREMELY LIMITED.

16 HORSEPOWER Secret South (Alternative Tentacles) cd+dvd 15.98
We've long been champions of Mr. David Eugene Edwards, in both of his swampy apocalyptic folk ensembles, first the late great 16 Horsepower, and then later, his more personal, and seemingly more spiritual Woven Hand. As long time readers of the aQ list know, Edwards is like a modern day revivalist, conjuring up demons and darkness, death and pestilence, but simultaneously light and hope and sometimes even redemption. With a sound that shifts from stripped down and intimate, to dense and heavy and ominously rocking, the music of Edwards is easily some of the most powerful and passionate we've heard. Woven Hand played the aQuarius SXSW showcase, and our first impression was holy shit, these guys are HEAVY. And loud. And so intense. In fact, considering how many actual metal bands and super heavy rock bands played that showcase, it's pretty remarkable that WH might still have been the heaviest band in the lineup.
Secret South is one of our favorite 16HP records, originally released way back in 2000, and out of print for AGES, this was their first record after leaving their major label, and thus seems to be infused with an extraordinary amount of anger and darkness. This record is FIERCE, the classic 16HP lineup is on fire, the vocals incredible and impassioned, the guitars raw and rough, the drumming powerful, the bass thick and enveloping, strings moaning and singing, but the magic of 16HP is how all those elements are woven together, it's difficult to imagine a mere band could evoke this sort of ominous atmosphere, this sort of dread and darkness, this is so much more than music, it's energy in sound, it's sweat and blood rendered in notes and melodies. A swampy mysterious gothic folk, but infused with elements of classic bluegrass, dramatic cabaret, plenty of doom and gloom... You can check the aQ site for other reviews where we rave on and on and on about both 16HP and Woven Hand, needless to say, both bands are all time favorites around here, and Secret South ranks right up there as one of the best by either.
Both the cd version and the lp comes with a bonus dvd featuring the whole record in 5.1 surround sound DVD audio.
MPEG Stream: "Clogger"
MPEG Stream: "Wayfaring Stranger"
MPEG Stream: "Cinder Alley"

16 HORSEPOWER Secret South (Alternative Tentacles) lp+dvd 15.98
We've long been champions of Mr. David Eugene Edwards, in both of his swampy apocalyptic folk ensembles, first the late great 16 Horsepower, and then later, his more personal, and seemingly more spiritual Woven Hand. As long time readers of the aQ list know, Edwards is like a modern day revivalist, conjuring up demons and darkness, death and pestilence, but simultaneously light and hope and sometimes even redemption. With a sound that shifts from stripped down and intimate, to dense and heavy and ominously rocking, the music of Edwards is easily some of the most powerful and passionate we've heard. Woven Hand played the aQuarius SXSW showcase, and our first impression was holy shit, these guys are HEAVY. And loud. And so intense. In fact, considering how many actual metal bands and super heavy rock bands played that showcase, it's pretty remarkable that WH might still have been the heaviest band in the lineup.
Secret South is one of our favorite 16HP records, originally released way back in 2000, and out of print for AGES, this was their first record after leaving their major label, and thus seems to be infused with an extraordinary amount of anger and darkness. This record is FIERCE, the classic 16HP lineup is on fire, the vocals incredible and impassioned, the guitars raw and rough, the drumming powerful, the bass thick and enveloping, strings moaning and singing, but the magic of 16HP is how all those elements are woven together, it's difficult to imagine a mere band could evoke this sort of ominous atmosphere, this sort of dread and darkness, this is so much more than music, it's energy in sound, it's sweat and blood rendered in notes and melodies. A swampy mysterious gothic folk, but infused with elements of classic bluegrass, dramatic cabaret, plenty of doom and gloom... You can check the aQ site for other reviews where we rave on and on and on about both 16HP and Woven Hand, needless to say, both bands are all time favorites around here, and Secret South ranks right up there as one of the best by either.
Both the cd version and the lp comes with a bonus dvd featuring the whole record in 5.1 surround sound DVD audio.
MPEG Stream: "Clogger"
MPEG Stream: "Wayfaring Stranger"
MPEG Stream: "Cinder Alley"

SLANEY, IVOR Terror / Prey (OST) (Moscovitch Music) cd 17.98
Now available on cd! With 9 extra tracks and sound cues from the Terror Soundtrack that were not on the vinyl version!
Attention British Horror fans! We have here, released by a new a label run by one of the guys from sampling groop Quiet Village, two previously unreleased soundtracks on one cd from New Wave of British Horror director Norman J. Warren: Terror (1979) and Prey (1978). Warren, best known for three horror movies he made in the late seventies (the first one was Satan's Slave), had a film style similar to Dario Argento, making highly explicit and gory supernatural thrillers filmed on a low budget with modern day settings and using younger actors, a sharp contrast to the classic period-set hammer films earlier in the decade. Composed by Ivor Slaney, an in-house composer for the DeWolfe Library, the music is deliciously creepy.
Terror sounds like a lost soundtrack by Goblin, beginning with proggy synths and organ dirges augmented by female vocal moans that are equally wistful and uh, well, terrifying! There are a couple of groovy interludes, one of them a short blues-rock number, the others more pensive, but the final tracks are full bore high-pitched synth drones that had the hairs on the back of our neck standing up on end! Also, an interesting piece of side trivia is that Terror stars Tricia Walsh, better known as Tricia Walsh-Smith, the you-tube sensation famous for videos berating her ex-husband to the general public!
Prey feels more like classic British horror scores, offering up at first soft and pastoral themes using harpsichord, organ and piano. From what we can gather from the sounds and the tagline (A Carnal Lust That Defies Earthly Expectation!) is that this is a rather twisted love story involving birds, as bird sounds emerge here and there. The lilting music soon turns to what sounds like a terrifying merry-go-round and then we get bits of sounds from the film itself of screams and flesh being ripped apart by massive bird-like creatures. There are a couple of party numbers, one a jazzy theme sung by someone who sounds like Caroline Peyton, the other by a lounge-rock band, before the final twisted Moog dirge comes into play with snippets of doomy dialogue. Great creepy stuff!
MPEG Stream: "Terror Main Title"
MPEG Stream: "Orgasmic Stripper"
MPEG Stream: "Is This Your Car, Sir?"
MPEG Stream: "Hide and Seek"

STARGAZER / INVOCATION Harbringer [sic] / H.A.S.T.U.R. (Bird Of Ill Omen Recordings) lp 14.98
Some of you may laugh at the mention of an "Australian sound" in music, but when you take a look at the continent's musical output since the '60s, it's pretty clear that after taking cues from the rest of the world and putting their own spin on things, Australians have no doubt arrived at a pretty unique and insular sound, especially in the metal department. You have dISEMBOWELMENT, Portal, Grey Daturas, Halo, Vorak, Paramecium, and then the bands represented on this asskicking split full length, a reissue of a cd from way back in 1999: StarGazer and Invocation (featuring members who went on to play in the aforementioned Portal). Both bands whip up a frenzy of blackened death metal that is mindbogglingly technical and totally fucked, but never too weird for its own good, and it's hard to imagine any self-respecting metalhead not losing it over this split.
StarGazer start things off with their strangely esoteric blend of black and death metal. The music and "lyrix" to their side of the split date back to the early '90s, giving the band some years to flesh out their evil ideas into songs that sound, at times, IMPOSSIBLE. The guitars are thick and burly as fuck, the bass is dirty and distorted, and man do the drums sound great - no triggers here, just a dude who obviously knows his way around a drumkit. Super distorted punkish guitars, insane blasts and phlegmy growls all merge into a thick stew of relentlessly concentrated EVIL that also rocks pretty damn hard. The intense riffs and song structures here are pretty much incomprehensible, and if you needed any proof that there's more going on here than your average metal band, just listen to the "Outroduction" that concludes StarGazer's side, a melancholy, spacey ambient piece played in reverse. Killer stuff here.
Next up is Invocation's contribution, accompanied by the information that "Invocation has no political/racial views, WE HATE ALL LIFE!!!" Nice. The band, three dudes with crazy looks in their eyes and the intent to kill, definitely deliver the goods. Not quite as bizarre as Portal, Invocation nonetheless create insane blasts of avant garde death metal with tons of weird changes and totally skewed instrumentation that you might expect to find on a prog record. Not that you will be mistaking Invocation for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, as the thrashing intensity and ridiculously tight playing will throttle you violently and put you in the shithouse with your neighbors for sure. Best of all is how "real" it all sounds, with guys who certainly know what it takes to ascend to the next level of metallic awesomeness without the need to succumb to any overproduced bullshit. Oh, and for the curious, H.A.S.T.U.R stands for "Horrific Ancient Sumerian Traditional Usurpurs [sic] Remembered". Something we can definitely get behind.
We can thank the folks at the awesomely named Bird Of Ill Omen Recordings for rescuing this one from the darkened vaults of time and unleashing it upon an unsuspecting world ten years after the fact. HAIL!

SYLVESTER & THE HOT BAND Blue Thumb Collection (Geffen) cd 17.98
Oh how we love Sylvester! Nobody really represented the true San Francisco spirit better. After moving to SF from Los Angeles in the late '60s he found true liberation in the gender bending thriving queer arts community here in the city, becoming a member of the legendary Cockettes, singing backup for an early and awesome incarnation of the Pointer Sisters as well as putting out two records with his Hot Band several years before he would become the disco diva most of us remember.
Blue Thumb Collection compiles Sylvester's earliest two releases. His self titled album with his Hot Band (also known as Scratch & Sniff, as the original lp had a scratch and sniff sticker on it) and then Bazaar, both of which came out on Blue Thumb, a '70s imprint that put out records by Captain Beefheart, T Rex, Robbie Basho, Jimmy Smith, Dave Mason, etc.
Sylvester's Hot Band were complete opposites to Sylvester, all straight white rocker dudes with long hair, which must have made the spectacle of Sylvester fronting that band even more amazing and confusing. During this era they were often put on really bizarre bills including an opening slot for Lynyrd Skynrd whose fans had no idea what to make of Sylvester (we would have paid to see their confused faces!).
The music Sylvester & The Hot Band made was very much based in rock and roll and classic rhythm and blues. The albums were packed with covers of songs by everyone from Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, James Taylor, Otis Redding, Grahm Parsons, Neil Young, etc. It's the cover of Neil Young's "Southern Man" that truly steals the show, sounding as poignant and impassioned as ever, yet taking on even greater meaning with a queer black man making the song his own. The two bonus tracks include one of our favorite Sylvester songs ever, a track he wrote called "Why Was I Born" which had been quite impossible to track down unless you were able to find a copy of the obscure compilation called Lights Out San Francisco that Blue Thumb put out in the early '70s. It's a song that really showcases the depth and range of emotion that Sylvester could reach in his music, and it's hard not to think of it as the blueprint for Antony & The Johnsons. These records were very much of their time, and it's not all great and with Sylvester consistency was never his strong suit, but it was all about those moments when he shined so bright that made the not so hot moments totally ok and worth it. Essential for Sylvester fans, we're really happy these records have been reissued, now it's time for someone to reissue our favorite Sylvester album, Stars!
MPEG Stream: "Southern Man"
MPEG Stream: "Friendship"
MPEG Stream: "On Your Way Down"

TEITANBLOOD Seven Chalices (Norma Evangelium Diaboli / Ajna) cd 14.98
France's Norma Evangelium Diaboli has always been one of the labels to turn to for some of the best black metal the world has to offer. Since pretty much forever, we have championed the pure evil promoted by Deathspell Omega, Katharsis, Watain, and Funeral Mist, but somehow Teitanblood managed to slip under the radar, and it wasn't until the dudes in YOB strolled in and told us to check this stuff out that we realized it was time to get on track. Based in Spain, but featuring the talents of a couple of Swedes, one of whom spent some time in Ofermod, Teitanblood plays a super punked out style of blackened death metal that few other bands could pull off with such perfection. Just looking at Seven Chalices' artwork, which brings to mind a crusty Xeroxed punk approach crossed with medieval woodcuts, will give you a pretty good indication of what's in store. From the band's logo to the face of the cd itself - complete with that "compact disc" icon - Teitanblood deliver the goods with a decidedly late '80s/early '90s bent, but thankfully without any trace of retro fetishism. The guitars are thick and downtuned, recalling the tone captured on Entombed's Left Hand Path - you know, some of the greatest sounding death metal guitars EVER - the drums pound out ferocious, heavy as fuck D-Beats, and the vocals growl out hateful bile as they fly all over the mix. There are moments that bring to mind the early Earache roster with insane Greg Ginn inspired solos made up of equal parts pure chaos and total noise, and somehow the band manages to hit a psychedelic stride with its cosmic heaviness. Like other NED bands, they expertly utilize creepy samples of angelic choir voices that make the metal moments even more disconcerting and intense. There are plenty of sludged out dirges that make you think of thick black tar, but the band also understands the importance of a good thrashy groove. The only moments of rest seem to come with the interludes spaced throughout the album, but even these will make your skin crawl with their throbbing tension.
Basically, Teitanblood takes what you love about heavy music and makes good - real good - on it. With all the metal coming out these days, it's easy for this stuff to start sounding tired, but it makes all the difference in the world in the capable hands of some masters who know what's up. What you get is a dizzying blur of hate filled fury that is so heavy it sounds like it may collapse on itself. In other words, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
MPEG Stream: "Whore Mass"
MPEG Stream: "Domains Of Darkness And Ancient Evil"
MPEG Stream: "Seven Chalices Of Vomit And Blood"

TETRAGON Stretch (Garden Of Delights) cd 22.00
We highlighted the Lion Productions reissue of Nature, the (until now) sole album from way-cool, keyboard-heavy, progged-out krautrock obscurities Tetragon, just a few weeks ago, and now here's ANOTHER, entirely unreleased album from the same band unearthed by krautrock specialists Garden Of Delights! If anything, this one's even more badass. Recorded live in the studio towards the end of 1971 (just a few months after Nature came out), these five tracks here meant for release on LP at the time, but that never happened, the efforts of Tetragon's four very talented musicians never getting the exposure they deserved back in they day (heck even the album that they did manage to get released was done in a VERY small pressing). Well it was 1971, so record buyers were presumably a bit overwhelmed. Still, Nature and now Stretch are worthy of being part of the class of '71, a year we consider one of the best ever in the history of recorded music - particularly of the psych/prog/kraut variety.
Stretch is all-instrumental, the band members just goin' off, doin' their thing, which was virtuoso, jazz-fusion inflected prog influenced by Miles Davis, The Nice and ELP, various Canterbury bands... and especially here, British jazz-rock organist Brian Auger. There's lots of solo action, as well as much precision ensemble playing. With wild widdly Hammond organ jamming, acid rock fuzz guitar, a heavy backbeat, and tons of technical chops, this simply cooks.
Of the 5 tracks on Stretch, which, um, stretch over 43 minutes, Tetragon do two covers: "Listen Here" by Eddie Harris and "Dragon Song" by John McLaughlin. Though perhaps as far as Tetragon were concerned, they were Brian Auger covers, 'cause their hero had previously done both of these songs on albums of his own, and Tetragon were inspired by his arrangements. The Eddie Harris one in particular is super funky but fuzzed, a heavy groove with drum solo breakdown, well actually everybody gets a solo. Of the three originals, "Snowstorm" is actually smokin' hot, "The Light" a laidback wah'd out groove, and "Hovering Stones" the most proggy and changeable, ranging from frantic keyboard runs in lockstep with martial drumming to more blissed-out solo sections. If you liked that Supersister reissue we recently highlighted, we'd imagine you'd be into this too. Likewise of course if you dug the other, original Tetragon disc!
Garden Of Delights reissue cds are even more exhaustive than Lion's, this includes uber-detailed liner notes in both English and German, plus vintage photos, and even the cover art from every single recording that the members of Tetragon were ever later associated with, including jazz-rockers Passport and folksters Falkenstein.
RealAudio clip: "tetragonsnowstorm.mp3"
RealAudio clip: "tetragonlisten.mp3"

39 CLOCKS Pain It Dark (Bureau) cd 17.98
We first heard about 39 Clocks (or "The" 39 Clocks according to the cover here) a few months back
with the release of their career spanning collection Zoned, and we were surprised to come across a group that managed to embody so many elements of what we love about various styles music while still managing to sound unique and delightfully out of time. The German duo's most notable characteristic was their pre-1966 take on hard driving beat music, delivered through a punkish art school filter on a couple tabs of acid. They managed to be catchy but nihilistic, familiar yet obscure, and we still stand by our assertion of them sounding like "Modern Lovers on Quaaludes with the guy from Faust singing," the liner notes here accurately describe them as "the natural successors to the Velvet Underground (minus Nico), ? And The Mysterions, and Suicide." Can't argue there.
Pain It Dark is the group's debut album, released back in 1981. From a historical perspective, it makes sense for this to have been reissued, but to those who purchased Zoned, be warned that eight of Pain It Dark's 12 songs were featured on that collection. For those of you hesitated for some reason or other, however, Pain It Dark might be the way to go, as the general flow and overall feel of the album help to paint a stronger picture than some of the more rambling songs featured on Zoned.
The album begins with "Shake The Hippie," an upbeat number with the band's trademark lazy German guy vocals. The next song, "DNS," is where things really take off, featuring a sleazy sax lead and a super rhythmic combination of real drums and drum machines. It's druggy in its own way, and its aggressive attack definitely makes this one of the stand out songs on the album. The Velvet Underground influence is also made pretty clear on "78 Soldier Dead," which alternates between a self-penned riff and the one from "Sweet Jane". "Stupid Art" sounds a bit like the Fun House-era Stooges, especially with its use of saxophone, while the band's warped pop sense is further illustrated on the awesomely titled "Radical Student Mob In Satin Boots" with a slashing little keyboard melody and percussion that could very easily not work in less skilled hands.
While we are slightly confused by the timing of this reissue with Zoned, Pain It Dark is a good place to start for the uninitiated, and hopefully marks the beginning of an extensive reissue campaign for this mysterious German duo.
MPEG Stream: "DNS"
MPEG Stream: "Stupid Art"
MPEG Stream: "Radical Student Mob In Satin Boots"

V/A An Anthology Of Chinese Experimental Music (Sub Rosa) 4cd 34.00
We're always wary of electronic compilations, for some reason, not sure if it's just an oversight or if they are meant to be super academic, but there seems to be no attention to flow. No consideration of what it might be like as a listening experience. You'll have 3 or 4 super quiet drone tracks, then a screaming grinding wall of noise, then a whispery hushed drift. In some ways it makes it practically unlistenable. Not that those records aren't worth owning, but they require special listening, a track at a time, thus, the listener is not lulled into a droney hypnotic state before being blasted out of his or her headphones.
So we were even more wary of this massive FOUR disc collection of experimental music from China (as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia), we knew it would be amazing, and most definitely an incredible sampling of sounds, but the difference between that, and a well sequenced collection of songs is the difference between pulling a record out every once in a while, and listening to hours and hours of sounds and getting immersed and lost in the sounds. We're happy to report, that this collection, surprisingly, falls into the later category. The first disc alone is nearly perfect, an incredible collection of deep dronemusic, thick and textured and varied and mysterious, rich and layered and lush, dark and haunting, from thick rumbling buzz, to barely audible sine waves, muted thumps and abstract rhythms, post industrial soundscapes of tangled tones and warm washed out whirs, to glitchy skittery Raster-Noton style minimalism, to warm blissed out almost new age-y drift, to squiggly seas of shimmery tones and buried glitches, to super abstract, ultra spare electronic hum, to clouds of insectoid like buzz, to warm wall of sound thrum, there are moments where the sounds grow jagged and sharp, caustic and corrosive, but the whole disc flows like a composed, tripped out minimal glitch space drone record, and there are three more discs!
The other discs are similarly grouped so that the flow is as much a part of the sound as the individual songs, although the focus shifts, where the first disc was more droney, the second disc seems to be more songy. There's still plenty of glitch and hum, but there's lots of real instruments, some proper bands, lots of electronic skitter, some serious noise, and lost of sonic weirdness. And so it goes.
There's LOTS to get into here. We've listened to the first disc a whole bunch of times, the second one a handful, the 3rd and 4th once or twice, and we're still discovering and exploring, but we do find ourselves not just skipping song to song, but throwing this on, laying back, and listening to whole discs, which again is so rare for this sort of compilation. Really amazing stuff. Really recommended.
Packaged in a fancy full color fold out digipak, with a booklet and minimal liner notes.
MPEG Stream: LI CHIN SUNG (DICKSON DEE) "Somewhere"
MPEG Stream: ZENLU "Zen"
MPEG Stream: BIA TIAN "Wet"
MPEG Stream: CHEEWEI "Evening Has Arrived"

V/A Audio Apogee - Frequency Thirteen Records Compilation: An Anti Baroque Fieldtrip Into Aire Movement And Grey Vibration (Frequency Thirteen) 2xcd-r 9.98
It's been a while, but finally, the return of Frequency Thirteen, and TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!! Yep, in the past we've championed killer discs from Black Vomit, Ice Bound Majesty, Trolskull, Dukkha and Rape Rack, all offering up a truly twisted take on blackened heaviness, and ever since we've been dying to hear more, so this pretty much hits the spot, a massive sprawling double disc compilation, featuring tracks from most of the Frequency Thirteen roster, and as far as we know, all the tracks here are EXCLUSIVE. So if you're already a fan, and snap up F13 cd-r's whenever you see them, then you obviously need this, exclusive new music from Skultroll, Dukkha and Ice Bound Majesty, as well as a whole mess of others.
But for those new to Frequency Thirteen, it's tough to imagine a better introduction to True Sheffield Black Psychedelia. Which is a bit of a misnomer, as much of this is not from Sheffield, much of this is not necessarily black, although it's ALL psychedelic, and it's all TROOOOOOO.
Beadle, who we had never heard of before, open up the first disc with a crushing chunk of looped riffage that reminds us of a more blackened Gore, a lurching, lumbering, hypnotic crush. Which perfectly gives way to a new Dukkha jam, that sounds like classic nineties style noise rock, heavy and crunchy and weirdly melodic, with some awesomely twisted melodies and arrangements, and some wild freaked out guitaring. Brobdingnagian who you might remember from their ep on Rusty Axe spews out some noise drenched black filth, like some sort of Ildjarn Merzbow mash up. And so it goes, the whole disc a twisted, convoluted, buzzy, blasting, psychedelic sonic travelogue, with some surprises along the way. Trolskull, slow things down with their murky heroin house minimalism, buried voices, a muted pulse, swirling swaths of synth. Ice Bound Majesty offer up their fiercest filthiest blow out yet, furious and frantic, doused in effects, with programmed drums so fast it almost sounds like a chest rattling drone. Charles Dexter Ward crafts a weird sort of Dan Higgs sounding bit of ritualistic sea shanty style guitar drone, albeit crunchy and distorted, and War Ethic does some weird super murky grindy thrash, but with some skittery almost jazzy sound blastbeats, and there's more more more more. And that's just the first disc!
The second disc starts out with some super minimal sinewave shimmer courtesy of a band called Syn, before Dukkha kick shit into gear with the most awesome hypnotic looped psych jam, that would make Circle or Cave proud. In fact, it sort of sounds like a mix of the two, but with a bit more metal drumming, and some convoluted tangled arrangements, but always slipping back into super mesmerizing hypno-rock. KPTMichigan unfurl some gorgeous hazy woozy Tim Hecker like gauzy dronemusic, while Scum Also Rises (awesome name) so some strange post industrial mathy groove rock, that sounds WAY better than that description makes it sound, fat fuzzy bass, weird skittery electronics, all fuzzy and blown out. Sluglord stir up some sort of unholy blackened orchestral doom, all dense tones and deep shimmers, and the Disobedients do a sort of super minimal bedroom doom pop, and Trolskull return with some murky abstract rhythmic weirdness, that sounds a bit like a less loose Avarus, a bit more sinister and haunting and a bit krautrock too. And of course again here, there's more more more!
Easily one of our favorite labels, with a roster that should make most other labels bow their heads in shame. And this is definitely one of the few comps where you literally want to hear more from every single band. Fancy packaging too, a fold out die cut full color sleeve, jam packed with about a million inserts, liner notes, an obi... hell, just buy it, you won't be sorry. And odds are, like us, soon you too will find yourself obsessed with TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!
MPEG Stream: BROBDINGNAGIAN "You, You Smell Like Death"
MPEG Stream: TROLSKULL "Unutterable Hideousness"
MPEG Stream: DUKKHA "Deu!"
MPEG Stream: PULSAR "Praeternational Light"

V/A Funky Frauleins (Bureau B) cd 17.98
For all the stereotypes about how serious and rigid German culture is, we love how so many compilations in recent years have revealed just the opposite, revealing how damn fun and playful so much of the music bursting out of Germany during the '60s and '70s really was. We're talking full on go-go kaleidoscopic cocktail party galore! Much in the spirit of like minded compilations like The In-Kraut series and Disco Deutchland, Funky Frauleins puts its fun focus on the colorful groovy, funky, and disco sounds of the beat queens of Germany from 1968-1978. Just as fun, sassy and spirited as their French go-go counterparts but very much in the '70s with instrumentation that would sound right at home on a game show, in a porno, or even especially at a full on dance party. We only knew a few of these ladies: Su Kramer, Hildegard Knef and Caterina Valente, so we were introduced to a bunch of other super fun vixens. The booklet offers up great photos and bios of all the artists. This is one of those turn off your brain and step into a sweet and delicious cocktail haze kind of records. And we love it.
MPEG Stream: TOPSY KüPPERS "Sagen Sie, Frau Zimmermann"
MPEG Stream: HILDEGARD KNEF "Ich Wart Auf Die Nacht"
MPEG Stream: SHIRLEY THOMPSON "Goldene Insel"

V/A Horse Meat Disco (Strut) 2cd 14.98
With the amazing resurgence and appreciation of the Disco era in the last several years this collection really serves as a kind of holy grail of the true sounds and soul of disco's heydey, as curated and mixed by one of the best disco minded DJ Collectives around, Horse Meat Disco out of the UK. They host legendary parties that channel that original free spirit of old school queer disco parties while manning the decks with some of the best and often most obscure disco gems from the golden era. Luckily Horse Meat Disco has made its way into the states and even to San Francisco, playing at parties with local kindred spirits Honey Sound System.
This two disc set is pretty much essential disco listening, having true disco diggers do the hard work for you and then you just get to sit back (or better yet shake your thang!) to the great jams they have unearthed. The first disc is a continuous mix which gives you a pretty good idea of what going to a Horse Meat Disco party would feel like, then the second disc gives you the songs in their original incarnation. There are some folks we know and love on here as well as many that are totally new to us. And even of the folks we DID know , most of the tracks aren't the total obvious ones we had heard before. Karen Young, Larry Levan, Tamiko Jones, Gino Soccio, Fern Kinney, etc. The impassioned liner notes (including a great piece written by Daniel Wang), give further proof to the lasting legacy and inspiration in these soulful disco sounds.
MPEG Stream: KAREN YOUNG "Deetour (Party Mix)"
MPEG Stream: SMOKEY ROBINSON "And I Don't Love You (Larry Levan Instrumental Dub)"
MPEG Stream: THE KIDS "Hupendi Muziki Wangu? (You Don't Like My Music?)"
MPEG Stream: TAMIKO JONES "Let It Flow"

V/A RRR-1000 (RRR Records) lp 26.00
Lock grooves are so cool. There are records that unwind into that perfect final moment, and then that moment is so seamlessly looped and locked, that you end up listening to it for ages before you realize that it would in fact go on for EVER. Then there's the lock grooves in the middle of songs, placed there by sonic terrorists looking to subvert the listening experience, turning their songs into sonic minefields, or obstacle courses (Billy Bao, being the most recent culprit). But there is an art to the lock groove, that brief couple seconds as the ultimate micro-composition. The musical version of Flash Fiction. Just enough time to whip up a tiny fragment, not enough to be called a song, just a SOUND, and then crafting it just so, so it plays over and over, seamlessly, sometimes blasting endlessly, sometimes locking into a stuttering rhythm. But there's the problem of what kind of person pulls out a record of lock grooves and sits back, and listens to the same 2 seconds over and over and over. Records like that either require some sort of zen bliss out, or they require active listening, constantly lifting the needle and placing it in the different grooves, sampling all the various micro-tracks. As you might imagine, we're pretty into records like this, and while it's true, they're not easy listening by any stretch of the imagination, they do offer up a strange window into sound, and music making, and in the case of this the second RRR lock groove disc, into the various permutations of NOISE.
Whereas RRR-500, now out of print, had 500 artists each offering up on groove each, RRR-1000, takes 20 artists, and let's each one deliver FIFTY grooves each. THAT'S ONE THOUSAND LOCK GROOVES ON ONE LP!! The one benefit here, is that the grooves are gathered in little bunches, which makes it easier to hear the specific artist you're looking for, although good luck finding the same track in less than 10 or 20 tries. Needless to say, this is a killer record, for folks into weird sound, and fucked up musical objects. It almost doesn't matter who's on here, but a quick glance at the artists will give you a rough idea of what you're in for: Otomo Yoshihide, Keith Fullerton Whitman, C. Spence Yeh, Prurient, Kevin Drumm, Incapacitants, Francisco Lopez, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Sudden Infant, Damion Romero, RLW, Jerome Noetinger, The New Blockaders, Lasse Marhaug, Jason Lescalleet, GZ Jupitter-Larsen, Carlos Giffoni, AMK, Thomas Dimuzio and Aaron Dilloway.
And sonically, while it does tend toward the noisy, there are some amazing bits of minimal drone, lurching rhythmic stutter, garbled vocal weirdness, grinding noxious buzz, warm whirring crunch and about every variation in between. And in our hop scotching across these 1000 tracks, we found ourselves lingering happily on a whole bunch of em.
Cool hand made covers, photocopies, found images, bits from magazines, and lots of duct tape!

V/A String Of Pearls: International 78s (Mississippi / Canary) lp 14.98
All you Mississippi Records fanatics should just stop reading now and click on the ADD TO CART button, because there's just no question that you are going to want, nay NEED this! Baltimore-based record store owner and record collector Ian Nagoski (who also compiled the excellent Black Mirror compilation for Dust-To-Digital) has put together another stunning collection of vintage 78 recordings from around the globe spanning between 1918-1952: Tanbur improvisations from Turkey, Vietnamese classical chamber music, Greek cabaret, Jamaican rural folk, Serbian dance, Spanish prayer song, Romanian Jewish mourning song, Italian opera, Highland Music of West Java; Arab classical music, Zuni Indian harvest chants, Ukrainian Hutzel music, Hindustani classical singing and Armenian folk music. Whew! It's a whirlwind tour of the world in beautiful, lonely and sometimes devastating bursts, colliding folk and popular styles, upper and lower classes, the famous and the obscure in a captivating melange of audio wonder. And apparently, there's more to come as this release also marks the debut of Nagoski's Canary Records imprint dedicated to International musical obscurities and the stories that hide within. Extensive liner notes with pictures included. Amazing!!

V/A Total 10 (Kompakt) 2cd 17.98
Another killer collection of Kompakt techno, and while we may tend to lean toward the Pop Ambient side of the Kompakt roster, no label has done more to wear down our resistance to techno than the mighty Kompakt, so much so, that we now find ourselves looking forward to these Total comps nearly as much as the Pop Ambient comps.
And once again, Kompakt comes through with, a killer collection of artists, and tracks, expertly sequenced into over two hours of minimal techno bliss.
Just have a look at the names and you'll know what you're in for: Dj Koze, Justus Kohncke, Gui Boratto, Matias Aguayo, The Field, Burger/Voigt, Reinhard Voigt, Jurgen Paape and loads more, and along with the usual tight clipped, late night dancefloor grooves there are plenty of surprises. How about DJ Koze's "40 Love", with a rhythm track built around the sounds of a tennis match, including the crowds disappointed "Awwwww"s when someone misses a shot, birds chirping, squeaking shoes, grunts, all woven into a woozy bit of warm throb and skitter. Then there's Coma's awesomely murky midnight pulse and shimmer, and Jonas Bering's super fuzzed out synth jam that definitely reminds us of Justice or Daft Punk, and Matias Aguayo's sunshiney techno pop jam, that almost sounds like Phoenix or something, the warped and tweaked tropical wooziness of the Pachanga Boys and the circusy soundtrack weirdness of Jurgen Paape's oompah jam "Ofterschwang", and in between, plenty of that classic Kompakt sound that we can never seem to get enough of.
If you've got 1-9, you obviously need 10, and if you've yet to dip your toes into the Kompakt pool, this is as good a place to start as any...
MPEG Stream: JONAS BERING "Who Is Who"
MPEG Stream: DJ KOZE "40 Love"
MPEG Stream: ADA "Lovestoned"
MPEG Stream: SAM TAYLOR-WOOD "I'm In Love With A German Film Star (Gui Boratto Mix)"

V/A Underwater Peoples Summertime Showcase 2009 (Underwater Peoples) cd 4.98
First cd release from this new-ish label specializing in that sort of woozy lo-fi pop sound that seems to be sweeping the nation, aQ included. Anyone into Blank Dogs, John Maus, Ariel Pink, Ducktails, Zola Jesus, Gary War, as well as other garage-y pop rockers like Oh Sees, the Intelligence, Ganglians, etc., will find that this awesome, bargain priced comp will probably hit the spot big time.
A few names we know, Ducktails, Julian Lynch, but a WHOLE bunch we don't (ahem, Frat Dad), but everything here taps into that same sort of DIY, broken 4-track, warped and twisted pop aesthetic that drives the above mentioned fave.
Frat Dad for instance, besides having the WORST band name, and the WORST song title ("Brosef") comes up with some cool reverby garage pop that would sound right at home between your Ty Segall record and your Oh Sees record. Pill Wonder are cool too, their songs sounding like Guided By Voices covering Beach Boys, all squiggly feed back and blown out bass wrapped around skittery drums and jangly guitars, and buried sort of lush harmonies. Real Estate are more songy, employing som reverb and delay, but for the most part relying less on texture and production, offering up two really nice twangy jams, one sort of rocking, one laid back and sort of Morricone-esque. Julian Lynch, a sometime collaborator with many aQ pop faves, has recently surfaced as an artist in his own right, and his tracks here are cool too, the Ducktails-ish calypso tropical pop of "Banana Jam Pt. 1" and the fuzzy loping indie dirge of "Droplet On A Hot Stone", with its distorted vocals and stumbling drums, wheezing synths, and murky ambience. It's all pretty good. Especially for all you who have been digging this particular sound lately, which we know is a LOT of you. Also included here are jams by Broken Trees, Liam The Younger, Andrew Cedermark, Family Portrait, Dana Jewell and Sad City.
A steal at $5!
MPEG Stream: JULIAN LYNCH "Banana Jam Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: REAL ESTATE "Beach Comber"
MPEG Stream: FRAT DAD "Brosef"
MPEG Stream: PILL WONDER "Wishing Whale"

VULPECULA In Dusk Apparition (Bird Of Ill Omen Recordings) lp 14.98
This long time outsider ambient space metal aQ favorite finally available on VINYL!!
Archival recordings from the late great Vulpecula, an American black metal band (featuring members of Order From Chaos) who strove to combine 'space music' a la Steve Roach and Vangelis with black metal. The result might not live up to what one might hope for when faced with the possibility of some sort of ambient space black metal, but it's still pretty awesome. The "spaciness" comes mostly in the form of the track intros and outros, long swirling swaths of spaced out FX and whirring synths, as well as the occasional interlude of ambient shimmer, sometimes laced with wandering minor key guitar lines or weird samples and sound snippets. The core of their sound though was a more classic nineties blackened death metal, buzzing guitars, killer riffing, demonic vocals, but unlike a lot of those bands, Vulpecula had a definite prog vibe, strange extended song structures, lots of meandering melodies, extended melodic instrumental passages, strange sonic tangles and dense bursts of busy drumming, definitely shades of Opeth and Samael as well as some other distinctly less metal influences.
Probably the weirdest part of In Dusk Apparition is the cover of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom", beginning with that immediately memorable buzzing synth melody, before it's swallowed by thick growling chugging guitars, the vocals a whispery demonic ghostly rasp, draped over the strangely melancholy dirge. Lots of reverb, and a lot less melody, make Vulpecula's version sound more like a black shadow of the original, but within the rest of the disc it sounds perfect, more like an original referencing some classic melody, than an actual cover.
For folks who miss the sprawling death flecked blackness of the late nineties, a kick ass spaced out swirl of ambient black metal prog...
MPEG Stream: "Eltanin Shadowcast"
MPEG Stream: "Major Tom (Coming Home)"

WHITE HILLS No Kind Ending (Diagnosis...Don't!) 3"cd-r 12.98
We ordered these from Australia over a year ago, and for whatever reason, we didn't end up getting them until just recently. The label is on indefinite hiatus now, and this disc is WAY out of print, thankfully we got nearly 50 of 'em, but those are the last copies EVER, and knowing how White Hills stuff sells around here, if you want one, best grab one quick.
One sprawling 16+ minute track, just White Hills main man Dave W. solo, echo guitar and synthesizers, unfurling a woozy, buzzy, softly undulating chunk of star speckled spacedrone, think Expo '70, Tangerine Dream, Zombi, Klaus Schulze, total blissed out planetarium lazer light show druggy kraut rock drift. Melodies unwind slowly through gently warped streaks of ominous whirring new age-y shimmer, and the whole track just seems to expand, to open up, like a time lapse vision of the death of a star or the birth of a universe, colors and streaks of white light swirl endlessly, creating delicate melodies, draped over a deep subsonic thrum, and delicate spidery whirring tendrils of crystalline sound, driven by a barely audible buried pulse like rhythm, blurred into a gauzy soft focus bit of divine cinematic space kraut drift.
Packaged in thick cardstock mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi.
And as mentioned above, SUPER LIMITED numbers of these in stock, and once they're gone, they are GONE.
MPEG Stream: "No Kind Ending"

WHITETREE Cloudland (Ponderosa) cd 17.98
Maybe it's the encroaching autumn, but lately we can't get enough of solo piano music. Especially when it's all minimal clusters of wistful passages, lilting progressions and sustained overtones. While this isn't a solo piano record per se, the liquid piano playing of Italian classical composer, Ludovico Einaudi, collaborating with electronic artists Robert and Ronald Lippok (To Rococo Rot, Tarwater), is at the heart of every track here. The group works fluidly together as a single unit (they recorded this live, together in one room) with the electronic nuances and occasional, but never overpowering, rhythms interlocking with Einaudi's playfully lyrical compositions. It's a lovely album that reminds us of the Rune Grammofon label's prettiest releases, and is fast becoming one of our favorite late night / early morning records. Highly Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Ullysses And The Cats"
MPEG Stream: "Tangerine"
MPEG Stream: "Derek's Garden"

WODENSTHRONE Loss (Bindrune) cd 11.98
Sometimes it gets pretty overwhelming with all the black metal we get coming through these doors, not that we don't love it, but it can become easy to lose track of everything. Which of course makes it really awesome when something just blows you away and reminds you why you got into black metal in the first place. Britain's Wodensthrone happen to be one of those bands. Not that there's anything mindblowingly original about these guys, it's just that Loss is delivered with a sincerity, not to mention an expert musical prowess, that really makes this one stand out among the sea of bands currently making the rounds. Featuring members of Atavist and Winterfylleth and recalling the majestic approach of bands like Emperor, Enslaved, Weakling, and Wolves in the Throne Room, Wodensthrone would be a pretty good example to explain what black metal sounds like to the uninformed. "Epic" would definitely be the word to use here, and this actually caught us a bit off guard considering how many bands have been taking a more raw approach as of late.
Wodensthrone are one of those bands who will remind you that synthesizers can be used for more than creating Cradle of Filth styled ridiculousness, as the keyboards here are both cinematic and sprawling, adding essential atmospherics to make you aware of black metal's obsession with the natural world. While these elements could very easily suck in the wrong hands, here they fit perfectly in conjuring Britain's pagan past. The production on Loss is enormous, and it makes total sense that the band ventured to Romania to record with members of Negura Bunget at their studio. Like Negura Bunget, Wodensthrone expertly merge folk-inspired elements from the respective country with a gigantic metal sound. It's worth noting the pagan influence here, as the melodies and overall mood of the album appear to be a little more, shall we say "positive", when compared to the all out evil of satanic black metal. There seems to be a serious awareness of classic British folk with melancholy acoustic guitars, mandolins, and flutes all commanding a pretty significant presence here, even in moments of all out metallic fury, and it's really refreshing to hear this stuff done so well. Definitely a nice surprise here, and enough to ensure that Loss will be on seriously HEAVY rotation for quite some time.
MPEG Stream: "Leodum On Land"
MPEG Stream: "Heofungfid"
MPEG Stream: "Those That Crush The Roots Of Blood"

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CHASSE, LOREN / ADAM SONDERBERG + KATHERINE YOUNG Characters At Water Margin / Speech Acts (Compost And Height) 3"cd-r 13.98
We got a very very very few of these. It is after all limited to a mere 50 copies. Chasse completists and Jewelled Antler obsessives, as well as fans of gorgeous abstract field recordings, it's a race to see who can grab one of these before they're gone.
Chasse's piece is 10 minutes long and begins with a burst of static, but as you might imagine, that's not static at all, it's more likely a field recording of wind in branches, or water traveling over a rocky stream bed. The sound soon fades, and then rest of the track is a constantly shifting soundscape of textures and timbres, many recognizable, many not, but all of them strangely musical. Such is the magic touch Chasse has with field recordings, an alchemist who with a handful of sticks and some pebbles can conjure up a beautiful world of earthy sound.
Sonderberg is a member of the Chicago based sound-project Haptic with Steven Hess; and his half with Katherine Young is not quite as serene as Chasse's, a sound field rife with squeaks and creaks and thumps and Geiger counter like clicks, the sound shifting from spare and skeletal to thick and hissy and almost distorted, all underpinned by a weird low end almost electronic sounding thrum.
Really nice, but as mentioned above, we have VERY FEW of these, it's almost out of print, and once they are gone, we will not be able to get more.
Cool packaging too. A 3" cd-r affixed to a small block of wood, wrapped in s sheet of clear plastic, attached on one side with little nails, and velcro on the other, the liner notes a sticker beneath the plastic, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: LOREN CHASSE "Characters At Water Margin"
MPEG Stream: ADAM SONDERBERG + KATHERINE YOUNG "Speech Acts"

CLOUDLAND CANYON Silver Tongue Sisyphus (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
Now on Vinyl! Here's what we said about the cd version when it came out in '07:
One of our most unexpected surprises last year came from Cloudland Canyon who totally blew us away with Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004, a shimmering sonic concoction, that sounded a bit like Ash Ra Tempel being channeled through the more melodic side of The Dead C.
They've followed that remarkable outing with a record that contains only two songs, but what it lacks in length it more then makes up for in cosmic-kraut brilliance. Listening to the two long tracks on this record is like being transported away on some otherworldly helicopter co-piloted by LaMonte Young and a very spaced out Hawkwind. We keep listening to these two epic tracks over and over and every time we do a customer is inevitably convinced that we're playing some obscure vintage kraut gem that they somehow have never heard before. Folks are always stunned to find out that this is brand new, but what makes Cloudland Canyon so great is that they manage to tap into that magical moment of cosmic kraut bliss, but do so without merely sounding like a tribute band, as there is something very immediate and timeless to the sounds they create. With another brand new full length coming soon on Kranky [Lie In Light] we predict that everyone blasting their Wooden Shjips records right now will be blissing out and taking off with Cloudland Canyon very soon. We sure are! You can start now.
MPEG Stream: "Dambala"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Tongued Sisyphus"

CULVER / SEPPUKU split (At War With False Noise) cd 10.98
First proper cd release from either of these bands. Culver you may know by name, and years of limited cd-r and hard to find vinyl releases, but maybe you don't realize that Culver is in fact Lee Stokoe, who also plays in long time faves Marzuraan, as well as being a member of the most recent version of the mighty Skullflower! Holy shit, that is one serioius noise rock underground cred resume if we've ever seen one.
We listed a Culver cd-r years ago, on the now defunct Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label (we actually have 3 or 4 left, if you're interested, just ask!), but haven't really managed to get anything else in since, at least until now. For his half of the split, Stokoe offers up a 31 minute, crushing, ultra heavy, super dense DRONE, corrosive and crunchy, crumbling and bristling with energy, thick slabs of teutonic low end suspended in a field of sonic tar, it almost sounds like black metal riffs blurred into thick streaks of sound, a near static crush, that seems to heave as if at any minute the whole thing could just crumble to pieces. About halfway through the sharp edges beging to wear away, the sound growing smoother, cleaner, yet somehow ever more harrowing and ominous. The track finishing off with a long stretch of near black shimmer, all smeared and woven into ropy tendrils of rumble and hum.
Seppuku counter with something much heavier, and way more metallic, their first joint, begins with a squall of electronics, some looped industrial thrum, soon gives way to a thick cloud of swirling glitch and buzz and hum, eventually dissipating leaving some seriously glacial ultradoom, left to lumber and lurch and pound its way through nearly ten minutes of amp shredding ear drum destroying glacial crawl, monstrous vocals, caveman drums, and all sorts of strange effects and electronics swirling and whirling... So slooooow and so so heavy.
The second Seppuku jam is much more of a power electronics sort of thing, tons of crumbling distortion, heavily processed vocals, all of staitc guitar buzz, loads of feedback, the sound growing ever blacker and more frantic, a grim industrial noisescape that seems to occasionally explode into flurries of murky blown out grind, before splintering back into caustic free noise. Phew.
Some serious heaviness, and some equally serious noise. In some very saucy packaging. Very little in the way of liner notes, but page after page after page, of scantily clad and mostly bare breasted euro babes!
MPEG Stream: CULVER "Traces Of The Woman By The Lake"
MPEG Stream: SEPPUKU "Inga"

GROUPER He Knows (IOG) 7" 6.98
Originally released as a super limited 3" cd-r on the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label, looooong out of print. Now finally reissued, on vinyl, on Liz Grouper's own IOG label. And probably out of print in 2 seconds (or less!) as well.
The sound of Grouper is a gloriously thick and fuzzy swirl, equal parts Arvo Part, Morton Feldman, Skullfower and all manner of drift and drone. Dense smears of processed vocals and mumbled guitars, all so heavily affected they become indistinct blurs, drifting fuzzy drones. He knows took everything we loved about Way Their Crept and made those sounds MORE: darker, denser, thicker, prettier. Three songs, ten minutes... but what it lacks in length, it makes up for in depth. The first track could of come straight off of Grouper's Way Their Crept full length. Disembodied vocals hover and drift, guitars (are they guitars?) rumble and murmur and shimmer and hover, not so much an instrument as some sort of musical spirit. The vocals, the guitars, the sounds Grouper produce are like wraiths, floating like wisps of smoke, drifting in and around and through each other, a thick cloudy soundscape, warm and enveloping, pulsing and reverberating, an indistinct blur, lovely but ineffable.
The second track is like chamber music recorded at the bottom of the sea, listening to it after it has bubbled up to the surface, warm and warbly and murky and so lovely. Melodies are nothing but streaks of barely there sound, like sunbeams filtered through the prism of swirling seawater. The final track sounds like a hymn, but muffled and indistinct. Imagine laying in a field outside a small stone chapel, blankets wrapped tight around your head to stave off the cold, the warm sounds of the church drift across the icy ground, the sounds barely making it through your wool shroud and into your ears, but what does make it, sounds warm and safe and beautiful. So good.
This 7" is crazy limited, we sold out of the first batch we got in a matter of days, and that's without even reviewing it or listing it on the website, so don't expect these to be around for very long (sorry)...

INFINITE BODY CMBCMEINAPTD (Teardrops) lp 14.98
Just a few copies are available of this vinyl only release from Kyle Parker's Infinite Body project, from which we got a nice introduction into his soft-noise / heavy-ambient sounds on the split LP with Emaciator. He picks up where he left off there with a blissed-out distortion billowing out of a glistening cyclical drone from what sounds like a overdriven pump organ. The heavy waves of distortion gradually fade away, and a pastoral, Cluster like melody is left behind to effortlessly glide through a warm set of ambient melodies. This gives way to a crunchier version of what Oneohtrix Point Never has been offering through luminous arpeggiations that trick themselves out of anything remotely new age sounding; and here, it's the heavy patina of distortion which saves Infinite Body's mantra. Parker furthers the shimmer with some floating-in-outer-space driftscaping bristling with bleary noises just beneath the surface, only to find these collapsing into a throbbing drone that reconstitutes itself through a kaleidoscope of that same pump organ sound. At first this emerges as a eerie fog horn only to overtake the sound field in a growing mass of crunched noise. Limited to 300 copies and pressed on clear vinyl.

JOXAREN Ritam Bluz b/w Oklart Uppdrag (Flogsta Danshall) 7" 6.98
Calling all skweee-jays! Or would-be skweee-jays. We've got four new 7" singles of fresh skweee straight from the source, imported from Flogsta Danshall in Finland. They're in plain white sleeves, the only art to be found here on the labels. If you've followed our other skweee recommendations (both Museum Of Future Sound comps, the more recent Skweee Tooth collection) then you know all about this Scandinavian DIY electro b-boy instrumental 8-bit phenomenon, and you'll also already be familiar with the strange names of the artists on these four singles.
Flogsta boss Limonious' slinky "Swedish Pommak" already wormed its way into our ears via the Museum Of Future Sound Vol. 2, though the jittery yet spacey b-side "Hurri Up!" we hadn't heard before. And all the tracks by Mangrove, Mrs. Queda, and Joxaren (all three artists hailing from Sweden) are new to us as well. Suffice to say, if you like skweee, you'll like these cuts, presented here in skweee's ideal format.
Joxaren's "Ritam Bluz" is a chiming, exotic, slightly sinister groove. Mrs Queda's laidback "Post-Pubertal" bleeps and bloops nicely along aided by robotic handclaps and digital hisses (oddly, her MySpace page lists Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum as her only influence). Maybe our fave of the batch, Mangrove's "Angry Animals", is a bit of a fractured funky banger, bringing down some rigid buzzin' beats. The flip is pretty solidly crunchy / catchy too. The various other A- and B- sides on these 7"s are all pretty darn skweelicious as well! Seriously, if you're a DJ, just throw one of these on in your set for instant skweee cred. Listening at home is fun too.
Go here: http://skweee.com/ for a lot more interesting skweee info, including interviews with some of the folks we just mentioned.

LIMONIOUS   Swedish Pommak b/w Hurri Up! (Flogsta Danshall) 7" 6.98
Calling all skweee-jays! Or would-be skweee-jays. We've got four new 7" singles of fresh skweee straight from the source, imported from Flogsta Danshall in Finland. They're in plain white sleeves, the only art to be found here on the labels. If you've followed our other skweee recommendations (both Museum Of Future Sound comps, the more recent Skweee Tooth collection) then you know all about this Scandinavian DIY electro b-boy instrumental 8-bit phenomenon, and you'll also already be familiar with the strange names of the artists on these four singles.
Flogsta boss Limonious' slinky "Swedish Pommak" already wormed its way into our ears via the Museum Of Future Sound Vol. 2, though the jittery yet spacey b-side "Hurri Up!" we hadn't heard before. And all the tracks by Mangrove, Mrs. Queda, and Joxaren (all three artists hailing from Sweden) are new to us as well. Suffice to say, if you like skweee, you'll like these cuts, presented here in skweee's ideal format.
Joxaren's "Ritam Bluz" is a chiming, exotic, slightly sinister groove. Mrs Queda's laidback "Post-Pubertal" bleeps and bloops nicely along aided by robotic handclaps and digital hisses (oddly, her MySpace page lists Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum as her only influence). Maybe our fave of the batch, Mangrove's "Angry Animals", is a bit of a fractured funky banger, bringing down some rigid buzzin' beats. The flip is pretty solidly crunchy / catchy too. The various other A- and B- sides on these 7"s are all pretty darn skweelicious as well! Seriously, if you're a DJ, just throw one of these on in your set for instant skweee cred. Listening at home is fun too.
Go here: http://skweee.com/ for a lot more interesting skweee info, including interviews with some of the folks we just mentioned.

MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO. Josephine (Secretly Canadian) cd 12.98
What can be said that hasn't been said already about the mighty Americana troubadour Jason Molina? He continues to weave his wonderful rustic folk pop tapestry in various deep dark shades of sorrow. On Josephine, he once again absolutely nails the heartbreak and the despair in classic country rock fashion. Of the generous list of fourteen tunes, standouts include the title track as well as "Little Sad Eyes", but the best might be "Knoxville Girl". Check 'em out!
MPEG Stream: "Josephine"
MPEG Stream: "Little Sad Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "Knoxville Girl"

MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO. Josephine (Secretly Canadian) lp 14.98
What can be said that hasn't been said already about the mighty Americana troubadour Jason Molina? He continues to weave his wonderful rustic folk pop tapestry in various deep dark shades of sorrow. On Josephine, he once again absolutely nails the heartbreak and the despair in classic country rock fashion. Of the generous list of fourteen tunes, standouts include the title track as well as "Little Sad Eyes", but the best might be "Knoxville Girl". Check 'em out!
MPEG Stream: "Josephine"
MPEG Stream: "Little Sad Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "Knoxville Girl"

MANGROVE   Angry Animals b/w Mental Metronome (Flogsta Danshall) 7" 6.98
Calling all skweee-jays! Or would-be skweee-jays. We've got four new 7" singles of fresh skweee straight from the source, imported from Flogsta Danshall in Finland. They're in plain white sleeves, the only art to be found here on the labels. If you've followed our other skweee recommendations (both Museum Of Future Sound comps, the more recent Skweee Tooth collection) then you know all about this Scandinavian DIY electro b-boy instrumental 8-bit phenomenon, and you'll also already be familiar with the strange names of the artists on these four singles.
Flogsta boss Limonious' slinky "Swedish Pommak" already wormed its way into our ears via the Museum Of Future Sound Vol. 2, though the jittery yet spacey b-side "Hurri Up!" we hadn't heard before. And all the tracks by Mangrove, Mrs. Queda, and Joxaren (all three artists hailing from Sweden) are new to us as well. Suffice to say, if you like skweee, you'll like these cuts, presented here in skweee's ideal format.
Joxaren's "Ritam Bluz" is a chiming, exotic, slightly sinister groove. Mrs Queda's laidback "Post-Pubertal" bleeps and bloops nicely along aided by robotic handclaps and digital hisses (oddly, her MySpace page lists Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum as her only influence). Maybe our fave of the batch, Mangrove's "Angry Animals", is a bit of a fractured funky banger, bringing down some rigid buzzin' beats. The flip is pretty solidly crunchy / catchy too. The various other A- and B- sides on these 7"s are all pretty darn skweelicious as well! Seriously, if you're a DJ, just throw one of these on in your set for instant skweee cred. Listening at home is fun too.
Go here: http://skweee.com/ for a lot more interesting skweee info, including interviews with some of the folks we just mentioned.

MANTLES, THE Trust (Mt. St. Mtn.) 7" 9.98
Second 7" from local San Francisco power pop group The Mantles, who will soon have their debut full length released on Siltbreeze. Not sure why this is called Trust, as that title is not mentioned anywhere, and the songs are "Don't Lie" on the A-side and "Secret Heart" on the B-side. But this is a band that likes to play with a bit of mystery, often sounding like they're from the seventies or eighties. Garnering comparisons to The Clean, or Big Star, they have also been called San Francisco's answer to The Crystal Stilts, which is apt as they seem to be mining similar retro sounds, although with the singing less mournful than you find on the Stilts releases. Engineered by Jason Quever from The Papercuts, this 7" is sure to please folks into the current wave of garage-pop bands on Woodsist, Slumberland, In The Red and of course Siltbreeze.

MAYER, NATHANIEL Why Don't You Give It To Me! (Alive) lp 16.98
Finally available on vinyl!
Damn. Not only was this here disc cooked up by a badass, totally STONED sounding R&B infused greasy garage rock n' roll band from Deeeetroit, featuring members of heavy hitters like the Black Keys (guitarist Dan Auerbach), Dirtbombs (bassist Troy Gregory), Outrageous Cherry (guitarist Matthew Smith), and the Sights (drummer Dave Shettler) but check the top billing - there's a bona fide, veteran black soul singer fronting this combo, maybe you've heard of him, maybe you haven't, but he was the real deal, Nathaniel Mayer. He had his first hit single, "Village Of Love", in the Top 40 back in 1962. We've had (but haven't yet reviewed) a pretty cool anthology of his '60s stuff, I Want Love And Affection, Not The House Of Correction. But that certainly didn't prepare us for this. Don't call it a comeback, this is something else altogether. Ol' Mayer didn't sound like this back in the sixties. We mean, yeah, this IS retro, but also totally something that could only be made now, the unlikely meeting of a versatile, veteran voice and young 'uns who grew up worshipping the Stoogesy rock action, who bring a fresh dose of fuzz and loose, laidback druggy psych to the proceedings that's pretty special.
Even more special though, is Mayer's marvelously ragged, hoarse voice. Weary and burnished with time - you can hear every one of his 64 years. Yet he's also totally in command of it, butter smooth one moment, croakingly gruff the next, belting out the James Brown style "owwwws!" like he coined the phrase. Yeah, the man can sing. And lyrically, he's all about sex and desire. Beggin' his girl. "Why Don't You Give It To Me?" Sometimes, "Doin' It" (which is a nearly 9-minute, wasted wild wahwah'd jam). In keeping with Mayer's phlegmy voice, the whole album is wrapped in a lo-fi murk, adding to the battered, bluesy, psychedelic mood. One that we might compare to some of the more soulful obscurities on that ol' Chains And Black Exhaust comp. The 1995 solo album by LSD casualty and former Funkadelic, Tawl Ross comes to mind as well.
And we'll remind you ('cause you DO read his site, right?) that this was Julian Cope's Head Heritage Record of the Month back in May.
Sadly, Mayer has passed away since this album first came out (it's a 2007 release, now here on vinyl), but there's a pretty cool posthumous album called Why Won't You Let Me Be Black that's just been released as well that we'll be reviewing soon on an upcoming list.
MPEG Stream: "White Dress"
MPEG Stream: "Everywhere"

MEM1 +1 (Interval Recordings) cd 12.98
The L.A. sound art duo Mem1 gathered together a great line-up of collaborators for this, their second album released earlier in 2009. Steve Roden, Jan Jelinek, Frank Bretschneider, and Area C are the heavy-hitters from our perspective, although those contributions from the those we've not heard of - Jen Boyd, Ido Govrin, RS-232 - seem to more than pull their weight. Mem1 works from an electro-acoustic context reworking cello through an interconnected series of electronics, most of which are probably driven through Max/MSP patches. The results typically settle into a slumbering drone sensibility, as noted in the Jan Jelinek collaboration which interweaves dark plucks from the cello with fizzing Tim Hecker-esque digital washes. The RS-232 pairing is a creepy, nocturnal track of sci-fi sound design for deep industrial hummings scorched with slow burning arcs. Frank Bretschneider offers an exception to this rule through his pulsing post-techno rhythms which gyrate in pools of reverb beneath looping sustained patterns of resampled cello. Beautiful stuff!
MPEG Stream: "+Jan Jelinek"
MPEG Stream: "+RS-232"
MPEG Stream: "+Frank Bretschneider"

MEM1 Alexipharmaca (Interval Recordings) cd 12.98
With artwork by the man behind Svarte Greiner and a conceptual framework dealing with "plant and animal poisons and their antidotes," Alexipharmaca is an album that wouldn't be out of place on Type. The Los Angeles based Mem1 is a duo comprised of Mark & Laura Cetilia, employing plenty of high-tech gadgets to abstract, obfuscate, and accompany the languid sounds from Laura's cello. Softened drones and delicate atmospheres are the dominant structures for Alexipharmaca, certainly casting a long gaze back to Erik Satie's idea of wallpaper music through the lens of Brian Eno's ambient and Akira Rabelais' esoteric digital abstractions. The movements of the bow across the strings of the cello are sometimes all that remains, as the rest of the sounds have been rarified, pitch-shifted, softly mulched, and recast as a ghostly undulation of sound crosshatched with digital ephemera and microsonic pin-pricks of glitchiness. While many of the quietly rendered sounds enjoy a jewel-like preciousness, Mem1 infuse these passages with a ghostly bleakness that occasionally grows ominous.
MPEG Stream: "Somniferum"
MPEG Stream: "Dasyatis"

MIRRORS Something That Would Never Do (Violet / Hovercraft) lp 24.00
A killer vinyl sort-of best of from these legendary Cleveland punk rock new wave misfits. The Mirrors were only active for about three years in the mid seventies, in the about-to-be-obscenely-fertile Cleveland punk rock scene, breaking up just as Cleveland was poised to unleash a barrage of snotty punky new wave mayhem on an unsuspecting public in the form of the Dead Boys, Rocket From The Tombs, The Electric Eels, the Pagans, Pere Ubu and more!
Think early punk rock mixed with a little Velvet Underground. Awesome stuff. LIMITED TO 800 COPIES. Maybe sold out already, we have a small handful...

MRS. QEADA Babi b/w Post Pubertal (Flogsta Danshall) 7" 6.98
Calling all skweee-jays! Or would-be skweee-jays. We've got four new 7" singles of fresh skweee straight from the source, imported from Flogsta Danshall in Finland. They're in plain white sleeves, the only art to be found here on the labels. If you've followed our other skweee recommendations (both Museum Of Future Sound comps, the more recent Skweee Tooth collection) then you know all about this Scandinavian DIY electro b-boy instrumental 8-bit phenomenon, and you'll also already be familiar with the strange names of the artists on these four singles.
Flogsta boss Limonious' slinky "Swedish Pommak" already wormed its way into our ears via the Museum Of Future Sound Vol. 2, though the jittery yet spacey b-side "Hurri Up!" we hadn't heard before. And all the tracks by Mangrove, Mrs. Queda, and Joxaren (all three artists hailing from Sweden) are new to us as well. Suffice to say, if you like skweee, you'll like these cuts, presented here in skweee's ideal format.
Joxaren's "Ritam Bluz" is a chiming, exotic, slightly sinister groove. Mrs Queda's laidback "Post-Pubertal" bleeps and bloops nicely along aided by robotic handclaps and digital hisses (oddly, her MySpace page lists Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum as her only influence). Maybe our fave of the batch, Mangrove's "Angry Animals", is a bit of a fractured funky banger, bringing down some rigid buzzin' beats. The flip is pretty solidly crunchy / catchy too. The various other A- and B- sides on these 7"s are all pretty darn skweelicious as well! Seriously, if you're a DJ, just throw one of these on in your set for instant skweee cred. Listening at home is fun too.
Go here: http://skweee.com/ for a lot more interesting skweee info, including interviews with some of the folks we just mentioned.

POLLARD, ROBERT Elephant Jokes (Guided By Voices Inc.) cd 14.98
Man, it's about time this guy put something new out! Ha-Ha. We couldn't resist, but as anyone who has been paying any attention knows, Pollard has been putting out records almost every other day it feels like after he pulled the plug on the late great Guided By Voices. The post GBV records aren't all great, but they aren't all bad either. Most fall somewhere right in between, crammed with so many songs there's always bound to be a few classic Pollard winners, most often set amidst a whole bunch of less rememberable moments. More and more his songs have a very '70s era vibe (reminding us of The Who) and some of us thought this even ventures into Dire Straits or Peter Gabriel territory. Which makes sense when you think about it, because on classic rock radio of the future there better be lots of Robert Pollard in rotation. Bigtime Pollard fans/completists will want this, but not totally essential for everyone / anyone else.
MPEG Stream: "Things Have Changed (Down in Mexico City)"
MPEG Stream: "Accident Hero"

POLLARD, ROBERT Elephant Jokes (Guided By Voices Inc.) lp 15.98
Man, it's about time this guy put something new out! Ha-Ha. We couldn't resist, but as anyone who has been paying any attention knows, Pollard has been putting out records almost every other day it feels like after he pulled the plug on the late great Guided By Voices. The post GBV records aren't all great, but they aren't all bad either. Most fall somewhere right in between, crammed with so many songs there's always bound to be a few classic Pollard winners, most often set amidst a whole bunch of less rememberable moments. More and more his songs have a very '70s era vibe (reminding us of The Who) and some of us thought this even ventures into Dire Straits or Peter Gabriel territory. Which makes sense when you think about it, because on classic rock radio of the future there better be lots of Robert Pollard in rotation. Bigtime Pollard fans/completists will want this, but not totally essential for everyone / anyone else.
MPEG Stream: "Things Have Changed (Down in Mexico City)"
MPEG Stream: "Accident Hero"

PRIVATE ENTERTAINMENT Four Tracks By Private Entertainment (White Denim) 7" 4.50
Who loves Coldwave? We Do! And we just got a handful of these 7" from Russian synth duo Private Entertainment. If you liked the female sung side of Cold Cave, Nini Raviolette, or Gina X Performance, then you should check out the icy shimmer of this Soviet male/female duo. On one track, they even remind us of "Me and My Rhythm Box" from the Liquid Sky soundtrack! So good!

SKULLFLOWER Malediction (Second Layer) cd 15.98
BACK IN STOCK!
Matthew Bower's growing obsession with black metal has gradually infiltrated the blown out guitar skree of his earlier recordings and continues to push the sound of modern Skullflower into realms blacker and more grim and gristly than ever. Much like the recently reviewed (but sadly now out of print) Vile Veil lp, word on the street was that Malediction was to be the "Skullflower black metal" record, which it could very well be, but you have to realize that no matter how much Darkthrone or Pyha or Old Wainds or Arckanum Bower listens too, those sounds get filtered through that mysterious mind, eventually coming out via his guitar as a sound not terribly removed from something recognizably Skullflower, but with enough blackness, enough buzzing riffage, enough cello (here transformed into howling moans and caustic shards of scrape and skree) and enough chaotic drum splatter, courtesy of original Skullflower drummer Stuart Dennison, to make this more than just another Skullflower record, and more than just another guitarnoise record, it transforms this wild cacophony into some transcendent blacknoise hybrid, equal parts ur-drone and black buzz, psychedelic freakout and free-noise experiment, a pulsing, throbbing swirl of abstract heaviness and in-the-red speaker damaging crunch, a sound that slips fluidly from total abstract atom scatter to lurching almost riffy mesmer, remaining always wreathed in a thick, corrosive field of upper register sonic static, only the drums, ever really leaping from the fray, to hurl some thunderous beats before being quickly sucked back under.
Not sure if it was that brief foray into almost seventies sounding riffiness, back circa the records Exquisite Fucking Boredom and Orange Canyon Mind, but ever since then, Bower and company have been making noise with a vengeance, the sound of Skullflower and fierce and fucked up and heavy and noisy as it's ever been, Bower's black metal interests only adding to the bands hellish sonic trajectory. That's not all to say black metallers would dig this, cuz odds are, only the most extreme music obsessives among the black legions would find this particular brand of psych-skree to their liking, but heck, those of you who do fit that profile, go for it, immerse yourself, and discover just what it is about Skullflower, just what sort of black ritualistic magic lurks within the caustic black sonic sun that is Malediction.
Noiseniks will no doubt flip their lids, appropriately so, but there's so much more to this 'noise', what seems like a wall of sound, crumbles into pieces revealing so much texture within, every heaving wave of punishing crunch, gradually parts revealing a delicate network of strange melodies, the sounds while on the surface seem easily defined, are in fact more complex then they might appear, guitars and drums and voices and cellos all careening chaotically into a roiling churning black sea, a bottomless sonic expanse that takes metal and sludge and doom and noise and punk rock and minimal drone music and melts it down, shaping it into something new and mysterious, a baffling, deafening sound that defies any sort of classification, as the title of an old SF record so boldly proclaimed. This is Skullflower. And THIS, is Skullflower NOW.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Packaged in a six panel full color digipak with cool tripped out watercolor artwork by Bower himself.
MPEG Stream: "A'arab Zaraq ~ Ravens Of The Burning Of God"
MPEG Stream: "Drenched In Moonsblood (Waxing Gibbous)"

SPOON Got Nuffin (Merge) 12" 9.98
NOW ON VINYL!
What more to say? A new Spoon record! Sure it may only be 4 songs (not 3 like it says on the sleeve), but heck, how long has it been since we've had some new Spoon? Far too long. And "Got Nuffin" is just what we've all been hankering for, nothing super new, no sonic reinvention, but then who wants that, it's just another killer brooding, chugging chunk of moody indie rock, a sound that few other modern rock bands can even come close to. Lots of fuzzy bass, minimal piano plink, some cool effected guitar, and Britt Daniel's unmistakable croon. Catchy and kick ass, sounds like it could have come right off any of their last few full lengths.
The other three tracks are all over the map. "Tweakers" is some cool abstract piano and drum experiment. Just a looping drum jam, super muddy and muted, with the occasional bit of electronic crunch, or atonal piano pound, even a little bit of drone-y high end, but it's mostly just the drums, and it's kinda cool. Leads right into "Stroke Their Brains", a shuffling slow burner, all fuzzy jangle and skittery rhythm, minor key melodies, strange effected vocals, an awesome Daniel vocal part, and lots of woozy twang.
Then after a few minutes of silence is the "Tweakers" remix, which sounds almost exactly the same, slightly altered, the beat subtly effected, the song a bit chopped up and stuttery, really cool, but then for a brief moment, there's some rapping, yep, rapping, really goofy dorky distorted rapping. It's only for 30 seconds or so, and it somehow works, sort of, but we imagine there's a reason it's tucked away after the silence and is unlisted on the sleeve. Maybe that track's for Spoon freeks only, but the rest of this way too brief ep definitely has us chomping at the bit for a new full length!
MPEG Stream: "Got Nuffin"

24 CARAT BLACK Gone: The Promises Of Yesterday (Numero Group) lp 17.98
Now on Vinyl!
An amazing kind of soft-psychedelic breeze must be blowing over whatever strange and mysterious land Numero Group call home as their two most recent recent deep vault discoveries have both sizzled in a soft psychedelic glow of vibrant color. Last time we heard from this always amazing reissue/rediscovery label it was the late 60's psych-pop delights offered by Pisces. This time out it's the early '70s soft psychedelic soul of 24 Carat Black. Conceived, produced and orchestrated by the amazingly talented Dale Warren whose delicate touch can be heard on various records released on Motown and Stax including choice cuts from Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, Eddie Floyd and Albert King. As seductive and rich in his orchestration and production as fellow soul magic makers like Charles Stepney and Norman Whitfield, Warren also had a kind of vivid imagination and singular vision much like aQ fave David Axelrod. He took a little known Cincinnati group called The Ditalians under his wing and had them change their name to 24 Carat Black and released their 1973 album Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth on Stax. A record that has become big time fodder for rare groove lovers and was sampled by hip-hop artists like Digable Planets and Young Disciples.
While that record has enjoyed cult-status by a new generation, it was, sadly, a commercial flop, so the follow up record was never released. Luckily Numero Group has given this deeply satisfying record the day in the sun it so rightly deserves. This is a record filled not only with a soft psych-soul vibe but also such intense emotional weight and an overall feeling which should speak loudly to fans of What's Going On era Marvin Gaye, Rotary Connection and Ramp. We also get the feeling that if she hasn't already, Erykah Badu would find so much inspiration here, and these guys would for sure be kindred soul spirits. Truly a lost classic. Thank you once again Numero Group!
MPEG Stream: "I'll Never Let You Go"
MPEG Stream: "Gone The Promises Of Yesterday"
MPEG Stream: "I Want To Make Up"

WIRE, THE #307 September 2009 magazine 9.98
On the cover, onetime popstar David Sylvian, who in an interview discusses his trajectory into ever-more avant garde creative territory. Also, this issue has pieces on Japanese field recordist Aki Onda, singer Julie Tippetts, dubstepper Joker, and SF's own Caroliner weirdos, among others. AQ fave William Basinski is tested in the Invisible Jukebox feature. And there's all the usual reviews, columns, charts, news, ads, and whatnot.

WOLF EYES Always Wrong (Hospital) lp 19.98
NOW ON VINYL!
For their latest collection of homebrewed electronic analogue filth, the boys in Wolf Eyes have decided to join the Hospital Productions roster, home of Prurient, Cold Cave, Ash Pool, Grey Wolves, Prurient, Kevin Drumm, Malkuth, and in some ways it's a perfect match. While all of that typically crusty and blown out Wolf Eyesian buzz and glitch and ruble and whir is all intact, Always Wrong actually displays a fairly significant shift, not just in sound, but in song writing. Unlike past efforts which tended toward the epic side long abstract noise jams, AW is practically a collection of songs, with vocals playing a much more significant part, sure they still offer up serious shards of skree and dense chunks of jagged buzz, but the manage as always to make their noise MORE than just noise, texture, timbre, mood, melody, and for the first time, SONGS.
The record opens with some electronic buzz and some muffled percussion, and right up front some snarled vox, spitting all kinds of venomous vitriol, over a strangely haunting glitchscape, before finally erupting into a clattery clangy Wolf Eyed Whitehouse jam. Tons of feedback, swooping electronic tones, clipped and stuttery chunks of buzz and squeal, all somehow woven into a lurching, stumbling malfunctioning industrial lumber. But it's the next track where things get really interesting, beginning with another high end squall, the streaks of skree get smoothed into haunting melodies, backing up a drawled gloomy almost Lou Reed sounding vocal, underneath it all a darkly gothic bassline, all murky and buzzy, some crunchy riffage popping up here and there, the whole thing a darkly swirling, but still crunchy and caustic, bit of coldwave, that should definitely please fans of the dark and morose, the brooding and black.
"Broke Order" sounds almost punk rock, crushing crumbling detuned crush, over grinding mechanical rhythms, dense clouds of blurred buzz, and yowled vokills, a lumbering lurching ultra heavy distortion drenched monstrosity, that again, manages to still be weirdly, if just barely, melodic.
The rest of the record drifts druggily between those different sounds, "Pretending Alive" is a slow crawl, of reverbed metallic percussion, jazzy horns, lots of layered amp buzz and tape hiss, spidery disembodied guitars, "We All Hate You", is another strangely post punk post industrial almost new wave sounding jam, more moody vox, heavily effected electronic beats, thick gritty textures, and woozy minor key melodies, finishing off with "Droll / Cut The Dog", starting our downright pretty, long form drones, deep resonant rumbles, tense minor key melodies, very creepy and cinematic, the buzz and glitch kept to a minimum, eventually shifting gears into another sort of industrial coldwave outro, all pounding minimal rhythm, sung spoken vocals, warm washes of washed out hiss, dense tangles of undulating drones, and as always, lots and lots of glorious blown out buzz.
MPEG Stream: "Living Stone"
MPEG Stream: "Broken Order"
MPEG Stream: "Droll / Cut The Dog"

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

ACCUSED, THE "The Curse of Martha Splatterhead" (Southern Lord) cd 13.98
AFRICA GERMANY GERMANY MEXICO TURKEY AUSTRALIA "s/t" (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 25.00
ANTLERS, THE "Hospice" (French Kiss) cd 12.98
ASTRA "The Weirding" (Rise Above) cd 13.98
BALLA ET SES BALLADINS "The Syliphone Years" (Sterns Africa) 2cd 24.00
BANJO OR FREAKOUT "Upside Down" (Half Machine Records) lp 10.98
BEHEMOTH "Evangelion" (Metal Blade) cd 15.98
BEMBEYA JAZZ NATIONAL "The Syliphone Years" (Sterns Africa) 2cd 24.00
BIBLE OF THE DEVIL / BLADE OF THE RIPPER "split" (Scarey Records) 7" 5.98
BIRDS OF AVALON "Uncanny Valley" (Volcom Entertainment) cd/lp 14.98/13.98
BLACK JOKER "Watch Out" (Olde English Spelling Bees) lp 21.00
BLACK SHEEP "Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse 2" (Invada) 2cd/2lp 31.00/39.00
BLIND BLAKE "Bahamian Songs" (Megaphone) cd 17.98
BLIND GUARDIAN "Nightfall In Middle-Earth" (Century Media) cd 12.98
BLOOD FOUNTAINS "Floods" (Utech) cd 14.98
BOWERBIRDS "Upper Air" (Dead Oceans) cd/lp 15.98/17.98
BREEDERS, THE "Last Splash" (Plain) lp 17.98
BREEDERS, THE "Pod" (Plain) lp 17.98
CABLE "The Failed Convict" (The End) cd 12.98
DESTROYER "Bay Of Pigs" (Merge Records) 12" 10.98
DESTROYER 666 "Defiance" (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
DIALING IN "The Islamic Bomb" (Music Fellowship) lp 19.98
ESPVALL, HELENA & MASAKI BATOH "Overloaded Ark" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/21.00
ETERNAL TAPESTRY "The Invisible Landscape" (Not Not Fun) lp 16.98
FENRIZ' RED PLANET / NATTEFROST "Engansgrill" (Indie Recordings) cd 21.00
GAS "Compressed Gas" (Siltbreeze) 7" 8.98
GOES CUBE "Another Day Has Passed" (The End) cd 14.98
HARBOURS "No Souvenirs" (HR) lp 14.98
HARNETTY, BRIAN & BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY "Silent City" (Atavistic) cd 16.98
HOOD, ROBERT "Minimal Nation" (M-Plant) 2cd 17.98
ILL WIND "Flashes" (Sunbeam) 2cd 25.00
INFANTRY / PYROTOXIC "Infantry Versus Pyrotoxic: Thrash Clash Volume 4" (Stormspell) cd 13.98
IRON MAN "I Have Returned" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 12.98
IRON MONKEY "Iron Monkey / Our Problem" (Earache) 2cd 15.98
ISOLEE "We Are Monster" (Playhouse) cd 16.98
ITOH, KIYOKO "Woman At 23 Hour" (Swax) cd 30.00
IXXI "Elect Darkness" (Candlelight) cd 12.98
J.T.IV "Cosmic Lightning" (Galactic Zoo Disk / Drag City) lp+dvd 24.00
JAFFE, SARA & MIA CLARKE "The Art of Touring" (Square Root Books) book + cd 19.95
JANDEK "Glasgow Friday (DVD)" (Corwood) dvd 14.98
JANDEK "Helsinki Saturday" (Corwood Industries) cd 8.98
JANDEK "London Tuesday" (Corwood) cd 8.98
JOHANNSSON, JOHANN "And In The Endless Paus There Came The Sound Of Bees" (NTOV Phonoautogram) cd 10.98
K11 "Voices From Thelema" (Aurora Borealis) cd 14.98
KUTI, FELA & HIS KOOLA LOBITOS "S/t" (Klimt) lp 27.00
LA NUEVA BANDA DE SANTISTEBAN "Sabor A Fresa" (Vampi Soul) cd 22.00
LAUDANUM "Coronation" (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
LI JIANHONG "Classic Of The Mountains And Seas" (PSF) cd 22.00
LITMUS "Aurora" (Metal Blade / Rise Above) cd 14.98
LYNCH, JULIAN "Orange You Glad" (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 22.00
MARTINEZ, SABU "Burned Sugar" (Mellotronen) cd 17.98
MAYER, NATHANIEL "Why Won't You Let Me Be Black" (Alive) cd 15.98
METH TEETH "Everything Went Wrong" (Woodsist) lp 14.98
MODEST MOUSE "No One's First, And You're Next" (Epic) cd ep 9.98
MORDANT MUSIC / SHACKLETON / VINDICATRIX "Picking O'er The Bones" (Mordant Music) cd 16.98
MUTANTES, OS "Dois Mil E Nove (including Os Mutantes #1, Os Mutantes #2, & A Divina Comedia)" (Lilith) 3lp 62.00
PEEBLES, ANN "Part Time Love" (Fat Possum / Hi Records) cd 13.98
PIGS "Illuminati House Party" (Sugar Mountain) cd-r/lp 8.98/12.98
PINK NOISE "Graffiti Youth" (Kill Shaman) lp 15.98
PLAIN RIDE "House On The Hill" (Ektro) cd 14.98
POISON THE WELL "The Tropic Rot" (Ferret) cd 14.98
REAL ESTATE "Green River / Fake Blues" (Half Machine Records) 7" 7.98
REIGNING SOUND "Love And Curses" (In The Red) cd/lp 13.98/10.98
ROCKCELONA "La Bruja" (Estereo Fonico Country) cd 25.00
ROYHKA JA RATTO JA LEHTISALO "Hiekkarantaa" (Ektro) cd 14.98
SALLY, ZAK "Why We Hide" (Sub Pop) 7" 4.98
SCIENCE FICTION DANCE PARTY "Dance With Action" (Germanic Minder / Finders Keepers) lp 29.00
SIGH "Scorn Of Defeat" (Enucleation) cd 13.98
SKYGREEN LEOPARDS "Gorgeous Johnny" (Jagjaguwar) cd/lp 12.98/14.98
SMITH, STEVEN R. "Cities" (Immune) lp 14.98
STRENG, PEKKA "Kesamaa" (Love) cd 17.98
SUCH HAWKS SUCH HOUNDS (Long Song Films) dvd-r 16.98
SUPERCHUNK "Crossed Wires" (Merge) 7" 6.98
SWASHBUCKLE "Back To The Noose" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Archive 1" (Jinya) 5cd 95.00
TARTUFI "Nests Of Waves And Wire" (Southern) cd 11.98
TREE PEOPLE, THE "Human Voices" (Guerssen) cd 17.98
TWISTED WIRES "One Night At The Raw Deal" (Italians Do It Better) 12" 9.98
V/A "Artificial Faces" (Crazy Apple) cd 24.00
V/A "Cazumbi Volume 2" (No Smoke) cd/lp 25.00/33.00
V/A "Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute To The Songs Of Kath Bloom" (Chapter Music) 2cd 17.98
V/A "Off The Wall Volumes 1 & 2" (Past & Present) 2cd 25.00
V/A "Porno Groove" (Secret Stash) lp 22.00
V/A "Songs In The Key Of Z: Volume 1 & 2" (Cherry Red) 2cd 16.98
V/A "The Midnite Sound Of The Milky Way" (Big Beat) cd 16.98
V/A "Transmissions From Sinai" (Arthur) cd 13.98
V/A "Waking Up Scheherazade: Arabian Psych Nuggets" (Grey Past) lp 28.00
V/A "Wayfaring Strangers: Lonesome Heroes" (Numero Group) cd 16.98
VAGUS NERVE "Lo Pan" (Utech) cd 14.98
VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR "Time Vaults" (Abstract Sounds) cd 13.98
VARIANT "Setting Sun" (Echospace) cd 16.98
VOIVOD "Infini" (Relapse) cd 14.98
VON IVA "Girls On Film" (Stickfigure Recordings) lp 12.98
WARMTH "Original Warmth" (Turgid Animal) cd 12.98
WYATT, ROBERT "Radio Experiment Rome, February 1981" (Rai Trade) cd 22.00
YACHT "See Mystery Lights" (DFA) cd/lp 14.98/15.98
ZOMBY "One Foot Ahead Of The Other" (Ramp) 2x12" 25.00

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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    $5.00 USPS Priority Mail
3+ items    $7.50 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 $7.50. 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 $5.00 for shipping. These packages are NOT insured or trackable, sorry. So if you desire those safeguards, please request UPS delivery at the $7.50 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 $7.50 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, but only in $USD. International customers please note that they must be international postal money orders purchased at a post office. Additional processing fees may apply. 

If you wish to pay by money order, you must confirm the order with us through email or phone BEFORE you send any payment. It's best to just use the secure order form on the website, and when checking out mark money order as your payment choice. We will then process your order and respond with all the crucial payment info.

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.

Unfortunately, we cannot take personal checks for mailorder, sorry!


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

----} August 25th
Jega "Variance" cd/2lp on Planet Mu
Yoga "Megafauna" cd on Holy Mountain
Hunt & Turner "Magic Landscape" cd reissue on Lion
The Sun Also Rises "s/t" cd reissue on Lion
Cathedral "Ethereal Mirror" reissue + dvd and ep on Earache
Patton Oswalt "My Weakness Is Strong" cd w/dvd
Arctic Monkeys "Humbug" cd on Domino

----} September 8th
Yo La Tengo "Popular Songs" cd/2lp on Matador
Times New Viking "No Time, No Hope" 7" on Matador
Taken By Trees "East Of Eden" cd/lp on Rough Trade

----} September 22nd
Times New Viking "Born Again Revisited" cd/lp on Matador
Kurt Vile "He's All Right" 7" on Matador
Teenage Filmstars "Rocket Charms/ Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness/ Bring Back The Cartel" 2cd on Artpop
The Times "E For Edward/ Pure/ Et Dieu Crea La Femme" 2cd on Artpop

----} October 6th
Kurt Vile "Childish Prodigy" cd/lp on Matador
Mission Of Burma "The Sound, The Speed, The Light" cd/lp on Matador

----} October 13th
Lightning Bolt "Earthly Delight" cd/2lp on Load

----} also in October
Betty Davis "Nasty Gal" cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Betty Davis "Is It Love Or Desire" cd on Light In The Attic (previously unreleased 1976 album!)

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later
Expo '70 "Corridors to Infinity" cassette on Sonic Meditations
Dock Boggs "Legendary Singer And Banjo Player" lp on Folkways
Elisabeth Cotten "When I'm Gone" lp on Folkways
John Fahey "America" lp reissue on Four Men With Beards
Roscoe Holcomb "High Lonesome Sound" lp reissue on Folkways
3 Inches Of Blood "Here Waits Thy Doom" cd on Century Media
Gösta Berlings Saga "Detta Har Hant" cd on Transubstans Records
Lord Vicar "Fear No Pain" lp+book version on The Church Within
v/a "Kompakt Total 10" 2cd/3lp on Kompakt
v/a "The Electric Asylum Volume 3: Rare British Acid Freakrock" cd on Past & Present
Black Boned Angel "Verdun" lp on Riot Season
Shit And Shine "229 2299 Girls Against Shit" lp on Riot Season
Ocean "Pantheon Of The Lesser" 2lp version on Important
Bunkur "Nullify" cd on Displeased
Grumbling Fur (Guapo + Jussi from Circle) cd
Der TPK (Teenage Panzerkorps) "Games For Slaves" lp on Siltbreeze
Oxbow "Fuckfest" cd reissue on Hydrahead
Combat Astronomy "Earth Divided by Zero" cd
Rosetta "Wake/Lift" vinyl version
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
Sean Smith "Eternal" cd on Ultra Hard Gel
Jazzfinger "The Sun's Golden Blood" cd on Beta-Lactam Ring
v/a "Noise Room" cd on Soniq
Country Teasers / Ezee Tiger split lp on Holy Mountain
Erase Errata TBA cd on Kill Rock Stars
Xiu Xiu TBA cd on Kill Rock Stars
The Black Heart Procession TBA cd/lp on Touch And Go
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists TBA cd/lp on Touch And Go
Rodan TBA cd/lp on Quarterstick
Deftones "Eros" cd on Warner Bros.
Swell Maps "International Rescue" clear vinyl LP reissue on Alive
Black Lips "We Didn't Know..." green vinyl LP on Bomp!
Loss "Despond" cd on Profound Lore
Celestiial "Where Life Springs Eternal" cd on Bindrune
Blood Of The Black Owl "A Banishing Ritual" cd on Bindrune


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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickSallyJonandAndrew