FOREST CREATURE Frustrated Analogue - 7 Edits From 2009 (Blackest Rainbow) cd 16.98
Apparently, this UK duo, Ben Moon and Richard Sides, aka Forest Creature, have dabbled in all manner of noisemaking in their brief existence, creating huge crushing walls of speaker shredding brutality, or super glitched out psychedelic beat heavy crunch, or howling, live, drum driven psychnoise freakouts, and while traces of those sounds are still present, we have to say, we're pretty partial to the twisted noise captured here, a seeming distillation of those disparate sounds, into something much more refined and focused, perhaps equally varied sonically, but somehow still strangely cohesive, and epic 'song' suite, due in no small part to the editing and sequencing as the actual music making itself.
The label drops names like Black Dice, Fuck Buttons, Animal Collective, Autechre, and those all do pretty much apply, but to our ears, there seems to be much more to Forest Creature than just aping their influences, we hear the ominous cinematic synthiness of Goblin, the intense late night noir buzz of recent aQ faves D.A., the murky swirl and shimmery out-of-time new age-y drift of the recent crop of pop hypnogogists, but here, those influences, as well as a handful of purloined sounds, are all reimagined, reinterpreted and all tangled up into constantly squirming and unraveling soundscapes, that skitter from almost kraut-like mesmer, to nineties style IDM, to looped woozy minimal synth wave, to gorgeous haunting murky heroin house, but no matter what the sound, or where the songs seem to be headed, Forest Creature mold all those elements into something truly original, lush, and deep, and dark, sometime super chaotic and hyper rhythmic, other times hushed and ominous. "Edit 4" begins as a foreboding minimal slow burning drone, but eventually builds to a warped synth loop, that gets more and more crunchy and buzz, the low end billowing out like a black cloud, the effects eating away at the original loop, super intense and totally mesmerizing. "Edit 5" is all rumbling low end whir, a distant beat, buried way down in the murk, looped and skittery, hovers below a black ambience that seems to swirl and shimmer in slow motion. "Edit 3" might be the prettiest of the bunch, beginning with a skeletal high end looped rhythm, which is soon joined by some warm warbly synths way off in the distance, the rhythm remains steady, but that low end grows thicker, and buzzier, creating thick warm slabs of chordal hum, playing out a gorgeous melancholy slowcore melody, a haunting depressive slow pop crawl, run through with that skeletal skitter, until both the buzz and the beat, begin to crumble, and intensify, until the song is transformed into a noise drenched psychedelic swirl.
So awesome. And a little bit surprising coming from Blackest Rainbow, whose past releases have tended more toward groups like Jazzfinger, Barn Owl, Bong, Starving Weirdos and the like. Frustrated Analogue is some fantastically twisted, blissed out, synth heavy electronic psychedelia, repetitive, hypnotic, spaced out, warped and glitchy, drone-y and rhythmic, moody and mysterious, a dizzying melding of This Heat, Goblin, John Carpenter, old Warp Records 12"s, early Chain Reaction, modern synthdrone, early analogue synth music, and the groups we mentioned up top (Fuck Buttons, Black Dice, Animal Collective, etc.). Way way recommended. Easily one of our new favorites...
MPEG Stream: "Edit 1"
MPEG Stream: "Edit 2"
MPEG Stream: "Edit 3"

YOGA Megafauna (Holy Mountain) cd 14.98
We went a little nuts for the skewed not-quite-black-metal of the oddly monickered Yoga, whose split with Ghast we reviewed a while back. Their sound not really buzzy and brutal as much as warped and twisted and blackened, more like a blurry shadow of black metal, the murky muddy underbelly of a sound more traditionally buzzy and black. Or as someone here opined, it's not black metal, but it wouldn't exist without black metal.
We'd been anxiously awaiting more, having played that split to DEATH, this full length definitely one of our most anticipated records of the year, and an inevitable Record Of The Week. The band do not disappoint. Once again, exploring all manner of spaced out otherworldliness, the blackness more implied, the buzz doused in druggy FX and wrapped around twisted streaks of fragmented pop and sprawling deconstructed dronemuisc. The core of the sound a sort of blissed out, uneasy, lo-fi dronescape, infused with fragmented riffage, pounding drum detritus, and super effected howling vox. There are definitely moments on Megafauna where Yoga begin to resemble an actual and proper metal band, but even then the sound is ragged and off kilter, effects swooping and swirling, the repetitive buzz becoming mantra like, the various strands of melody unraveling before your ears, like a live, metal, Disintegration Loop, with sounds crumbling and falling to pieces, the sound of dissolution and destruction rendered in abstract sound.
Imagine Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, filtered through a grim black bedroom black metal aesthetic. Or better yet, Jeck in full corpse paint, hunkered over a row of black turntables, candles guttering in the evening breeze, lit from below like some hellish visage, the sounds emanating from his warped vinyl manipulations, being these: fuzzy, gauzy smears of indistinct shimmer and ghostly shadow, haunted music box missives, grim buzzscapes underpinned by heaving swells of crumbling blackness, abstruse sonic alchemy begetting bursts of almost orchestral crush, as well as long stretches of fun house mirror hum and whir, all gathered into a loose songsuite that oozes and drifts, interrupted only by the occasional squall of buzzing metal pound, either looped and frenzied sounding, or lurching and doom-ic, the drums a murky plod, the guitar slippery and shimmery, the riffs melty and viscous, the arrangements endless and lysergic, the sound washed out and shoegazey, a sort of hybridized black metal space rock trip out, that may lumber or blast or crunch, but always eventually slips back into a sound more abstract and metaphysical, psychedelic and darkly dreamy. Yeah!
MPEG Stream: "Seventh Wind"
MPEG Stream: "Flying Witch"
MPEG Stream: "Encante"
MPEG Stream: "Wagion"

VELVET CACOON P aa opal poere pr.33 (Starlight Temple Society) cd 7.98
Two weeks ago when we made Velvet Cacoon's stellar Atropine one of our Records Of The Week, we mentioned the possibility of yet ANOTHER VC release in the not too distant future. Well here it is, way sooner than we had initially predicted.
While Atropine may have baffled some fans of this already baffling band with its total ambience and a complete absence of the blown out black metal they made their name on, it also managed to perfectly convey the drugged out isolation and dissociative bliss that has always been central to their music. Atropine is an intense piece of work, very rewarding when listened to with patience, BUT... we'd be lying if we said we didn't miss the metal. Thankfully, P aa opal poere pr.33 (good grief, what a title!) arrives right on the heels of Atropine, and more than anything, it seems to be the perfect companion piece to that previous album, delivering almost 40 minutes of murky, blissful as fuck METAL, heavy on the nautical themes that have commonly been part of Velvet Cacoon's M.O. Yet even as we write the word "METAL," we are faced with the already obvious realization that Velvet Cacoon pretty much defies any simple classification. Call it shoegaze, ambient, metal, hell, even pop... their sound is unique, and even though scores of imitators have popped up in recent years, the second we put this on we knew who we were listening to (unless they completely stole these recordings like some of their other albums supposedly...) While it does share some certain sonic similarities to the band's previous work, it would be lazy to write off P aa opal poere pr.33 as merely the successor to the band's now classic Genevieve, and here Velvet Cacoon seem to have arrived at the most realized encapsulation of their sound to date. So yes, it's REALLY fucking good. And thus also a Record Of The Week!
According to the notes, vocals here are handled by one Cain of a band called Snowfall. His style falls into a more traditional style of black metal shrieking, acting as the perfect foil to Velvet Cacoon's melodic fuzzed out dirges, but we are also fairly certain that VC mainman SGL (or "Josh" if you want to demystify things) is handling a lot of the vocal duties here. What the fuck? Whatever. The album opens with "2.", with the trademark Velvet Cacoon "dieselharp" guitar sound accompanied by a lumbering drum machine rhythm and a sound that gains momentum as it appears to bubble up from the bottom of the sea. "Claverie" is huge sounding with a nice lazy groove and a hazy narcotic feel, sort of like sleepwalking. As distant drones swirl about, the riff remains steady until changing at the 6 minute mark, with a guitar that is so sustained it almost sounds like a keyboard. The standout track here is "Marylux", with an awesome and unique riff that pretty much sounds like a psychedelic black metal sea shanty. At the same time, it gives off a sort of a '90s indie vibe. What doesn't make sense on paper, however, KILLS in reality. It's catchy, amazing, and dreamy in the sense that a band like, say, Windy and Carl is dreamy... but also "dreamy" in the way that being fucked out of your mind of psychotropic drugs is dreamy, so you really get the best of all kinds of different worlds with this song. With "Grevona", the melodies lie hidden below layers of murky guitar fuzz, everything is so hazy and distant sounding, like a slow moving ship going nowhere while the vocals float around helplessly. On "Oviamoire," a soothing riff wraps you up in its fuzzy majesty while the abject vocals croak below the surface. There is a certain spectral quality to it, all gauzy and whatnot, with krauty keyboard drones adding even more ambience to the affair. The last song on the album, "Sovarine" sways rhythmically back and forth with the vocals sounding like some sort of nefarious bottom dwelling ocean minion. Or something. While the guitars are all warm and fuzzy, the overall vibe here is of coldness and isolation. Not to belabor the point, but it's kind of like being lost at sea, though no one could have predicted it would sound this awesome. The album closes with a brief piece entitled "Flouvonne," with two voices, one male and the other female, speaking in French as the wind blows amid crackling sounds, a weird and somehow totally appropriate end to the journey.
In a music world where few mysteries truly exist, it's always nice to know that Velvet Cacoon will never be making things easy for us. Whether or not they are "true", some sort of pseudo-intellectual performance art, or maybe even a complete fucking joke, their music is never anything less than amazing. If you hated them before, it's unlikely that this album will change any of that. But for those of us who have patiently waited for the last five years wondering if P aa opal poere pr.33 would ever become a reality, you will find much to look forward to.
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "Claverie"
MPEG Stream: "Marylux"

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9DW / BORIS Golden Dance Classics (Catune) cd 16.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Boris, mostly because they've seemingly been touring non stop for the last few years, but it looks like finally some new music is happening, including a forthcoming split with low end sludge popppers Torche, and this, another split with a Japanese band we've never heard of called 9DW, who as far as we can tell is sonically about as far removed from Boris as any band could be. A sort of eighties cosmic disco, like a way less edgier Justice maybe. More on those tracks in a second, since odds are most aQ customers will be all over this for the two brand new Boris tracks.
But be warned, not sure if it's a general shift in sound, or they were just trying to mix it up for this split, but this is Boris like you've never heard them. The first Boris track, "Tokyo Wonder Land", in a blind listening test, everyone here, when asked who they though it was, invariably said Ariel Pink, or John Maus, yep, a warbly warped blurry lo fi alien FM radio pop, with primitive drum machine, mumbled vocals, shimmery eighties production, whirring synths, jangly reverbed guitar, buzzy rubbery cop show basslines, super woozy and trippy and WAY druggy, there are even some falsetto 'oooh's. It only really gets Boris-y briefly in the middle with a wild tangle of super distorted psychedelic leads. Woah, What the fuck? Not sure what's going on, or what happened, but we are digging it BIG time, in fact, we might go so far as to say, this is one of our favorite Boris jams in ages, as is the second track here, "Akirame Flower", which finds Boris in full on washed out bleary eared nineties shoegaze mode, My Bloody Valentine, Bailter Space, fuzz guitar, weary vox, tons of delay and reverb and effects, all smeared and blurred into a gorgeous hazy 16 Candles / Dinosaur Jr / M83 soft focus, dream jam. Fuck. Awesome.
So what the heck are Boris doing with a band like 9DW? Can't say, and can't really say, how often we'll find ourselves listening to their two tracks, groovy, slightly jazzy, a little house-y, definitely eighties, not one guy, an actual band, sounds a bit like M83 if he were to do a techno record, stir in a little Justice stomp, some post rocky skittery, looped synths, and some total eighties MTV new romantic guitar jangle, a little Shadowfax and some worrisome funkiness...
But fuck it, Boris is why you're here, and if you're an adventurous Boris fan, who won't be disappointed by the lack of fuzzed out buzzy psych rock, then two Boris jams will kick your ass something good. Dying to hear if they continue on in this direction, and give the rest of the warbly new wave noise pop outsiders a run for their warped druggy money.
MPEG Stream: 9DW "Stingray"
MPEG Stream: BORIS "Tokyo Wonder Land"

9DW / BORIS Golden Dance Classics (Catune) lp 16.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Boris, mostly because they've seemingly been touring non stop for the last few years, but it looks like finally some new music is happening, including a forthcoming split with low end sludge popppers Torche, and this, another split with a Japanese band we've never heard of called 9DW, who as far as we can tell is sonically about as far removed from Boris as any band could be. A sort of eighties cosmic disco, like a way less edgier Justice maybe. More on those tracks in a second, since odds are most aQ customers will be all over this for the two brand new Boris tracks.
But be warned, not sure if it's a general shift in sound, or they were just trying to mix it up for this split, but this is Boris like you've never heard them. The first Boris track, "Tokyo Wonder Land", in a blind listening test, everyone here, when asked who they though it was, invariably said Ariel Pink, or John Maus, yep, a warbly warped blurry lo fi alien FM radio pop, with primitive drum machine, mumbled vocals, shimmery eighties production, whirring synths, jangly reverbed guitar, buzzy rubbery cop show basslines, super woozy and trippy and WAY druggy, there are even some falsetto 'oooh's. It only really gets Boris-y briefly in the middle with a wild tangle of super distorted psychedelic leads. Woah, What the fuck? Not sure what's going on, or what happened, but we are digging it BIG time, in fact, we might go so far as to say, this is one of our favorite Boris jams in ages, as is the second track here, "Akirame Flower", which finds Boris in full on washed out bleary eared nineties shoegaze mode, My Bloody Valentine, Bailter Space, fuzz guitar, weary vox, tons of delay and reverb and effects, all smeared and blurred into a gorgeous hazy 16 Candles / Dinosaur Jr / M83 soft focus, dream jam. Fuck. Awesome.
So what the heck are Boris doing with a band like 9DW? Can't say, and can't really say, how often we'll find ourselves listening to their two tracks, groovy, slightly jazzy, a little house-y, definitely eighties, not one guy, an actual band, sounds a bit like M83 if he were to do a techno record, stir in a little Justice stomp, some post rocky skittery, looped synths, and some total eighties MTV new romantic guitar jangle, a little Shadowfax and some worrisome funkiness...
But fuck it, Boris is why you're here, and if you're an adventurous Boris fan, who won't be disappointed by the lack of fuzzed out buzzy psych rock, then two Boris jams will kick your ass something good. Dying to hear if they continue on in this direction, and give the rest of the warbly new wave noise pop outsiders a run for their warped druggy money.
MPEG Stream: 9DW "Stingray"
MPEG Stream: BORIS "Tokyo Wonder Land"

ACEPHALIX s/t (Prank) 7" 4.50
Debut release from this Bay Area horde, fucking killer, grinding, pummeling old school downtuned metallic crust, equal parts Celtic Frost, Anti Cimex, Cro-Mags and any other of the classic crushers.
Thick, super distorted ultra heavy guitars, pounding drums, and some of the sickest, gnarled bellowed vocals we've ever heard. The riffs destroy, there are even GUITAR SOLOS, which shred, the songs are mostly midtempo, weirdly groove here and there, even some awesome Iron Maiden style harmonized guitars, and always crazy catchy and heavy as fuck. We find ourselves listening to this over and over and over. Can't wait for the full length.
Super swank packaging, silver metallic foil printed on thick black and white sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and includes a printed insert.

ACID WITCH Witchtanic Hellucinations (Razorback) cd 12.98
Despite all the Acid- suffix and -Witch prefix bands out there (and vice versa for that matter), it appears that this is the very first band ever to use the name Acid Witch! And it really would have sucked if the name had already been taken, 'cause these guys are the PERFECT Acid Witch. Nobody could possibly do better justice to a moniker like that than this, um, coven.
Are they psychedelic? Yes. Are they metal? Yes. Are they creepy? Yes. Are they deathly? Yes. Are they doomy? Yes, yes, yes! Psychedelic drug doom death horror metal that cackles, wears a pointy hat, and flies on a broomstick. And, they have a sense of humor about it (hence song titles like "Witches Tits"), the same sense of humor -and- horror that gets us all into those cult '70s and '80s Italian fright flicks. Speaking of which, this album is amply laced with sinister, proggy Goblin-esque keyboards, draped over fuzzy chugging heaviness worthy of early Cathedral. Heavy, heavy doom riffs indeed abound, along with guttural grunting deeper-than-thou vokills, both of which manage to be fairly catchy as well, this album casting a spell of instant headbanging most definitely. Acid Witch's songs are furthermore infested with droning psych guitar soloing, weird electronics, witchy laughter, and spooky-ooky sound FX (is that a bubbling, boiling cauldron in there?) which makes this sound something like a "haunted Hawkwind" version of death/doom metal! Or let's say, take Acid Mothers Temple and Witchfinder General and mix them together (including the band names), then get 'em to play old school death a la Hellhammer. It's a bewitching, if totally gonzo, sound.
Further coolness: did we mention the main guy in the band is from Finland? And did you see the freaky EC Horror comics meets Cracked Magazine cover art? Which was done by Acid Witch member Shagrat (doubtless an Amon Duul II fan), who also provides a b&w portrait of the band done in the style of one of Witchfinder General's singles covers. Also, Witchtanic Hellucinations? Heck that's our review right there. These guys are brilliant (at least as much so as Electric Wizard and their "Satanic Rites Of Drugula" on Witchcult Today - hey maybe those two bands should go on tour and make black magic together!). Other bands that if you might like, probably means you should listen to this, include: Solar Anus, Coffins, Sigh (circa Imaginary Sonicscape), Moss, and Pan-Thy-Monium.
As soon as we heard 'em, we knew this was a definite AQ highlight. It took us a while to get more, our suppliers never had enough, but finally we contacted the label directly and got some, so here they are! Get 'em before they turn us all into (lysergic) toads.
MPEG Stream: "Into The Cave"
MPEG Stream: "Swamp Spells"
MPEG Stream: "Witchblood Cult"

APPLES IN STEREO, THE #1 Hits Explosion (Elephant 6 / Simian / Yep Roc) cd 13.98
For the life of us, we can't figure out why The Apples In Stereo never reached the same great heights popularity wise as groups like The Shins or Arcade Fire, cuz when it comes to immaculately crafted indie pop gems it just doesn't get much more perfect then Apples In Stereo.
#1 Hits Explosion, as you might have been able to tell from the title, is a collection of Apples 'greatest hits', songs that in a more perfect world really would have been #1 hits on the radio, at least if we were in charge. These songs are so bright and full of sunshine and color, taking a love of The Beatles and amping it all up with so much energy and enthusiasm that it's nearly impossible not to become a a little bit smitten by their ultra smart and super fun power pop. Every song has more hooks and more melody than most bands can manage on an entire album.
If you've somehow managed to miss these guys so far, this is such a perfect way to get introduced to this awesome Colorado outfit who remain one of the lasting lights of the amazing Elephant Six collective, that also included the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control.
When you want the feeling of eternal spring, or that perfect summer that lasts forever, Apples In Stereo is pretty much the perfect soundtrack. Blast it loud, with the top down, and soak in the sounds of sunshine!
MPEG Stream: "Go"
MPEG Stream: "Seems So"
MPEG Stream: "Energy"

ARCTIC MONKEYS Humbug (Domino) cd 14.98
Not entirely sure why we never reviewed the Arctic Monkeys' Favorite Worst Nightmare, considering how much we flipped for their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, that second one was good too, but here we are at record number three, Humbug, and their sound has definitely taken a strange turn. It still sounds like THEM, but it's much darker, more brooding and crunchy, less kinetic and snotty and wild. Could be lots of things, musical maturity, regular maturity (after all they were all in their teens when they recorded that first record), lots of people are blaming Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme, who handled most of the production, but maybe 'blaming' is the wrong word, cuz as far as we're concerned, there's no blame to be assigned, if anything Humbug is just a grower. On first listen, nothing stood out single wise, like the first record. But then "Crying Lightning" caught our ear big time, with its big drums and fuzzy bass, and spidery guitar lines, it only took a few listens and BANG, heavy rotation. And so it went with the rest of the record, track by track, blossoming into a new favorite, the sound definitely beefier, heavier, more crunchy, that we can give Homme some credit for, but as for everything else, blame the band, at least for making another killer record of super catchy crunchy new wavey post punk pop. Dig it!
MPEG Stream: "My Propeller"
MPEG Stream: "Crying Lightning"
MPEG Stream: "Dangerous Animals"

ARCTIC MONKEYS Humbug (Domino) lp 23.00
Not entirely sure why we never reviewed the Arctic Monkeys' Favorite Worst Nightmare, considering how much we flipped for their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, that second one was good too, but here we are at record number three, Humbug, and their sound has definitely taken a strange turn. It still sounds like THEM, but it's much darker, more brooding and crunchy, less kinetic and snotty and wild. Could be lots of things, musical maturity, regular maturity (after all they were all in their teens when they recorded that first record), lots of people are blaming Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme, who handled most of the production, but maybe 'blaming' is the wrong word, cuz as far as we're concerned, there's no blame to be assigned, if anything Humbug is just a grower. On first listen, nothing stood out single wise, like the first record. But then "Crying Lightning" caught our ear big time, with its big drums and fuzzy bass, and spidery guitar lines, it only took a few listens and BANG, heavy rotation. And so it went with the rest of the record, track by track, blossoming into a new favorite, the sound definitely beefier, heavier, more crunchy, that we can give Homme some credit for, but as for everything else, blame the band, at least for making another killer record of super catchy crunchy new wavey post punk pop. Dig it!
MPEG Stream: "My Propeller"
MPEG Stream: "Crying Lightning"
MPEG Stream: "Dangerous Animals"

ARECIBO Trans Plutonian Transmissions (Soleilmoon) cd 14.98
Sounding something like a hybrid of Lustmord and Dopplereffekt, Trans Plutonian Transmissions is a long lost album from Brian Lustmord's one-album side project Arecibo, released back in 1994 through the Dark Vinyl imprint Atmosphere. This offshoot of its more seminal dark ambient / post-industrial main label was something of a conceit to the blossoming ambient techno scene of the early '90s, spiralling out of labels like Emit, Fax, and Reflective. Lustmord is best known for his quintessential dark ambient work of subterranean drones and deep space isolationism on the timeless and existentially bleak albums Heresy and The Place Where The Black Stars Hang. In fact, Trans Plutonian Transmissions was recorded about the same time as Black Stars, and draws from the same conceptual pool by sourcing the universe itself albeit to different ends. The dark matter and occluded hues of that album resound in Trans Plutonian Transmissions but with the major addition of stalking downtempo rhythms and acidic 303 basslines. Plenty of NASA communications with astronauts and reclaimed data from NASA research into pulsars, quasars, and black holes embue this album with paranoid aesthetic paralleling the X-Files; and those pointilistic squiggles and squelches dropped into minor key chords and judiciously bathed in blackening reverberation further those metaphors. The one Arecibo record had a few contemporaries, including the Patashnik album from Biosphere, the Pete Namlook / Richie Hawtin collaborations as From Within, as well as the early Pan Sonic and Mono Junk recordings of icey post-techno out of Finland, all from the mid '90s. The album is a product of its time, but is certainly no worse for the wear because of it. Lustmord's production touch is impeccable as always, lending that steely gaping quality to every sound, as if it were slowly getting injested by a galaxy crushing black hole. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "3C147 (Beyond The Heart Of Space)"
MPEG Stream: "NGC 5427 (Anomalous Intermittent Radio Source)"
MPEG Stream: "3C295 (Pulse Burst Decryption)"

BANJO OR FREAKOUT Upside Down (Half Machine Records) lp 10.98
The funny thing about Banjo Or Freakout, is you'll find neither on their records. Okay, well maybe a -little- freakout. But mostly, BoFO traffic in some seriously buzzy, warm and warbly fuzz drenched indie folk noise pop, acoustic guitars, vocal harmonies, some almost programmed sounding drums, total power pop hooks, think Neutral Milk Hotel, the Comas, Apples In Stereo, but filtered through the new breed of pop deconstructionists like Ducktails, Thee Oh Sees and the like.
The A side is all jangle and buzz and croon and will totally hit the spot and fill that Neutral Milk Hotel shaped hole in your heart, the B side though is totally blown out, absolute woozy shoegazy bliss, everything looped and hypnotic and buried under a haze of guitars and buzzy effects. And then there's the trippy rhythmic closer, equal parts Avarus style tribal clatter and drum circle kraut jam and Animal Collective outsider pop bliss. This record rules. Need to hear more bad!!

BARN OWL Transfiguration (Electric Totem) cd-r 8.98
San Francisco's dronelords Barn Owl (featuring our very own Jon!) return with Transfiguration, an awe inspiring slab of expansive psychedelia that is both heavy and beautiful. Recorded live on tour in Vancouver in summer 2008, Transfiguration clocks in at a massive 21 minutes, giving the duo plenty of time to put together a sprawling slow burning expanse that manages to retain a high degree of focus while also flowing freely.
Beginning with high pitched, bell like drones and a slowly creeping guitar note, it is hard to tell whether the vibes are good or evil, and before long the piece begins to move forward cinematically. It's like things are ascending way up to the heavens, and as the bells create a hypnotic flow, massive guitar drones take over everything. The sound is truly mountainous, with bits of molten feedback punctuating the atmosphere, and just when you think everything is going to be taken over by total noise, you realize that even though the music appears to be alive and of its own will, things are kept very much in control by the band. Amazingly, there seems to be a sense of implied rhythm, not in the sense of a traditional pop song, but the rhythm of the drone, taking things into a more realized form of existence. The white hot squalls of heavily distorted bliss swirl about but never decay, instead its like they are alive and breathing... and then, the piece is separated into its second half, by a lone voice. The low chant creates its own sort of spacious cavern, and the surrounding silence creates its own tension as more chants enter the atmosphere while higher voices float ethereally at the top. Giant cyclones of droned voices rise and recede, creating their own unique style of movement. The way the voices merge creates a cool disorienting effect where you lose all sense of direction in a state of suspended consciousness. Awesome.
Limited to a scant 200 copies, Transfiguration comes beautifully packaged in a thick cardstock sleeve with a professionally printed cd-r and serves as a nice teaser to the duo's upcoming full length on Root Strata!
MPEG Stream: "Transfiguration"

BLACK BONED ANGEL Verdun (Riot Season) lp 16.98
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Birchville Cat Motel may be dead, only to be replaced by the quite similar sounding, but much more massive and electronic flecked Our Love Will Destroy The World. But thankfully, Black Boned Angel, the other long running musical project of Campbell Kneale, lives on, with not one, but TWO new releases this list. The other, a second collaboration with like-minded musical heavies Nadja, and this, the latest full length after last year's devastating The Endless Coming Into Life.
Verdun, named for the legendary battle presumably, is almost like an Endless Coming part two, dialing back the sheer heaviness and exploring space and dynamics, but in the process, somehow sounding so much heavier. Three long songs, all tracked as a single 52 minute epic, takes ages to get going, which is just fine, in doom as in life, it's not about the destination it's about the journey, and BBA's journey is a death march through burning fields and soot filled skies, but that's a few minutes away. A slow slow slow build, all barely there ambience, before some massive drums kick in, and then it's JUST drums, pounding away, in a spaced out vacuum, spare but punishing, and then THE RIFF, a massive one, the sort of riff, that once written, becomes a part of the writer, and soon after the listener. Sleep has a few, Sabbath has lots, now BBA has one, a slow, slithery crawl, a handful of notes spread way out into a dark descending minor key melody, the drums, just there to drive it home, as this is the sort of riff that needs nothing else, the sort of riff any metalhead could listen to looped over and over and over forever. About 12 minutes in, the tone changes, some high end shimmer sneaks in, sheets of feedback, the riff is pulled apart, various notes left to ring out, the drums a little more active, before everything drops out completely, leaving just a distant keening riff, left to moan and groan, to ring out, mournful and so so doomy, at about the half hour mark, the main riff returns, but this time it's been transformed into something strangely melodic, almost like power metal played at 16rpm, epic, but still so slooooooow, building ever building, eventually crumbling into a swirling bit of noise and crumbled buzz, and a gorgeous classical chorus, a choir of voices just below the churning distorted surface, totally epic and weirdly haunting, the sounds of warfare, guns and planes and explosions, surfacing from below the sprawling low end rumble, eventually taking over completely, the last few minutes a harrowing collage of death and destruction, of bombs and the cries of the dying.
Definitely a different beast than many of the older BBA records, which blended the kitchen sink drones of Birchville Cat Motel with a sort of abstract black doom element, Verdun is more of a proper metal record, although to be sure 'proper metal record' is really relative, since as metal as this is, it's also just as much an experimental doomdronedirge record, regardless, it is maybe the most fully realized Black Boned Angel record yet, not sure if it's THAT RIFF, or because Kneale just keeps getting better and better, or because it's a concept record, so it's essentially a suite of interconnected songs. It's actually probably a little of all three, although as you might have guessed, we're definitely leaning toward THAT RIFF.
MPEG Stream: "Prayer Sodden Holes"

BLACK BOX, THE (Flingco) battery powered soundbox 16.98
We're not really pissed. Not really. After all, we're highlighting this aren't we? They beat us to it fair and square. And of course the fine folks at Flingco could have had no idea that WE at Aquarius, after having sold sooooo many of FM3's now famous Buddha Machine, had already thought up the idea of doing our own "Buddha Machine" style soundbox, in black, and calling it (wait for it) The Black Box. They actually did it though, we just thought about it, never actually tried to contact a factory in China to have 'em manufactured or anything. So kudos to Flingco for being the first folks out there to jump on FM3's Buddha Machine bandwagon with their own (completely different and equally cool) knock off.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Buddha Machine (hard to imagine at this point, since it seems like every AQ customer has bought at least 2, but possible), it's a little plastic battery operated gadget that plays short musical loops through a tiny speaker, though it could also be connected to headphones or a stereo. The "original" Buddha Machine was all ambient drone, meditative in nature. This Black Box is along those lines, featuring a finite (9) number of loops that you can randomly switch between by flicking a switch on the side of the thing. And it is sort of ambient too... just more DARK ambient we guess. The short, textural tracks on here come from several artists on the outskirts of the black metal scene, blackened but not at all metal, we'd say, much more mysterious... they're by folks we're already fans of from the Flingco stable. There's two loops by Wrnlrd, three by Haptic, and two by Cristal. Along with two "spoken word sound pieces" by one Annie Feldmeier Adams. We're not sure which are which (aside from Adams' two loops), but all are creepy and mesmeric, at least one particularly chaotic and mayhemic. A couple are whispery, windy, rattling drones. Another features higher pitched, wavering pulsations. One is like the tolling of an industrial-noise bell. One consists of white noise and distant clanking. And while at first we were a bit apprehensive when told that 2 of the loops were "spoken word", not to fear, those two actually really work well in this context, and are of sonic interest besides their textual content. The nasal, treated voice sounds like a mental patient, intoning lifelessly "I don't feel anything" and "Today I will not kill myself". The bummed out, mantric repetition of the later phrase in particular is quite effective! All nine tracks are rather tinny and distorted, and, well, that's probably the idea.
Comparisons to FM3's Buddha Machine are of course inevitable. Thus: while the FM3 boxes are available in a variety of pleasing colors, this item comes only in BLACK, obviously, and is shaped rather like a cute little tombstone, rounded in a semi-circle at the top. Unlike the Buddha Machine, this is is constructed so that the speaker is on the same side as the compartment for the batteries (it takes 2 AA batteries, not included, and there's also a jack for a separate power supply), as well as the screws that hold it together. Nothing wrong with that, just a design difference. As with FM3's first Buddha Machine, you can control the volume, and skip from loop to loop, and that's it (the Buddha Machine II added pitch control, a luxury not found here). Sound-wise, this is of course a whole 'nother thing, we've already discussed the nature of the loops above. One other difference: it's cheaper!
What else to say? It's a neat little soundbox thingie. It's got weird downer sounds on it. We like it! Get one!! Oh, and it's LIMITED to just 2000 units!!
Meanwhile, OUR hypothetical Black Box was going to have actual black metal loops on it (blastbeats and screams and buzzing guitar riffs) and an inverted pentagram on the front of it too... that's quite a bit different from this, really, so who knows, it could still happen someday. But we won't be calling it the Black Box now... maybe the Satan Machine? (Nobody steal that idea or we WILL get pissed. Shoot, probably shouldn't even have mentioned it. Also don't use White Box 'cause that's apparently Flingco's planned follow up to this.). Anyway, we're happy to see the "battery powered soundbox" format take off in another direction, and we're pretty sure everyone with a Buddha Machine I or II or both will want to add this to their collection... and for those of a darker, more depressive disposition, this is definitely the soundbox for you. Move over FM3!
(Another good soundbox idea we just thought of that we'd like someone to steal: The Conet Box!! Or Numbers Station Machine.)

BLOOD FOUNTAINS Floods (Utech) cd 14.98
One of two new records this list from the always kick ass Utech label, the other is from Vagusnerve, a tripped out bit of guitar and laptop sonic alchemy, and this dark gem right here, the first release from the mysterious Blood Fountains, which counts as a member artist Stephen Kasner, responsible for much of the amazing Utech artwork (and has an amazing book of his art, we have one or two in stock if you want one, and you should!), and counts as a guest, dooooom chanteuse Yoshiko Ohara, from avant doom merchants Bloody Panda.
And the sound? Well if you're familiar with Kasner's artwork, it's hard to imagine that this isn't exactly what his paintings would sound like. Creeping fluttery ambience, flecked with ethereal vocals, spidery tendrils of Eastern buzz, draped over soft shards of muted crumbling thrum, deep swells of Godspeed like rumble, all beneath soaring string like shimmers, while a dense Lustmordian buzz sprawls into a sea of whirring blackness, and deep resonant hum. A slow motion, ultra delicate soft focus dreamdoom, rendered in flickers of wistful flute, processed guitar feedback, and glistening slabs of synth, wrapped in ephemeral flurries of reflective tones and overlapping layered vocal harmonies. A grim blackened new age drift, dark and mysterious and quite lovely.
Like all Utech releases, gorgeous packaging, a lush full color fold out sleeve, featuring original artwork by Kasner himself (of course)...
MPEG Stream: "Cold Flood / In"
MPEG Stream: "Head Found In Aptos"
MPEG Stream: "Spiritless"

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER Dead Death Death Dead (Gnarled Forest / Troubleman Unlimited) lp 14.98
We're running out of ways to describe these guys. Out thesaurus has been bled dry. Bleak, hateful, grim, blackened, harsh, hellish... By now you should have at least an idea of where this diabolical duo are coming from. Epic slow motion expanses of blacknoize, and rumbling blown out low end, howled blackened dronemusic, ritualistic abstract guitar torture, these four tracks here, three are live, and previously released (but on tapes and cd-r's so limited, that unless you were THERE, you probably never saw one), one is previously UNreleased, well worth it for the black hearted and evil ear-ed.
The live tracks are brutal, might be the heaviest we've heard these guys, processed black soundscapes woven from grinding industrial crunch and howled hellish vox, heaving slabs of caustic low end dissipate in clouds of whirring downtuned thrum, way more effects than usual, tripped out and almost psychedelic sounding, streaked with super distorted white noise hiss. The B side begins with some gurgling black ambience, all rumble and creep, peppered with corrosive shards of amp buzz, eventually growing more and more heavy culminating in a strange assemblage of cool moaning melting riffage. That riffage then gets locked into a strangely hypnotic loop before devolving into yet more freaked out abstract heaviness.
Intense, punishing, pummeling, black as fuck and heavy as all get out, which to those of you into that sort of thing, means this is definitely recommended.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Comes in an incredible sleeve, spot varnished animal head on a rich black background, with an 11" x 11" printed insert.

BORNEO Charismatic Megafauna (self released) cd-r 5.98
Not sure what happened recently, but for a while there, there was a serious dearth of heavy bands in the Bay Area. And we mean HEAVY. Not just regular old metal bands, but bands doing something new with that heaviness. Prizehog, with their post Harvey Milk sludge, guitar synth and drums whipped up into a heaving black wave of crush. Wildildlife, who did call the Bay Area home for a while, their fractured psych pop metal weirdness, equal parts Butthole Surfers, Gaye Bykers On Acid, Black Sabbath and Adam Ant. Then there's Pigs, reviewed elsewhere on this list, who do their own sort of Melvins meets Motorhead thing. And now Borneo. Who are not nearly as heavy as any of those groups, but who infuse their considerable heft with some serious poppiness. The guitars are thick and crunchy and distorted and just slightly blown out, the drums pounding and propulsive, but where other bands might go for something more metallic, or totally chaotic, these guys tap into their indie rock roots, and the result is a super hooky hybrid, Jesu betwixt godheadSilo, with vocals, that less distorted and buried in the murk, could have been plucked right from a Pavement or Polvo song. It's a killer combo too, the music thick, and muscly and intense, with plenty of chug and grind, but all wrapped around some total classic indie rock. It's almost like Harvey Milk or Jesu covering Lync or Seam or even Codeine. The heart of these jams is melancholy and melodic, wistful and emotional, but that sound is given a serious facelift, and the result is, well, THIS. A kind of shoegaze-y metallic indie post rock that we are digging big time. Not sure what to call it, but usually, the harder it is to describe something, the cooler it is. And Charismatic Megafauna is indeed super cool...
MPEG Stream: "Rob Anderson"
MPEG Stream: "Shadows"

BREEDERS, THE Last Splash (Plain) lp 17.98
The first two and best Breeder's records finally get their well-deserved vinyl reissue treatment!!
A portentous title if there ever was one, 1993's Last Splash was the bands biggest release, but one that crippled their lasting impact. With Kim Deal in full control and the Pixies broken up, she was able to broker this blockbuster release on the strength of a few singles, especially the mega-crossover hit, "Cannonball". That song played everywhere!!! Its hooky riff was even used as a sample in another worldwide smash hit, "Firestarter" by The Prodigy, securing Deal plenty of royalties. With Deal's twin sister, Kelly replacing Tanya Donnelly, the band gained creative intensity with stronger songwriting. But they also gained some heavy baggage, as their sudden superstar status took the band down some dark roads in order to deal with the relentless pressures of fame and touring. It took nearly ten years for the band to release their next record, but they were forever changed. One of the best alternative rock records of the nineties, at least time has been kind to Last Splash, still holding up after all these years. But not without leaving a near-fatal mark that the band is just now finally recovering from.

BREEDERS, THE Pod (Plain) lp 17.98
The first two and best Breeder's records finally get their well-deserved vinyl reissue treatment!
Pod was first released in 1990 as a side-project for Kim Deal of the Pixies and Tanya Donnelly from Throwing Muses to finally express some of the creative freedom they were lacking in their main bands. Joined by Josephine Wiggs of Perfect Disaster and produced by Steve Albini, The Breeders turned out an album with far more potential and fun than either of the two records the Pixies (Bossanova) and the Muses (Hunkpapa) put out at the time. Though the line-up was short-lived (Donnelly left shortly after to form her own band, Belly), Pod has become over the years a widely beloved record with more creative urgency and risk-taking than its more commercially successful follow-up. It pretty much jump-started what music would become in the nineties and still hasn't lost any of its timeless power. So awesome!

CARETAKER, THE Persistent Repetition Of Phrases (History Always Favours The Winners) lp 19.98
One of Wire magazine's records of 2008, the Caretaker's Persistent Repetition Of Phrases was in fact, when we finally got to hear it, incredible. Gorgeous, hazy, mysterious, destined to be one of OUR favorites as well. Unfortunately, when we tried to order it, intending to feature it prominently on the list, we discovered that it was in fact so limited that it was already out of print, not to be repressed. Argghhh.
Thankfully, the vinyl version showed up recently, so we grabbed as many as we could, so we could shower it with the praise it most definitely deserves. CD only folks are shit out of luck, but for now (and we mean NOW, these are crazy limited too) we have the vinyl, so grab one before they disappear.
The Caretaker has two modes, slow shimmery gauzy ambience, and slowed down warped and blurred big band and jazz. Often combing the two into some sort of otherworldly slow motion spectral dream jazz. We've been joking that the Caretaker is sort of like the DJ Screw of the avant underground, seeing as he takes scratchy old jazz records and reworks them Philip Jeck style into, woozy buried drifts of jazz shadows and haunting otherworldly vocals. Most of the jazzier tracks, sound like the soundtrack to some super creepy dream sequence, a la the Shining, like when Nicholson finds himself in that bar filled with ghosts, you can almost imagine, a dusty old saloon, broken mirrors, cigarette burned tables, sawdust floors, a lone figure sitting alone, hunched over in a dark corner, while all around him, nearly transparent figures move about as if still alive, a ballet of phantom familiarity, spirits unaware that they've moved on, going on with the machinations of daily life, their essence flickery and indistinct, like an old filmstrip. And a filmstrip soundtrack is exactly what the music of the Caretaker evokes, warm, effusive, burnished, old timey, antiquated, the sounds are dark and woozy and and bleed together, blurring into fuzzy stretches of lost memory, of suspended time. The music here is the sound of faded old photographs, of old super 8 movies projected on a wall in a dark and dusty old room, of abandoned skating rinks, of boarded up windows, of black clouds filling a slate grey sky, of life slowing to a crawl, before ven more slowly fading away. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.

DIALING IN The Islamic Bomb (Music Fellowship) lp 19.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Reita Piecuch, aka Dialing In. Everything we've heard, we have loved, as in LOVED, as in became totally obsessed with, so when we heard about this lp months ago, we couldn't wait, and had been chomping at the bit, but now it's finally here, and is as good, if not better than anything we've heard from her before.
Piecuch's travels through the Middle East resulted in some absolutely incredible field recordings, local musicians, prayers, street sounds, ambient sounds, voices, traffic, which she then transforms into even more incredible soundscapes. Warped and collaged and murky and smeared and blurry, a whole new sonic experience, which somehow never obfuscates the original sounds completely. Street sounds in Piecuch's hands becomes skittery turntablist drift, all crackly and fuzzy and looped sounding, a call to prayer is slathered in distortion and becomes a woozy blown out buzz, while in the background, a sea of murky grooves and effected street sounds sway and swirl and bleed into each other creating a strangely organic sonic backdrop.
The sound is raw and rough and in-the-red, it's a symphony of sound assembled from incredible and mysterious source material, voices, music, and all the various sonic artifacts and detritus that comes with recording on a handheld device. These manipulated and recontextualized sounds become almost pop songs, twisted into new melodies, given new life as some abstract pop flecked collage, somehow lush, for all it's low fidelity, incredibly emotional, due in part to the original sounds, but also, Piecuch's delicate and deft handling of those sounds.
The second track is the perfect example, a woman singing, praying, passionately, and emotionally, her singing draped over what sounds like super distorted guitars, the whole thing transformed into a strange glacial dirge, equal part fuzzy fractured slow motion pop and Middle Eastern folk song, white white hot, but moody and minor key and so beautiful you never want it to end.
Imagine Philip Jeck, armed with nothing but his turntables, his effects, and dubplates of all the Sublime Frequencies releases, the results broadcast through a busted old high school PA, and recorded onto a microcassette recorder, before being dubbed onto an old tape from the floor of your car, and then finally, in all it's UN-pristine glory, pressed on to thick green wax. Fucking awesome!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

ENDLESS TIME Coasting (Monorail Trespassing) cassette 6.98
No idea who Endless Time is or where they hail from, but his/her/their Coasting cassette on Monorail Trespassing is a great introduction, and stands well with some of the disturbed drone passages that have come from the recent output of Emaciator and Infinite Body. The first side ripples with an ominous drone from a single synth line transmitting beneath a series of haunted piano notes, which split the difference between the Caretaker and Cranioclast (if anybody remembers that once prolific German post-industrial outfit of peculiar darkness). Stretches of iron-clad static burst through these sci-fi atmospheres, giving way to a melodic interlude between two harmonized notes. The second side seems to be a soft dub of the first with alienating bleeps set in motion across an undulating and unsettling electrical field of an analog synth sawtooth drone, placated by pastoral flutes which emerge toward the end of the piece. Here, Endless Time has more of the '80s ambient feel of Vangelis, particularly from some of the Blade Runner soundtrack. Limited to 125 copies, of which we only have a few.

ETERNAL TAPESTRY The Invisible Landscape (Not Not Fun) lp 16.98
Another slab of spaced out kosmiche kraut riffage from these psychedelic warlords, their sound all Loop-ed guitars, propulsive in the pocket drumming, buried weary vox, all manner of lysergic effects, hazy distorted all over the place, locked into mesmerizingly repetitive grooves, sounds good huh? Anyone into Wooden Shjips, White Hills, Spacemen 3, if you haven't discovered these guys, you need to turn in your garage rock space drone trip out card RIGHT NOW.
But it's not too late, grab one one of these, dim the lights, fire up the hookah, rev up the magic carpet, and let this shit send you straight into the heart of the sun.
Unlike those other bands we mentioned, Eternal Tapestry is a bit more loose, on the verge of chaos, a drugged-out, raw as heck, punk kraut space rock, like locking Black Flag and Parson Sound in a basement full of wah and fuzz pedals and waiting for the destruction to begin. Their shit just keeps getting better and better. Invisible Landscapes picks up where their first Not Not Fun LP, Mystic Induction, left off, only this time the boys seem to have polished their sound. Don't get us wrong, E Tap still brings that raw, blown out tube amp destruction, but the trio seem more solid, more graceful about balancing their rawness with in the pocket rhythms and more clear cut song structures. The sound is a bit more unhinged and abstract, the songs slipping into some mathiness here and there, some free psych freakouts now and again, but always finding their way back to THE GROOVE.
It's Hawkwind worship of the highest order for sure, but filtered through a more modern drone-psych vibe. The A-side is absolute acid fried space jam bliss, any one into any of the above bands who lays their ears on this, will immediately have a new obsession. The flipside is much more soulful and laid back, the drumming super minimal, the guitars chiming and glistening, tons of wah wah (of course), killer hooks too, all over the place... Invisible Landscapes also touches on some new territory for the group, at times veering into a fast paced, hypnotic, machine-like plod, kind of like the Stooges covering a Suicide song, pretty damn sweet. Nick Bindeman and Dewey Mahood send hazy vocals and blissed out guitar solos into the grey sky while Jed Bindeman pounds away on his kit like a lawless locomotive with his sights on the horizon. Heavy hitting, blistering psych-punk that will keep you head banging 'til the early morn, and then there's the closer, a total classic space pop ur-jam, dipped in fuzzy crunch and shoegaze shimmer. NICE!

FERRARO, JAMES Citrac (Arbor) 2lp 24.00
More warped otherworldly sound collage murky warble from one half of the late great Skaters. And like everything else we've heard from Ferraro post-Skaters, the sounds on Citrac, a two lp collection of mostly previously released material (but most so limited you probably never heard 'em anyway), are a blurred jumble of fantastically twisted time machine lo-fi anti-pop. Ferraro along with his ex-bandmate have been credited with spearheading the so called 'hypnogogic pop' movement, but pop seems to have very little to do with this. Pop CULTURE maybe. Visually, the jacket and inner sleeve are adorned with all manner of eighties cheesiness, which thankfully isn't necessarily reflected in the music. Instead, Ferraro takes his arsenal of music making devices, busted effects and falling apart 4-track, as well as a handful of samples from cop shows and after school specials and late night made for TV movies, and goes about, snipping and pasting and looping and smearing those various sounds into some totally tripped out krautdrone, psych-synth, buzz-loop weirdness.
All of the sounds here are murky and muddy and sound like they were recorded on an old VHS tape and then duped over and over and over and over. The percussion is clattery but buried in the mix, tons of reverb and delay, much of the first disc sounds like a John Carpenter soundtrack spinning lazily on a fucked up turntable while someone holds their thumb down on the vinyl, causing the record to slip and slow down, the whole thing peppered with strange howled vocals (or what sound like vocals). The end of side two features a sonic event that seems to pop up all over these two records, an awesome lurching synth-psych loop, that could have gone on FOREVER, but ends way too soon. Also, as far as we can tell, the first record is meant to play at 45, it definitely sounds like Ferraro at 45, but it sounds really cool at 33 too, even more industrial and woozy and washed out.
The second disc though, sounds like 33 is the correct speed, 45 makes it a bit manic, but still pretty intense and psychedelic, but at 33, it's way more aggressive than the first record, more industrial too, like a doom metal Wolf Eyes or something, albeit way more fucked up and fractured, loads of low end, metallic percussion, and some sick inhuman barks wreathed in effects, at 33 it's creepy, at 45 it becomes some sped up soundtrack video game alien techno. Weirdly twisted and almost proggy. Rad stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

GARY WAR Galactic Citizens (Captured Tracks) lp 14.98
The attack of the killer outsider jams continues! One thing the recent crop of left of center damaged pop deconstructionists have in common is their rapid fire release schedule. Seems like everytime we come up for air there's a new slab of wax from Blank Dogs, Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile and now Gary War. But we ain't complaining one bit cause we've loving it. And so far, everything we've heard from Gary War has KILLED, and these six brand new tracks are no exception. While Ariel Pink has made clear his love of and inspiration from R. Stevie Moore, it seems that for Gary War his true influence is Joe Meek, as evidenced by GW's tripped out production and bubbling/collapsing electronics.
Those elements are fused with some seriously strange skewed pop and has us imagining what it might have sounded like if Meek lived long enough to have produced fucked up new wave albums. Of all the current warped pop peddlers Gary War really does feel in sound and spirit closest to John Maus, as they both use really primitive electronics to help achieve their otherworldly approach to pop gone wrong, so damn right!
FYI the copies we got (and all the ones at our distributor too) are all just a tiny little bit dinged on the corners, sorry, them's the breaks.

GENOCIDE (NIPPON) Black Sanctuary (Shadow Kingdom) 2cd 15.98
Yes, the "(Nippon)" in their name means that these genocidal gents are from Japan. Also, they're from the '80s, and very VERY metal. Makes for a cool combo! We'd never heard of 'em until this deluxe reissue recently appeared, but don't doubt it's a cult classic, as we were immediately were struck by the awesome metal craziness of this band. They've got wild dual guitars, evil riffage, and most significantly, truly over the top vocals. INSANE vocals. Dynamic, dramatic high pitched wailings and demonic lower register declamations... Mercyful Fate fans will definitely enjoy this, the guy sounds like an unhinged student of King Diamond, also somewhat like Messiah from Candlemass, but possessed by sinister Japanese spirits, laughing and screaming.
Black Sanctuary was first released in 1988. Musically, the band play classically influenced trad metal (not quite thrash or speed, but sometimes fairly doomy), manic yet melodic, and pretty much hellishly heavy for that sort of thing, though there is one wimpy, almost new agey tune, an instrumental with acoustic guitars and weepy keyboards. What happened? Dunno but as soon as that's over they start killing again, so it's just a weird interlude (on a weird album)! If you picked up the Slauter Xstroyes reissues we listed recently, and are ready for some even more outrageous underground '80s metal with ridiculously expressive vocals, look no further.
It's a nicely done reissue, the cd booklet contains a band history (1979 through the present day!) as well as the lyrics, the English portions of which are exceedingly strange and cryptic, perhaps because of the translation, perhaps not. At the band's request, Shadow Kingdom has provided brand new cover art, but the original cover is also included on the back of the cd booklet, which we always appreciate (so you have the option of which to use, flipping it over if you want). And, there's a whole bonus disc included of demo tracks, different recordings from the album versions.
MPEG Stream: "Last Confusion"
MPEG Stream: "Living Legend"
MPEG Stream: "Doomsday [demo]"

HAPPY DAYS Happiness Stops Here... (Self Mutilation Services) cd 15.98
The return of possibly our favorite depressive black metal band going these days, the awesomely (and ironically, obviously) monickered Happy Days, who seem to keep getting better and better, and weirder and weirder with every release, and with Happiness Stops Here... we can add poppier and poppier.
Their MO remains the same, but then why fix what ain't broke? Clean minor key guitars, simple drumming, those two elements wound into a loping post rock meander, before the buzzy blackness erupts and takes over, as well as the WAY up in the mix, harsh howled vokills. It's that weird dichotomy that makes Happy Days so compelling, the music is so pretty, so darkly melodic and weirdly poppy, and those vocals, a harsh sinister croak, constantly pulling and pushing against each other. On this record more than either of the others, the melodic component is front and center, remove the vocals, and we'd be talking some seriously dreamy buzz pop, or tweak it just a bit and we'd be in Lifelover territory, as it is, it's more like a revved up Hypothermia, or a slowed down, much more raw and ragged Katatonia, when the second clean guitar comes in, and offers a super emotional melodic counterpoint, it's some seriously intense stuff.
"My Brutus" features those dueling guitars, over some cool busy drumming, and some almost melodic vocals (still harsh and raspy), the guitars chiming, the vibe almost new wavey, the main riff looped endlessly, the whole track totally hypnotic. "Letting Go" might be our favorite though. The drums and guitar locked into a woozy downtuned lumbering groove, the vocals echo-y and reverbed, deep and near spoken, until again, a second guitar swoops in and offers up an arpeggiated minor key melody that wraps itself around that original riff, before the harsh vocals explode in a frenzy of tortured misery, until the drums bust out double time, and the guitars lock into a dizzying rapid fire harmony, which is easily the high point of the record, both emotionally and musically. Super intense and so goddamn catchy.
The thing with Happy Days, was that in the beginning, their ineptness and half assedness was a huge part of their appeal, total on the verge of falling apart chaos, strange and obvious samples, lots of drum struggle, all of which -would- occasionally coalesce into some seriously dark depressive buzz, but would inevitably splinter into chaos once again. The band now are so much tighter, which generally would turn us off, we like our fucked up black metal as inept and as damaged as possible, but it suits these guys, they're still plenty loose and rough and raw, but locked into these darkly depressive pop grooves, these guys are in their element, and seemingly have no equal. Depressive black metal record of the year? Most definitely? Buzzing blackened gloom pop record of the year, maybe that too...
MPEG Stream: "Letting Go"
MPEG Stream: "Sounlose Netter I Mitt Isolatrom"
MPEG Stream: "My Brutus"

HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR (V/A) Sidetracked (Renaissance) 2cd 22.00
No one has done more in recent years to renew faith in the power of dance music than Andy Butler. With his amazing debut album as Hercules & Love Affair he took his passion for decades of dance floor culture, from disco to house, to create one of the most vibrant and memorable debuts of the decade. Sidetracked finds Andy putting together a mix of music that truly moves him. So in case you are confused this is NOT A NEW HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR ALBUM, but instead an awesome document of many of the sonic ingredients that helped inform Andy's taste, and were a huge part of the amazing sounds he creates with Hercules.
HOWEVER, there is one brand new Hercules track in his mix and oh my god does it kill! "I Can't Wait" has this manic house vibe of ecstatic empowerment that's made us play that track more times then we can count! The first disc is the actual DJ mix so you can also get a feel of what it's like to be on the dance floor for one of his DJ sets. He culls his tracks from tons of classic house records (many of total obscurities) as well as some left-field disco gold. Dubwise, Studio X, Dr. Buzzards Original Savanah Band, Gino Soccio, Rainbow Team, In Flagranti, Daniel Wang and lots others. The second disc pulls out eleven of those tracks and keeps them unmixed in their original form but remastered so even those of you lucky enough to have a worn out 12" of some of these burners now can hear them all clean and shiny for a change. Of course we're anxiously anticipating the actual new Hercules & Love Affair album, but until then we're loving being Sidetracked!
MPEG Stream: HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR "I Can't Wait"
MPEG Stream: RHYTHM MASTERS "Oh Oh My"
MPEG Stream: GINO SOCCIO "Dream On"

JAPANDROIDS Post-Nothing (Polyvinyl) cd 13.98
What would happen if you somehow mixed the chaotic two piece post punk frenzy of No Age with the earnest, fuzzed out classic kinetic yowled indie rock of Superchunk? Odds are it would end up sounding a lot like Japandroids. A guitar and drums duo, who kick up a killer racket, with crunchy fuzzed out riffage, super distorted wild drumming, some seriously anthemic jams, and minimal lyrics, most repeated over and over and over, ripe for wild sweaty basement show sing alongs, the vocals are high and keening and emo(tional), the band are wild and woolly, not all that tight, just rough and raw and loose enough to make this whole record feel like they're playing right there in the room with you, like any minute you could find yourself careening into the drum kit, or you could suddenly be sprawled on the floor with the guitar player and a bunch of kids writhing right next to you covered in beer and wrapped in feedback. Sweaty and intense, energetic, super rocking and WAY fun, these guys must KILL live, and although lots of bands do, most have trouble capturing that live energy on record, but Japandroids don't seem to have any problems there at all.
MPEG Stream: "The Boys Are Leaving Town"
MPEG Stream: "Young Hearts Spark Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Wet Hair"

JAPANDROIDS Post-Nothing (Polyvinyl) lp 15.98
What would happen if you somehow mixed the chaotic two piece post punk frenzy of No Age with the earnest, fuzzed out classic kinetic yowled indie rock of Superchunk? Odds are it would end up sounding a lot like Japandroids. A guitar and drums duo, who kick up a killer racket, with crunchy fuzzed out riffage, super distorted wild drumming, some seriously anthemic jams, and minimal lyrics, most repeated over and over and over, ripe for wild sweaty basement show sing alongs, the vocals are high and keening and emo(tional), the band are wild and woolly, not all that tight, just rough and raw and loose enough to make this whole record feel like they're playing right there in the room with you, like any minute you could find yourself careening into the drum kit, or you could suddenly be sprawled on the floor with the guitar player and a bunch of kids writhing right next to you covered in beer and wrapped in feedback. Sweaty and intense, energetic, super rocking and WAY fun, these guys must KILL live, and although lots of bands do, most have trouble capturing that live energy on record, but Japandroids don't seem to have any problems there at all.
MPEG Stream: "The Boys Are Leaving Town"
MPEG Stream: "Young Hearts Spark Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Wet Hair"

KOWALSKY, GREGG Tape Chants : Live In Chicago (self released) cd-r 9.98
Super limited release from this long time aQ fave, continuing on in his recent Tape Chants direction, where, tired of working digitally, decided to work with tapes and old tape players, the results of which were displayed on the Tape Chants disc on Kranky reviewed back in May. These particular Tape Chants were recorded live, and were pressed up as a cd-r (in super swank screenprinted sleeves BTW) for his current US tour.
Like the cd proper, Kowalsky works magic with his tapes, on the first lengthy track, creating a symphony of bells and chimes and gongs, letting the overtones drift and overlap and bleed into one another until they begin to crumble and buzz, and on the second track, where similar sounding bells are set amidst a field of deep grinding rumbles and softly buzzing low end, the bell like tones bobbing as if on some soft black sea. Softly percussive, almost nautical sounding, whirring and hypnotic, meditative and ethereal.
Gorgeous stuff. Obviously grab one of these while you can, before we run out, and if you get the chance, don't hesitate to see him live conjure these sonic mysteries in the flesh!
MPEG Stream: "Chants I-IV For Tuned Percussion"
MPEG Stream: "Tape Meditation on Tuned Percussion"

LAUDANUM Coronation (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
All you really need to know about these Oakland sludge/doom merchants is what is being played, and what bands the various members hail from. So, howabout Graves At Sea, Brainoil and Pig Heart Transplant for a heavy low ended pedigree? And what exactly is employed to create this gloriously grim racket? "Overdriven string corrosion, ambient texture and documentation", "battering ram and subsonic transmissions", "low end frequency discharge, vocal disruption and auditory experimentation" and of course "battery acid, bellows and blasphemy". So yeah, you know where these crushers are coming from. Crushing, punishing doom infused sludge, laced with thick black drones and buzzing abject industrial ambience, all blurred into a massive heaving blackened brutal sonic beast.
Beginning with some sort of alien soundscape, until huge sheets of white noise take over, you're not sure if you hear the sounds of a guitar or maybe just overwhelming electronic wind-like sounds, all strange and buzzing and creepy.
Finally, weird little bits of abstract keyboard buzz and drift before the band kicks in. And WHAM, super heavy and sludgey, like black tar heroin, but also Eyehategod groovy; Khanate vokills that almost exude a black metal vibe. Lots of negative space to make things tense and uncomfortable. A second singer bellows in his best Neurosis voice, the perfect foil for the other more high pitched yowl, all tangled up with a cool. but weirdly sour guitar lick, giving the track a much more twisted vibe.
The record slips from crushing doom, to dense blackened rumble and back again, inserting angelic choral vocals, strange blurred electronics, super intense subsonic feedback, the bass thick and gritty and dirty, the sound here, when the band is rocking, is not at all that far removed from Burning Witch or Zoroaster, but the band pepper their sludgy crush with gorgeous black drone interludes, which makes this more of an EP, only one of epic doom-ic proportions, which renders it an EP that just so happens to stretch out to 50 minutes. Bad ass.
MPEG Stream: "Invoke"
MPEG Stream: "Wooden Horse"
MPEG Stream: "Apotheosis"

LONESUMMER What We Were (Starlight Temple Society) cd-r 7.98
Any band that stirs up tons of shit on the net, inspiring vitriolic tirades, definitely gets us interested, whether they can back it up sonically is another thing entirely.
Velvet Cacoon might be the best example, beginning life as a supposed Eco-Fascist black metal band, who created their dense drone-y buzz with a 'diesel harp', only later revealing that they were taking the piss. But it hardly mattered, cuz the music they made was totally transcendent, their sick sense of humor and antagonism toward the rest of the black metal scene only added to their appeal. So it should come as no surprise that Lonesummer, who share a label with Velvet Cacoon, are inspiring similarly heated reactions. In their case, it's not because of any bullshit mythmaking, it's because their sound is seriously fucked up, like nothing you've ever heard. Taking inspiration from the new wave of buzzy poppy shoegazey black metal, but twisting it all up into a noise drenched, chopped and looped. barrage of beats and riffs and damaged effects and bizarre vocals, and delicate melodies and strange samples, a dizzying jumble, that for some might be total torture, but for us, and we would guess most adventurous listeners out there, What We Were might just become a fast favorite.
Obviously if you dig bands like Alcest and Lifelover and Amesoeurs, you should for sure check this out, and while Lonesummer do share some of the same sonic elements, this is SO MUCH WEIRDER.
Best to probably just go song by song, it's too varied and all over the map to really boil it down to a single descriptor.
"The Ones Who Grab My Hand, The Lost Souls" is a crushing barrage of noise, there seems to be some metal underneath the noise, but it's so obfuscated it's more like a pulse, or another layer of static, like a more rhythmic Merzbow, but laced with some hysterical shrieking vokills, before the song fragments and begins to crumble, and gets all mathy and chaotic and industrial, while underneath, some super distorted vocal jazz surfaces, scatting female vox, skittery drums, piano and bass, but all tangled up with Lonesummer's frantic crumbling buzz, so fucked up and so weird, but super cool.
The second track is more traditionally buzzy and black, but it's all relative, 3 minutes of the same muted muddy riff, programmed drum skitter, occasional demonic growl, but all smeared with hazy soft focus melodies, the whole thing blurred into a woozy mesmer, a bit like a Pop Ambient Wold. Then there's "Long Winter Way" that fills the first half of the track with delicate chiming minor key guitar, softly swaddled in reverb and delay, only to get all bleary eyed and gauzy and soft poppy and shoegazey toward the end, sounding more like Ariel Pink or John Maus than any metal we've ever heard. Backwards drums sizzle beneath loopy flurries of notes, all swirling in a cloud of soft hushed shimmer. The rest of the record is equally disparate, from lurching crushing low, blackened and super distorted, to blasting brittle black metal, all repetitive and wrapped in still more layers of fuzz and buzz and whir, to the blown out in-the-red distorto noise bliss of the title track, to the psychedelic smoldering crumble of "We All Looked So Perfect", like a music box plugged into a million distortion pedals, to the closer, a loping, super melodic slow core depressive dirge, with lovely clean guitars, howled vokills, and a shimmery vacuum cleaner buzz wrapped around everything, simultaneously ultra melodic, warmly washed out and blissfully otherworldly.
Guaranteed to piss off purists, but so is about 90 percent of the stuff we dig, but for anyone into fucked up and freaky, baffling and bizarre blackness, this might be your new favorite band.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!! Gorgeously packaged in a full color oversized 7" style sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "The Ones Who Grab My Hand, The Lost Souls"
MPEG Stream: "Lone Tree Hill"
MPEG Stream: "Long Winter Way"

LUBELSKI, SAMARA Future Slip (Ecstatic Peace) cd 11.98
It's nearly impossible not to be ensorcelled by Samara Lubelski's mystical voice. She possesses that rare human instrument that is both otherworldly, and warm and familiar, easily seducing the listener after only a few seconds. Had she been born decades earlier, she most likely would have been musical comrades with sixties chanteuses like Francoise Hardy, Joyce, Brigitte Fontaine, Jane Birkin, etc.
Future Slip finds her in top form with lush instrumentation creating the most perfect daydream backdrop for her beautiful vocal delivery. With Thurston Moore in the producer's chair (returning the favor for all the great playing Samara did on his solo outing Trees Outside The Academy). And it's really important to note that Samara isn't just a lady with a gorgeous voice, she's also such an accomplished musician with a wonderful knack for smart and sizzling song construction. A lot of Future Slip brings us to those more mellow Stereolab moments or when Latetitia Sadier records as Monade. Lubelski also finds kindred spirits in folks like Juana Molina and we have a feeling that Charlotte Gainsbourg's new album in the works with Beck writing and arranging could become the perfect companion piece for this record. Future Slip sways and swirls with such ease and lingers with such a nice soft psychedelic shimmer.
MPEG Stream: "Culture King '66"
MPEG Stream: "Walking In The Waves"
MPEG Stream: "Empire's Dream"

LYNCH, JULIAN Orange You Glad (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 19.98
First full length (as far as we know) from this sometimes Ducktails collaborator, who seems to be making his move lately for some solo recognition, and he's bound to get it, occupying as he does a sonic station similar to Ariel Pink, Gary Way, John Maus, Ducktails (obviously) and that whole new breed of warped lo-fi sunshiney downer pop.
Thankfully, Lynch brings his own take on THAT sound, creating something much more washed out and abstract and haunting, with sorrowful vocals, throbbing Joy Division-y basslines, gnarled super effected wah wah psych guitar, and of course, LOADS of murky haze.
The vocals tend toward a delicate falsetto, often hovering over whirring synths, warbly organs, skittery drums and almost always some crazy weirdly wild and almost unhinged sounding guitar squalls. A seriously strange mix of hushed jangle balladry and wild psych freakout. There's also some strange electronics, a little drum machine, some distinctly new wave stretches, even some tropical sounding calypso moments that betray his Ducktails past, and of course plenty of abstract tweakery, but at its very core this is pop music, a bit fractured and fucked up for sure, but still plenty dreamy and drifty and divine.

MANILLA ROAD Crystal Logic (Iron Glory) cd 14.98
BACK IN PRINT! This exceedingly weird '80s fantasy metal band has another of their many obscure albums reissued on cd! We first listed this way back in 2000, and it's a reissue of a 1983 album in the first place. But these days, Manilla Road is probably much better known than they ever were, whether nine or 26 years ago, now being cited as an influence by everyone from The Gates Of Slumber to Wormsblood, so it's about the time this cd was available again, particularly 'cause it's also pretty much our favorite of their whole weird ouvre (though they're still going strong even today).
When you talk about a cult metal band, they don't get much more "cult" than this one... Hailing from the state of Kansas, but more at home in some sub-Robert E. Howardian prehistoric epoch of swords and sorcery, this band is beloved by the same folks who worship Cirith Ungol and The Lord Weird Slough Feg, and should appeal to bizarre-minded fans of Iron Maiden, Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, Manowar... "Crystal Logic" is a perfect illustration of what's great (and ridiculous) about Manilla Road: eccentric (to say the least) vocals, a totally wrong (tinny, thin, poverty-stricken) guitar sound that paradoxically sounds fantastic & punk, doomy bass, mythological/intellectual lyrics, and lets not forget the so-bad-it's-good cover art... But most importantly, Manilla Road had the talent and imagination to write some great songs, and truly rule their own unique sub-genre of progressive, remarkably catchy garage-metal. This reissue includes the crazed guitar instrumental "Flaming Metal System" as a bonus track. On the album proper, you'll find true Manilla classics like the oft-covered "Necropolis", the doomy "The Veils Of Negative Existence", and the especially epic "Dreams Of Eschaton".
MPEG Stream: "Necropolis"
MPEG Stream: "The Riddle Master"

MAYER, NATHANIEL Why Won't You Let Me Be Black? (Alive) cd 15.98
A while back, Alive Records released Why Don't You Give It To Me?, a pretty darn badass slab of psychedelic R&B garage funk fronted by Detroit soul singing sixties legend Nathaniel Mayer. It was the man's "comeback album" of sorts, and definitely helped introduce him to a new generation of fans. The combination of his charismatic, age-burnished voice with the super stoned and sometimes Stoogesy jamming of his much younger band (featuring members of such acts as the Black Keys and the Dirtbombs) was pretty darn killer. Sadly, Mayer suffered a stroke last year and eventually passed away at the not so ripe old age of 64. But it's good to know that up until then, he was pretty darn active, doin' his music, touring and recording and finding an eager audience. We're also now glad to learn that a lot more was recorded at the sessions that produced Why Don't You Give It To Me? than could fit on that one record, and now here's a posthumous second volume of modern day shack shaking Nathaniel Mayer soul singing rockin' and rollin' action! If you liked WDYGITM? then you'll also dig WWYLMBB? It consists of eight tracks, six electric numbers from those sessions plus two "unplugged" radio performances full of bluesy strum. The disc starts off surprisingly mellow, with the slow jam "Dreams Come True", Mayer's ragged voice to the fore. A voice that couldn't come from a younger man, that's for sure, but is also still quite supple and expressive. Pretty soon thereafter the fuzz kicks in, this disc featuring its share of thwomping electric muzz, that sort of thing reaching its zenith perhaps on the penultimate track "The Puddle", wherein Mayer sings about just how high he is. Again, we're sad that Mr. Mayer is no longer with us, but happy that these recordings (and maybe more to come) exist to allow us to enjoy his raw soul talent eternally (or, at least for our lifetimes).
MPEG Stream: "Mr. Tax Man"
MPEG Stream: "You Are The One"
MPEG Stream: "The Puddle"

MCCANN, SEAN Wind In Their Way (Monorail Trespassing) cassette 6.98
San Franciscan Sean McCann has produced a ton of material running the gamut between splattery feral pop, crusty noise, and dreamy droneworks; and despite our neighborly geographies, we've only managed to get a hold of a few of his recordings, most of which tend toward the micro-edition side of things. The fine folks at Foxy Digitalis have been showering this guy with praise; and now we can see why on this great cassette from the increasingly essential cassette label Monorail Trespassing. Wind In Their Way begins with a sweeping atmosphere of elongated drone, smoke, and shadow with an elegant violin emoting sad, sad melodies all bathed in reverb, looped back into those background sounds, and muddled nicely into the mix. Here, McCann seems to be paralleling what fellow Bay Area stringed conjurer Darwinsbitch had mustered on her impressive Ore album released earlier in 2009. This same direction continues on the second side of the album, with more shimmering tones that probably have their origins from a guitar, producing majestic swells of ambience not nearly as dark as those by Troum but just as ethereal, with those gauzy, flickering ghosts of sound woven in and out. Peter Wright and Machinefabriek even come to mind on this lovely, lovely, lovely piece. Limited to 125 copies!

MOUNTAIN GOATS, THE & KAKI KING Black Pear Tree (self released) 12" 14.98
Another awesome, and limited self released lp from Mountain Goats HQ, another collaboration in fact. We listed Moon Colony Bloodbath a while back (and again elsewhere on this list, got a few more copies in!), which found the MGs' John Darnielle teaming up with pop songsmith John Vanderslice, Black Pear Tree pairs Darnielle with folk rocker Kaki King, who we have to admit we had heard very little from before this, but based on her contributions here, we definitely need to hear more.
An ep, but each song here is surprisingly lush and expansive, long long gone are the days of lo-fi boombox recordings, the opening track alone is one of the most beautifully produced songs we've heard from Darnielle, who plays piano, while King vocalizes in a childlike croon, the sound so hushed and the production so intimate you can hear the pedals of the piano being depressed, while all around strange electronics and effects swirl and skitter, but in a way that doesn't at all take away from the song, but instead merely adds texture and mystery.
The rest of the record is a bit More Mountain Goats sounding, Darnielle handling the lion's share of the vocals, but here and there the two harmonize, and King's voice is a nice match for Darnielle's, and then there's some of the guitar playing, King's we presume (since she IS credited with 'greater guitars', where as Darnielle is credited with 'lesser guitars'), dense tangles of minor key rapid fire fingerpicking that smoothly slips into languid drift, or more MG-like heavy strum. And Darnielle demonstrates over and over his always evolving and improving vocals, even slipping into a gorgeous falsetto on one track. And of course the songs are gorgeous, dark, and moody, and subtly catchy, the lyrics simple and intimate, a really lovely record.
We got a whole bunch of these direct from Darnielle, he's heading out on tour, so when we run out of these, it may take a while for us to get more (if we even CAN get more), so as always, best to grab one while you can. Pressed on thick vinyl, and housed in a simple, pretty, printed sleeve.

NADJA / BLACK BONED ANGEL s/t (20 Buck Spin) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL! And comes with an MP3 download as well...
A match made in dreamdrone heaven, one that has now spawned a second collaboration, between two of the most prolific in their field. Swapping files back and forth to create a devastatingly potent sonic brew, Nadja and Black Boned Angel have delivered two crushing epics, heavy and blackened, a sonic representation of their combined might.
Unlike the surprisingly poppiness of their first match up, this is a much grimmer beast. Starting with an almost Xasthur-esque opening, rife with slightly sour funereal guitars, a creeping wave of distortion slowly moves in like a persistent rainstorm. After about 6 minutes, the drums kick in like the beginning of a forced march towards a very bleak end. Soon a cloak of industrial strength feedback takes over everything else with occasional pounds of a drum popping up here and there. The results are somewhat like Skullflower's recent work with pulverizing feedback and a harsh grinding feel. Eventually, the blankets of distortion subside and the song ends with a low rumbling sound and a sustained burst of high pitched skree. The second number here opens with a low hum that constantly turns on itself before a sloooooooooooow dirgey beat comes in, taking the on its strange circular path. Some heavy subsonic riffs enter the picture at the 13 minute mark, merging with the rest of the fuzzed out drones, and the song becomes so heavy that it seems like at any moment it might collapse on itself due to the sheer density of it all. Still, a discernible melody cuts through to bring the piece to its SUNNO)))-styled conclusion, 26 minutes later. Whew.
Perfect listening for anyone looking to get lost in the epic sonic sludge of these two masters.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

NEKRASOV The Form Of Thought From Beast (Siege Of Power) lp 11.98
NOW ON VINYL, this big time aQ black metal fave, record number two from grim Australian one man nekronoise black metal horde NEKRASOV!!
We raved about the first Nekrasov, Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days, our first exposure to this maniac's haunting blacknoize infused buzzing riffage, noise being a key element of Nekrasov's sound. But as we mentioned in that review, adding noise is not always as simple as just, well, adding noise. Mixing two genres, even if they're related, just as often leads to something messy and pointless, as it does to some genius fusion. And there is definitely plenty of noisy black metal, but much of it is either thick noise over shitty metal, or just metal, with the noise an afterthought. One must have a serious handle on both THE NOISE and THE RIFF to make it work. And if you hadn't figured it out by now, Nekrosov is most definitely a master of both the noise and the riff, and manages to fuse the two into something blackly transcendent.
That said however, the opening one two punch here are a bit misleading, in that the noise and the riff are kept well separate, the first, an ominous glitched out landscape of bleak minimal buzz and drone, hiss and crackle, almost like a black metal Philip Jeck, and the second track, the furious buzzing blasting "Mountain Ash" sounds amazing, only noisy in as much as black metal is inherently noisy, super well produced, the riffs HUGE and heavy, the drums lightning fast, erupting in squalls of impossible blasts, the vocals grim and harsh, the melodies soaring, even some hooks buried beneath the buzz.
The next track however finds Nekrosov returning to more familiar blacknoise ground. Deep swirling waves of static buzz, the vocals stretched into sheets of abstract whir, churning and roiling, beneath melodies lurk and struggle to surface, held under by the buzzing blackness. It's almost like some black metal song was frozen, a single moment played over and over stretched into some sort of infinite loop, but it's not a loop as it slowly grows and sprawls and spreads out into something expansive. It's almost ambient, and strangely soothing in its droniness, without losing any of its grim buzz or black mystery.
The next few tracks veer back and forth between, blown out soundscapes of samples and percussion, blurred into a windswept buzz, what sounds like ghostlike vocals underneath processed sounds of whipping winds and the click clack of a railroad, to noise drenched old school raw black metal crush, to slow burning deep ambience, to full on classic eighties style riffing, the old masters rendered in new shades of black and buzz, finally culminating in the twenty minute closer, which begins as some bleak, post industrial Wolf Eyes-an dronescape, all haunting whirs, and strange clanks and clunks, distant moans, bits of percussion and mysterious samples, building to a wall of white hot blackened buzz, sheathed in streaks of feedback and pulled apart riffs, this is the sort of shit that would put most cd-r dronescapers to shame, but it's not over yet, the wall of noise slowly takes shape, riffs emerge from the murk, drums explode from beneath the veil of hiss, the track barreling along churning wildly, riffing and blasting, but gradually sinking ever deeper into a morass of gorgeous textured noise, crackle and buzz and hiss, blown out and super distorted, eventually swallowing the blackness whole, leaving just a brief glimpse of the black buzz, before blinking out.
Fucking AWESOME! Absolutely essential. AND LIMITED OF COURSE!!! ONLY 500 COPIES! With all new artwork, and an 11x17 poster...
MPEG Stream: "Mountain Ash"
MPEG Stream: "Today The Sun A Golden Illusion"

NON TOXIQUE LOST Wanton (Klanggalerie) cd 17.98
BACK IN PRINT, BUT NOT FOR LONG! Non Toxique Lost began in the early '80s as a German industrial band that had stayed true to the avant-garde / difficult listening propositions to also come through Throbbing Gristle and Dome. While plenty of other industrialists such as Psychic TV and Einsturzende Neubauten honed their craft for occluded electronics with sinister motives into downright catchy tunes, Non Toxique Lost chose a murky collage strategy for metal bashing, undulating electronic arppegiations, and megaphone vocal barking. Wanton was the first album for Non Toxique Lost, recorded between 1982 and 1984 and released a year later on vinyl. There's an aggressive deconstruction of sound within the primitive synth-punk arrangements which get splattered into amassed distortion from guitar freakouts blowing out of way too small amplifiers on top of lumbering electronic loops, all of which get cut up and mangled on tape. One of the early members of Non Toxique Lost was Achim Wollscheid, who had also begun his solo project of DIY musique concrete called S.B.O.T.H.I. before developing his highly conceptual sound art projects throughout the late '90s. It seems that Non Toxique Lost is still around, although Wollscheid left many years ago. Regardless, Wanton is a fascinating document of art-damaged noise from this little known German industrial project.
Limited to 300 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Inschallah"
MPEG Stream: "Condor"

NOVELLER Red Rainbows (No Fun Productions) cd 12.98
Former guitarist for Parts & Labor, Sarah Lipstate, has been fully entrenched in her far more minimalist ventures under the moniker Noveller. There seems to be a constant round of performances in New York and Brooklyn, occasionally finding Lipstate in one of Rhys Chatham's guitar symphonies; and she has found a comfortable home amongst the boys at No Fun. Red Rainbows is her second album released by No Fun, following the limited Paint On The Shadows LP. For the most part, Red Rainbows is a darker maelstrom than the first, although Lipstate does include the very lovely track "St. Powers" from Paint On The Shadows, accentuating chiming notes from her double necked guitar which blossom against a set of looping drones. The two opening tracks are far more ominous constructs with rasping noises streaming against the pure tonal flutterings from her bowed / ebowed guitar. "Tunnels" is the suitably nocturnal piece for ebbing low frequencies, glowing harmonic drones, and ghostly clatterings bathed in subterranean reverberations. Deathprod or Svarte Greiner certainly come to mind on a track as evocative as this. The finale features No Fun label boss Carlos Giffoni, although this is hardly the overblown excess you would expect from the man; rather, he offers some growling sawtooth electronics which sit in the background against the sustained vibrato from Lipstate's guitar. Very nice indeed!
MPEG Stream: "Brilliant Colors"
MPEG Stream: "St. Powers"
MPEG Stream: "Tunnels"

NUDGE As Good As Gone (Kranky) cd 14.98
Featuring folks from some other Portland aQ faves like Fontanelle, Strategy, and Valet, Nudge seem to have really hit their stride and found their voice on this, their fourth outing. With the wonderfully melty and psychedelic vocal delivery of Honey Owens (Valet, Jackie O Motherfucker) swirling in the midst of subtle electronics and smoky instrumentation, As Good As Gone kind of sounds like some amazing amalgamation of Mazzy Star, Grouper, Windy & Carl and Nite Jewel, if they all joined forces for a blissed out 4AD inspired late night musical love affair. Dazed and hazy in all the right ways, with such a nice touch on the electronics that gives the record its unique slant on cloud surfing shoegaze glory. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Two Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Tito"
MPEG Stream: "Dawn Comes Light"

NUDGE As Good As Gone (Kranky) lp 13.98
Featuring folks from some other Portland aQ faves like Fontanelle, Strategy, and Valet, Nudge seem to have really hit their stride and found their voice on this, their fourth outing. With the wonderfully melty and psychedelic vocal delivery of Honey Owens (Valet, Jackie O Motherfucker) swirling in the midst of subtle electronics and smoky instrumentation, As Good As Gone kind of sounds like some amazing amalgamation of Mazzy Star, Grouper, Windy & Carl and Nite Jewel, if they all joined forces for a blissed out 4AD inspired late night musical love affair. Dazed and hazy in all the right ways, with such a nice touch on the electronics that gives the record its unique slant on cloud surfing shoegaze glory. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Two Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Tito"
MPEG Stream: "Dawn Comes Light"

O'ROURKE, JIM The Visitor (Drag City) cd 14.98
You probably can't find a musician with a wider breadth of sound, or more sonically varied releases, than Mr. Jim O'Rourke. During his vast career he's made everything from harsh noise to delightful pop, was part of one of the more influential groups of the last few decades, Gastr Del Sol, collaborated with Nurse With Wound, became a member of Sonic Youth, was at the forefront of the '90s experimental electronic renaissance, made some crunchy rock albums with his Wilco pal Jeff Tweedy, and the list just goes on and on.
These days O'Rourke has slowed down his output considerably so a new release is both much more anticipated as well as a total unknown as to which side of Jim O'Rourke will be on display. With The Visitor, O'Rourke emerges with his first new full length in many years and wow the wait was worth it! The Visitor is one long track clocking in at around 37 minutes but it almost serves as some kind of early morning daydream song cycle with a spectrum of nuanced sounds that make us think of Van Dyke Parks arranging a John Fahey album or what a more restrained James Blackshaw record might sound like.
The record starts with very hushed noodling guitar and as the piece goes on the sounds expand in richness as extra flourishes of bells, piano and other lushness flesh out O'Rourke's delicate guitar playing. Hard to avoid this cliché, but The Visitor really is a total journey, at first you don't really know where it's going and you're not sure if you necessarily want to follow but as the piece evolves it completely grabs a hold of your attention until you are lost in its slowly unfurling sonic voyage. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "The Visitor"

O'ROURKE, JIM The Visitor (Drag City) lp 17.98
You probably can't find a musician with a wider breadth of sound, or more sonically varied releases, than Mr. Jim O'Rourke. During his vast career he's made everything from harsh noise to delightful pop, was part of one of the more influential groups of the last few decades, Gastr Del Sol, collaborated with Nurse With Wound, became a member of Sonic Youth, was at the forefront of the '90s experimental electronic renaissance, made some crunchy rock albums with his Wilco pal Jeff Tweedy, and the list just goes on and on.
These days O'Rourke has slowed down his output considerably so a new release is both much more anticipated as well as a total unknown as to which side of Jim O'Rourke will be on display. With The Visitor, O'Rourke emerges with his first new full length in many years and wow the wait was worth it! The Visitor is one long track clocking in at around 37 minutes but it almost serves as some kind of early morning daydream song cycle with a spectrum of nuanced sounds that make us think of Van Dyke Parks arranging a John Fahey album or what a more restrained James Blackshaw record might sound like.
The record starts with very hushed noodling guitar and as the piece goes on the sounds expand in richness as extra flourishes of bells, piano and other lushness flesh out O'Rourke's delicate guitar playing. Hard to avoid this cliché, but The Visitor really is a total journey, at first you don't really know where it's going and you're not sure if you necessarily want to follow but as the piece evolves it completely grabs a hold of your attention until you are lost in its slowly unfurling sonic voyage. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "The Visitor"

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER Zones Without People (Arbor) lp 15.98
It makes perfect sense that Daniel Lopatin is a fan of J.G. Ballard, the late author of dystopian environments plagued and / or graced with the dilemmas of the relationship between man and machine. Lopatin's previous entry as Oneohtrix Point Never was the Memory Vague dvd on Root Strata, recycling '80s computer animation from YouTube to serve as the visual data for his sci-fi soundtracks of analog synthesis; and there was no doubt about the peculiar Ballardian aura to that dvd which enjoyed a bittersweet optimism for the future of technology with its sensual grasp upon the 'new.' For this album - Zones Without People - Lopatin continues to delight us with his perfectly anachronistic use of synthesizers to capture the early '80s memories of early afterschool science specials, cheap sci-fi soundtracks, and the never-ending fascination with space. Lopatin is keenly aware that we don't have teleportation devices, jetpacks, or holidays on the moon; and an undercurrent of sadness does seem to bubble from below all of his compositions. In fact, Lopatin describes the strategies he employs for his poly-synths as "grid tears," imbuing a sense of melancholy through his rigid network of percolating tones and bleeps.
Above an solar-powered electric hum, the album opens with a series of interwoven synth pulses which insistently push up against each other, collapsing into the electronic sunrise which is the next track of slowly building arppegiations and sequences situated on top of cybernetically pastoral ambience. When Lapotin gets to the title track, his laser beam pings have calmed into a sublimely sad offering, easily the best thing that he's produced to date. This isn't to say that the flip side is a dud. Far from it, as a wigged-out squiggling collage splatters as the second side's opening cut. Cosmic arpeggiations and star-gazing drones settle in the rest of this amazing record. Don't expect this to be around for long. We're not the only one's freaking out about Oneohtrix Point Never, and Zones Without People is limited to 400 copies.

ONODERA, YUI Entropy (Trumn) cd 21.00
Plenty of artists we love have mustered beautiful, droney compositions through the act of decay. Look no further than the AQ favorites from William Basinski's sublime Disintegration Loops, the crumbling digitalia of Tim Hecker, and even our own Jim Haynes has his special rusting techniques with sound and image. So when it comes to an album called Entropy which comes from the Japanese drone 'n' field recordist Yui Onodera, we have to wonder how it measures up.
We gotta say this is a beautiful piece of grey-smeared ambience, but we're scratching our head over how this sounds like the world falling apart. This would be a perfect rainy day, contemplative soundtrack, but not exactly a meditation on entropy. Well, maybe except for the Loren Chasse-like crumbling of soil, pebbles, and leaves on the untitled second track which quietly tumbles into a series of evolving loops that blur into a sleep-inducing drone of oceanic waves and shimmering tones. The way this track progresses is how the entire record is situated -- a very calm, sedate, yet hypnotizing collection of drones and tones that float out of stacked guitars and processed field recordings. The fourth track is pure drone bliss straight out of the Chalk / Coleclough axis of smeared dronemaking precision; and the sixth has more of a Popul Vuh two-note melody oozing out of Onodera's shoegazing guitar chords, which have been filtered, layered, re-recorded, layered again, echoed, reverbed, and back again. Onodera has produced some great recordings for Mystery Sea and And/OAR, but this one was actually something he released back in 2005 through his Critical Path imprint. Even if this doesn't inspire the idea of entropy for us, Onodera has still made a fantastic and beautiful drone record here. Check it out!
MPEG Stream: "Track 2"
MPEG Stream: "Track 4"
MPEG Stream: "Track 6"

PACHA, FEDAYI The 99 Names Of Dub (Hammerbass) cd 14.98
This isn't the latest release by Armenian dub experimentalist, Fedayi Pacha, but we were intrigued by the cover of this one, a goggled arab nomad brandishing what looks like a firearm (but what could also be a horn or a hookah) that we decided to check this one out first. And it's pretty awesome! We're generally a little wary of electronica with Asian or Middle Eastern influences, always reminding us of that nineties Asian underground scene that got a little too pervasive and cheesy really quick. Yet Pacha manages to reign in that sound, using traditional Middle Eastern instruments and influences with a dark and heavy dub sheen adding layers of complexity, mystery and subtle dread to the proceedings, reminding us of what groups like Muslimgauze used to do best. If you are looking for a different and interesting take on classic dub, this doesn't disappoint!
MPEG Stream: "Apricot Wood"
MPEG Stream: "Bhayrawi Steppa"
MPEG Stream: "Bhayravi Dub"
MPEG Stream: "Londoninstan"

PAYCHECK, JOHNNY Nowhere To Run (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
Probably best know for his boss bashing hit "Take This Job And Shove It" (written by David Allan Coe!), Paycheck began life as Donald Eugene Lytle, originally performing as Donny Young, before, changing his name to Johnny Paycheck, and falling in with the outlaw country movement, along with folks like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, etc.
In the sixties, Paycheck started his own label, Little Darlin, and released a handful of records, all pretty intense and twisted and gorgeous, and rarely heard. This killer comp collects those rare tracks, and while on first listen, this sounds like classic honky tonk country, his voice immediately recognizable, but the sounds pretty classic, listen closer, pay attention to the lyrics, and suddenly the sounds don't sound so classic, instead, they are dark, and sinister, and seriously fucked up. Or at least with a twisted sense of humor. The sticker on the cd describes Paycheck thusly: "Imagine David Lynch As A Honky Tonky Singer" which is not that far off. On the surface, everything appears normal, but just below the surface, something much more dangerous lurks. A killer. Maybe. A psycho, VERY likely. Tales of murder, suicide, death, insanity and oh yes, drinking, just have a gander at some of the song titles: "(It's A Mighty Fine Line) Between Love And Hate", "(Pardon Me) I've Got Someone To Kill", "It Won't Be Long (And I'll Be Hating You)", "There's No Easy Way To Die", "I'm A Coward", intense and spooky and menacing, but all set to killer country twang and foot stomping honky tonk.
Another winner from Omni, and like all the Omni reissues, this comes with a huge booklet, new liner notes, and tons of photos. And as always most definitely recommended.
MPEG Stream: "(It's A Mighty Thin Line) Between Love And Hate"
MPEG Stream: "(Pardon Me) I've Got Someone To Kill"
MPEG Stream: "It Won't Be Long (And I'll Be Hating You)"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Monkey With Another Monkey's Monkey"

PIGS Illuminati House Party (Sugar Mountain) lp 12.98
There's lots of ways we find out about cool new bands. We finally listen to a promo that came in the mail, or a customer raves about them, or we read about 'em in a fanzine or on the internet, etc. etc. One of the best ways though, is to randomly see a band playing live that you've never heard of before, and be impressed. That's the deal with how we discovered local SF heavies Pigs.
I (Allan) just moved into a new apartment here in the Mission, that's not too far from the Potrero del Sol skatepark. On one of the days I was moving stuff, I could hear live music coming from the direction of the park, where they do sometimes have outdoor shows. Sounded like yr basic punk rock, but then a band started playing that - as best I could tell from several blocks away - sounded much more metallic and interesting, with shredding guitar leads and chunky riffage and everything. And obviously very loud. So, needing a break from my moving tasks, I wandered over to the park posthaste to check out what was going on. When I got there, the band I'd heard was still playing, and they were GREAT. Super heavy, fairly hairy power trio (boy drummer, girl bassist, bearded dude guitarist / sometime vocalist) kicking out the jams big time, sorta like a scrappier, scuzzier Melvins, in their earliest, fastest, punkiest incarnation. Like, with some more Motorhead mixed in. I had a blast watching the rest of their set, totally into it, already wondering if they had any recordings I could get my hands on for Aquarius. Also wondering, just who the heck they were. Well both questions were soon answered when the drummer held up a garish purple, very DIY looking handscreened LP emblazoned with the name Pigs, saying they'd just put this record out. Better yet, moments later a friend of mine appeared, who it turned out was friends with band as well, and told me that he'd just been telling Pigs before they played that they should bring their album down to Aquarius. And so they did, a week or so later, not just the limited vinyl but also a cd version too.
Just like their live set, the album is a blast (of distortion, among other things). Sometimes slow and sludgy, equally often full of frenzied jamming, Illuminati House Party is pure metal-punk underground awesome, with more than a few nods to classic rock catchiness. Pigs traffic in Black Sabbathy riffs (most definitely in "Lurch"), their songs furthermore having plenty of rollicking swing to 'em a la both Sabbath and Sleep. The guitarist constantly peels off tangly, widdly leads like they're coming back into style. All the tracks here (11 of 'em) rule, from the sick-o smartassery of "Hard Lovin' Van", a song with gnarly Ginnish licks and hoarse, strangled vox that could almost be an old Tad tune (some of the lyrics: "let's go the lake, and feed the ducks...get in the van, take the candy"), to the even more punk "Population Control", to the wasted doom of "Hessian's Revenge" and sheer shred of "Surf's Up". And then there's the epic instrumental 3-part rifftastic "Taser Trilogy" wherein Pigs show off their Champsy chops, not to mention stoner sense of humor (and not for the first time on this record). Yeah, great stuff!
Is it possible to imagine an unholy hybrid of, um, Electric Wizard, Breadwinner, and, er, Pissed Jeans?? Pigs might be it. Soooo glad I was within earshot of the skatepark that day!
MPEG Stream: "Hard Lovin' Van"
MPEG Stream: "Surf's Up"
MPEG Stream: "Taser Trilogy I: V.V.E.T.C."

PIGS Illuminati House Party (Sugar Mountain) cd-r 8.98
There's lots of ways we find out about cool new bands. We finally listen to a promo that came in the mail, or a customer raves about them, or we read about 'em in a fanzine or on the internet, etc. etc. One of the best ways though, is to randomly see a band playing live that you've never heard of before, and be impressed. That's the deal with how we discovered local SF heavies Pigs.
I (Allan) just moved into a new apartment here in the Mission, that's not too far from the Potrero del Sol skatepark. On one of the days I was moving stuff, I could hear live music coming from the direction of the park, where they do sometimes have outdoor shows. Sounded like yr basic punk rock, but then a band started playing that - as best I could tell from several blocks away - sounded much more metallic and interesting, with shredding guitar leads and chunky riffage and everything. And obviously very loud. So, needing a break from my moving tasks, I wandered over to the park posthaste to check out what was going on. When I got there, the band I'd heard was still playing, and they were GREAT. Super heavy, fairly hairy power trio (boy drummer, girl bassist, bearded dude guitarist / sometime vocalist) kicking out the jams big time, sorta like a scrappier, scuzzier Melvins, in their earliest, fastest, punkiest incarnation. Like, with some more Motorhead mixed in. I had a blast watching the rest of their set, totally into it, already wondering if they had any recordings I could get my hands on for Aquarius. Also wondering, just who the heck they were. Well both questions were soon answered when the drummer held up a garish purple, very DIY looking handscreened LP emblazoned with the name Pigs, saying they'd just put this record out. Better yet, moments later a friend of mine appeared, who it turned out was friends with band as well, and told me that he'd just been telling Pigs before they played that they should bring their album down to Aquarius. And so they did, a week or so later, not just the limited vinyl but also a cd version too.
Just like their live set, the album is a blast (of distortion, among other things). Sometimes slow and sludgy, equally often full of frenzied jamming, Illuminati House Party is pure metal-punk underground awesome, with more than a few nods to classic rock catchiness. Pigs traffic in Black Sabbathy riffs (most definitely in "Lurch"), their songs furthermore having plenty of rollicking swing to 'em a la both Sabbath and Sleep. The guitarist constantly peels off tangly, widdly leads like they're coming back into style. All the tracks here (11 of 'em) rule, from the sick-o smartassery of "Hard Lovin' Van", a song with gnarly Ginnish licks and hoarse, strangled vox that could almost be an old Tad tune (some of the lyrics: "let's go the lake, and feed the ducks...get in the van, take the candy"), to the even more punk "Population Control", to the wasted doom of "Hessian's Revenge" and sheer shred of "Surf's Up". And then there's the epic instrumental 3-part rifftastic "Taser Trilogy" wherein Pigs show off their Champsy chops, not to mention stoner sense of humor (and not for the first time on this record). Yeah, great stuff!
Is it possible to imagine an unholy hybrid of, um, Electric Wizard, Breadwinner, and, er, Pissed Jeans?? Pigs might be it. Soooo glad I was within earshot of the skatepark that day!
MPEG Stream: "Hard Lovin' Van"
MPEG Stream: "Surf's Up"
MPEG Stream: "Taser Trilogy I: V.V.E.T.C."

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 1 (Synthnoise) cd-r 4.98
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The first installment of Meditative Music unfurls a stream of undulating synth lines, whose phase pattern shifts and oscillating tones are hypnotizing in their own right; then a set of crystalline tones calmly rise and fall at a pace that seems to always be getting just a little bit slower. That's pretty much all that happens with Meditative Music, but it works very well. This is great inner-cosmos exploration music using the simplest of techniques that probably the ambient pioneers of Cluster, Eno, and Schulze would not have shied away from. As Groetsch put it, here's an excellent album for "sleep, massage, or any activity where a peaceful and balanced sound environment is desired."
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 1"

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 2 (Synthnoise) cd-r 4.98
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The second installment in this series features a soft bit of white noise undulating in the distance, acting much like a field recording of wind, surf, rain, or any combination you would prefer. Above this, Groetsch gradually unfurls a revolving set of notes from one of his modular synthesizers that overlap in various combinations, occasionally creating nifty harmonics, but mostly gradual swells and blossoms of Doppler-effected tones. There's nothing ominous, nothing cheesy, nothing hackneyed about these drifting ambient passages - just great music for, as Groetsch puts it, "sleep, massage, or deep reflective thought." Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 2"

RALE Whispering Gallery (Arbor) 12" 11.98
After a few super limited tape releases (so limited we were unable to get any at all), comes this brand new 2 song 12"s from the Bay Area sound dude William Hutson known simply as Rale, whose abstract modular synth dronescapes should absolutely appeal to all the dronelords out in aQ land.
Exploring similar sonic territory as fellow sonic obfuscationists Philip Jeck, Christian Fennesz, Tim Hecker and the like, Rale unleashes a soft stream of ultra minimal crackle, draped over murky barely there melodies and deep gauzy rumbles, a sound haunting and hushed and super minimal, even a little distantly doomy. The track slowly gains momentum, growing ever more distorted and crunchy, eventually the hushed low end drift is overwhelmed by a super processed stuttery stretch of distorted glitch, which after building to a frenzied coda smooths out into a crumbling crackly drone, that finally fades out leaving just strange disembodied sounds and mysterious voices.
The flip side is a similarly slow burning slab of dronemusic. A deep cavernous drift, softly textured, hushed and whispery, an underground sound, underwater, that sound grows warmer and and deeper and more dronelike before gradually transforming into something more brittle and buzzy, but no less blissed out and mesmerizing.
Some seriously gorgeous, hypnotic and occasionally noisy dronemusic, a two song teaser which has been getting repeat plays since we got it in, and most definitely has us wanting more more more...
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

REAL ESTATE Green River / Fake Blues (Half Machine Records) 7" 6.50
Another in the new breed, Ducktails school of shimmery fuzzy tropical garage pop, comes Real Estate. The sound, while perfectly at home amides the current crop of noise poppers, also manages to sound quite Pavement-y, especially the vocals. Minimal tribal drumming, tangled spindly guitars, drawled indie box vox, super catchy, but laid back and drifty, with just the right amount of buzz and haze and shimmer.
Flip it over and the sound is all fuzzy jangle, with caffeinated drumming, sounding VERY eighties, or even early nineties, classic indie pop for sure, but slightly off kilter and just a little bit twisted, and some truly gorgeous guitar/vocal harmonies and reverby new wave chorus to die for.
And yeah, it is, of course, LIMITED.

SCIENCE FICTION DANCE PARTY Dance With Action (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 15.98
It's pretty obvious why the folks at B-music (like DJs Andy Votel and Dom Thomas) dig these particular collectible exploito obscurities so much, and why they're so excited to be reissuing 'em in their new "Germanic Miner" series dedicated to "krautsider music"! What could be more B-musical than these two faux soundtracks concocted in the late sixties by a couple of creative German producers, operating at the weird, wacked out intersection of kitschy library music and freaky krautrock? One's a slice of slinky, sorta-scary "horrotica", the other a spaced out sci-fi fest for the Barbarella set. Both are delirious, demented party-pleasers.
The Vampires Of Dartmoore and their Dracula's Music Cabinet conjures a sexy frightmare of hip swinging, bloodsucking sounds. "Mord Im Ohio Express (Murder In The Ohio Express)" seems kinda surfy, but mostly this is about groovy porno lounge music, with smoky horns and jazzy percussion, interwoven with screams and creepy sound effects, moaning and groaning, dogs barking and something going boing boing boing... It's a very NON-academic application of musique concrete technique, noises worked into the songs, such as the rumbling explosions that punctuate "Eine Handvoll Nitro (A Handful Of Nitro)". The mix is fairly chaotic, stuff fading in and out, levels up and down. If this WAS a movie soundtrack, it would have been a pretty crazy movie. Tracks reference Hitchcock, Dr. Caligari, and Frankenstein's monster. And sex. Definitely sex.
Equally bizarre, if less R-rated, is the Science Fiction Dance Party. Again, it's groovy, jazzy, sometimes fuzzy "instro-hipster" style stuff, laced with loads of goofy outer space sound effects and rocketship radio drama theatrics. It sounds like music for a cocktail party and/or acid test on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. You can imagine Robbie the Robot getting down to this. Distorted alien and/or computer voices abound, song titles include "Visitors Of A.D. 2022", "The Whistling Astronaut", and "Hit Parade In The Light Year 25" (which doesn't even make sense, don't they know that light years are a measure of distance?). As well as whistling, there's some screams here too, as spacemen are presumably being zapped with rayguns, but the music remains jaunty. Even the song "Death Rays Out Of The Universe" is inexplicably upbeat. So, it's all very silly, but a lot of fun.
Both albums feature bonus tracks (2 previously unreleased "Petting Party" jams on Vampires, 4 extra tracks on Science Fiction that come back to earth to delve into disco and Eastern exotica instead). The slipcased cds of these are now domestic releases (we waited instead of getting the expensive imports) but the LP versions remain imports.
MPEG Stream: "Monster On Saturn 1"
MPEG Stream: "Murder In The Space Station"
MPEG Stream: "Death Rays Out Of The Universe"

SHANNON AND THE CLAMS Hunk Hunt (Weird Hug) 7" 4.50
San Francisco has a rich history when it comes to raw garage punk rock. But we have to say so much of that scene in the past had a bit too much of a dudes n' beer n' bar vibe for us. It's not until the last few years with a whole new new wave of garage peddlers that we've really been swept up in the raw and rocking fun of a scene that seems to have evolved for the better.
Shannon And The Clams have been making quite a name for themselves here in the bay with their super fun live shows where they usually play on bills with their pals like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall and Hunx and His Punx. The four songs on Hunk Hunt really show off the range of their sound. From '50s inspired girl group classics corrupted by angular art punk to a more rocking garage sound more in the tradition of The Headcoats/Headcoatees or what The Husbands might have sounded like drenched in more of a Cramps influence. If you live in town or they come to yours by all means see this group live, but for now, this 7" serves as a pretty awesome introduction to their world.

SMITH, STEVEN R. Cities (Immune) lp 14.98
Good ol' Steven R. Smith. Whether in bands - Jewelled Antler flagship Thuja, for one - or on his own, doing his wonderful Hala Strana and Ulaan Khol projects among others - the presence of SRS a reliable indicator that you're going to hear some quite nice and in fact transcendental music. He's got that magic. Sometimes playing droning, home-built stringed things, or Eastern European ethnic instruments, or out-n-out amped up psych guitar, or all the above... whatever it is, we're always happy to hear more from SRS. Here's something new under his own name, another reverie-inducing solo outing, in part improvised, all-instrumental, emotive and abstract and melodic and minimal and sad and shimmering and altogether lovely.
This limited edition LP (vinyl only, but it comes with a download card or whatever so you can get mp3s, though we'd prefer if there were also a cd version) is entitled Cities. But this mostly calm and quiet music doesn't seem all that urban. There's no hustle and bustle here, no teeming crowds or honking traffic. Instead, the cities this evokes are ancient ones, empty ones, abandoned ones, unknown ones. Or perhaps the cities to which this LP refers are still are home to people, the listener wandering through them only in the desolate, faintly glowing pre-dawn hours, down secret streets and through dreamy, dewy parks. Ah, our meager musings don't do this justice, but we're sure that you'll find this music capable of stirring some melancholic mental imagery...
As with much of SRS's music, while there's an acoustic rustic folk element to this, there's an electric one too, with gorgeous, gentle distortion and drone at the edges. He's playing a plethora of instruments here: assorted guitars, fiddle, psaltery, melodica, cello, organ, electric piano... Slowly unfolding, echoing, the mood pieces SRS crafts on Cities make us nostalgic for imagined places we've never been.
MPEG Stream: "Cities In Decline"
MPEG Stream: "The Road"

SNAKE FLOWER 2 Renegade Daydream (Tic Tac Totally) cd 11.98
Not sure why, but it's been SO impossible to get enough of these to list, which is a huge bummer, cuz it's definitely turned into one of our favorite records of the year (and yeah, we know it didn't come out this year, but so what!). Our distros never have it, emails to the label never get returned, so fuck it, we decided to just list it with the 10 or so copies we have. So at least a few of you can check this out.
The weird thing is we were expecting something much more generic and garagey and run of the mill, but from the first song (a definite contender for jam of the year) we knew this was something WAY more. Fuzzy, and buzzy, and stoney and groovy and spaced out, crunchy guitars busy burbling basslines, some bad ass drumming, and some super wicked scowly vox, somewhere between the Lyres, Monster Magnet and the White Stripes.
"Flight Of The Navigator", the aforementioned jam, encapsulates pretty much everything we love about these guys and gal. A sharp jagged jangly main riff, with a killer stop start descending verse, a woozy soaring chorus, and then a total Monster Magnet bridge with weird processed vocals, and the guitars all space-y and stretched out. Some wild leads here and there, and HOOKS THAT KILL. We literally listened to this first track so many times, that it was weeks before we got any further into the record, but when we did, we discovered that the rest of the record was pretty much just as bad ass. The Lyres vibe can't be underestimated, but Monster Magnet is all over these tracks, as is Hawkwind, plenty of fuzzy poppiness too, classic garage infuses everything here, but it's way more poppy, and space-y and heavy and hooky. We could go on and on and on and on, but since the availability of this record is a bit up in the air, we'll just sum it up by saying this kicks ass big time, and if favorite records were indeed judged entirely and soley on how many times and how often it gets listened to, then we're pretty sure there's no other record this year that would even come close (if you ask Andee).
MPEG Stream: "Flight Of The Navigator"
MPEG Stream: "Talk About It"
MPEG Stream: "I Woke Up In A Dream"

SNAKE FLOWER 2 Renegade Daydream (Tic Tac Totally) lp 14.98
Not sure why, but it's been SO impossible to get enough of these to list, which is a huge bummer, cuz it's definitely turned into one of our favorite records of the year (and yeah, we know it didn't come out this year, but so what!). Our distros never have it, emails to the label never get returned, so fuck it, we decided to just list it with the 10 or so copies we have. So at least a few of you can check this out.
The weird thing is we were expecting something much more generic and garagey and run of the mill, but from the first song (a definite contender for jam of the year) we knew this was something WAY more. Fuzzy, and buzzy, and stoney and groovy and spaced out, crunchy guitars busy burbling basslines, some bad ass drumming, and some super wicked scowly vox, somewhere between the Lyres, Monster Magnet and the White Stripes.
"Flight Of The Navigator", the aforementioned jam, encapsulates pretty much everything we love about these guys and gal. A sharp jagged jangly main riff, with a killer stop start descending verse, a woozy soaring chorus, and then a total Monster Magnet bridge with weird processed vocals, and the guitars all space-y and stretched out. Some wild leads here and there, and HOOKS THAT KILL. We literally listened to this first track so many times, that it was weeks before we got any further into the record, but when we did, we discovered that the rest of the record was pretty much just as bad ass. The Lyres vibe can't be underestimated, but Monster Magnet is all over these tracks, as is Hawkwind, plenty of fuzzy poppiness too, classic garage infuses everything here, but it's way more poppy, and space-y and heavy and hooky. We could go on and on and on and on, but since the availability of this record is a bit up in the air, we'll just sum it up by saying this kicks ass big time, and if favorite records were indeed judged entirely and soley on how many times and how often it gets listened to, then we're pretty sure there's no other record this year that would even come close (if you ask Andee).
MPEG Stream: "Flight Of The Navigator"
MPEG Stream: "Talk About It"
MPEG Stream: "I Woke Up In A Dream"

SPLINTERS, THE s/t (Double Negative) 7" 7.98
Such a great time for Bay Area bands! Every time we look up there seems to be a new awesome band popping up and playing around town and this new female foursome is the perfect example, grabbing a hold of our ears with such commanding and vibrant energy! Taking cues from greats like The Raincoats, the Vaselines, and the Shop Assistants, the Splinters create songs that are both immediate and wear well with many repeated listens. It wouldn't be a far stretch to find The Splinters landing on a label like K or Merge in the years to come as this is a band that knows its underground rock history yet creates songs that feel so completely present and all their own. There's still something so humble and logical about introducing your band to the world on a good ol' 7", and this nearly perfect slab of classic indie pop is indeed a perfect introduction to the Splinters! Now we vote that their next release should be a split 7" with like minded former Bay Area band Brilliant Colors. But whatever shape their next outing comes in, we will be all ears!

SUPERCHUNK Crossed Wires (Merge) 7" 6.98
Brand new slab of clear 7" vinyl from Chapel Hill noise pop heroes Superchunk. Always delivering the goods with such solid and striking results and this new single is no exception. "Crossed Wires" is classic sounding Superchunk, you know the sound that basically a billion other indie-pop bands ripped off, but of course none of them get it right, or come at all close to the level of pure powerpop excellence as the masters themselves. The B side is even more uptempo and driving and just another reminder that summer just never feels the same without some Superchunk jams to blast! The 7" comes with a coupon for a digital download of the two songs as well as demo version of "Crossed Wires."

TORTOISE Beacons Of Ancestorship Remixes - Eye / Mark Ernestus (Thrill Jockey) 12" 12.98
If you're like us, one sentence is all it should take: Best song from the new Tortoise record, remixed by Eye from the Boredoms. We'll pause a second so most of you can just add to cart and move on to the next review...
Seriously though, Tortoise were one of the few bands, rock bands especially, to RULE the remix. So here we go again, years later, and this two track reinterpretation, does again, in fact, rule.
Hard to go wrong really getting Eye to remix your track, especially when it's a song as bad ass as "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In", which isn't just a great NEW Tortoise song, it might be one of their best tracks ever. So get Eye to twist it all up and well, you just sort of have to hear it. The Tortoise original basically becomes a Boredoms jam, all sundappled and super spacey, rhythmic and hypnotic, the drums become the focal point (of course), tribal and heavy, while the bass buzzes intensely, and peppered throughout are little processed squalls made up of fragments of the original. Electronic squiggles, weird warped effects, swirling synths, all take a backseat to those pounding rhythms. And if you weren't super familiar with the original, you could easily believe this was a jam off a new Super Roots, groovy, hypnotic, space-y, psychedelic and awesome!
The B side is remixed by some guy we've never heard of, Mark Ernestus, and most folks would blanch at the idea of sharing a split with the mighty Eye, but nope, he steps up and offers up his own mix of another killer track from the new Tortoise, and gets all This Heat, complete with the handclaps. Stuttery acoustic guitars and looped skeletal drumming, buzzing dubstep bass warbling intensely over the skitter, somehow super minimal and abstract, but also strangely intense and aggressive. If you can imagine a slightly jazzy stripped down dubstep This Heat, well, then you might come up with something like this. Both mixes kick ass.
Part of the new Thrill Jockey singles series, not sure how limited these are, but probably safe to assume VERY, and snag one before you're kicking yourself later...

TROUM Sigqan (Transgredient / Drone Records) cd 17.98
Finally reissued, Troum's epic Sigqan is back in print after being unavailable for many years, even after getting a Stateside release through the Relapse subsidiary Desolation House. Troum are the ambient-drone ensemble that emerged from the dissolution of proto-industrial dronesters Maeror Tri. Unlike the primarily guitar based whir and rumble of Maeror Tri, Troum obfuscate their sound sources, laptops, found sounds, accordions, guitars too maybe, and the results are timeless, mysterious, haunting, ethereal and utterly breathtaking dronescapes. Sigqan is a lengthy three part epic, beginning with rich sonorous foghorn like swells, that ebb and flow, separated by near silence, and slowly building in intensity from warm crescendos to huge doomy pulses. Eventually, these roaring rumbles joined by complementary shimmers of high end, that sound out, and then dissipate like sonic ripples, fading into blackness. The swells slowly grow closer and closer until the edges begin to blur and a subtly more continuous melodic framework begins to emerge and so begins the second movement, a creepy and slightly ominous, slowly fluctuating slow-motion-melody, whose lazily shifting notes keep the sonic landscape dense and rich, and keeps the sounds from flatlining into monochromatic drones. As the piece winds down, the dynamics and melody start to smear together into a warm, diffused fuzzy hum, with the subtle traces of melody sinking deeper and deeper into the dark warmth. The third and final movement was a sonic afterthought, added/recorded later than the first two, but is a pleasantly dreamy coda, with a slightly sunnier tone, a keening upper register melody, stretched out into subtly slithering iridescence with a shuffling, staticky rhythm just below the surface. So nice.
MPEG Stream: "Sigqan Part 1"

V/A Grind Bastards 3 (Grind Freaks) cd 14.98
With a title like Grind Bastards, you can safely assume that this comp is indeed directly targeted at you, the grind bastards. And we know there are some serious grind bastards among the aQ faithful. Anyone who has gone nuts in the past for Agoraphobic Nosebleed, or Pig Destroyer, or Discordance Axis, or Last Days Of Humanity, we could go on and on and on, so yeah, dig a little deeper and discover a whole world of grind going on UNDER the underground. Grind Bastards collects some of the best Japanese grind from mostly bands you've never heard of, but NEED to.
Heavy, buzzing, blasting, frenzied, frenetic, pummeling, crushing, a dizzying swirl of metal riffage, furious blast beats, grunted cookie monster vocals, inhuman blackened shrieks, hooks all over the place, and some of the heaviest catchiest under a minute shit you'll ever hear.
Little Bastards, Magnicide, Mortalized, Butcher ABC, Cortecuellos, Brob, Mangirl, Fortitude, Bleeding Humanity, D.I.E., Kutsujoku, Deadly Spawn, Zagio Evha Dilegj and of course Unholy Grave, whose label Grind Freaks released this (and who also run the amazing all black metal and grind and doom record store Grave in Japan). Dense and dizzyingly complex, next level heaviness for sure, fast and crusty enough for punk rockers, riffy and brutal enough for metalheads, and definitely a rad grind primer for the newbies.
BTW: We also have a few copies of Grind Bastards 2, which besides totally ruling as well, just so happens to feature one of our favorite grind jams ever, a 51 second grindpop gem by Mortalized (who have 2 songs here) covering pop punkers Propaghandi.
MPEG Stream: LITTLE BASTARDS "Lie, Deceive, Steal"
MPEG Stream: MAGNICIDE "Misery Of An Existence"
MPEG Stream: MORTALIZED "Funeral Grind"
MPEG Stream: CORTECUELLOS "Don't Call Japanese Hardcore Japcore"
MPEG Stream: MANGIRL "Ghoul Gurumand"
MPEG Stream: UNHOLY GRAVE "Cruel Terror"

V/A Lords Of Chaos: The History Of Occult Music (Index Verlag) 2cd 19.98
Lords Of Chaos, the definitive book on the whole Norwegian black metal scene, heavily focused on all that church burning, band mate murdering drama, that made an otherwise grim and cult a household dinner party topic, even amongst folks usually averse to metal and murder and mayhem.
This two disc companion seems the be more thematically linked to the book, featuring tracks by many of the bands, while more interestingly tracing a history of occult music from the blues to seventies prog to industrial, eighties metal to underground subversive soundtracks to the current crop of corpse painted black metal warriors. It's an awesome introduction for the black metal newbie for sure, featuring tracks from Bathory, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, Ulver, Thorns, Abruptum and of course Venom, the godfathers of black metal. But it's way more than that. The first disc especially is jam packed with haunting, mysterious, metal and occult classics. Aleister Crowley, recorded on wax cylinder, invoking Satan, Robert Johnson (he did make a deal with the devil after all!), an awesome creepy classic prog jam from Coven, of course Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath", more amazing flute flecked prog from Black Widow, whose demonic elements seem to be more thematic, but a killer jam nonetheless, some creepy cinematic ambience from Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil (whose remarkable Lucifer Rising 4lp box we reviewed recently), maybe the biggest surprise, an 11 minute chunk of electronic looped weirdness from someone called Mick J (we'll go out on a limb and say it's actually Mick Jagger!), that we listen to over and over, Venom's classic "Black Metal" (of course!), then Mercyful Fate, Sodom, Hellhammer, finallty some industrial stuff, Monte Cazazza, Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV, as well as some goofy organ music from the high priest himself, Anton LaVey.
The second disc is where you'll find all the black metal, but also a rare track from Italian horror metallers Death SS, and some other random evil occult weirdness from White Stains, Electric Hellfire Club and Peter H. Gilmore, acting high priest of the Church Of Satan. Killer stuff, super varied, and easy to enjoy even if you haven't read Lords Of Chaos. Comes with a massive book, featuring a brief history of occult rock, a bit about all the artists and performers, plenty of pix, as well as an introduction by Michael Moynihan, author of Lords Of Chaos. Definitely essential, even for someone who is well familiar with most of these artists, plays like the coolest 'evil occult' mix tape any one could ever make you.
These have been tough to get, so if we run out, please be patient while we order more from overseas, best to grab one now while you can...
MPEG Stream: ALEISTER CROWLEY "The Pentagram"
MPEG Stream: COVEN "The Portrait"
MPEG Stream: BLACK WIDOW "Sacrifice"
MPEG Stream: BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL "In The Temple Of The Moon"
MPEG Stream: MICK J "Invocation Of My Demon Brother"

V/A Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute To The Songs Of Kath Bloom (Chapter Music) 2cd 17.98
Wow, such a superb treat for any longtime Kath Bloom fan! This will surely win her many new ones too! Loving Takes This Course not only features a tribute cd packed with sixteen amazing artists covering her tunes, but also a second disc with the fifteen originals by the lady herself! Wondering why there's a discrepancy in track count? It's because there are two fine covers of "Come Here" - one that opens the tribute proceedings and one that closes it. So with these two discs, you can swiftly hear just how faithfully close the artists stuck to Bloom's delicately lilting and deeply intimate blueprint or how far they ventured away from it. Unlike some other tribute albums where you sorta end up having to step gingerly around the well-meaning, but not quite successful renditions, this collection is terrific and absolutely heartfelt from start to finish. Really, everyone shows their love and respect to this wonderful folk artist soooo beautifully in song!
Here's the who's who: Bill Callahan, Josephine Foster, Devendra Banhart, Meg Baird, Mark Kozelek, Marianne Dissard & Joey Burns (of Calexico), The Concretes, Tom Hanford, Peggy Frew & Mick Turner (of Dirty 3), Scout Niblett, Amy Rude, Marble Sounds, Laura Jean, Mia Doi Todd, Corrina Repp, and The Dodos! Wow.
Have to say, Monsieur Banhart's take on Forget About Him", Dissard & Burns' darker hued "It's So Hard To Come Home" and The Concretes' dreamy "Come Here" are particularly tickling our fancy this week! Don't miss!
MPEG Stream: BANHART, DEVENDRA "Forget About Him"
MPEG Stream: DISSARD, MARIANNE & JOEY BURNS "It's So Hard To Come Home"
MPEG Stream: CONCRETE, THE "Come Here"

V/A Wayfaring Strangers: Lonesome Heroes (Numero Group) cd 16.98
Another incredible installment in Numero Group's Wayfaring Strangers series, Lonesome Heroes is the male singer-songwriter counterpart to the series' first installment, Ladies of The Canyon. But instead of one artist serving as the thematic touchstone (Joni Mitchell and John Fahey were the key influences of the first two installments), there are several influences present, but the artists are unified by a moody tone of loneliness and introspection. You can hear traces of Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Tim Hardin and Tom Rapp in this collection of private press wonder (one artist, Kieran White, the only singer from the UK and a member of Steamhammer, actually sounds a lot like Sam Beam from Iron and Wine!), but the songs that span the late sixties to the early eighties are neither love songs or protest songs. Nor do they connect in any real way to a folk music scene or its traditions. These 17 artists, mostly from America, were rambling individuals who more often than not wrote music for recording more than for performing, penning quiet songs about time spent and lost, regrets and joys, and nature as the mystical reminder of this ever present balance of life. The home studio has a big presence in the recordings casting a warm tape aura around the songs and making subtle studio effects (reverb, multi-tracking, panning) add interesting details to the compositions. It's not all just an acoustic guitar and a voice (though some of it is), but aural flourishes of flutes, pianos, and female backing vocals can also be heard throughout. Perfect for Sunday Morning listening! As usual, Numero Group do a great job with the packaging with an added booklet featuring photos of the original private press lps and mini-bios of all the artists here. Astonishing!
MPEG Stream: RICHARD SMYRNIOS "As I Walk"
MPEG Stream: KIERAN WHITE "Hummingbirds"
MPEG Stream: GEORGE CROMARTY "Little Children"
MPEG Stream: JOHN VILLEMONTE "I Am The Moonlight"

VAGUSNERVE Lo Pan (Utech) cd 14.98
This fellow we know recently wrote an entertaining book called Get High Now, no not about drugs, but about other sorts of highs, non-drug related natural techniques to enjoy "sensory trips" and the like. Quite a few of them are sound-based (the book even references Ryoji Ikeda at one point) but in a major oversight, a recommendation to "listen to VagusNerve" was left out! 'Cause it's definitely a trip when you really settle into a session with VagusNerve on the stereo or better yet headphones - likewise of course with a lot of other drone musics too, why do you think we like the stuff so much? Loud enough, it'll either stimulate, or at least simulate, a high.
So, c'mon, get high now with Chinese guitar/laptop duo VagusNerve. Someone calling herself VAVABOND is the laptopper, and Li Jianhong (of D!O!D!O!D!) is the guitar player. We're already considerable fans of Li's solo psych/noise guitar excursions (his disc on aRCHIVE for instance, and a fantastic new one on PSF, Classic Of the Mountains And Seas) so we were excited when we found out he's half of VagusNerve. We were also interested to learn what exactly the lo pan of the title is. As the liner notes explain, it's a traditional Chinese mytho-technological device, a sort of Feng Shui compass. A rotating disc in a wooden base, with several concentric rings of Chinese characters to which the needle in the middle can point, indicating various arcane things.
VagusNerve are not actually using a lo pan to make this music, rather it's inspired by a dream Li had about a giant lo pan in a forest that could be used to summon UFOs! That's pretty much the title of the first track, in fact. And swarming cosmic UFOs looking for mystical feng shui advice definitely could be making some of the sounds heard here. It's nervous, very active drone musick, buzzing and zapping and crackling and chiming, featuring 3 long tracks (8:21, 21:05, 28:27). There's much moody sci-fi windiness, and what sounds like flocks of otherworldly birds crying to one another, amidst thick grinding whooshing sizzling drones, spinning and swirling. Feedback a la underwater whale calls, resonant "long wire" like vibrations, insectoid buzzings, and mechanical rhythms all feature in the the mix. It's a sonic delirium, wherein Urthona is jamming opaquely with KK Null, if that hypothetical comparison is of any help to you.
Definitely another cool Utech release, a label we've been raving about lately for many good reasons (Horseback, Gog, Aluk Todolo, Blood Fountain...). Regarding Li Jianhong, hopefully we'll be reviewing that new PSF disc of his very soon. And, by the way, he also made several appearances on that An Anthology Of Chinese Experimental Music box set we listed last time.
MPEG Stream: "In The Summer Of 2006 Li Made A Dream About A Lopan And A UFO."
MPEG Stream: "No Doubt. The Lo Pan Is A Universe."

VAMPIRES OF DARTMOORE, THE Dracula's Music Cabinet (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 15.98
It's pretty obvious why the folks at B-music (like DJs Andy Votel and Dom Thomas) dig these particular collectible exploito obscurities so much, and why they're so excited to be reissuing 'em in their new "Germanic Miner" series dedicated to "krautsider music"! What could be more B-musical than these two faux soundtracks concocted in the late sixties by a couple of creative German producers, operating at the weird, wacked out intersection of kitschy library music and freaky krautrock? One's a slice of slinky, sorta-scary "horrotica", the other a spaced out sci-fi fest for the Barbarella set. Both are delirious, demented party-pleasers.
The Vampires Of Dartmoore and their Dracula's Music Cabinet conjures a sexy frightmare of hip swinging, bloodsucking sounds. "Mord Im Ohio Express (Murder In The Ohio Express)" seems kinda surfy, but mostly this is about groovy porno lounge music, with smoky horns and jazzy percussion, interwoven with screams and creepy sound effects, moaning and groaning, dogs barking and something going boing boing boing... It's a very NON-academic application of musique concrete technique, noises worked into the songs, such as the rumbling explosions that punctuate "Eine Handvoll Nitro (A Handful Of Nitro)". The mix is fairly chaotic, stuff fading in and out, levels up and down. If this WAS a movie soundtrack, it would have been a pretty crazy movie. Tracks reference Hitchcock, Dr. Caligari, and Frankenstein's monster. And sex. Definitely sex.
Equally bizarre, if less R-rated, is the Science Fiction Dance Party. Again, it's groovy, jazzy, sometimes fuzzy "instro-hipster" style stuff, laced with loads of goofy outer space sound effects and rocketship radio drama theatrics. It sounds like music for a cocktail party and/or acid test on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. You can imagine Robbie the Robot getting down to this. Distorted alien and/or computer voices abound, song titles include "Visitors Of A.D. 2022", "The Whistling Astronaut", and "Hit Parade In The Light Year 25" (which doesn't even make sense, don't they know that light years are a measure of distance?). As well as whistling, there's some screams here too, as spacemen are presumably being zapped with rayguns, but the music remains jaunty. Even the song "Death Rays Out Of The Universe" is inexplicably upbeat. So, it's all very silly, but a lot of fun.
Both albums feature bonus tracks (2 previously unreleased "Petting Party" jams on Vampires, 4 extra tracks on Science Fiction that come back to earth to delve into disco and Eastern exotica instead). The slipcased cds of these are now domestic releases (we waited instead of getting the expensive imports) but the LP versions remain imports.
MPEG Stream: "Crime And Horror"
MPEG Stream: "Mord Im Ohio Express (Murder In The Ohio Express)"
MPEG Stream: "Tanz Der Vampires (Dance Of The Vampires)"

VARIANT The Setting Sun (Echospace) cd 16.98
By now, we know exactly what to expect from a new Echospace record. Total soft focus Pop Ambient bliss out. Abstract, ethereal, gauzy, murky, meditative, Variant is the perfect addition to the Echospace stable, exploring similar sonics, but adding a definite darkness, wreathing the shimmer and drift in a surf like crackle and hum, the buried melodies, more like pulses, distant throbs, the heroin house of classic Chain Reaction rendered even more indistinct, the beats, skeletal and glitchy, just as often slipping into the background, to lurk rhythmically below the constantly shifting layers of bristly texture. And it's that texture that defines The Setting Sun, where plenty of electronica is wispy and shadowy and otherworldly and effervescent, Variant is most definitely a much more grim, and foreboding proposition, the dubbed out elements floating in a morass of processed record crackle, of blurred white noise, the hiss of electronic rainfall. The best moments in fact are when the texture and ambience swell and swallow up all the other elements, leaving a dark shimmery cloud of sound particles to drift and glimmer and glisten before the beat, or melody finally struggles back to the surface.
The 23 minute closing track is a gorgeous (and surprisingly) crystalline chunk of slow burning shimmer, pulled apart into a sort of ultra abstract slowcore, all the above mentioned buzz and crackle relegated to the background, a sibilance WAY off in the distance, the sound warm, and melancholy, sun dappled and delicate, a pretty and sunshiney coda to an otherwise dark and dense disc of dubbed out electronic ambient hiss and pulse. Easily our new favorite late night drifting off disc...
MPEG Stream: "As Time Stood Still"
MPEG Stream: "The Setting Sun"

WOODS To Clean / Rain On (live on WVKR) (Half Machine Records) 7" 7.98
Brand new two tracker from these dreamy forest folkers, their brand of folk indie fuzz pop a sound we just seem to love more and more everyday, harmony vocals, clean guitar jangle, simple garage rock drumming, so sunshiney and sixties sounding, music for laying in green grass under blue skies, the wind in the trees, all wrapped in soft reverb and dreamy delay.
The live track on the flipside though is the real stunner, super stripped down, total back porch, later afternoon strum and croon, also hazy and reverbed, but with some of the dreamiest falsetto vocals we've heard in ages, with a killer hook, and spidery tendrils of woozy guitar melody. Haunting and super pretty, super minimal and skeletal but still mysteriously lush.
Housed in an instantly recognizable Woods sleeve, an old time life picture of trees and forests, all creased up, with the band name scrawled in white out in the corner.
Probably crazy limited too...



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ALVA NOTO Xerrox Vol.2 (Raster-Norton) 2lp 23.00
Now available on vinyl!
Part two of Alva Noto's Xerrox series takes up right where the last one left off, continuing on in a much more buzzy, blissy, droney vein, way more textural and melodic than many of the AN records that have come before. In the review of volume one we mentioned Pop Ambient, and if anything volume 2 is even more washed out and shimmery, right out of the gate, AN offers up a warm wash of muted buzz, and thick gristly whir, softly pulsating, layered and warm, seemingly gone are the harsh tones and glitchy clicks and pops found on most Raster-Noton releases. Could be that Xerrox is just a concept record, but we have to say, as much as we loved the clipped minimalism of other Alva Noto records, the sounds here are quite divine. But this is an Alva Noto record, so even these warm whirls of drifting ambience, are laced with bits of static and hiss, super high end sine waves, but they're woven deftly into the sound, and serve to simply add more texture. There's a brief bit of super minimal beep and rumble, but then it's right back into that gorgeous drifty haze, that could just as soon be a Tim Hecker record.
"Xerrox Meta Phaser" follows suit, at least in the beginning, a soft whirring soundscape, that quickly escalates into an almost Sunn like dirge before exploding into a squall of blown out white noise. And then we're back to the dreamy dronemusic, this time, stretched out strings, smeared into soft summery swells, laced with a patina of gritty hiss, and so it goes, the whole record is a dark swirling expanse of muted minimal melodies, warm textures, mysterious drones, and delicate hazy drifts, the usual glitch and buzz, relegated to accents and filigree, rarely interfering in the rest of the record's blissy sprawl. Any one of these tracks would be right at home on the newest, more Kranky-fied Pop Ambient comp, and thus, this might be the first Raster-Noton record that might just appeal to all the drone and dirge folks as much as the glitch and pop people.
Like all R-N stuff, gorgeously designed and packaged, an oversized diecut, 8 panel sleeve, the cd nestled within the diecuts, the art spare and minimal and striking.
MPEG Stream: "Xerrox Phaser Acat 1"
MPEG Stream: "Xerrox Soma"
MPEG Stream: "Xerrox Meta Phaser"

CROM The Cocaine Wars 1974-1989 (Forest Moon) lp 16.98
This incredible slab of ridiculous heaviness, long out of print on cd, is finally available on lp, worth it to have the insane cover art all BIG, easily one of the best record covers you'll ever see, and the goofy sonic crush to back it up! Plus if you missed it before, now you've got a chance to hear it!
L.A.'s kings of grindcore first full length (after a shitload of comps and 7"s). Heavy and noisy and totally hilarious. From the airbrushed cocaine/Conan the Barbarian '70s-van art cover, to the ridiculous between song banter (lifted from Venom and others) to the sort-of-appropriation of metal classics and '70s am radio hits that occasionally surface between bursts of all out grind, this record fucking rules. Think Crossed Out but way slower and WAY sloppier, or maybe Man Is The Bastard with a sense of humor.
Awesome.

ENTRANCE BAND, THE s/t (Ecstatic Peace! / Universal Motown) cd 12.98
It's been a long road for Guy Blakeslee, since his early days as bassist for Baltimore post-punks the Convocation Of..., to the acoustic psych blues of Entrance. The last few years have seen that solo endeavor electrified into the Entrance Band with the addition of bassist Paz Lenchantin (whose recent Songs For Luci lp we reviewed a few lists back) and drummer Derek W. James, and here the trio dish up a solidly rocking collection of songs that very capably venture into more polished territory without losing any of their primal rock energy.
The end result emphasizes the band's impressive instrumentation - make no mistake, Blakeslee can shred, and the rhythm section ain't no slouches either - within a more modern indie approach while still managing to bring to mind some good ol' classic rock. It took a few listens for this to click with us, but once it did, we were sold. Those of us at AQ who have been bigtime Entrance fans from the beginning definitely noticed a much different production, aesthetic and straight ahead rock vibe to this new Entrance outing. In fact, when thinking of "modern rock", you may find yourself questioning why it isn't THIS you're hearing on the radio. The Entrance Band are a modern day power trio, bluesy and psychedelic as hell, with all kinds of snaky guitar licks, thunderous bass, and awesomely grooving drums, with Blakeslee's clear but powerful vocals cutting right through. One certainly gets the impression that they must tear shit UP live. A nice surprise, this one.
MPEG Stream: "M.L.K."
MPEG Stream: "Grim Reaper Blues (Pt. 2)"
MPEG Stream: "This Is Why"

ENTRANCE BAND, THE s/t (Ecstatic Peace! / Universal Motown) 2lp 17.98
It's been a long road for Guy Blakeslee, since his early days as bassist for Baltimore post-punks the Convocation Of..., to the acoustic psych blues of Entrance. The last few years have seen that solo endeavor electrified into the Entrance Band with the addition of bassist Paz Lenchantin (whose recent Songs For Luci lp we reviewed a few lists back) and drummer Derek W. James, and here the trio dish up a solidly rocking collection of songs that very capably venture into more polished territory without losing any of their primal rock energy.
The end result emphasizes the band's impressive instrumentation - make no mistake, Blakeslee can shred, and the rhythm section ain't no slouches either - within a more modern indie approach while still managing to bring to mind some good ol' classic rock. It took a few listens for this to click with us, but once it did, we were sold. Those of us at AQ who have been bigtime Entrance fans from the beginning definitely noticed a much different production, aesthetic and straight ahead rock vibe to this new Entrance outing. In fact, when thinking of "modern rock", you may find yourself questioning why it isn't THIS you're hearing on the radio. The Entrance Band are a modern day power trio, bluesy and psychedelic as hell, with all kinds of snaky guitar licks, thunderous bass, and awesomely grooving drums, with Blakeslee's clear but powerful vocals cutting right through. One certainly gets the impression that they must tear shit UP live. A nice surprise, this one.
MPEG Stream: "M.L.K."
MPEG Stream: "Grim Reaper Blues (Pt. 2)"
MPEG Stream: "This Is Why"

EVAPORATORS, THE / ANDREW W.K. A Wild Pear (Nardwar The Human Serviette / Mint) 7" 6.98
Ba-booom! This a Nardwuar The Human Serviette alert! A short dose is contained on this here record - a split 7" between Nardwuar's band The Evaporators and a certain Andrew W.K.
Yeah, we were sort of braced when this showed up. Can you say "Gung ho!"? Two irrepressible individuals and their respective cohorts go toe to toe, wreaking some good ol' garage rock havoc. Mr. W.K. covers two awesome songs by two awesome Canadian bands, punk rock legends Vancouver's Subhumans and the mighty Toronto duo The Leather Uppers. It's a relatively stripped down W.K. compared to his stadium rock persona of yore, but it's no less bombastic. Nardwuar and co. tackle a tune by obscure Montrealers Les Hou-Lops as well as deliver one of their own, the sillily juvenilely titled "The Bombs In My Pants". If you're seeking a ridiculous fun listen and some extremely obscure pop trivia, this is for you! Bonus "treats": a brief clip of Nardwuar interviewing W.K. as well as a printed insert that verges on old school obsessive zine-ish-ness documenting among other things the coming together of the two. Actually, attempting to read the tiny solidly packed text will probably take longer than listening to these five songs!

IRONSWORD Overlords Of Chaos (Shadow Kingdom) 2lp 26.00
NOW ON VINYL!!
This is not the first time we've heard from these Portuguese heavy metallers, but might be the best time! Either this band has gotten better over the years, or our ears have gotten more and more leathery (possibly both). This is their first release since the NWOBHM covers split 7" they did with Slough Feg back in 2005, and it's been worth the wait, that is if you're into epick swords and sorcery metal '80s style. Overlords Of Chaos is escapist metal manna to sate the bloodthirsty appetites of true metal warriors, the lyrics based on works of Robert E. Howard (just like their doomier brothers-in-arms The Gates Of Slumber). Underground, only-for-the-true stuff, very much in the vein of Ironsword's big heroes Manilla Road. So much so, that they actually got Manilla Road's Mark "The Shark" Shelton to sing backup on a few of the tracks here. Boy, the Ironsword dudes must have been excited about that! We're almost surprised that Shelton wasn't too busy signing each band member's entire Manilla Road collection to actually have time to get behind the microphone.
Ironsword's regular vocalist also sounds a lot like Shelton, delivering these barbaric battle hymns in a manner both gruff and triumphant. That well matches the music, seriously pounding and powerful. We say seriously, and if you can't take these Conan-inspired tracks ("Wrath Of Crom", "Cimmeria", "Dark Shadows Of Stygia", etc.) in that spirit, well... either this isn't for you, or at least you'll get some laughs out of it! If the latter is the case, fine, but you'll be missing the gist of something that really means a lot to these guys... they're not doing this for laughs at all. R.E. Howard and Manilla Road speak to their hearts, and maybe Ironsword can speak to yours if you let them.
All thirteen tracks here, from the uber-majestic opening sweep of "Death Of The Gods" to the glorious "Hyperborean Hordes" to the ripping "Fear The Night" to the semi-acoustic requiem of "The Pyre Of Kings" are Howardian headbangers par excellence. But it's the rockin' "Road Warriors" with its monomaniacal, repetitive riff break that starts at about the 3 minute mark that is the highlight for us, though. Suddenly they're Pharaoh Overlord, for about 45 seconds at least! Otherwise, it's all about good stuff like Cirith Ungol, Omen, Manowar, Sacred Steel, Doomsword, The Gates Of Slumber, and of course Manilla Road.
There's another retro-'80s "true metal" album reviewed this list, the self-titled one by Portrait. Comparing the two, well, they're both gonna be cult items. But Ironsword seems to be the geekier gang, yet their music is heavier and rawer as well. If you had to choose between Portrait and Ironsword (we like 'em both), it's a basically a choice between Mercyful Fate and Manilla Road... and if you aren't into either of *those* bands, then we imagine that both Portrait and Ironsword would want no part of you anyway.
MPEG Stream: "Cimmeria"
MPEG Stream: "Hyperborean Hordes"
MPEG Stream: "Road Warriors"

LAKE OF DRACULA Skeletal Remains (Rococo) lp 15.98
Now on vinyl! Here's what we said about the cd edition when it came out a few years back:
What's weird is we don't remember liking Lake Of Dracula very much back in the day, but listening to this now, it's sort of kicking our ass in a huge way. Pounding sludgy new wavish punk rock, with a serious gothy dark vibe. Sort of like Chrome playing Interpol or something. Big crunchy guitars playing doomy angular riffs, a simple garagerock thud, thick swaths of feedback, occasional squalls of psychedelic freakout, and vocals that rant and rave in a super dramatic croon. Most of this disc is take from a live radio broadcast recorded May 28th, 1997, but there are a handful of extra tracks taken from singles and compilations. This short lived combo ('95-'97) featured Flying Luttenbachers drummer extraordinaire Weasel Walter on the GUITAR, Marlon Magas from Couch and Magas on vocals, Jessica from the Jacks on bass and Heather M. from the Scissor Girls on the drumkit as well as some guest rock action from Al of U.S. Maple fame.
Shit, the more we listen to this, the more we're digging it. An ultra chaotic mix of old school industrial thud, gloomy depressive punk rock, psychedelic garage rock stomp, a hellish sort-of-rockabilly with reverbed guitars and galloping drums, gloomy doom and in-your-face no-wave freakout. Seems like it would be a big ol' mess and it sort of is, but it sounds so impossibly good. Like the Strokes with frontal lobotomies recording for Bulb, or some caveman doom band covering Franz Ferdinand after taking huge handfuls of horse tranquilizers. Getting a jump on the current crop of new wave revivalists by a decade. But their new wave was a whole lot darker, damaged and demented!
MPEG Stream: "Four Teachers"
MPEG Stream: "Plague Of Frogs"
MPEG Stream: "Biographers Of The Flaming Druglords"
MPEG Stream: "Cherries And Socks"

MARS VOLTA Octahedron (Rodriguez Lopez Productions) 2lp 38.00
Now on not so cheap vinyl (special for this Saturday's Vinyl Record Store Day)... This latest release from modern prog heroes Mars Volta finds them at their orchestrated and organized best. Omar Rodriguez Lopez lays on the guitar effects while Cedric Bixler Zavala's vocals soar above and beyond into the stratosphere. There's a lot of extended build ups (as one has grown to expect) and some really crazy drum work on this record (especially on "Cotopaxi"). Though most of the eight tracks rock almost beyond belief, there are a couple sloooow, dreamy jams that almost require closed eyes and a doobie to fully appreciate.
MPEG Stream: "Since We've Been Wrong"
MPEG Stream: "Teflon"
MPEG Stream: "Halo Of Nembutals"

MORBID TALES Issue #6 magazine 8.98
We're happy to report that the internet has not (entirely) killed the 'zine. Blogs and websites are great, but can't really replace a good old fashioned b&w stapled xeroxed 'zine! They do seem old fashioned, though. And that vintage quality is fully embraced by this metal 'zine out of Canada, Morbid Tales, since the subject matter covered is pretty old school too. Some of the bands here are new, but they carry the torch of '80s underground metal (thrash, doom, death and NWOBHM) high. '90s cult black metal and '70s psych and prog is also not outside Morbid Tales' purview. While all 'zines are labors of love, editor Annick "Satannick" Grioux REALLY is a maniac for this music. Her enthusiasm really captures the spirit of 'zines back in the old pre-internet tape-trading days.
Interviewees, among others, include Darkthrone, Portrait, Master's Hammer, Voivod, Pagan Altar, Cauldron, The Lamp Of Thoth, Elixir, Soothsayer, and, get this, Flower Travellin' Band (who get asked about the naked chopper riding cover photo of their debut LP)!! Plus there's reviews of obscure releases and demos, metal tourist shopping guides to London, Paris, Montreal, and Prague, show reports, and other interesting tidbits, including a brief guide to "Purple Metal" aka Italian Horror Metal like Black Hole and Paul Chain.
This is Morbid Tales' biggest issue yet, 117 full size pages, plus flip it over and then there's another 13 page bonus zine all about heavy metal cooking tips entitled Hell Bent For Cooking (soon to be expanded into a book to be published by Bazillion Points we're told)! Recipes contributed by members of Anvil, Exciter, Cauldron, Trouble, The Gates Of Slumber, Countess, Ogre, Piledriver, and others. Such delicious dishes as: The Stew Of True Doom. Tomato-Garlic Hellfire Chicken. Black Pudding And Squid In It's Own Ink, With A Hashish Garnish. And then by the last few pages, the recipes have turned into drink mixes, these being metalheads after all...
Morbid Tales #6 (+ Hell Bent For Cooking) is an impressively thick tome of metal obsessiveness all in all. We only got a handful of copies (8) and won't be able to get any more, as it's SOLD OUT, so act fast if you want one.

MOUNTAIN GOATS, THE & JOHN VANDERSLICE Moon Colony Bloodbath (self-released) 12" 14.98
Managed to get a handful more of these from the Mountain Goats, good chance these will be the last copies we see, so act fast!!!
Another super limited vinyl only Mountain Goats record, this one a collaboration concept record with SF power popper John Vanderslice. The Mountain Goats (aka John Darnielle) and Vanderslice toured together earlier this year, and took the opportunity to make a record together, but not just any record, a CONCEPT record. And not just any concept record, no, this one tells the story of organ harvesting colonies on the moon, and the employees of said colonies, who spend their non work time living in luxurious seclusion throughout America. Wow.
The record itself isn't like a typical rock opera, it's loosely related to the concept, so it plays just fine simply as a gorgeous pop record, and a gorgeous pop record it is. Lush and well produced, with lots of instruments, guitars and organs and cellos and harmonicas and even handclaps (we know, not actually an instrument)! Darnielle and Vanderslice trade off songs, each writes and sings his own, but both contribute to all of them. Plus the record was produced by Chris Stamey, of pop legends the dB's, he also plays on a bunch of the songs.
Darnielle's instantly recognizable, slightly nasal croon plays nicely with Vanderslice's more traditional power pop vocals, lots of lovely harmonies, woven into the gorgeous instrumentation, plenty of hooks, catchy melodies, moody and melancholy mostly, but with moments of joyous exuberance, fans of both the Mountain Goats and Vanderslice should dig this a lot. We definitely do.
This is super limited, and not a lot of places are selling it. We got a bunch direct from the band, and these are most likely all we'll be able to get. Pressed on good old heavy black wax, and housed in thick full color sleeves. While they last, VERY recommended.

MUTANTES, OS Dois Mil E Nove (including Os Mutantes #1, Os Mutantes #2, & A Divina Comedia) (Lilith) 3lp 66.00
Three of the best, and our favorite, Tropicalia releases EVER, now available on vinyl again, in this super deluxe box set.
Their 1968 debut (self titled Os Mutantes, not to be confused, though it's easy, with their also self titled 2nd album Mutantes) is one of the most important and influential records of the last quarter century. Seriously. Here was a band from Sao Paulo, Brazil creating sounds with so many layers and styles intertwined, dense and dizzying, lush and lilting, elaborately arranged but so simple and catchy, who have gone on to help inspire some of the best and most beloved musical outfits in recent times. Their blending of breezy psychedelia, fuzzy delicious pop, and drops of musique concrete was the perfect infusion of experimental elements into challenging and rewarding pop that STILL sounds so amazingly enchanting, weird and irresistible. We could go on listing forever some of the bands and artists who have been inspired by so much of the Muntantes' spirit, sound and aesthetic: Stereolab, Broadcast, the whole Elephant Six scene, Beck, The Flaming Lips, Tower Recordings, Tater Totz, the list is endless. Today we even just noticed how Sonic Youth totally took the guitar melody of "O Relogio" for their classic "Little Trouble Girl". The scope and breadth of Os Mutantes influence is immeasurable. At one point, Kurt Kobain was desperately trying to convince Os Mutantes to tour with Nirvana! And while best-of collections and a few songs on comps here and there are nice, this is the kind of band whose records need to be heard in their entirety. We can't say it loud enough but just imagine us singing to you in glorious sun dappled Technicolor as we tell you that THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And not just 'cause it's the one that features perhaps their best-known hits, "Baby" and "Bat Macumba". Heck we could even do without those songs at this point, the rest of this is so great. An absolute all time Aquarius favorite and quite possibly one of the best pop records EVER! You might as well just give in, you absolutely need ALL of their first three albums. Never has there been a more perfectly unique and effortless blend of bossa nova and fuzzed out psych rock as on this trio of perfect discs! In addition to this their absolutely perfect debut, there's also Mutantes (album #2, 1969) with its amazing green alien band photo on the back cover. And of course A Divina Comedia (album #3, 1970) with its slightly proggier sound and striking graveyard scene on the cover. Their "Sgt. Pepper meets Astrud Gilberto mix" holds up brilliantly across all three original Mutantes records. It's the sort of thing where we're kinda envious of anyone who hasn't heard 'em already and now has the chance to buy these for the first time!
MPEG Stream: "A Minha Menina"
MPEG Stream: "O Relogio"
MPEG Stream: "Panis Et Circensis"
MPEG Stream: "Nao Va Se Perder Por Ai"
MPEG Stream: "Caminhante Noturno"
MPEG Stream: "Desculpe, Babe"
MPEG Stream: "Oh! Mulher Infiel"

OSWALT, PATTON My Weakness Is Strong (Warner Bros. / Degenerate) cd+dvd 14.98
Yippeee! We're always geeked to hear there's new stuff from Patton Oswalt! Our abs never look better than after a vigorous session of laughing our guts out! Maybe he should consider targeting the fitness market. When his voice crests into the upper register we can easily imagine him as the next Richard Simmons (yup, our imagination is very vivid!). Heck, he's already become quite a guru to many (albeit non-fitness). Anyhoo, on My Weakness Is Strong, he had many of us in stitches from the get go with his trademark exuberance. However, rather than this feeling like a totally fresh batch of tales and observations, it's more like hanging out with an old college buddy shootin' the shit. Y'know, like the friend who retells old stories that he doesn't remember he's already told you, but in Oswalt's case in the interim he's rewritten those yarns with different characters and slightly different scenarios. As with your dear chum, you don't complain, but chuckle along because it IS funny. Certainly helps that he delivers the goods with the same killer pacing and dynamics he always has - obviously a vital key to drawing the laughs - although it does come across as more rehearsed and not as spontaneous at times. It's also pretty evident that his other more recent career has been in movie voice work. His range of characters is a lot more varied this time around. That's totally cool except that it means we get a bit less of the geeky comic book man-boy persona we know and love so dearly. The different voices he assumes come across more like those of random strangers than of Oswalt's well-weathered inner voices on his older material. A bit less interesting, a bit less holy shit!
Yeah, you're probably thinking "Aaaah, they're just spouting old school sour grapes (a la "his earlier stuff was waaay better, man!")", and to a certain extent, yes, we are. Some of the best fodder for comedy writing is drawn from personal experiences and insights - the bizarre, the astute, the biting, the snide, the absurd. Oswalt's older bits were rife with all of those. If this album is any indication, his recent activities have been rife with mostly domestic bliss. Topics this time lean more heavily on the commonplace grown-up mundane rather than pop culture, comic books, video games, and sci-fi flicks. In other words, you get tales of house hunting instead of hottub ball shaving. Shit, he said it himself on his last album Werewolves And Lollipops! The #1 killer of comedy material is personal contentment and comfort. Literally, no joke. He's now happily married with a baby on board. He's got a kickass hot poop career, and one of his prime sources for supervillain material is now out of office. And really, let's face it, he was on a successful major network TV show for years, and though he still looks and plays the part well, his genuine underdog days are far behind him. Good for Patton, bad for our abs. We're a bit bummed by the shift in focus, but we shouldn't really be all that surprised. He's clearly a savvy, smart guy doin' well in the big leagues, and he is still a very very funny man, but he's appealing to a far broader audience. Watching the dvd, you quickly get an impression of the size of place he's packing these days. It's a very large theater and it is a significant factor in the Oswalt experience. The immediate impact of his past stand-up performances in intimate smaller venues was unquestionable. Totally like seeing that awesome new band absolutely slay in someone's basement or dive bar. It's a fleeting joy, but of course you've gotta move on. Nevertheless you'll always have that cherished memory (and 222 cd!).
So yeah... recommended of course... but only after you've been lubed up by any/all of his previous recordings! Psst, this does get bonus points for the Chick Tract inspired Ivan Brunetti cover art!

RAMLEH Too Many Miles (Dirter Promotions) cd 17.98
BACK IN PRINT!!!
Much has been written here about the recent work of Matthew Bower and his beautiful improv skree in Sunroof (paralleling the massive proliferation of likeminded acts Vibracathedral Orchestra and Birchville Cat Motel); but people often overlook the fact that he began making music in the early '80s as a part of the Broken Flag camp - a loose collective of British power electronics technicians and noise rockers, that recorded under the monikers Skullflower, Total, and Ramleh. While Bower was principally the 'figurehead' of the first two and fellow Broken Flag waver Gary Mundy took hold of Ramleh, most of the recording was done with a revolving door membership. Between Skullflower and Ramleh, the Broken Flag camp had produced a noxious arsenal of sludgy noise rock with grim guitar pyrotechnics, crashing upon pummelling rhythm sections, village-idiot basslines and thuggish percussive blasts. These days, the awe-inspiring Skullflower albums Form Destroyer and Birthdeath are virtually extinct (even, the cd compendium Ruins is impossible to find); but fortunately, the old Ramleh stuff is finally available again via this collection of singles. Hopefully this will help keep Broken Flag from dissappearing in the dustbins of musical history.
The formulas for Ramleh (and Skullflower for that matter) were incredibly simple: hammer out a basic rhythm as heavy and as loud as possible, then layer on the angriest and most dissonant blasts of post-Blue Cheer psychedelic freaks outs. Throughout the '80s, Ramleh and Skullflower were pigeonholed as a part of Industrial Culture - due to their power electronics side projects and associations with Whitehouse; yet as Too Many Miles now indicates, this work has much more parallels with the explosive dirges of Neurosis or the incendiary stoner rock of Boris. Really fantastic stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Eightball Corner Pocket"
MPEG Stream: "Welcome"
MPEG Stream: "Black Moby Dick"

SHINDIG! September - October 2009, Vol. 2 Issue 12 magazine 9.98
On the cover: singer Julie Driscoll (and organist Brian Auger, though the picture is just of Julie...). Inside, also: Spirit, Kim Fowley, Question Mark and the Mysterians, Wimple Witch, Iron Virgin, and modern day pagan-proggers Circulus. Plus reviews and news and the other usual magazine features. Shindig has undergone graphic redesign this time around, but it's still the same magazine of good old psych/pop/garage and other vintage sounds, made by bands (mostly) old and (occasionally) new. Includes free cd comp of new bands.

STRENG, PEKKA Kesamaa (Love) cd 17.98
The second and final record from this legendary Finnish folk icon, who died at age 26 not soon after this record was released. Where his first album, Magneettimiehen Kuolema, was recorded with Finnish prog rockers, Tsavallan Presidentti, this psych folk gem from 1972 is much more stripped down and intimate, dark and mysterious, a combination of shuffly folk and haunting psychedelia, Streng's delicate croon, underpinned by simple percussion, acoustic guitars, pointillist piano, and fluttery flute.
Some of the numbers are fairly upbeat and jubilant, festive for sure, but the magic lies in the darkside, the hushed whispery drifts that found Streng infusing some serious jazzy cosmic drift into his more minimal folkiness. Streng was a huge influence on the modern Finnish troubadours (Es, Kemialliset, Ystavat, Kiila, etc...) and it's easy to hear why on Kesamaa...
MPEG Stream: "Mimosaneito"
MPEG Stream: "Kaukana"
MPEG Stream: "Perhonen"
MPEG Stream: "Auringon Lapsi"

TO BLACKEN THE PAGES Crow's Nest (Colony) 12" + cd-r 11.98
BACK IN STOCK!
The return of Irish one man guitar dronedoomdirge noisemaker, Paul McAree aka To Blacken The Pages, with his first vinyl release, and to commemorate, McAree mixes it up a bit, offering up at least one side dramatically different from what we're used to hearing on TBTP records up until now.
Originally recorded for a sound exhibition in Dublin, "Crow's Nest" strips away most of the thick rumbling distorted guitars we might have been expecting, leaving a strange haunting bit of effects drenched shadowy sound in their place, the result though is quite pleasing, much more mysterious and otherworldly, lots of delay and reverb, bits of clang and crunch sent spinning into the ether, here and there long notes ring out, the overall sound is super spare and abstract, soft tangled melodies, the guitars smolder instead of roar, plenty of scrabble and scrape but smeared and blurred into solar flares of Sunroof!-ed sound, but unlike the raga-like ur-drone of Sunroof!, the sound and sounds here are way more spaced out, both figuratively AND literally. Warm washes of feedback bathe the whole track in a rich glow, and strange little flutters surface here and there, like some alien birdsong.
The track on the B-side is more similar to past TBTP outings, but McAree manages to meld the old sounds, with the new sounds found on the flip, the same strange assemblage of high end crunch and scrape and squiggle, but set in a landscape much more black and buzzy, thickly layered, undulating sea of sound, blown out an streaked with feedback, the weird effected shards of melody, drifting on that thick, rumbling undercurrent. Dense and drone-y looped and hypnotic sounding here and there, but for the most part a massive organic sprawl of minimal psychedelic guitar drone dreaminess.
Housed in a simple black 12" style sleeve with the middle holes cut out, a printed obi with all the artwork and liner notes, and comes with a black cd-r, packaged in its own sleeve with a proper insert, containing, both the tracks, but a WAY extended and remixed version of the B-side!
MPEG Stream: "Crows Nest"
MPEG Stream: "Crowsun"

TORTOISE Beacons Of Ancestorship (Thrill Jockey) lp 15.98
The first pressing of this went so quick we were never able to list it! Now it's been repressed, and it's a couple bucks cheaper too (although no longer on 180 gram vinyl, hence the savings). This new pressing is actually now on regular weight WHITE vinyl. Here's what we said about the compact disc version when we happily highlighted it a few months back...
Now this is indeed a pleasant surprise. The return of Tortoise. A band we were OBSESSED with in the beginning, whose first few records are classics, undefinable masterpieces that managed to totally transcend their classification as mere post rock. Tortoise's self titled debut still sounds classic and timeless, a loping hypnotic blend of math rock and krautrock and jazz. Their Millions Now Living, which was released in the very early days of the aQ list, so it only has a barely descriptive two sentence review, was a mind blowing meld of Oval like electronics and abstract jazziness, of brooding post rock and almost orchestral arrangements. The remix record, which found the band being reimagined by Steve Albini, Brad Wood, Bundy Brown, Jim O'Rourke, John McEntire and others, still ranks as one of the few examples of how a collection of remixes, in some ways can even transcend the originals. But from that point on, the band seemed to lose their way, it's hard to explain just how, but their record, often literally years in the making, surprisingly enough didn't sound fresh anymore, the sounds tired and played out, maybe meant to be 'mature' or 'academic' but instead mostly sounded boring, and in some cases bad.
There was always a spark, and every record had brief flashes, little musical moments that reminded us what they were once capable of.
Which brings us to the awkwardly titled Beacons Of Ancestorship, which while not a total mind blowing complete return to form, is pretty dang good. A handful of the tracks ranking up there with some of their classic jams from years back.
Most folks have been focusing on record opener "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In", and rightfully so, the band definitely had something to prove, some lost ground to make up, and some fans to win over again, and hell, "High Class Slim" is just the song to do it. It still sounds like Tortoise, but it's all revved up, skittery jazzy drums wrapped around deep woozy bass and reedy synth buzz, before in swoops some tripped out Stereolab / Tangerine Dream keyboard swirl, and then some super out of place buzzy keyboard groove, but it somehow works, the track gets more intense, the sounds smolder and throb, blissy and subtly psychedelic, a little bit funky, a lot bit space-y, even a breakdown that gets all cybotronic robot funk, washed over by some new age shimmer, and sparkely space-y effects... it was almost too much to hope for that the whole record would sound like that the whole way through, but then it wouldn't really be Tortoise, for these guys it's just a launching point for their latest exploration of sounds both simple and sinister, serene and cinematic, jazzy and funky.
There are definitely a few moments where things lag, where it definitely sounds like they're back to doing Tortoise by numbers, some Morricone-ish guitar, that while we usually love, here doesn't do much, some of the stretched out jams bog down more than bliss out, but those moments are few and far between, the rest of their time is spent weaving pretty fantastic flights of instrumental fancy, mathy jams rife with melodic curlicues and warm whirls of warble and whir, cool skittery almost dancehall sounding bits of buzz and blurt, wrapped around some truly funky rhythms, long stretches of stuttering almost African sounding grooves, laced with sitar like buzz, and cool psychedelic flourishes, and at least one track that starts off with some looped Afterschool Special music that is transformed into what sounds like the perfect backing track for a Kanye West song. And then there's the unpronounceable "Yinxianghechengqi" which finds Tortoise getting their Trans Am on, fuzzed out, snarling guitars wrapped in crumbling distortion, pulsing bass, John McEntire pummeling his kit like he probably hasn't since his Bastro Days, but then this IS Tortoise, so over the top they drape some atonal modal Return To Forever sort of buzz drenched melodic weirdness which ends up turning the song into something else entirely. And minus those few aforementioned lulls, the rest of the record continues on, and manages to hold our attention, and definitely has had us returning again and again.
So while it's not quite Millions, Beacons is definitely the best Tortoise record since the mid nineties, and once distanced from the legacy and the expectations and all the non musical bullshit, on it's own as simply a record by a band, a collection of songs and sounds, Beacons is really pretty fantastic.
MPEG Stream: "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In"
MPEG Stream: "Prepare Your Coffin"
MPEG Stream: "Yinxianghechengqi"

YACHT See Mystery Lights (DFA) cd 14.98
Feel good summertime fun that's sure to be the soundtrack for many upcoming dorm room dance parties. Yacht take cues from '80s luminaries like the Tom Tom Club and B-52's as well as more left of center dance/electro-pop that was created on Ze records back in the day, and share a spirit similar to modern day kindred spirits Hot Chip and The Blow (to whom Yacht's Jona Bechtolt used to belong). Fun stuff for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Ring The Bell"
MPEG Stream: "Psychic City (Voodoo City)"

YACHT See Mystery Lights (DFA) lp 15.98
Feel good summertime fun that's sure to be the soundtrack for many upcoming dorm room dance parties. Yacht take cues from '80s luminaries like the Tom Tom Club and B-52's as well as more left of center dance/electro-pop that was created on Ze records back in the day, and share a spirit similar to modern day kindred spirits Hot Chip and The Blow (to whom Yacht's Jona Bechtolt used to belong). Fun stuff for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Ring The Bell"
MPEG Stream: "Psychic City (Voodoo City)"




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V/A Horse Meat Disco (Strut) 2lp 24.00
Now on Vinyl!
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 heyday, 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 Legends Of Benin (Analog Africa) 2lp 27.00
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Score three in a row for the always amazing Analog Africa label! First African Scream Contest, then Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou, and now Legends of Benin! Focusing on four composers, Gnonnas Pedro, Honore Avolonto, Antoine Dougbe, and El Rego from the small West African country Benin, recording between 1969 and 1981. All coming from different regional musical traditions but operating in the same fervent musical scene in Cotonou where the Orchestre Poly Rhythmo were also from, that group providing back-up on a couple of tracks here.
As with the other two Analog Africa compilations, this one also focuses on tight danceable grooves and rare afro-funk. Gnonnas Pedro was perhaps the most popular of the four, being a master of the style known as Agbadja, derived from early burial rituals focusing on three differently toned percussion instruments, Pedro modernized the sound to such a degree that the first track, the highly infectious "Dadje Von O Von Non" later became the anthem for the national football team. Honore Avolonto, a young tumba player from Togo, was the most prolific composer in Benin, writing songs for pretty much every group around. Amazingly, he had no band of his own, but would score a hit, tour with the band until the hit faded and then write another hit with some other band and be off. He eventually recorded an LP,which became Benin's biggest selling LP ever. El Rego, a boxer in his young life and a brothel owner later on, made one of the first recordings of Jerk music (as soul and funk music was so dubbed) in Benin. His tracks are the most Western influenced, often times singing in English. Antoine Dougbe, is the most obscure and his tracks are among the rarest finds. His style combined elements of Congolese Rhumba, High Life, and traditional Beninese rhythms into a form he called Afro-Cavacha, named after the fast rhythms of pop music from Zaire. Dougbe, often worked with the Orchestre Poly-Rhytmo, but it was often an uneasy relationship since Dougbe's father was a feared and powerful Voudon priest, and the band (most of them practicing Voudons) feared reprisals should they question Dougbe's arrangements and musical instruction. But undoubtedly this religious quality so pervasive in Benin is what created such intensely tight and dynamic music, hypnotic and bewitching and endlessly captivating. Pure Gold!
MPEG Stream: GNONNAS PEDRO ET SES DADJES "Dadje Von O Von Non"
MPEG Stream: EL REGO ET SES COMMANDOS "Vimado Wingnan"
MPEG Stream: ANTOINE DOUGBE "Kovito Gbe De Towe"
MPEG Stream: HONORE AVOLONTO "Na Mi Do Gbe Hue Nu"

V/A ROCK IS HELL - 7" Club Box Set (Rock Is Hell) 8 x 7" / box / 2 buttons 64.00
We reviewed this a while back, a mind blowing, ear destroying, super limited collection of strange sounds, noisy weirndess and fractured heaviness, all gorgeously packaged in a silk screened box with inserts and buttons and all kinds of stuff.
We discovered a small handful of these tucked away, and figured some of you may have missed out the first time around. Maybe your last chance to snag one of these....
Everyone around here is a huge fan of weirdo music label Rock Is Hell, as are most of you judging from how fast we sell out of their stuff and how quickly it all goes out of print. Pretty much everything on Rock Is Hell has blown us away, the Dig That Body Up It's Alive lp, the crazy Nate Denver's Neck etched one sided lp box set thing, the super limited Octis lathe cuts, the XbXrX / Total Shutdown double 5", all gorgeously packaged and jam packed with mind melting sounds. With that in mind we worked out a special deal with Rock Is Hell, which will give AQ customers first (and maybe only) crack at this ULTRA limited 7" box set!!!
The set is limited to only 400 copies, it was almost completely sold out on preorders, minus the 8 or 9 we just got, so this will be your last and only chance to get one of these, if you didn't already preorder one. All the records are on white vinyl with white labels, and the records are housed in a silkscreened cardboard box with an inlay and 2 buttons designed by BONGOUT (http://frre.fr.freee.frfr.e.free.fr/). And all the copies we got have the secret bonus 7"!!! Only 50 or so of those! The singles included are:
Foot Village (USA)
Z's (USA)
Sasqrotch (USA)
Child Abuse (USA)
Death Sentence: Panda! (USA) / Fugu & The Cosmic Mumu (AUT)
Bulbul (AUT)
Bug (AUT) / Reflector (AUT)
Rokko Anal (AUT)
So if you want to be one of the lucky few to own this crazy chunk of sonic and visual weirdness, click the buy button and you'll be all set! So there you go, don't blow it!!!
And remember, ROCK IS HELL!!!!!

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

3 INCHES OF BLOOD "Here Waits Thy Doom" (Century Media) cd 15.98
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
ALTAR OF OBLIVION "Sinews Of Anguish" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 14.98
ALVA NOTO & RYUICHI SAKAMOTO WITH ENSEMBLE MODERN "UTP_" (Raster Norton) cd+dvd 32.00
ANTLERS, THE "Hospice" (French Kiss) cd 12.98
ARGUS "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
ASTRA "The Weirding" (Rise Above) cd 13.98
ASYLUM "The Earth Is The Insane Asylum Of The Universe" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
BEHEMOTH "Evangelion" (Metal Blade) cd 15.98
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
BLK JKS "After Robots" (Secretly Canadian) cd 14.98
CABLE "The Failed Convict" (The End) cd 12.98
CONGA DE LOS HOYOS "Carnival Music Of Easern Cuba" (World Audio Foundation / Soul Jazz) cd 17.98
COURTIS, ALAN / BRUCE RUSSELL / EDDIE PREVOST / MATTIN "The Sakada Sessions" (Azul Discographica) lp 27.00
DDAA "Action And Japanese Demonstration" (Fractal) cd 27.00
DELAY, VLADISLAV "Tummaa" (Leaf) cd 14.98
ELECTRIC PRUNES, THE "Mass In F Minor" (Reprise) lp 14.98
ESPVALL, HELENA & MASAKI BATOH "Overloaded Ark" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/21.00
ESSO TRINIDAD STEELBAND, THE "Van Dyke Parks Presents" (Bananastan) cd + dvd 16.98
FENRIZ' RED PLANET / NATTEFROST "Engansgrill" (Indie Recordings) cd 21.00
FLUXION "Inductance" (Echospace) 12" 13.98
GOES CUBE "Another Day Has Passed" (The End) cd 14.98
GRASS WIDOW "s/t" (Make A Mess) lp 12.98
HABOOB "s/t" (Long Hair) cd 27.00
HARBOURS "No Souvenirs" (HR) lp 14.98
HEALTH "Get Color" (Lovepump United) cd
HEIMS "Worship Or Die" (Moribund Cult) cd 15.98
HOOD, ROBERT "Minimal Nation" (M-Plant) 2cd 17.98
ILL WIND "Flashes" (Sunbeam) 2cd 25.00
JAFFE, SARA & MIA CLARKE "The Art of Touring" (Square Root Books) book + cd 19.95
JANDEK "Not Hunting For Meaning" (Corwood Industries) cd 8.98
KUUPUU "Lumen Tahden" (Time-Lag) cd/lp 15.98/29.00
LA NUEVA BANDA DE SANTISTEBAN "Sabor A Fresa" (Vampi Soul) cd 22.00
LI JIANHONG "Classic Of The Mountains And Seas" (PSF) cd 22.00
LITMUS "Aurora" (Metal Blade / Rise Above) cd 14.98
MAHER SHALAL HASH BAZ "C'est La Derniere Chanson" (K) 2cd 13.98
MASERATI "Passages" (Temporary Residence) cd 13.98
METH TEETH "Everything Went Wrong" (Woodsist) lp 14.98
NECRONOMICON "Strange Dreams" (Garden Of Delights) cd 22.00
PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART "Come Saturday" (Slumberland) 7" 3.98
PLAIN RIDE "House On The Hill" (Ektro) cd 14.98
PUMICE "Perservere" (Soft Abuse) 7" 6.98
RAVAGE "End Of Tomorrow" (Metal Blade) cd 14.98
ROCKCELONA "La Bruja" (Estereo Fonico Country) cd 25.00
ROXY MUSIC "s/t" (Virgin) lp 21.00
ROYHKA JA RATTO JA LEHTISALO "Hiekkarantaa" (Ektro) cd 14.98
SARKE "Vorunah" (Indie Recordings) cd 21.00
SCIENCE FICTION DANCE PARTY "Dance With Action" (B-Music / Finders Keepers) lp 29.00
SINISTER REALM "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
STONE GARDEN "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
SUCH HAWKS SUCH HOUNDS (Long Song Films) dvd-r 16.98
SWASHBUCKLE "Back To The Noose" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98
TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Archive 1" (Jinya) 5cd 95.00
TREE PEOPLE, THE "Human Voices" (Guerssen) cd 17.98
V/A "A Orillas Del Magdalena" (Domino Sound) lp 14.98
V/A "Electric Asylum Volume 3" (Past & Present) cd 17.98
V/A "La Belle Epoque" (EMI / Zonophone) cd 14.98
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
VIVIAN GIRLS "Everything Goes Wrong" (In The Red) cd 13.98
VOIVOD "Infini" (Relapse) cd 14.98
WARDRUNA "Runaljod - Gap Var Ginnunga" (Indie Recordings / Fimbullijod) cd 21.00
ZOMBY "Digital Flora" (Brainmath) 10" 14.98
ZOMBY "One Foot Ahead Of The Other" (Ramp) cd/2x12" 14.98/25.00

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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

----} 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 15th
Nadja "Under The Jaguar Sun" 2cd on Beta-Lactam Ring Records

----} 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
Ancestors "Of Sound Mind" cd/lp on Tee Pee Records 

----} October 13th
Lightning Bolt "Earthly Delight" cd/2lp on Load
v/a "Zanzibara 5: Hot In Dar" cd on Buda Records

----} October 27th
Eagle Twin "The Unkindness of Crows" lp version on Southern Lord

----} 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!)

----} November 3rd
Cold Cave "Love Comes Close" cd/lp reissued via Matador

----} 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
Gösta Berlings Saga "Detta Har Hant" cd on Transubstans Records
Lord Vicar "Fear No Pain" lp+book version on The Church Within
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