FROST, BEN By The Throat (Bedroom Community) cd 16.98
We first discovered Ben Frost on, of all places, a dubstep comp. It definitely worked, this long brooding chunk of creeped out electronic dronemusic plopped down right between to stuttery stripped down dubbed out jams. It quickly became our favorite track on that disc, and got us to hunt down his full length, Theory Of Machines, which was just as good as that track. A strange assemblage of mysterious psych jams and minimal techno, drones and glitchy electronica, but all shot through with a mysterious darkness, that seemed to infuse every track with a bit of malevolence.
But if that record was dark and mysterious, then his new one, By The Throat, is downright terrifying. Who knew electronic music could be this harrowing, this epic and intense?! Mixing organic instruments, field recordings (lots of wolf howls and growls) and fucked up glitched out electronics, Frost has conjured up an incredible cinematic electronic dronemusic masterpiece. Sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. This record is amazing, playing out like a soundtrack to some lost-in-the-woods Italian horror film, pianos and strings, dense swells of static, the aforementioned wolves, all wound into tense soundscaped vignettes, each one rife with tension, and emotion, and a sprawling darkness.
The opening track is worth the price of admission alone, a series of slow building sonic swells, each a wall of crumbling distorted hiss, throbbing over a minimal stretch of subtle glitch and muted melody, the tones are jagged and sharp, the melodies are fragmented and minor key, bits of acoustic guitar drift over the squalls, ghostlike, while beneath, thick ominous low end rumbles and whirs. It's like a more electronic, more minimal, and much darker Godspeed.
That track segues right into "The Carpathians", where the wolves make their first appearance, howling over Bernard Hermann like strings, their growls providing seriously scary low end, the baying matched by the mournful melodies, it's easy to imagine being lost in the snow, miles away from civilization, wandering through the dark, the night filled with the howling of wolves.
The whole record really does play out like a soundtrack, each track evoking a certain mood, "O God Protect Me" is all clipped abstract rhythms and muted crystalline melody, soft glitches and distant beeps, pretty and melancholy and subtly ominous, while "Hibakusja", which starts out with a simple guitar melody and what sounds like the moan of horns, becomes the scariest track on the record, the wolves growling processed into fucked up glitched low end stutters, that original opening guitar remains, but beneath those fucked up grinding glitchy growls, totally intense, before becoming more and more staticky and abstract.
If there's not a movie, someone needs to make it NOW. The rest of the record evokes still more strange territory, skipped Jeck-like loopscapes, all glitchy and tense, the skipping records offering up snippets that on their own would be fairly haunting and mysterious, but recontextualized become something even more, thick swells of buzzing cellos and harmonized voices transformed into massive crumbling walls of sound, various melodies and elements resurfacing throughout, especially a main theme that seems to define the record, and sounds like a simple melody, but here is infused with the terror and fear of the surrounding sounds, long stretches of layered high end shimmer, more glitched out electronic minimalism, again, all rife with tension, with a cinematic weight, that makes this record sound like so much more than just a collection of songs and sounds.
Gorgeous cover art too, all reflective inks on a matte background, all images of snow and wolves and empty landscapes, the spare frostbitten white wasteland, where the seemingly imaginary events described by the sounds on By The Throat could have taken place. Intense and amazing.
MPEG Stream: "Killshot"
MPEG Stream: "The Carpathians"
MPEG Stream: "Hibakusja"

MARDUK Wormwood (Regain) cd 14.98
In the beginning, Swedish black metal horde Marduk were a special breed, a sonic panzer division onslaught, that mostly consisted of locking into a riff, dropping in an insanely fast blast beat, and then letting rip, rarely veering from their course. Fast and furious and heavy. Lots of folks thought they were boring, but for us, the sound of Marduk was transcendent, mesmerizing, hypnotic, cyclical, it was trancelike, and we loved it.
The something changed, and Marduk began to morph into something new, something much less one dimensional (even though it was a great dimension), their sound began to drift more toward the avant garde side of BM, becoming more gnarled and convoluted and fucked up, where was once old school classic Swedish blackness, aligned with the Scandinavian pantheon, was now some strange modern avant black weirdness, now more in line with groups like Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist and the like, which make sense considering Funeral Mist vocalist Mortuus joined the group right around this shift.
And while we still hold the old Marduk records near and dear to our hearts, it's hard to deny the twisted beast Marduk has become, especially considering how much the BM envelope has been pushed lately, Marduk may be old guard, but they've stepped up and put most of the new guard to shame.
2007's Rom 5:12 was a totally twisted game changer, bumming out lots of old time fans, but reinvigorating the group, and turning on a whole new legion of fans enmeshed in the more progressive side of BM, which has all lead to this, easily the best Marduk record yet. Certainly the weirdest, and catchiest, the same folks who hated Rom 5:12 will probably hate this one too, unless they've finally come to their senses, for the rest of us, it's a chance to dig in to an incredibly dense and bizarre record by a band at the top of their game.
There's plenty of furious blasting blackness on Wormwood, it's just that there's so much more, and even when the band is blasting blackly, they're still twisting it all up. After a creepy intro the band explode into a frenzy of super complex convoluted thrashing, the riffs are strange, atonal, warped, the arrangement is incredible, with the band stopping and starting, lurching wildly, slipping into a doomy creep, only to launch right back into it, the sound is MASSIVE, there's bass all over the place (in a notoriously bass-less genre), Mortuus' vocals are SICK, an inhuman gurgling rasp, and the riffs amazing, wild and tangled and melodic, it's 3 minutes for Marduk, but for other bands it would be a whole record. Which leads right into the seasick lumber of "Funeral Dawn", with an almost industrial martial vibe, soaring epic and melodic, the main melody impossibly catchy, while streaks of noise swirl around the riffs, there's even a breakdown where Mortuus's sick vox are laid over a thick undulating bassline, the resulting sound is like a blackened Laibach.
"The Fleshy Void" is a 3 minute hyperblast of black intensity, still tangled and warped, but impossibly heavy and fast, giving way to the super creepy "Unclosing The Curse", all tolling bells and pulsing bass, abstract guitar chords, and hateful vokills, spare and spaced out and super ominous.
Wormwood is not inherently a 'weird record', it's not fucked up and freaky the way Furze or Necrofrost are - the weirdness here, the strange song structures, the freaked out non black parts, the fucked up samples, the drones, the doomy breakdowns, they're all seamlessly integrated into Marduk's sound, for every blast of Swedish blackness, there's some soaring melodic almost NWOBHM sounding melody, for every stretch of doomy pound, there's some gurgly bass heavy creep, the whole record is twisted, but subtly so, it's not about being weird or fucked up, it's about making a truly original piece of black art, which by its very nature IS both fucked up and weird. But the fact that's not the be all end all, keeps Wormwood from being gimmicky, instead it's a fierce and furious ultra heavy black metal record, with lots of twists and turns, which in a nutshell, means quite possible black metal record of the year for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Nowhere, No-One, Nothing"
MPEG Stream: "Funeral Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "To Redirect Perdition"

HOME BLITZ O.ut O.f P.hase (Richie) cd 13.98
Another out of left field record that just knocked our blocks off. Not sure what we were expecting, something super noisy and fucked up actually, but what we got was some totally irresistible sloppy chaotic garage power pop, that actually sort of ends up sounding a bit like noise rock guys unleashing their inner power pop demons. Before we go any further though, listen to the first sound sample, "Two Steps", we'll wait...
Man that song destroys, some of you have probably already added this to your cart, heck, that's what we would have done, there's no resisting that one, easily THE pop jam of the year, we've literally listened to that song about 50 times in the last week, so much that it wasn't until a couple days ago that we finally listened to that whole record, which thankfully revealed a whole 'nother bunch of killer pop chaos, not to mention some even more chaotic off kilter noisiness.
Let's talk about that song first, it's definitely the best song on the record, and we would gladly pay $14 for a one sided single with JUST that song, it's pretty much the most perfect pop song we've heard in forever, with wild almost cracking vocals, some incredible riffing, including a weird slippery almost slide part that gives us chills every time, sloppy drumming, and a killer tempo shift part way through that's just fucking perfect. And the hook, that song has been stuck in our head non stop since the first time we heard it.
But after you get it out of your system and listen to it 20 or 20 or 50 times, the rest of the record will reveal itself as a pretty much non stop kick ass punky power pop gem, like some eighties pop record transported through time. but on the way it got all tangled up in the slipstream with some random noise and garage rock records and emerged like, well, THIS.
"Other Side Of The Street" is a short sharp ultra distorted pop jam, with a punky frame but laced with all sorts of amazing hooky guitar melodies, "Route 18" (after the 3 minutes of near silence that is "Live Outside") is total bubblegum FM radio pop, but all twisted up and tweaked, and just like the other tracks, it's the extra guitar that turns it into something super special, adding some super rad melodic filigree. It's hard to not hear some Guided By Voices and other purveyors of lo-fi pop, but this isn't traditionally lo-fi, it doesn't sound muddy and 4-tracky and much as it just sound ramshackle and haphazard, and if there are hints of those other lo-fi rockers, these guys definitely make it their own, plus there's the weird extra noisy parts which manage to fit perfectly, not disrupting the flow at all, rather highlighting the subtle noisiness in the poppiest tracks, while hiding some serious poppery within the various layers of crunch and howl, the angular no-wave opener "Nest Of Vipers", with its sampled broken glass, fucked-with tape speed, mumbled vocals, super blown out drumming, and dreamy hushed detuned piano backward outro, "A Different Touch" is super in-the-red, the drums so distorted they sound like bursts of radio static, the guitars practically melting, but the whole thing wrapped around some killer hooks, with amazing guitar melodies, an impossibly noise drenched murk-pop blow out, and that's basically the magic of Home Blitz, the practically perfect pop is infused with noise and on the verge of total implosion, while the fucked up noise jams are infused with pop, threatening to shed the noise completely and explode into another burst of wild eyed power pop. If these guys went in a real studio and spent a fortune, it's almost possible to imagine them getting huge, but smooth out the rough edges and it just wouldn't be the same band.
Absolutely killer noisepop, and yet another record to add to our year end faves list...
MPEG Stream: "Two Steps"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Talk To Me"
MPEG Stream: "Other Side Of The Street"
MPEG Stream: "Is Anybody There?"

BIGOT, FRED Mono/Stereo (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Utter obsession with a particular artist or style of music is, of course, something we're familiar with... and fully in favor of. In the case of the oft-praised by us Holy Mountain label, such obsession has lead to some quite amazing discoveries and reissues in the field of Japanese psychedelia, for instance, among other Holy Mountain specialties. This release, too, is the result of obsession, and it's been 10 years in the making. We remember way back, when Holy Mountain head honcho JW, before he had his label (he used to work at one of our suppliers), would rave about the vinyl-only 12"s of French "shuffletime" techno producer Fred Bigot (pronounced Bee-joe we assume). According to JW, Bigot's electronic tracks were in fact utterly psychedelic. And they were. Fuzzed out, raw and repetitive, hypnotic with their shuffle (schaffel) rhythms. We never forgot 'em, and neither did JW/Holy Mountain, who now finally presents the 4 cuts from Bigot's two 12" singles circa 1999 and 2000 on compact disc, along with 4 more tracks, one of 'em from a 2001 comp, the other 3 presumably previously unreleased. Definitely a bit of a 'dream come true' for Holy Mountain.
You may also know Bigot in his -other- guise of Electronicat, who has put out a lot of records we also like. But while Electronicat provides a playful dose of T-Rex style glam and glitter, and even rockabilly, with campy vocals and wah-wah guitars making appearances, upping the glam angle immensely, in comparison these tracks under Bigot's own name are stripped down, minimalistic, and without the more bubblegum elements. Imagine instead Pan Sonic, but with more of the synth-psych spirit of Christine 23 Onna. On the original 12" cuts, it's all about the mesmeric shuffle throb, the distorted crunch and scrunch, the almost drone-like repetition. (We like repetition. We've said it before, we'll say it again.) Definitely good headphone listening, or to be cranked LOUD on your home stereo. And then some of the tracks here, not from the 12"s, aren't even beat-oriented at all.
For starters, there's the intro sine-whine of opener "Chant", pretty abstract and clinical. Then, it's shuffle time, as that's followed by the one-two punch "Mono" and "Stereo" from Bigot's first 12", both tracks crude 8+ minute throb-a-thons, like followed by the equally effective cuts from his second 12", "Binary" and "Ternary", which adds glammy handclap sounds into the mix. Seeing as how getting those two crucial 12"s on cd is worth the price of admission alone, hitting repeat and playing those four tracks over and over again is certainly an option, but when you do continue on with the disc, there's further treats to be found. Next up, a change of pace with the void-ian atmospheres of the windily desolate "Extinction", full of spacey rumble. Then, bang, "Lr-Yz" is another monomaniacal, mesmeric cruncher in the tradition of the 12"s. Following that is "Outside", a 10 minute track suggestive of field recordings, with electronic sounds like crickets chirping, something like Ryoji Ikeda conducting a nighttime nature sounds symphony, but one that speeds up nervously if that's wasn't enough. And then, "Symmetriad" ends the disc, combining the distorted throb of the 12" cuts with the more haunted ambience of the likes of "Extinction" and "Outside". So it all kind of appropriately comes together, and for a collection of tracks not originally intended as an album, this actually adds up into one surprisingly well, a unified vision with a bit of variety. Maybe 'cause all the tracks, recorded in Paris and Berlin, were made with the following only: "Roland TR808 + Rat distortion + Waldorf filter + Sherman filter + Lexicon Jamman". We don't know... but we do like it, can't get enuff. Big ups to Holy Mountain for bringing these Bigot tracks back!! That old obsession never let go we guess, and pays off for all of us now.
MPEG Stream: "Mono"
MPEG Stream: "Binary"
MPEG Stream: "Extinction"

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AGUAYO, MATIAS Ay Ay Ay (Kompakt) cd 15.98
Long gone are the days when you could pigeon hole or easily predict the sound of a release on Kompakt. While they made their name with their trademark releases of minimal techno and pop ambient gems, the label has proven to be a wide ranging force in innovative electronic music of all shapes, colors and styles. We had heard previous releases by Matias Aguayo as well as with his collective Closer Musik, but we either weren't paying close enough attention or he has totally upped his game because Ay Ay Ay is by far one of the most colorful, immediate and rewarding electronic records of the year! Imagine some amazing combination of the hypnotic repetitive beats of Ricardo Villalobos fused with the more dance minded stylings of folks like Swayzek and Herbert, topped off with a nice backdrop of Aguayo's Chilean South American roots and you have all the ingredients for total party record of the year!
But what makes Ay Ay Ay so great is that it's not at all a disposable party record, instead it's immaculately crafted so it's the kind of record that satisfies whether you listen to it alone on headphones and get lost in its sonic swirlings or if you blast it out loud with good folks around as you shake your stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Ay Ay Ay"
MPEG Stream: "Rollerskate"
MPEG Stream: "Koro Koro"

AGUAYO, MATIAS Ay Ay Ay (Kompakt) lp + cd 19.98
Long gone are the days when you could pigeon hole or easily predict the sound of a release on Kompakt. While they made their name with their trademark releases of minimal techno and pop ambient gems, the label has proven to be a wide ranging force in innovative electronic music of all shapes, colors and styles. We had heard previous releases by Matias Aguayo as well as with his collective Closer Musik, but we either weren't paying close enough attention or he has totally upped his game because Ay Ay Ay is by far one of the most colorful, immediate and rewarding electronic records of the year! Imagine some amazing combination of the hypnotic repetitive beats of Ricardo Villalobos fused with the more dance minded stylings of folks like Swayzek and Herbert, topped off with a nice backdrop of Aguayo's Chilean South American roots and you have all the ingredients for total party record of the year!
But what makes Ay Ay Ay so great is that it's not at all a disposable party record, instead it's immaculately crafted so it's the kind of record that satisfies whether you listen to it alone on headphones and get lost in its sonic swirlings or if you blast it out loud with good folks around as you shake your stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Ay Ay Ay"
MPEG Stream: "Rollerskate"
MPEG Stream: "Koro Koro"

ARCKANUM PPPPPPPPPPP (Moribund) cd 16.98
Last year's killer Antikosmos was probably one of the best black metal records of 2008, and here we are only a year later with a brand new Arckanum, and once again, this too is poised to be one of this year's best. From its unpronouncable all p'd title (meant to be runes we think), to it's scrawled heavy metal binder cover art, to the amazing raw melodic blackness within, we'd have to agree, gonna be tough to top PPPPPPPPPPP.
Very little has changed since Antikosmos, but then why change what is already working so well, the sound is pretty polished for sure, and still a bit punky, but here maybe even more melodic and stripped down. There are still plenty of blown out black blasts, lots of twisted dissonant riffage, but there's some serious poppiness going on, as well as some surprisingly killer leads, super melodic and a bit NWOBHM, the overall vibe epic and majestic, and a bit crusty, yet even when things are black as pitch, the sound is still infused with a fair amount of melody. Not really all that raw and grim, instead super rocking and so so melodic, the vocals as always are howled and punkish which helps things from getting too clean, but the production is so slick, and these songs are so good, it seems inevitable that things would veer toward the less grim and kvlt side of the black metal spectrum.
Perhaps we're painting to un-grim a picture, PPPPPPPPPPP is still plenty black and buzzy and blasting, but there's no way to ignore how catchy and melodic and classic metal sounding much of this is, and we're not complaining, it sounds awesome, and we've been playing this over and over, just didn't want to scare off all you troo grim metalheads, cuz it would be a shame to let any sort of dopey grim metal pride get in the way of digging into a record this rad...
MPEG Stream: "Porhatl"
MPEG Stream: "Pann Svartis"
MPEG Stream: "Pyrpas Ulfar"

BAKER, AIDAN / NOVELLER Colorful Disturbances (Divorce) lp 17.98
A pretty perfect matchup, Aidan Baker, 1/2 of doom drone duo Nadja, and avant-drone guitarist / filmmaker Sarah Lipstate aka Noveller, who both offer up some of their prettiest sounds for this collection of Colorful Disturbances.
Lipstate starts things off with a gorgeous smoldering driftscape, a sea of tinkling chiming high end melodies draped over soft swells of buzz and crunch, while within a pulsing blur holds it all together. Dreamy and divine, definitely the sort of track that could have been double or triple the length. Her second contribution is just as good, a bit more minimal, slightly glitchier and buzzier, but still serene and dreamlike, with a slightly ominous vibe, reverbed guitars are left to float in a constantly swirling cloud of sonic grit and soft focus hiss, that hiss constantly changing shapes and revealing partially obscured sounds and voices and melodies. So nice, this too could have filled up the whole side and we would have been perfectly happy.
Baker contributes a single 20 minute sidelong drift, all washed out glimmery tones, long and blurred and smeary and indistinct, creating a slow shifting layered landscape of gauzy soft focus colors, sun dappled and prismatic, warm and muted and totally lovely. Easily one of the prettiest tracks we've heard from AB for sure. Like we said, a perfect match!
Vinyl only and limited, so grab one before they disappear...

BARACLOUGH The Lampshade Is Not A Past Tense (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
Another weird one from The Tapeworm, a UK tape only label, who specialize in, well, it's hard to say what they specialize in. Past releases gave included tapes from Philip Jeck, Simon Fisher Turner, a recording of interviews with Derek Jarman, some amazing psych jazz from a group called the Van Patterson Quartet among other strange offerings. So considering all of those, this record from Baraclough, a London trio of abstract noisemakers, sounds right at home.
Described by the label as being made up of a "classically trained musician, a self taught musician and a non musician", the trio exist somewhere between abstract minimal drone music, and the sort of stumbling anti-folk of No Neck or Sunburned Hand, but doused in electronics and a healthy bit of Nurse With Wound style industrial noise. Simple delicate melodies and bursts of percussion, drift dreamily over a caustic sea of black buzz, roiling and crumbling in a cloud of blurred distortion, squalls of grinding electronic glitch throb and envelop hushed vocals, and splatters of minimal looped percussion, sometimes locking into an almost This Heat sounding mesmer, the sound slipping from rhythmic hypno-lurch to blown out crumbling murmur, to delicate shimmery smearscape.
Unlike much of what comes out on The Tapeworm, these guys are a going concern, with actual records on other labels, and after hearing this, odds are you're gonna want to track those down too.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!

BARONESS Blue Record (Relapse) cd 15.98
When we first heard Baroness, we described them as Electric Wizard meets the Fucking Champs metal stoner sludge crush, which was pretty accurate, throw in some Iron Maiden guitar harmonies, some Carcass, some Jesus Lizard, and of course some Sabbath, and we were pretty much talking about our new favorite band. That metal / post rock hybrid we love, but heavy on the Sabbathy stoner sludge. And pretty much every record since followed a similar pattern, and thus we dug BIG TIME.
So before the Blue Record was even released, it started getting tons of hype, we didn't understand why, not because they didn't deserve it, but because every record was great, and they kept slipping below the radar, so why would this one be any different? Well, once we got it, and heard it, we understood exactly why.
For the most part, gone is the sludgey Southern stoner sound, and in its place an insanely catchy, super poppy prog metal, that sounds alternately like Torche with Brian May guitars or Queens Of The Stoneage mixed with Mastodon. Or something. The poppiness is so undeniable, and we love it. So much so that we were sort of shocked that the rest of the world felt the same. Cuz usually if something is weird and poppy and we get all obsessed, the mainstream barely notices, but not this time.
So yeah, Torche is the closest comparison, especially in the vocal department, enough that if we had been played this in one of those Invisible Jukebox things, we definitely would have guessed Torche, so if you ever wished Torche was less downtuned and sludgey, and more super rocking and proggy and epic and straight up poppy, then the Blue Record is definitely for you. But where Torche is pretty simple and stripped down, like a modern day metal version of Nirvana's Bleach, Baroness have much grander aspirations, setting their metallic power pop amidst all sorts of unlikely progisms, the guitars, all Queen-y as we mentioned before, are psychedelic and tangled, soaring and howling and buzzing and chugging, the band occasionally slip into haunting acoustic interludes, before launching into convoluted pop prog epics, so weird, and wonderful. Definitely their least heavy record, but it hardly matters, it seems like a fair trade, since it's also definitely their most epic and majestic and proggy and catchy and poppy and far out recording to date, and hell it's still pretty dang heavy to boot.
MPEG Stream: "The Sweetest Curse"
MPEG Stream: "Jake Leg"
MPEG Stream: "Swollen And Halo"

BARONESS Blue Record (Relapse) 2lp 30.00
When we first heard Baroness, we described them as Electric Wizard meets the Fucking Champs metal stoner sludge crush, which was pretty accurate, throw in some Iron Maiden guitar harmonies, some Carcass, some Jesus Lizard, and of course some Sabbath, and we were pretty much talking about our new favorite band. That metal / post rock hybrid we love, but heavy on the Sabbathy stoner sludge. And pretty much every record since followed a similar pattern, and thus we dug BIG TIME.
So before the Blue Record was even released, it started getting tons of hype, we didn't understand why, not because they didn't deserve it, but because every record was great, and they kept slipping below the radar, so why would this one be any different? Well, once we got it, and heard it, we understood exactly why.
For the most part, gone is the sludgey Southern stoner sound, and in its place an insanely catchy, super poppy prog metal, that sounds alternately like Torche with Brian May guitars or Queens Of The Stoneage mixed with Mastodon. Or something. The poppiness is so undeniable, and we love it. So much so that we were sort of shocked that the rest of the world felt the same. Cuz usually if something is weird and poppy and we get all obsessed, the mainstream barely notices, but not this time.
So yeah, Torche is the closest comparison, especially in the vocal department, enough that if we had been played this in one of those Invisible Jukebox things, we definitely would have guessed Torche, so if you ever wished Torche was less downtuned and sludgey, and more super rocking and proggy and epic and straight up poppy, then the Blue Record is definitely for you. But where Torche is pretty simple and stripped down, like a modern day metal version of Nirvana's Bleach, Baroness have much grander aspirations, setting their metallic power pop amidst all sorts of unlikely progisms, the guitars, all Queen-y as we mentioned before, are psychedelic and tangled, soaring and howling and buzzing and chugging, the band occasionally slip into haunting acoustic interludes, before launching into convoluted pop prog epics, so weird, and wonderful. Definitely their least heavy record, but it hardly matters, it seems like a fair trade, since it's also definitely their most epic and majestic and proggy and catchy and poppy and far out recording to date, and hell it's still pretty dang heavy to boot.
MPEG Stream: "The Sweetest Curse"
MPEG Stream: "Jake Leg"
MPEG Stream: "Swollen And Halo"

BARWICK, JULIANNA Florine (self released) cd 7.98
Want to get lost in hazy, shimmering sounds that would sound perfect in the pristine church of 4AD worship? Sounds pretty great right, well, the sounds of Julianna Barwick deliver just that. With her looped ethereal vocals she creates such hypnotizing sounds that really evoke a more tripped out Lisa Gerard (Dead Can Dance) or Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), a sound that is totally perfect for the crisp and cold days we've been experiencing as of late, each track a gorgeous soundtrack for bundled up evening strolls when you can see your breath in the air. Barwick has been crafting her own multi-layered, hazy and hypnotic sounds for several years now, in fact her self released debut, Sanguine, from over three years ago was a big favorite here in town at our local radio station KUSF and we're happy to have gotten that in as well which we'll most likely be gushing about on a future list. In fact that record came out just shortly after Grouper's wonderful debut Way Their Crept and the two definitely share a swirling and surreal sonic spirit.
MPEG Stream: "Anjos"
MPEG Stream: "Choose"
MPEG Stream: "Sunlight , Heaven"

BEAK> s/t (Ipecac) cd 15.98
It's tough to ignore talk of a 'Portishead side project', and it's even tougher to imagine what that project might sound like. Thankfully no need to wonder, it's called Beak> (and yeah, that little beak shape is part of the name), and it's a trio fronted by Portishead mastermind Geoff Barrow, but don't be expecting Portishead 2, there are some similarities, but it's mostly tone and vibe, the music is something else entirely, more krautrock, minimal, space-y, hints of Stereolab (which is basically krautrock when you think about it). Recorded live, with no overdubs, the arrangements were created using edits, so one can imagine these guys jamming out on single parts, and then later chopping them up and assembling them into songs. Which helps explain why the sound of Beak> is so hypnotic and looped and cyclical sounding. Stereolab obviously, but also Circle, Cave, a definite hypnorock / krautrock thing going on. The drumming super simple and motorik, the bass driving the whole thing, and the synths offering up the melody, usually locking into whirling swirling loops over the top. The band get into long stretches of hushed almost nothing, whispery drifts of softly pulsing drone, but invariably the shift gears and launch into another loping hypnotic dubby rhythm, and with all this talk of rhythm, you can bet there are lots of moments that reminds us of This Heat, which is NEVER a bad thing. There are vocals too, but they're minimal, and are often in the background, wordless croons, adding just another layer of texture to the proceedings. Fourtet, Tortoise, Add N To (X), Fridge, Necks, even some of the modern spacerock stuff like Wooden Shjips, that sort of endlessly looping dronerock, Beak> would definitely hit the spot if you dig any or all of that.
This record is super addictive, we threw it on when it first came in, and we ended up listening to it 3 times in a row, and ever since, we find ourselves throwing it on all the time, which says a lot. Definitely a new fave!
MPEG Stream: "Backwell"
MPEG Stream: "Pill"
MPEG Stream: "Ham Green"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Mitleid Lady (Latitudes 0:11) (Southern / Latitudes) 12" 14.98
FINALLY AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!
Long rumored, long awaited, Bohren and Der Club Of Gore's installment in Southern UK's limited edition Latitudes series is, finally, here!! While the Latitudes series has included a disparate selection of interesting artists, including AQ faves like Circle, Shit & Shine, Grails, and now Bohren. You'd think they were asking US who they should put out! Certainly if they HAD asked us, we'd have said Bohren, we're (as you probably know) huge fans, we're still in awe of the live show they played in San Francisco a few months back, also something that we didn't ever think we'd see. The stage was in total darkness except for small lights shining from directly above each musician, one bassist, one keyboardist, and another who played keys, bass, and sax as necessary. And while it was unfortunate that there was no drummer (for some reason he couldn't travel with the band) their usual slow tempo meant that the keyboardist could "play" sampled drums fairly effectively, though doubtless it would probably have been even better had the actual drummer been there (however, one of our friends who was at the show didn't even realize there was no live drummer present, due to the darkness, and the fact that the glowing Bohren skull-head logo in the center of the stage looked like it was on a bass drum head!). Their music was so beautiful, and sooooo heavy. Literally one of the HEAVIEST performances we've ever witnessed, SO MUCH BASS it was insane. And remember, they're essentially a jazz group.
So, we like Bohren. You like Bohren (or if you haven't heard 'em, may we suggest their most recent album, Dolores?). And so we're both excited that this is here. Heck, we've been waiting for it for a while. Apparently the Latitudes folks like to get people all in a tizzy by announcing things YEARS in advance of the actual release. As a result, Bohren fans have been asking about this one, since, well back when Barack Obama was still an unknown community organizer, it seems. We had sorta given up hope of ever actually seeing it come out, assuming it was a figment of someone at Southern's overactive imagination. But then what do you know, out of the blue, with no warning, here they are. We got ALL the copies we're gonna be able to get, and good luck finding it elsewhere. So act fast if you want one.
Here's the lowdown: Like the previous Latitudes volume, from White Magic, this is an ep, just one song in fact, and while Bohren have been known to make some looooong songs, this one is "only" 10 and a half minutes in length. But of course what with Bohren's typical mesmeric glacial pace and soporific atmospheres, when "Mitleid Lady" is playing it's as if time has stopped, anyway... the bass frequencies throbbing gently, the sparse snick...snick...snick of the drummer's high hat, the dulcet liquid tones of electric piano melodically meandering... eventually the merest suggestion of a sweet whisper of smoky saxophone... ahhh the unique slo-mo "jazz" of Bohren is utterly entrancing as usual. This track was recorded back 2006 (we said it was long awaited), after their Geisterfaust record and before the more recent Dolores, and sounds like it could easily have found a place on either album. But having it here on its own record is actually rather nice, as a "concentrated" (not really) dose of Bohren's special sound to savor.
Like all the Latitudes lps, packaged in that instantly recognizable black and white diecut 12" sleeve, and yeah, totally limited...
MPEG Stream: "Mitleid Lady"

BORIS Japanese Heavy Rock Hits Vol. 3 (Southern Lord) 7" 5.98
Finally, the third and final volume in the Japanese Heavy Rock Hits 7" series from Japanese heavy rockers Boris. Although based solely on this series of singles, one could be forgiven for thinking Boris were anything but heavy rockers. Seems like these singles were a chance for the band to stretch out and try on some different sounds for size, and the results have been pretty great actually.
Each 7" featured a different band member on the cover, and fan boys have been waiting for this one, when lead guitarist and Boris crush Wata takes center stage. Glamorous and bored, or maybe just aloof, Wata poses beneath a flurry of Stephen O'Malley's geometric abstractions on the cover, while inside, on the A side, Wata croons languidly over a simple skeletal drumbeat and washed out clean guitar strum, almost like a way more minimal stripped down sonic youth. Minor key, woozy, melancholy, the vocals front and center, while the band offer a hushed slowcore backdrop, delicate and mopey and a little bit dreamy, with a definite '90s indie rock vibe, with a little Mazzy Star mixed in, but not nearly as shoegazey, just really sad and slow and indie folky.
The flipside however finished things with a band, or more specifically, a wall of crumbling distortion, then a sheet of feedback, and then some slow plodding blissed out mope rock, with crashing drums, crooned vox, epic and mournful, another nod to the indie rock of old, but given a little Nadja / Jesu style sonic makeover. A lilting main vocal melody drifts ethereally over snarls of incendiary guitar, and plodding doomic drums, everything lysergic and staring-into-the-sun heavy. Dizzying and darkly dreamy, a sort of future heavy rock doom-ed blown out ballad. Really cool for sure, but these singles definitely have us wondering what the heck the next Boris full length is gonna sound like... can't wait to find out.

BUNKUR II - Nullify (Displeased) cd 13.98
It's been 5 years since the last Bunkur record, the appropriately titled Bludgeon, possibly one of the slowest, heaviest sickest doomdronedirge discs EVER. Corrupted, Esoteric, Khanate, Asva, Rigor Sardonicous, Skepticism, Fleshpress, all heavy and slow, but it always seemed like Bunkur managed to push that sound a little further. And if anything, record number 2 from these guys, titled Nullify, might have thrown down the gauntlet, creating a single, sprawling, 77 minute cloud of oozing slow motion black hate. Until Corrupted come through with their rumored triple disc single song, Nullify might just rank as the one to beat. That is if by beat, you meant create a doom record, that was impossibly slow, with instruments tuned insanely low, a sprawling skeletal song structure that is so spare and sparse it seems essentially structureless, with vocals that sound like you're vomiting up your internal organs, drums that sound like they're playing to some subterranean deathmarch, and basslines that aren't really lines at all, more like subsonic tones emanating from some bottomless pit. Cuz that's what it would take to out-doom these Dutch destroyers. But hell, why bother, better to just sit back, and let Bunkur's filthy black tide wash over you.
Slow, and epic, not really 'heavy' as much as dense, dark, deep and dismal, in fact Nullify almost sounds more ritualistic and abstract than doomy, like a heavier blacker Abruptum, lots of rumbling and groaning and howling and creeping and oozing, here and there the band do lock into something more propulsive, and by that we mean like 4 or 5 bpm, the drums offering up some chaotic fills, the bass swelling and undulating, but just as quickly whatever forward momentum is generated is dispelled and the band grinds back to a near static rumble. In a weird way, this is almost a drone record, strangely soothing in fact, a blurred smeared expanse of rumbling buzzing low end, the vocals and grinding riffage, so low and filthy and downtuned, that they just sound like more layers sound, but strap on some headphones, and it's like being sucked into hell, a harrowing sonic journey through the deepest pits of the underworld, every crushing thrum like the soul shattering footstep of some massive demon, every streak of hiss like a fiery blast of hellbreath, intense and brutal, massive and mysterious, punishing and pummeling, a gorgeously grim expanse of ultra, mega, multiple o'd, beyond funereal, kvltish hell doooooooooooom. And thus, gets our highest, or perhaps lowest, recommendation.
MPEG Stream: "Nullify - Excerpt I"
MPEG Stream: "Nullify - Excerpt II"

CAETHUA The Long Afternoon Of Earth (Preservation) 2cd 19.98
It's the moment that reminds us why we still love doing all the work it takes to run AQ. The moment when you put on a record by an artist you have never heard before and are immediately transported to another dimension, all senses completely heightened as you realize that you are hearing for the first time what will be sounds and songs that you will be playing over and over for years to come.
This is the moment that occurred the first time we put on this album by Caethua. We knew that the label it was on Preservation, had given us some tender and dreamy releases in the past, especially the great bliss out Japanese band Eddie Marcon, but other then that we had nothing to go on. But the moment we pressed play, that sensation hit harder than it has in so long. With its sparse and haunting arrangements and daydream inducing vocals this is one of those records that we thought could only exist in our imaginations. You know that fun 'what if' game you play to invent the perfect record. What if Machinefabriek and Jasper TX merged forces with Beach House??!! And for once one of those too good to be true imaginary concoctions has totally come to life!!!
Caethua really manage to meld so many of our favorite worlds. That feeling of being somewhere between waking and sleeping worlds, faded and melting layers of sound creating the perfect bed for the irresistible vocal delivery, the magical soft force behind Caethua, Clare Hubbard.
The Long Afternoon Of Earth is spread out over two discs, bursting at the seams with the layered and haunting elements of her sound. Like if Vincent Gallo and Mira Cook jammed together with disintegrating Chet Baker records woven into the mix. There are also songs with a more straightforward approach that evoke a modern day Karen Dalton or Shirley Collins, if teamed up with the Tenniscoats, maybe. Makes sense that Hubbard is from Maine as these would be the perfect sounds to keep you warm and safe and protected when the world around you turns so frosty and dark. Absolutely stunning!
MPEG Stream: "Lament"
MPEG Stream: "The Old Ones Go First"
MPEG Stream: "In A Garden Barely Looked At"

E-MAN s/t (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
A long lost eighties artifact from UK tape label The Tapeworm, released along with three other strange and wonderful tapes, to be found elsewhere on this week's list.
E-Man is probably not a name familiar to most folks, and Geir Jenssen might not be either, but odds are, most aQ customers and drone obsessives do know Jennsen by his 'other' name, Biosphere!
But before you freak out and nab one of these expecting some sort of icy grim minimal ambience, be prepared, this was originally released in 1984, and is a whole 'nother beast. E-Man specializes in gloomy synth driven new wave, with crooned dramatic vocals, programmed electronic percussion, Joy Division-y basslines, Kraftwerk like melodies, wicked cool, but definitely of its time. Although folks who have been digging on the recent resurgence of new wave / cold wave, should for sure check this out, cuz this is the real deal, warm whirring swooshes of synthesizer, "Rockit" like rhythms, electronic drums, even some scratching, a little bit funky, but also cold and clinical, space-y here and there, with haunting snippets of found sounds, mysterious voices, but all would around the groups propulsive sound. There are some moments that hint at the Biosphere to come, a little more spacey and abstract, but even those tracks are strangely new wave-y, almost new age-y actually, and often lead right into some stiff outerspace robo-funk, usually overlaid with the above mentioned reverb drenched croon. Not at all what we expected, but we're totally digging it.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES. Bad ass Savage Pencil artwork too...

FAHEY, JOHN America (4 Men With Beards) 2lp 25.00
All right now. After a few unfortunate issues at the pressing plant (discovered, of course, after these beautiful, highly elaborate gatefold double lps were already on the market), we finally have the mind boggling 2009 edition of John Fahey's America. And man was it worth the wait. Originally released in 1971 as a single lp with only four songs, America wasn't heard as it was intended until 1998 when Takoma issued a cd version with all the tracks (NINE extra songs!), and even then, a few minutes had to be shaved off the song Mark 1:15 because of cd time constraints. But now we have it on vinyl, and let it be said, 4 Men With Beards have really outdone themselves with this one, offering an appropriate package (limited to a scant 3000 hand numbered copies, by the way) for Fahey at his most epic!
America definitely ranks among Fahey's most thematic albums, which is saying a lot. Even with covers of songs by Skip James and the McGee Brothers, (not to mention an amazing interpretation of the third movement from Dvorak's Symphony #8), this album presents a powerful and unique vision that is pure John Fahey, and in doing so, he takes things further than usual with a couple of massive tracks stretching into the double digits. Some real mind blowers, for sure, and you'll probably be left wondering how anyone could maintain such an amazing and disciplined command of a steel string guitar. But hey, it's John Fahey after all, and chances are you've been waiting for this one for quite some time.
MPEG Stream: "Jesus Is A Dying Bedmaker"
MPEG Stream: "Knoxville Blues"
MPEG Stream: "Mark 1:15"

FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD High Life (Awesome Vistas) lp + cd 14.98
One of two new releases from the always kick ass Awesome Vistas label, run by artist, musician and aQ pal Chris Johanson.
Flower Of Flesh And Blood is the new project from Sean Kennerly, a write and musician based in New York, who was a SF scene regular back in the nineties (he fronted the late great Ponyride, remember them?), and who later went on to play guitar in pop punk combo Samiam. Flower Of Flesh And Blood finds Kennerly teaming up with Johanson and Hisham Baroocha (Black Dice, Soft Circle, etc.) for a record of dark brooding indie rock, that wouldn't be out of place next to recent Record Of The Weekers True Widow. The same sort of head nodding grooves, drawled vocals, slow builds and big hooks, the guitars fuzzy and warm, the sound definitely reminiscent of classic nineties indie rock / slowcore.
Flower Of Flesh And Blood are dark and languid, mellow and stoned, druggy and dreary, laid back and almost twangy here and there, rocking for sure but not loud or heavy. Hooks galore, but they're subtle, and lurk beneath the surface, letting the guitars buzz and chime, the bass unfurl thick and distorted tendrils of low end, the drums pound away, powerful but restrained, the songs minor key and melancholy, definitely poppy, but a more muted pop, dour and contemplative, occasionally locking into droney almost looped sounding parts, totally hypnotic and spacey. Really nice.
Packaged in a gorgeous silkscreened sleeve, with a xeroxed insert and a cd of the record to boot!
MPEG Stream: "Trigger"
MPEG Stream: "Let It Die"
MPEG Stream: "Pony Life"

FORMER GHOSTS Fleurs (Upset The Rhythm) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Former Ghosts is a primitive darkwave trio featuring two folks we know quite well, the teen goth chanteuse Zola Jesus and Xiu Xiu's emotionally wracked Jamie Stewart; but it's the third party who's responsible for penning all of the songs for Former Ghosts. That would be one Freddy Ruppert, who also records as brilliantly named solo project This Song Is A Mess But So Am I. Even though Zola and Jamie are the supporting cast in Former Ghosts, their unique theatricality is welcomed in Ruppert's dark cabaret of cheap synths wheezing out downer melodies. The Joy Division / early New Order axis is the most obvious influence on Ruppert's songwriting, alternating between peppy minor-chord tunes and maudlin electro-dirges; yet the production veers much closer to the John Maus ethos for warped home recordings. In fact, the track "Mother" could be straight out of New Order's Power, Corruption, and Lies, minus the lack of a Martin Hannett production in favor something much more jagged around the edges. Zola Jesus mostly keeps her vocals as backing chorales of sustained trills and ululations, but on a couple of tracks she steps forward to belt out those songs with operatic prowess. As affected and gloomy as Ruppert's monotone can be, the Zola Jesus tracks are probably the standouts on the album. Certainly one to place alongside Cold Cave, Blank Dogs, and of course Xiu Xiu and Zola Jesus. Great stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Mother"
MPEG Stream: "Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "The Bull And The Ram"

FRANKLIN, MARTIN & MICHAEL NORTHAM (MNORTHAM) An Opening Of The Earth: Recovered (Faria) cd 18.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Martin Franklin and Michael Northam began communicating in the early '90s, both engrossed with the realm of possibilities extant in the laboratory that was the experimental cassette culture. At the time, Northam was beginning a career of sound-art globetrotting by way of festivals, residencies, and the generosity of others, having emerged from the Austin, Texas sound community that spawned the likes of John Grzinich, Olivia Block, Rick Reed, and Seth Nehil. Martin Franklin had gone on to form the British ambient ensemble Tuu, with releases through Beyond, Hic Sunt Leones, and Amplexus. It seems that Franklin and Martin enjoyed a single three hour session back in 1991, and out of that session came the original set of recordings which made their way on to a cassette, released by Sounds For Consciousness Rape, and later onto cd by SDV Tontrager. As both the cd and the tape have been long out of print, we can't comment on the differences between the original recording and this 'recovered' remix of the original source material.
Franklin and Northam settle organic textures from metal, dirt, and wood clattering against each other and building softened drones amidst the aggregated sounds. It makes perfect sense that Northam would later work with Darren Tate in one of the final Ora recordings, as these sodden ambient passages and quietly gritty noises share plenty of similarities. Northam had also brought to the session a cassette deck rewired to generate feedback systems, and Franklin had a handheld dictaphone with static and white noise broadcasting through the hypercompressed speakers. These elements give the recordings a rough hewn edge which counterpoint Franklin's sinewy ambience and ghostly half-melodies which are evidence of the contemporary remix work. Altogether, this redux has a darkly ritualized feel of isolationist drones divining something tactile out of the void, much like one would expect from the occluded sounds of the recent Drone Records catalog.
MPEG Stream: "Tape 1, Pt. 2"
MPEG Stream: "Tape 1, Pt. 3"
MPEG Stream: "Tape 3, Pt. 2"

GLACIER Sounding The Deep (Sonic Meditations) cassette 5.98
This one should be a no brainer. Any one into space rock krautdrone a la Expo 70, might as well just stop reading and grab this right now.
Recorded by Expo 70's Justin Wright, and released on his Sonic Meditations label, Glacier definitely sounds like it could have been Wright under a different name, the same sort of brooding psychedelic drift, the same blissed out ambience, the same minimal blurred dronescapes, the same occasional forays into something slightly heavier and Sunn-ier, but it's actually the work of a fellow named David Williams. And don't assume that Glacier are a rip off of Expo 70, they just happen to tread the same sonic territory. Imagine the furthest reaches of space, Wright's Expo 70 is drifting aimlessly through the stars, coordinates set for the heart of some distant sun, when who should drift into view, Glacier, their trajectory an entirely different far off sun, a wholly different destination, but with a shared journey.
Glacier to our ears sounds a bit more droney, and abstract, not as heavy or space-y, instead, more contemplative, minimal and abstract, tendrils of guitar melody drift in a haze of deep low end tones, occasionally thickening into something a bit more dense and blackened, but retaining a proper amount of bliss and shimmer, the resulting overall sound is more like slowcore or shoegaze, but slowed waaaaaaaaay down, to a crawl, what once might have been a dirge, is transformed into something much more ephemeral and ethereal, chords and melodies are spread out over minutes rather than seconds, tones are allowed to ring out, and dissipate, chords sprawl spaceward, almost disappearing completely before the next one is sent in its wake. Hushed, minimal, dark and lovely, definitely essential listening for folks into the dreamier side of spacedrone, could be your new favorite late night chill out drift off soundtrack... it's fast becoming ours!
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Shore"
MPEG Stream: "Glacier"

GLACIER Sounding The Deep (Sonic Meditations) cd-r 5.98
This one should be a no brainer. Any one into space rock krautdrone a la Expo 70, might as well just stop reading and grab this right now.
Recorded by Expo 70's Justin Wright, and released on his Sonic Meditations label, Glacier definitely sounds like it could have been Wright under a different name, the same sort of brooding psychedelic drift, the same blissed out ambience, the same minimal blurred dronescapes, the same occasional forays into something slightly heavier and Sunn-ier, but it's actually the work of a fellow named David Williams. And don't assume that Glacier are a rip off of Expo 70, they just happen to tread the same sonic territory. Imagine the furthest reaches of space, Wright's Expo 70 is drifting aimlessly through the stars, coordinates set for the heart of some distant sun, when who should drift into view, Glacier, their trajectory an entirely different far off sun, a wholly different destination, but with a shared journey.
Glacier to our ears sounds a bit more droney, and abstract, not as heavy or space-y, instead, more contemplative, minimal and abstract, tendrils of guitar melody drift in a haze of deep low end tones, occasionally thickening into something a bit more dense and blackened, but retaining a proper amount of bliss and shimmer, the resulting overall sound is more like slowcore or shoegaze, but slowed waaaaaaaaay down, to a crawl, what once might have been a dirge, is transformed into something much more ephemeral and ethereal, chords and melodies are spread out over minutes rather than seconds, tones are allowed to ring out, and dissipate, chords sprawl spaceward, almost disappearing completely before the next one is sent in its wake. Hushed, minimal, dark and lovely, definitely essential listening for folks into the dreamier side of spacedrone, could be your new favorite late night chill out drift off soundtrack... it's fast becoming ours!
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Shore"
MPEG Stream: "Glacier"

HJARNIDAUDI Psykostarevoid (MusicFearSatan) cd 16.98
We first discovered Hjarnidaudi via the always amazing Paradigms label, but at the time we were even more excited by the fact that the man behind Hjarnidaudi was one Hlidolf, who was responsible for one of our all time favorite (and sadly now out of print) doomdronedirge records, a massive slab of slow motion spaced out sludge that was the perfect combination of SUNNO))) slow motion sludge and blissed out psychedelic space drift a la Klaus Schulze. So we were surprised to learn Hjarnidaudi was a full on band, still heavy and doomy and slow, but a band, who didn't traffic exclusively in slow motion sludge, but created glimmering shimmering doomscapes, that took the slow and low and wreathed it in fuzz and warmth and shimmer, on Paradigms' Pain:Noise:March.
And now it's 3+ years later, and we discover there's a NEW Hjarnidaudi, so we order a bunch cuz we loved the last one (made it a Record Of The Week!), and whattayaknow, we're surprised once again. The band is barely even doomy anymore it seems, instead offering up some looped, hypnotic heaviness, the guitars dense and heavy, the drums big and booming, the sound a sort of epic post metal mathiness, guitars moaning and keening, while another offers up weird high end tangles, super propulsive, downright rocking and a little proggy.
But hold off, that's only the first song, the other three tracks are definitely a lot doomier and darker, pounding and plodding, with guitars ringing out, chiming and shimmering, wreathed in crumbling distortion, woozy and washed out, but definitely dark and depressive and dreamily doomy, however, also strangely clean, the guitars more loud and effected than downtuned and distorted, some moments this actually sounds like a more blissed out less gloom pop Katatonia... and by track three the distortion becomes totally blown out and the band slips into full on metallic Jesu / Nadja territory offering up a deafening blown out coda.
MPEG Stream: "Part I"
MPEG Stream: "Part II"

IS s/t (Awesome Vistas) lp 14.98
A new batch of Awesome Vistas is always a cuse for celebration around here, so we're pretty thrilled to get not one, but TWO new AV jams, Flower Of Flesh And Blood, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this, the simple titled Is, which is the soundtrack music for an art exhibit by Chris Johanson, who also happens to be the Awesome Vistas head honcho.
For this project, Johanson gathered up a whole mess of kick ass guests, including Sam Coomes (Quasi), Tom Greenwood (Jackie O Motherfucker), Sara Lund (Unwound), Emil Amos (Grails), Tara Jane O'Neil, Nick Bindeman (Acre) and more, to create a gorgeous abstract drift of folky percussion, soft wheezing drones, and looped mesmer.
Two twenty minute side long tracks, the first begins with an awesome looped start stop figure, before expanding into something more free and folky and free jazzy, drums and flutes and acoustic guitars and cellos, eventually growing to a muted frenzy, like a free jazz / free folk / drum circle psych jam, think Avarus, No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Jackie O, but with a bit more of a chamber music vibe. Quite nice.
The second track is much more folky and hippy, definitely reminding us of the Finnish forest folk, with tribal rhythms, hand drums, shakers and random percussion, fluttery flutes, detuned guitars and chanted vocals, total psychedelic spaced out Wicker Man folk that slowly sprawls and then dissipates.
Gorgeous hand silkscreened sleeves with a photocopied insert, and yeah, probably limited too...

JABLADAV Cold (self released) 7" 9.98
Three new songs from one man black metal band Jabladav, limited to only 100 copies, so grab one while you can.
Jabladav explores some different sounds on Cold, the opener "Coldest Last Winter" begins with just keyboards, and clean guitar before the distortion kicks in, but instead of exploding into a frenzy of black buzz, the song lopes drearily, the keyboard remaining, plinking out a sorrowful minor key melody, while the drums pound out a doomic tempo, and the guitar buzz all washed out and Striborg like. It's heavy but more sort of dreamy and ethereal, near the end things get a little more mathy and convoluted with some cool stop starts, but for the most part it's all drift and haunting and doomy.
The second track is another keyboards and guitar jam, the guitars tangled and folky, intricate and lush, the keyboards set on some strangehuman voice setting, so it sounds like a stuttering choir, and again, the 'band' kicks in, a trudging plod, harsh vokills over angular distorted chug, before things build to a full on black blast, the keyboards drifting creepily below the surface the whole time.
The final track is way more classic Jabladav, the guitars sharp and jagged and buzzy, the drums frenetic and blasting, the melody epic and haunting, with some cool stumbling, lurching gnarled arrangements and a cool black ambient outro. Rad stuff as always. A bit different, but still shot through with that same twisted Jabladav vibe.
Comes in a printed color sleeve, the 7"s are each numbered, there's an insert too, also numbered and signed and each with a little drawing, ALSO comes with a cd-r featuring the tracks from the 7", that too is hand numbered. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we got a bunch. but Jabladav stuff always blows out of here...

JAMES, SKIP Jesus Is A Mighty Good Leader (Monk) lp 22.00
For this list, we don't just have one, or two, but three of the Early Blues' heaviest hitters newly reissued on vinyl from the always amazing Monk label: Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the "Mother of the Blues", Ma Rainey!!!
Of all the bluesmen from the Delta, Skip James is a true auteur. Master of the blues subgenre now known as the "Bentonia school", named for the region he hailed from in Mississippi. He's also one of the longest living, having survived through an early career and a later rediscovery. His signature style of odd guitar tunings, three finger picking and eerie falsetto vocals could make shivers run down your spine. He didn't just interpret material he invented it, influencing the likes of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and none other than Robert Johnson himself (Johnson's "Hellhound On My Trail, was derived from James "Devil Got My Women"). James didn't begin recording until the early thirties and this collection is pulled from lost Paramount 78 recordings recorded in Grafton, WI. All material is completely original including his most well-known songs such as "I'm So Glad", "Drunken Spree", "Devil Got My Woman" and "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues".

JEFFERSON, BLIND LEMON I Want To Be Like Jesus In My Head (Monk) lp 22.00
For this list, we don't just have one, or two, but three of the Early Blues' heaviest hitters newly reissued on vinyl from the always amazing Monk label: Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the "Mother of the Blues", Ma Rainey!!!
Perhaps the most well-known of the blind bluesmen and the quintessential purveyor of the Southern Gothic (it doesn't get much darker than "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", though that song is not included here!), Blind Lemon Jefferson is one of the founders of the Texas Blues, and one of the first successful solo artists. Starting his career performing in brothels and barber shops, with his unique interplay of rural and urban blues techniques, as well as his lamenting theatrical vocal style, he was able to use his songs as a means to call attention to the plight of the poor and the destitute. Though he died at an early age (freezing to death in Chicago!), he managed to record nearly 100 songs in just a few years. This collection features some of his best, including "Black Snake Moan", "Bad Luck Blues", "Broke and Hungry", and "Beggin' Back".

KATATONIA Night Is The New Day (Peaceville) cd 16.98
Nobody does heartbreaking heaviness like Sweden's Katatonia. Nobody. Every record is just the perfect blend of dour gloom pop, and crushing massive metal crush, and Night Is The New Day is no different. It's tempting to say this is the best Katatonia yet, but we really can't because they're ALL great, all practically perfect. If you have all the other ones you're obviously gonna need this one too, odds are you've been dying for it since you first found out a new one was coming. For the rest of you, if you've somehow gone this long without ever hearing Katatonia, it's definitely time to fix that.
This is Katatonia's 8th full length in a little over 15 years, originally these guys were something way more metal, but even back then, they sounded more Cure than My Dying Bride, the gloom and miserablism already seeping into their music. But once the focus shifted, their sound was perfect, and has remain virtually unchanged ever since. Dark brooding metal ballads, we've described them in the past as a doom metal Cure, or a metallized Depeche Mode, but they've become so much more. The covered a Jeff Buckley on a past record, and suddenly it wasn't that difficult to imagine what might have happened had Buckley played with a metal backup band.
Katatonia manage the impossible, balancing delicate, hushed classic rock balladry, with epic modern doom, the guitars massive, the drums pounding, the vocals lush, lots of harmonies, no screeching, it's more like Alice In Chains in the vocal department, but it suits their chugging doom ballads. This is one of those bands who are really difficult to describe, their sound definitely borrows from all over the place, but manages to be totally original, it seems like it would be too wussy for most metalheads, yet, rare is the metalhead who doesn't LOVE Katatonia, and we MEAN LOOOOOVE. Must be tied in to that weird phenomenon of most metalheads digging the Cure and Depeche Mode, and in that case, Katatonia makes way more sense, cuz while they do sound a lot like those two bands, they are also HEAVY, when they want to be. Not sure what else to say, check the sound samples, if "Forsaker" doesn't convince you, then another couple hundred words probably won't either. Deep, dark, melodic, doomy, heavy and heartfelt, and just so goddamn good.
Some of us around here have been waiting for this record for months, maybe even years actually, and we were NOT disappointed, a record of the year contender for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Forsaker"
MPEG Stream: "The Longest Year"
MPEG Stream: "Idle Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Onward Into Battle"

KRALLICE Dimensional Bleedthrough (Profound Lore) cd 11.98
Nice. Black Metal supergroup Krallice return with record #2, and much like the first self-titled album, Dimensional Bleedthrough is full of nonstop, dizzying musical virtuosity that will send your jaw dropping to the floor. This stuff sounds IMPOSSIBLE to play, which for most mortals, it would be. But Krallice count among its ranks avant indie-metal guitar gods Mick Barr (Crom Tech, Orthelm, Ocrilim, etc.) and Colin Marston (known usually for his bass duties in groups like Dysrhytmia and Behold the Arctopus), as well as the hot-shit drumming skills of Lev Weinstein and the burly basslines of Nick McMaster. It's cool to hear what many people would have written off as a side project really take off into new territory where the music is allowed to shine through instead of hiding behind a facade of what black metal should be. In the end, Krallice effortlessly lay waste to so much of the black metal out there these days. The complexity of these songs is pretty unbelievable, but luckily things remain very musical throughout. The songs are forceful but super melodic and catchy, and listening to Krallice is like taking off on a mind altering journey. The vocals here are great and classically black metal, and anyone familiar with Barr's high pitched shrieking days in Crom Tech might be a bit surprised to hear him passing the test with flying colors. Soundwise, Krallice adhere to the template perfected by groups like Weakling and Wolves In The Throne Room, but they definitely put their own unique spin on things. Things get a bit proggy here and there, but not in a bad or dorky way at all. This is really the sound of dudes who know their way around their instruments like few others, and they have combined their talents to deliver hands down one of the most impressive metal records this year.
NOTE: We're listing this at a special sale price of $11.98 for the next two weeks only, after which it'll go back to the regular $13.98 list price.
MPEG Stream: "Dimensional Bleedthrough"
MPEG Stream: "Autochthon"

LIFE ON EARTH (EDWARD WILLIAMS) OST (Trunk) cd 17.98
Another amazing lost gem from Trunk records, this time it's the soundtrack to a legendary (so we're told) nature show on the BBC called Life On Earth, from 30 years ago. Obviously we've never seen the show, but the music is magical. Mysterious and haunting, orchestral chamber music that sounds way too dark and haunting and serene to be designed to accompany shots of frogs and seals and tigers and bears, that is unless they're dying or wandering away sadly into the sunset. The music here, composed by Edward Williams is really quite lovely, but is so surprisingly dark, and melancholy, minor key, sad and sometimes otherworldly, almost almost like it would be better suited for an animated Tim Burton movie, but removed from the show, taken on its own, this music is indeed fantastic, yet still sounds like it must have been taken from some old horror film, or Italian giallo.
Lonely coronets, strummed harpsichords, creepy pizzicato melodies, muted hand drums and marimbas, Bernard Hemann-esque strings, fluttery flutes, ominous swells, booming kettle drums, singing violins, bells and chimes, lots of reverbs, clouds of gentle harp melodies, so gorgeous, but definitely has us wanting to see the show, to understand just how this music worked with shots of animals and plants, it makes nature seem quite ominous and malevolent indeed.
The record finishes off with what sounds like an actual clip from the show, whirring drones, distant drums, what sounds like reverbed Theremins, and a deep British voiceover (David Attenborough in fact!) discussing the disappearance of man. Wow.
Cool liner notes too, and photos, including the story of how Johnny Trunk tracked down the composer, and had to also track down Sir Attenborough himself.
Totally recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Life On Earth Begins"
MPEG Stream: "First Fossils"
MPEG Stream: "Comb Jellies"
MPEG Stream: "Coral Larvae"

LIFE ON EARTH (EDWARD WILLIAMS) OST (Trunk) lp 17.98
Another amazing lost gem from Trunk records, this time it's the soundtrack to a legendary (so we're told) nature show on the BBC called Life On Earth, from 30 years ago. Obviously we've never seen the show, but the music is magical. Mysterious and haunting, orchestral chamber music that sounds way too dark and haunting and serene to be designed to accompany shots of frogs and seals and tigers and bears, that is unless they're dying or wandering away sadly into the sunset. The music here, composed by Edward Williams is really quite lovely, but is so surprisingly dark, and melancholy, minor key, sad and sometimes otherworldly, almost almost like it would be better suited for an animated Tim Burton movie, but removed from the show, taken on its own, this music is indeed fantastic, yet still sounds like it must have been taken from some old horror film, or Italian giallo.
Lonely coronets, strummed harpsichords, creepy pizzicato melodies, muted hand drums and marimbas, Bernard Hemann-esque strings, fluttery flutes, ominous swells, booming kettle drums, singing violins, bells and chimes, lots of reverbs, clouds of gentle harp melodies, so gorgeous, but definitely has us wanting to see the show, to understand just how this music worked with shots of animals and plants, it makes nature seem quite ominous and malevolent indeed.
The record finishes off with what sounds like an actual clip from the show, whirring drones, distant drums, what sounds like reverbed Theremins, and a deep British voiceover (David Attenborough in fact!) discussing the disappearance of man. Wow.
Cool liner notes too, and photos, including the story of how Johnny Trunk tracked down the composer, and had to also track down Sir Attenborough himself.
Totally recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Life On Earth Begins"
MPEG Stream: "First Fossils"
MPEG Stream: "Comb Jellies"
MPEG Stream: "Coral Larvae"

LOWE, ROBERT A. A. Fazo IV: La Kvalito de Speguloj (Rainbow Body) lp 21.00
Ooh! A hyperlimited LP from Robert Lowe, better known now for his work as Lichens and with Om, better known than for being in nineties indie noise rockers 90 Day Men. Recently, those Lichens recordings have oozed a cosmic vibe of enveloping transcendence through looping vocals and shimmering guitars; and through Om, he's been instrumental in furthering the Middle Eastern dervish vibe in Om's live sets (as of this writing, it's unclear if he'll join the band in the studio). That said, it's all electronics for Lowe on this LP-only, micro-edition pressing. The first side sinks into a side-long excursion that glides along a sedate hypnotic groove of downer electronic bass pulses, which almost has a hyper stripped down Tricky-meets-Conrad Schnitzler slinkiness to the rhythm. Filter swept tonal bendings and pixie-dusted melodies float about the laid back rhythms. Chill-out music, indeed. The second side contains five shorter cuts of library music redux with spiralling arpeggiations and weird-science bloopiness that fits perfectly into the Oneohtrix Point Never / Pulse Emitter camp of electronic meditations. The titles all give you a chance to bone up on your Esperanto! Only 300 copies!

M.B. / MAURIZIO BIANCHI Mectpyo Bakterium / Genocide O.T.M. (Menstrual Recordings) 2cd 27.00
Maurizio Bianchi is one the pioneers of Italian Industrial music, transforming the psychedelic electronics of the likes of Conrad Schniztler, Cluster, Eno, Neu!, etc. into a chilling, dark theater of cancerous sounds that had become the template for the countless dark ambient / industrialists who followed. His story is a peculiar one, as he was incessantly productive throughout the late '70s and early '80s until he unexpectedly stopped in 1984. This musical cessation served to heighten the mystique around the man, as rumors and falsehoods swirled around his legacy, followed by numerous bootleg tapes and LPs of his rarities. While Bianchi has resurfaced once again with new material (some of questionable quality), this 2cd set is a collection of the classic Bianchi sound. Mectpyo Bakterium was an album originally released on LP back in 1982, and then later in 1998 through the Alga Marghen reissue campaign of his major records. The second disc is a collection of extremely rare tracks, including several that had made their way into the public domain as bootlegs.
Mectpyo Bakterium is a bleak piece of electronic expressionism, with shivering tones and slashing bursts of clinical noise meandering through minefields of grim atmospheres. As it was originally released on LP, the two main tracks of this album are each side-long excursions that mutate and fold on top of themselves, beginning at very dark, very grim launching points and ending up in an entirely different mindframe, having rotated through dour melodies, squalid noises, funeral drum machine marches, and further bleak electronics. It makes sense for this to be a worthy contemporary of TG, Cabaret Voltaire, and Whitehouse! The Mectpyo Bakterium disc also features two bonus tracks - the same featured on the 1998 cd reissue.
The second disc entitled Genocide O.T.M. culls tracks from three sources -- the Japanese bootleg Anthology 1981-1984, the acetate 7" of Genocide Of The Menses, and the Leibstandarte SS MB 2 LP. It's hard to know where that Leibstandarte SS MB track came from, as it's not credited to either of the Come Organization LPs, but the track here "Zyclombie" is a very dark, noisy construct of accreting hiss and lazer-drill droning. Bianchi in top, noise-mantra form. The tracks from the Genocide Of The Menses 7" continue in this same vein with equally impressive results. Neither of the two tracks credited as "Neuro Habitat" actually come from the album of that same name, but are woozy tape excursions with rudimentary drum machines and slow-motion noise bellowing. These tracks are pretty rough around the edges, and the sound quality could have been punched up a bit. Aside from these odd-ball cuts, the whole set is a remarkable document of just how good Bianchi had been back in the day.
We only have a handful of these which we got from Mr. Bianchi himself. It remains to be seen, if we'll be able to get more copies in!
MPEG Stream: "Sterile Regles"
MPEG Stream: "Zyclombie"
MPEG Stream: "Genocide Of The Menses 1"

MAYFAIR SET, THE Young One (Captured Tracks / Woodsist) cd 12.98
The Mayfair Set sound exactly how you would imagine a band made up of members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls would sound, AWESOME!
Equal parts gloomy retro cold wave and that reverbed sixties girl group sound, two great tastes for sure, the sound washed out and murky, the boy vocals buried beneath angular jangle guitar and simple drumming, the female vox all shimmery in the background on some tracks, way up front in the others, with the boy vox drifting off in the distance, brooding moody verses and soaring choruses, gothy cold wave basslines, lilting and sing songy jangle gives way to driving woozy gloom pop, the guitar lines are spidery and skeletal, the distorted drumming skitters and stumbles, locking into simple propulsive rhythms, holding things together, white the dueling girl / boy vocals drive most of these songs, surrounded by shimmering clouds of glitchy effects, warm whirring keyboards, the sound warm and washed out and dreamy, another one of those records that gets played like crazy every single day. No better recommendation than that! And the fact that's members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls...
MPEG Stream: "Already Warm"
MPEG Stream: "Desert Fun"
MPEG Stream: "Junked!"

MEGASUS s/t (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
Finally available on cd!!
A name like Megasus can only mean one thing. METAL. That's right, pounding, thrashing, ass kicking head banging metal from Providence Rhode Island, which just so happens to feature Brian from Lightning Bolt on drums. But NOT Brian Chippendale, nope, that's bass player Brian (Gibson!) pounding the skins, and hot damn, he's a pretty sick drummer for being such an insane bass player.
For those of you out there that play Rock Band or Guitar Hero, odds are you've probably heard Megasus before, one of their tracks was a huge hit on one of those games, downloaded about a million times, but for us, Megasus came out of nowhere, and proceeded to pummel us into submission!
Shredding classic style heavy metal, with a definite punk rock flavor, reminding us a bit of bands like Karp, that sort of punked up metal vibe, although with Megasus it's mostly the vocals, for the most part this is some seriously TRUE metal. Wild soaring leads, guitar harmonies, relentless drum pound, lots of chugging riffage, proggy arrangements, some stretches of doominess, the vocals a distorted howl, but for the most part this is just some seriously kick ass metal radness!
MPEG Stream: "Ten Kingdoms"
MPEG Stream: "Megasus"

MEGASUS s/t (Wild Power) lp 24.00
Available on vinyl one more time, new higher price though sorry:
A name like Megasus can only mean one thing. METAL. That's right, pounding, thrashing, ass kicking head banging metal from Providence Rhode Island, which just so happens to feature Brian from Lightning Bolt on drums. But NOT Brian Chippendale, nope, that's bass player Brian (Gibson!) pounding the skins, and hot damn, he's a pretty sick drummer for being such an insane bass player.
For those of you out there that play Rock Band or Guitar Hero, odds are you've probably heard Megasus before, one of their tracks was a huge hit on one of those games, downloaded about a million times, but for us, Megasus came out of nowhere, and proceeded to pummel us into submission!
Shredding classic style heavy metal, with a definite punk rock flavor, reminding us a bit of bands like Karp, that sort of punked up metal vibe, although with Megasus it's mostly the vocals, for the most part this is some seriously TRUE metal. Wild soaring leads, guitar harmonies, relentless drum pound, lots of chugging riffage, proggy arrangements, some stretches of doominess, the vocals a distorted howl, but for the most part this is just some seriously kick ass metal radness!
And the packaging, we talk about amazing packaging all the time, but wow, does this take the cake, an full color eye popping outer gatefold jacket, some sort of bloody winged goat, the logo and song titles embossed and stamped with gold foil, printed inner sleeve, pressed on 180 gram blood vinyl, comes with a poster, and a sticker. As well as a full album download. Phew.
MPEG Stream: "Ten Kingdoms"
MPEG Stream: "Megasus"

MELT-BANANA Initial T. (Init Records) 7" 6.98
It's been almost 2 years since we last heard from Japan's mighty Melt-Banana, our favorite purveyors of manic spastic grinding ultra complex math pop, and we were all ready to just write a generic review saying how we loved them but what else could we say, their sound hasn't changed that much, but then we threw this on and the opening track blew our fucking minds. Not sure why exactly, big buzzing bassline, all sorts of weird almost electronic sounding guitar parts, it almost sounds like a super charged sped up Deerhoof, the song soaring and epic, weirdly produced, processed, almost dance-y actually, and when the song kicks in it's just incredible, wild and catchy and frantic and heavy and so goddamn good, the sound lush and expansive, maybe like Melt-Banana doing their best Fuck Buttons or something. Whatever it is, it's just about the most delirious 2 and a half minutes we can remember.
Both the cd and the 7" are short short short, as in 5 minutes, but lots of parts and radness jammed into those 5 minutes and 3 songs. The second track is a bit more classic punked up MB, but that one too is more poppy and twisted and bouncy and electronic than we remember. The last track is another warped tangled pogo pop grind jam that RULES. Shit, maybe we've just been away from these guys (and gals) and just forgot how amazing they were. Regardless, this is just about the raddest 5 minutes we've rocked out to in forever!
MPEG Stream: "Loop Nebula"
MPEG Stream: "Leeching"

MELT-BANANA Initial T. (Init Records) 3" cd 6.98
It's been almost 2 years since we last heard from Japan's mighty Melt-Banana, our favorite purveyors of manic spastic grinding ultra complex math pop, and we were all ready to just write a generic review saying how we loved them but what else could we say, their sound hasn't changed that much, but then we threw this on and the opening track blew our fucking minds. Not sure why exactly, big buzzing bassline, all sorts of weird almost electronic sounding guitar parts, it almost sounds like a super charged sped up Deerhoof, the song soaring and epic, weirdly produced, processed, almost dance-y actually, and when the song kicks in it's just incredible, wild and catchy and frantic and heavy and so goddamn good, the sound lush and expansive, maybe like Melt-Banana doing their best Fuck Buttons or something. Whatever it is, it's just about the most delirious 2 and a half minutes we can remember.
Both the cd and the 7" are short short short, as in 5 minutes, but lots of parts and radness jammed into those 5 minutes and 3 songs. The second track is a bit more classic punked up MB, but that one too is more poppy and twisted and bouncy and electronic than we remember. The last track is another warped tangled pogo pop grind jam that RULES. Shit, maybe we've just been away from these guys (and gals) and just forgot how amazing they were. Regardless, this is just about the raddest 5 minutes we've rocked out to in forever!
MPEG Stream: "Loop Nebula"
MPEG Stream: "Leeching"

MELTAOT First And Second Rites (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
One of four new releases on the always fascinating, and often perplexing UK tape label The Tapeworm. This one comes courtesy of long time aQ customer and pal, bad ass artist, and scribe for the mighty Wire, Mr. Edwin Pouncey, aka Savage Pencil, along with his partner Sharon Gal, a UK artist and broadcaster. Besides doing time together in a noisy rock outfit called Pestrepeller, the duo unleash a pretty grim din as Meltaot, whose sound is a strange assemblage of abstract guitar drones, whispered incantations, abstract percussion, all woven into a candlelit crawl through some subterranean sonic doomscape, equal parts harrowing atmosphere, noisy abstraction and blackened beauty. Imagine a more artrock Abruptum, lots of squealing feedback way off in the distance, thick chordal buzz up front, lots of space, plenty of scrapes and creaks, moans and whispers, the female vocals are feral and haunting, sometimes slipping into some sort of demonic processed chantlike vokills. We also definitely hear some Angelblood, but picked apart and stretched out into some sort of unholy soundtrack to an endless night lost in a haunted forest, pursued by some unspeakable evil. Intense, and weirdly beautiful, each side a single track, each titled a 'rite', which is precisely what these sound like, the mysterious rites of some forestkult, conjuring up all manner of sonic demoncy.
Fans of atmospheric blackness and grimnoize will for sure dig, and even people into other abstract foresty weirdness, a la Sylvester Anfang, Avarus and the like, as long as they're up for something a bit darker, could do with a wonder through these black woods.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! With a killer Savage Pencil cover illustration.

MERRIMACK Grey Rigorism (Moribund) cd 14.98
The list can get a bit frustrating, in more ways than one, but we're constantly frustrated by too many records and not enough time, which means inevitably, some badass band that we love somehow never makes it onto the list. It happened with noiserock mice-fits White Mice finally reviewed elsewhere on this list, and it happened with French black metallers Merrimack, who are on full length number three, and who are only now making it onto the list for the first time. What can we say, we do our best, and as far as Merrimack is concerned, they rule, you should definitely buy this new one, and if you dig it as much as we think you will, you should buy the other two as well.
Why you ask? Cuz there's just something about French black metal. Something special, a definite vibe, a certain sound, although Grey Rigorism sounds very modern, and very Scandinavian, which is not a bad thing at all, but don't be expecting insane gnarled blackened weirdness or fucked up freaked out damaged black metal, Merrimack are super tight, their songs are dense and grim, slipping easily from midtempo pound, to furious blast, to almost industrial sounding stop start lurch, these guys would definitely have been right at home on Moonfog, along with Khold and Satyricon and other super slick sounding buzzing black hordes.
There are some strange moments here for sure, a couple tracks where the band lock into some doomy dirge while some mysterious French sample plays over the top, and the lengthy closing track, a multi parted epic that finds the band slipping from frantic blast to loping post rock to slow lumbering doom, there's some strange female spoken word part too laced amidst the howling vokills, but for the most part, Grey Rigorism is some super tight, well produced black buzzing grimness, and we dig it.
Features members of other elite French BM hordes Ancestral Fog, Corpus Christii, Glorior Belli and Morte Incandescente, and killer artwork by Seldon Hunt...
MPEG Stream: "The Golden Door"
MPEG Stream: "Omniabsence"
MPEG Stream: "By Thy Grace"

MICHAEL AND THE MUMBLES s/t (De Stijl) lp 14.98
If you're like us, then you probably first came across Michael Yonkers with the reissue of his 1968 outsider garage-punk classic Microminiature Love a few years ago. That record was a wildly forward looking piece of music that worked heavy studio experimentation into Yonkers' passionate and tense songs for a result unlike anything else. But where did this guy come from? Well, Minneapolis if you want to get all geographic. But Yonkers' musical roots, like many others from his era, were initially sewn from the fertile American garage rock scene of the mid '60s. Yonkers got his start all short haired and well dressed fronting the Mumbles, a simple and straightforward R&B combo, and these recordings from 1966 present a solid group taking cues from the Nuggets style fervor that was sweeping the nation. We're not quite sure that we detected any of the "dissonant undercurrents" the De Stijl website mentioned, maybe they're there... But this is not to slight this record at all, as Michael And The Mumbles whip up a cool set of rhythmic garage rock that is pretty much impossible to dislike. Yonkers' voice here is less frantic and emotional than on his solo discs, but it is also easy to get an idea of how he developed his own idiosyncratic approach to music making by stepping off the edge of a more traditional foundation. Perhaps it would be difficult to tell where things were going if you heard this stuff first, but this record is a delightful collection of tunes that laid the groundwork for one of the craziest and punkest things to come out of the late '60s American underground. Highly recommended, and to the non-turntable having types, this lp does come with a free download card.

MOEBIUS / PLANK / NEUMEIER Zero Set (Bureau B) cd 17.98
The collaboration between Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia), Connie Plank (the producer of pretty much every great Krautrock record), and Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru's drummer) almost sounds too good to be true. But, the one and only recording these three produced in 1983 proves to be amazing. The albums stands as a stunning amalgamation of Kraut motorik rhythms, angular electronic percolations, and a space-funk futurism that's wholly unique to Zero Set. In the early '80s, Plank had been hired to produce the early D.A.F. recordings, beefing up their already muscular Teutonic electronics; and that steroid bloated sound is found within the tight punches of electron poly rhythms and agitated sequences of arpeggiated bleep here too. The tracks all lock around the precisely synchronized rhythms of Neumeier, who has much more of a Donald Johnson / A Certain Ratio approach a la tight punky propulsion rather than the monstrous, if languid fills of "Stone In" on Guru Guru's UFO. Moebius later bemoaned that this album got "too close to techno for comfort." Well, it's actually better for it! Even if it did get close to an electroid techno, Zero Set is both weirder and more playful than many of the electronic body music practitioners of the day. This might not be something for those of you seeking the pastoral prettiness of Harmonia's Deluxe or the Cluster & Eno album, but as an response to the Neue Deutsche Welle sounds from that time period, Zero Set stands out amazingly well. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Speed Display"
MPEG Stream: "Load"
MPEG Stream: "Recall"

MOEBIUS / PLANK / NEUMEIER Zero Set (Bureau B) lp 17.98
The collaboration between Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia), Connie Plank (the producer of pretty much every great Krautrock record), and Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru's drummer) almost sounds too good to be true. But, the one and only recording these three produced in 1983 proves to be amazing. The albums stands as a stunning amalgamation of Kraut motorik rhythms, angular electronic percolations, and a space-funk futurism that's wholly unique to Zero Set. In the early '80s, Plank had been hired to produce the early D.A.F. recordings, beefing up their already muscular Teutonic electronics; and that steroid bloated sound is found within the tight punches of electron poly rhythms and agitated sequences of arpeggiated bleep here too. The tracks all lock around the precisely synchronized rhythms of Neumeier, who has much more of a Donald Johnson / A Certain Ratio approach a la tight punky propulsion rather than the monstrous, if languid fills of "Stone In" on Guru Guru's UFO. Moebius later bemoaned that this album got "too close to techno for comfort." Well, it's actually better for it! Even if it did get close to an electroid techno, Zero Set is both weirder and more playful than many of the electronic body music practitioners of the day. This might not be something for those of you seeking the pastoral prettiness of Harmonia's Deluxe or the Cluster & Eno album, but as an response to the Neue Deutsche Welle sounds from that time period, Zero Set stands out amazingly well. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Speed Display"
MPEG Stream: "Load"
MPEG Stream: "Recall"

MOONDOG The German Years 1977-1999 (Roof Music) 2cd 22.00
We couldn't be more excited that this has become available once again. We were blown away by this collection when it was first released a few years back but it became impossible to restock, until now! We finally have enough to share our love of the lesser known yet equally dazzling music Moondog made in the later years of his life. We recently listed the reissues of his early LP's from the '50s, and how remarkable that this man could have crafted such amazing creative music back then and continue to do so all the way up to his passing, four decades later!!!
The German Years documents the last two decades of Moondog's amazing and eccentric life when he was living in Germany, taken in by a family who supported him so he could devote all his time to creating music. An incredible collection of songs composed for pipe organ, string quartet, voice, chamber ensemble, piano, saxophone and more. Completely other worldly and what we would want a holy church devoted to the purity and sanctity of music to sound like.
The second disc is a recording of his last ever live performance recorded in France in 1999, just five months before he would pass away. Centered mostly on his piano pieces, the show is majestic and totally moving. The cds are packaged in a gorgeous hard cardboard package and includes a 44 page booklet of notes, photos, lyrics, interviews, essays, etc. Essential for Moondog fans, and when we really think about it if you just have a deep love of music chances are you either already love Moondog or you have yet to hear his music and once you do you will for sure be blown away!
MPEG Stream: "Marimba Mondo 2"
MPEG Stream: "Sea Horse"
MPEG Stream: "I'm This I'm That"
MPEG Stream: "Fiesta"

NADJA Belles Betes (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 15.98
One of our favorite Nadja records, previously only released on vinyl, finally available on cd!!
As we've mentioned in past reviews, it gets harder and harder to know what to say about Nadja and Aidan Baker records. Not just because there are so many of them, but because they all mine similar sonic territory, and heck, they all sound fantastic. This latest limited lp release is no different.
Baker, half of the duo that is Nadja (but you knew that), also has a strange habit of re-recording old songs, which drives completists and obsessive fans up the wall. Such is the case with Belles Betes, 4 solo Aidan Baker tracks, here reimagined and performed by Nadja, which basically means tracks that tended toward the minimal and drifty, get some crunch and buzz, pretty shimmer transformed into blessed out crush. And like we mentioned above, these tracks are fantastic, different enough from the originals that they're well worth owning. Probably most of you know what to expect from Nadja at this point, but just in case, the sound here is dripping with thick crumbling distortion, washed out weary vocals, muted machinelike percussion, a pounding Godfleshian post industrial metallic shoegaze, falling somewhere between M83 and Jesu, warm, thick, lustrous, epic, but somehow simultaneously melancholy and mournful.
The standout track might be "Green And Cold", the title track from a Baker disc we sold tons of, here the song becomes a bit of marginally new wave-y slowcore, spare and spacious, moody and haunting, and maybe the creepiest and mysteriously lovely Nadja jam yet.
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Beast"
MPEG Stream: "Green & Cold"

NEMOTO, SHINOBU Improvisations #1 (Experimedia) cd-r 10.98
This Japanese guitarist would have been much better off calling this record anything other than Improvisations #1. To be fair, these five extended pieces of drone smolder are technically improvised, but they sure as hell do not sound like the improvisations of Keiji Haino, Tetuzi Akiyama, Masayuki Takayanagi or any other giants of Japanese improv guitar bruitism. Shinobu's work recalls much more of the post-shoegazing excursions that you would get from Explosions In The Sky, Tarentel (circa From Bone To Satellite), and even some of Machinefabriek's constructions. As we mentioned, Shinobu does technically improvise each of these tracks, although it might be better stated that be records these pieces in single takes, collecting loops through his arsenal of pedals and layering them into these architecturally dense mounds of compacted fuzz, drone, and noise all blurred into a beautifully shoegazing atmosphere. The first track builds a warm enveloping haze on top of which Shinobu plops a rich piece of slide guitar work, that gives this track train-chugging-through-desert-valley-at-sunset type of cinematic scope. The second piece takes a slightly darker arc that billows with bioluminescence and distantly mechanoid pulsations. Again, Shinobu continues darker still throughout the album with the ensuing tracks, as the guitars become more spectral, more laced with shadow, and heavier on the low end frequencies. Here, you'll find more references to Troum or Aidan Baker, in terms of a darker take on the ambience. With the fourth track, Shinobu brightens everything with a guitar driven variation on the Gas / Pop Ambient sound that's very, very nice. Afterwards, the darkened murk and shadow returns on the finale, a majestically black piece of ambience. So so cold.
Experimedia has been turning up some pretty amazing artists from around the world that previously we had never heard of, and this album is certainly one of the gems in their increasingly prolific catalogue of releases. Limited to 150 copies!!!
MPEG Stream: "18:55 09 jan. 2009 "
MPEG Stream: "16:27 14 jan. 2009"
MPEG Stream: "22:34 14 jan. 2009"

NIBLOCK, PHILL Touch Strings (Touch) 2cd 19.98
Awesome. Simply, awesome. Phill Niblock is an artist that every musician should aspire to be. He's tirelessly composing, performing, and hosting this seminal series at his own Experimental Intermedia loft, all well into his late '70s! If you were to think of so many artists who had started to suck when they hit 30 or 40, the fact that Niblock is continuing to amaze as the elder statesman of NY Minimalism is all the more impressive. Never one to be effusive in his titles, Niblock's Touch Strings is a double disc of compositions for stringed instruments. The first disc is a 60 minute piece for electric guitar and bass, performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss (both from Band Of Susans) each restricted to only a few notes (E, F, and F#, to be specific) to coax sounds through their respective instruments with ebows. The resulting composition is an unhurried set of majestic drones, whose microtonal shifts delicately unfold over the course of the hour. Changes are definitely noticeable but only after they've happened, as Niblock's compositional genius is thoroughly hypnotizing. The second disc is broken into two pieces, both sourced from acoustic strings. The microtones from a single cello are ripped apart and layered back as a densely packed, monumental drone that buzzes, blurs, and bends for 25 minutes. The next piece applies the same strategy but to a four piece ensemble, all of whom are building harmonic intervals along a single drone arc that Niblock then reconfigured digitally after the fact. So fucking good!
MPEG Stream: "Stosspeng"
MPEG Stream: "Poure"
MPEG Stream: "One Large Rose"

NILE Those Whom The Gods Detest (Nuclear Blast) 13.98
The King Tut exhibit is back, and so is Nile! Gotta hand it to 'em, not only is their uncompromisingly brutal death metal so extreme that it's practically avant-garde (the stuff of Mike Patton's sickest fantasies no doubt), they stick to their historical, Egyptological themes with such pedantic persistence it's clear that they really ARE geeks for this stuff. Which also helps the (inadvertent?) avant-garde aspect, when they throw in "exotic" touches of ethnic instrumentation, and lyrics that practically need scholarly footnotes. Who else in the world of metal or any other music for that matter would name a song "Hittite Dung Incantation"? Hmm, maybe Steven Schultz, come to think of it. Anyway, as far as we're concerned, that's pretty cool, and this review is now superfluous, either you want album with a song called "Hittite Dung Incantation" on it or you don't, right? If somehow you're still undecided, perhaps it will help you decide (either way) if we mention that, musically speaking, Nile haven't lost a step, and still appear to be the reigning kings of death metal, with the state of the art blasting beats, crushing riffs, squiggly (yet majestic) leads, and guttural growls all precisely in place. And considering how death-obsessed ancient Egypt was, with those pyramidical tombs and all, Nile have picked a perfect subject for death metal, one that doesn't get old (it's already old!), and provides a chance for the band to explore some sounds not normally heard on a death metal album. Ferinstance, take the track "Yezd Desert Ghul Ritual In The Abandoned Towers Of Silence", which we're not sure if it's an "ethnographic forgery" or appropriated field recording, but it's definitely not death metal, with its ritualistic percussion, Arabic-sounding chant, and zinging acoustic flourishes on an oud or some other non-Western string instrument. We could do with a whole album of that (see Harappian Night Recordings for something along those lines) but of course the next track, "Kem Khefa Kheshef" is back to the bulldozing brutality.
Heck, we've liked EVERY Nile album, and this is no exception. What else is there to say? If you were to just follow ONE death metal band's career, you could do a lot worse than Nile. Plus, you might learn something!
Now, the question is, when is Nile going to pay tribute to the ultimate metal/Egypt song ever (that they didn't write) and record a cover of Iron Maiden's "Powerslave"? Sure it'd be silly hearing it done death metal style, but no sillier than "Hittite Dung Incantation", eh?
MPEG Stream: "Hittite Dung Incantation"
MPEG Stream: "Iskander Dhul Karnon"

NIRVANA Bleach (Deluxe Edition) (Sub Pop) cd 15.98
Really, what needs to be said about Nirvana's Bleach? Nothing probably. But also everything. Most of the folks here probably rank Bleach as their favorite Nirvana record, and some of us might even include Bleach in our best of all time list as well (c'mon, we know you keep one too, even if it's just in your head). And listening to this again today, it's shocking out great it sounds, not at all dated, better than 90 percent of the music coming out today, and it cost like $600 to record. EVERY song here is a goddamn classic, equal parts punk rock, pop, sludge, grunge, '60s garage, everything perfect, the vocals raspy and raw, the drumming killer, the guitar parts weird and wonderful, thick and heavy and grimy and so utterly catchy. Half the bands around today wouldn't even exist if it weren't for this record, hell, the musical landscape would be WAY different if it weren't for Nirvana, sure we grew up listening to Bleach, but we can only imagine discovering this record today, it would blow your fucking mind. How could a band on their first time out create a record that would basically reinvent rock for a new generation. Odds are most folks probably have this, and some of you are probably big ol' Nirvana geeks like us and will need to buy it again, for the improved sound, the killer packaging, the bonus live show tacked on the end, but if for some crazy reason you've yet to hear this, drop everything, don't buy another record until you take this one home and immerse yourself in its utter rock genius. Listen to the sound samples, and either be reminded how good this record is, or discover your new favorite band and let your life be changed, the way ours were when we first heard this 20 years ago.
The bonus tracks are from a live show recorded in Portland back in 1990, and it sounds amazing. Admittedly, Nirvana live were a dodgy proposition, or at least Kurt was, often singing weirdly or not at all, fucking up songs on purpose, or sometimes not on purpose, but this set is wicked tight, and loud and heavy, the vocals are pretty much perfect, they do some killer covers, some rad non-Bleach songs, and a few songs that would show up on future record, but it's cool to hear with this lineup, live all rough and ragged. And yeah, the new packaging is pretty badass too, no new liner notes but tons of photos and flyers and stuff, the perfect companion to the Live At Reading set which was also just released, and which we'll probably review on the next list.
MPEG Stream: "Blew"
MPEG Stream: "Floyd The Barber"
MPEG Stream: "About A Girl"
MPEG Stream: "Negative Creep"

NIRVANA Bleach (Deluxe Edition) (Sub Pop) 2lp 29.00
Really, what needs to be said about Nirvana's Bleach? Nothing probably. But also everything. Most of the folks here probably rank Bleach as their favorite Nirvana record, and some of us might even include Bleach in our best of all time list as well (c'mon, we know you keep one too, even if it's just in your head). And listening to this again today, it's shocking out great it sounds, not at all dated, better than 90% of the music coming out today, and it cost like $600 to record. EVERY song here is a goddamn classic, equal parts punk rock, pop, sludge, grunge, everything perfect, the vocals raspy and raw, the drumming killer, the guitar parts weird and wonderful, thick and heavy and grimy and so utterly catchy. Half the bands around today wouldn't even exist if it weren't for this record, hell, the musical landscape would be WAY different if it weren't for Nirvana, sure we grew up listening to Bleach, but we can only imagine discovering this record today, it would blow your fucking mind. How could a band on their first time out create a record that would basically reinvent rock for a new generation. Odds are most folks probably have this, and some of you are probably big ol' Nirvana geeks like us and will need to buy it again, for the improved sound, the killer packaging, the bonus live show tacked on the end, but if for some crazy reason you've yet to hear this, drop everything, don't buy another record until you take this one home and immerse yourself in its utter rock genius. Listen to the sound samples, and either be reminded how good this record is, or discover your new favorite band and let your life be changed, the way ours were when we first heard this 20 years ago.
The bonus tracks are from a live show recorded in Portland back in 1990, and it sounds amazing. Admittedly, Nirvana live were a dodgy proposition, or at least Kurt was, often singing weirdlt or not at all, fucking up songs on purpose, or sometimes not on purpose, but this set is wicked tight, and loud and heavy, the vocals are pretty much perfect, they do some killer covers, some rad non Bleach songs, and a few songs that would show up on future record, but it's cool to hear with this lineup, live all rough and ragged. And yeah, the new packaging is pretty bad ass too, no new liner notes but tons of photos and flyers and stuff, the perfect companion to the Live At Reading set which was also just released, and which we'll probably review on the next list.
MPEG Stream: "Blew"
MPEG Stream: "Floyd The Barber"
MPEG Stream: "About A Girl"
MPEG Stream: "Negative Creep"

NURSE WITH WOUND Space Music (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 15.98
So here's a question that may not need to be answered: did Pink Floyd come up with the idea of hosting lazer shows in planetariums for Dark Side of the Moon or was it a groundswell of psychedelically minded astronomers who took up the cause independently of the band? Obviously, a planetarium would make for a fantastic venue for a psychedelically bent excursion for light and sound. Just drop a tab or pull a hit, sit back in a comfortable space surrounded by kaleidoscopic lazer effects with decent surround sound, and go for a cosmic trip. So, why not have something other than what has become a yawning standard of the planetarium soundtrack? Why not something really lysergic like Nurse With Wound?
In Melbourne, Australia, somebody's willing to explore the cosmos with something far more alien and far more challenging; thus the commission for Nurse With Wound to score a piece for the Melbourne Planetarium's Science In The Dark Series. On the whole, this is a quiet subliminal piece of music with eerie charges of electricity and echoing pools of sustained pure tones, all of which set against low hovering rumbles and deep-gasping drones. Yup, Stapleton (here working with Colin Potter and Andrew Liles) has successfully sutured together the strategies for tonal beauty from his immaculate Soliloquy To Lilith with the very special nothing music of A Missing Sense. While 95 percent of Space Music is cosmic solitude and deep-space floating for Nurse With Wound, the other 5 percent is filled with huge ruptures of exploding noise burst forth during an early interlude of the album, followed by mangled bits of alien speech. Pretty awe-inspiring as with most every Nurse With Wound record. It probably would sound pretty fucking great in a Planetarium, too!
MPEG Stream: "Extract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"

ODD CLOUDS Deceiving Illusion (Not Not Fun) lp 17.98
It's on Not Not Fun, so we were sort of expecting something a bit noisier and heavier, but instead, Odd Clouds traffic in some sort of fractured stoner folk, stumbling shambolic space rock, skittery and skeletal, lysergic and lethargic, some seriously druggy weirdness.
The opening track is a rickety campfire crawl, with some almost black metal sounding vocals, growling and gurgling, beneath some scraped guitars, some simple drumming, everything detuned and melty sounding, tribal and ritualistic, almost sounds like some cool Avarus / Abruptum mashup, also sounds strangely medieval. The second track introduces horns, the guitars get more pronounced and driving, but the vibe is no less fractured and chaotic, if anything, when the horns come in, Odd Clouds begin to resemble late great Northwestern outfit Reeks And The Wrecks, whose sole record (released on tUMULt) channeled the same sort of drunken druggy sprawl.
The record dips into krautrock and space rock, but even in those moments the band tend to ramble and wander, we hear hints of No Neck and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, free and flowing and abstract, but dark and sinister, the drums usually offering up splatters of percussion instead of rhythm, everything hovering in a haze of reverb and delay, playful melodies surface here and there, often only to be swallowed whole by those creepy vox, the horns add a strange jazzy vibe once in a while, but just as often bleat and moan and just make the proceedings sound that much more haunting and otherworldly. Really really rad, a nice surprise for sure, and WAY recommended

OVSKUM Atto III (Obscure Origins) lp 17.98
Finally, the first proper vinyl release from mysterious Italian avant black metal horde Ovskum, presented by the just launched Obscure Origins label. Atto III is the first in an Ovskum reissue campaign that will hopefully also include a cd on Andee's tUMULt label.
Bu for now, let's just revel in the blackened musikal actions that make up this amazing collection of haunting and otherworldly blackness. We don't know all that much about Ovskum, but one thing we do know is that we fucking LOVE them. One of our favorite BM outfits for sure. For the uninitiated, this is no ordinary buzzing black metal, although it does buzz and is most definitely BM, Ovskum, conjure up some sort of midtempo, near ambient blackened plod. The guitars are huge and thick and seem to be crumbling into pieces, the drums are a midtempo trudge or a relentless martial march, the riffing is sometimes sludgy and thick, other times, angular and jangly, often both, a swirling slithering low end beneath keening upper register guitar skree and howled vocals. It's almost weird to call these guys black metal, they sound more like some super chaotic ambient noise rock, or spacey black sludge, or dreamy noise rock doom, all definitely fit... melodies are angular and obtuse, the drumming is sort of stumbly and simple, but the sound is HUGE, thick and swirling, raw and atmospheric, guitars are gnarled and convoluted, bits of melody and keening droneguitar are whispy streaks above the roiling fury below, some tracks forego the drums completely, and become these haunting abstract riffscapes, drifting and throbbing and crawling along malevolently... it's all so intense and dark and so so so good.
This deluxe vinyl version, comes in a plain black sleeve with a sticker on the front of the jacket, as well as a front cover insert, along with a massive printed booklet of original artwork from Morte404, the mysterious woman whose creepy line drawings have accompanied all the Ovskum releases. III collects all four actions from the 2006 s/t tape on Insikt as well as a track from Ovskum's split with Necrolust.
LIMITED TO 490 COPIES!!!

PETIT MAL Absolution (self-released) 3" cd-r 5.98
Absolution is another missive of blackened ambience extracted by Bay Area denizen J.Kaiser (aka Petit Mal), once again mining his trusted electro-acoustic set-up of bicycle wheel, shortwave radio, tape loops, and effects. On the first cut "Passover," Kaiser begins with a subterranean gloom, built out of an excess of reverb applied to the metallic scrapes of his bowed bike wheel and incidental noise elements which grate against this mournful bellow that loops out of his reel-to-reel tape deck. Out of this sour atmosphere, Kaiser builds a menacing slab of noise through a series of concussion bomb blasts, thrumbing static from shortwave radio, and squealing divebombs of pierced feedback. The whole piece drips with leaden reverb that further sinks this malcontent set of noise into a depressive, apocalyptic dirge. The much shorter "Other Fields" is also much prettier, although most anything would be pretty next to the ashen bleakness of "Passover." Somber piano notes hang in space against a clatter of wooden objects being randomly tossed in an abandoned warehouse with some tape manipulation in the distance of undefined captured dialogue. File somewhere between Lethe, Anenzephalia, and The New Blockaders. Super limited.
MPEG Stream: "Passover"
MPEG Stream: "Other Fields"

PINK SKULL Endless Bummer (RVNGNL) lp 16.98
It's getting harder and harder to keep track of bands these days, considering how many have either 'pink' or 'skull' in their names, so it was inevitable that a band would finally combine both. So Pink Skull, another band mining the eighties, creating their own brand of new wave, Pink Skull's is tight and smooth and controlled, with a bit more of a house-y vibe than is usual with the new breed of retro 'wave revivalists, the beats propulsive and motorik, laced with fluttery flutes, horns, little flurries of falsetto vox, all wound into a sort of New Order / PiL space disco. Throbbing new wavey basslines, all sorts of chopped up samples and stuttery percussion, a bit psychedelic here and there, groovy, funky, definitely would sound right at home on DFA, but a bit more space-y and far out, with a few tracks getting all kosmiche, like Klaus Schulze with swooshing layers synths and crystalline melodies, mostly designed for the dancefloor for sure, but varied and interesting enough to merit some late night headphone exploration.
The covers seem to be different, with alternating titles printed on the front, also comes with two big fold out posters!

RAINEY, MA Those Dogs Of Mine (Monk) lp 22.00
For this list, we don't just have one, or two, but three of the Early Blues' heaviest hitters newly reissued on vinyl from the always amazing Monk label: Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the "Mother of the Blues", Ma Rainey!!!
Yes, Mother of the Blues! Ma Rainey, one of the very first blues divas, already had a 20 year career under her belt, before she made her recording debut in 1923. Legend has it that she gave Bessie Smith singing lessons as she toured the South with her performing husband Pa Rainey as "Rainy and Rainey, Assassinators of The Blues". Hailing from Georgia, Rainy had a wide repertoire of blues, pop and minstrel songs, but her tough and heavy vocal delivery set her apart from the more cabaret-focused female performers. She was often paired with horn and piano jazz bands, but she also performed with guitar duos and southern jug bands too, often performing with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson and Coleman Hawkins. This collection covers some of her earliest material recorded in Chicago for the Paramount label from 1923-1924. Though her career lasted a mere six years, she recorded over 100 songs, many of them classics like "C.C. Rider" and "Bo-Weavil Blues" (included here). The lady knew how to have a good time!

SALLY, ZAK Fear Of Song (La Mano) cd 14.98
A few years back, bassist Zak Sally decided to leave the band Low, to pursue his true loves, printing and book making, and thus La Mano was born, an incredible publishing / print house run by Sally, with some amazing books, many made by hand, a few of which we've had for sale at aQuarius. But it was inevitable, that he'd feel the itch again, to play music, and so Sally recorded his own record, played all the instruments, and then printed and assembled the super cool covers by hand at La Mano, total DIY all the way, which is only made cooler by how good this record is.
The sound is a rough and raw amalgamation of all the rad nineties rock we (and probably Sally) grew up on, specifically Rex, Red Red Meat, Codeine, and yeah, even Low, there's a definite twang too, that makes much of this sound a bit like a heavier Calexico, but Sally's voice is a dead ringer for Red Red Meat's Tim Rituli, so the less rocking, more dark and brooding tracks here definitely sound a lot like Red Red Meat.
But this record is all over the place, with blown out drum machines, distorted riffs, dreamy acoustic guitars, vocals that go from raspy howl to hushed croon, wheezing keyboards, opener "St(R)Utter" is killer, with super distorted chugging guitars, pounding programmed drums, swirling glitchy effects, and moody impassioned vox, "How I Did What I Did When I Did It" is a stripped down acoustic stunner, with really gorgeous multitracked vocals, a gorgeous main melody, and some wild psychedelic guitar, the title track too is acoustic and intimate, but underpinned by swirling buzzing weirdness way off in the background, and of course record closer, the awesomely titled "Corpsegrinder!", begins all acoustic, with distorted vocals, and strange muted percussion, all moody and meandery, before building to a full on, emotional, soaring indie rock ballad.
Definitely for fans of any of the aforementioned bands, or just cool homebrewed DIY indie rock.
And again speaking of DIY, the packaging is amazing, printed on thick textured paper, the front cove image glued to the booklet, same with the little 'band' photo on the back, the insert with the track listing is oversized, houses the disc itself, and has a tab sticking out, signed by Sally and hand numbered, LIMITED TO 900 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "St(R)utter"
MPEG Stream: "Why We Hide"
MPEG Stream: "Corpsegrinder!"

SAVIOURS Accelerated Living (Kemado) 2lp 19.98
Yeahhh! Now available on VINYL! Here's the review we did of the cd version last list:
If we picked our Records Of The Week based on how likely they were to inspire massive bouts of head banging and air guitaring (and come to think of it, why the heck don't we?) then this new album from San Francisco's Saviours would easily be the Record Of The Week this week. And maybe next week too, and again and again for some weeks to come, since we don't know who'd want to mess with 'em, they might be tough to dethrone. Do you feel lucky, punk? they'd be asking all future pretenders to Record Of The Week status. Seriously, maybe the only reason we just made this a highlight on our list instead is that while Saviours are so good at what they do, what they do is perhaps a bit more circumscribed than the sort of metal we would make a Record Of The Week (such as the more eccentric likes of The Lord Weird Slough Feg's Ape Uprising a while back... though we'd definitely imagine any fan of that band would dig a lot of what's happenin' on this Saviours platter). But if you're in the mood for ragin' METAL and nothin' but, have we got a record for you!
Saviours, whom most metal inclined AQ customers already know we hope, are punkish proponents of adrenaline fuelled, NWOBHM lovin', thrash infected, uber metal up your ass gallop. Punkish maybe only 'cause they ooze attitude, also in part from the hoarse and shouty nature of the vocals (which we dig more on this album than in the past it must be said). As we have come to expect, then, Accelerated Living is in large part the sound of triumphant twin axes rampaging together, wet and red with poseurs' blood, lashing out left and right with slash and burn soloing. There's of course plenty of crushing low end heaviness and dominating battery propelling things along at a breakneck pace. But number one in our book are the guitars, dealing out heroic harmonies and rambunctious riffery. Oh yeah, this has got riffs, good ones. Riffs piling upon riffs. As much as we liked the Skeletonwitch album reviewed last time, THIS is way catchier and more memorable (maybe 'cause it lacks the more modern and monotonous black/death aspect, going only for the thrash/punk and trad '80s metal thing). We're even ready to sing along with the vocals, dammit! This is the type of album where it's tough to pick which tracks to make sound samples of for our review, 'cause they're almost all standouts. We kept thinking, ok, this one, then we'd listen to the next track, and be like, this one too, and on and on through the record. Of course, in the end that meant we could pick any 3 random tracks to sample and that'd be fine, let's just that sample making out of the way so we can put the album on again from the beginning, loud, and bang our heads!!
Our appetite for this rad, rippin' release was whetted by the limited edition trilogy of 7"s that preceded it, featuring spirited covers of Saxon and Judas Priest as well as demo versions of some of Accelerated Living's songs. They sound even better here, the album produced by Phil Manley (of Trans Am, The Fucking Champs, etc.). Recommended, if you couldn't tell.
MPEG Stream: "We Roam"
MPEG Stream: "Burnin' Cross"
MPEG Stream: "Apocalypse World Split"

SHIT AND SHINE 229-2299 Girls Against Shit! (Riot Season) lp 17.98
This bad ass past Record Of The Week, finally available on vinyl!!
When we first heard / heard about Shit And Shine, a mysterious noise rock collective from the UK, they definitely seemed custom made for aQ, multiple drummers, multiple bass players, someone playing lawnmower, a sound equal parts vintage Butthole Surfers, classic Hawkwind, and modern kraut-psych-drone-rock a la Circle and Pharaoh Overlord and Cave and the like, not to mention the garish, sometimes offensive album, art, the hilarious and usually offensive song titles, we were sold, smitten, totally obsessed. And thankfully, in the several years since that very first 12", very little has changed, almost all of the aforementioned essentials are still part and parcel of the Shit And Shine experience (minus the lawnmowers, but then the more we've come to understand these jokers, the more we realize that probably a lot of the 'facts' circulating about S&S is total bullshit, so odds are there never was any lawnmowers, sigh), and if anything, they've managed the impossible, getting tighter and more polished, more rocking, with better and somewhat proper 'songs', while simultaneously getting more and more fucked up and far out, taking super minimal elements and combining them into something massive and bewitching and baffling and heavy as fuck, but sounding literally unlike anything we've ever heard. Sure there are elements of plenty of stuff we love, but the way these guys twist those elements and cram them into whatever shape THIS is, just blows our minds, and eardrums.
So yeah, garish pink on black cover, masked lady with one of her breasts out on the front, a weird long necked headless super hero lady on the back, inside an awesome scary photo of two little girls, long hair obscuring their faces, standing hand in hand in front of a massive wall of amps, and song titles: "Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?", "Goodbye And Good Gardening", "Girls Against Shit", "20 Years Of Caring For The Nations Eyes", "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", "I'm Making My Lunch", " People Like You... REALLY!" and on and on, but none of that would mean shit if there wasn't a head spinning gut churning din to back it up, and holy shit do these guys bring the noise this time around.
The opening track, "Have Your Really Thought About Your Presentation" is equal parts Brainbombs and last list's Record Of The Weekers Rusted Shut, but with a little bit of krautish hypnorock mixed in, so what you get is a crushing, super distorted mega main RIFF, a pounding mesmerizing drum beat, everything super hot and blown out and in the red, looped and locked and pounding away over and over and over and over, but with some weird stuff going on, buried vocals, strange bits of glitch and crunch, and the weirdest part of all, seems impossible to play, but every few measures, it sounds like the band skips a beat, almost like the record skips, but it's super subtle, like a weird stutter step, that just makes it all the more weird, but no less trancelike and heavy, and it only gets weirder from there on out.
All the songs here are based on rhythms, which comes with the territory when you have multiple drummers, the second track begins all skittery, an almost drum machine sounding shuffle, which slips into a looped dubbed out pound, while all around the rhythms is buffeted by swirling FX, jagged shards of jangle guitar, and super distorted wild over-saturated leads and weird voices buried in the mix. The next track explodes in a tangle of twisted string buzz and fractured electronics, before those sounds coalesce into a crazy noise drenched rock racket, rife with angular guitars and layer upon layer of drones and voices and feedback and sonic chaos. "USA / Mexico" is some Buttholes gone black metal weirdness, super murky muddy riffage, pounding blast beats, start stop rhythms, bizarre vokills and crazy electronics all over the place.
The crushing stop start chug of "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", almost makes the record for us, with a killer main riff, and an increasingly distorted guitar tone, until a sample of some cheesy European sounding folk song comes in, and like magic, the crunch and chug and pound lock in and fit perfectly with that lilting little ditty, turning it into something nasty and scary and AWESOME. It's only a second, but it's sooooo good.
The abstract dub of the title track, the main rhythm made out of what sounds like someone writing on a chalkboard, some super effected tripped out dubby bursts, random spoken words, thick sheets of warm washed out guitars, until the track gets all Circle-y, but filtered through some fractured nineties industrial, like Pharaoh Overlord jamming Meat Beat Manifesto, but with strangled metal guitars and vrooming motorcycle sounds. There's some dance-y almost house sounding throb and pulse, but it's butted up right against a twisted angular noise rock / electro mashup, that is so distorted it's dabbling in Merzbow territory.
The other looooong track "Roberts Church Problem" sounds like it was recorded live, ad thus sounds like vintage S&S in full on unhinged Buttholes mode, multiple pounding drummers, wall of buzz, fuzzed out heaviness, repetitive and looped and seemingly never ending (we wish!). "Friseur Nelson is another good one, all very Circle, distorted and murky, a killer tribal rhythm, crumbling fuzz bass, and a muted chugging low end, some weird haunting chiming minor key melodies, another one that could have been stretched out to the end of the record and we would have been perfectly happy.
We could go on and on and on (even more than we already have), but why bother? Every song here rules, they're all super strange and heavy and hooky and groovy and noisy, and somehow, for being so disparate, they all manage to sound like part of a proper record. Well, certainly not a PROPER record, but you know what we mean. And while the rest of the songs are just as tripped out, and what-the-fuck and holy shit! as the ones we already described, odds are by now you probably got the feel for whether this is your cup of blown out rhythmic heaviness or not.
The sound of Shit And Shine is like some constantly twisting and transforming, bloody and mangled wreckage, equal parts This Heat, Aluk Todolo, Geronimo, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Brainbombs, Merzbow, Terminal Cheesecake, Strangulated Beatoffs, Faust, Laddio Bollocko, all pulled apart and reassembled into some damaged Frankenhooker noiserock drum circle spacejam. And odds are if you like any or all of those bands, you're gonna LOVE this...
MPEG Stream: "Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?"
MPEG Stream: "USA / Mexico"
MPEG Stream: "The Cusp Of Innocence. Prettily"
MPEG Stream: "Girls Against Shit"
MPEG Stream: "Friseur Nelson"

SLAYER World Painted Blood (American) cd 14.98
C'mon, it's SLAYER!!! Does this even need a review. What if we said it was the heaviest and maybe best Slayer record in ages? There's never really been a -terrible- Slayer record really, there have been a few missteps, a stinker here and there definitely, and there was that one record that had rapping on it, oof, but for the most part Slayer have always ruled, and continue to reign supreme (and in blood!), and World Painted Blood definitely finds them sounding the best they have in a decade. The songs here are fierce and heavy and complex, catchy in that way only Slayer can pull off, wild squiggly leads, killer riffing, incredible drumming of course, and seriously some of the best Slayer songs in a while. The opening / main riff of "Psychopathy Red" sounds like it could have come straight off South Of Heaven, the title track is another killer, total classic Slayer until about halfway through when the band slips into a crushing half time solo laced chug driven breakdown, "Snuff" explodes right out of the gate with a wild frenzied solo, which you rarely hear, the first 40 seconds are ALL SOLO, fuck yeah! "Beauty Through Order" is a chuggy dirge, with some insane drumming, a wicked hook (like "Dead Skin Mask"), and a weirdly proggy arrangement. We could go on, track by track, not a bad one in the bunch, which definitely hasn't happened in several Slayer records, and is well worth celebrating by blasting this as loud as you can and playing it over and over and over.
Bad ass artwork too, really grim and creepy, almost like black metal art, a blood stain bone adorned booklet, with strange diagrams inside with the lyrics and photos, and a thick red plastic transparency in front of the booklet, making the whole thing look blood soaked!
MPEG Stream: "World Painted Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Psychopathy Red"
MPEG Stream: "Snuff"

SOULS ON BOARD s/t (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
Another mysterious release from upstart UK tape label The Tapeworm, one of FOUR new releases this time around (all reviewed on this week's list). So who are Souls On Board? Well, like lots of the stuff The Tapeworm releases, it's really hard to tell, the recordings sound live, plenty of crowd sounds, shuffling feet, room noise, tape hiss, according to the minimal liner notes, the sounds were "recorded in Tangiers, Mallorca, London, Lisbon, Lanzarote and other unknown locations." Guests include Wire guitarist Bruce Gilbert, as well as Northwestern noisenik Daniel Menche, each contributing something subtle to the Souls' smoldering buzz drone minimalism. Hushed barely there static, deep pulsing swells, smears of gristly hiss, bumps and clunks and clanks smoothed out into rugged textures, thick and layered and dense, and quite mesmerizing. With a vibe and sound that recalls the antique obfuscations of Philip Jeck, or the warm pixelated sonic Gauze of Tim Hecker, but way more abstract, but that's really only the first lengthy track. After that, there's some intercepted conversations, some intense high end tones, some strange abstract field recordings, but soon those too give way to more of that washed out creepiness, peppered with voices, strange electronic glitches, and plenty of soft focus noisiness.
The flipside offers up some more dark minimal throb and pulse and buzz, beginning as a super hushed throb, laced with found sounds, and a patina of static, before getting all rhythmic, then noisy, a sort of Chain Reaction / Pan Sonic / Wolf Eyes mash up. Dark and heavy and haunting and droney and a little bit noisy, quite cool for sure.
LIMITED TO ONLY 250 COPIES!!!!

SPEEDWOLF Bark At The Poon (Black Shit Noise Productions) cassette 4.98
They're called Speedwolf. Their demo tape is called Bark At The Poon. They have song titles like "Time To Annihilate", "DeathRipper" and "I Am The Demon". The inside cover features a pants down drummer, wearing a wolf headdress, on the can, rocking out. They're obsessed with football, their hometown the Denver Broncos (they not only thank John Elway, but they named one side John, the other Elway). The cover features a rad high school binder drawing of a crouched wolf in front of the full moon. Sounds goofy, and maybe it is a bit, but fuck do these guys slay. Or shred. Slay AND shred. Full on thrashing metallic madness, with a vocalist who sounds a bit like Lemmy, and with super catchy classic sounding thrash jams, the first of which sounds a little like aQ favorite Young Ones faux metal heroes Bad News fronted by Lemmy, but way heavier. The guitars chug and churn, the drums blast relentlessly, flurries of double kick laid beneath , the songs shift from full bore neck snapping frenzy, to loping hooky groove, to pounding almost doom, laced with some creepy samples, some killer riffs, and plenty of rad licks. Definitely on the punker side of thrash, with the vocals and some of the hooks reminding us of a way more metal Danzig, which is definitely not a bad thing. "I Am The Demon" is THE jam here, with its killer Danziggy chorus, its super catchy guitar harmonies and insane drum breakdown (complete with wolf howl at the end), these guys kick so much ass, heavy and hooky is a pretty unbeatable combo. If you're hip to the whole modern retro thrash revival, these guys will definitely hit the spot, and if there's any justice, they'll end up on some huge label rocking stadiums with dressing rooms overflowing with coke and booze and groupies, cuz this shit is so much better than 90 percent of the new thrash we've heard...
Way recommended. LIMITED TO 200, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Demon"
MPEG Stream: "Speedwolf"

SPEEDWOLF / THE HOOKERS split (Splattered!) 7" 4.98
One more track from our new favorite retro thrashers, Denver's Speedwolf, whose killer demo tape is reviewed elsewhere on this list, which you should grab immediately before they're gone. Think classic thrash, but with some Danzig mixed in, as well as some Bad News (really!), hooky and heavy and pounding and frantic, and so fucking killer. Bad ass riffs, crushing drumming, throat shredding vox, and hooks all over the place. These guys should be HUGE.
Speedwolf share this single with long running rockers The Hookers, who we'd only heard once or twice before, but who prove to be a pretty epic match for the 'Wolf. We remembered them being more punk rock, and while this is till plenty punky, it's got a serious NWOBHM vibe. A little Iron Maiden, a little Venom, wild feral vocals, killer riffs, rad harmony guitars, and hooks that slay. Definitely gonna have to give these guys another chance and track down some of their full lengths.
Both sides rock AND rule, anyone into classic sounding heaviness NEEDS this (and the Speedwolf tape) BAD!
Super cool cover art, and limited of course, ONLY 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered...

STAPLETON, STEVEN & TONY WAKEFORD Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish (Robot) 2cd 24.00
Over 30 years, Steven Stapleton has worked with countless musicians, miscreants, and madmen in the brilliantly surreal Nurse With Wound, and occasionally he's stepped beyond Nurse to engage in fully collaborative projects. His long-standing friendship with Current 93's David Tibet brings the most prolific non-Nurse collaborations (both with Current 93 and as Stapleton / Tibet pairings); but in 1992, a curious one-off project between Stapleton and Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus, ex-Death In June) was released. The Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish is certainly not a Nurse With Wound record, but it's also not a Sol Invictus record. The album finds itself in one of those unique locations that really exists on its own, but also manages to perfectly hybridize the aesthetics of both artists.
It's unfortunate that we've not posted much on Tony Wakeford, and for those not aware of his work, here's the brief synopsis. After working with Douglas Pearce in the anarcho-punk trio Crisis and later forming Death In June, Tony Wakeford's personal aesthetic took up a very dark, occultish take on British folk, even darker and more malcontent than those apocalyptic recombinations of Current 93. His vocal style was never terribly polished, with his mumbling delivery and blue-collar brogue probably serving the punk snarl of Crisis better than the stoically minimal arrangements of Sol Invictus. While some of the Sol Invictus records could be pretty painful to listen to, a few are downright classics, Trees In Winter and Against The Modern World being the two strongest.
We seem to recall Stapleton quipping somewhere that he felt Tony Wakeford's music was too po-faced and that his collaborative project was his own way of subverting Wakeford's agenda. The two genuinely seemed to enjoy each other's company, as the liner notes from both artists can attest; but one has to wonder if the flipside was true as well that Wakeford felt Stapleton's collages were too silly from time to time.
The atmosphere of the album is somber from the onset, with slashing drones not dissimilar to the Nurse album Soliloquy For Lilith, but situated into a gentle melody surrounded by gasping noises and eventually giving way to melancholy piano chords bounce off of oscillating drones. These collages of semi-melodic drones continue until a frenzied noise burst gives way to a quick interlude of Perez Prado inspired mambo shimmy. This leads to the albums centerpiece: a song-based diptych of "Lucifer Before Sunrise" and "Walk The White Ghost" (a haunting remix of the former), both of which center upon an archetypal Wakeford song of grim folk tunes that Stapleton twists to their profound benefit. The album concludes with an dubbed collage of spectral noises juxtaposed with more of that mambo grooviness that could only come from Stapleton.
For the reissue of the Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish, there's a bonus disc with material unused from the original album, plus a series of remixes from irr. app. (ext.), Andrew Liles, and Brian Conniffe.
Very nice to have this record in stock again!
MPEG Stream: "The Frightening City"
MPEG Stream: "Lucifer Before Sunrise"
MPEG Stream: "Sea Slug (Unused Mix)"

STEEL MAMMOTH Nuclear Ritual (Musapojat) 14.98
This being Circle side-project Steel Mammoth's 4th disc, its mere existence pretty much answers the question about how serious they are, or not. Or maybe just creates new questions. If they're entirely tongue-in-cheek, then it's a really elaborate joke. If it's not a joke, then they're insane. Either way, we love Steel Mammoth! As always, they claim to be crusaders of the New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal, it says NWOFHM in big letters in the cd booklet. Where you'll also find some remarkable photos of the band cavorting around a campfire, or at least we think it's the band, though we're pretty sure that this makes 'em the first ever metal act to include a proudly pregnant lady in their ranks, decked out in what appears to be black leather heavy metal maternity wear! Meanwhile, one of the men is posing in a horned helm, massive and metal, apparently handcrafted, that looks very (ridiculously) medieval indeed.
So, Steel Mammoth are certainly bizarre. And silly, and Finnish, and, yeah, metal. Metal but not quite HEAVY metal. Steel Mammoth have a lighter touch for the most part. Sure, there's some distortion - but not always. The vocals are hardly ever, maybe never screamed, usually delivered in a weird rolling-r drawl, lazy and sinister. Heck half the time it sounds more like some kind of indie-rock pop, but all the awesome and not so subtle metal signifiers that infest the music and lyrics make it so much BETTER. But we probably don't need to tell you all this, if you're like us you have all their other discs already.
Nuclear Ritual, not to be confused with their debut ep Nuclear Barbarians, or for that matter their first album Atomic Mountain, is another killer set of tunes all right, catchy and confusional, from rousing opener "The Shakall" onwards. Some -titles- could be "ordinary" metal songs ("Sacred Death", "Cerebral Acid", "King Of The Damned", sure) but others would obviously be unacceptable to most metal bands ("Gargantuan Boom Boom" being the worse offender). And when one listens, none are ordinary. Some aren't even at all metal (the bulk of title track "Nuclear Ritual" is a meandering murky psych instrumental sorta in the mode of "Commando Leopard" from Atomic Mountain). Most of the tracks are kind of a hybrid of metal/not metal, like "Mammoth Sun Bacteria", which is sunny all right, in that it sounds like Iron Maiden gone bubblegum, bright and bouncy. Elsewhere, though, there is some convincingly authentic metal guitar soloing, and the distorted vocals on "Sacred Death" are almost scary. And that's the genius of Steel Mammoth, those vocals fit there just a perfectly as do the Doorsy Jim Morrison stylings that pop up on the track "Atomic Chainsaws".
Oh, and we've got to mention the last song, "Extinction", 8+ minutes long, boasting a lumbering stoner doom riff a la Witchcraft or Jex Thoth. The song eventually morphs into an extended lysergic jam worthy of Circle in its krautiness, with a bassline that Rick Rubin woulda loved on Bloodsugarsexmagic, that never seems like it will end and when it does you'll want to start it again... With results like this, Steel Mammoth are doing something right, even if they're playing metal "wrong". And anyway, when Japan's Metalucifer can make albums wherein every single song title includes the words "Heavy Metal", and still be taken (sort of) seriously, what is and what isn't a joke?
All in all, another highly entertaining, highly radioactive, album from the truly unique entity (well, along with all the other incestuous NWOFHM acts) that is Steel Mammoth!!
MPEG Stream: "Mammoth Sun Bacteria"
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Death"
MPEG Stream: "Atomic Chainsaws"

STRIBORG Southwest Passage (Displeased) cd 13.98
What more can we say about Striborg that we haven't already? The most consistently brilliant and baffling purveyor of bizarre and ultra personal depressive black metal we know of, every record is drenched in otherworldly buzz, super evocative and atmospheric, harrowing and haunting, as gorgeous and strangely beautiful as it is black and grim. This will be about the 20th Striborg record we've reviewed and that's not nearly all of them.
But everything we've heard from Sin Nanna, the man behind Striborg, has totally hit the spot, a sound that is so unique in a genre that seems to breed sameness, Striborg is as much a soundscaper, a noise maker, a sonic alchemist, as his is a corpse painted grimlord, in fact maybe even moreso. The songs are hypnotic and repetitive and mantra like, the guitars locked into cyclical loops, wreathed in layers of texture, tape hiss, guitar buzz, wheezing synths, the drums almost an afterthought, a rhythmic skeletal system to keep the tracks from drifting off like black clouds of warm buzz. The vocals raspy and demonic, probably the most black metal element of Striborg's sound, but set amidst dreary doomy loveliness, buried beneath soaring streaks of buzz, of swirling soundscapes of lo-fi keyboards and angular twisted guitar melodies, the mood and the vibe not afterthoughts, but elements that infuse every sound, ever song, with some strange Tasmanian forest magic, which is definitely part of what sets Striborg apart from the black metal pack.
If you're like us, you can never have enough Striborg. Don't believe us? Read through the tons of other gushing reviews, and you'll maybe begin to understand why we, and lots of you, are so obsessed with this mysterious one man band. And if you've yet to take the plunge, this is as good a place as any. Needless to say, even though we did and great length, some of the most special, and uniquely twisted doom drenched atmospheric and depressive black metal you'll ever hear.
MPEG Stream: "Southwest Passage"
MPEG Stream: "Human Extinction"

SUBARACHNOID SPACE Eight Bells (Crucial Blast) cd 13.98
Back in the old days, when space rock heavies SubArachnoid Space called SF home, we sort of took them for granted, they played all the time, and opened for pretty much every cool band that came to town, so without trying, it was easy to end up seeing them play every week or two. But then two things happened. They moved away, so suddenly they weren't ever playing around town, and second, and maybe more importantly, they started to get heavier, and more fucked up, and way more metal, which made us want to see them so we could check out the new, more heavy SubSpace.
But we've been keeping tabs on them through recordings, 2005's The Red Veil was the last one we reviewed, and even back then, we were already talking about them appealing to fans of Kinski and Yeti and Tarantula Hawk, and if anything in the 3 years since, they've gotten way spacier and way heavier, and this is the proof, Eight Bells, released on weirdo heavy label Crucial Blast, and it's a pretty good fit, 5 songs, the shortest a little over 5 minutes, the longest well over 13, every one a tripped out Hawkwinded blow out, effects drenched and psychedelic, propulsive and super rocking, epic and intense, the guitars thick and distorted, the arrangements pretty complex and intricate for space rock, none of that jam at the same tempo for 10 minutes (not that there's anything wrong with that) but it definitely keeps things interesting, and in fact, if we had to classify the new SubSpace, we'd probably call it metallic space prog, which is obviously a good thing.
"Hunter Seeker" starts off all eighties Big Country style, with a cool effected stuttery guitar part, before the rest of the band launches into a woozy doomy dirge, and over the course of the next 12 minutes, flits from spaced out dreamy ambience, to chugging almost metal, to soaring Godspeed like drama, to full on noise rock. The last three tracks find the band slipping from droney drift to dense psychedelic blowout to pounding space/math rock and back again, culminating in the super frenzied explosive last couple minutes that has us imagining how good this stuff must sound live these days.
Produced by Stephen Ray Lobdell (Faust, Davis Redford Triad), who's now a SubArachoid member weirdly enough! And it boasts cool Stephen Kasner cover art...
MPEG Stream: "Lilith"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter Seeker"

SUNN O))) Monoliths and Dimensions (Southern Lord) 2lp 36.00
NOW ON VINYL!!! And holy crap is this some gorgeous over the top packaging, thick vinyl, insanely heavy gatefold jackets, all housed in a printed vellum slipcover to emulate the cd design. Here's what we had to say about Monoliths and Dimensions when we first got it in...
The first thing we thought when we threw this on, was, man, it's gonna be pretty tough to top Domkirke. The last SUNNO))) release, vinyl only, found the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley recording their low end Earth worshipping drone symphonies in an actual cathedral, incorporating the cathedral's church organ. Hard to imagine anything heavier.
For Monoliths and Dimensions, the duo drafted in all sorts of extra help. The usual suspects sure, Attila Csihar on vocals, guitarist Oren Ambarchi, but also, a veritable orchestra, French horns, violas, piano, hydrophone, English Horn, Conch Shell, double bass, and that's just on album opener "Aghartha", which on first listen sounds like the SUNNO))) of old, all churning low end, slow motion glacial riffage, but as the track progresses, the heavy riffage peels back, revealing, a sea of moaning horns, Csihar's haunting intoned vocals, creaks and groans, and the actual sound of water (the hydrophone?), eventually getting super abstract and minimal, before fading out completely.
"Big Church" features four guitarists (Ambarchi, O'Malley, Anderson and Earth's Dylan Carlson) as well as trombone, trumpet, organ, tubular bells and a choir!!! The choir giving the track a definite Arvo Part vibe, haunting and choral, drifting ethereally over the slow burning rumble of the multiple guitars, before locking into a strangely melodic almost slowcore creep.
"Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia)" features yet another expanded lineup, this time including a "Man choir", the track begins all standard doom, crushing lugubrious riffage, growled gurgled vokills, but the man choir's deep haunting chant adds a whole other dimension, creating a sort of choral doom hybrid, much like the other track, but this one remains much darker and heavier.
Finally, the record closes with Alice, this time with horns AND strings, and the song that probably is most responsible for describing this record as "SUNNO))) with strings". It starts out all woozy and twangy like some nineties slowcore jam, except for the Morricone-ish horn swells, the guitar crunches few and far between, the sound quite spare and skeletal, and weirdly enough, downright pretty, a shuffling slow motion drift, the whole thing surprisingly melodic, and spacious, quite possibly one of the loveliest (and most unlikely) SUNNO))) tracks yet.
SUNNO))) have done wonders with their limited sonic palette, who would have thought a one time Earth cover band would have survived this long, and resulted in such an impressive body of original work, but the group have grown and expanded and explored, they manage to incorporate all manner of sounds and textures and guest players, to realize their ultimate vision, while somehow keeping the core sound intact. We only just got this in, and we've been listening to it like crazy (which should tell you something), and the more we hear it, the more we dig it, especially that last track. Quickly becoming one of our fave SUNNO))) discs...
MPEG Stream: "Aghartha"
MPEG Stream: "Big Church"

TAYLOR BOW Thin Air (Youth Attack) lp 14.98
Last time we were in New York, we managed to grab a single by this band, Taylor Bow, named for an infamous online porn site featuring videos posted by a disgruntled and spurned ex boyfriend, we heard it playing in a store, and had to buy it. An insanely furious and frenzied, blown out chunk of metallic punkness, or maybe punked out metal, either way, the speakers seemed to be melting and malfunctioning, spewing red hot daggers of sound, the vocals ultra distorted and in the red, the drums, total practice space boom and crunch, chaotic and unhinged, the guitars slipping from wild feedback soaked squalls, to churning Brainbombs-y sludge. So we of course tried to order a bunch, but it was the LAST copy.
So we waited and waited, and our patience was finally rewarded with this, the first full length from NYC hardcore noise metal weirdos Taylor Bow, fronted, you might not be surprised to discover by Dom Fernow, of Prurient, Vegas Martyrs and Ash Pool among others. Taylor Bow features the same sort of lo-fi metal-punk noise drenched crush, but instead of blasting blackly, or exploding into sheets of white noise, TB slip back and forth between freaked out on-the-verge-of-collapse hardcore and looped sounding sinister dirges, that totally push all our Brainbombs buttons. The sound is red hot, blown out, brittle and brutal, but still thick and heavy, the vocals are super intense, which sometimes makes Taylor Bow sound like a way more rocking Whitehouse, but there are definite nods to the current crop of stripped down raw black metal, Fernow's Ash Pool for sure, but also stuff like Akitsa and Bone Awl. But even with that metal edge, this stuff is way more filthy and punky, and we're loving it. Released on the same label that brought us Ancestors and that Hallow record, which makes perfect sense, just more fucked up freaked out heaviness that we can't seem to get enough of.
SUPER LIMITED of course, we may have the last 20 or so copies, so grab one while you can...

TWIN STUMPS s/t (Dais) lp 19.98
Brainbombs. Rusted Shut. Billy Bao. Shit And Shine. If that sounds like your record collection, you best grab one of these pronto and add Twin Stumps to the list.
Heavy, and noisy, filthy, ugly, brutal, pounding, misanthropic, blown out, grinding, crushing, druggy and damaged, yet weirdly and impossibly catchy. This NY crew conjure up some of the heaviest, most distorted noise rock we've heard in ages, sounding like a million guitars and a million drum kits melted down, poured into a woodchipper and sprayed all over you, while someone howls through a bullhorn, these songs are bursting with guitar freakouts, from churning impossibly low end chug, to tangled feedback, the drums pound, but are so buried in the muck and mire, they sound more like some muted subsonic throb, the vocals are unhinged and maniacal, also pretty much buried, the whole record lurches and lumbers and stumbles, like a way heavier, more metal Butthole Surfers, but these songs can't seem to disguise the little bits of pop that lurk inside, sometimes the guitars lock into a weirdly harmonized melody, or the band slip in a killer hook, but even at its catchiest, it's still insanely heavy and harsh, hypnotic and hateful, gloriously misanthropic and noisy. Quickly becoming one of our favorite new noise rock records for sure.
Anyone into any of the above mentioned bands MUST own this, and if you buy it and dig it (heck even if you don't), go here:
http://mikeyanirofund.wordpress.com/
And help support Twin Stumps guitarist Mike Yaniro, who was savagely beaten, and remains hospitalized with years of surgery and therapy ahead of him, and no health insurance.

UGLY THINGS Issue #29 Winter 2009 magazine 8.95
The best thing about Ugly Things' rather irregular twice-yearly schedule is that it's always a pleasant surprise when the latest issue of this magazine of "wild sounds from past dimensions" suddenly shows up here! And, somehow, it's always a day or two before "list day" so we can't totally kick back and spend as much time reading it right away as we'd like, 'cause there's work to do. And we do mean we'd need to spend time, lots of time, it's a big ol' magazine (224 pages this ish) packed to the gills with text and vintage photos.
However, since our list-work IS to review New Arrivals, and since this Ugly Things is a New Arrival, we WILL take a moment now to leaf through it... ah, maybe sit back a bit, put the feet up, settle in... whoops, better be careful, hours and hours of "lost productivity" will go by as we read about cover stars The Masters Apprentices ('60s Australian psych-pop sensations we know better in their later proto-metal mode). That article is 27 pages and it's only part 1, another of editor Mike Stax's multipart epics, to be continued next issue! Then there's several eulogies to the late Sky Sunlight Saxon of The Seeds (who passed away the same day as Michael Jackson, who gets mentioned here in Ugly Things for probably one of the only times ever on account of that). And the usual slew of obscure groups are dug up and examined, in depth - this time 'round, The Fenmen ('60s UK harmonizers with Pretty Things connections), The Reactor ('70s Mexican-American Inland Empire punk), The Nomadds ('60s Midwestern garage rockers), The Bittersweet (all girl garage from Ohio in the '60s), The Wildflower (mystical ballroom era SF "lost band"), Dentist (late '70s French punkers), and PLENTY MORE. As usual, we most often find the stories told quite fascinating, even when we've never heard a note of a band's music, nonetheless entire long gone music scenes open themselves up to the imagination, the world as it once was, somewhere, elsewhere, underground, rockin' out.
Leafing through (ok, we'll stop in a second and get back to work) it's easy to come across any number of treats, from the reprinted super-harsh one line putdown album reviews from '70s fanzine Future (a sample: "Foghat - Night Shift - The title of this LP should not include the 'F' in shift"), to the piece about recently rediscovered proto-punks the Imperial Dogs (look 'em up on YouTube!!!), to fanzine editor Phil Milstein's tale of trying to release a Nico bootleg some 30 years ago, a difficult saga which somehow manages to involve both his mom and Penn of Penn & Teller fame, as well as Nico herself of course. If we keep reading we'd find more to mention, haven't even delved into the pages and pages and pages of reviews yet, but we have other reviews of our own to write, so we'll reluctantly set aside our copy of UT#29 to pick it up again after our remaining list-duties are completed. Ah, yes, recommended. A magazine by music obsessives, for music obsessives, of almost any nostalgical variety.

V/A Fire In My Bones: Raw + Rare + Other-Worldly African-American Gospel [1944-2007] (Tompkins Square) 3cd 30.00
Maybe you think you'd already have to be pretty into gospel music to purchase a 3cd set like this? But, when you're through listening to all three of these discs (for the first and certainly not the last) time, you'll DEFINITELY be into gospel music. Of course it helps that, as the subtitle states, this is gospel music of the "raw" and "other-worldly" variety, compiled by Yeti magazine's Mike McGonigal. And moreover, you need to realize, if you don't know already, that the relationship of gospel to secular music - soul, blues, R&B - is strong. Even (especially) rock n' roll has gospel roots. In fact, if you think gospel is some sort of goody two shoes churchy hymn singing lameness, take a listen to this and think again. There's powerful stuff here, stuff that's BADASS. Beautiful too, but let's stick to badass for the moment. Seriously, try your favorite hipster garage rock combo against Elder Beck's astonishing 1956 "Rock and Roll Sermon" and see who wins. Answer, the garage rockers will repent and sell their guitars - not 'cause they've found the Lord, but 'cause Elder Beck would obviously blow them off stage with his performance. That track in particular represents one of the brilliant ironies of this collection, 'cause whilst railing against the evils of rock n' roll music, Elder Beck manages rock harder than just about anyone, EVER. It's almost kinda difficult to believe that he and his congregation weren't aware of this fact, and were simply secretly enjoying a chance to really go wild under the guise of "gospel". Certainly the guitar player is getting into it. Whatever the case, it's amazing, as are so many other tracks on here.
With three jam-packed discs (80 tracks total!), there's really too many gems here for us to even begin to mention 'em all. There's some other early rockers, lots of groovy funkiness from the '70s that could make even the blackest heart want to join in with the praising, low-down busted-up blues guitar workouts played by old old men, all sorts of impassioned testifying that could constitute a new definition of "emo", and (not surprising, considering Satan is so often the subject, along with his opposite) plenty of eerie atmosphere and weirdness, often augmented by the relatively dusty and distorted nature of some of these recordings.
There's a few names here that some may know from other recent reissues on Mississippi and CaseQuarter among others, like Isaiah Owens, Abner Jay, Bishop Perry Tillis, and Rev. Utah Smith. And plenty more that you'll be happy to get to know, 'cause unless you're a gospel collector its doubtful you do. Here's a dozen, just for starters: Rev. Lonnie Farris, Elder Roma Wilson & Family, Madison County Senior Center Singers, Singing Son Of Zion (Brother Shelby Bransford, Jr.), Little Ax & The Golden Echoes, Madam Ira Mae Littlejohn, Fannie Bell Chapman, Hickory Bottom Harmoneers, Ray Branch & His Guitar, Napolian Strickland, Precious Bryant, Mississippi Nightingales... It's a diverse collection for sure, covering all sorts of gospel traditions, and serves as a survey of all the amazing post-war black gospel music that you probably haven't heard before. Providing some food for your mind as well as your soul, the thick, illustrated cd booklet in this nicely-packaged set provides some notes on each track, but it's the music that's really gonna speak to you.
Despite our love of black metal, comps like this remind us that the Devil does NOT have all the best tunes. As McGonigal states in his liner notes, the music represented here is "among the most vibrant, playful, beautiful and emotionally charged music in the world." We can only but agree.
MPEG Stream: ELDER BECK "Rock and Roll Sermon"
MPEG Stream: AMAZING FARMER SINGERS OF CHICAGO "I Got a Telephone in My Bosom"
MPEG Stream: BROTHER & SISTER WB GRATE "Power Is in the Heart of Man"
MPEG Stream: IKE GORDON "Don't Let the Devil Ride"

VEEE DEEE Listen To This 1000x Then Kill Yourself (Fuckland Better Business Bureau) cd-r 9.98
Record number three from these American noisemakers living in Japan, who apparently have decided that while they're there, they should make the heaviest, loudest, ass kickingest RAWK possible, and hell, doesn't really seem like it could get more heavy, loud or kick ass. Or mean, it is called Listen To This 1000x Then Kill Yourself after all, and there's a note inside crediting there artwork to Stephen O'Malley, even though there's virtually no art at all, we can only assume they're taking the piss. But it's all about the sound inside, and contrary to all the above, it's actually surprisingly melodic, as well as murky, a little lo-fi, definitely super rocking. The first track is a pretty freaked out slab of cyclical hypno-noiserock, a bit like a less spazzed out Lightning Bolt, but from there on out, while still heavy and a bit noisy, it's much more melodic, the second track is all big booming guitars, chords ringing out, blurred and buzzy and droney, the drums abstract and splattery, the track after that is downright dreamy, a sort of Japanese psych take on the Necks, hypnotic, loping and washed out and dreamy, yet still distorted and in the red, just not KILL YOURSELF in the red, more like eyes closed letting the blissed out heaviness wash over you.
It might be the recording, but this new Veee Deee, for all its implied misanthropy is really listenable, heavy, and hectic, manic and a little metal sure, but really warm and psychedelic, even the last track, which is more unhinged and angular and chaotic, with wild free drumming and tangled guitar skree, it too is weirdly melodic and surprisingly not fucked up. The louder you play it, the more the heaviness and freakiness reveals itself, maybe that's true of all records, but even with headphones this is a seriously dense and heavy chunk of noisy psychedelic post rock radness. If you have the other two, definitely grab one of these while you can, but even if you missed out, this is definitely worth picking up for the heavy rhythmic psych inclined out there.
Comes in cool handmade packaging, and includes free link to what's basically another full-length: To All the Girls I've Loved Before - Which One of You Gave Me the Clap?, a hi-fi antithesis to Listen To This 1000x Then Kill Yourself.
MPEG Stream: "Fucked In The Heart"
MPEG Stream: "Love Is Magic, Magic Is Stupid"

WASHED OUT Life Of Leisure (Mexican Summer) lp 16.98
It's been ages since we've seen folks freaking out and getting so excited about a record months before it was even released. But that's exactly what happened with this 12" by Washed Out. And while we tend to be a bit skeptical of blog-hype we have to say we whole heartedly agree with all the excitement surrounding Washed Out, because they/he do deliver, and what they deliver is some fantastic and infectious terminally chill pop.
The name Washed Out suits the sound so perfectly as the six songs on Life Of Leisure really do sound like some amazing washed out version of New Order, or Ariel Pink if he wore all white and cranked out a bunch of covers of Hacienda classics. Much like the Neon Indian record we recently raved about, Washed Out operates in that same realm of faded 80's nostalgia, and Ernest Greene's vocals are so casually seductive and smooth. Kind of like the male equivalent to the slow burning bedroom jams of Nite Jewel or a way stoned Cut Copy.
One of our customers said this was like the ultimate make out jam or post-sex chill out record and we can't really argue with that. Unless you were one of the lucky few to grab one of the crazy limited cassettes this is probably the first chance to get a physical copy of Washed Out songs and all six of the tracks on here are totally great (not a bummer in the bunch) and it also comes with a digital download. These might not last long so you know what to do......

WHITE FANG Whatever (Marriage) lp + zine 14.98
Bands like White Fang really make us wanna be young again, really young, with their carefree attitude, snarky and scrappy aesthetic and all out blasts of fucked up fun! The opening track on Whatever sounds a bit like today's lo-fi garage burners covering Bad Brains, and throughout the record we also hear wonderful hints of the really raw and noisy early years of Pavement or what it might sound like if Wavves covered a song off the first Neutral Milk Hotel record, especially on the songs where WF rock some distorted trumpet.
Freewheeling, eclectic and on the verge of falling apart, White Fang really are all over the place, but in ways that make perfect sense to our warped ears. They have some of the awesome charm of those damaged early SST records by folks like Saccharine Trust and the Meat Puppets (their first record!) as well as modern day kindred sonic spirits like Eat Skull or Silver Daggers. These kids have wisely tapped into the more twisted and cracked side of punk and garage rock, we're sure they would be so rad live at some out of control house party or warehouse show. The record comes on really nice thick vinyl with a coupon for a digital download as well as a cool little zine filled with photos, flyers, and drawings.

WHITE MICE Ganjahovahdose (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
This is at least record number 3 or 4 from White Mice, but somehow, we've never reviewed anything by these drugged out noise makers before now. Not sure how that happened exactly but these guys are long overdue for some aQ love...
Lots of bands, especially if they're sort of spacey and druggy get compared to the Butthole Surfers, who pretty much defined spaced out drug rock, but no one truly embodies the same sort of fucked up frenzied sonic chaos like White Mice, who sound a bit like Lightning Bolt crossed with Shit And Shine, which if we do the math correctly does basically add up to the Butthole Surfers, or at least some way heavier, way noisier modern day equivalent.
Take album opener "Passsthefissst" one part, pounded on over and over and over, wild relentless tribal drumming, throbbing buzzy bass, and distorted to oblivion guitars, locked into an endless loop, hypnotic and mesmerizing and mantra like but also totally blown out and filthy and noisy and heavy, with some sinister demonic vocalizations over the top. You can almost imagine how insane this shit must be live, nothing but strobe lights, the band a blinking blur, the crowd a writhing mass of bodies, an endless lysergic freak out free for all.
And that's pretty much how the White Mice roll, every song is another effects drenched low slung damaged psychedelic sludge jam, sometimes frantic and super intense, other times slowed down and all Brainbombs-y, but always totally in the red and blown out and trippy and freaked out. Makes sense that these guys are from Providence Rhode Island, home of Lightning Bolt and Landed and Pink And Brown (R.I.P) and all of those like minded costumed noiserockers, pretty sure they're part of the same crew too, the best part about them being from RI, is that there's a good chance they play live with big ol' tails and fucked up furry mice heads, which is pretty much the only way you could make this stuff any better.
MPEG Stream: "Passthefissst"
MPEG Stream: "Ganjahovahdose"
MPEG Stream: "Placenta The Crotchtower"

WHITE MICE Ganjahovahdose (20 Buck Spin) lp 14.98
This is at least record number 3 or 4 from White Mice, but somehow, we've never reviewed anything by these drugged out noise makers before now. Not sure how that happened exactly but these guys are long overdue for some aQ love...
Lots of bands, especially if they're sort of spacey and druggy get compared to the Butthole Surfers, who pretty much defined spaced out drug rock, but no one truly embodies the same sort of fucked up frenzied sonic chaos like White Mice, who sound a bit like Lightning Bolt crossed with Shit And Shine, which if we do the math correctly does basically add up to the Butthole Surfers, or at least some way heavier, way noisier modern day equivalent.
Take album opener "Passsthefissst" one part, pounded on over and over and over, wild relentless tribal drumming, throbbing buzzy bass, and distorted to oblivion guitars, locked into an endless loop, hypnotic and mesmerizing and mantra like but also totally blown out and filthy and noisy and heavy, with some sinister demonic vocalizations over the top. You can almost imagine how insane this shit must be live, nothing but strobe lights, the band a blinking blur, the crowd a writhing mass of bodies, an endless lysergic freak out free for all.
And that's pretty much how the White Mice roll, every song is another effects drenched low slung damaged psychedelic sludge jam, sometimes frantic and super intense, other times slowed down and all Brainbombs-y, but always totally in the red and blown out and trippy and freaked out. Makes sense that these guys are from Providence Rhode Island, home of Lightning Bolt and Landed and Pink And Brown (R.I.P) and all of those like minded costumed noiserockers, pretty sure they're part of the same crew too, the best part about them being from RI, is that there's a good chance they play live with big ol' tails and fucked up furry mice heads, which is pretty much the only way you could make this stuff any better.
MPEG Stream: "Passthefissst"
MPEG Stream: "Ganjahovahdose"
MPEG Stream: "Placenta The Crotchtower"

YONKERS, MICHAEL & PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND Bleed Out (Spiral Staircase) lp 16.98
It's funny comparing the two Michael Yonkers related releases we reviewed this list. "Funny" because they couldn't be more different from each other, and yet they both bear the distinct mark of the same man. While the Michael And The Mumbles release features cuts from Yonkers' innocent mid '60s garage days, Bleed Out, a 2004 collaboration with Chicago psych lords Plastic Crimewave Sound, heads into much darker, drugged out terrain. Bleed Out makes good on the monolithic psych jams that most of us aQuarians can't get enough of, and the results are dirty and tough, super rhythmic and charged with a swirling negative energy for maximum results. Much of this record is instrumental, but Yonkers' distinctive wail does surface from the murk now and again, and it fits perfectly with this kind of thing. Even still, it's a bit of a surprise just how heavy things turned out (we certainly aren't complaining!) and this stuff is definitely satisfying our hunger for stoner grooves in the same vein as the Heads, White Hills, and the like. Super recommended!

YOUNGS, RICHARD Under Stellar Stream (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98
We talk a lot about music that puts us in a spell, or drones that elevate us to some hypnotic state of mind, but what's much even more rare, is to achieve one of those states, while also tapping into something more personal and immediate and intimate and haunting. Richard Youngs is a sonic shamen, conjuring up musical rituals that never fail to entrance and ensorcell us, we've raved about so many of his records in the past and his newest outing is definitely another winner, and is striking such a deep chord with us. His use of vocal repetition transforms these songs into otherworldly mantras, that we find ourselves NEEDING to listen to on a daily basis. With hazy instrumentation and hypnotic loops as the musical bed, Under Stellar Stream sounds like a magical collaboration between Robert Wyatt and William Basinski, as Youngs manages to merge a deep emotional impact with shimmery, softly nuanced dreaminess.
Listening to Under Stellar Stream evokes the sensation of watching an incredibly intense and beautiful film. Understated and emotional piano fluttering delicately, the sound restrained, yet expansive, the last two tracks if stripped of the vocals would sound right at home on an Andrew Chalk record. While Youngs definitely has a large devoted following we really think folks who might not have heard his records, but love the more haunting side of folks like Bonnie Prince Billy and Smog, might find much to love in the mysterious sound world of Richard Youngs. So fitting that the day we got this it was pouring outside as these are sounds so perfect for grey skies and rainfall, just standing beneath the bruised sky letting the raindrops fall where they may. Totally moving and gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "All Day Monday And Tuesday"
MPEG Stream: "The Bells Of Spring"
MPEG Stream: "Broke Up By Night"

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ANVIL CHORUS The Killing Sun (Rockadrome) cd 12.98
Not to be confused with Anvil! Though, right now, maybe they'd like to be. This Bay Area metal band, is another from the '80s that had even less success than those now famous Canucks. Much less. Back in the day, Anvil Chorus never managed to get signed, and released only demos and singles, never an album - until now. It wasn't 'cause they weren't good, in fact, they were commonly known as "the Bay Area's best unsigned metal band". It was more due to mere bad luck. And maybe 'cause their music crossed too many genre lines, from NWOBHM power, to party time LA pop metal, to progressive wank, to speed metal tech. Who knows. But it's cool that they got back together, got back in the studio, and FINALLY have released their debut album, via the Rockadrome label (who've been blessing us with some awesome proto-metal reissues lately, you should recall). Anyone who digs '80s metal ought to check this out. There's certainly plenty of shred. And don't worry, most of these songs are ones demoed back in the day thus and have that "only in the '80s" authenticity to 'em, although they're newly recorded.
Criticisms? Well, Anvil Chorus do have a tendency to a bit of cheesiness, mainly due to overuse of keyboards, that's their weak spot taste-wise. And they've probably only grown in "adulthood", towards such prog-metal pitfalls, also evinced by the awful album cover. Cheesy, yeah. Still, even their cheese can be kinda enjoyable, so this is just a warning to those who can't handle a whiff of it. Their song "European" for instance, might be too poppy for some, but it's ultimately pretty good, a classy track, though we prefer it when they're killing us with the equally classy "Deadly Weapons"! Anyway, among the 12 songs here there's lots to make folks into heavy, riffy, rippin' bands like Riot, Armored Saint, and Metal Church happy... along with pleasing the Queensryche fans that their cheesier prog side indulges. So check it out, it's some Bay Area heavy metal history come back to life (they even played a show the other night!). Oh, and making amends for the cover art, the cd booklet includes lyrics, vintage photos of the band in action in the '80s, and a band history/appreciation by local metal celeb Ron Quintana.
MPEG Stream: "Deadly Weapons"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Flames"
MPEG Stream: "Phase To Phase"

BANHART, DEVENDRA What Will We Be? (Warner Bros.) 2lp 33.00
NOW ON VINYL!!!
By this point people seem to have really strong feelings one way or another about Devendra Banhart, ourselves included. We've been big fans of him from his first ultra personal other worldly creations and then as he transitioned his approach into a more fleshed out sound, and we really do appreciate the twists and turns his music has taken over the years and his willingness to play with different sounds and approaches, even when not entirely successful. Perhaps especially then!
Because the thing about Banhart's music is that for every slight slip up or overly feel-good goofy song that might make it on a record (and there are a couple here) there are so many intense and heartfelt, emotional and flat out incredible songs that help balance his uniquely skewed musical vision.
Despite all the hype and hoopla that's surrounded Banhart over the years, the truth is he might just be one of the best songwriters of the last decade. What Will We Be? fits very nicely alongside his recent outings Cripple Crow and Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Mountain, with some all out rocking and even glam moments ("16th Street & Valencia Roxy Music", "Rats") as well as a handful of tropical excursions, but it's the more slow and dreamy songs that really remind us why we love this guy so much. What Will We Be? is a record that requires multiple listens, as there are golden tracks throughout, which only really seep through after multiple plays. The cd comes with a beautiful booklet with the lyrics to each songs along with Banhart's wonderful drawings.
MPEG Stream: "Brindo"
MPEG Stream: "Baby"
MPEG Stream: "16th & Valencia, Roxy Music"
MPEG Stream: "Last Song For B"

BROOKS, CEDRIC IM Light Of Saba (Honest Jons) cd 17.98
This all-time AQ favorite is back in print again!
This amazing and absolutely incomparable recording of Cedric Im Brooks finally gets reissued, again. Those of you who've picked up copies of the Trojan Nyabhinghi Box Set have already gotten a taste for Mr. Brooks. Born in Kingston in 1943 Cedric Brooks had been involved in Jamaica's music scene since the early sixties, playing both clarinet and saxophone for several groups and recording some successful instrumentals for Coxsone Dodd, along with working as a session musician at Studio 1. It was two subsequent events that really sharpened Brooks' musical aesthetic though: the first was a trip to the United States where Brooks almost had the opportunity to join Sun Ra's Arkestra (the birth of his daughter back home in Jamaica thwarted this). The other was his introduction to rasta percussionist Count Ossie. Ossie & Brooks teamed up, forming the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, to produce the holy grail of reggae/nyabhinghi recordings "Grounation". After parting ways with Ossie, Brooks formed his own orchestra "Light of Saba" in 1974 and recorded several albums worth of material with them. This compilation of 18 tracks here are absolutely amazing, a truly bizarre amalgam blending roots reggae, jazz, afro-funk, soul, calypso and even disco -- all glued together with pounding nyabhinghi drumming (not to mention bass, guitar, organ, horns and flute). Those beginning to feel squeamish about such shameless genre blending fear not: this is not some half-assed world-beat record cum marketing gimmick. This is perhaps one of the best "reggae" (though it doesn't completely fit the genre) reissues we've seen through these doors in a long time! This is heavy, rough hewn, beautiful and potent. This is one of those gems that, when we play it in the store, everyone either wants or wants to know just what the hell it is and when the hell it was recorded. Timeless and crucial. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Sabayindah"
MPEG Stream: "Africa"
MPEG Stream: "Nobody's Business"

CINDYTALK The Crackle Of My Soul (Editions Mego) cd 17.98
Cindytalk on Mego? It was a shock to see that pairing. Cindytalk has been the sporadic project of Gordon Sharp with a shifting ensemble over the past two and half decades. At first, Sharp's abject post-punk took a gritty, almost industrial growling to the ethereally dark tunes of the Cocteau Twins. Sharp's voice in many ways is the masculine equivalent to Liz Fraser's, just as beautiful and haunting; and the two had paired up on a few tracks through This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins. Cindytalk's two releases in the '80s - Camoflage Heart and In This World - have been secret gems to all those who had uncovered that work, with Cindytalk only emerging a few times since. There was the impressionist Ambient piano record The Wind Is Strong and 1994's underwhelming Wappinschaw. Then, a decade of silence followed by a limited edition single from 2003 and a brilliant one-sided 10" of drone-rock beauty in 2008. So, it was hard to know what to expect with a 2009 full album from Cindytalk, especially from the digi-centric label Mego.
Here, Cindytalk is just the work of Gordon Sharp; and The Crackle Of My Soul certainly sounds like a Mego record on par with the likes of Pita, Kevin Drumm, and BJ Nilsen, as shards of digital noise are looped and phased into building compositions that glow with a very intense high-end piercing. Not quite Whitehouse territory, it's actually far more glacial and icy in tone. Nevertheless, Sharp's electronics have a way of drilling into your skull. Voice and piano occasionally creep into the mix, but not to the extent that you would hear on any of the earlier records, even the aforementioned album The Wind Is Strong. We have to admit that we didn't love this record as much as Camoflage Heart and In This World; but it's sort of a different beast, and there's a lot of very strong electro-acoustic renderings to be found here...
MPEG Stream: "Feathers Burn"
MPEG Stream: "One Hundred Years Tomorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Debris Of A Smile"

DRUDKH Microcosmos (Season Of Mist) lp 17.98
NOW ON VINYL!!!
The return of Ukrainian black metal legends Drudkh! In the past, the Ukraine have given us Hate Forest and Nokturnal Mortum and Astrofaes and Lucifugum and so many more, but Drudkh somehow always manage to overshadow their blackened brethren, their sound transcendent and otherworldly, at once grim and frosty and black, but at the same time timeless and epic and majestic and melodic. Few black metal bands could release an all acoustic folk record, and imbue it with the same sort of intensity and emotion, but Drudkh did just that with Songs Of Grief And Solitude, a folk record that one might assume would most definitely not appeal to metalheads, but we've yet to meet a black metal freek who didn't also love that record. Definitely speaks to the band's power and originality and energy.
Something strange seems to be going on currently with Drudkh and their catalog though (or maybe with Drudkh and their old label Supernal), all of their previous records are currently out of print and unavailable, which makes the arrival of Microcosmos even more timely. Continuing on from where the brilliant Estrangement left off, the sound of Drudkh is a dizzying blend of old world folk music, melodic metal, and of course grim buzzing blackness. The record begins with a brief bit of baroque court music, some old school folk, all buzzing strings and simple percussion, Eastern melodies and warm wheezing textures, before the second song kicks in with a flurry of frenetic buzz and wildly blasting drums, the main guitar immediately unfurling a totally epic and timeless sounding melody. The band establishing in a matter of seconds that they have returned, and all other black minions must bow down or be smote. The nearly ten minute epic is packed with twists and turns, as we described Drudkh songs in a past review, an epic sonic journey, from soaring washed out melodic whir, to howled blasting fury, to woozy mid tempo grooves laced with heart rending minor key melodies, stretches of Deathspell-ish gnarled riffage, even a drifty acoustic interlude, with steel string guitars, weird bits of buzz and fragmented riffage and some scraped atonal bass, before lurching back into a blown out Godspeedian majestic black coda.
And so it goes for the whole record. Four songs, all hovering around ten minutes, the guitars intense and massive, the melodies and arrangements so unlikely but so perfect. Strip away the buzz and take away the vocals, and this would be some super dense tripped out folk flecked post rock epic, but as it is, Microcosmos is next level black metal, their naturalist vibe is totally present, the songs and sounds organic and lush, evocative of forests and fjords, of grey skies and snow covered mountains, but the magic most definitely lays in the songs, even the harshest heaviest parts are impossibly melodic, and even the pretty parts often splinter into total buzz drenched chaos. The bass is all over the place (a rarity in the realm of black metal), throbbing and pulsing, adding melodic counterpoint as often as it does texture and ambience, the vocals appropriately harsh and howled, but really, they seem to just merge with the music, a gorgeously blackened metal that easily slips from relentless blasting, to Burzumic plod, to seasick lurch, all blended into a sound that while on the surface is most definitely black metal, is ultimately a strain of blackness that could only be Drudkh.
In the past we've mentioned the bands possibly problematic politics, but recently the band issued a statement to the effect that the absence of lyrics and information, the no photos, no interviews, no website policy is purposeful, and this dearth of information is what led some folks to posit that the band espoused ideals in line with the NSBM movement, when in fact, the band claim to be apolitical, and to promote "individualism, self-improvement and estrangement from modern values." So there.
MPEG Stream: "Distant Cries Of Cranes"
MPEG Stream: "Decadence"
MPEG Stream: "Ars Poetica"

EATER The Album (Get Back) lp 23.00
Now on vinyl, once again! England's snotty teenage first-generation punks get their due with this nice vinyl reissue of their insanely enjoyable album, The Album. Never the smartest of the punk scene (they literally were snotty little teens), the band still possessed undeniable songwriting chops, influenced by the glammy side of Bowie, the Velvet Underground, and the rest of the usual suspects. Above all, Eater are super charged and out of control fun, and the boundless enthusiasm of their work has held up surprisingly well over the years.
Here's our review of the cd reissue that came out last year:
Maybe not the most important nor most influential '77 punk band from the UK, no, but definitely one of our personal all time faves! And Eater were both one of the earliest (forming in '76, debuting with a single in March '77) and youngest (they were literally schoolboys, their drummer Dee Generate was only 13 years old!). That's pretty punk, innit? Being snotty and pissed off wasn't a problem for them. Neither was writing high energy, highly catchy tunes that usually did the dirty deed in under two minutes, tops. Gotta love the poppy punk power of tracks like "Public Toys", "Room For One", and their age-adjusted Alice Cooper cover, "Fifteen". They also covered tracks by T-Rex, David Bowie, and the Velvet Underground, always infusing 'em with their own teenaged punk 'tude. Which admittedly (and not unexpectedly, giving their age/testosterone combo) gets a little un-PC on their own "Get Raped", though that's still a catchy number too... Maybe you've heard the Sex Pistols a few too many times, but probably not Eater.
MPEG Stream: "Room For One"
MPEG Stream: "Fifteen"
MPEG Stream: "Get Raped"

FAR EAST FAMILY BAND Nipponjin (Phoenix) lp 24.00
This reissue is now available on vinyl!
The subtitle here, or perhaps it's their slogan, is "Join Our Mental Phase Sound". It's a good slogan, whatever it means, and if you wonder what "Mental Phase Sound" is, all you have to do is listen. Total Pink Floydian, Tangerine Dreamy synthesizer laden space travel from Japanese hippies with krautrock connections! The Far East Family Band, as their name definitely implies, was a '70s hippie Japanese psych/prog outfit, forerunners of the likes of Acid Mothers Temple. Once known as Far Out (they were!), they got even trippier in their Far East Family Band formation, which included future New Age artist Kitaro as a member. This album was their 2nd, originally released in 1975, and is a classic for sure (#14 in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler Top 50). It was produced by krautrock legend Klaus Schulze by the way, for extra kosmische cred!!
Nipponjin is an electronic/organic/rock ritual, a symphonic ceremonial music, effortlessly fusing the spacey synths of the German krautrock scene with authentic Eastern mysticism in a way that probably made the European hippies jealous. Some tracks are propulsive, full of electronically effected drum beats, others more mellow and meditative, with the whooshing of synths... there's ethnic instrumental twang, heavy bluesy electric guitar noodling, stately rhythms, majestic vocal choirs, and it's all quite melodic too, making for memorable music that's a prog classic album for the ages, from Japan or anywhere else in the universe. Heck the side-long title track that opens the album qualifies all by itself.
MPEG Stream: "The Cave"
MPEG Stream: "Timeless"

FREEDOM RHYTHM & SOUND Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965-83 (Soul Jazz) book 39.95
You think Soul Jazz are good and funk, jazz and soul reissues, you should see how good they are at making books! Holy crap this thing is amazing, just based on the incredible and expansive booklets that come with all the Soul Jazz releases, it should come as no surprise that these guys can put together a pretty amazing book. Then again, how can you go wrong working with some of the coolest, most striking, and arguably most important jazz album covers EVER (well, okay 1965-1983).
We can't think of a single music obsessive we know that wouldn't flip for this book. It's huge, perfect for displaying record covers almost full size, and the covers, WOW, so creative, the design so fantastic, some just great looking, many super political, all of them AWESOME. Covers of albums by folks like Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Rashied Ali, Steve Reid and more more more!!
The only thing more fun than listening to these classic free jazz records, is looking at the covers, and since most of these you'll probably only ever get to see on cd, it's nice to have the covers big and bold to enjoy.
There's also a companion double cd, with some of the best revolutionary jazz jams ever, ones with their covers represented inside, we'll list it on the next list, but if you want one, just ask, or it should be in the In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed section at the end of this week's list.

LITURGY Renihilation (20 Buck Spin) lp 14.98
Now available on vinyl!
These guys sent us an lp a long while back, and somehow we totally slept on it. Not sure why, a 12" x 12" image of a cloudy sky, the sun glinting in the background, and the words "PURE TRANSCENDENTAL BLACK METAL" writ large in big black records across the front, and inside, just what the cover promised some seriously buzzing blazing blackness. It's not surprising these guys found there way to 20 Buck Spin, a pretty good fit for sure for this NY horde.
Unlike the blissed out blackened ethereal transcendentalism of the lp, back when Liturgy was a one man bedroom black metal band, Renihilation finds Liturgy expanded to a 4 piece, and the sound is much more raw and organic, still blown out and pretty blissy, goddamn soaring and epic in fact, but it sounds more like a proper rock band, although the drumming is still inhumanly fast, and the band lock into these cool, weird, and very un-black metal sounding high end trills, that only make the sound that much more mysterious and mystical. The band claim some unlikely non-metal influences, but as you get into Renihilation, it's easy to hear that there's way more going on here than Ulver or Darkthrone worship, the band slipping into lurching, almost mathy breakdowns, incredible dynamics, that almost sounds like Harvey Milk at 78rpm, the sort of stop start, sway and lumber, that only works if the band is tight as fuck.
These songs are not super long either, but they feel majestic, and sprawling, and never ending, in a good way, the guitars are frantic, the drumming relentless, the guitars seem to exist only in the upper registers, like wild psychedelic leads transformed into some sort of blackened tremolo picking, so instead of black metal, these jams almost sound like modern classical compositions, like Arvo Part composing for black metal band, when a song ends, you feel exhausted, and drained, like at the end of a long journey, but before you can even catch your breath, the band explode into action once again. And before you know it, they're locked into another high end blast of extreme tension, no let up, no slipping into acoustic interludes, it's almost like the musical version holding your breath, soaring as high and for as long as (in)humanly possible, so when the band does pause briefly, it knocks you on your ass, of when they switch gears and get all spacious and dynamic, it nearly blows your mind.
When we first got this, we only listened to it a couple times, and thought it was pretty cool, but on repeated listens it is proving itself to be truly transcendental, and unlike almost all of the other black metal out there, and is quickly becoming a contender for black metal record of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Pagan Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Mysterium"
MPEG Stream: "Ecstatic Rite"

LOVE Love Lost (Sundazed) cd 19.98
Most people know Love from their initial run in the mid to late '60s, culminating in the classic Forever Changes album. But there's much more to the story than what you will generally read about, and bandleader Arthur Lee soldiered on under the Love name with various lineups until the mid '70s. The results from Love's less popular phase are mixed, but these scrapped 1971 sessions for Columbia Records make it plain and clear: Arthur Lee still had it, at least in 1971.
Well, it must be said that most aQ staffers - ok, ALL of them except for one - were less than blown away by Love Lost, content to file it in the much maligned "blues rock" bin. Personally, I think these songs stand strongly on their own, but it does help to take things into perspective: if you saw your pioneering band torn apart by drug addiction, mental turmoil, and public indifference (among other things), you might have a case of the blues as well. With that said, calling this "blues rock" is off the mark, if you actually take the time to listen, and truthfully, it's hard to imagine a fan of Love not digging this. Sure, like most bands from the era, a heavy blues influence is there, but there's also a super charged folk vibe that had been with the band since the beginning, and many of the songs walk an interesting line between tough early '70s rock and more the introspective, melancholy numbers that had always been part of Love's agenda. Lee's voice sounds as amazing and self-aware as it always had, and his colorful lyrics are clearly the outcome of a powerful vision. It actually sounds like these sessions were fun, not agonizing, and it's refreshing hearing the band sound this lively. Not really sure why these songs have gone unreleased for almost 40 years, because Love Lost really does sound like a fully realized album, not just a collection of throw away demos. This work stands as a powerful reminder of Arthur Lee's talents and finds itself right at home within Love's untouchable legacy, but definitely don't expect another Forever Changes....
MPEG Stream: "Love Jumped Through My Window"
MPEG Stream: "I Can't Find It"
MPEG Stream: "Product Of The Times"
MPEG Stream: "Everybody's Gotta Live"

NATURAL YOGURT BAND Away With Melancholy (Jazzman / Now-Again) 2x10" 21.00
Here's the (double 10") vinyl edition of this, cd listed last time. The packaging is gorgeous for this format as well, AND there's two songs included here that aren't on the cd version!
Here's our review of the cd:
Natural Yogurt Band??? So many associations come to mind of what kind of band would name themselves that, but without hearing them, you probably wouldn't guess right off jazz, funk or soul. Or if you did, you might think they were of a hippie jam band mentality and not this amazingly tight British jazz combo mining the sounds of late sixties Verve label cool jazz stalwarts like Cal Tjader, Lalo Schifrin, Gary McFarland, and Jimmy Smith. Rife with psychedelic flutes, vibes and organs, Away With Melancholy takes us through a vibrant cinematic sound world propelled by funky Latin rhythms and kaleidescopic compositions. The band isn't merely aping their influences, but extracting their key ingredients and repurposing them into something modern. El Michaels Affair and Clutchy Hopkins may be covering similar territory, but not nearly with the amazing aplomb and spot-on musicianship these guys have. And if you like those groups, the artists mentioned above, that Spiritual Jazz compilation we reviewed a while back, or anything on the Stones Throw label, you should definitely check this out!
MPEG Stream: "Chapter One"
MPEG Stream: "Pipe Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Broken Rose"
MPEG Stream: "Lament For Piano"

RACEBANNON IV: Acid Or Blood (Tizona) lp 16.98
Look out, now it's on vinyl too... Here's what we said about the cd version last year:
Jeepers it's been a while since we've reviewed an album by these heavynoisyspasticartpunkrock dudes from Nebraska, and we almost neglected to list this new one, but thought we should since there's bound to be a few AQ customers who groove to Racebannon's weird brand of manic, maybe-metallic mayhem, one part Melvins, one part Dillinger Escape Plan, one part anything on Skin Graft or Toyo (RIP).
Sounds like: screaming sneering vox, jagged guitar distortion, wiseass brutality... When you're in the mood for it, great! When yr not, well, the 22 separate, entirely silent 7 second tracks that come between track 10 and 33 will be among your faves here. [However, we didn't check to see if these occur on the vinyl as well.]
If on the other had you want even more of Racebannon's earhole abuse, keep an eye out for their next release, a 12" entitled Merzbannon, which is apparently one of their previous albums "remixed" by you-know-who. [Still haven't seen this, sadly.]
MPEG Stream: "Awaken"
MPEG Stream: "Bad Case Of..."

REED, LES Girl On A Motorcycle (OST) (Get Back) lp 23.00
Newly Reissued on Vinyl!
Hot stuff! The liner notes for this soundtrack suggest that the movie, which paired the ultra sexy Marianne Faithfull with the equally irresistible Alain Delon, fell "somewhere between fetish and fantasy" and we'd venture to say that this soundtrack does too. Sooo perfectly '60s - bringing together the grand orchestra and the rock band! There's the expressive horns that frolic, chuckle, taunt and weep... the glorious strings and woodwinds that sweep you around a dancefloor or along an open road... oh and let's not forget the funky noodly electric guitars and keyboards. Now, punctuated the proceedings with some thunderous timpani drums, some enchanting Cleo Laine and Mireille Mathieu vocals and yes, some ambient sounds from the film itself like the roar of a motorcycle! Super sexy and stylin'. If you dig hip '60s flicks, this soundtrack and the movie is totally for you.
MPEG Stream: "Surrender To A Stranger"
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Souvenirs"

SIXX Sister Devil - Demo 1991 (Nuclear War Now!) cd 11.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
Bay area black metal masters Von were responsible for two of the most important USBM documents ever, the Satanic Blood and Blood Angel demos, considered by many to be the first US black metal record(s), and to this day, those records continue to inspire a legion of musical hordes, who strive to emulate that furious idiosyncratic raw that few can reproduce. What few people know, is that right after the release of those demos, the members of Von shifted their focus to another project, with a way different sound and vibe, called Sixx, which was anything but black metal, instead a dark, creepy, brooding, gothic deathrock, think Bauhaus, Christian Death, Specimen, all minor key spidery guitars, swirling dark ambience, pounding new wave drums, and of course, super dramatic crooned vocals.
It seems almost prescient, considering that this sound is enjoying a pretty serious resurgence these days: past Record Of The Weekers Soror Dolorosa, Hateful Abandon, Factums, Dial M For Murder, Cold Cave, Crystal Stilts, etc. But this demo, recorded in 1991, was as mentioned above, recorded hot on the heels of two of the most grim and raw, blasting black metal records ever! And while it may not directly inform the actual sound, it does speak to what a strange and special record the Sixx demo was and is. Chiming guitars and krauty rhythms, lots of reverb and delay, a dark brooding ambience, we hear lots of classic goth and darkwave and new wave, Kommunity FK, Human Drama, Tones On Tail, and the more we listen to it, the more the link between Sixx and Von crystallizes, both bands trafficked in simple stripped down songs, most with only one or two parts, vocals repetitive and mantric, in fact, in some ways, Sixx almost sounds like Von with all the distortion removed, right down to those classic Von goaty grunts. That said, just 'cause you like Von, doesn't necessarily mean you'll like Sixx, but if you dig that sound, and any of the above mentioned bands, then Sixx's Sister Devil might just be your lost reissue / rediscovered gem of the year.
MPEG Stream: "On The Dead"

SIXX Sister Devil - Demo 1991 (Nuclear War Now!) lp 16.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
Bay area black metal masters Von were responsible for two of the most important USBM documents ever, the Satanic Blood and Blood Angel demos, considered by many to be the first US black metal record(s), and to this day, those records continue to inspire a legion of musical hordes, who strive to emulate that furious idiosyncratic raw that few can reproduce. What few people know, is that right after the release of those demos, the members of Von shifted their focus to another project, with a way different sound and vibe, called Sixx, which was anything but black metal, instead a dark, creepy, brooding, gothic deathrock, think Bauhaus, Christian Death, Specimen, all minor key spidery guitars, swirling dark ambience, pounding new wave drums, and of course, super dramatic crooned vocals.
It seems almost prescient, considering that this sound is enjoying a pretty serious resurgence these days: past Record Of The Weekers Soror Dolorosa, Hateful Abandon, Factums, Dial M For Murder, Cold Cave, Crystal Stilts, etc. But this demo, recorded in 1991, was as mentioned above, recorded hot on the heels of two of the most grim and raw, blasting black metal records ever! And while it may not directly inform the actual sound, it does speak to what a strange and special record the Sixx demo was and is. Chiming guitars and krauty rhythms, lots of reverb and delay, a dark brooding ambience, we hear lots of classic goth and darkwave and new wave, Kommunity FK, Human Drama, Tones On Tail, and the more we listen to it, the more the link between Sixx and Von crystallizes, both bands trafficked in simple stripped down songs, most with only one or two parts, vocals repetitive and mantric, in fact, in some ways, Sixx almost sounds like Von with all the distortion removed, right down to those classic Von goaty grunts. That said, just 'cause you like Von, doesn't necessarily mean you'll like Sixx, but if you dig that sound, and any of the above mentioned bands, then Sixx's Sister Devil might just be your lost reissue / rediscovered gem of the year.
MPEG Stream: "On The Dead"

SONNY & THE SUNSETS Tomorrow Is Alright (Secret Seven / Soft Abuse) lp 14.98
Some awesomely sunshine-y jangle pop from right here in SF, Sonny & The Sunsets, fronted by local luminary Sonny Smith, who for his debut was joined by a who's who of local rockers, including Kelly Stoltz, John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees, Shayde Sartin of the Fresh & Onlys, Flying Canyon and Kelly Stoltz's band and Tim Cohen (Fresh & Onlys, 3 Leafs, Amocoma!). The label compares S&TS to Jonathan Richman, Michael Hurley, Velvet Underground, the Holy Modal Rounders, which definitely all apply, but there's plenty of Beach Boys going on too.
From brooding moody lope, to shimmery doo wop flecked surf rock to stripped down classic power pop, to fifties style balladry, to twangy back porch folk the songs are simple and heartfelt, sometimes intimate and hushed, other times subtly silly, even a bit more rocking now and again, but always catchy, melodic and cool.
MPEG Stream: "Too Young To Burn"
MPEG Stream: "Death Cream"
MPEG Stream: "Strange Love"

TERRORIZER issue #189 magazine + cd 9.25
Awesome cover - Immortal!! The larger than life face of Abbath staring out at you in perfect corpsepaint.
Also this ish: Slayer, Nile, Venom, Marduk, Baroness, Secrets Of The Moon, My Dying Bride, Evile, and plenty more.
On the free cover-mounted sampler cd: The Ruins Of Beverast, Skeletonwitch, Destruction, Gwar, Paradise Lost, Belphegor, and a bunch of other less well known acts.
As always, an essential metal periodical.

WIRE, THE #310 December 2009 magazine 9.98
Holy crap, it's our favorite rapper, Sensational posing in some cool shades on the cover. You know it's gonna be a good issue of this indispensable music magazine already. Then, inside, there's also features on Ben Frost (who has an AQ Record of the Week this week, you may have noticed), Oneohtrix Point Never, pianist Lubomyr Melnyk (good for him!), Dam-Funk, a primer on prog greats King Crimson (now we're really talking!), and plenty more interesting and diverse musical subjects... plus all the usual columns, charts, and reviews, lots of reviews... Oh, and there's a David Keenan article on "The now sound of Sheffield" including Harappian Night Recordings and a bunch of other related acts we're now curious to check out. Cool... though at first we were expecting a piece on True Sheffield Black Psychedelia, which ISN'T touched upon here, nothing about Black Vomit or Skultrol or the like, well perhaps next time if Keenan sticks around the place and really starts delving?




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----* Compilations :
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V/A Psych Funk 101: A Global Psychedelic Funk Curriculum (World Psychedelic Funk Classics) 2lp 21.00
Now available on vinyl! Yay!
Looking at the cover of this comp, what catches our eye? Well, of course the words PSYCH and FUNK in big electric pink letters. Pretty much had us right there, we're easy like that. But then the fine print on the sticker on the front adds an extra tingle of excitement: "None of these tracks have ever been reissued"! So what we have here is a survey course on some obscure shit, an international collection of freaky, fuzzy, funky jams from the golden years, circa 1968-1975 or so, mostly from groups we'd never heard of before. The ones did know were a good sign, being super groovy and decidedly eccentric. (Though we do have to point out that at least a few of the cuts here actually have been reissued before, that's how we knew 'em!). Here's the lineup: Hunsu Ozkartal Orkestrasi (Turkey), Kukumbas (Nigeria), Mulatu Astatke feat. Belaynesh Wubante and Assegedetch Asfaw (Ethiopia), Kim Sun (South Korea), Petalouda (Greece), Mehr Pooya (Iran), Staff Carpenborg and The Electric Corona (West Germany), The Group (Italy), Armando Sciascia (Italy), Wadih Essafi (Lebanon), Omar Khorshid (Egypt), Metin H. Alatli (Turkey), George Garanian with The Melodiya Jazz Ensemble (Russia), and Eskaton (France). 14 tracks in all, all of 'em b to the a to the d to the ass. Get ready for plenty of percolating percussion, infectious bass lines, analog synth buzz, chicken scratch guitar, greasy organ, drugged out FX, and in many cases Middle Eastern or African or other 'exotic' ethnic elements as appropriate to their nation of origin. Highlights are almost impossible to pick. All the African stuff is killer (Ethiopiques fans take note), so are the Turkish tracks (you want weird? check out how the Metin H. Alatli cut somehow segues from Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith music to stoned cocktail bellydance improv!!), so is everything else. We dig how eerieness and jazziness are combined on "The Feed-back" by The Group (aka Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, featuring Ennio Morricone), and also Armando Sciascia's suspenseful "Circuito Chiuso" is pretty eerie too. Both are from Italy, where it seems that it's hard NOT to sound like you're scoring a phantasmagoric horror flick a la Goblin. Also, we love love love the grandiose extended electro-funk from Magmoid progsters Eskaton that closes out the disc. But why keep writing about this, you know you need it - unless your record collection already includes all these rarities, and there's no way it does.
Lovingly compiled with the help of DJs like Cut Chemist and Stone's Throw's Egon, Psych Funk 101 is truly a lesson in, well, a variety of awesome vintage funkiness, in the tradition of other cool comps like Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Obsession, Trap Door, and the Afro-centric Love's A Real Thing. Housed in a handsome digipack, it boasts a thick, 36 page booklet featuring a two-page spread on each track, with full color repro of the original LP or 45 sleeve from whence the cut originated, along with a page of text giving more info than you'd expect.
FYI this also came out on vinyl, but was gone so fast, we don't have any to list. However, we are told it is being repressed, soon we hope...
MPEG Stream: PETALOUDA "What You Can Do In Your Life"
MPEG Stream: OMAR KHORSHID "Rakset El Fadaa"
MPEG Stream: ESKATON "Dagon"

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

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

AHAB "The Divinity Of Oceans" (Napalm) cd 16.98
ANDUIN "Abandoned In Sleep" (SMPG Limited) lp + cd 16.98
BARWICK, JULIANNA "Sanguine" (s/r) cd 10.98
BAUHAUS "Mask" (Beggar's Banquet) 2cd 26.00
BRAINSTORM "Smile A While" (Lion Productions) cd 14.98
CANT / ARTHUR RUSSELL "Ghosts / Come To Life" (Terrible) 7" 8.98
CAPTAIN BEYOND "Captain Beyond & Sufficiently Breathless" (Raven) cd 22.00
CASPA "Everybody's Talking, Nobody's Listening!" (Fabric) cd 11.98
COBRA KILLER "Uppers And Downers" (Monika 666) cd 15.98
COLLINS, NICOLAS "Devil's Music" (EM) 2cd/2lp 26.00/32.00
DEKHA JAYE GA / UF YEH BEVIAN "OST" (Finders Keepers) cd 23.00
EARTH AND FIRE "s/t" (Esoteric) cd 23.00
FOWLEY, KIM "One Man's Garbage: Lost Treasures From The Vaults 1959-69 Volume 1" (Norton) cd 14.98
HELCARAXE "Broadsword" (Regimental) cd 14.98
HOLCOMB, ROSCOE "The High Lonesome Sound" (Bo Weevil) lp 16.98
LITMUS "Aurora" (Metal Blade / Rise Above) cd 14.98
MIST AND MAST "Action At A Distance" (self released) cd 6.98
NGOZI FAMILY "45,000 Volts" (No Smoke) lp 32.00
NIRVANA "Live At Reading" (DGC) cd/dvd 16.98/21.00
NOTWIST, THE "Music For Storm (OST)" (Alien Transistor) lp+cd+book 24.00
OPHTHALAMIA "Via Dolorosa" (Peaceville) cd 13.98
PARTCH, HARRY "The World Of Harry Partch" (Scorpio / Sony) lp 15.98
PAYNE, FREDA "Payne & Pleasure" (Reel Music) cd 14.98
QUANTEC "Cauldron Subsidence" (Echochord) cd 16.98
RADIAN "Chimeric" (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
RAINCOATS, THE "s/t" (Kill Rock Stars) lp 16.98
RATTO, MIKA "Polkupyoralla Vuokkopenkereelle" (Ektro) cd 14.98
REAL ESTATE "s/t" (Woodsist) cd/lp 13.98/14.98
RITA J "Artist Workshop" (All Natural Inc.) cd 13.98
ROCKCELONA "La Bruja" (Estereo Fonico Country) cd 21.00
SACRED STEEL "Carnage Victory" (Massacre) cd+dvd 17.98
SEX WORKER "Labor Of Love" (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
SKITLIV "Skandinavisk" (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
SPIRAL STAIRS "The Real Feel" (Matador) cd/lp 13.98/16.98
TIA CARRERA "The Quintessential" (Small Stone) cd 14.98
V/A "Africa Boogaloo: The Latinization Of West Africa" (Honest Jons) 2cd/2lp 17.98/22.00
V/A "Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series" (Wergo) 3cd 53.00
V/A "Forge Your Own Chains: Heavy Psychedelic Ballads and Dirges 1968-1974" (Now-Again) cd/2lp 17.98/19.98
V/A "Freedom Rhythm & Sound: Revolutionary Jazz & The Civil Rights Movement 1963-82" (Soul Jazz) 2cd 25.00
V/A "Messthetics #107" (Hyped To Death) cd 14.98
V/A "Mr. Toytown Presents...Vol.3" (Toy Town) cd 26.00
V/A "Mutant Disco Volume 3: Garage Sale" (Ze) cd 16.98
V/A "Ouled Bambara" (Twos & Fews / Drag City) cd + dvd 17.98
V/A "Panama! 3 : Calypso Panameno, Guajira Jazz & Cumbia Tipica On The Isthmus 1960-75" (Sound Way) cd 16.98
V/A "The Harmonic Series - A Compilation Of Musical Works In Just Intonation" (Important) cd 14.98
V/A "Tumbele! Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds From The French Caribbean, 1963-74" (Sound Way) cd/2lp 16.98/23.00
V/A "Warp 20 (Chosen)" (Warp) 2cd 22.00
V/A "Warp 20 (Recreated)" (Warp) 2cd 25.00
VHS HEAD "Video Club" (Skam) cd 9.98
VOIVOD "Infini" (Relapse) cd 14.98
WHITE FANG "Best of White Fang Vol. 3" (Gnar Tapes) cassette 8.98
YOUNGS, RICHARD "High Sun Energy" (Dull Knife) 7" 8.98

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Please place your order via our website.

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

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

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


DOMESTIC SHIPPING :
--------------------------------

1-2 items    $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

----} on the way, any day
Lusiferiinin Armosta "Nuolee" cd on Ektro
Musiikkivyöry "Tulemme Sokeiksi" cd on Ektro

----} November 24th
Shrinebuilder "s/t" lp version on Neurot
Expo 70 "Sonic Messenger" 2cd on Beta-Lactam Ring
Worm Ouroboros "s/t" cd on 20 Buck Spin
Horna "Musta Kaipuu" cd on Moribund

----} also November
King Khan & BBQ Show "Invisible Girl" cd/lp on In The Red
Jozef Van Wissem "Ex Patris" lp on Important
Felix "You Are The One I Pick" cd on Kranky
Mulatu Astatke "New York-Addis-London" cd/2lp on Strut
Papercuts "Where Are The Waves" cd on Gnomonsong
v/a "Steppas Delight 2" cd/2lp on Soul Jazz
Oneohtrix Point Never lp and cd on No Fun
The Roots "How I Got Over" cd
Max Richter "Memory House" cd
Tom Waits "Glitter and Doom" live cd
Sparks "The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman" cd on Lil' Beethoven

----} December 8th
Kraftwerk vinyl reissues on Astralwerks

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later
Cluster "Curiosum" cd reissue on Bureau B
Crispy Ambulance "Plateau Phase" cd reissue on LTM
Vampire Weekend "Contra" cd
Neon Indian "Psychic Chasms" lp version on Lefse
Six Finger Satellite "A Good Year For Hardness" cd on Anchor Brain
Shit And Shine "229 2299 Girls Against Shit" lp on Riot Season
Ocean "Pantheon Of The Lesser" 2lp version on Important
Grumbling Fur (Guapo + Jussi from Circle) cd
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
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
Trans Am "What Day Is Tonight" cd on Thrill Jockey
Boduf Songs "Strait Gait" cd/lp on Latitudes
M. Holterbach + Julia Eckhardt cd on Helen Scarsdale
AFCGT "s/t" lp on Sub Pop
Beach House "Teen Dream" cd on Sub Pop

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickSallyJonandAndrew