ALCEST Ecailles De Lune (Prophecy) cd 17.98
Metalheads are definitely a weird bunch, their likes and dislikes, what is considered true and cult, versus stuff labeled poser or false metal. In some cases it's definitely cut and dried, but in others, there's really no rhyme or reason. For instance, take Depeche Mode. Almost every metalhead we've ever met, loves Depeche Mode. Why? There seems to be no metal connection, other than a sort of darkness or gothiness. Yet, DM remain a fast favorite, with more than a few metal bands covering songs by them as well. Which brings us to Alcest. For the life of us, we can't figure out why these guys are so beloved by black metallers, even the ones who go on about frosty grim kvlt hordes and generally listen to only extreme buzzing blackness, they all seem to love Alcest. Not that there's not plenty to love, it's just Alcest are barely metal at all. Sure there's some harsh vocals now and again, some distorted guitar, even some blast beats but that's about it as far as it goes metalwise. And the thing is, even when Alcest do dip into some blasting blackness, it's more shoegazey and dreamy and washed out and melodic, which speaks to why we love this band so much, their ability to create this glimmering blown out dreampop using tropes usually reserved for musics much more harsh and heavy.
This latest record finds the band perfecting their ever evolving formula, merging a sort of depressive melancholic black metal, with total blissed out shoegaze jangle pop. On Ecailles De Lune, even the heaviest moments are infused with an undeniable poppiness, a sort of ethereal dreaminess, that turns this into one of the least likely black metal records ever.
The band can be perfectly summed up sonically in the nearly 20 minute two part opening salvo, jangly guitars, hushed vocals, explode into a sort of prismatic shoegaze post pop, all big chords, pounding drums, everything wrapped in a soft psychedelic haze, crooned sad boy vocals, way down in the mix, slow builds to Godspeed like crescendos, angelic female background vocals, lush harmonies, spidery tendrils of minor key guitar, finally within the last minute of the first part, slipping into a buzzing blast, but as mentioned above, it's not so black and grim as if is epic and effulgent and soaring and majestic and beautiful. The second part opens with spare chiming guitars, before some almost actual black metal erupts, a woozy descending minor key melody that quickly shifts into something much more moody with harsh vocals showing up for the first time. It's frenzied and buzzy, but still more dreamy and druggy than black, and then just as quickly as it started, the blackness fades, leaving a loping rhythm, sweet chiming clean guitars, and then the rhythm drops out too, and the song plays out with just a soft tangle of reverby guitar notes and ethereal female vocals.
"Percees de Lumiere" begins all Lifelover-y, with swoonsome soaring shoegaze pop and harsh vox, only to splinter into prismatic dreampop partway through, dreamy female vocals over softly churning chords underneath, so nice.
"Solar Song" is some sort of Slowdive / Swervedriver / My Bloody Valentine hybrid, warm lush chords, soaring vocal harmonies, a killer main melody, total classic pop wreathed in layers of washed out fuzz and swirling sonic gauze, maybe the 'hit' here if there was gonna be one.
An 8+ minute closer might have you expecting a blasting metallic finale, but instead, we're treated to a smoldering sprawl of soft strummed, chiming gloom pop, no drums, just layers of glistening guitars, warm lush vocals, a slow burning chunk or rainy day post-metal dreamfolk balladry. woozy, washed out, hazy, dreamlike and utterly gorgeous.
While they last, we've got the limited digi-book packaging version of this fine album.
MPEG Stream: "Ecailles De Lune - Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Percees De Lumiere"
MPEG Stream: "Solar Song"

SOULEYMAN, OMAR Jazeera Nights: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Syria (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
We'll admit, we're a sucker for Sublime Frequencies, they've yet to release a record that didn't totally blow our minds. Which says as much about SF's curating as it does about the unheard music worldwide. Treasures everywhere, amazing and passionate and personal and far out sounds, being made in homes and yards, on street corners, in bars, at picnics and parties, not conceived for public consumption, meant for a small audience, and often for a specific purpose, getting a glimpse into these magical musical moments is what Sublime Frequencies is all about, and we feel lucky to get to experience these sounds.
This is the third record from Omar Souleyman on Sublime Frequencies, and just might be the best one yet, which is saying A LOT. A collection of live recordings culled from nearly 15 years worth of cassettes, these tracks are incredible, energetic, passionate, so full of life, effusive and emotional, funky and celebratory, and to Western ears, seriously far out. There's almost a wild Bollywood vibe (even though this is from the Middle East, not India), in the vocals, and the rhythms, and with the crazy tangled synthesizer melodies, the propulsive drumming, and Souleyman's distorted, wailed vocal delivery, it all sounds just so perfect, even listening to this music on record, it sounds sweaty and exhausting and cathartic, it's easy to imagine a big crowd of people dancing and bouncing along, freed from all cares and concerns letting the music just carry them away.
Like all Sublime Frequencies releases, the liner notes offer up so much information, on Souleyman, his life, the history of Syria, on Syrian folk music, etc, but even without all that info, if it's just about the music, these are some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear. Frantic Eastern melodies, frenetic percussion, analog synths wound around Souleyman's vocals, this is party music, dance music, but not like party or dance music the way we normally think about it. The music of Souleyman is transcendent, spiritual, psychedelic, transformative, a folk pop known as Dabke, rarely heard in the West, perhaps not at all if it wasn't for Sublime Frequencies, and we'd imagine these sounds might be overwhelming for casual world music listeners, it is after all wild and frantic and relentless, the melodies complex and twisted and tangled, there are some moments that verge on folky for sure, the final track is a gorgeous haunting lament, just vocals and buzzing synthesizers, but barring that track, even on the folkier jams, those strange synths, the unique melodies, the repetitive tranced out rhythms, those all transform Souleyman's folk into something much more, and in most cases, it's not long before the band explodes into yet another super intense sweat soaked psychedelic Syrian folk pop workout. So great!
MPEG Stream: "Hafer Gabrak Bidi (I Will Dig Your Grave With My Hands)"
MPEG Stream: "Ala Il Hanash Madgouga (The Bedouin Tattoo)"
MPEG Stream: "Hot Il Khanjar Bi Gleibi (Stab My Heart)"
MPEG Stream: "Kell Il Banat Inkhatban (All The Girls Are Engaged)"

V/A Cold Waves + Minimal Electronics : Volume One (Angular Recordings) cd 21.00
As we promised, when we made the vinyl format of this a Record Of The Week a couple lists back, it would soon also available on compact disc too, and here it is, again getting to be a Record Of The Week! Here's what we said about it before, so now those of you who are turntable-impaired can grab this too:
First off, anyone who bought the Minimal Wave Tapes compilation, another recent aQ Record Of The Week, is most definitely gonna want this too, another killer collection of, like the title says, Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics, a perfect part two, or companion, and fear not, the only overlap is one single band, who do appear on both comps, but with different tracks, so this is essentially an all new (old) collection of vintage coldwave dark synth sonics, which, if you're anything like us, and we're beginning to think you are, you can't get enough of.
It's pretty strange how cold / dark / new / synth wave have made such a huge comeback, bands like the Cure, Depeche Mode, Human League, Front 242, Soft Cell, are now cited as huge influences on a new breed of dark synth driven combos. Also funny considering something similar happened 8 or 9 years ago, when a rash of bands were exploring similar territory: Adult., The Faint, Fischerspooner, Erase Errata, etc. But music is definitely cyclical, and as a new generation discovers the treasures of the past, they start bands mining that past, and revist that past via reissues. The most recent issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian offers a mini primer on the difference between the various waves: darkwave was early industrial and goth rock, cold wave the French version of darkwave (as we first discovered on the amazing So Young But So Cold comp), Synth wave was like cold wave but more sparse and moody, and new wave, well everyone should know what that is by now.
Lately, it seems most folks make little distinction between the various waves, instead lumping them all together as cold wave, or minimal wave or whatever, since regardless of the variations, they definitely all share a similar sound and vibe, and speaking for ourselves at least, it's a sound we dig big time. But then most of us never really stopped digging that stuff to begin with. Lots of former goths here for sure. And every time we discovered a band exploring the sounds we dug so much back in the day, we went way out of our way to gush about them big time, like one of our 2009 Records Of The Week, from Soror Dolorosa, a black metal side project that sounded like some lost Joy Division jam, or rare cold wave antiquity, and more recently records by groups like Blank Dogs, who may not have grown up listening to this music, but if they didn't then must have had a super hip older brother.
But as was demonstrated on the Minimal Wave collection, there were tons of bands outside of the obvious above mentioned references, who were just as cool, if not cooler, the underground of a scene that for a while was very mainstream, on the Minimal Waves comp, it was Crash Course In Science, Tara Cross, Das Kabinette, Ohama, Das Ding, Martin Dupont, Deux, Bene Gessert, Turquoise Days, and others, a few of the more wave-informed folks here knew many of those bands, but to the rest of us, it was a revelation. So much amazing music, so many new groups. On this Cold Waves collection, it's Absolute Body Control, Ruth, The Neon Judgement, Stereo, The Vyllies, Days Of Sorrow, Land Of Giants, End Of Data, Eleven Pond, Ausgang Verboten, Nine Circles and more more more. And like before, a few groups we're familiar with, but a whole bunch of mysterious new names, all of which contribute killer tracks, and most definitely have us hankering for more from all of them.
The obvious ones, Ruth of course, a long time aQ favorite, whose track here also appeared on the out of print So Young But So Cold, sort of Kraftwerk meets Gary Numan, Linear Movement, who also had a track on the Minimal Wave comp, whose track here is awesome, catchy and swirly, with super hypnotic synth melodies and awesome vocals, groovy bass and that clipped new wave drum machine rhythm, Absolute Body Control, who recently received the deluxe Vinyl On Demand boxset treatment, with some awesomely gothy gloom pop, in fact, this collection sounds WAY poppier than the Minimal Wave collection, so much so, that almost all of these bands sound like they should have been right up there with Depeche Mode and the Human League.
Needless to say, this is another fantastic comp, with some incredible songs, and already has us hankering for volume 2!
MPEG Stream: ELEVEN POND "Watching Trees"
MPEG Stream: AUSGANG VERBOTEN "Consumer"
MPEG Stream: OTO "Anyway"
MPEG Stream: THE STEREO "Somewhere In The Night"

WOODS At Echo Lake (Woodsist) cd 11.98
Ah, Woods. It seems like maybe some of us here haven't given these guys as much attention as they deserve. Of course, some of that has to do with the difficulty in getting very many of their singles, and maybe we were just blasted with so many releases on the Woodsist label (which, you guessed it, Woods own and operate) that we overlooked them... not too sure, maybe we're just quibbling. But we will quibble no more, because At Echo Lake has our undivided attention.
This album exhibits an effortless but impeccable attention to songcraft, and even though it clocks in at under 30 minutes, its all encompassing greatness causes you to lose track of time and space, just like a good album should. While Woodsist has earned a reputation for blown out garage pop, Woods themselves are more on the folk side of the spectrum. Words like "lo-fi" will undoubtedly be thrown around, and not without good reason. This IS lo-fi, but instead of hiding behind tape hiss and distortion, the songs make perfect use of the recording quality for an album that is lush, dreamy, and above all, BEAUTIFUL. Singer Jeremy Earl's falsetto croon has earned many comparisons to Neil Young, but we're still trying to figure out who else he reminds us of. Some sort of Jad Fair/Elliott Smith hybrid on helium? Chris Gunst from Beachwood Sparks? Eh, why bother, because we imagine before long it will be Earl other people are being compared to when everyone is ripping his band off. This stuff is just so great that we can't imagine Woods NOT ascending to the next level in the indie world.
Lightly psychedelic opener "Blood Dries Darker" gives off a hazed summery feeling, its warm acoustic (we think) bass recalling the sounds of groups like Dead Milkmen or even Violent Femmes, but also sounding very appropriate for 2010. "Suffering Season" finds Earl and Woods' other half Jarvis Taveniere sounding a bit more like a ramshackle Beachwood Sparks with a ridiculously catchy chorus asking "Who knows what tomorrow might bring?"
The instrumentation on this one should appeal to anyone who dug other recent aQ favorites the Smith Westerns, as both bands seem to inhabit a world where the whole lo-fi thing is not just an excuse for not going to a real studio. Many numbers, like "Time Fading Lines" aren't necessarily "sad", but definitely a bit melancholy. A lot of these songs give off a sense of longing, not in a super defined way or anything... ultimately, though, the vibe here is pretty triumphant, some real feel good kind of stuff. Woods also know how to shake things up a bit, like on the instrumental "From The Horn", hands down the most rocking song here. Skittery guitars and some more aggressive than usual drumming have the band letting loose, and the addition of the cool backwards tape sounds actually reminded us a bit of Faust, as strange as that may sound.
Woods have created their own magical world, perfectly captured in Earl's awesome artwork, which adorns all Woodsist releases but not surprisingly make most sense on his own record sleeves. It's strange, but also very intriguing, a perfect visual accompaniment. The best thing about Woods is how they manage to be mysterious but inclusive, making tunes that will surely please all types of music lovers. It's always great when an album unexpectedly knocks you on your ass. At Echo Lake is one of those albums.
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we'll have the cd format of this on a special $2 off sale, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 5/21/10!
MPEG Stream: "Blood Dries Darker"
MPEG Stream: "Pick Up"
MPEG Stream: "Suffering Season"
MPEG Stream: "Time Fading Lines"

WOODS At Echo Lake (Woodsist) lp 14.98
Ah, Woods. It seems like maybe some of us here haven't given these guys as much attention as they deserve. Of course, some of that has to do with the difficulty in getting very many of their singles, and maybe we were just blasted with so many releases on the Woodsist label (which, you guessed it, Woods own and operate) that we overlooked them... not too sure, maybe we're just quibbling. But we will quibble no more, because At Echo Lake has our undivided attention.
This album exhibits an effortless but impeccable attention to songcraft, and even though it clocks in at under 30 minutes, its all encompassing greatness causes you to lose track of time and space, just like a good album should. While Woodsist has earned a reputation for blown out garage pop, Woods themselves are more on the folk side of the spectrum. Words like "lo-fi" will undoubtedly be thrown around, and not without good reason. This IS lo-fi, but instead of hiding behind tape hiss and distortion, the songs make perfect use of the recording quality for an album that is lush, dreamy, and above all, BEAUTIFUL. Singer Jeremy Earl's falsetto croon has earned many comparisons to Neil Young, but we're still trying to figure out who else he reminds us of. Some sort of Jad Fair/Elliott Smith hybrid on helium? Chris Gunst from Beachwood Sparks? Eh, why bother, because we imagine before long it will be Earl other people are being compared to when everyone is ripping his band off. This stuff is just so great that we can't imagine Woods NOT ascending to the next level in the indie world.
Lightly psychedelic opener "Blood Dries Darker" gives off a hazed summery feeling, its warm acoustic (we think) bass recalling the sounds of groups like Dead Milkmen or even Violent Femmes, but also sounding very appropriate for 2010. "Suffering Season" finds Earl and Woods' other half Jarvis Taveniere sounding a bit more like a ramshackle Beachwood Sparks with a ridiculously catchy chorus asking "Who knows what tomorrow might bring?"
The instrumentation on this one should appeal to anyone who dug other recent aQ favorites the Smith Westerns, as both bands seem to inhabit a world where the whole lo-fi thing is not just an excuse for not going to a real studio. Many numbers, like "Time Fading Lines" aren't necessarily "sad", but definitely a bit melancholy. A lot of these songs give off a sense of longing, not in a super defined way or anything... ultimately, though, the vibe here is pretty triumphant, some real feel good kind of stuff. Woods also know how to shake things up a bit, like on the instrumental "From The Horn", hands down the most rocking song here. Skittery guitars and some more aggressive than usual drumming have the band letting loose, and the addition of the cool backwards tape sounds actually reminded us a bit of Faust, as strange as that may sound.
Woods have created their own magical world, perfectly captured in Earl's awesome artwork, which adorns all Woodsist releases but not surprisingly make most sense on his own record sleeves. It's strange, but also very intriguing, a perfect visual accompaniment. The best thing about Woods is how they manage to be mysterious but inclusive, making tunes that will surely please all types of music lovers. It's always great when an album unexpectedly knocks you on your ass. At Echo Lake is one of those albums.
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we'll have the cd format of this on a special $2 off sale, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 5/21/10!
MPEG Stream: "Blood Dries Darker"
MPEG Stream: "Pick Up"
MPEG Stream: "Suffering Season"
MPEG Stream: "Time Fading Lines"

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1349 Demonoir (Prosthetic) cd 14.98
It seems like we were the only people who loved the last 1349, the experimental black industrial aboutface that was Revelations Of The Black Flame. A twisted, lurching tangled of convoluted blackness, and abstract black drone, some of the darkest weirdest black metal shit we'd heard in ages. But folks pissed and moaned, "why isn't it fast?", "where are the blast beats?" and on and on and on. But c'mon, were we the only ones who did NOT want to just hear Liberation Part 4, or Beyond The Apocalypse Part 3? Seems like it.
Well, all the haters can breathe easy, cuz Demonoir is a return to the frenzied black blasts and insanely furious buzz that defined 1349's sound, but listen close, and there's still some weird shit going on. First off, every song is separated by a short instrumental track, each one denoted "Tunnel" plus a digit, contributing to the seamless flow of the record, and allowing the more by-the-numbers blackness to get some breathing room. These interludes range from effects drenched metallic drones, to creepy backwards pianos and acoustic guitars, woozy minor key melodies, and blackened industrial wastescapes, super tense Herrmann like cinematic ambience, to deep cavernous drones, and washed out shimmery white noise.
But it's not just the interludes, the band may have managed the impossible, melding their grim frosty blast of old, with their obvious desire to twist and transform and experiment. The result is some seriously epic and convoluted and yeah sort of experimental black metal, but subtle enough that folks how just want to bang their hands or thrash about, will be perfectly happy, while the rest of us can strap on headphones and get way lost.
"Atomic Chapel" is total classic 1349, but not quite, creepy spoken word, some weird start stop arrangements, some atonal piano buried in the mix, mysterious voices, chanting, all tangled up with some of the fiercest black metal ever. It's a pretty potent mix. Elsewhere the blasting blackness gets weirdly melodic, almost NWOBHM in parts, but then the band stretches it out, transforming it into a droned out chugscape, rife with wild moaning leads, that turn into effects drenched squiggles.
The pianos pop up now and again throughout the record, as do some more surprising melodies, more unlikely arrangements, the title track being maybe the strangest of the bunch, a woozy midtempo workout, all hissed and whispered vox, tangled spidery guitars, a super progged out arrangement, psychedelic and moody and fucking awesome.
On first listen we were sort of bummed out, thinking that the band had caved, and ditched the experimental stuff to placate the naysayers, but after listening a bit closer, we're beginning to think that in some ways, it's almost MORE subversive than Revelations Of The Black Flame, not so overtly fucked up, but infused throughout with a sort of insidious weirdness, that will worm itself into the minds and souls of the grim kvlt masses, whether they realize it or not.
MPEG Stream: "Atomic Chapel"
MPEG Stream: "When I Was Flesh"
MPEG Stream: "Psalm 7:77"

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. In O To Infinity (Important) cd 14.98
It's really hard to keep up with these guys. We love pretty much everything they do, but they are quite possibly one of the most prolific bands around, and it can get frustrating, trying to take it all in, and sometimes that frustration can manifest itself as not giving a shit, which would be a shame, cuz whenever we find ourselves not giving a shit, and we manage to overcome that reaction, we are always totally blown away by the magical musical mysteries these guys are capable of conjuring up.
In O To Infinity marks two milestones of sorts for the bands, and for fans, one is the return of Cotton Casino to the fold, the other is the group's musical progression from their seminal cover of Terry Riley's "In C", the band figuring that the denotation of a specific key is mostly arbitrary, thus we have these 4 extended sonic explorations, each in their own key, those 'keys' being 'O', 'A', 'Z' and of course 'Infinity'.
And as much as we love all the different facets of AMT, this might be our favorite, their blissed out cosmic space drift, long form dronescapes, otherworldly kosmiche ambience, lush clouds of swirling effects, muted churning rhythms, guitars transformed into mysterious noisemakers, long tones layered and intertwined, the swoop of processed backwards sounds, but heck, this is AMT, so the do end up rocking out, launching into a propulsive krautrock groove, jamming away within that constantly swirling and shifting cloud of swirling psychedelia.
"In A" is all chants and grunts and weird vocalizations, some sort of alien ritual, performed in yet another cloud of shimmering drones and grinding muted hiss, a demonic barnyard emitting mewls and squeaks and groans, all bathed in reverb and delay, building to a dizzying outer space swirl. "In Z" is a futuristic freak out of strange bleeps and bloops, laid over some sort of abstract cosmic jazz drift, subtly rhythmic, but way free, a shimmering fog of glistening electronics and malfunctioning effects, which gets downright crunchy and chaotic near the end.
And finally, "In Infinity", which contrary to what we were expecting, is the most 'rock' of the bunch, a wild sprawling avant jazz, space rock, future funk groove that goes on and on and on, a motorik beat, underpinning wild electronic squiggles, woozy synths and organs, all manner of tangled instrumental freakout, culminating in a total heart of the sun, bleary eyed prismatic sonic blowout.
Another AMT winner, to add to that dedicated shelf in your house that by now must be bowing beneath the weight of the previous hundred or so winners. Regardless, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "In O"
MPEG Stream: "In A"

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. In O To Infinity (Important) lp 27.00
It's really hard to keep up with these guys. We love pretty much everything they do, but they are quite possibly one of the most prolific bands around, and it can get frustrating, trying to take it all in, and sometimes that frustration can manifest itself as not giving a shit, which would be a shame, cuz whenever we find ourselves not giving a shit, and we manage to overcome that reaction, we are always totally blown away by the magical musical mysteries these guys are capable of conjuring up.
In O To Infinity marks two milestones of sorts for the bands, and for fans, one is the return of Cotton Casino to the fold, the other is the group's musical progression from their seminal cover of Terry Riley's "In C", the band figuring that the denotation of a specific key is mostly arbitrary, thus we have these 4 extended sonic explorations, each in their own key, those 'keys' being 'O', 'A', 'Z' and of course 'Infinity'.
And as much as we love all the different facets of AMT, this might be our favorite, their blissed out cosmic space drift, long form dronescapes, otherworldly kosmiche ambience, lush clouds of swirling effects, muted churning rhythms, guitars transformed into mysterious noisemakers, long tones layered and intertwined, the swoop of processed backwards sounds, but heck, this is AMT, so the do end up rocking out, launching into a propulsive krautrock groove, jamming away within that constantly swirling and shifting cloud of swirling psychedelia.
"In A" is all chants and grunts and weird vocalizations, some sort of alien ritual, performed in yet another cloud of shimmering drones and grinding muted hiss, a demonic barnyard emitting mewls and squeaks and groans, all bathed in reverb and delay, building to a dizzying outer space swirl. "In Z" is a futuristic freak out of strange bleeps and bloops, laid over some sort of abstract cosmic jazz drift, subtly rhythmic, but way free, a shimmering fog of glistening electronics and malfunctioning effects, which gets downright crunchy and chaotic near the end.
And finally, "In Infinity", which contrary to what we were expecting, is the most 'rock' of the bunch, a wild sprawling avant jazz, space rock, future funk groove that goes on and on and on, a motorik beat, underpinning wild electronic squiggles, woozy synths and organs, all manner of tangled instrumental freakout, culminating in a total heart of the sun, bleary eyed prismatic sonic blowout.
Another AMT winner, to add to that dedicated shelf in your house that by now must be bowing beneath the weight of the previous hundred or so winners. Regardless, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "In O"
MPEG Stream: "In A"

APSE Eras (Equation) lp 18.98
We hadn't paid too much attention to this band, but listening now to this super swank lp version of their second full length, Eras, we're beginning to think we have definitely been missing out.
The record begins with some murky, muddy, washed out psychedelic drone rock, motorik beats, thick clouds of churning chordal distortion, glistening melodies, super shoe gazey, but super dark and blurred as well, but the record soon slips into something more dreamy and twangy, Eastern melodies over a mass of soft swirling drones and minimal percussion, vocals buried in the mix, ghostlike and mysterious, some big booming drums, very druggy and psychedelic, reminds us of Wooden Shjips, or Moon Duo actually, and the whole record sort of weaves back and forth, between weirdly bombastic post industrial shoegaze dirgery, and a more sort of Velvet Underground / Spacemen 3 style psych drone sprawl, but with a little Scenic style atmosphere mixed in. Sound strange, and it is a bit, but the band make it work, a constantly shifting psychedelic rock bliss out / trip out, that should definitely appeal to fans of the current crop of space gazers.
As with all Equation releases, the design and packaging are fantastic, super thick 180 gram vinyl, deluxe full color gatefold jacket, printed inner sleeves, various inserts, LIMITED TO 425 COPIES, each one hand numbered...

ARP & ANTHONY MOORE Frkwys Vol. 3 (Rving Intl.) lp 24.00
For the third in the series (or second, because we don't think there was actually a Vol. 1) of collaborations between new bands and their older progenitors, we get this beautiful collaboration between Arp (Alexis Georgopoulos of The Alps and Q&A, and formerly of Tussle) and Anthony Moore (Slapp Happy, Henry Cow). Inspired by Moore's early and little heard minimalist compositions from 1971's Pictures of a Cloudland Ballroom, rather than Moore's later art-rock leanings, the duo build upon old and new material, utilizing piano, cello, synth and tape manipulations into eight pieces of gorgeously placid minimalism. Two of the cello based tracks are dedicated to Robert Wyatt and Arthur Russell and you'll hear their influence as well as shades of Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Eroc, and Franco Battiato. The final song, "Slow Moon's Rose" is the only vocal track, sounding like a lovely lost Slapp Happy outtake sung by Georgopoulos instead of Dagmar Krause. A far cry from the last collaboration in this series between Excepter, Chris & Cosey and J. G. Thirlwell, but one with more depth, as it feels like a true collaboration between two mutually inspired artists rather than a couple of interesting remixes. Highly Recommended! And ultra limited!!
MPEG Stream: "Spinette"
MPEG Stream: "Wild Grass II (For Robert Wyatt)"
MPEG Stream: "Mirrors & Forks"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Moon's Rose"

AUSTERITY PROGRAM Backsliders And Apostates Will Burn (Hydra Head) cd 10.98
This is probably gonna sound like total sacrilege. And it is, we know it is, but it's all we can think when we're listening to these guys, quite possibly our favorite drum machine driven duo, is that yeah, they sound like Big Black, the super distorted guitar chug, the sung spoken vox, the thick floor shaking bass, the fucked up and funny lyrics, it's like Big Black, bit kind of, well, you know, BETTER.
There we said it. And before you get your hate mail machine in motion, realize, that we revere Big Black, every single song, a fucking misanthropic masterpiece, but if you were to ask us, what could make BB better? Well, we would have said, let's see, you could make it heavier, make the songs more complex, add tons more dynamics, fuck it, the Austerity Program is just that, like a super charged, ultra heavy, way more complex Big Black, but they are so much more, they have taken that sound, that classic, timeless (to us at least) sound, and made it all their own.
The super tense slow build of "Song 25", with its sprawling guitar buzz, and hushed spoken vocals, gradually growing more and more intense, the drum machine and buzzing bass soon joining in, a churning low slung dirge, the guitar doesn't even show up until a minute left in the song, but suddenly the track is transformed into a lurching metal machine prog blow out, with some awesomely weirdly clipped rhythms, chugging guitar, it's the sort of part most bands would (and should) stretch out for minutes, but the AP make it last seconds, cuz they know, they have way more up their sleeves.
"Song 26" explodes in a throbbing downtuned crush, stopping, starting, stuttering, hiccupping, until things bliss out, and suddenly it's a shimmery whispered drift, only to lurch into a grinding metallic robotic pound, finally finishing off with more churn and crunch. "Song 27" starts off all distorted strum and more clipped drum machine, droney and tense and hypnotic, before splintering into a stop start stutter, that explodes into what sounds like "Jordan, Minnesota" at triple speed, and then back again, a fucking epic proto prog metal jam with some MIT worthy drum machine programming, and anguished ultra pissed vox.
"Track 29" might be the weirdest, and perhaps the coolest of the bunch, a cloud of soaring guitars, a chugging bass, and another robotic looped rhythm, but the vocals are sung, sweetly, a lovely melodic counterpoint to the churn and chug beneath it, taking some subtle detours throughout, but always returning to that relentless crunch, another track, that seems way too brief at 5:30, epic and melodic and majestic and heavy and fucking awesome.
We've listened to these 4 songs about 20 times, and we're bound to go 20 more, but they've got us really hoping there's a full length around the corner. And yeah, that means buy it, it RULES.
MPEG Stream: "Song 25"
MPEG Stream: "Song 26"

AVI BUFFALO s/t (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
All it takes really is one song. Sometimes that's the key to understanding a record, to loving a band. A record can seem just sort of okay, but then that one song can work its magic and make all the other songs make more sense, and then suddenly it's not just that one song anymore. That's happened with lots of our favorite records, and is exactly what happened with this, the debut from Avi Buffalo, a group of young Southern Californians, whose sounds is a little bit Built To Spill, a little bit Elephant 6, a little bit Shins, you know what we're talking about, jangly and hooky, indie pop, but smart indie pop. The sort of stuff we do dig, but also the sort of stuff that is EVERYwhere.
So while we found this record pleasant enough, it wasn't until "What's In It For?" that everything clicked, a pretty much perfect slice of wistful jangle pop, with sly sad boy emo lyrics, spidery melodies, simple major chord jangle, the about to crack vocals, and the chorus, and absolute killer, with some super cute and charming background harmonies, that seem to get looser and looser as the song progresses, plus how can you not love a young songwriter who compares his crush's lips to two little pieces of bacon?! So after playing that song about a million times, we started letting the whole record play, and all the other songs blossomed into other songs begging to be played a million times, and who are we to argue? Sunshiney and summery, melodic and subtly catchy, songs like "Summer Cum" with its weirdly sing songy verse and heart wrenchingly twee chorus, or "Five Little Sluts", with its chiming guitars and strange serpentine vocal melodies, that manage to be catchy as heck, even though they're so unlikely. Which is sort of the story with the whole record, unlikely, off kilter, but so catchy and heartfelt and awesome. Definitely a new pop fave.
MPEG Stream: "What's In It For?"
MPEG Stream: "Truth Sets In"
MPEG Stream: "Coaxed"
MPEG Stream: "Five Little Sluts"

AVI BUFFALO s/t (Sub Pop) lp 14.98
All it takes really is one song. Sometimes that's the key to understanding a record, to loving a band. A record can seem just sort of okay, but then that one song can work its magic and make all the other songs make more sense, and then suddenly it's not just that one song anymore. That's happened with lots of our favorite records, and is exactly what happened with this, the debut from Avi Buffalo, a group of young Southern Californians, whose sounds is a little bit Built To Spill, a little bit Elephant 6, a little bit Shins, you know what we're talking about, jangly and hooky, indie pop, but smart indie pop. The sort of stuff we do dig, but also the sort of stuff that is EVERYwhere.
So while we found this record pleasant enough, it wasn't until "What's In It For?" that everything clicked, a pretty much perfect slice of wistful jangle pop, with sly sad boy emo lyrics, spidery melodies, simple major chord jangle, the about to crack vocals, and the chorus, and absolute killer, with some super cute and charming background harmonies, that seem to get looser and looser as the song progresses, plus how can you not love a young songwriter who compares his crush's lips to two little pieces of bacon?! So after playing that song about a million times, we started letting the whole record play, and all the other songs blossomed into other songs begging to be played a million times, and who are we to argue? Sunshiney and summery, melodic and subtly catchy, songs like "Summer Cum" with its weirdly sing songy verse and heart wrenchingly twee chorus, or "Five Little Sluts", with its chiming guitars and strange serpentine vocal melodies, that manage to be catchy as heck, even though they're so unlikely. Which is sort of the story with the whole record, unlikely, off kilter, but so catchy and heartfelt and awesome. Definitely a new pop fave.
MPEG Stream: "What's In It For?"
MPEG Stream: "Truth Sets In"
MPEG Stream: "Coaxed"
MPEG Stream: "Five Little Sluts"

BILLY BAO Urban Disease (Pan) lp 36.00
All right, a new Billy bao, a crazy expensive fancy pants lp, sorry about that, not sure why it's so expensive, it's super limited, imported from overseas, original artwork by HENRY FLYNT!, cool silkscreened plastic sleeves, all that stuff probably contributed to the crazy price, but for the noise obsessed, and specifically BB obsessed among you, it'll take more than $36 to keep you away from another slab of damaged, caustic noise punk weirdness from this demented noisenik.
And demented this stuff is, beginning with a loooooong stretch of barely there hushed crawl, voices, drones, all way down in the mix, played in the store it almost sounds silent, but don't crank the volume, cuz soon from the silence explodes a monstrous chunk of downtuned dirgery, wrapped in swirls of warped buzz and woozy layered crunch, a simple caveman beat pounding away, weirdly hypnotic, like some sort of kraut-noise-rock, which gives way to stuttery staticky stop and start rhythmic hiss, spitting out an almost martial sounding rhythm, underpinned by strange mumbled vox and peppered with shards of feedback and deep tectonic rumbles.
After still more near silence, BB and co. spew some seriously Merzbowian thud rock, all wrapped in jagged squalls of white noise and grinding feedback, stumbling rhythms, that sound like they were made out of distorted voices. Soon after comes maybe the coolest part of the record, a twisted bit of skipping stuttering skittery free jazz, almost like some drunk turntablist spinning dusty old Coltrane records, at the wrong speed, while some nervous footed punter continually kicks the plug out of the wall only to plug it right back in again, dizzying and almost carnivalesque.
After still more whispered drift, another bout of pounding feedback drenched noiserock, culminating in a final stretch of near silence, punctuated by sharp bursts of caustic blown out crunch and fucked up grinding howl, rhythmic and dementedly mesmerizing. Woah. Some serious outsider noiserock damage for sure. Definitely headphone listening, but headphones WITH earplugs!
As mentioned above, super swank packaging, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, housed in a jacket with original artwork by Henry Flynt, in a cool hand screened sleeve, imported and limited, and thus the hefty price tag...

BUMBLEBEE UNLIMITED Sting Like A Bee (RCA) lp 12.98
This late '70s, all-time disco classic and longtime crate diggers' obsession has been pretty impossible to find for years and years. Luckily it's finally been reissued on wax and what a great thing too, cuz this is one unique and outrageously fun record.
Bumblebee Unlimited were a studio project conceived by legendary producers Gregory Carmichael (Phreek, Inner Life) and Patrick Adams (Musiq, Universal Robot Band, as well as producing countless classics, check out the Master Of The Masterpiece records that compile so many of the amazing songs he helped create). With Bumblebee Unlimited they made this awesome high energy bee-minded record highlighted by the infectious nearly nine minute lead off track "I Got A Big Bee". With sped up vocals, the song in any other hands would have just been a novelty, but with the gorgeous arrangements and rich grooves, it still remains a total dance floor classic. This record has so many of dance music's greatest hands all over it, besides Adams and Carmichael, it was also recorded at the legendary Blank Studios with Bob Blank controlling the board.
Sting Like A Bee is all uptempo disco burners with those sped up vocals giving it a dizzying edge and moments on the record also foreshadow the sounds of the House scene that would blow up a few years later. Kind of like if the Jackson Five in the mid '70s got high on amyl nitrate and let all their inhibitions run free and wild. A must have for disco lovers!

CAROLINE K Now Wait For Last Year (Klanggalerie) cd 21.00
In 1979, Nigel Ayers and Caroline K began recording as Nocturnal Emissions, a project then that was spurned by the nascent Industrial Culture of Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, and SPK. Their early recordings - Tissue Of Lies and Drowning In A Sea Of Bliss especially - are classic recordings of information overload aesthetics through abrasive drum machines, electronic noise, tape psychosis, and aggressive sequencing. At the same time, the two began Sterile Records as a means to put out their own recordings and those of likeminded malcontents (i.e. Lustmord, MB, Controlled Bleeding, Konstruktivits, etc.). By the early '90s, Caroline left Nocturnal Emissions to Ayers and disappeared from the public eye; but she did manage one solo record in Now Wait For Last Year.
By the time that Caroline recorded this album, Nocturnal Emissions had grown disenchanted with Industrial Culture, especially all of the blood and horror from the requisite medical imagery that went hand in hand with the punishing electronics. At the same time, Sterile Records had transformed into Earthly Delights promoting an agenda of post-Eno driftscaping. Now Wait For Last Year was actually the first lp to land on Earthly Delights, standing as a fantastic and underappreciated swath of industrially tainted ambience.
Sodden loops of melancholic dronings open the album which all spiral into a 20 minute mantra of murky haze reminiscent of some of the Zoviet France recordings from around the same time period (Mohnomische, in particular), furthered along by a lurching set of mechanical rhythms buried deep in the background. This is followed by a nocturne synthesized from medieval chants and percussion not unlike, the earliest Dead Can Dance or the Fairlight driven works of Coil. The dirge-paced synth number Chearth is more in keeping with John Carpenter score (although certainly less bombastic). Klanggalerie had acquired three bonus tracks from Caroline's estate (she died in 2008), featuring her in more of a Suspiria meets Richard Pinhas vein of mood engineering.
MPEG Stream: "The Happening World"
MPEG Stream: "Tracking With Close-Ups"
MPEG Stream: "Between The Spaces 2"

CHICAGO THRASH ENSEMBLE s/t (Plastic Airlines) lp 8.98
Pretty tough to resist a group called the Chicago Thrash Ensemble. So why even try? Ever since their kick ass blood splattered cassette on PlusTapes, we were pretty much totally obsessed with CTE's awesomely retro shredding classic thrash metal, and thankfully nothing has really changed on this, their first foray into vinyl, if anything the band sound better than ever, heavier, catchier, and with another passel of kick ass tunes to boot.
Like the tape, these guys are channeling their thrash heroes, but it comes out a bit more punked up and raw, which only makes these jams rule even more, thick dense buzzing riffage, wild pounding drummage, howled vox, galloping rhythms, some seriously chugging breakdowns, all wound up into epic classic thrash destruction. Any one who has been digging aQ faves Speedwolf should definitely check these guys out, but where Speedwolf was all Motorhead and Venom, these guys are way more Slayer, Exodus and D.R.I. Or something. Either way, these guys rip, and as we mentioned in the review of the tape, any band that sounds this heavy and ruling on record, are probably insane live.
Awesome packaging too. Screen printed cardstock sleeve, black inner sleeve, and coolest of all, a plastic sheet of baseball cards, one for each band member complete with various rock stats, mixed in with some actual baseball cards, the record is one sided, the B-side is silkscreened with a cool hanged man image. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!

CINDYTALK / ROBERT HAMPSON Five Mountains Of Fire / Antarctica Ends Here (Editions Mego) 10" 16.98
Sure, Cindytalk's The Crackle Of My Soul for Mego was an interesting diversion into laptop electricity; but that album would have been way better off had Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp steered the album toward the direction of this split 10" with Robert Hampson. Cindytalk gravitates towards the dissonant drones of bowed cymbals, foggy electronics, skittered percussion, and growling guitars, which all enjoy much more of a recorded-in-a-concrete-bunker vibe with all of the sounds dripping with heavy reverb, giving the pieces the feel of Organum, Thuja, or RV Paintings. Pretty amazing stuff, in fact. The Robert Hampson piece seemed to have Cindytalk in mind when he composed it (even though it's dedicated to John Cale), as it's very reminiscent of the Cindytalk piano / ambient pieces from In This World. Hampson also doesn't rely upon the concrete juxtapositions of his Touch output, instead settling upon a drone from a harmonium to buttress a lilting series of repeating piano clusters that spiral around deep ringing bell tones and washes of hiss and static. Again, we think Hampson should be producing more music like this, which is probably the best piece he's done since the Main album Motion Pool.

CLERIC Regressions (Web Of Mimicry) cd 13.98
For the longest time, the Web Of Mimicry label seemed to exist mostly for all things Secret Chiefs 3 related, all post Mr Bungle avant rock, but they've also done heavy stuff like Asva, and the recent Good For Cows record, which totally defied expectations, we were imagining some sort of genre splicing freakout, but instead we were treated to a disc of seriously sludgey avant doom heaviness, granted there's SC3 connections in those bands too. But now there's this, the latest full length from these Philadelphia metalheads, whose Web Of Mimicry debuts is seriously one of the heaviest records we've heard in ages.
Massive sprawling metallic epics that channel the machinelike chug of Meshuggah, through all sort of dark ambient soundtrack atmospherics, brooding slow building post rock, and crushing ultradoom. The first track alone, is 20 minutes of all over the map metallic crush, from the churning chug of the first few mintues, before working through dense math metal tribalism, a soaring vocal driven post rock slow build, replete with psychedelic solos, some lurching start stop doom that is quickly transformed into more impossibly mathy grind and chug, only to explode into a sort of slow motion industrial doom plod, all soaring distorted guitars and caveman crush, fucking totally epic and insanely heavy.
There's six proper songs, all long and epic and convoluted and complex, separated by brief interludes, birds chirping, droning buzz, super distorted howling screams, hushed rumbles, but hell, they're the only breather you'll get, the proper tracks are relentless, leaping deftly from crushing Neurosis style pummel, to wild tangled Dillinger Escape Plan style frenzied hyperblasts, to random bits of haunting piano, slow motion doom plod, to weirdly melodic clean singing, to hiss drenched buzz, but always back to that churning chug, until the final track, a super weird assemblage of stuttery static, processed field recordings, damaged effects, a patina of crackle and hiss, all of whioch fades out leaving just super spare, solo piano.
Killer stuff. No idea how we never heard of these guys before, or why they're not all over Terrorizer and Decibel, but we'd be surprised if that didn't change real soon.
MPEG Stream: "Allotriophagy"
MPEG Stream: "A Rush Of Blood"
MPEG Stream: "The Boon"

COMBAT ASTRONOMY Earth Divided By Zero (Zond) cd 11.98
You don't really hear much about Combat Astronomy, except from us at Aquarius Records (do you?). Which is weird, 'cause this band should be a lot better known than they are, among fans of heavy and/or freaky music, considering they're already on their third (and a half, counting a split) cd release, one that has been long awaited, for a certain subset of AQ-customers in the know. For those not in the know, we'll say that basically CA sound like a Justin Broadrick or Kevin Martin industrial metal act (Godflesh or God, something along those lines) mixed up with freeform improv horn-skree, for results both brutal and beautiful. This band, or we should say this collaborative trans-Atlantic project, to be precise, is the unholy spawn of American sub-bass sludge technician Jamie Huggett and British improv reedsman Martin Archer (and friends). Thus they don't play live that often, which might have something to do with their low profile. They're self-described as an "intense hypnagogic industrial/jazz/prog/doommetal hybrid", and we can't think of any other outfit that better fits that mouthful. As we now know to expect, CA's new disc dishes out uber heavy doomic annihilation, bludgeoning with squelching bass and machine-like beats, the entire thing in fact percussive in its distorted rhythmic impact, amidst ominous organ and rising electronic drone. Yet CA also has a prog/classical side, thanks to Archer's woodwinds and also some female vocals, first introduced to this previously all instrumental act on their 2nd album Dreams No Longer Hesitate, returning here only wordessly, to eerie, avant garde effect. With that in mind, and all the heavy bass, Magma fans might find this to be their extreme sludge combo of choice. We'd also of course recommend Combat Astronomy to those who appreciate the likes of Painkiller, 16-17, Scorn, and even UFOmammut...
And Earth Divided By Zero might just be their best disc yet, keeping the expanded palette of sounds found on their last outing, but leaving aside that disc's occasional surprise explorations of vocal (prog) pop song-ishness, instead forging a more organic synthesis of what we REALLY dig about this unit, the grinding low end and squealing sax skronk, the heavy rhythms and atmospheric, ambient-ish interludes. Not that it's without melodic surprises, like how track two tries to lull us with a placid piano intro, shades of Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore... but soon enough the bass and distortion attack is back in force. Punishing, but such sweet punishment.
MPEG Stream: "Astralized"
MPEG Stream: "Parallax Of One Arc Second"
MPEG Stream: "Earth Divided By Zero Part 1"

CORTEZ / LANGUAGE OF LIGHT split (Anticlock) 12" 14.98
ATTENTION: LOVESLIESCRUSHING FANS!! We managed to get a handful of these split 12"s direct from the man himself, one side a gorgeous slab of hazy LLC style shimmer, the other an equally lovely bit of abstract guitarscaping from a new to us outfit, it's already out of print, we have a handful of copies, but they will probably not be around for long.
The Cortez side is of course Scott Cortez, the man behind Lovesliescrushing, and the sound is quite similar to much of the LLC stuff, in particular the fantastic Voirshin record, hushed and hazy, ultra minimal, a blurred lovely stretch of softly layered drones, glimmering and glistening and aquatic sounding, very much reminiscent of William Basinski, like if you locked up the tapes that were the source for this record, in 20 years, it'd be all crumbling and decayed and disintegrating.
The flipside is from a group called Language Of Light, who we've never heard until now, a good match for Cortez, similarly washed out and ethereal, but more structured, chiming guitars streaks over processed metallic shimmer, with muted hazy melodies, before the sound shifts to something much darker and ominous, a jagged processed loopscape, weirdly warped and noisy, but that quickly gives way to the final movement, more lovely guitar ambience, blurred and gauzy and otherworldly.

DARGE, MONIEK Crete Soundies (Kye) cd 15.98
Moniek Darge is a Belgian composer, performer, and artist with quite an extensive history, but she's probably one who hasn't really gained much of an audience outside of the European academic circles. That's a shame, as she's done some amazing, wild, and engaging work over the years. She runs the Logos Foundation, which is something of a thinktank for experimental practices with plenty of high-brow theory coating their post-Fluxus happenings, many of which seem to involve a whole lot of nudity! Throughout the three decades of work through the Logos Foundation, Darge has been involved in building strange variations on music boxes, various robots & automatons, and pneumatic devices that must have been an influence on Yoshi Wada's post-bagpipe installation pieces. On the compositional side for Darge's, there's a unique hybridization of musique concrete practices, avant-garde vocalization, and a dystopic / mystical realization of minimalism.
Beginning in 2006, Darge embarked on the first of several journey to the Isle of Crete, working with local artists, presenting intermedia events, and composing the three extended pieces on this album. While one idea purported through the sound work was to conjure the mystical atmospheres of an ancient cult and its utopian principles, Darge's work here, as it typically has been, is haunting, eerie, and disarming. Deep moaning vocals open the first piece, emerging as a lugubrious chorale of intertwining ululations and eerie utterances. A melancholy drone, maybe from a harmonium, settles into the background while Darge, brings recordings of cicadas and variously untuned bells into the mix. It's not unlike Fursaxa or Christina Carter as reinterpreted by Luc Ferrari. The second piece is dominate by an impressive display of field recording prowess of the whipping winds around one of the mountains on Crete, with various clanks, metal creaking, and bells breaking up a recurring narrative of spoken texts. The final piece is a collage of aquatic tumblings, more cicadas, and more swirls of wind with an interest in the sound ecology of the island, rather than the narrative properties mentioned above. This compelling album has been released on Kye, the label run by Graham Lambkin from The Shadow Ring. Now, there's a nice endorsement!
MPEG Stream: "Magnesia"
MPEG Stream: "Anemos"
MPEG Stream: "East Crete"

DEAD MEADOW Three Kings (Xemu) cd + dvd 21.00
Some people have issues with live albums. Fair enough, but anyone who has seen Dead Meadow in concert will undoubtedly know that this is where the band truly shines. However, Three Kings is more than just a live record, featuring a couple of studio takes as well, and an accompanying DVD that the band sees as the main attraction here, with the audio portions serving as the soundtrack.
In the time that has passed since Dead Meadow's last live album, a good 8 years or so, they have risen from an obscure indie answer to Sabbath/Free/whatever stoner rock to pretty much one of the more legitimate legacies of those legendary heavies. Considering the generally lukewarm reception to their last studio full length, Old Growth (a shame to say, but...), it's nice to hear Dead Meadow holding things down expertly on stage, and we've been able to reassess some of the songs from OG as they are presented here and we're actually digging them quite a lot. The sound is nice and upfront, a fairly accurate representation of the concert experience, with warm fuzzy guitars, shitloads or wah wah, awesome sustained bass, drumming that's all over the place without sounding too busy for it's own good, and singer Jason Simon's love-it-or-leave it whine. The songs mostly come from the band's Matador catalog, with a few exceptions of earlier tracks. Just listening to all this stuff we were struck with the reality that this band has been around for a long-ass time now, building an awesome legacy for themselves and existing in a realm where most bands won't ever get to before throwing in the towel. Maybe the thing with Old Growth had something to do with them resting easy in their comfort zone after nailing a sound for so many years. But this makes us realize, or at least hope, that that album was just a slight misstep, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that they have plenty of great records still left in them. Honestly, to the Dead Meadow fans at aQ, so many of these songs sound, well, CLASSIC. Adventurous, highly melodic stoner rock that isn't afraid to wander, with some shoegazing grandeur and a heavy blues influence that would not fair well with a lesser band.
Oh, but there's more, and that comes in the form of the DVD. Judging from the cover of Three Kings, you might be inclined to think that maybe the boys in Dead Meadow have stepped off the deep end... but then you realize that this is EXACTLY what should happen! They've been at it since 1998, so we're all in favor of some minds being lost, and the band has pulled a bit of a The Song Remains The Same with some crazy visual renderings. Ambitious? Sure. Ill advised? Perhaps. But it's really something else altogether, a bit ridiculous, but in a good way, and it integrates the music with good results.
The film begins with the ramblings of a crackhead before fading to a shot of the band walking around in druid robes in the desert. Huh? It then cuts to Dead Meadow tearing it up on stage in their adopted hometown of Los Angeles. The professionally shot live footage is actually pretty amazing, showing the band in all their psychedelic glory with some close up shots revealing the nuances that might otherwise be lost within the sheer volume. There's some more desert wandering, which never overstays its welcome before going back to the concert. The vignettes are undoubtedly the results of being really, really high, and they are actually pretty funny at times (we hope that was the intention). I mean, can you really argue with the idea of drummer Stephen McCarty's amazing mustache and long blond locks as he stumbles through a mountain of sand in corduroys and a tank top with a seriously sun blistered face? Or what about Jason Simon chainsmoking and studying books on the paranormal? There's even some ultraviolence when bassist Steve Kille whips out a handgun and blasts the shit out of some dude in front of his chick. You really don't have to pay too close attention to dig what's going on, and whatever the replay value of the DVD might be, it's safe to say that after this many years, Dead Meadow has earned this. Three Kings is ambitious, weird, and a nice reminder of the power of a band that may have been taken for granted in recent years. Two thumbs up.
MPEG Stream: "Til Kingdom Come"
MPEG Stream: "At Her Open Door"
MPEG Stream: "The Whirlings"

DEAD MEADOW Three Kings (Xemu) lp + dvd 35.00
Some people have issues with live albums. Fair enough, but anyone who has seen Dead Meadow in concert will undoubtedly know that this is where the band truly shines. However, Three Kings is more than just a live record, featuring a couple of studio takes as well, and an accompanying DVD that the band sees as the main attraction here, with the audio portions serving as the soundtrack.
In the time that has passed since Dead Meadow's last live album, a good 8 years or so, they have risen from an obscure indie answer to Sabbath/Free/whatever stoner rock to pretty much one of the more legitimate legacies of those legendary heavies. Considering the generally lukewarm reception to their last studio full length, Old Growth (a shame to say, but...), it's nice to hear Dead Meadow holding things down expertly on stage, and we've been able to reassess some of the songs from OG as they are presented here and we're actually digging them quite a lot. The sound is nice and upfront, a fairly accurate representation of the concert experience, with warm fuzzy guitars, shitloads or wah wah, awesome sustained bass, drumming that's all over the place without sounding too busy for it's own good, and singer Jason Simon's love-it-or-leave it whine. The songs mostly come from the band's Matador catalog, with a few exceptions of earlier tracks. Just listening to all this stuff we were struck with the reality that this band has been around for a long-ass time now, building an awesome legacy for themselves and existing in a realm where most bands won't ever get to before throwing in the towel. Maybe the thing with Old Growth had something to do with them resting easy in their comfort zone after nailing a sound for so many years. But this makes us realize, or at least hope, that that album was just a slight misstep, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that they have plenty of great records still left in them. Honestly, to the Dead Meadow fans at aQ, so many of these songs sound, well, CLASSIC. Adventurous, highly melodic stoner rock that isn't afraid to wander, with some shoegazing grandeur and a heavy blues influence that would not fair well with a lesser band.
Oh, but there's more, and that comes in the form of the DVD. Judging from the cover of Three Kings, you might be inclined to think that maybe the boys in Dead Meadow have stepped off the deep end... but then you realize that this is EXACTLY what should happen! They've been at it since 1998, so we're all in favor of some minds being lost, and the band has pulled a bit of a The Song Remains The Same with some crazy visual renderings. Ambitious? Sure. Ill advised? Perhaps. But it's really something else altogether, a bit ridiculous, but in a good way, and it integrates the music with good results.
The film begins with the ramblings of a crackhead before fading to a shot of the band walking around in druid robes in the desert. Huh? It then cuts to Dead Meadow tearing it up on stage in their adopted hometown of Los Angeles. The professionally shot live footage is actually pretty amazing, showing the band in all their psychedelic glory with some close up shots revealing the nuances that might otherwise be lost within the sheer volume. There's some more desert wandering, which never overstays its welcome before going back to the concert. The vignettes are undoubtedly the results of being really, really high, and they are actually pretty funny at times (we hope that was the intention). I mean, can you really argue with the idea of drummer Stephen McCarty's amazing mustache and long blond locks as he stumbles through a mountain of sand in corduroys and a tank top with a seriously sun blistered face? Or what about Jason Simon chainsmoking and studying books on the paranormal? There's even some ultraviolence when bassist Steve Kille whips out a handgun and blasts the shit out of some dude in front of his chick. You really don't have to pay too close attention to dig what's going on, and whatever the replay value of the DVD might be, it's safe to say that after this many years, Dead Meadow has earned this. Three Kings is ambitious, weird, and a nice reminder of the power of a band that may have been taken for granted in recent years. Two thumbs up.
MPEG Stream: "Til Kingdom Come"
MPEG Stream: "At Her Open Door"
MPEG Stream: "The Whirlings"

FAUNA The Hunt (Aurora Borealis) cd 17.98
Record number two from these Cascadian black metallers, originally released in 2007, now remastered and partially re-recorded, replacing the original electronic drums with live drumming, and dividing the original hour plus epic into more manageable song length tracks, while still playing out as one single sprawling black metal naturescape.
Not sure what the deal is with these guys, they've obviously been around since 2006, when their debut Rain was originally released, but since 2007, we've heard nothing new, only the eventual re-release of their first two records. Not that we're complaining, well, okay, maybe we're complaining a little, but only cuz we want more, and are dying to hear what these guys sound like circa NOW.
But The Hunt will hold us over for now, like Rain before it, an expansive blackened collage of murky blasting blackness, and slow creeping ambient dronemusic, often lumped in with their Cascadian brethren Wolves In The Throne Room, and while there are definitely similarities, they tread markedly different sonic paths. WITTR channel the majestic blackness of SF legends Weakling, taking that sound and infusing it with their own naturalistic take on BM, adding female vocals, folky acoustic guitars, and plenty of polish, while Fauna seem to lurk in the shadows, with a sound more immediate and intimate, almost feral sounding at times, the drone element key to their sound, the black blasts are trancelike and mesmerizing, the ambient stretches expansive and haunting, the sound even here, gussied up and remastered, still sounds more DIY and punk than Wolves, and it suits them, the ferocity of the forest primeval, mixed with the mysterious tranquility of the endless night.
The Hunt is a blackened journey, a moonlit creep, ominous and drifting like some black fog, giving way to explosive fury, passionate howling and blasting metal, that slips into woozy melodic doominess, as easily as crushing grim blackness, in fact much of the heaviness on display leans toward a more melodic melancholia, spidery minor key guitars weaving together stretches of foresty folk and blasts of frenzied riffage, sometimes locking into dynamic doomish mathiness, but just as easily transforming that into churning gnarled black metal pound.
The final two parts here might be Fauna's finest moment, a dizzying tangle of stop start riffing, tense and dramatic, giving way to the moody final movement, a dirgey drift, with soaring vocals buried beneath the crumbling minor key distortion, melodic and mournful, peppered with furious blown out blasts, laced with acoustic guitars, finally fading out leaving just the sounds of the forest.
Swank packaging too, black on black origami style cardstock sleeve, with a printed black on black cardstock insert.
MPEG Stream: "The Hunt I"
MPEG Stream: "The Hunt II"
MPEG Stream: "The Hunt IV"
MPEG Stream: "The Hunt VII"

FLEURY-STEINER, BEN Keep A Weather Eye Open (Infraction) cd 16.98
Longtime readers of the aQ list should be familiar with Ben Fleury-Steiner even if they don't realize it. There's been three discs of freaked out avant drone drenched rhythmic psychedelia as Light Of Shipwreck, which is in fact, Ben Fleury-Steiner, tons of releases on the Gears Of Sand label, which BFS just so happens to run, but this is the first proper solo record under his own name, and it's gorgeous.
Unlike Light Of Shipwreck, which was typically a dizzying assemblage of repeated rhythms, layered and collaged samples, careening chaotic drum damage and dubbed out industrial weirdness, on Keep A Weather Eye Open, Fleury-Steiner traffics in something much more tranquil, a series of dark and dolorous dronescapes, some thick and textured, corrosive and chordal, others hushed and minimal smooth and crystalline, a sound that veers from dense cavernous black ambient rumbles to shimmering shoegazey drift, from Troum to Lovesliescrushing. "Tender Is The Opaque Morning" is delicate yet ominous, long streaks of distant high end sound underpin reverbed plinks, and moaning strings, a smoldering lightly blackened haze, while "Purple As The Dawn" is a wispy smear of hushed new age etherea, "Feedback Of Day" sounds like it was recorded in the hull of a rusty old ship, "Blue Sonar" is a blue sky full of sun dappled clouds, the sound of light dancing on leaves. The cool thing about all these songs is the distinction is not all that distinct. The pretty delicate numbers bleed right into the more haunting mysterious tracks, and both are infused with elements of the other. A sound not so much perfectly balanced between light and dark, but one that is both simultaneously, depending on the track, on the context, a hidden battle beneath the surface, the result, a strangely otherworldly collection of ever evolving, totally mesmerizing, and strangely mysterious dronemusic, dark enough to require active listening, but blissed out and tranquil enough to be the soundtrack to late nights and slow drifts into oblivion.
MPEG Stream: "Tender Is The Opaque Morning"
MPEG Stream: "Purple As The Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Feedback Of Day : Sunlit In Stop Frame (Part 1)"

FLYING LOTUS Cosmogramma (Warp) cd 17.98
Coming up with a new album on the heels of a hit like Los Angeles is definitely difficult, but Flying Lotus have created a pretty perfect follow up with another amazing disc of esoteric electronica, rife with everything we loved about LA, as well as some serious sonic twists and turns.
While their past releases always found Flying Lotus with a foot firmly planted in the world of hip-hop production, Cosmogramma finds Flying Lotus branching out much more with an energy that is both frantic and majestic, a combination that is pretty damn hard to pull off, but they do manage it here with flying colors!
What makes Flying Lotus so unique and sound so ahead of their peers is that you can't sum up their music with one word, genre or catch all phrase. Yes there are moments of dubstep, and hints of their more hip-hop minded past but there is also a nice use of instrumentation including harps, strings, horns, and keys that help give the record a rounded and celestial feel. But along with those majestic and pretty moments there is a whole lot of frantic and urgent energy that runs throughout the record. Like the last outing, there are a few tracks with guest vocals (including Thom Yorke!), and with all these varying ingredients, what makes Cosmogramma such a success is that they all meld together so seamlessly and create a true album listening experience. This is a start to finish listen, in that you get to really feel the music, and get swept away by the range of sounds and the feelings that weave all these songs together into a single organic and expansive whole. So great!
MPEG Stream: "Zodiac Shit"
MPEG Stream: "Pickled!"
MPEG Stream: "..And The World Laughs With You (feat. Thom Yorke)"
MPEG Stream: "Dance Of The Pseudo Nymph"

FRACTION Moon Blood (Phoenix) cd 17.98
Hard to believe we've never listed this before, it's been reissued a bunch of times already, being a bit of a classic of underground USA '60s private press psych. Now it's out on cd again, with we're told a vinyl reissue upcoming on the Mexican Summer label too. So about time we gave it a write up, 'cause if you haven't heard it before and are at all into the 'early heavy' this is indeed one to check out!
From LA, Fraction played druggy, Doorsy, psychedelic proto-proto-metal, loaded with loping, lumbering fuzz riffs. It's very sixties, hippy/biker garage heaviness, yet almost no longer dated, if Fraction were part of today's psych scene, they'd fit right in with Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, Dead Meadow, and suchlike. Well, except we'd be a bit surprised by the deep growling Jim Morrison style vocal intonations, a gruff voice that sways and screams with utmost sincerity and conviction, and truly elevates Fraction into ultra cult classic status. The singer's cryptic lyrics are vaguely Christian-Apocalyptic, and Fraction manages to make heavy (in the "that's heavy, maaaan" pass-the-joint sense) music to match. Recommended If You Like: Blue Cheer, High Tide, Sam Gopal, Iron Butterfly, Negative Space, B.F. Trike...
MPEG Stream: "Come Out Of Her"
MPEG Stream: "Eye Of The Hurricane"

GORDON, EDWARD LARRY Celestial Vibration (Universal Sound) cd 21.00
For the past couple of years, we've really been digging the recent unearthing of little known private press new age music whether it be Collie Ryan, William Eaton or Iasos. Lately we've been especially excited about this reissue from Universal Sound, of Edward Larry Gordon's 1978 debut. Gordon, or Laraaji, as he is otherwise known, creates long-form trance-inducing compositions using electronically enhanced zithers, auto-harps, kalimbas and other acoustic instruments that shimmer and radiate in beautifully meditative pulses. This record comprised of two thirty minute tracks, "All Pervading" and "Bethelehem" gained little notice upon its initial release, but thankfully it caught the attention of Brian Eno who subsequently produced his follow-up Days of Radiance for the EG Editions Ambient series in 1980 to wider acclaim. You can tell that Gordon was much inspired by earlier progenitors of cosmic music from Sun Ra to John and Alice Coltrane. You can especially hear the harp-like shimmer of Alice Coltrane in his treatments of the open tuned zither that he plays while in a complete meditative state. Really gorgeous stuff!
MPEG Stream: "All Pervading"
MPEG Stream: "Bethlehem"

GORDON, EDWARD LARRY Celestial Vibration (Universal Sound) lp 23.00
For the past couple of years, we've really been digging the recent unearthing of little known private press new age music whether it be Collie Ryan, William Eaton or Iasos. Lately we've been especially excited about this reissue from Universal Sound, of Edward Larry Gordon's 1978 debut. Gordon, or Laraaji, as he is otherwise known, creates long-form trance-inducing compositions using electronically enhanced zithers, auto-harps, kalimbas and other acoustic instruments that shimmer and radiate in beautifully meditative pulses. This record comprised of two thirty minute tracks, "All Pervading" and "Bethelehem" gained little notice upon its initial release, but thankfully it caught the attention of Brian Eno who subsequently produced his follow-up Days of Radiance for the EG Editions Ambient series in 1980 to wider acclaim. You can tell that Gordon was much inspired by earlier progenitors of cosmic music from Sun Ra to John and Alice Coltrane. You can especially hear the harp-like shimmer of Alice Coltrane in his treatments of the open tuned zither that he plays while in a complete meditative state. Really gorgeous stuff!
MPEG Stream: "All Pervading"
MPEG Stream: "Bethlehem"

GRAHAM, KENNY & HIS SATELLITES Moondog And Suncat Suites (Trunk) cd 16.98
If you were ever curious to hear how Moondog might have sounded had he been recorded by Joe Meek, then here is your chance! Trunk records rescues this exquisite rarity from complete obscurity that displays the early influence of The Viking of 6th St. on a group of Britain's finest jazz players. Recorded in 1956, and engineered by a young Joe Meek, the underrated alto saxophonist Kenny Graham assembled a band of amazing session players, including Stan Tracey, Phil Seamen, Danny Moss, and Ivor Slaney (who recorded the horror soundtracks Terror and Prey we reviewed awhile back, though he is here in less horrific mode), as well as the evocative vocals of singer Yolanda to record this two part tribute. The first part, The Moondog Suite, covers ten of Moondog's early compositions, five short percussive pieces and five longer songs including "Utsu, "Chant", "Fog On The Hudson" and Lullaby". The six pieces in the "Suncat Suite" (Suncat, get it?) are all originals inspired by Moondog's pieces. These range from short eastern influenced numbers to more complex compositions of mesmerizing exotica, sometimes swinging, and at other times more moody. The production for both is sharp. The percussion zings, the vibes crisply resonate and the horns and woodwinds sound impeccable. Trunk scores again with this amazing reissue.
MPEG Stream: "Chant "
MPEG Stream: "Utsu"
MPEG Stream: "Tropical Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Sunday"

GRAHAM, KENNY & HIS SATELLITES Moondog And Suncat Suites (Trunk) lp 17.98
If you were ever curious to hear how Moondog might have sounded had he been recorded by Joe Meek, then here is your chance! Trunk records rescues this exquisite rarity from complete obscurity that displays the early influence of The Viking of 6th St. on a group of Britain's finest jazz players. Recorded in 1956, and engineered by a young Joe Meek, the underrated alto saxophonist Kenny Graham assembled a band of amazing session players, including Stan Tracey, Phil Seamen, Danny Moss, and Ivor Slaney (who recorded the horror soundtracks Terror and Prey we reviewed awhile back, though he is here in less horrific mode), as well as the evocative vocals of singer Yolanda to record this two part tribute. The first part, The Moondog Suite, covers ten of Moondog's early compositions, five short percussive pieces and five longer songs including "Utsu, "Chant", "Fog On The Hudson" and Lullaby". The six pieces in the "Suncat Suite" (Suncat, get it?) are all originals inspired by Moondog's pieces. These range from short eastern influenced numbers to more complex compositions of mesmerizing exotica, sometimes swinging, and at other times more moody. The production for both is sharp. The percussion zings, the vibes crisply resonate and the horns and woodwinds sound impeccable. Trunk scores again with this amazing reissue.
MPEG Stream: "Chant "
MPEG Stream: "Utsu"
MPEG Stream: "Tropical Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Sunday"

HALLOW Soundtrack (Totalvernichtung) cd 21.00
We listed the vinyl version of this a while back, a super deluxe (and quite expensive) double lp, the soundtrack to an art show by Hallow mainman (only man?) Mark McCoy, who is also fronts aQ faves Ancestors (the noisy black metal Ancestors, not the stoner one), Hallow sounding not surprisingly like a meaner, less black metal, way more fucked up hardcore Ancestors. And as we mentioned before, anyone, and we mean ANYone who loves those Ancestors records, absolutely needs this as well.
In addition to fronting multiple metallic behemoths, McCoy also creates some super intense artwork, strange assemblages of ruined buildings, of crumbling riggings, collapsing structures suspended in space, intricate to the point of being the work of a madman, these drawings are captivating, incredible, precise and ultra detailed, and in their own way, they are imbued with some sort of fucked up energy, they seem, sad, they seem violent, abandoned, lonely, possessed, EVIL even. Those drawings are presented beautifully here, included on smallish inserts, held in place by a Japanese style obi, all housed in one of the most gorgeous and confounding packages ever. All white, sealed with wax, each page embossed or debossed with all sorts of calligraphic filigree, old text, strange sigils, incredible for sure, but then comes the real question, where the heck is the cd? Hidden in the packaging, like some sort of Raiders Of The Lost Ark / National Treasure artifact, that's where, INSIDE the thick text adorned back panel, a panel that seemingly must be destroyed to retrieve the cd, in keeping with the theme of destruction so prevalent in McCoy's artwork and music. We're told there is a way to get the disc out if you're careful, but we've been afraid to try. As an object though, it's breathtaking, and if you are brave enough to retrieve the hidden compact disc, you won't be sorry, the cd contains a series of songs, of soundtracks, each to accompany one of McCoy's pieces, it's up to the listener to determine which song accompanies which drawing. But it hardly matters, on their own, the images are breathtaking, and the music, even minus the art, is some seriously blackened and caustic metalnoize crush.
The first half of the disc plays out like an Ancestors records, a bunch of short sharp tracks, furious frenetic post hardcore black metal buzz and pound and blast, super harsh, hellish, hateful, awesomely buzzy riffs, wildly blasting beats, walls of feedback wrapped around lurching anti-grooves, the songs stuttering and lumbering and exploding into jagged freakouts before locking back into some churning rhythm or white hot blast. But soon, the sound shifts and transforms, sonically similar to what came before in some ways, but a whole different beast in others, a noisy depressive dirge, epic and spacious, definitely doomy, the guitars heavily distorted and processed, effects all over the place, the vocals insane and harsh and noisy draped over the sheets of buzz and blur and the spaced out plod below, before the sound grows ever more blown out, the guitars blindingly effulgent, all of the sounds on the verge of total collapse, but at the same time strangely melodic and epic.
Elsewhere, Hallow unfurl thick corrosive noisescapes equal parts Wolf Eyes and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, caustic and abject, tangled strands of feedback wound around thick heaving slabs of distorted low end, all melted down into something thick and black and viscous, gradually splintering into something super abstract, all high end, chittering, chirping, stuttering, squeaking shards of upper register squelch and glitch, Morse code beeps, chirping crickets, wheezing creaks, a hauntingly melodic field of fragmented skree, chaotic and abrasive, but also textural and abstract and actually sort of beautiful.
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"
MPEG Stream: "VII"
MPEG Stream: ""

HARVESTMAN Trinity (Neurot) cd 14.98
We've got a bountiful harvest of, ah, Harvestman this list, two releases from the psychedelic alter ego of menacing Neurosis guitarist Steve Von Till, and that's very much okay by us, seeing as how we loved the first Harvestman album Lashing The Rye, and then utterly freaked out over the second one, In A Dark Tongue (made it a Record Of The Week in fact). Now, this week we've got Harvestman doing Hawkwind covers on a three-way split with U.S. Christmas and Minsk (highlighted nearby) and this, the third "official" Harvestman full-length. So far, they've all been a bit different, beginning with the druidic Brit-folk elements of the debut, morphing into the mindblowing space rock mantras of album number two, and now, an Italian horror soundtrack??? Literally, yes! Not long ago, Von Till received a commission to score an Italian film of psychological suspense oddly entitled h2Odio (or, for English speaking audiences, Hate 2 O). So, he entered his remote upper Idaho home studio and basically let his beard take over, eventually resulting in this instrumental soundtrack... don't expect spooky prog-funk a la Goblin, though! This seems more inspired by the cosmic kraut soundtracks of Popol Vuh. It's a spacey, mellowed out affair, hushed and hypnotic, full of quietly meandering psych guitar, ghostly synth pulsations, and washes of distorted drone, lovely and dark... it's not really scary scary music, just somewhat sinister, but equally soothing. We don't know much about the movie itself, this soundtrack is sufficient pleasure for us anyway, but we do imagine that if the characters/victims in the film could actually hear this music, they'd probably feel quite resigned to their fates.
And now it's been released in a numbered, limited edition, in a spiffy black cardstock wallet. 71 minutes, 16 tracks, of which five, however, originally appeared on Lashing The Rye (we'd guess the director especially wanted those in his film, and then asked Von Till for more?). Listen meditatively, and become resigned to YOUR fate.
MPEG Stream: "Trinity"
MPEG Stream: "Dig"
MPEG Stream: "Pure Phase"

HARVESTMAN / U.S. CHRISTMAS / MINSK Hawkwind Triad (Neurot) cd 14.98
It would be pretty much impossible to fuck this one up. Steve Von Till's (of Neurosis) Harvestman, along with psych heavies U.S. Christmas, and sludgy metallic post rockers Minsk, all covering their favorite Hawkwind jams. Exactly. We didn't even really have to hear this to know we needed it. And we were not disappointed.
U.S. Christmas are definitely right at home tackling these Hawkwind tracks, as there's plenty of Hawkwind in their sound anyway. Musically, their versions are dead ringers, the same sort of urgent guitar crunch, the swirling clouds of effects, the big difference is the vocals, sounding more like a super harmonized Paul Stanley, which is not a bad thing, but it's definitely a bit weird, and does help to make these songs their own. And the songs they picked, tough to beat: "Master Of The Universe", "Psychedelic Warlords", "Orgone Accumulator" and "You Shouldn't Do That" (notable also for the specificity of vocal duties described in the liner notes: "Do That"s, "Shouldn't Do That"s and "You Shouldn't Do"s, all split between various band members). Needless to say, if this was just a U.S. Christmas Hawkwind ep, we'd be in, but there's more more more.
Harvestman too are no stranger to psychedelia, and we can bet Steve Von Till has a pretty serious Hawkwind collection, and he proves it with some cool versions of some of our HW faves, "D Rider" sounds like a Von Till original here, stripped down and acoustic but with plenty of effects, and that unmistakable rasp. "Down Through The Night" also sounds like just acoustic guitar, but wrapped in a thick swirl of hissing space psych effects, and some awesome vox, "The Watcher" is bluesy and slithery, and sounds like Hawkwind via Tom Waits, while "Magnu" is all propulsive crunch and psychedelic swirl.
Finally Minsk drop the hammer, on "7X7", "Assault & Battery / The Golden Void", and "Children Of The Sun", and get all spaced out and druggy and psychedelic, letting their pounding post rock get swallowed up in clouds of buzz and blur and his, they even let loose with some sax! Finishing off with a straight up acoustic "Children Of The Sun", which is all sun dappled and dream, until near the end, when it transforms into a churning chugging psych space stomp.
Anyone who dug those Trensmat Hawkwind covers singles is gonna want to check this out, and if you love Hawkwind as much as we do, and as these guys obviously do, you're probably not gonna be able to resist. So why try? You shouldn't do that.
MPEG Stream: U.S. CHRISTMAS "Psychedelic Warlords"
MPEG Stream: MINSK "Children Of The Sun"
MPEG Stream: HARVESTMAN "D Rider"

HEWITT, P.E. JAZZ ENSEMBLE Winter Winds: The Complete Works 1968-70 (Now Again) 3cd 36.00
We first got an earful of P.E. Hewitt on that recent Spiritual Jazz comp, and we knew we had to hear more, we just didn't realize that it would end up being an massive triple cd / triple lp boxset collecting Hewitt's first three albums in their entirety. But we're definitely not complaining, this is some incredible stuff, especially considering that these three records were recorded when Hewitt was but a teenager, between the ages of 16 and 19, yet already an accomplished vibraphonist and composer. These albums, as good as they sound now, went mostly unheard then, the first, Jawbones, was released in an edition of 50 copies, his second and third, Since Washington, and Winter Winds in runs of 100. So until now, only 250 copies TOTAL of these three albums existed for the last 40+ years.
Listening to these now, it's hard to believe what could have happened had Hewitt's fortunes shifted just a bit, record deals, world tours, there's really no reason someone so accomplished as a teen shouldn't have gone on to sit aside other legends in the jazz pantheon, but as it turned out, until the eighties, Hewitt stopped playing music entirely.
There's loads more about Hewitt's life and music in the massive booklet, as well as a lengthy interview conducted right here in SF last year, not to mention original liner notes from the three records, tons of photos too, but it's still all about the music, and the sounds on all three records are some of the most amazing jazz you've never heard, not far out or free or freaky, not skronky or avant, instead, these records are classic, masterful, emotional and intimate and spiritual, the vibes warm and melodic, his equally young band tight and incredible, modal jazz that swings and grooves, rhythmic and soulful, piano, bass, drums, sax, trumpet, vibes and flugelhorn, occasionally vocals, not traditional jazz scat, but instead, Hewitt provided rhythmic words that functioned more as some sort of invented language, the result, again, mysterious and so soulful. So so recommended. Anyone who has been digging the recent spate of obscure jazz reissues from folks like Lloyd Miller, Nathan Davis and of course that Spiritual Jazz compilation will LOVE this, as will anyone into classic, timeless, lost genius jazz.
Both the 3cd and the 3lp come in super deluxe boxes, with each record housed in exact reproductions of the original artwork, and a huge booklet of liner notes, photos and interviews.
MPEG Stream: "Free"
MPEG Stream: "Ihadmyheadoverthechickensouppot"
MPEG Stream: "Alone And Watching"
MPEG Stream: "Sad Sunday"

HEWITT, P.E. JAZZ ENSEMBLE Winter Winds: The Complete Works 1968-70 (Now Again) 3lp 59.00
We first got an earful of P.E. Hewitt on that recent Spiritual Jazz comp, and we knew we had to hear more, we just didn't realize that it would end up being an massive triple cd / triple lp boxset collecting Hewitt's first three albums in their entirety. But we're definitely not complaining, this is some incredible stuff, especially considering that these three records were recorded when Hewitt was but a teenager, between the ages of 16 and 19, yet already an accomplished vibraphonist and composer. These albums, as good as they sound now, went mostly unheard then, the first, Jawbones, was released in an edition of 50 copies, his second and third, Since Washington, and Winter Winds in runs of 100. So until now, only 250 copies TOTAL of these three albums existed for the last 40+ years.
Listening to these now, it's hard to believe what could have happened had Hewitt's fortunes shifted just a bit, record deals, world tours, there's really no reason someone so accomplished as a teen shouldn't have gone on to sit aside other legends in the jazz pantheon, but as it turned out, until the eighties, Hewitt stopped playing music entirely.
There's loads more about Hewitt's life and music in the massive booklet, as well as a lengthy interview conducted right here in SF last year, not to mention original liner notes from the three records, tons of photos too, but it's still all about the music, and the sounds on all three records are some of the most amazing jazz you've never heard, not far out or free or freaky, not skronky or avant, instead, these records are classic, masterful, emotional and intimate and spiritual, the vibes warm and melodic, his equally young band tight and incredible, modal jazz that swings and grooves, rhythmic and soulful, piano, bass, drums, sax, trumpet, vibes and flugelhorn, occasionally vocals, not traditional jazz scat, but instead, Hewitt provided rhythmic words that functioned more as some sort of invented language, the result, again, mysterious and so soulful. So so recommended. Anyone who has been digging the recent spate of obscure jazz reissues from folks like Lloyd Miller, Nathan Davis and of course that Spiritual Jazz compilation will LOVE this, as will anyone into classic, timeless, lost genius jazz.
Both the 3cd and the 3lp come in super deluxe boxes, with each record housed in exact reproductions of the original artwork, and a huge booklet of liner notes, photos and interviews.
MPEG Stream: "Free"
MPEG Stream: "Ihadmyheadoverthechickensouppot"
MPEG Stream: "Alone And Watching"
MPEG Stream: "Sad Sunday"

HOLY FUCK Latin (XL / Young Turk) cd 13.98
It's been a while since we heard from Holy Fuck, we were pretty into their debut, a swirling mash up of blown out loops and space krauty synths, of fuzzy bass and fractured beats, and it seems like maybe things have gotten even more twisted and far out on this latest. After a slow tranquil drone, that gradually builds to a wall of white noise, comes a sort of looped Beastie Boys style funk jam, all loping bass, wah guitar, shimmery synths, but it's not necessarily as simple as that, it sounds, well, created, not played, so there's an element of lurch and stutter, the sounds jagged and not entirely smooth, occasionally locking into parts that almost sound like skipping cds, peppered with little shards of glitch and squelch. And that's sort of the way the record plays out, fuzzy, synth heavy grooves, that sound a bit motorik, a bit spaced out, super propulsive, and heavy in their own way, sometime slipping into almost jazzy sounding post rock, a la Tortoise, but still like that opening track laced with all manner of subtle electronics and production weirdness. There's definitely a pop element, as well as a space age bachelor pad vibe too, a la Stereolab, and tracks like "Silva & Grimes" are total krautrock Neu! worship, repetitive and hypnotic, swirling synths and clouds of distorted buzz wrapped around total head nodding beats, and while those elements inform the rest of the record there's also plenty of big block rocking beats, Daft Punk style synth wave, lo-fi electronic skitter and crunch, and a closing jam that's like some super cool eighties new wave jam, super charged and doused in crumbling distorted synths and buried blown out beats.
Latin might just be the weirdo dance party record of the year... And both the cd and the lp come in super cool, super swank diecut covers!
Technically this doesn't come out until next Tuesday, so locals will have to wait until then for us to put 'em out in the store, but mailorder customers, go ahead and order like normal, since it'll take at least until Tuesday for you to get your package anyway, most likely.
MPEG Stream: "1MD"
MPEG Stream: "Red Lights"
MPEG Stream: "P.I.G.S."

HOLY FUCK Latin (XL / Young Turk) lp 14.98
It's been a while since we heard from Holy Fuck, we were pretty into their debut, a swirling mash up of blown out loops and space krauty synths, of fuzzy bass and fractured beats, and it seems like maybe things have gotten even more twisted and far out on this latest. After a slow tranquil drone, that gradually builds to a wall of white noise, comes a sort of looped Beastie Boys style funk jam, all loping bass, wah guitar, shimmery synths, but it's not necessarily as simple as that, it sounds, well, created, not played, so there's an element of lurch and stutter, the sounds jagged and not entirely smooth, occasionally locking into parts that almost sound like skipping cds, peppered with little shards of glitch and squelch. And that's sort of the way the record plays out, fuzzy, synth heavy grooves, that sound a bit motorik, a bit spaced out, super propulsive, and heavy in their own way, sometime slipping into almost jazzy sounding post rock, a la Tortoise, but still like that opening track laced with all manner of subtle electronics and production weirdness. There's definitely a pop element, as well as a space age bachelor pad vibe too, a la Stereolab, and tracks like "Silva & Grimes" are total krautrock Neu! worship, repetitive and hypnotic, swirling synths and clouds of distorted buzz wrapped around total head nodding beats, and while those elements inform the rest of the record there's also plenty of big block rocking beats, Daft Punk style synth wave, lo-fi electronic skitter and crunch, and a closing jam that's like some super cool eighties new wave jam, super charged and doused in crumbling distorted synths and buried blown out beats.
Latin might just be the weirdo dance party record of the year... And both the cd and the lp come in super cool, super swank diecut covers!
Technically this doesn't come out until next Tuesday, so locals will have to wait until then for us to put 'em out in the store, but mailorder customers, go ahead and order like normal, since it'll take at least until Tuesday for you to get your package anyway, most likely.
MPEG Stream: "1MD"
MPEG Stream: "Red Lights"
MPEG Stream: "P.I.G.S."

HOME BLITZ Perpetual Night (Almost Ready) 7" 8.98
Not only did we make the last Home Blitz our Record Of The Week, we also had them play our showcase a few months back at SXSW, and despite showing up super late, and having to cram an abbreviated set into 20 minutes, they kicked serious ass, super crunchy and jangly and hooky and frantic and just completely killer.
This single is the first new music since their O.ut O.f P.hase full length, and both tracks sound like they could have been outtakes from the same sessions. "Perpetual Night" is another chunk of HB's noise rock / power pop jangle and crunch, guitars are as jagged as they are jangly, the drums are super lo-fi practice space pounding, there's some piano this time around, and then those whiney, snotty irresistible vocals, all wrapped around a super catchy noise pop blowout. But it's the B side that steals the show, "Murder In My Heart" sounds like it could have been snatched off some best of the eighties power pop comp, albeit a tad more ragged and off kilter, but just total classic eighties style power pop jangle, hooks galore, some cool squiggly leads, weird vocal harmonies, but all somehow tangled up into some seriously perfect pop.

HOWLING WIND, THE Into The Cryosphere (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
Before even hearing a note, we were sold. You really can't argue with an album called Into The Cryosphere, not to mention the fact that this bears the stamp of the always amazing Profound Lore label, AND this duo features Ryan Lipinsky of doom lords Unearthly Trance and punkers Villains. The Howling Wind definitely writhe in some of the same blackened sludge as UT, but with an approach that is heavily indebted to the hateful black metal we can never get enough of, with a thrashiness that is hypnotic, relentless, and pretty much the kind of thing your mother wouldn't ever want you listening to. Their punked out approach snakes around the Cryosphere through all sorts of passages, taking you along for a super negative death trip reminiscent of Deathspell's more thugged out excursions on Kenose. The riffs are thick and burly, the drums heavy as fuck, and you will marvel over how appropriate a name like The Howling Wind is, as the whole album seems shrouded in an uncontrollable, icy wind. Not surprising then that the band would cook up song titles like "Teeth Of Frost", "Ice Cracking In The Abyss", and "A Dead Galaxy Mirrored In An Icy Mirage". Lipinsky certainly sounds like a man of conviction here, with his super tough, throatshredding vocals telling you how it's gonna be. Totally nihilistic and hateful with a sense of fuck all despair, it's also surprisingly catchy with riffs just won't let up, which will surely keep this one blasting out of our speakers for quite some time.
MPEG Stream: "The Seething Wrath Of A Frigid Soul"
MPEG Stream: "Teeth Of Frost"

INDIGNANT SENILITY Plays Wagner (Type) cd 15.98
Now both volumes of this previously vinyl only deconstructed classical epic are available on one cd with new artwork! Here is what we recently said about 'em:
If the recent Leyland Kirby 3cd epic, Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was, left you jonesing for more washed out spectral ambience culled from classical sources, than here's the next best thing.
Indignant Senility is one of many monikers of Portland-based tape-manipulator, Pat Maherr, who also operates as DJ Yo-Yo Dieting, Sisprum Vish, and Moms Who Chop. For this project, Plays Wagner takes its obvious source material from old found thrift store records of Richard Wagner symphonies and operas. With all the dust and wear still intact, Maherr runs the source material through layers of filters and processing until they are mere specters of their original sound, stretching and distorting these inspirational masterpieces of classical music into something altogether alien and dark, but strangely familiar. Murky deep-pitched strings, ghostly choral voices slowed, and blurred into tremulously washed out and ephemeral murmurs, slow-rising intensities and tonal vibrations. These were then recorded on to cassette tape from which this recording was mastered from, adding to the slow, mournful decay of the ruined grandeur of the original source material.
It's easy to see why classical music always seems to be haunted, even without much manipulation. But their is something to be said about the grandeur and power of classical music's biggest ego deconstructed into something so unearthly and spectral and yet so beautifully sad that even at it's most reduced, one still can't remove the huge flow of powerful feeling inherent in the recording. The ghosts can be exorcised but never fully banished. Highly Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "OnE"
MPEG Stream: "FoUr"
MPEG Stream: "TeN"

JENNINGS, WAYLON The Dark Side Of Fame (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
Another awesome collection of lost unsung country from Omni, this time, a collection of tracks from country music legend Waylon Jennings, from a period in Jennings' career that most folks consider a low point, before he had busted out as an 'outlaw', a younger man, playing by the rules, just another cog in the Nashville country music machine, whose music, to many, was safe and predictable, constantly simply striving for a hit. This collection begs to differ, big time, gathering up a whole mess of Jennings' best tracks from the period, and while to be fair, the sounds are definitely different than what we're used to from this outlaw, a lot of these songs are pretty fantastic. If these tracks were recorded by any other country singer, no one would bat an eye, but the enduring power of the outlaw era to follow seems to have permanently tainted these songs, which is definitely a shame.
The title track is dark and ominous, with some sitar like buzz, and some awesomely cinematic strings, and of course Jennings nails "Delia's Gone", haunting and intense, complete with some cool creepy female backing vox, this whole collection is super cool, weird covers, strange instrumentation, fuzz guitars, more of that sitar like buzz, lush instrumentation, lots of pop, subtle psychedelia, he may have been trolling for a hit, but it seems like maybe he was still doing his own thing, even if it was a bit too subtle for most folks to notice.
Fans of any of the Omni reissues will dig this too, and Waylon obsessives might do well to give these tracks another try. As always with Omni, the cd comes with a massive booklet packed with tons of photos, liner notes, old album covers and all sorts of other Jennings ephemera.
MPEG Stream: "Don't Play The Game"
MPEG Stream: "MacArthur Park"
MPEG Stream: "The Chokin' Kind"
MPEG Stream: "Six Strings Away"
MPEG Stream: "Rock, Salt And Nails (With Lee Hazlewood)"

JESUS AND MARY CHAIN, THE Darklands (Plain) lp 17.98
Make no mistake, the second Jesus And Mary Chain record Darklands, now reissued on vinyl (yay), is not a reprise of the self-immolating punk-pop of their debut Psychocandy - but it would also be a mistake to dismiss this record. Cuz it's is a pretty damn good record in its own right! William and Jim Reid had perfected the monstrous JAMC sound of excess distortion and treble fuzz that suffocated the trad rock swagger and bubble-gum pop hooks on Psychocandy; and it's easy to make the case that the Reid brothers scratched their head with the question, "Okay, what next?" In answering that query, Darklands turns to the craft of the song, working towards what would become the Creation / Cherry Red Brit-pop vernacular. The songs jangle above drum machines programmed to replicate any given Phil Spector production, the basslines are all but an after thought for rhythm buttressing, and there's a bit of the bittersweet distortion cast as a darkened halo around these tunes. But Darklands is an album of melody and harmony, pure and simple. Bright guitar leads drift out of dour minor chord riffs while Reid brothers push the moping whisper vocals to some downright punchy and definitely catchy vocal melodies. The lyrics maintain a uniform mopiness that fits the Reid brothers' signature black leather and sunglasses at night demeanor, with rainclouds being the dominant theme: "Nine Million Rainy Days," "April Skies," and "Happy When It Rains." Sure, poetry this stuff ain't, but these downright poppy tunes are so good as to move beyond any lyrical foible.
And yeah, Psychocandy is the record that made JAMC legendary, but Darklands may have been the album with its dedication to the song, that spurned where My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and maybe even Oasis would take Brit-Pop into the '90s.
MPEG Stream: "Happy When It Rains"
MPEG Stream: "Nine Million Rainy Days"
MPEG Stream: "April Skies"

K11 Metaphonic Portrait 1230 A.D. (Actual Noise) cd 10.98
K11 is sound artist Pietro Riparbelli, whose concepts are based on spaces as much as sounds. On the last K11 record, Riparbelli recorded short wave radios and receivers placed in Aleister Crowley's Thelema Abbey in Cefalu, Sicily, letting the sounds resonate and reverberate, creating gorgeous clouds of echoey drone and deep haunting rumble. For Metaphonic Portrait 1230 A.D., Riparbelli set up inside Assisi Cathedral in Umbria, again employing shortwave radios and receivers, harnessing the natural acoustics of the building, in this case, the cathedral's lower basilica, where the remains of St. Francis are kept. Adding only bits of organ and voice, Riparbelli has created an epic abstract dronescape, haunting and mysterious, the tones layered into huge walls of sound, allowed to ring out, sometimes fading to a distant shimmer, other times exploding in a cacophonous roar.
There's tolling bells, disembodied voices, blurred into ghostlike streaks, crumbling natural distortion that occasionally builds to a heaving chordal crush that could be Nadja or Tim Hecker. In fact, much of the sounds here, field recordings and recontextualized field recordings, organs and voices, begin to sound as old as the cathedral they were recorded in, some ritualistic conjuring, as if some strange sonic entity laid dormant for hundreds of years, only to be awakened, and captured on magnetic tape. Or imagine some strange recording device that doesn't just capture sound, but the sound of all the spirits and spiritual energy that ever existed in a certain space, hence the strange voices, the howling buzz, the keening melodic shards...
Less an exercise in field recordings, and more a gorgeous assemblage of field recorded sound. Not knowing the source of the music, one would still be captivated by these thick droned out buzzscapes, and epic high end ur-drones, the mysterious shimmer, the smeared voices, it definitely has the feel of some damaged turntable installation, like Philip Jeck set up in the dungeon of some castle, but knowing the mysterious source, and unique setting, only makes the music within that much more arcane and enigmatic.
The cd includes a video of the cathedral where the music was recorded as well...
MPEG Stream: "300=Tau"
MPEG Stream: "888"

LAZER CRYSTAL MCMLXXX (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
All right! Chicago electro rockers Lazer Crystal return with MCMLXXX, the band's first album for indie tastemakers Thrill Jockey. We raved about their previous vinyl only outings, released in small batches on the HBSP - 2X label, and for those who maybe missed out, we should point out that Lazer Crystal features a member from aQ mega faves Cave, as well as two dudes from Mahjongg, a band we have for some reason never listed but dug nonetheless. Those connections, however, really only make sense after the fact, because Lazer Crystal's sound is probably more indebted to Giogio Moroder, Kraftwerk, and possibly labelmates Trans Am. The songs here are propelled forward by heavy drum machine beats with lots of cool robo-tom rolls and synthesizers galore. Vocals alternate between a sexy, icy croon and robot styled vocoders. This stuff just oozes out of the grooves, throbbing relentlessly throughout the entire album. And while it's sure to get asses moving on the dancefloor, there is also a cool, very ominous vibe on display here. The songs all have that great "running from something" sort of feel we all know and love, not unlike some of John Carpenter's soundtrack work.
Super recommended, and while we have both cds and lps, we ain't gonna lie - the lps, with their totally ball tripping cut out artwork, certainly take the cake in the packaging department.
MPEG Stream: "Lipp Service"
MPEG Stream: "Love Rhombus"
MPEG Stream: "Bad Indian"

LAZER CRYSTAL MCMLXXX (Thrill Jockey) lp 16.98
All right! Chicago electro rockers Lazer Crystal return with MCMLXXX, the band's first album for indie tastemakers Thrill Jockey. We raved about their previous vinyl only outings, released in small batches on the HBSP - 2X label, and for those who maybe missed out, we should point out that Lazer Crystal features a member from aQ mega faves Cave, as well as two dudes from Mahjongg, a band we have for some reason never listed but dug nonetheless. Those connections, however, really only make sense after the fact, because Lazer Crystal's sound is probably more indebted to Giogio Moroder, Kraftwerk, and possibly labelmates Trans Am. The songs here are propelled forward by heavy drum machine beats with lots of cool robo-tom rolls and synthesizers galore. Vocals alternate between a sexy, icy croon and robot styled vocoders. This stuff just oozes out of the grooves, throbbing relentlessly throughout the entire album. And while it's sure to get asses moving on the dancefloor, there is also a cool, very ominous vibe on display here. The songs all have that great "running from something" sort of feel we all know and love, not unlike some of John Carpenter's soundtrack work.
Super recommended, and while we have both cds and lps, we ain't gonna lie - the lps, with their totally ball tripping cut out artwork, certainly take the cake in the packaging department.
MPEG Stream: "Lipp Service"
MPEG Stream: "Love Rhombus"
MPEG Stream: "Bad Indian"

LES DISCRETS Septembre Et Ses Dernieres Pensees (Prophecy) cd 16.98
The easiest way to describe Les Discrets is thus: anyone who loves Alcest or Amesouers, is gonna love these guys too. Which makes perfect sense, they're French, their sound is a blissed out shoegazey post-black metal pop, and heck they even share members with Alcest.
But unlike Alcest, whom these guys shared a split release with not too long ago, Les Discrets have pretty much eliminated all and any blackness from their sound. Only the barest traces, only shadowy vestiges remain, no harsh vocals, no blast beats, no frenzied riffing, no Les Discrets is like an even more poppy blissed out Alcest, all jangle and chime and soar and shimmer. And as we mentioned in the Alcest review elsewhere on this week's list, these guys are inexplicably beloved by black metallers. With Alcest it makes a bit more sense, as there is actually some blackness, but the blackness in Les Discrets has been infused with sunlight, transforming black into bursts of greys and blues, hazy and gauzy, a sound more akin to Katatonia really, majestic and epic and heartfelt and emotional, still heavy for sure, even a little mathy, but more than anything, lush and dreamy and shimmery, shoegazey and softly fuzzy, lots of clean guitars, acoustic jangle, crooned vocals, warm whirling effects, all mixed into the woozy distorted crunch and softly blown out buzz, the result, while not remotely black metal, is turning out to be one of our favorite shoegaze gloom pop records ever!
MPEG Stream: "L'Echappee"
MPEG Stream: "Les Feuilles De L'Olivier"
MPEG Stream: "Song For Mountains"
MPEG Stream: "Sur Les Quais"

LITMUS Aurora (Metal Blade / Rise Above) cd 14.98
This week's AQ-list has got the goods for Hawkwind fans all right - not only do we have that Harvestman / Minsk / U.S. Christmas disc of Hawkwind covers, but we're also highlighting the latest from Litmus, the Head Heritage and Rise Above approved British band who are basically a more-metallic Hawkwind for the current millennium. We doubt they'd deny it. Taking off (in rocket ships, of course) from where their countrymen left off (not that Hawkwind ever actually did leave off, we're pretty sure that venerable institution is still at it in some incarnation or other, but you know what we mean), Litmus do the space rock thing with an abundance of youthful energy and verve, rocking hard and spacing out in the best spirit of vintage '70s Hawkwind, to the over-the-top utmost really. Not only are the riffs big and heavy, not only are the rhythms propulsive and ecstatic, not only is everything infused with all the electronic sci-fi whooshings, bloops and blips, zips and zaps, etc. that you'd expect, but most crucially they also possess the POP element that Hawkwind also had, something that often gets overlooked by a lot of the other current bands who cite Hawkwind as an influence. These songs are damn hooky and melodic, destined to lodge in your skull, and not just due to the use of mantra-like repetition, which of course is also a Hawkwind derived feature too. Bands like White Hills and Cave share some of these tendencies, but none are more Hawkwindlike than Litmus!
We loved their 2007 Rise Above debut Planetfall, and this follow-up pushes all the same buttons, providing another excellent, epic hour of heavy duty space-prog bliss, complete with soaring vocal uplift, loads of searing synth, and ripping guitar leads. These lads are so pro, and aglow.
Needless to say, for fans of Hawkwind. Also other old, bold, cosmic prog. And more modern stoner(henge) metal. Thus for fans of labelmates Astra, too. Man, we'd love to see 'em live...
MPEG Stream: "Beyond The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "In The Burning Light"
MPEG Stream: "Stars"

LOTHAR AND THE HAND PEOPLE Presenting... (Microwerks) cd 12.98
Another oft-reissued, minor classic from the sixties, flower power pop-psych with a good gimmick: Lothar wasn't the singer, instead Lothar was the name of the group's Theremin, with the Hand People referring to the actual humans in the band, the Theremin as you probably know being an unusual electronic instrument invented in the 1920's by Russian scientist Leon Theremin, that you don't actually touch to play (the instrument, not the scientist). Its weird, wavery sound should be familiar from old horror soundtracks, and the intro to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations". Also we sold a ton of the album by classical Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore that was recently reissued on vinyl by Mississippi.
Lothar wasn't The Hand People's only electronic gadget, either, they also utilized Moog synths, tape decks, and more. So you'd expect something along the lines of Silver Apples, maybe, or the United States Of America, but this isn't quite that avant garde, though some tracks, like "It Comes On Anyhow" with its loops and edits, or the spacey-synthy instrumental soundscape "Paul, In Love", are certainly all about the electronic experimentation. Yet, others like "This May Be Goodbye", are vocal-oriented, laidback, sunshiney songs with the electronic elements almost an afterthought, but nice nonetheless. Really it seems like The Hand People would try just about anything (not sure if Lothar got a vote), musically they're all over the place, the 13 tracks (+3 bonus cuts) on this, their 1968 debut, running the gamut from groovy garage to Byrdsy countryish pop to the abovementioned styles, happily veering into novelty tune territory too, ferinstance their "switched on" version of the Woody Woodpecker cartoon theme (!?), and the freak scene that is "Sex And Violence", a far out goof that sounds a lot like something Kim Fowley could have produced. Pick of the litter is probably the lead-off track "Machines", a bonafide classic consisting of rhythmic clink and clank, disjointed groove and poppy psych, almost proto-Devo if not proto-industrial, and reminding us of some of Bruce Haack's compositions. Neat-o.
MPEG Stream: "Machines "
MPEG Stream: "It Comes On Anyhow"

LOWE, ROBERT & ROSE LAZAR Eclipses (Thrill Jockey) lp 15.98
Collaboration number two from Robert Lowe (of Lichens) and visual artist Rose Lazar. The first was a small bound book of artwork, that came with a 3" cd featuring Lowe's gorgeous hazy soundscapes created with just voice and effects, while the book was filled with Lazar's mysterious multi colored geometric artwork.
This latest release once again features music by Lowe, but this time, he's using a series of monophonic and polyphonic synthesizers to create burbling, shimming, blissed out synthkrautdronemusik, that seems to perfectly reflect the prismatic textural artwork on the sleeve (more on that in a second).
Opening track "Crayon Gym" is total Klaus Schulze / Tangerine Dream / Neu! krautworship, pulsing and throbbing, rhythmic and hypnotic, while the next track "Fantomoj De La Vitro Domo", is way more Carpenter / Goblin style creep, haunting minor key melodies, moody swirling ambience, with some swooping sweeping effects, but still mesmerizing and a bit psychedelic. The whole record is an ever evolving, sun dappled and starlit sprawl of slow shifting synth textures, dipping into krautrock, new age, free drone, and blurring them into a dreamlike expanse of lush and psychedelic krautsynth shimmer.
The record comes housed in a massive 6 panel, two sided, 36" x 12" fold out sleeve, adorned with artwork from both Lowe and Lazar, strange tangled bits of pen and ink, weeping clouds, mysterious caves, smeared rainbows, and piles of diamonds.

LUDICRA Hollow Psalms (Life Is Abuse) 2lp 23.00
About time! After eight years, finally the debut record from this fearsome local black metal fivesome sees the light of day ON VINYL. The cd is currently out of print too, making this all the more essential. Like the cd version did, the lp comes in a rather deluxe package. Mastered at 45 rpm for extra fidelity, it's two slabs of clear vinyl packaged in a gatefold, handbound booklet with art and handlettered lyrics, inside a thick silkscreened cover, limited to 500 copies! As impressive as the original cd's "storybook" packaging, definitely the way this deserves to be vinyl-ized, in style.
Here's what we said back when about the cd release, though by now you probably know all about this band, considering all the accolades they've garnered here and elsewhere, with their latest opus The Tenant, on Profound Lore, being highlighted here not long ago...
Ludicra is yet another project from the fertile metal mind of John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Iron Cemetary, etc.), this time with the help of local rockers/scene fixtures Aesop (Hickey, Dr. Dre Del, etc.), Christy Cather (Missile Command), Ross Sewage (Impaled), and Laurie Sue Shanaman (who works at the veterinarian where Andee's girlfriend and Erik his housemate take their cats!).
Ludicra's debut reveals them to be a highly advanced black metal creation. They're complex, moody, darkly psychedelic, and 'post-rocky' like AQ-faves Enslaved - a very good thing. The droning savage trance rock of another AQ black metal fave (and fellow San Franciscans) Weakling is also evident. Maybe it's Aesop's punk-derived drumming, or the song-writing dynamics, but while this is very metal indeed it also betrays an awareness of other strands of underground rock. And of course it's heavy, textured, and exceedingly well-crafted, as you would expect from the pen/plectrum of Sir Lord John Cobbett.
Ludicra has two singers: Christy (who also plays guitar) and Laurie Sue, and while both vocalists are women, you won't hear any of the sweet singing that Hammers of Misfortune's female vocalist does. No, it's all very extreme - except for some wordless background choruses and an interlude or two of gentle chanting, they mostly deliver scary throat-shredding screams that upend gender stereotypes. But, like Hammers, having more than one vocalist allows for interesting variety and dynamics. Lots of acoustic interludes and dark and rhythmic breakdowns that hint at the band members' diverse indie rock/post punk/punk rock backgrounds. That, and Ludicra's ability to yet generate at the same time such a convincing black metal atmosphere, makes for a very satisfying and compelling listen.

MCFALL, CHRISTOPHER The City Of Almost (Sourdine) cd 14.98
Vacant lots. Empty storefronts. Warehouses pocked with shattered windows, rusted walls, and pigeon shit. These are haunts for Christopher McFall when he collects field recordings in and around his hometown of Kansas City. The area where McFall has a studio is one of the rundown areas of town, that once was a thriving nexus of commerce and culture, but for the most part has crumbled under neglect; and The City Of Almost is a well constructed album that wholly embody the grit, decay, murk, and dust of those crumbling spaces. His processed recordings amplify the melancholy of the space through his ominous looping techniques and the atmospheres of malaise which hang upon elongated drones raked with wind-swept textures and numerous passages of scraped objects distressed by the elements over the years. These moments of The City Of Almost do recall some of the earlier dystopic works from John Grzinich, Michael Northam, and the non Jewelled Antler sounds of Loren Chasse; but McFall furthers the theatrical and allegorical sense of neglect through a fortunate discovery of an stash of musty old records and a barely functioning turntable during his wanderings. Thus, the scratchiness of dust upon the needle and ghostly hints of a forgotten melody also work their way into McFall's work, with references to Philip Jeck being noted even as McFall slows everything down way further than Jeck ever did to match the turgid pacing of the album. We've heard a few pieces from McFall over the years, and this one is the strongest to date.
MPEG Stream: "Slow Containment"
MPEG Stream: "Requiem For Troost (Home)"
MPEG Stream: "All Parts Contained"

MONUMENT OF URNS Blaspheme (Hand Hewn Timbre) cd-r 4.98
RETURN OF THE URNS!! Quite possibly our favorite one man black doom outfit is back, with installment FIVE, in his ever expanding canon of droning downtuned blackness, and as always, it's gorgeously and lovingly hand packaged, a black folded cardstock sleeve, printed in thick red ink on the front and back, a strange black on black skeleton mandala on the inside.
The big change this time around is that Monument Of Urns has outgrown the 3"cd, this latest track, clocks in at a whopping 29 minutes, which seemingly forced a shift to a proper 5" cd-r. But beyond that, all is well, and grim, and bleak, and harrowingly dooooomy in the world of Urns. When we first put this in the computer, the song info came up "When The Wind Stopped Blowing - A Read To Your Child audiobook!" And while "When The Wind Stopped Blowing" does make a perfectly doomy title for a record, for this record even, evoking some sort of blackened wasteland, a burnt expanse of deadness and pestilence, these sounds are definitely a bit too intense for all but the grimmest of child folk.
A churning, roiling mass of near static black riffage, crumbling and distorted, oozing and filthy, a SUNNO))) baked crawl, that seems to grow more and more dense and caustic and black, as the track progresses. It's not until over 10 minutes in that the drums finally kick in, a BPM of say maybe 3 or 4, a seriously lugubrious tarpit creep, way beyond funereal, this is doom that is dead and buried and dug up again, caked with blood and mud and human flesh, a lumbering sick sonic behemoth, ultra doom, many many o'd dooooom, crushing and punishing and pummeling, total black hole, hollow earth, end of humanity doom, eventually ditching the drums and forward momentum, as the shuddering black grime oozes back into whatever black void birthed it. So goddamn good. Why Urns isn't up there with Moss and Corrupted and SUNNO))) and Monarch and the rest of the grim slowpoke royalty we'll never understand, needless to say, if you dig the very very slow, and ultra ultra low, and can't get enough oooooozing blackness and soul crushing dooooooom, then prostrate yourself before the Monument Of Urns, and let the buzz and rumble wash over you in thick filthy black torrents...
MPEG Stream: "Blaspheme (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Blaspheme (excerpt 2)"

MOUNT CARMEL s/t (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98
Blues rock sometimes gets a bad rap around aQ, one aQuarius employee in particular is fond of hurling the descriptor 'blues rock' as an epithet, used to describe lots of cheesy bar rock, and hokey dad rock, and all manner of stuff that sounds more suited for pubs or parking lots than the hallowed halls of aQ. But even that aQ-er will happily admit, that there's plenty of blues rock that does indeed kick heaps of ass, Blue Cheer, ZZ Top, Budgie, Captain Beyond, Moses, Juan De La Cruz, Leaf Hound, Jerusalem...
Gotta mention Jerusalem in the case of this new blues rockin' Siltbreeze band from Columbus Ohio, considering that the vocals here are a dead ringer for the Jerusalem dude, and there's of course Zeppelin-isms galore, it's that perfect mix of super distorted bluesy fuzz, and hooky pop, not to mention some killer psychedelic leads, and some awesome lazy vox that perfectly suit the band's serpentine sonic slither. Another band these guys totally remind us of are retro heavy rock revivalists The Want, whose only full length sounded like it could have in fact been a reissue of some lost seventies hard rock gem. Which is definitely the case here, the song writing, the guitar tone, the songs, definitely not of this time, cemented by the 11 minute final track, a live in the studio jam, all skittery rhythms, wild tangled fuzz guitar leads, throbbing bass, that totally sounds like it was lifted from some chunk of seventies vinyl. Further proving they're really the real blues rock deal, they even do a Ten Years After cover. Not sure how (or why) these guys ended up on Siltbreeze, but these jams definitely have us embracing the blues rock, BIG time.
MPEG Stream: "Livin Like I Wanna"
MPEG Stream: "Still Listening"
MPEG Stream: "ZZ Breakers"

MOUNT CARMEL s/t (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
Blues rock sometimes gets a bad rap around aQ, one aQuarius employee in particular is fond of hurling the descriptor 'blues rock' as an epithet, used to describe lots of cheesy bar rock, and hokey dad rock, and all manner of stuff that sounds more suited for pubs or parking lots than the hallowed halls of aQ. But even that aQ-er will happily admit, that there's plenty of blues rock that does indeed kick heaps of ass, Blue Cheer, ZZ Top, Budgie, Captain Beyond, Moses, Juan De La Cruz, Leaf Hound, Jerusalem...
Gotta mention Jerusalem in the case of this new blues rockin' Siltbreeze band from Columbus Ohio, considering that the vocals here are a dead ringer for the Jerusalem dude, and there's of course Zeppelin-isms galore, it's that perfect mix of super distorted bluesy fuzz, and hooky pop, not to mention some killer psychedelic leads, and some awesome lazy vox that perfectly suit the band's serpentine sonic slither. Another band these guys totally remind us of are retro heavy rock revivalists The Want, whose only full length sounded like it could have in fact been a reissue of some lost seventies hard rock gem. Which is definitely the case here, the song writing, the guitar tone, the songs, definitely not of this time, cemented by the 11 minute final track, a live in the studio jam, all skittery rhythms, wild tangled fuzz guitar leads, throbbing bass, that totally sounds like it was lifted from some chunk of seventies vinyl. Further proving they're really the real blues rock deal, they even do a Ten Years After cover. Not sure how (or why) these guys ended up on Siltbreeze, but these jams definitely have us embracing the blues rock, BIG time.
MPEG Stream: "Livin Like I Wanna"
MPEG Stream: "Still Listening"
MPEG Stream: "ZZ Breakers"

MOUTH OF THE ARCHITECT The Violence Beneath (Translation Loss) cd 12.98
We've been digging these guys for a while now, one of those bands who take the downtuned metallic crunch of bands like Neurosis, and add all sorts of post and math rock to the mix, a combination that when done right, we pretty much can't get enough of. And the thing is, these guys do it about as good as anyone. This latest disc, a short-ish 4 song ep, just drives that point home. The opening title track has got it all, sick downtuned riffs, bellowed vocals, spidery basslines, incredible super buys drumming, a lurching lumbering weirdly melodic behemoth, with some awesome soaring breakdowns, with what sounds like organ buzzing away beneath it all. One immediately noticeable thing is the shift toward something much poppier. The mix of crushing heaviness and killer hooks and melodies, definitely reminds us of Torche, but unlike the overt poppiness of that band, these guys bury that pop under an avalanche of metal prog and math metal, that turns the pop into something else completely.
These tracks are all over the place, the second track starts out all folky, clean steel string guitar, crooned clean vocals, which gives away to some devastatingly heavy chug and howl, and the track constantly shifts, from soaring epic majesty, to tangled ultra prog stop start stutter, with chiming guitars, and more super complex drumming. "Restore" is about as doomy as they get, somehow channeling both Godspeed and Candlemass into a sort of post metal epic, still rife with pop and progisms, but super moody and mournful and HEAVY.
The whole record culminates in the final track, a cover, and an odd one at that, Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes", which could have been a disaster, a tongue in cheek cock up spoiling a pretty perfect record. But instead, they OWN in, slowing it waaaay down, turning it into a super melodic doomy dirge, that almost sounds more like the Deftones, or Lifelover, or one of those bands unafraid to meld heartfelt pop with heaving heaviness, and it's good, so good that it has us digging a song we definitely could have gone forever without hearing again. It helps that the chorus is transformed into a churning blown out crush, and that the whole song is streaked with screaming howling high end guitar. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "The Violence Beneath"
MPEG Stream: "Buried Hopes"

NADJA Thaumogenesis (Important) 2lp+cd 27.00
Super deluxe gatefold vinyl reissue of this long out of print cd (originally on aRCHIVE) from doomdronedirgegaze duo Nadja, which includes TONS of extra material. Besides the original hour long track, spread out over 3 sides, the reissue tacks on an exclusive D-side, featuring an epic James Plotkin remix. AND the vinyl comes with a cd featuring an exclusive Nadja live performance (recorded in an outdoor garden!). Swank packaging to boot...
Thaumogenesis is one single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel, beginning with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in its depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone. And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 2)"

NEW PORNOGRAPHERS, THE Together (Matador) cd 13.98
Hurrah! Album #5 for longtime aQ darlings The New Pornographers finds them picking right up from where Challengers left off, and tweaking a few things in the best possible ways. Together's dozen pop songs are polished up to an absolute gleam, primed and ready to embrace your ears. The album's tempo is easy-going, and the production is expansive, yet comfily even keeled. Very welcoming and lovely. The powerful and nuanced voices of Neko Case and Kathryn Calder have been brought even more to the fore (such as on the robust "Your Hands (Together)" and the jaunty lilting "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk"), and serve as a wonderful counterbalance to the yearning yelps of Carl Newman and Dan Bejar, evoking varying depths of wistfulness and melancholy. Never fear, the occasional, fantastical obtusity from Mr. Bejar does inevitably surface (check out "Silver Jenny Dollar"). He wrote a quarter of the album's songs, and headmaster Newman penned the rest. Their contrasting approaches have always been an unusual, but strangely effective pairing. And with each record they've seemed to draw closer and closer in step while not losing their individual quirks. This has only made the band's overall sound stronger and more solidified. Actually that is what makes this album so darn good. The band members have struck a resounding balance and unity. Although the band has long been classified as a supergroup, often to the point of distraction, and despite the fact that the career of one member in particular has skyrocketed in recent times, the band is more... uhh, together than ever before (sorry, how could we resist?!), and each song is a glorious fully realized ensemble piece. While we sure do yearn for the explosive candy-coated romp of their early effervescent tunes, we also find the honed and well composed spot that this mighty Canadian pop troupe have settled into quite easy on our ears too. So, need we say? Heartily recommended! Sure to please their legions of fans and win them legions more!
And fyi, if you're lucky, while supplies last, you get a free limited edition bonus 7" with your purchase of this album, featuring the New Pornos covering 3 songs by Outrageous Cherry! (Note, though, if you're a mailorderer getting Together on the cd format, you should tell us if you want the 7" or not, 'cause it might affect your shipping options...)
MPEG Stream: "Your Hands (Together)"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Jenny Dollar"
MPEG Stream: "Valkyrie In The Roller Disco"

NEW PORNOGRAPHERS, THE Together (Matador) lp 16.98
Hurrah! Album #5 for longtime aQ darlings The New Pornographers finds them picking right up from where Challengers left off, and tweaking a few things in the best possible ways. Together's dozen pop songs are polished up to an absolute gleam, primed and ready to embrace your ears. The album's tempo is easy-going, and the production is expansive, yet comfily even keeled. Very welcoming and lovely. The powerful and nuanced voices of Neko Case and Kathryn Calder have been brought even more to the fore (such as on the robust "Your Hands (Together)" and the jaunty lilting "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk"), and serve as a wonderful counterbalance to the yearning yelps of Carl Newman and Dan Bejar, evoking varying depths of wistfulness and melancholy. Never fear, the occasional, fantastical obtusity from Mr. Bejar does inevitably surface (check out "Silver Jenny Dollar"). He wrote a quarter of the album's songs, and headmaster Newman penned the rest. Their contrasting approaches have always been an unusual, but strangely effective pairing. And with each record they've seemed to draw closer and closer in step while not losing their individual quirks. This has only made the band's overall sound stronger and more solidified. Actually that is what makes this album so darn good. The band members have struck a resounding balance and unity. Although the band has long been classified as a supergroup, often to the point of distraction, and despite the fact that the career of one member in particular has skyrocketed in recent times, the band is more... uhh, together than ever before (sorry, how could we resist?!), and each song is a glorious fully realized ensemble piece. While we sure do yearn for the explosive candy-coated romp of their early effervescent tunes, we also find the honed and well composed spot that this mighty Canadian pop troupe have settled into quite easy on our ears too. So, need we say? Heartily recommended! Sure to please their legions of fans and win them legions more!
And fyi, if you're lucky, while supplies last, you get a free limited edition bonus 7" with your purchase of this album, featuring the New Pornos covering 3 songs by Outrageous Cherry! (Note, though, if you're a mailorderer getting Together on the cd format, you should tell us if you want the 7" or not, 'cause it might affect your shipping options...)
MPEG Stream: "Your Hands (Together)"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Jenny Dollar"
MPEG Stream: "Valkyrie In The Roller Disco"

NOTIC NASTIC It's Dark But It's Okay (Shitkatapult) cd 16.98
Some of us around here have become a little obsessed with Ke$ha, and that song "Tik Tok". The song is crazy addictive, and the fact that she's kind of a babe and has that whole haughty trampy rockstar thing going on, what can we say? But if we were gonna be totally honest, THIS is what we really wish Ke$sha sounded like, it's still sexy and slutty and a little bit filthy, but musically, it's way more dark and fractured and fucked up. A sort of Missy Elliot meets Glass Candy electro thing, but with plenty of T. Raumschmiere or Motor mixed in. Big stuttery beats, squelchy synths, woozy loops, twisted and tweaked effects, thick buzzy bass, and some sultry vocals that here and there are definitely a dead ringer for Ke$ha, but again, it's so much darker and more sinister, less singing, than sort of mewled and whispered and spoken, a sex kitten sort of croon, but the vocals often doused in effects or weirdly sped up, and screwed with in some way, which perfectly mashes with the constantly shifting sonic mashup in the background, all woozy and washed out and Portishead-y one second, deconstructed sliced and diced Art Of Noise the next, synthy Daft Punk euro groove the next, but always groovy, funky, and sexy, and yeah, this is the sort of shit they should be playing on the radio, even though it's probably way more suited to some dark and dingy danceclub in Berlin, way on the wrong side of the tracks.
MPEG Stream: "Let Go"
MPEG Stream: "Stupid Happy"
MPEG Stream: "Secret Life"
MPEG Stream: "Swifty"

ODLUND, CHRISTINE Phenomena (Ideal) cd 14.98
More of an installation artist, who delights in the play between the psychedelic and the clinical, Christine Odlund proves to be quite talented when it comes to her own darkened electro-acoustic composition, holding her own next to the likes of Thomas Koner, Matt Shoemaker, and BJ Nilsen. Throughout her catalogue of installations, video, and sound, Odlund has been interested in simulating synaesthesia, the neurological phenomena of the transposition of one sensorial experience with another - in other words, the ability to 'see' sound or 'hear' touch. Odlund's installations feature overblown projections of microscopic organisms displayed in dazzling hyperdelic colors and hung against jet black environments; and her sound work is a like-minded chimera, although it's much heavier, darker, and blacker. Low-end modulating tones pool around a flattened hiss to start the record, setting a suitably grim, dark-ambient vibe. Squeaking metals echo in the distance, as the morass of blackened sound builds to a shadowy crescendo of dark noise. Slow loops and theremin-like swells of tone offer an oceanic interlude that leads into a crackling collage of VLF recordings, electro-static bristlings, insect choruses, and various crunchings that sound like a massive amplification of an army of beetles. Two shortened tracks of percolating computer music sequences and electronic algorithms break up Odlund's abstracted drone, crunch, and hiss which return in fine effect by the end of the album. Very nicely done.
MPEG Stream: "Mycelium Of A Lawyers Wig"
MPEG Stream: "Magnetosphere"
MPEG Stream: "Meeting In Albertville"

OH SEES, THEE Warm Slime (In The Red) cd 11.98
More awesome fuzzy distorted sixties style garage rock from Mr. John Dwyer and his Oh Sees, the first full length, full band effort after Dog Poison, the record on which Dwyer played all the instruments himself. It's easy to forget just how great Thee Oh Sees are, and what a great songwriter Dwyer really is, after all the sweaty chaotic live shows, non stop touring, record after record, but holy shit are these tracks killer. Especially the 13+ minute title track that opens up the record, beginning with two minutes of classic super catchy Oh Sees, super distorted guitars, a cool stuttery rhythm, reverb all over the place, howled echoed vox, and lots and lots of 'ooooooh's, surely plenty for a song, but "Warm Slime" has way more to offer with its next 10 or so minutes, a cool extended breakdown with a loping drum beat, some sixties girl group sounding vocals, jagged bursts of vocal / guitar crunch, super trancey and hypnotic, in the style of classic sixties funk and soul breakdowns, where live, probably the band is introduced, or there's some interaction with the crowd, but on the record, it's just a chance for the band to spread out and lock into a super minimal groove, and see just what they can do with it.
The other six tracks are mostly just what we've come to expect (and want) from Dwyer and company. Fuzzy echo drenched sweat soaked garage pop, loads of buzz and howl and crunch, kick ass drumming, lots of hooks, more oooh's and aaah's, but there are a couple surprises, most notably the fuzzed out, super distorted drone rock dirge of "Flash Bats", a hazy sprawling motorik druggy groove that finds the Oh Sees getting all Shjips style, which most definitely suits them, big time. As always awesome. And if like us, you're STILL hankering for more, it's always good to know that it probably won't be all that long before the next record drops. We'll be ready.
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we'll have the cd format of this on a special $2 off sale, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 5/21/10!
MPEG Stream: "Warm Slime"
MPEG Stream: "I Was Denied"
MPEG Stream: "Everything Went Black"

OH SEES, THEE Warm Slime (In The Red) lp 13.98
More awesome fuzzy distorted sixties style garage rock from Mr. John Dwyer and his Oh Sees, the first full length, full band effort after Dog Poison, the record on which Dwyer played all the instruments himself. It's easy to forget just how great Thee Oh Sees are, and what a great songwriter Dwyer really is, after all the sweaty chaotic live shows, non stop touring, record after record, but holy shit are these tracks killer. Especially the 13+ minute title track that opens up the record, beginning with two minutes of classic super catchy Oh Sees, super distorted guitars, a cool stuttery rhythm, reverb all over the place, howled echoed vox, and lots and lots of 'ooooooh's, surely plenty for a song, but "Warm Slime" has way more to offer with its next 10 or so minutes, a cool extended breakdown with a loping drum beat, some sixties girl group sounding vocals, jagged bursts of vocal / guitar crunch, super trancey and hypnotic, in the style of classic sixties funk and soul breakdowns, where live, probably the band is introduced, or there's some interaction with the crowd, but on the record, it's just a chance for the band to spread out and lock into a super minimal groove, and see just what they can do with it.
The other six tracks are mostly just what we've come to expect (and want) from Dwyer and company. Fuzzy echo drenched sweat soaked garage pop, loads of buzz and howl and crunch, kick ass drumming, lots of hooks, more oooh's and aaah's, but there are a couple surprises, most notably the fuzzed out, super distorted drone rock dirge of "Flash Bats", a hazy sprawling motorik druggy groove that finds the Oh Sees getting all Shjips style, which most definitely suits them, big time. As always awesome. And if like us, you're STILL hankering for more, it's always good to know that it probably won't be all that long before the next record drops. We'll be ready.
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we'll have the cd format of this on a special $2 off sale, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 5/21/10!
MPEG Stream: "Warm Slime"
MPEG Stream: "I Was Denied"
MPEG Stream: "Everything Went Black"

OPERATIVE Ramp / Pulse (Ecstacy) 12" 14.98
We first heard Operative (a.ka. Scott Goodwin of Bonus) at the Root Strata curated music festival, On Land, last September here at San Francisco's Cafe Du Nord. Expecting to hear some piercing long-form drone meditation, we were pleasantly surprised that Goodwin was joined by two live drummers for a set of exuberant and organic minimal house workouts that were a welcome change of tone from much of the beautiful but exhausting roster of introspective drone experimentation that had been happening throughout the day.
Likewise, we're keen on this 12". "Ramp" begins with a slow-rising siren tone that continually elevates in pitch. As it's countered by other rising tones in a sort of Charlemagne Palestine-ish way, the drums and steady bass tones kick in taking the track to an urgent futuristic thriller as scored by Giorgio Moroder kind of territory. "Pulse" is more organic, taking warm rhythmic synth loops and looping them on top of each other to a pulsating and hypnotic 4/4 rhythm. So good!
This 12" marking Operative's debut comes courtesy of Honey Owens' (Valet, Jackie-O Motherfucker) new label for left-field techno, Ecstacy. Look out for her Miracles Club 12" on a future list!
MPEG Stream: "Ramp"
MPEG Stream: "Pulse"

PITA Mesmer (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
While the music of Pita, aka Peter Rehberg, can tend toward the harsh and caustic, this archival release, a reissue of Rehberg's first ever solo composition, is anything but, a gorgeously hypnotic, dreamlike rhythmic dronescape that sounds more like Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker than Pita.
The latest in The Tapeworm label's ever expanding catalog of super limited cassette tape oddities and artifacts, Mesmer was originally released in 1995 as part of a compilation, for which the various contributors (including Ryoji Ikeda, CM Von Hausswolff, Robert Hampson, among others) were given a copy of an early vinyl recording, called Mesmer, released on Ash International, and tasked with composing a piece dedicated to Friedrich Mesmer, an "animal magnetist and hypnotist" from the 19th century.
Rehberg's piece is definitely hypnotic, a slow, softly churning, gradually evolving sprawl of muted hiss, smeared pulses, mechanical and industrial, but also warm and organic, a woozy, shimmery landscape of blurred textures and barely there propulsion, and as mentioned above, not at all what you might expect from Pita, plenty of static and buzz, a glowing sepia toned sonic patina wreathing the whole thing, if forced to guess the creator, we definitely would have been thinking Philip Jeck.
The flipside is the same piece, but in a drastically different form, an original dubplate of "Mesmer" that Rehberg used to DJ, presented here with nearly 15 years of accumulated clicks and pops, clouds of hiss and whir, the original even more blurred and washed out and hazy. So so lovely.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. With cool Savage Pencil cover art.

PUMP, THE s/t (Klanggalerie) cd 21.00
The Pump was the first project of Nigel Ayers, Daniel Ayers, and Caroline K, which morphed into the Nocturnal Emissions around 1981. Nigel Ayers hand-dubbed all of the tiny editions of The Pump's cassettes on the shittiest tapes he could find in a local market; and when he learned that Rough Trade in London quickly sold through a run of 30 copies, he made a point to find even worse grade tapes for The Pump's recordings. Crap tape, cheap electronics, stop/start editing techniques, and overdriven distortion run throughout The Pump's recordings, which have more of an art-damaged aesthetic in keeping with the likes of the Storm Bugs or the Homosexuals, but don't you worry, there's plenty of Throbbing Gristle to be heard within The Pump's anti-songs. Ayers claims that he released four or five cassettes as The Pump, before shifting into Nocturnal Emissions; and this disc collects various tracks from various cassettes, although nothing is annotated as to where anything originated. It probably doesn't matter, as those cassettes had probably all disintegrated from their structural shittiness. Anyway, The Pump loosely splattered electronic noise and distortion upon cheap drum machine programs, slapped on asynchronous basslines which lurch through the treble crashing production, and even displayed a surprisingly sophisticated use of dub collage techniques to provide some ghostly flourishes of voice, media samples, and scratchy guitar noise amidst the dishevelled sound. This is Industrial Music in the way the Industrial Records released Industrial Music, by way of Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, and Cabaret Voltaire all circa 1979; but they also seemed to run parallel to the fucked-up, heroin-splattered noise of Destroy All Monsters as well. It should be noted that there's way more material from The Pump on this disc than found on the Nocturnal Emissions 4lp boxset Lest We Forget from Vinyl On Demand. A gritty free for all from way down deep in the British underground.
MPEG Stream: "Instant Truth"
MPEG Stream: "Futures Unlimited"
MPEG Stream: "I Wanna Be A Living Dead"

RANGE RATS s/t (Mississippi) lp 14.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Yet another pre-Dead Moon band featuring Fred and Toody Cole, thanks to the kind folks at Mississippi. While the Range Rats shares some of its name with another Fred and Toody combo, The Rats, the sound is WAY different. Recorded in 1985, The Range Rats is the Cole's country band, or more accurately cowpunk. Very reminiscent of eighties LA groups like X or Tex And The Horseheads, The Range Rats had that punky twang, dueling boy girl vocals, galloping rhythms, rambunctious and punk rock, but plenty country and catchy.
Some tracks get all reverby and ballad-y like some lost sixties girl group, others are full on punk bluegrass raveups, and still others get all slithery and bluesy, but throughout it all, the twang is ever present, and the vocal interplay and harmonies are awesome, with some cool crunchy distorted guitars thrown into the mix, as well as some surprisingly sensitive, almost power pop sounding classic popsmithery. Never before released at all until now, and Mississippi did it up right, nice thick vinyl, super heavy deluxe jackets, the front adorned with all sorts of dimestore Western novels. Cool!

SERENA MANEESH S-M2: Abyss In B Minor (4AD) cd 13.98
Druggy droney space rock doesn't get any cooler than this. Yeah, there's Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo and Black Angels, Heads, White Hills, Eternal Tapestry and Sleepy Sun, but there's just something special about Serena Maneesh. Drawing from the same murky well of effects-drenched Hawkwind heart-of-the-sun space rock psychedelia, motorik tranced out krautrock, and woozy abstract stoner rock, SM infuse their particular brand of dronerock with plenty of My Bloody Valentine shoegaze shimmer, Sonic Youth noise rock and a serious heaping of POP. It's a weird combo, and it could be precisely what keeps SM from blowing up, but it's also what makes their records so awesomely twisted, weirdly catchy, and gloriously druggy and hypnotic.
The opening track here "Ayisha Abyss" might be the murky droned out space rock jam of the year, all hazy streaks of low end, skittery skeletal rhythms, whirling clouds of blurred effects and streaked chordal hum, little splatters of drum machine, mumbled weary vox, and a super far out ending, a little burst of new wave squelch, some manipulated tapemusic, some piano, then a final burst of super fuzzed out cold wave. WEIRD. And awesome. But then it's straight into "I Just Want To See Your Face" which sounds like a perfect Sonic Youth / Swirlies mashup, a hooky noise pop jam, wrapped in wah guitars and strange processed effects, hooky and jangly and noisy but way way poppy. The following track takes the same elements but twists them all up and dubs them out, all super blown out incendiary guitars and swirling backwards effects, pounding processed drums, and a thick cloud of psychguitar freakout.
"Melody For Jaana" is total washed out drone doom balladry, like a female fronted Nadja, slow and lugubrious and syrupy, like My Bloody Valentine at 16 rpm. The awesomely titled "Blow Yr Brains In The Mourning Rain" is a wild squall of jagged guitars, buried vox, chaotic drumming, a gorgeous chunk of super in-the-red noisepop, more nods to Sonic Youth for sure, but much more soft focus.
The final three tracks ditch the sort of spacey heaviness in exchange for some ethereal jangle pop, "D.I.W.S.W.T.T.D" is total lysergic psychpop, that grows more and more tripped out as it progresses, and finally, the record closes with the tropical tinged Beatles-esque jangle pop of "Magdalena (Symphony #8)" complete with flutes and hazy summertime melodies.
Okay so it's not strictly a 'space rock' record, or a 'drone rock' record, it's more like a strange space-y drone-y POP record, but it's got enough sonic weirdness, blown out heaviness, and hypnotic riffery, to balance the pop hooks and sunshiney jangle, and make this one of our new favorites for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Ayisha Abyss"
MPEG Stream: "Blow Yr Brains In The Mourning Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Magdalena (Symphony #8)"

SERENA MANEESH S-M2: Abyss In B Minor (4AD) lp 14.98
Druggy droney space rock doesn't get any cooler than this. Yeah, there's Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo and Black Angels, Heads, White Hills, Eternal Tapestry and Sleepy Sun, but there's just something special about Serena Maneesh. Drawing from the same murky well of effects-drenched Hawkwind heart-of-the-sun space rock psychedelia, motorik tranced out krautrock, and woozy abstract stoner rock, SM infuse their particular brand of dronerock with plenty of My Bloody Valentine shoegaze shimmer, Sonic Youth noise rock and a serious heaping of POP. It's a weird combo, and it could be precisely what keeps SM from blowing up, but it's also what makes their records so awesomely twisted, weirdly catchy, and gloriously druggy and hypnotic.
The opening track here "Ayisha Abyss" might be the murky droned out space rock jam of the year, all hazy streaks of low end, skittery skeletal rhythms, whirling clouds of blurred effects and streaked chordal hum, little splatters of drum machine, mumbled weary vox, and a super far out ending, a little burst of new wave squelch, some manipulated tapemusic, some piano, then a final burst of super fuzzed out cold wave. WEIRD. And awesome. But then it's straight into "I Just Want To See Your Face" which sounds like a perfect Sonic Youth / Swirlies mashup, a hooky noise pop jam, wrapped in wah guitars and strange processed effects, hooky and jangly and noisy but way way poppy. The following track takes the same elements but twists them all up and dubs them out, all super blown out incendiary guitars and swirling backwards effects, pounding processed drums, and a thick cloud of psychguitar freakout.
"Melody For Jaana" is total washed out drone doom balladry, like a female fronted Nadja, slow and lugubrious and syrupy, like My Bloody Valentine at 16 rpm. The awesomely titled "Blow Yr Brains In The Mourning Rain" is a wild squall of jagged guitars, buried vox, chaotic drumming, a gorgeous chunk of super in-the-red noisepop, more nods to Sonic Youth for sure, but much more soft focus.
The final three tracks ditch the sort of spacey heaviness in exchange for some ethereal jangle pop, "D.I.W.S.W.T.T.D" is total lysergic psychpop, that grows more and more tripped out as it progresses, and finally, the record closes with the tropical tinged Beatles-esque jangle pop of "Magdalena (Symphony #8)" complete with flutes and hazy summertime melodies.
Okay so it's not strictly a 'space rock' record, or a 'drone rock' record, it's more like a strange space-y drone-y POP record, but it's got enough sonic weirdness, blown out heaviness, and hypnotic riffery, to balance the pop hooks and sunshiney jangle, and make this one of our new favorites for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Ayisha Abyss"
MPEG Stream: "Blow Yr Brains In The Mourning Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Magdalena (Symphony #8)"

SKULL DEFEKTS, THE Skulls VM Von Hausswolf & The Sons Of God Descending The Silver River Of The DFX (Important) lp 21.00
Pretty much every review of Skull Defekts begins with some comment about how confounding these guys are, or what a big surprise the record is, so at this point, having these guys surprise us is exactly what we expect! Yet we're still surprised and confounded every time.
This lp finds Skull Defekts both live and in the studio, with their lineup augmented by some surprising (yep!) additions. The A-side is live, and finds CM Von Hausswolff becoming an honorary Defekt, along with someone called Jean-Louis Huhta, augmenting the core duo of Joachim Nordwall and Henrik Rylander, and we were expecting something, well, noisy, but instead, this is a gorgeous, ultra minimal side long dronescape, hushed layered drift, muted high end sine wave shimmer, the sound growing gradually more dense, thickening, sprawling, the high end more incendiary, the low end more crunchy and distorted, finally building to a bit of a noisy climax, before slipping right back into more minimal dronedriftskree. Quite cool.
The B-side finds the Defekts welcoming Leif Elggren to the group, along with Kent Tankred, this quartet created their sidelong 'jam' live in the studio, and again, it begins as a hushed, barely there field recording, static and hiss, a bit of clatter and scrape, weird distorted buzz, streaks of feedback, tiny buried melodies, sonic fragments drifting in the ether, sonic motes settling on some greyed expanse of blurred mystery, the B-side is definitely headphone listening, the sounds of daily life will for sure overpower the sounds coming out of the speakers, but with headphones, one can enjoy the deep sonic mysteries of this epic chunk of minimal ambient dronemusic.

STACKPOLE, KAREN WITH DIE ELEKTRISCHEN Machine Shop (Dielectric) cd 10.98
Of all the amazing records we've reviewed on the Dielectric label, our favorite might just have to be the Karen Stackpole 12", an incredible collection of bowed gongs, huge billowing clouds of deep sonorous metallic shimmer, a specialty of this East Bay based percussionist. So we were super excited about this full length, nearly 45 minutes of the heaviest metal imaginable, as in hundreds and hundreds of pounds, a whole room full, all recorded and gently and subtly reworked by Die Elektrischen, aka Drew Webster, Dielectric Records mainman.
The core sounds here are incredible, the sound of a huge sheet of metal being struck or bowed, the unbelievable overtones, most drone obsessives could listen to struck gongs all day and night, and Webster seems to know this, doing the bare minimum to enhance and augment.
In most cases, it's hard to tell anything has been done to the original recordings at all, usually the additions are super subtle, layering two tracks on top of one another, changing the stereo panning, while in other instances, the sounds are most definitely altered, with reverb, or delay, distortion, but done deftly, a delicate balance for sure.
Bell like chimes drift into deep rumbling metallic drones, strange melodies surface within the overtones, crystalline shimmer laid over lush dense low end buzz, some of the tracks, the layered metal buzz gets so dense and intense it almost sounds like Troum or Nadja or something, the final track introduces a gorgeous minimal rhythm, very tabla like, accompanied by gongs and cymbals, a super intense abstract groove, but for the most part, the sounds on Machine Shop are dark and minimal, mysterious and haunting, tranquil and hypnotic, woven into softly undulating dronescapes, or just left to shimmer on their own.
MPEG Stream: "Effect Of Oxidation"
MPEG Stream: "Quantitative Treatment Of Reflection"
MPEG Stream: "Coefficient Of Friction"

SUN ARAW On Patrol (Not Not Fun) cd 14.98
Yeah! NOW ON CD!
Latest cloud of smoked out dub psych damage from this one man band, a massive sprawling album, every song bleeding into the next, one epic druggy abstract sonic trip. The Sun Araw sound keeps drifting further and further out, and in the process, approaching something that sounds a bit like reggae, but filtered through a cracked Not Not Fun filter, and a bank of busted amps and malfunctioning effects pedals. Oh and pot smoke. Lots and lots of pot smoke.
Woozy, warbly, prismatic, sun baked (and just plain baked), stripped down, dubbed out, inner space drift. Wah Wah guitars hover over skeletal rhythms, reverb and delay coats everything in earshot, disembodied chantlike vox are draped over SA's twisted mutant lo-fi dub. The record drifts into some warped murk, still peppered with plenty of upstroke reggae guitar jangle, but wrapped in wheezing keyboards and some super distorted fuzz bass.
The second record begins all ethereal and new age, some hushed glimmering ambient drift, near static, before launching into some dubby krautrock, muted and muddy and minimal, flurries of keyboard tangle spray notes at the relentless motorik pulse, still more abstract vox and lots of gorgeously spidery guitars, all tangled up into minor key melodies that seem to fade into the background, the whole record sort of hazy and ghostly, while somehow remaining krauty and dubby. The sidelong final side strips everything away, or piles it all on, blurring and smearing and winding everything into a dense layered drift, looped and hypnotic and psychedelic, that wouldn't sound out of place on a Monopoly Child Star Searchers record. Rad stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Ma Holo"
MPEG Stream: "The Stakeout"
MPEG Stream: "Deep Cover"

TRANCELIKE VOID Where The Trees Can Make It Rain (Ars Magna Recordings) cd ep 8.98
The Belgian duo Trancelike Void have somehow managed to slip through the cracks here, though at least two of us are big fans, but somehow, we've never listed on of their records until now. Which is a shame, especially considering the current obsession with post black metal shoegazers like Alcest, Les Discrets, Lifelover and the like. TV are definitely black metal, but their sound is warm and lush and blissed out, more Sigur Ros or Godspeed than Darkthrone or Immortal.
Which brings us to Where The Trees Can Make It Rain, the latest from TV, which only furthers that sort of non black metal vibe, in that it's wholly acoustic, just acoustic guitars and drums, two long tracks, each, doleful and meditative, dreamy and tranquil, softly reverbed notes ring out and hang in the air, the overtones spinning off into the ether, the drums, simple and spare and skeletal, darkly moody and melancholic, subtly dynamic, building to softy emotional crescendos, only to slip back into a somnambulant drift. Clouds of strummed steel strings hover and slowly dissipate, leaving, stray notes to flutter and fade out.
The two songs here are quite minimal, almost like shadowy sketches of songs that could have been, which is precisely what makes them so appealing, they're hushed and abstract and shadowy, they drift and shimmer, flicker and fade, the sound is lush and organic, but also fleeting, a soft sound, that manages to evoke all sorts of emotional responses, a fleeting glimpse of some otherworld, where these hushed sounds are the soundtrack.
MPEG Stream: "The Stone Pond"
MPEG Stream: "Ghost Mountain"

ULTRABUNNY AKA BUNNYBRAINS 88 Squirrel Attack EP (Equation) 10" 15.98
Back in stock! Got a very limited number of these from the label, at a way cheaper price. Bunnybrains 88 are now called Ultrabunny, but the sound is still as Bunnybrained as ever. Read on...
You know how much we love the Bunnybrains around here. Their chaotic retarded garage rock chaos gets us everytime. We were blown away by the recent Box The Bunny release, that collected all their old recordings and included a dvd of insane and ridiculous footage. So you can imagine how psyched we were to learn that there was a brand new Bunnybrains record! So why the 88 you ask? Well, apparently there were two separate bands that joined forces in 1988 and became the Bunny brains we know and love. After 17 years or so, rock and roll took its toll and the Bunnybrains split back into two separate units. Both bands are 100% Bunnybrains (or at least 98%) and both bands kick ass! This new 10" from Bunnybrains 88, now ULTRABUNNY is ULTRA limited, to only 333 copies, the first 88 of which came in super fancy boxes and were $50 or more and are now out of print. But do not fear, the other 245 copies are nearly as cool, gorgeously packaged in custom letterpressed Bruce Licher sleeves, an elaborate cardstock interlocking foldover, with lovely maroon and white text and filigree. The vinyl is breathtaking as well, half clear, half opaque red, and the sleeve has a nifty sparkly pink stick affixed to the front. One track on one side, and two simultaneous tracks on the other! Includes a bunch of inserts including a sticker and FAQ that goes into greater depth about the whole multiple Bunnybrains thing. Each copy is also hand numbered! WOW!

URGEHAL Ikonoklast (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
It's been ages since we reviewed a record by Norwegian black metal horde Urgehal, but since we've been flipping out over Urgehal side project Angst Skvadron, we figured it was definitely time to check back in with the grim black mothership.
For those of you who missed out on our raving about Angst Skvadron, the twisted black industrial avant prog black metal side project of Urgehal member Trondr Nefas, take a second, read the review, check out the side project, probably buy one, then come back here, so we can rave about this record too.
Urgehal is not nearly as abstract or out there as Angst Skvadron, but someone capable of that sort of weirdness, well, you gotta think those twisted thoughts and messed up musical ideas must seep into their day job, and they do for sure, albeit subtly.
The sound is total third wave classic Norwegian black metal, epic, majestic, buzzing blasting, with hints of classic thrash, some old school eighties metal, but make no mistake, this is grim, frosty, kvlt shit. Opener "Stesolid Self-Destruction To Damnation" is everything we want in black metal, frantic insectoid rigging, blasting drums, convoluted and complex, but, the vocals are seriously twisted, not shrieked, more a sort of demonic croak, and there are wild guitar leads all over the place, adds a little weirdness, without detracting from the grim core. The second track is a woozy, almost waltzy blackened dirge, with more sick vox, and some killer riffing, not to mention all sorts of haunting ominous atmosphere, until the song explodes again into a monstrous burst of crushing blasting heaviness, with some throbbing rumbling bass, which is definitely a rarity in black metal.
And so it goes, a fucking beast of a black metal record, just twisted enough to make it special, but not overtly weird or fucked up.
The final track is the gem here, super melodic, with all sorts of lush layered guitars, arpeggiated melodies, a seasick tempo, and a cool final movement wherein buzzing soaring riffage is draped over haunting reverbed piano, super creepy, but really beautiful too, until the riffs drop out, leaving just the piano, to play the record out.
MPEG Stream: "Stesolid Self-destruction To Damnation"
MPEG Stream: "Dodelagt"
MPEG Stream: "Cut Their Tongue Shut Their prayers"

V/A Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock & Electronic Music 1972-83 (Soul Jazz) 2cd 21.00
Leave it to the fine folks at the Soul Jazz Label to bring us a stellar Krautrock compilation that is as heavy on obscurities as it is on classics. Don't let the fact that the Neu!, Faust and Amon Duul tracks will probably be familiar to the most casual krautrock listener, or that pretty much all the classic bands in the canon (save for Kraftwerk and Klaus Schulze) are represented, deter you from this well-researched and beautifully sequenced compilation. Why? Well, because this compilation does a great job of showcasing the many diverse facets of the music that defined krautrock: Kosmishe electronica, hippie commune folk, motorik rhythms, proggy jazz-funk and lysergic cinematographic soundscapes. There are plenty of rarities from bands we've barely heard of such as Between, E.M.A.K., Michael Bundt, and Ibliss, as well as bands and artists we love like Kollectiv (aka Kollektiv), Conrad Schnitzler, Deuter and Gila that perhaps casual fans may not know much about. Plus many of the more well known groups are represented by less well known tracks or later periods. The Can tracks, for example. "Aspectacle" and "I Want More" are from later records, while the great Tangerine Dream track "No Man's Land" is from an early eighties record, a less seminal period for most classic Krautrock, but one filled with plenty of amazing discoveries for those brave enough to wade through some crud. Thankfully Soul Jazz did that work for us! Here is the full listing of bands: Can (2 tracks), Between, Harmonia (2 tracks) Gila, Kollectiv, Michael Bundt, E.M.A.K., Popol Vuh (2 tracks), Conrad Schnitzler, La Dusseldorf, Faust, Neu!, Cluster, Ibliss, Moebius, Roedelius, Amon Duul II (2 tracks) Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, and Deuter.
Comes with a full color booklet showcasing the history of the bands and music. Perfect for both newbies and longtime fans! Awesome!
MPEG Stream: BETWEEN "Devotion"
MPEG Stream: KOLLECTIV "Rambo Zambo"
MPEG Stream: MICHAEL BUNDT "La Chasse Aux Microbes"
MPEG Stream: CONRAD SCHNITZLER "Auf Dem Schwarzen Canal"
MPEG Stream: IBLISS "High Life"
MPEG Stream: TANGERINE DREAM "No Man's Land"
MPEG Stream: ASH RA TEMPEL "Daydream"

V/A Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock & Electronic Music 1972-83 - Volume 1 (Soul Jazz) 2lp 24.00
Leave it to the fine folks at the Soul Jazz Label to bring us a stellar Krautrock compilation that is as heavy on obscurities as it is on classics. Don't let the fact that the Neu!, Faust and Amon Duul tracks will probably be familiar to the most casual krautrock listener, or that pretty much all the classic bands in the canon (save for Kraftwerk and Klaus Schulze) are represented, deter you from this well-researched and beautifully sequenced compilation. Why? Well, because this compilation does a great job of showcasing the many diverse facets of the music that defined krautrock: Kosmishe electronica, hippie commune folk, moterik rhythms, proggy jazz-funk and lysergic cinemagraphic soundscapes. There are plenty of rareties from bands we've barely heard of such as Between, E.M.A.K., Michael Bundt, and Ibliss, as well as bands and artists we love like Kollectiv (aka Kollektiv), Conrad Schnitzler, Deuter and Gila that perhaps casual fans may not know much about. Plus many of the more well known groups are represented by less well known tracks or later periods. The Can tracks, for example. "Aspectacle" and "I Want More" are from later records, while the great Tangerine Dream track "No Man's Land" is from an early eighties record, a less seminal period for most classic Krautrock, but one filled with plenty of amazing discoveries for those brave enough to wade through some crud. Thankfully SouL Jazz did that work for us! Here is the full listing of bands for this volume: Can, Between, Harmonia (2 tracks) Gila, Kollectiv, Michael Bundt, E.M.A.K., Popol Vuh, Conrad Schnitzler, La Dusseldorf, Faust, and Neu!.
Comes with a full color booklet showcasing the history of the bands and music. Perfect for both newbies and longtime fans! Awesome!
MPEG Stream: BETWEEN "Devotion"
MPEG Stream: KOLLECTIV "Rambo Zambo"
MPEG Stream: MICHAEL BUNDT "La Chasse Aux Microbes"
MPEG Stream: CONRAD SCHNITZLER "Auf Dem Schwarzen Canal"

V/A Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock & Electronic Music 1972-83 - Volume 2 (Soul Jazz) 2lp 24.00
Leave it to the fine folks at the Soul Jazz Label to bring us a stellar Krautrock compilation that is as heavy on obscurities as it is on classics. Don't let the fact that the Neu!, Faust and Amon Duul tracks will probably be familiar to the most casual krautrock listener, or that pretty much all the classic bands in the canon (save for Kraftwerk and Klaus Schulze) are represented, deter you from this well-researched and beautifully sequenced compilation. Why? Well, because this compilation does a great job of showcasing the many diverse facets of the music that defined krautrock: Kosmishe electronica, hippie commune folk, moterik rhythms, proggy jazz-funk and lysergic cinemagraphic soundscapes. There are plenty of rareties from bands we've barely heard of such as Between, E.M.A.K., Michael Bundt, and Ibliss, as well as bands and artists we love like Kollectiv (aka Kollektiv), Conrad Schnitzler, Deuter and Gila that perhaps casual fans may not know much about. Plus many of the more well known groups are represented by less well known tracks or later periods. The Can tracks, for example. "Aspectacle" and "I Want More" are from later records, while the great Tangerine Dream track "No Man's Land" is from an early eighties record, a less seminal period for most classic Krautrock, but one filled with plenty of amazing discoveries for those brave enough to wade through some crud. Thankfully SouL Jazz did that work for us! Here is the full listing of bands for this volume: Can, Popol Vuh, Cluster, Ibliss, Moebius, Roedelius, Amon Duul II (2 tracks) Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, and Deuter.
Comes with a full color booklet showcasing the history of the bands and music. Perfect for both newbies and longtime fans! Awesome!
MPEG Stream: IBLISS "High Life"
MPEG Stream: TANGERINE DREAM "No Man's Land"
MPEG Stream: ASH RA TEMPEL "Daydream"

V/A Fanajana - A Collection Of Recordings And Photography From Madagasikara (Mississippi) lp 14.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
A few months ago, there was a triple lp release, briefly available via Mississippi, called Fihavanana, it was so limited, pretty much nobody got any, but thankfully, the label decided to pick out a handful of tracks, and create this, Fanajana, a collection of recordings culled from those 3lps, chronicling in music and photography a trip to Madigasikara, undertaken by Canadian musician and ethnographer Charles Brooks. Recorded in the late nineties, Brooks returned and pressed up a couple hundred copies of the aforementioned 3lp set, storing them in his house for nearly a decade, before finally letting Mississippi have them, where they literally sold out in a matter of days.
So unless you're one of the lucky souls who snagged one of those triples, you're definitely gonna want to grab one of these, some of the most intense, incredible and uplifting sounds, lush and celebratory, the stringed instrument playing is intricate and complex, a mix of traditional and modern instruments, the vocals very reminiscent of African high life, the tracks quite varied, but all fantastic, a wild drum and flute freakout, an awesome accordion ballad, a song that's just voices and handclaps, some super emotional and intimate solo vocals, all recorded live, in people's homes, or yards, the sound of life infusing all of these track, children playing, people talking, chickens, birds in the trees, running water, footsteps, all just adding to the energy and emotion of this music.
The record comes with a large 8.5" x 11" booklet, packed with Brooks' liner notes, the history of the country, of the music, descriptions of the various instruments (along with drawings), small stories about all the musicians, including how Brooks met them and what precipitated these recordings, a little about payment, an often overlooked element in these sorts of reissues, a bit about Brooks himself, and plenty of notes on his approach, his techniques, and so much more, poems, lyrics, diagrams, and tons of photos. Super super recommended.

V/A Message From The Tribe: An Anthology of Tribe Records: 1972-1976 (Universal Sound) cd 21.00
Similar in spirit to the AACM (the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) collective out of Chicago, The Tribe was a collective of free-spirited musicians in Detroit, some of them former Motown session players, who produced and distributed independent recordings by local musicians to foster their own community and have their own creative control of marketing and artistic freedom. Founded by Phil Ranelin and Wendell Harrison, the collective also included Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney and Doug Hammond. Musically, The Tribe leaned more to the soul and funk side of jazz, often sounding similar in vibe to Roy Ayers and Donald Byrd rather than the freer sounds of the AACM which included the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Philip Cohran. The Tribe were similarly community minded, but displayed a more activist bent politically, trying to arouse a sense of communal pride and self-reliance in a city beseiged by economic woes, first in the relocation of Motown from Detroit to Los Angeles, and then in the long decline of the auto industry. They did this not only by making and releasing music, but also through the monthly publishing of the Tribe magazine, "Detroit's first black awareness magazine" which featured articles on history, politics, business and culture. While the collective only lasted five years, their output has continued to inspire. In fact, Carl Craig recently brought Tribe members back together to record for the first time in thirty years. Universal Sound has done an amazing job of anthologizing their collective output and this release features a 60 page booklet of history, photos and articles form the Tribe magazine, complete with vintage advertisements from local businesses. Fans of the Sounds of Liberation release or that Spiritual Jazz compilation on Now Again should definitely check this out. So freaking cool!
MPEG Stream: PHIL/PHILIP RANELIN & TRIBE "Vibes From The Tribe"
MPEG Stream: TRIBE "What We Need"
MPEG Stream: MARCUS BELGRAVE "Space Odyssey"
MPEG Stream: DOUG HAMMOND "Wake Up Brothers"
MPEG Stream: TRIBE "Farewell To The Welfare "

V/A Message From The Tribe: An Anthology of Tribe Records: 1972-1976 (Universal Sound) 2lp 23.00
Similar in spirit to the AACM (the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) collective out of Chicago, The Tribe was a collective of free-spirited musicians in Detroit, some of them former Motown session players, who produced and distributed independent recordings by local musicians to foster their own community and have their own creative control of marketing and artistic freedom. Founded by Phil Ranelin and Wendell Harrison, the collective also included Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney and Doug Hammond. Musically, The Tribe leaned more to the soul and funk side of jazz, often sounding similar in vibe to Roy Ayers and Donald Byrd rather than the freer sounds of the AACM which included the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Philip Cohran. The Tribe were similarly community minded, but displayed a more activist bent politically, trying to arouse a sense of communal pride and self-reliance in a city beseiged by economic woes, first in the relocation of Motown from Detroit to Los Angeles, and then in the long decline of the auto industry. They did this not only by making and releasing music, but also through the monthly publishing of the Tribe magazine, "Detroit's first black awareness magazine" which featured articles on history, politics, business and culture. While the collective only lasted five years, their output has continued to inspire. In fact, Carl Craig recently brought Tribe members back together to record for the first time in thirty years. Universal Sound has done an amazing job of anthologizing their collective output and this release features a 60 page booklet of history, photos and articles form the Tribe magazine, complete with vintage advertisements from local businesses. Fans of the Sounds of Liberation release or that Spiritual Jazz compilation on Now Again should definitely check this out. So freaking cool!
MPEG Stream: PHIL/PHILIP RANELIN & TRIBE "Vibes From The Tribe"
MPEG Stream: TRIBE "What We Need"
MPEG Stream: MARCUS BELGRAVE "Space Odyssey"
MPEG Stream: DOUG HAMMOND "Wake Up Brothers"
MPEG Stream: TRIBE "Farewell To The Welfare "

V/A Pomegranates (B-Music / Finders Keepers) 2lp 27.00
NOW ON (IMPORT) VINYL!!
Those folks at Finders Keepers / B-Music never stop wowing us with the killer stuff they dig up. This list, we've made their reissue of the Aussie psychedelic biker flick soundtrack Stone one of our Records Of The Week, and we're constantly having to order more copies of recent discs like The BYG Deal (documenting rarities released by the radical French underground label BYG) and The Sound Of Wonder (an indeed wondrous collection of music from Pakistan's "Lollywood" cinema).
Now, here's Pomegranates, an amazing compilation of "Persian pop, funk, and psych of the 60s and 70s" compiled by a pair of Iranian-American music lovers delving into the pop culture past of their parents' generation, prior to the fall of the Shah, an era of rapid Westernization, economic stratification, and eventual sociopolitical upheaval. Looking back with bittersweet nostalgia, enthusiasm, and curiosity, they've put together a dazzling array of music that's usually quite groovy, also often melancholic, and sometimes subversive. Several tracks are considered classics, some are total obscurities (same to us!), all are irresistible. It's a colorful hybrid of East and West, of Persian musical traditions (already a melting pot of international influences) and electric youth energy. You'll hear strains of Western psych-pop, James Brown funk, Indian raga, Gypsy flamenco, Turkish folk, another other 'exotic' Middle Eastern motifs...
So many great tracks on here, the compilers almost making it impossible to select faves 'cause it's all so good, but if we had to pick just one highlight maybe it would be popular singer Googoosh's "Talagh", which sets her sweet voice soaring over one of the most insidiously slinky grooves EVER, pulsating with sinister fuzz-funk energy under flourishes of cinematic strings. She's got a couple more tracks on here, as befits her status as one of Iran's top pop stars of the day, a true sensation. If you like Turkey's Selda, you'll like what you'll hear here from Googoosh and this disc's other female vocalists. We also should note the zinging sitar funk of Abbass Mehrpouya's "Soul Raga", definitely another standout (it also appears on the full-length Mehrpouya reissue we raved about recently). But we haven't scratched the surface, the tracks by the other artists here, including Parva, Zia, Soli, Sima Bina, Ramesh, Noosh Afarin, Kourosh Yaghmaie, and others, are all awesome too, varying from groovy dancefloor workouts to aching love songs, sometimes both in one. Lots to enjoy, dive in!!
MPEG Stream: GOOGOOSH "Talagh"
MPEG Stream: ZIA "Kofraim"
MPEG Stream: RAMESH "Sharm-e Boos-e"
MPEG Stream: NOOSH AFARIN "Gol-e Aftab Gardoon"

VALBORG Crown Of Sorrow (Zeitgeister) cd 10.98
Yet another band in the ever expanding axis of aQ beloved weird and wonderful German metal groups, most of which share members. Avid aQ list readers no doubt remember math metal combo Woburn House, avant black metal horde Klabautamann, mathy folk metal outfit Island and black doom slowcore crawlers Gruenewald, well, you can now black prog doomlords Valborg to that list!
Do these guys ever sleep, rest, eat? Well we sure as shit hope not, not if it meant giving up any or all of the projects these guys work on instead, of well, anything else we presume.
Needless to say, if you dig any of those other bands, you're probably gonna dig these guys too, playing a sort of gnarled, off kilter, blackened death metal, which is not all that far removed from Woburn House or Klabautamann, or Island, especially Island considering it's the exact same lineup. But in Valborg, the trio unleash thick swaths of woozy downtuned chug, laced with all sorts of tripped out melodies, grunted hellish vox, plenty of clean guitar folkiness, but always a step away from exploding into a burst of blasting heaviness. But no matter what these guys do, whether black metal, death metal, prog metal, they can't seem to keep those various sounds separate, which is precisely why all these bands are so good.
From blast beat frenzies, to sea sick arpeggiated waltzes, to tangled Deathspell style blackness, to reverbed space prog, to super catchy almost groovy Khold style metal, often all of the above in a single song,these guys kick out some seriously sick, impossibly varied jams, and we're digging it big time. Guessing some weirdo metalheads out there might too...
(By the way, we like how their logo just goes ahead and uses the same triangular shape for the G at the end of their name as it does for the V at the beginning.)
MPEG Stream: "Wisdom From The Vortex"
MPEG Stream: "Ancient Horrors"
MPEG Stream: "Thunderbolt"

VAN CANTO Tribe Of Force (Napalm) cd 16.98
Not sure how many folks remember Jud Jud, but we were obsessed, a parody straight edge band that was all a cappella, as in every guitar chug, every bit of wailing feedback, was sung, not played, in fact the band name comes from the sound of a chugging muffled power chord, JUD JUD, JUD JUD, JUD JUD. So genius, so when we first discovered this band, we couldn't help but be reminded of Jud Jud.
Van Canto are an all a cappella power metal band, and yeah, it's as ridiculous as it sounds, and awesome. Imagine a whole band, all vocalists, each one handling a different instrument, sort of. They do have a real drummer, which makes the sound more metal and less jokey, but only barely. A choir like arrangement of soaring epic power metal, with plenty of "dumm dum dum dumdumdum dum"s and "diddly diddly diddly thum thum"s, but masterfully arranged, with guitar solos handled by the female vocalist, who simply sings the melodies, and the lush acoustic passages arranged for quite impressive three and four part harmonies, and when the band are really 'rocking' the vocalists are growling their "dum dum dum"s and "diddly diddly"s.
If you ever wondered what Blind Guardian or Hammerfall would sound like arranged for a choral group, or if you ever dreamed of a barbershop quartet covering Iron Maiden or Lost Horizon, well then, these guys and gal will definitely hit the spot. The highlight here is probably their cover of Metallica's "Master Of Puppets", which as goofy as it is, does sound pretty amazing, the various melodies are arranged into lush harmonies, the slow solo sung operatically, the second fast solo sung through what sounds like a distorted kazoo, and even the heavy parts are arranged for really elaborate harmonies, and when it gets mean, the sung chugging is pretty impressive.
It didn't take long for us to become totally obsessed with Van Canto, we've been listening to it not stop, unsure whether we love it cuz it's so ridiculous, or cuz it's actually good, or a little of both, but if you've made it this far and are still reading, you might be destined for a similar path. "DUM DUM DUM DUUUUUUH, DIDDLY DIDDLY, DUM DUM DUM DUDUDUUUUUH...
MPEG Stream: "Master Of Puppets (Excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Master Of Puppets (Excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "To Sing A Metal Song"
MPEG Stream: "Rebellion"

WAINWRIGHT, RUFUS All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu (Decca) cd 16.98
It's been about three years since Rufus Wainwright released a proper album, but the wait seems to have been worth it, with possibly his most emotionally engaging and honest record yet.
Way stripped down, the entire album is just Rufus and piano. There is a stark and poetic nature to these songs that find him being a bit less snarky and clever than in the past instead opting for something more bare, mournful and sincere. We have always loved Wainwright's records, and are always in awe of his grandiose arrangements, but it's so cool how even with just his voice and piano he is still able to create such elaborate and interesting songs. We're also struck with what an amazing pianist he is, his playing both sparse and dizzying, lush and intricate, subtle and melodic. At times it's almost like this amazing version of piano virtuoso Lubomyr Melnyk joined by Scott Walker or Leonard Cohen. It's always a good sign when you can't think of many contemporary peers an artist has, showing how unique and singular their vision is. Besides maybe Antony & The Johnsons and Fiona Apple (by the way where are you Fiona, we miss you!!!) we can't think of many modern folks who have the same kind of talent and ability to create such dynamic and emotional songs.
And while on past efforts, there was usually always a song or two that try to get all rock and always seem a bit forced and out of place, on this album with only him and piano, there is no room for rock n' roll posturing, as he really zones in to what is at the core of his songwriting. Emotional, dramatic and richly crafted songs that have the power to leave you frozen in your tracks as you sit stunned and moved by these songs' bold and devastating honesty.
MPEG Stream: "True Loves"
MPEG Stream: "Les Feux D'Artifice T'Appellent"
MPEG Stream: "Martha"

WALLS s/t (Kompakt) cd 15.98
The hazy and washed out cover art caught our eye but the sounds that came pouring out of the speakers is what won us over right away. Shoegaze blissed out electronics that seem to float in the clouds but also have a keen sense of melody. Walls definitely remind us a lot of that cool Morr music compilation of Slowdive covers that came out years ago, as it really does sound like our dreamy electronic based favorites tapping into the mesmerizing world of shoegaze greats like Slowdive, or the more celestial moments of Flying Saucer Attack's masterpiece Further.
Blissy blurry guitars and smeared murky vox buried in the mix on a few tracks, it all makes for such a perfect sun soaked sound. These songs swirl and flow with such ease yet it never turns into wallpaper as there is an understanding of creating actual songs and nice moments of subtle tension that give the record a rounded and utterly satisfying feel. Like an even more blissed out Infinite Body or our favorite outings by Ulrich Schnauss, or even what could happen if Panda Bear let go of his Beach Boys leanings and set his sights to a more soaring shimmery sound. This is turning into a major candidate for dreamiest record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Burnt Sienna"
MPEG Stream: "Soft Cover People"
MPEG Stream: "Austerlitz Wide Open"

ZARADNY, ANNA Mauve Cycles (Musica Genera) cd 16.98
Here's an album that we had heard about a while back, but had never been able to track down until now. Anna Zaradny is a Polish sound artist, specializing in harmonically challenging drones that slide out of electrical pulses and glass-shattering digital errata. She seems to have had something of a similar background as Gunter Muller or Jason Kahn (well, without Kahn's hardcore exploits in the US during the '80s), as she began her career in the realm of improv and has worked into a powerful and complex aesthetic for pierced minimalism, bristling with psychoacoustic intensity. Mauve Cycles features two lengthy pieces, the first being a zonked crucible of lazer-shot tones and frequencies which slowly melds into a mosaic of skittering rhythmic pulsations, pure tone dissonance, and seasickening sequences. We're not alone in finding parallels between this track and some of the more abstracted rhythmic constructs from Mika Vainio. As Zaradny smooths those rhythms into sustained vibration, this track begins to allude more to the classic electronic minimalists, with that strategy being furthered on the alluring second piece of pure dronescaping. Zaradny spatializes fizzes and crunched pixelations into complex constructions for oscillator tones slipping to toxic phase shifts from time to time. The overall feel of her work falls somewhere between recent John Duncan, feedback-era Eliane Radigue, the narcoleptic sounds of Mika Vainio, and a polite Florian Hecker. Intense!
MPEG Stream: "Mauve Cycles 1"
MPEG Stream: "Mauve Cycles 2"

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A CERTAIN RATIO Early (Soul Jazz) 2cd 25.00
Finally at long last REPRESSED AND BACK IN STOCK! Here's what we said about this cool collection when we first listed it way back in 2002...
A Certain Ratio, who took their name from a lyric off Brian Eno's flawless pop album Taking Tiger Mountain, began their career alongside fellow Mancunians Joy Division back in the late '70s, crafting a sound that evolved through the bleak references of punk into a groove-oriented, party-funk band by the mid-'80s. Strangely enough, the band's first ventures (including their first single "All Night Party" which is featured on this Soul Jazz compilation) were drumless, until the self-professed Funkadelic fan Donald Johnson filled in A Certain Ratio's rhythmic lack with an explosive prowess that matched the band's original proclivity for militant death disco grooves that were as good as anything on the first two Public Image Limited albums. A Certain Ratio rounded out their earliest incarnation with the eerie baritone vocals of Simon Topping, who shared more than a few of the theatrical affectations of Joy Division's Ian Curtis. Throughout the early '80s albums on Factory, Topping's vocals took a less central role, as A Certain Ratio began focusing upon the rhythmic dynamic of Jeremy Kerr's increasingly overactive use of slap bass and Johnson's explorations into jazz and Brazilian rhythms. Like Joy Division's transformation into New Order, A Certain Ratio re-created themselves within the context of the mid-'80s UK club culture.
In addition to the first disc which collects many of their best songs (although hardcore ACR fans might take issue with some of the selections), what's extra nice about this reissue are the B-sides and rarities that comprise the second disc. Those of us who missed out the first time around will be surprised to hear that the driving dance-iness of those tracks were balanced out by the decidedly more gloomy sound typical of Joy Division's dark and angular choppiness. Far more punk than dance. Another fine case of a band's demos and rarities being a valuable good listen, instead of being collected for collectors' sake. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Do The Du"
MPEG Stream: "Knife Slits Water"
MPEG Stream: "All Night Party (7" mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Choir"

A CERTAIN RATIO Early (Soul Jazz) 2lp 27.00
Finally at long last REPRESSED AND BACK IN STOCK! Here's what we said about this cool collection when we first listed it way back in 2002...
A Certain Ratio, who took their name from a lyric off Brian Eno's flawless pop album Taking Tiger Mountain, began their career alongside fellow Mancunians Joy Division back in the late '70s, crafting a sound that evolved through the bleak references of punk into a groove-oriented, party-funk band by the mid-'80s. Strangely enough, the band's first ventures (including their first single "All Night Party" which is featured on this Soul Jazz compilation) were drumless, until the self-professed Funkadelic fan Donald Johnson filled in A Certain Ratio's rhythmic lack with an explosive prowess that matched the band's original proclivity for militant death disco grooves that were as good as anything on the first two Public Image Limited albums. A Certain Ratio rounded out their earliest incarnation with the eerie baritone vocals of Simon Topping, who shared more than a few of the theatrical affectations of Joy Division's Ian Curtis. Throughout the early '80s albums on Factory, Topping's vocals took a less central role, as A Certain Ratio began focusing upon the rhythmic dynamic of Jeremy Kerr's increasingly overactive use of slap bass and Johnson's explorations into jazz and Brazilian rhythms. Like Joy Division's transformation into New Order, A Certain Ratio re-created themselves within the context of the mid-'80s UK club culture. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Do The Du"
MPEG Stream: "Knife Slits Water"

BUNYAN, VASHTI Just Another Diamond Day (Di Christina Stairbuilders) lp + 7" 14.98
Happy day, the vinyl of this has just been repressed and is available once again!
This beloved 1970 folk album is back on its original format... VINYL LP! Plus this reissue comes with a bonus 7"! Hurrah! Here's what we said about the cd version:
We're pretty damn excited that this album is now available again. Inspiration for this turn of events must certainly have something to do with Ms Bunyan turning up on Devendra Banhart's recordings recently. Without a doubt Vashti Bunyan has played a big influence on the young Banhart's song writing, and fans of Devendra should definitely take note. This record is so incredibly charming! Having been expelled from a London art school in 1964 for not narrowing her field of studies to either music or painting, Vashti Bunyan took to singing her songs on the streets of London. She eventually left the city, hitching up a cart and horse to journey across the countryside, heading for the remote Outer Hebrides islands. It wasn't long before fans tracked her down to record an album. The album was released in 1970 and disappeared in relative obscurity - only later being sought out fanatically by record collectors. Featuring accompaniment by such notables as Robin Williamson (fiddle, mandolin, Irish Harp) of The Incredible String Band and Simon Nicol (banjo) of Fairport Convention, Robert Kirby (string and recorder arrangements) who played with Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan's music is an exquisitely delicate folk music with melodies reminiscent of hornpipes and shanties. Her clear voice is so full of innocence, and she sings so earnestly about her horse and the countryside full of hayfields and waiting for love and the simple rewards, like nice tea, that await after a long day's journey. It's so beautiful, it makes me want to dress in peasant garb (like Vashti on the cover) and forget all about the 21st century.
MPEG Stream: "Diamond Day"
MPEG Stream: "Glow Worms"
MPEG Stream: "Where I Like To Stand"

CASTANETS / OHIOAN / GHOST TO FALCO / DRAGGING AN OX THROUGH WATER Zia (Infinite Front) 7" 7.50
Well, this is a weird one! A four-way split of Portland bands with two of the bands playing at the same time on each side(?!) You have to pan hard right or left to hear each band alone. I guess it sort of makes sense when all the bands seem to traffic in a kind of ramshackle mumbly Americana with a bent towards the freaky. It just builds an added layer of bizarre disorientation to the proceedings when you play them at the same time. Pretty cool but super weird and really limited!

CATHEDRAL The Guessing Game (Nuclear Blast) 2cd 15.98
The UK's Cathedral, a band who first appeared back at the dawn of the nineties, should be well known to a lot of AQ customer types for their undisputed significance to the doom metal scene. Back when they first started dooming it up, doom metal wasn't exactly the happening subgenre it is today, and they were one of the proud few carrying on so blatantly the Black Sabbath tradition. While contemporaries Eyehategod (and before them, Saint Vitus) adapted a slowed-down version of the Sabbath sound and went in a more punk, feedback filled direction with it, Cathedral took Sabbath, slowed it down even more, but also progged it up (flute!) to make at least one majestic, melancholic masterpiece of slo-mo sludge, Forest Of Equilibrium, their debut full length. After that, their long career to date has seen 'em pass through a more commercial, stoner rockin' phase (with unfortunate extra lashings of '70s disco kitsch), several albums worth of that, after which they got a bit more serious and heavied it up for a couple comeback discs (Endtyme in particular) that sounded something like their earlier stuff, before again allowing their innate British silliness (and love of indulgent '70s progressive rock) to take over for the wonderfully WTF? album The Garden Of Unearthly Delights in 2005. At that point, it became clear that Cathedral had been around long enough to get to do indeed whatever the fuck they liked, and what they liked, and still like, is that aforementioned '70s prog! So now, five years later we have their newest opus, and in grand prog tradition it's a double album, that's right, two discs all a-sprawl with progged-out quasi doom eccentricity unlike ANYTHING else (not even Solar Anus). Aptly titled, The Guessing Game.
Disc one (dis) eases us into things with an intro instrumental entitled "Immaculate Misconception", all Hammer Horror Hammond organ, malevolent and pounding, heralding (along with the sounds of a crying baby) this latest Cathedral conundrum, the remaining tracks confusionally consisting of, among other things, herky jerky bits, sudden metal riff-storms, folky motifs, cowbell rockin', and characteristically curious vocals from the gruff gargley throat of mainman Lee Dorrian - probably the weak link here for some, his singing never really being Cathedral's strong suit anyway. No offense meant, he's the heart and soul of Cathedral as well as the excellent Rise Above label, but we'd imagine he doesn't ever win any karaoke contests. However, what you ALSO always get with Cathedral are heavy as heck guitars, and yes their axes are still wielded weightily and have THAT tone (recently borrowed by hotly tipped Finnish doomdeath act Hooded Menace, fellow fans of the '70s Spanish "Blind Dead" movies). And, in addition, they unfurl wild psych solos in quite satisfying fashion. So, amidst everything else, purist doom fans should enjoy the heaviosity of such cuts as "Painting In The Dark" and "Death Of An Anarchist", though they'll also have to deal with the headspinning circusy prog with which this album is rife, especially on tracks like "Funeral Of Dreams". Not to mention the almost post-punk-funk of "Cats, Incense, Candles & Wine"!! That'd be the first disc's most weird-ass one, wrapping up with acoustic guitar and whistling, believe it or not. Works for us, though. Forgetting that it's Cathedral you're listening to (not hard) might help, though that realization also adds to the insanity.
While we needn't go through it in detail, disc two is equally out there of course, another idiosyncratic melange, full of Sabbathisms and silliness, with surprises (?) ranging from King Crimson-y dramatics to to grinding doompunk to Goblin inspired hairy wah-funk. They get their groove on, all right, sometimes to taste-defying effect... Also we gotta mention the final track, "Journey Into Jade", with lyrics that recount Cathedral's own history/discography, discussing each album of theirs in turn! Even Darkthrone has never done that, yet. Though less open-minded listeners might not hear the forest (of equilibrium) for the trees, devoted Cathedral fans (those who like ALL their stuff, even the most outre) shouldn't be disappointed, and non-doom, non-metal prog peeps might want to give this a spin as well.
MPEG Stream: "Painting In The Dark"
MPEG Stream: "Cats, Incense, Candles & Wine"
MPEG Stream: "La Noche Del Buque Maldito (Aka Ghost Ship Of The Blind Dead)"
MPEG Stream: "The Running Man"

DECIBEL #68 June 2010 magazine 4.95
More good readin' for all you metal fans. This issue has Exodus on the cover, but also 1349, Cathedral, Darkthrone, The Ruins Of Beverast, Fenriz, The Ocean, Pentagram (with their 1985 album Relentless being inducted into the Decibel "Hall of Fame"), a studio report from Torche, a feature on one-man death metal bands, and plenty more, including all the witty usual reviews (78 of 'em) and columns.

DREAMDATE Patience (Skywriting Records) cd 11.98
The proof's in the pudding... indie girl pop is alive and well! Evidence? Patience, the sophomore full length from those Bay Area sweeties known as Dreamdate. The follow up to 2007's Come On Now is as perky, peppy and pretty as its predecessor, but maybe a bit more self assured. Patience is packed with one dozen youthfully spirited, mid-fi tunes that'll put a skip in your step and a jingle-jangle charm in your heart! Most certainly for fans of cub, Tiger Trap, Heavenly, Lois and The Shams, as well as recent like-minded combos such as Summer Cats and Dum Dum Girls! And they even give a snuggly nod to the original cuddlecore queens Cub with their cover of the Vancouver trio's ditty "Go Fish". Ooooh la la! Oooh eeee cha cha!
MPEG Stream: "Have I Told You"
MPEG Stream: "Go Fish"

FAKEYOUROWNDEATH s/t (self-released) cd ep 3.00
New San Francisco band featuring ex-members of Elephone. While they're still in their infancy as a band they have recorded a debut ep, almost like a demo, just to get their music out in the world. And from the sounds of these four songs they're off to a pretty good start. Driving guitar fueled rockers that remind us a bit of folks like Interpol, The Editors and even Afghan Whigs. Will be cool to see what the future holds for them. And super cool that this ep so cheap.
MPEG Stream: "Mouth To Speak"
MPEG Stream: "Few Plus One"

FEHLMANN, THOMAS Gute Luft (Kompakt) 2lp + cd 19.98
NOW ON VINYL!! Includes cd version too.
We had no idea that Thomas Fehlmann had been making music for more than 30 years, beginning with his time in the band Palais Schaumburg moving on to his work in Detroit/Berlin techno group 3MB (with Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald), finally playing in the Orb to this day, as well as tons of solo records, quite impressive for sure, but this one, this is something else, selections from a score Fehlmann did for a film called 24H Berlin, which is the longest documentary film in history, a full 24 hours long, the filmmakers employed 80 cameras, and followed various Berliners over a 24 hour period, documenting a day in the life in Berlin. It's hard to even fathom trying to compose 24 hours of music, thankfully, Fehlmann shared those duties with another composer, so he probably needed to only come up with 12 hours worth of music, but still, incredible.
And the sounds here are of course gorgeous, that Kompakt sound we love so much, a lush mix of old school techno, modern Berlin dub, and washed out dreamlike pop ambience, if you didn't know this was a soundtrack, you might just assume this was a regular Fehlmann release, which for listening purposes it might as well be. After some cool, late night skitter and thump, the record blossoms into some truly lovely dronemusic, prismatic and crystalline, before slipping back into some clipped stuttery dub and we're off.
The whole record is very warm, and soothing, dreamy, melodic, from the hushed pulse of "Speeding", definitely evocative of late night drives, to the almost Kraftwerk sounding "In The Wind II", lilting and lovely, but underpinned by a busy bit of warbly bass, to the hazy ethereal blurscape of "Von Oben", that eventually transforms into some minimal ambient techno, to the lush and warmly melodic closer "Schieben", which musically sounds like a time lapse photo of a city growing dark as the sun slips beneath the horizon, reminds us of Tim Hecker or Fennesz, so gorgeous.
The songs are balanced pretty evenly between beats and ambience, the two elements constantly blurring into one another, the result being a lush, easy flowing, drifting, dolorous electronic dreamscape.
MPEG Stream: "Alles, Immer"
MPEG Stream: "Falling Into Your Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "Wasser Im Fluss"
MPEG Stream: "Schwerelos"

FROST, BEN Theory Of Machines (Bedroom Community) cd 14.98
YES! BACK IN PRINT! We originally raved about this back in the summer of '08, it's been out of print for a while now but finally has been repressed, and is a little bit cheaper now too! If you picked up Ben Frost's By The Throat (an AQ Record Of The Week last fall) but missed this earlier, now's your chance to grab it!
Ben Frost was a total unknown to us until just a few months ago, when we heard his track on the recent Mary Anne Hobbs Evangeline mix cd, which was soooooo good, a huge surprise, a totally left field electronic drone jam stuck in the middle of a dubstep mix. Some of us were definitely thinking jam of the year, even though the record it was taken from had come out the year before, but holy crap, it totally stole the show, and we knew we had to hear more. So we tracked down the full length, but then, to be honest, became a little nervous before digging in, worried that we might discover that THAT track, the one we were already obsessed with and already had, might be the only good one on the record. Thankfully nothing could be further from the truth. And in fact, a few of the other tracks are now vying to knock that one out of the top spot. 
Theory Of Machines is a tough one to describe. It's electronic, but rife with strange glitches, with deep buzzing drones, blown out psych jams, mysterious murky minimal techno, all somehow woven into something totally cohesive, ultra dark and ominous, and so fucking kick ass. The record begins with the title track, the one from the Hobbs mix, but for those of you who might have missed that one, here's how we described it:
An extended slab of slow burning blurred dronemusic, that over the course of its 9 minutes builds from soft shimmer to dense crumbling Tim Hecker style smeared gauzy beauty, to thick caustic blown out soft noise, to an super distorted almost-trip-hop. The sound is immense and epic, and so gorgeous, wreathed in crackle and underpinned by buzzing downtuned lowend, streaked with soaring synths, the track's climax, all skittery beats beneath clouds of hiss and whir and crackle and fuzz is totally intense and gorgeous. 
Indeed! If lots of folks didn't already own the Hobbs mix, we would be declaring this worth owning for that track alone. But the follow up, "Stomp" is just as good. A shimmery minimal glitchscape, tons of space, swells of hissy buzz, and off kilter fractured beats, drifting in and then out, leaving long expanses of whispery hush, a blown out electric guitar, super processed, is smothered and muted into a stuttered decayed riff, struggling to let loose, the drums begin to pound, the guitar grinds out a noisy crunch, before retreating again, leaving just that soft almost techno skitter finally culminating in a super fuzz drenched industrial pound, a looped rhythm beneath that same damaged riff filtered through all sorts of static and short wave interference. It's so intense and weirdly ominous and sort of exhausting to listen to. So cinematic and fraught with tension. When the song ends you almost feel like you just crawled up from the sewers after being chased over rooftops, having the shit kicked out of you, leaping from a helicopter, saving the damsel in distress, and discovering that the city before you lay in ruins. So evocative and dramatic. 
The next track, while still dark and haunting, is a bit of a respite, a moody trawl through a glitched out low end drift, peppered with a mysterious sonar like single note high end pulse, a subtle shuffling beat hovering just below the surface, the hiss and static swirling and crunching while a distant melody floats in an expanse of soft shimmer. A quick two minute arrangement of big beats, grinding electric guitar, whirling ambient buzz offers up the record's most 'rock' moment before slipping into the final jam, which is not so much a jam as it is an extended drift, deep resonant tones, ring out, decaying ever so slowly, the various sonic ripples blending into one another, creating soft, shimmery minor key melodies, underpinned by deep pulsing bass, that you almost feel more than you hear, very tranquil and serene, eventually jazzy drums come in, melodies coalesce into something much more tight and arranged, becoming a sort of dreamy jazzy slowcore, softly dramatic, with what sounds like swoonsome strings and warm organ warble, a surprisingly dreamy and sun dappled finish to a record that is otherwise pretty caustic and dark. Which is precisely why it's so good. Totally unpredictable, a jarring mash up of rock elements all fucked up and processed, glitched out electronics, of dark brooding drone and cinematic ambience, all woven into a creepy, menacing, beautiful batch of sound.
MPEG Stream: "Theory Of Machines"
MPEG Stream: "Stomp"

GUARANTEED KATCH In A Sumptuous Brown Gravy (Equation) lp 9.98
This is a strange one, definitely not for everybody, but for those of you into freaked out, noisy, goofy, silly and stupid, whatthefuck weirdness, then Guaranteed Katch might hit the spot. Knowing that this stuff was recorded in Ohio with the guy from Sockeye, legendary fucked up lo-fi punk noise weirdos (who have a connection to aQ faves Breathilizor) should tell you enough about these "experimental noise rock" / "jazz core" to know whether to venture in, or run away screaming. Even we're not sure which to recommend. But that in itself, at least around here is its own sort of twisted recommendation.
Stumbling, noisy, chaotic, puerile, punky, jazzy, like the brain damaged little brother of Mr. Bungle, these guys mix and match, sludge and samba, noise and jazz, punk and pop, but this is not the Naked City sort of genre splicing, no, this is more a sort of ADD, kitchen sink, too much weed and a 4-track, channel surfing, ritalin overdosed, neighbor terrorizing, basement lo-fi noise punk jazzbo misfit metal, who-knows-what sort of dizzying DIY damage.
Not sure what else to say, be forewarned: only for the brave, or the ballsy, or the dim witted, preferably all three! And as with all Equation records, this one is packaged pretty sweetly, pressed on thick brown vinyl, with tons of inserts, a fancy full color jacket, bonus tracks not on the original cd releases, and LIMITED TO ONLY 333 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

NAKED ON THE VAGUE Heaps Of Nothing (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98
Heaps Of Nothing marks the return of mysterious (to us, anyway) Aussie noise rockers Naked On The Vague. The band mines similar territory as groups like Blank Dogs and Times New Viking, making Siltbreeze an ideal home for them. The songs are dark and grimy, sounding like something recorded in an underground bunker, or maybe a meat locker, but below this maelstrom sit some pretty catchy pop songs. The band knows how to overload their speakers for maximum saturation, with the guitars cutting through like razorblades and the warm organ buzzing out nice little melodies. Above it all are some cool monotone female vocals and an ever present caveman drum thump. The band doesn't really stray from this formula, nor would we want them too, as the album seems to thrive on all the negative energy here, a bit like Joy Division and Catherine Wheel meeting in a fist fight while strung out on black tar heroin. Noisy, a tad gothy, and with a nice garagey sheen. Cool stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Mysterious Oven"
MPEG Stream: "Wrong Room"
MPEG Stream: "Treading Water"

NAKED ON THE VAGUE Heaps Of Nothing (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
Heaps Of Nothing marks the return of mysterious (to us, anyway) Aussie noise rockers Naked On The Vague. The band mines similar territory as groups like Blank Dogs and Times New Viking, making Siltbreeze an ideal home for them. The songs are dark and grimy, sounding like something recorded in an underground bunker, or maybe a meat locker, but below this maelstrom sit some pretty catchy pop songs. The band knows how to overload their speakers for maximum saturation, with the guitars cutting through like razorblades and the warm organ buzzing out nice little melodies. Above it all are some cool monotone female vocals and an ever present caveman drum thump. The band doesn't really stray from this formula, nor would we want them too, as the album seems to thrive on all the negative energy here, a bit like Joy Division and Catherine Wheel meeting in a fist fight while strung out on black tar heroin. Noisy, a tad gothy, and with a nice garagey sheen. Cool stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Mysterious Oven"
MPEG Stream: "Wrong Room"
MPEG Stream: "Treading Water"

SECTION 25 Always Now ( Drastic Plastic) lp 24.00
NOW REISSUED ON VINYL!!!
Of all of the Factory Records gloom merchants, Section 25 has never really garnered much critical success, yet they won over enough allies (notably Joy Division's Ian Curtis and Bernard Sumner) that they were able to last as a self-sustaining project well into the late-'80s when they called it quits. Formed in Blackpool by brothers Larry and Vincent Cassidy in 1979, Section 25 was marked by skeletal instrumentation with various emotive patinas that began as post-punk grimness and steadily lightened to a glowing prototype of acid-house (complete with 303 percolations!). Always Now, the group's debut recording released on Factory in 1981, falls under the latter camp of lead-colored, death-disco grooves propelled by a spry, if monochromatic rhythm section and jagged swatches of guitar drone. While many of the Factory bands (Crispy Ambulance, Names, Tunnelvision, The Wake, etc.) had been slagged as Joy Division clones, Section 25 admitted their allegiance to Public Image Limited's zenith Metal Box even though much of the material from their first eps were recorded months before Lydon and crew went into the studio. The differences between PiL and SXXV (a nifty shorthand mentioned in their biography by James Nice) are of course noticeable; with Lydon still striving for Situationist revolt through great art and the Cassidy brothers attempting to emote the bleakness of Northern England by hollowing sound as a illusory shadow of music. In essence, Section 25's Always Now was an isolationist model for living. It was effective in its bleakness and brilliant in its poetry.
Packaged in a nice replication of the original LP sleeve with its fold over cover. One of many pieces of design that probably cost Factory Records more money than it brought in back in the day.

SHINDIG! #16 magazine 9.98
Another issue of this rad retro mag from England, featuring Paul Revere and the Raiders on the cover, along with cult power poppers Shoes, psychsters Sun Dial, proggers Caravan, and plenty more... The Stooges, Alex Chilton, The Lemon Drops, The Yardbirds, Granny's Intentions, all that and more this ish.

SIX FINGER SATELLITE A Good Year For Hardness (Anchor Brain) cd-r 12.98
NOW RELEASED AS A CD-R!! (Why not an actual cd, we don't know, weird.) This came out on vinyl last year, when we said...
2009 has been quite a year for noise rock legends Six Finger Satellite. First, long lost recordings from 2001 surfaced as the album Half Control. Now, a few months later, the recently reformed band has returned with its first new studio record, and goddamn it's good to have them back. Sad to say though, but the general response (EXCLUDING this one, of course) seems to be overwhelmingly lukewarm, and even all out negative in some cases. Even around here, the first thing people mention is how this doesn't sound like the Six Finger Satellite of old. Perhaps there is some truth to that claim (though why should it necessarily matter?), but repeated listens really dispel it. It's just that current 6FS is a little less focused on experimental noisiness and more into full on rocking, something they've always done well. It's funny how A Good Year For Hardness is pretty damn bluesy. Maybe some folks just don't dig it, but the big 6FS fans around these parts are definitely pleased. After all, it's not like this shit sounds like typical white boy blues rock that you hear at the county fair. Far from it. This is coked out mutant blues being beamed in from outer space. Mean, depraved blues made by guys who are old enough to step into this territory without embarrassment or any desire to be seen as cool in the eyes of today's indie rockers, who they probably don't even acknowledge. This band has always been ridiculously tight, and the new lineup is no exception. The songs exude a grooving, almost classic rock vibe with warm bass, cool backbeats, and muscular riffage. But then there is singer J. Ryan's trademark vocals, all pissed off and pretty scary, every once in a while punctuated by crazy distorted James Brown-styled screams. And yes, the synths are there, they are just used a bit more sparingly, but to awesome effect. Rarely is the band "quirky" here, but every once in a while, the synths just make everything really weird and almost funny if they weren't within such disturbing songs. A lot of the songs venture into dark, brooding psychedelic territory, almost like some jagged post-punk Doors (some may disagree with this, but whatever). This is probably best demonstrated on closing number "Rise," driven by a warm bass throb and a steady beat with occasional bursts of heavily vibratoed guitar chords. Throughout it, the creepy synths pop up here and there as the barely controlled intensity of non-sceaming J. Ryan scares you just a little more. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Hot Food"
MPEG Stream: "Rome From Home"
MPEG Stream: "Rise"

SPACEMEN 3 Performance (Fire Records) cd 15.98
Nice, now we have these essential albums available on cd too!
Performance was released to fulfill contractual obligations with Glass Records, sort of an easy solution before moving on to bigger things. Still, it comes completely recommended, as it captures Spacemen 3 in a live setting on the Perfect Prescription tour, and there's no reason to complain about that. Apparently they weren't exactly pleased with this particular set, and the drums are surprisingly low in the mix, but they tear things up just as you would expect, with the molten guitars taking over everything everywhere. Recorded in 1988 in a setting one could imagine the band being quite comfortable in - Amsterdam - Performance is a fiery run through some early classics, and it will no doubt give you further insight into Spacemen 3's revolutionary approach. Goddamn, there sure aren't any bands like this these days.
MPEG Stream: "Mary Anne"
MPEG Stream: "Take Me To The Other Side"
MPEG Stream: "Starship"

SPACEMEN 3 Sound of Confusion (Fire Records) cd 15.98
Nice, now we have these essential albums available on cd too!
Sound Of Confusion was the band's first statement after building up a repertoire for a few years. It's their most aggressive record and even though the future was full of surprises, it is the album that set the template for how most people will describe Spacemen 3: loud droning guitars, a minimal but intensely psychedelic approach that is almost violent in its focus, and of course, an inseparable cloak of drugginess. Lyrically, you just can't fuck with songs like "Losing Touch With My Mind" and their mindblowing cover of Juicy Lucy's "Just One Time", retitled as "Mary Anne". The album contains three originals, and three amazing covers that manage to become originals, and a sort of original/cover hybrid. Everything Spacemen 3 did is worth your time, they're definitely an appropriate band to get obsessed with, so why not start at the beginning?
MPEG Stream: "Losing Touch With My Mind"
MPEG Stream: "Hey Man"
MPEG Stream: "Mary Anne"

SPACEMEN 3 The Perfect Prescription (Fire Records) cd 15.98
Nice, now we have these essential albums available on cd too!
For some people, it's Playing With Fire. For others, probably most, it's The Perfect Prescription, Spacemen 3's ultimate statement and the record where everything was working together in absolute harmony. The record cover itself seems to completely capture the essence of Spacemen 3, with Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce holding their guitars, eyes closed, no doubt concentrating deeply on the contents of their minds. It seems fair to call this their pinnacle, as things would become increasingly more split between the group's mainmen from this point on. The Perfect Prescription is one of those rare albums that is completely beyond criticism. Don't even try. Beginning in classic Spacemen 3 style with "Take Me To The Other Side", the album subsequently incorporates a wide array of influences and styles, from soul to gospel to country, making it clear that, even though they did it better than anyone else, there was far more to this band than just walls of fuzzed out drones. Even with this diversity, everything on the album belongs to Spacemen 3 - especially their cover of the Red Crayola's "Transparent Radiation" - and they were able to harness all their powers into something which is, yeah, pretty fuckin' definitive. We could go on forever, but we won't.
MPEG Stream: "Take Me To The Other Side"
MPEG Stream: "Walkin' With Jesus"
MPEG Stream: "Feel So Good"

SPIN May 2010 magazine 4.99
25th anniversary issue, featuring "the 100 moments that rocked our world", kinda cool actually, from "#18: Surfer Rosa invents the '90s sound" to "#54: Paw and the year Scrunge broke" to "#83: the White Stripe's sister act is exposed"... brings you back, doesn't it? And all along the top of each page, in tiny type, are catch-phrases and subgenres of music, like C86 and twee and black metal, with suggested listening... A nice crash course in alt.culture over the last quarter century (!), informative for the young 'uns and nostalgic memory-stirrers for the older folk...

VHS HEAD Video Club (Skam) cd 9.98
This sounds like electronic music made by someone who spent way too much of their life working in a video rental shop. And in fact, that just might be the case. Released on the UK label Skam in one of those solid black jewel cases they like to use, this 19 minute disc is a fairly entertaining ADD episode of sample-based electronica, a collage of music and sounds apparently almost exclusively sourced from VHS tapes of cheesy '80s movies, we're guessing many of them the straight-to-video variety. It's a jagged, jaunty cavalcade of chopped-up sounds, chaotic and glitchy, funky too, almost like a more lo-fi Justice, VHS Head splicing together synth themes, electro-beats, and all too serious sounding voiceovers (the first words you hear are "Matthew Modine"). The five tracks here aren't exactly fully realized "songs" (this ain't DJ Shadow digging through the old tapes at your local video emporium), it's more kinetically random sounding than that, but definitely fun stuff, and even comes with a "video club" membership card. Remember, be kind, rewind.
MPEG Stream: "Video Club"
MPEG Stream: "Kincaid"

WALKER, PETER Long Lost Tapes (Vinyl Lovers) lp 25.00
NOW ON VINYL!! Sorta expensive, but it IS a cool record...
You may or may not have noticed that everytime we review anything by Peter Walker, it's always sort of in the tone of yeah, we like the new stuff, but come on, really, please reissue the old stuff!!! And while his two amazing records on Vanguard in the sixties remain bafflingly un-reissued, we can finally give you a taste of what we've been jonesing for. These recently unearthed recordings from 1970 were Walker's last recorded effort before facing "years of obscurity". Gathering a group of session players in Woodstock, NY at the home of Levon Helm (while Helm was away), Walker recorded these loose raga jams with tablas, flute, clarinet, bells, bass, and trap drums. These long-form meditative grooves are probably the best recorded insight into the sounds of Timothy Leary's Celebration gatherings at Harvard of which Walker was the musical director. Spiraling and trance-inducing, built on Eastern modal progressions, with flute and clarinet weaving throughout. Really beautiful! We're very thankful that the label head of Tompkins Square, Josh Rosenthal, managed to convince Walker to dig through his storage vaults and unearth this lost session. We want more!
MPEG Stream: "City Pulse"
MPEG Stream: "102nd Psalm"
MPEG Stream: "Mellowtime"

WIRE, THE #315 May 2010 magazine 9.98
Latest issue of this British modern music mag, chock full of goodies as always, on the cover, NY electronic weirdos Excepter, while inside: an Invisible Jukebox with Kid Creole aka August Darnell, John Weise writes about fellow noisemakers the Haters, Aaron Dilloway writes about Drunks With Guns, William S. Burroughs, Chicago house music duo Virgo, nu-glo-fi outfit Toro Y Moi, rapper Lil B, German label Jahtari, Global Ear on Vancouver, filmmaker Craig Baldwin, saxophonist Daniel Carter, experimental music in Seoul Korea, and pages and pages of reviews of records, cds, 7"s, lps, tapes, films, performances, concerts, installations and more more more. Finishing off with a final page Epiphany about robotic music and psychedelics...





----*
----* Compilations :
----*

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

----*
----* DVD's :
----*

ANGER, KENNETH The Complete Magick Lantern Cycle (Fantoma) 2dvd 40.00
Cult cinema buffs might recall The Films Of Kenneth Anger: Volume One and Volume Two, a pair of dvds that we carried a couple of years ago. They were amazing and highly coveted documents of the filmmaker's works, not only because his films had been so elusive (and when they were found the prints and VHS dubs had seen better days), but also because Fantoma did such a beautiful job with the presentation (dvd digipak with slipcover and 48-page booklet). Feel free to check out our reviews for them if you want to "read and weep". Sadly their lifespan was fleeting, and those dvds are both now out of print. However, all is not lost because Fantoma has just released a new double dvd set to take their place. It compiles Anger's Magik Lantern Cycle... or in other words, his films circa 1947 through 1981: Fireworks, Puce Moment, Rabbit's Moon (both the 1950 and 1979 versions), Eaux D'Artifice, Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, Invocation Of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising. Plus the extras include the Rabbit's Moon outtakes that were included on Volume One, and Anger's 2002 film about Aleister Crowley's art among other goodies. While you don't get the deluxe packaging of its predecessors, you do get all of the restored films in one spot at a nicer price!


----*
----* 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!

2+2=5, THE "Into The Future..." (Spittle) cd 21.00
ADVERTS, THE "Crossing The Red Sea With..." (The Devils Own Jukebox) cd 15.98
AGENCEMENT "Early Works 1983-1986" (Edition Omega Point) cd 27.00
ANDREW W.K. "Close Calls With Brick Walls / Mother of Mankind" (Steev Mike) 2cd 17.98
ARCHITEUTHIS REX "Dark As The Sea" (Utech) cd 14.98
BON NO KUBO "s/t" (PSF) cd 16.98
BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY & THE CAIRO GANG "The Wonder Show Of The World" (Palace / Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/17.98
BRILLIANT COLORS "Never Mine" (Slumberland) 7" 4.50
BRILLIANT COLORS "Walk Into The World" (Make-A-Mess) 7" 7.98
CENTURIONS GHOST "Blessed & Cursed In Equal Measure" (Church Within) cd 16.98
CHAUVEAU, SYLVAIN "Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)" (Type) lp 19.98
CORNERSHOP "Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast" cd 15.98
DILWORTH, DIANNA "Mellodrama - The Mellotron Movie" (Bazillion Points) dvd 24.00
DOO SOO, KIM "Evening River" (PSF) 2cd 17.98
DRUNKDRIVER "Born Pregnant" (Parts Unknown) lp 13.98
EDDIE MARCON "Shining On Graveposts" (Preservation) cd 16.98
ENDTABLES, THE "s/t" (Drag City) cd 14.98
EQUATICS, THE "Doin It!!!!" (Now Again) cd 17.98
ERICKSON, ROKY WITH OKKERVIL RIVER "True Love Cast Out All Evil" (Anti) lp 16.98
ESTES, SLEEPY JOHN "I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More" (Monk) 2lp 30.00
FAY, BILL "Still Some Light" (Coptic Cat) 2cd 15.98
FINNTROLL "Nifelvind" (Century Media) cd 13.98
FLUXION "Perfused" (echocord) cd 16.98
FNS "s/t" (Miasmah) lp 19.98
FROG EYES "Paul's Tomb: A triumph" (Dead Oceans) cd/2lp 14.98/21.00
GRAVEYARDS "Cinders" (Sergent Massacre) lp 24.00
HEATWAVE, THE "Honeymelon Teapot" (Grey Past) cd 26.00
INDIAN JEWELRY "Totaled" (We Are Free) cd 15.98
JAN DUKES DE GREY "Strange Terrain" (Wounded Nurse) cd 17.98
JARNOW, AL "Celestial Navigations: The Short Films Of Al Jarnow" (Numero) dvd 28.00
JUCIFER "Throned In Blood" (Alternative Tentacles) lp 13.98
KIRK, RAHSAAN ROLAND "Blacknuss" (Atlantic) lp 12.98
LALI PUNA "Our Inventions" (Morr) cd 15.98
LANDSCAPE "From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars .... To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus" (Cherry Red) cd 16.98
LEMONADE "Pure Moods" (True Panther Sounds) 12" 8.98
LITTLE RICHARD "Here's Little Richard" (Doxy) lp 24.00
LUMERIANS "Burning Mirror" (Rococo Records) 7" 10.98
MAX PLANCK "Kill The Pain" (Buried By Time And Dust) lp 32.00
MCGUIRE, MARK "Tidings / Amethyst Waves" (Weird Forest) cd 13.98
MIRACLES CLUB "Light Of Love" (Ecstacy) 12" 12.98
MOUNT EERIE "Fog Movies Live" (P.W. Elverum & Sun) dvd-r 15.98
NABAY, AHMED JANKA "Bubu King" (True Panther Sounds) 12" 9.98
NEON "Oscillator" (Spittle) cd 21.00
NILSEN, BJ "Defeat" (Ideal) cassette 10.98
NOISE NOMADS "s/t" (Ultra Eczema) lp 30.00
OTTO; OR, UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE "OST" (Crippled Dick Hot Wax!) cd 17.98
PUFFY AEROLAS "In The Army 1981" (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
RAMASES "Glass Top Coffin" (Esoteric) cd 23.00
SAFT, JAMIE "Black Shabbis" (Tzadik) cd 16.98
SATAN'S ALMIGHTY PENIS "Pulsing Feral Spire" (Pagan Flames Productions) cd 9.98
SCATTERED ORDER "Prat Culture Plus" (Klanggalerie) cd 21.00
SERPENT'S KNIGHT "Silent Knight...Of Myth And Destiny" 2cd 17.98
SIMONE, NINA "Silk & Soul" (RCA) lp 12.98
SONODA, SATOSHI "Everything Lies Beyond The Boring Summer Grasses: Early Works Of Satoshi Sonoda 1977->1978 Memories Of Yashushi Ozawa" (PSF) cd 16.98
SPECIAL INTERESTS "Volume 2" magazine 3.98
STARKEY "Ear Drums And Black Holes" (Planet Mu) cd
STEREO TOTAL "Baby Ouh!" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 16.98
SWEET APPLE "Love & Desperation" (Tee Pee) cd 14.98
T++ "Wireless" (Honest Jons) 2x12" 22.00
TAINT "All Bees To The Sea" (Destructure) cd/lp 16.98/22.00
TANGERINE DREAM "Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares" (Lilith) lp 26.00
TANLINES "Settings" (True Panther Sounds) 12" 9.98
TEKHTON "Alluvial" (Church Within) cd 16.98
TEMPLE OF THE MAGGOT "How To Perform A Human Sacrifice" (Rusty Axe) cd 9.98
THE SKULL DEFEKTS & THE SONS OF GOD "Received In Studio Dental, Gothenburg" (Utech) cd 14.98
THOU "Baton Rouge, You Have Much To Answer For" (Robotic Empire) lp 16.98
TRANS AM "Thing" (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
TRANS AM "What Day Is It Tonight: Live 1993-2007" (Thrill Jockey) 2lp 21.00
URAL UMBO "s/t" (Utech) cd 14.98
V/A "Milano New Wave 1980-83" (Spittle) cd 21.00
V/A "Neonbeats" (Klanggalerie) 2cd 25.00
VAINIO, MIKA / KOUHEI MATSUNAGA / SEAN BOOTH "3. Telepathics Meh In-Sect Connection" (Important Records) cd 14.98
VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR "Time Vaults" (Abstract Sounds) cd 13.98
VANGELIS "Who Killed The Dragon? (The BYG Sessions)" (Finders Keepers) 12" 14.98
VELASQUEZ, ANIBAL Y SU CONJUNTO "Mambo Loco" (Analog Africa) cd/lp 19.98/21.00
WARLOGHE "The First Possession" (Northern Heritage) cd 16.98
WARLOGHE "Womb Of Pestilence" (Northern Heritage) cd 16.98
WETDOG "Enterprise Reversal" (Angular Recordings) lp 30.00
WILKINS, ROBERT "That's No Way To Get Along" (Monk) lp 22.00
WRIGHT, MILTON "Spaced" (Jazzman) cd 17.98
YRSEL "Requiem For The 3 Kharities" (Aurora Borealis) cd 17.98

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Please place your order via our website.

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

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

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


NEW DOMESTIC SHIPPING RATES :
--------------------------------
STANDARD (DEFAULT):

    1 CD (or cassette or DVD or 7") : $2.95 USPS First Class                                                                                               

    1-3 CD (or cassette or DVD, but not 7"s) : $4.95 USPS Priority Mail via flat rate box                                                          

    4+ CD, or any package with LPs in it (also books & box sets), any number of items: $9.95 UPS Ground    
     
Also, please note that UPS will not ship to PO Boxes, so those packages that would have gone UPS will be sent USPS Priority for $9.95,
or you may select  USPS Media Mail instead, see below.

UPS shipments are automatically trackable and include insurance up to $100.        
USPS shipments (First Class, Priority, and Media Mail) are all automatically trackable.

OR, you can choose instead to have your order shipped by MEDIA MAIL:

    1-3 items (i.e. w/ LPs) : $5.95 USPS Media Mail 

    4+ items : $7.95 USPS Media Mail


Special shipping needs (e.g. UPS Next Day) are also doable, just ask for a quote.
Also, if you are just getting 1 item that would therefore ship USPS First Class, and for some reason you would rather have it sent Priority, then you could say so in the comments field. (Note: however, 7"s are too big for the Priority flat rate boxes.)

NOTE: UPS permits their drivers to determine if there is a secure location at the shipping address to leave the package if no one is there to receive it (unfortunately some are less cautious than others!). If you'd prefer that they not do this or if you have specific instructions for the driver, please include a note in the comments section of your weborder form.

PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK SHIPPING ADDRESSES BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR ORDER. Aquarius is not responsible for orders delayed or returned due to incorrect or undeliverable addresses provided by the customer. Returned packages will be reshipped at the customer's expense.

Shipping rates are charged per shipment.


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 to us now
Pharaoh Overlord "Live In Suomi Finland" lp version on Klangbad
Charanjit Singh "Synthesizing - Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat" 2lp
Magus Pelander (of Witchcraft) "s/t" cdep/12" on Svart

----} May 11th
Cocorosie "Grey Oceans" cd/lp on Sub Pop
Male Bonding "Nothing Hurts" cd/lp on Sub Pop
The National "High Violet" cd/lp on 4AD
Japandroids "No Singles" cd/lp on Polyvinyl
Braindrill "Quantum Catastrophe" cd on Metal Blade
Misery Index "Heirs To Thievery" cd on Relapse
UNKLE "Where Did The Night Fall" cd
Nightbringer "Apocalypse Sun" cd on Anja

----} May 18th
Harvey Milk "Small Turn Of Human Kindness" cd on Hydra Head
Daniel Higgs "Say God" 2cd/2lp on Thrill Jockey
Simon Scott "Traba" mini-lp on Immune
Band Of Horses "Infinite Arms" cd on Sony
Black Keys "Brothers" cd
Devo "New Traditionalists" cd reissue
LCD Soundsystem "This Is Happening" cd on Virgin

----} May 25th
Tobacco "Maniac Meat" cd
Master Musicians Of Bukkake "Totem Two" cd/lp on Conspiracy
Danzig "Deth Red Sabaoth" cd on The End
Lightning Swords Of Death "Extra Dimensional Wounds" cd on Metal Blade
Common "Go: Common Classics" cd on Geffen

----} also soon
Souvenirs Young America "The Name Of The Snake" cd on Init
Limonious "House Of Usher" lp on Flogsta Danshall
Aun "VII" cd on Important
Pianos Became The Teeth "Old Pride" cd on Top Shelf

----} June 8th
Watain "Lawless Darkness" cd/lp on Season Of Mist
Emeralds "Does It Look Like I'm Here?" cd on Editions Mego

----} June 15th
Oval "Oh" 12" on Thrill Jockey
Jack Rose with D. Charles Speer & the Helix "Ragged and Right" cdep/
12" on Thrill Jockey

----} also in June
Xasthur "Portal" vinyl on Hydra Head

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later or whenever
Alps "Le Voyage" cd/lp on Type
Ratto Ja Lehtisalo "UU Mama" cd on Ektro
Thor "Only The Strong" cd reissue on Ektro
Dara Puspita "1966-1968" cd on Sublime Frequencies
v/a "Ecstatic Music Of The Jemaa El Fna" lp on Sublime Frequencies
Expo 70 "Sonic Messenger" and "Black Ohms" vinyl editions on Beta-lactam Ring
Wet Dog "Frauhaus" lp on Captured Tracks
Jean-Pierre Massiera "Horrific Child" cd/lp reissue on Finders Keepers
The Sticks "s/t" cd/2x7" on Upset The Rhythm
Harvey Milk "s/t" vinyl edition on Hydra Head
Torche / Boris "Chapter Ahead Being Fake" split 10" on Hydra Head
Pyramids w/ Nadja "Lustmord / Ulver Remix" 12" on Hydra Head
Grasslung "Feeding Your Horizon" on Root Strata
Jim Haynes "Rocks. Hills. Plains" on Root Strata
Nurse With Wound "Skrag" cd on United Dairies
Jonathan Coleclough "Flutter" 2cd-r on October
Johann Johannsson "And In The Endless Pause" lp on Type
Jay Reatard "Blood Visions" lp on Fat Possum
King Khan & BBQ Show "Invisible Girl" cd/lp on In The Red
Felix "You Are The One I Pick" cd on Kranky
Papercuts "Where Are The Waves" cd on Gnomonsong
The Roots "How I Got Over" cd
Max Richter "Memory House" cd
Ocean "Pantheon Of The Lesser" 2lp version on Important
Grumbling Fur (Guapo + Jussi from Circle) cd
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
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
Rodan TBA cd/lp on Quarterstick
Deftones "Eros" cd on Warner Bros.
Swell Maps "International Rescue" clear vinyl LP reissue on Alive
Loss "Despond" cd on Profound Lore
Boduf Songs "Strait Gait" cd/lp on Latitudes
Current 93 "BS:SO" cd on Coptic Cat
The Fall "Future Our Clutter"
Panda Bear "Tomboy"
Sloath s/t lp on Riot Season
Ken Camden "Lethargy & Repercussions" cd/lp on Kranky

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BASSHATERS & LOACHFILLET
ANTOINE CHESSEX
GILLES AUBRY
VALERIO TRICOLI
JIM HAYNES
RIVERVERB
ATROPHY MOTOR

TERMINAL  9PM - 3957 SAN LEANDRO ST  - OAKLAND CALIFORNIA

_______________________________________________________________________
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KUSF co-presents the Friends of KUSF benefit
featuring

KHI DARAG
CHARMING HOSTESS
MITCH MARCUS QUINTET

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 9:00pm
at Bottom of the Hill

Buy tickets:
http://www.stubmatic.com/bottomofthehill/event/4546

Khi Darag: Inspired by Persian classical, late 1960s acid garage psychedelia and surf mayhem, traditional Armenian and Jewish dances, Cambodian street music, 1970s Prog and Goth Art rock, and Bollywood soundtracks, SF Bay Area-based ensemble Khi Darag walks the line between the modern and archaic. Employing a dizzying array of instrumentation, the group features musicians from Lord Loves a Working Man, Charming Hostess, Aphrodesia, Kugelplex, Rube Waddell, Polkacide, SF Mime Troupe, Eric McFadden Trio, Sweet Snacks, and the Japonize Elephants, and has played shows with Fred Frith and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

Charming Hostess: Charming Hostess is a whirl of eerie harmony, hot rhythm and radical braininess. Their music explores the intersection of text and the sounding body-- complex ideas expressed physically, based on voice and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. They live where diasporas collide, incorporating piyyutim and Pygmy counterpoint, doo-wop and niggunim, work songs and Torah chanting. Charming Hostess is now working on The Bowls Project, a performance installation based on sex, magic and the apocalypse in Babylonian Jewish amulets. Incantation bowls were inscribed with a householder¹s secrets and desires, then buried under the home. The texts speak of mysticism and sex; angels and demons; and the trials and joys of love and sex. Especially audible are the voices of women--their work, hopes, and dreams. The Bowls Project offers a visceral, personal connection to daily life 1500 years ago in the region now known as Iraq. Musical context for The Bowls Project is drawn from the female body, the rich traditions of the Babylonian Jews, and other diaspora sources, both Jewish and African. Jewlia Eisenberg founded Charming Hostess to explore the relationship between text and the sounding body and The Bowls Project continues this endeavor. Current & past Hostesses include members of Red Pocket, Khi Darag, Idiot Flesh, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, 2 Foot Yard, Rupa & the April Fishes, Nanos Operetta, Lord Loves a Workingman, The Fuxedos, & more...

Mitch Marcus Quintet: From post-apocalyptic jazz to scintillating trance hypnotism, the Mitch Marcus Quintet delivers a unique brand of original music, taking you through a labyrinth of ever-shifting textures...and even some surf rock! Comprised of some of the SF Bay Area's finest musicians, current and former members of the group have played in many other groups in and around the SF Bay Area including The Japonize Elephants, Donovan, Good For Cows, Kipple, The Nathan Clevenger Group, The Mitch Marcus Quintet + 13, Stanley, Aphrodesia, The Marcus Shelby Orchestra, MegaMousse, The Supplicants, The Matt Small Chamber Ensemble, Nevada, Lefty, Shotgun Wedding Hip-Hop Symphony, Realistic Orchestra, Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, Convulsant Trio, The Secret Chiefs 3, Loose Wig, Ted Brinkley's Jazz Argosy, Ben Adams Quintet, Helsinki Skylight, Detroit Grand Pubah's, and more...

Cost : $12 (21+)

Friends of KUSF: http://fokusf.org
Khi Darag: http://khidarag.com
Charming Hostess: http://charminghostess.us
Mitch Marcus Quintet: http://www.mitchmarcusmusic.com
KUSF: http://kusf.org
Bottom of the Hill: http://www.bottomofthehill.com
Amoeba Music: http://www.amoeba.com
Aquarius Records: http://www.aquariusrecords.org

Friends of KUSF is a support organization for the station, directing funds to repair and replacement of aging equipment and more. Thanks to everyone--performers, attendees, Bottom of the Hill, Amoeba Music, and Aquarius Records--for your support.

The Bowls Project, curated by Jewlia Eisenberg, begins its run Sunday, 7/11 at Yerba Buena Center.

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickSallyJonandAndrew