AUN VII (Important) cd 14.98
Part of the joy of music for us is seeing various genres stretched to the breaking point, testing the creativity of the music maker, whether it's electronic, black metal, indie rock, whatever, it's what really keeps music exciting for us. Not that we don't love us some buzzing blasting grim black metal, or perfectly poppy indie jangle, but sometimes all it takes is that black metal being twisted up a bit, or that pop music tweaked a little, or heck even better, combining the two into some impossible grim black indie jangle, to really get us going.
One genre that seems to offer limitless possibilities is DOOM. We've had funereal doom, true doom, black doom, doom folk, doom pop, and within those various permutations, there are still more subsets, ultra doom can be abrasive and harsh and heavy, or washed out and dreamy, doomgaze anyone? But we have to say, we pretty much love most doom, all the various shades of slow and low, doooooooom, the more o's the merrier, the slower, the heavier, the prettier, the more abstract and minimal the better. Which brings us to Quebec's Aun, who to some ears might indeed sound like doom, and heck, certain elements of Aun's sound are most definitely doom-like, but Aun is a perfect example of the above mentioned experimentation. The tropes that define the sound remain the building blocks, but are approached as something malleable, able to be twisted into any shape, and it seems the shape Aun has chosen is something closer to the glacial crawl of SUNNO))) and the metalgaze drift of Nadja. Which is a pretty killer combo, especially in this case, as Aun manages to make that sound, sound pretty unique.
The opening track of this new album is a slow motion sea of heaving black swells, downtuned and thunderous, but blurred into gritty streaks of low end, wreathed in glitch and crackle, underpinned by sheets of coruscating feedback, buried in the mix, offering a subtly melodic counterpoint to the mesmerizing glacial pulse of the thick crumbling near static riffage. The result is a totally mesmerizing, almost raga like doomdrone, that manages to be both tranquil and crushing, dreamlike and HEAVY AS FUCK.
The second track begins hushed and shimmery, minimal and ethereal, while way off in the distance a churning riff begins to pulse and throb, eventually emerging as a thick pulsing wall of crumbling sound, very much like old Earth, but like the track before, crackling with electricity, and then the drums come in (courtesy of none other than Voivod's Away, wow!!), but not like a normal beat, they sputter and skitter, little explosive bursts, not fully kicking in, just peppering the black expanse with machine gun bursts of percussive crunch, before eventually locking into a rhythm, the track becoming a strange almost krautrocky groove, while all around those sheets of guitar undulate wrapping their blackened tendrils around the beat, shades of Aluk Todolo.
The next track is more of the same, that motorik drum beat, but this time the guitars are muted and smoothed out, unfurling haunting melodies beneath the drums, epic and cinematic, and the cool thing is it never gets properly heavy, the guitars remain washed out and minimal, a little spacey, a little psychedelic, the production almost sounds like Xasthur, weirdly lo-fi and lush at the same time, before the track sort of splinters to pieces at the end, allowing the drums to sort of drift off, while those churning guitar drones slowly rev down.
The 'final' track (more on that in a second), returns to the incendiary guitar crunch of the first few tracks, spreading out another dronescape of warm buzz, glimmering glitch, and blown out blurred melody, all hazy and super distorted, there's a brief bit of drum driven dirgery, before the track settles into some softly crackling shimmer.
After the 'final track', there appears to be an unlisted extra track, sounds like maybe it could be live, hardly matters, it fits perfectly with the rest of the record, another expansive buzzscape, all layered ever shifting drones, truncated melodies, strange textures and timbres and overtones, the most abstract of the bunch, a swirling shimmering blackened drift, still heaving and heavy, but way more ethereal and space-y, the perfect final movement for sure.
Equally recommended for doomlords, dronelords, and pretty much anyone who likes it slow, low, mysterious, heavy and BEAUTIFUL.
MPEG Stream: "Drainbow"
MPEG Stream: "Broken Hill"

DARA PUSPITA 1966-1968 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
We first heard about this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group when three of their records were reissued on Chicago label PlusTapes, we all went nuts for them, as did you, we couldn't keep them in stock, but sadly they were crazy limited. Even at the time, and even on tape, we wanted to make one or all of them Records Of The Week, but they disappeared before we had a chance. But now Sublime Frequencies swoops in and saves the day, reissuing on a compact disc all three of the Dara Puspita's records proper (all the stuff on the cassettes, and then some!). But what's so great about these ladies? Read on....
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live (Koes Bersaudara in particular, whose Sublime Frequencies disc we reviewed a few lists back - Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara had very similar histories, their careers often directly influenced by each other, the whole story to be found in the copious liner notes). Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform, the very songs that got Koes Bersaudara jailed!) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shine on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Just listen to the sound samples. You'll be hooked in no time.
Lavish packaging, a full color six panel digipak, with tons of photos, a huge booklet of liner notes, with the story of the band, of the recording, more about the state of Indonesia at the time, the producer and more more more. So great!!
MPEG Stream: "Lonely Street"
MPEG Stream: "Bertamasja"
MPEG Stream: "Mari Mari"
MPEG Stream: "Minggu Jang Lalu"
MPEG Stream: "A Go-Go"
MPEG Stream: "To Love Somebody"
MPEG Stream: "Aku Tetap"

SEGALL, TY Melted (Goner) cd 11.98
While Ty Segall may be as prolific as they come when it comes to 7"s, splits, and collaborations, a new one seemingly coming out monthly, weekly even, faster then we can keep up with, there's still something so special, thought out, and so damn satisfying about Segall's full-length albums proper.
Especially this new one. No longer can you just reduce a summarization of his music as 'way blown out lo-fi garage radness.' Although that's definitely some of it, but Segall has begun to widen his scope in such thrilling ways. Melted finds his sound more punchy, a dizzying mix of psychedelic, pop, surf, gritty rhythm & blues, punk rock, in fact the album opener is a perfect example, it begins all fey and jangly, but then the guitar kicks in, surprisingly heavy and crunchy, swaggery and sorta bad ass, big loud drums, and then suddenly, a super tripped out squiggly synth solo! The second track too, begins all acoustic guitar, until in comes a groovy walking bassline, and it's total sixties jangle pop that finishes off in a flurry of fluttery flutes....
From the very beginning of the record, the whole thing takes such awesome twists and turns, getting all tweaked and super far out right when you might expect straight ahead jangle, and getting all poppy and heartfelt, right when it sounds like it was gonna explode into chaotic whatthefuckness. Alongside influences like The Gories, Thee Headcoats, and The Sonics, you can even hear some Led Zeppelin, albeit stripped of its excess and indulgence and boiled down to its primitive and riveting core, kind of what it felt like when we heard The White Stripes for the first time. Not reinventing the wheel for sure, but instead pressing the pedal to the metal and spinning all four wheels in a frenzy of unfettered creativity, OWNING these sounds, making totally original music out of borrowed bits, and blowing away so many of the bands around him in the process. Along with that intensity, Segall has a crazy knack for incredible hooks, deep rooted melodies, crafting perfect pop all wrapped up in fiery, fierce rocking crunch.
"Girlfriend" may just be song of the year! It's impossible not to listen to it over and over from the beginning with Ty growling and then it bursting into one of the most catchy, sweat inducing, body shaking songs ever, the sort of jam you would want to put on every mix tape you make. As always, Segall writes and plays just about every note of music himself on the album, but there are some nice moments where his friends lend a helping hand, like John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees laying down some FLUTE on "Caesar", and Mike Donovan from Sic Alps adding vox, as well as some guitar on a couple tracks, including the absurd blown out brilliance of the simple yet so totally addictive "Mike D's Coke". And on tracks like "Imaginary Person" it's like this awesome blend of early Adam & The Ants crossed with The Misfits for an all out sonic showdown.
Segall has a found a way to bring together primitive and powerful stripped down Bo Diddley-like energy and a very honest and sincere emotional undercurrent in his songs that convinces us that once this latest lo-fi garage revival dies down, Segall will still be making engaging, moving and truthful sounds. He is for real!
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we've got this on a special $2 off sale deal, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 7/4/10!
MPEG Stream: "Finger"
MPEG Stream: "Ceasar"
MPEG Stream: "Girlfriend"
MPEG Stream: "Mike D's Coke"

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AGONHYMN Doom Jazz (Heathen Skulls) cd 13.98
Fair warning, we only have a dozen copies of this, and given our druthers, we probably would have had 3 times as many, in fact at one point we wanted to make this a Record Of The Week, but were never able to get enough, and now it's out of print, so these are the VERY last copies of the debut record from this heavy Aussie duo, whose sound, as the record title might suggest, is definitely doomy, not so much jazzy, but most definitely HEAVY.
Beginning with a melodic little ditty all wheezing accordion and minor key guitar, very Parisian sounding weirdly enough, but it doesn't take long before the band lurches into action, and by action, we mean chugging, slow motion dirgery, super abstract and dynamic, a churning ultra math doom, stop / start, with occasional bursts of all out heaviness, but returning to that strange doomic chug, and somehow even as minimal and abstract as it is, it's sort of catchy, not poppy, not at all, but the repetition, and the chordal structure, it gets lodged in your head.
The whole record sort of follows a similar pattern, as if each track was a part of the bigger whole, the clipped chug, the explosive downtuned metallic blow out, occasional harsh vox too, some stretches of shimmery near silence, even some spidery melodic grooviness, which reminds us quite a bit of Harvey Milk, in fact, overall, if we had to pick a band to compare these guys too, it might just be HM overall, the same sort of willful antagonism, the same sort of subversive hookiness. It also reminds us of a slooooowed down sludgier Stinking Lizaveta (who also label their music "Doom Jazz"), sinewy and mathy, either way, this is some crushing heaviness that should definitely appeal to fans of Harvey Milk, and the more metallic of post rockers, as well as dooooomlords like Monarch, Moss, Bunkur and the like (and if you believe the sticker on the cd, Yob, Neurosis and Pelican too)...
LAST COPIES EVER, less than a dozen left, apologies for not being able to get more, but figured it would be cool if at least a few folks could get their hands on one of these....
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"
MPEG Stream: "7"

ALPS, THE Le Voyage (Type) cd 15.98
Full length number four from these Bay Area kosmische krautfolk visionaries, the sound on Le Voyage (aka IV) the perfect extension of the soundworld they created on 2008's III, and perhaps their most fully realized record thus far, as the band have developed from lo-fi drone and ramshackle free folk, abstract Appalachia and dreamy dronemusic, to something much more measured and sonically subtle, still consisting of many of the same basic elements, yet somehow more haunting and delicate, and occasionally exploring heavier more rhythmic territory.
Part of this new expanded sound is the fact that the core trio, our very own Scott Hewicker (Troll), Alexis Georgopoulos (Arp, formerly of Tussle) and Jefre Cantu (Tarentel, Colophon, J.C. Ledesma), is augmented by some serious guests, who contribute tamboura, pedal steel, bass guitar and field recordings to the already impressive (and occasionally baffling) list of sonic implements: palm guitar, 12 string acoustic guitar, Moogerfooger delay, mountain drums, electric clouds, Mini Moog synthesizer, falling piano, symphony space, radiophonic synthesizer, parabolic guitar, memory man, desert guitar, melted glass guitar and more.
But don't let the bizarre instrumentation mislead, the sound here is definitely abstract and 'out there', but perhaps not as much as that list might lead you to believe. Those instruments, subtly wielded, result in something dreamy and divine, rhythmic, propulsive, and totally mesmerizing.
The record begins with some crystalline Appalachian guitar, warm and sun dappled, underpinned by upper register shimmers, bits of piano, super minimal percussion, and some gorgeous pedal steel that gives the track a sweeping, wide open space vibe, the musical equivalent of laying in knee high grass, watching the clouds drift by in a cobalt blue sky. After a brief bit of jumbled psychedelic samplage, voices, horn fanfares, explosions, dinner party strings, applause, running water and random swirling FX drenched, the band get seriously krauty, with some stripped down tribal drumming, muted squalls of wah guitar, definitely dark and brooding, but as the track progresses, and various instruments join the fray, loping bass, steel string strum, all manner of melody, the track begins to glow, a smoldering almost space rock sounding work out, that sets its sights for the heart of the sun, but instead settles back to earth in a brief stretch of piano flecked drone, before launching into the next track, a dreamy slice of classic sounding psychedelic pop, all spare drumming, and chiming acoustic guitar, not to mention some rubbery basslines and more delicate piano, the second half of the track decidedly less propulsive and more washed out rainy day contemplative.
After another brief respite, soundtracked by a warped collage of shortwave buzz, reverbed horns, electronic glitches, swirls of hiss and grit and a brief flurry of marital snares, "Saturno Contro" commences, a lazy, lugubrious bit of dour acoustic dreampop, laced with tinkling chimes, moaning strings, softly cinematic and quite lovely.
Which leads into the records closing salvo, a three track, 20 minute fugue, that is the record's climax for sure, beginning with "Black Mountain", a piano laced buzzing raga, a gorgeous sprawling slow burn, that builds to something slightly more rhythmic, a sort of brooding chamber folk, bookended by field recordings of crickets, as if the track was merely the soundtrack for an early evening stroll through the forest. The title track is up next, a lush, loping chunk of hypnorock slowcore krautdrone drift, the drums simple and skeletal, the other instruments subtly urgent, the tone tense and intense, like the final few minutes of some space rock epic, stripped way down, slowed way down and stretched way out, still psychedelic and space-y, but more earthbound, the sound of night and day viewed in time lapse, flowers opening to the sun, and then folding back up to shut out the dark, the shadows rushing across the ground, the sky and ever shifting prismatic expanse, dark and emotional and gorgeous, eventually fading into the buzzing final track, another hazy druggy raga, thick layered buzz wrapped around a simple propulsive bassline, the song building bit time, the drums crashing, the various tones and sounds seeming to blossom like miniature supernovas, the various elements bleeding into one another, a lush cloud of swirling buzzing bliss, that could go on forever, but instead, crumbles into a fractured dubby outro before blinking out completely.
A perfectly realized hybrid of krautrock, new age, raga, Appalachia, dronefolk, an ever shifting expanse of cinematic sound, a pop music redefined and reinterpreted as something much more esoteric, hauntingly beautiful, and darkly mysterious.
MPEG Stream: "Drop In"
MPEG Stream: "Crossing The Sands"
MPEG Stream: "Le Voyage"
MPEG Stream: "Telepathe"

ALPS, THE Le Voyage (Type) lp 19.98
Full length number four from these Bay Area kosmische krautfolk visionaries, the sound on Le Voyage (aka IV) the perfect extension of the soundworld they created on 2008's III, and perhaps their most fully realized record thus far, as the band have developed from lo-fi drone and ramshackle free folk, abstract Appalachia and dreamy dronemusic, to something much more measured and sonically subtle, still consisting of many of the same basic elements, yet somehow more haunting and delicate, and occasionally exploring heavier more rhythmic territory.
Part of this new expanded sound is the fact that the core trio, our very own Scott Hewicker (Troll), Alexis Georgopoulos (Arp, formerly of Tussle) and Jefre Cantu (Tarentel, Colophon, J.C. Ledesma), is augmented by some serious guests, who contribute tamboura, pedal steel, bass guitar and field recordings to the already impressive (and occasionally baffling) list of sonic implements: palm guitar, 12 string acoustic guitar, Moogerfooger delay, mountain drums, electric clouds, Mini Moog synthesizer, falling piano, symphony space, radiophonic synthesizer, parabolic guitar, memory man, desert guitar, melted glass guitar and more.
But don't let the bizarre instrumentation mislead, the sound here is definitely abstract and 'out there', but perhaps not as much as that list might lead you to believe. Those instruments, subtly wielded, result in something dreamy and divine, rhythmic, propulsive, and totally mesmerizing.
The record begins with some crystalline Appalachian guitar, warm and sun dappled, underpinned by upper register shimmers, bits of piano, super minimal percussion, and some gorgeous pedal steel that gives the track a sweeping, wide open space vibe, the musical equivalent of laying in knee high grass, watching the clouds drift by in a cobalt blue sky. After a brief bit of jumbled psychedelic samplage, voices, horn fanfares, explosions, dinner party strings, applause, running water and random swirling FX drenched, the band get seriously krauty, with some stripped down tribal drumming, muted squalls of wah guitar, definitely dark and brooding, but as the track progresses, and various instruments join the fray, loping bass, steel string strum, all manner of melody, the track begins to glow, a smoldering almost space rock sounding work out, that sets its sights for the heart of the sun, but instead settles back to earth in a brief stretch of piano flecked drone, before launching into the next track, a dreamy slice of classic sounding psychedelic pop, all spare drumming, and chiming acoustic guitar, not to mention some rubbery basslines and more delicate piano, the second half of the track decidedly less propulsive and more washed out rainy day contemplative.
After another brief respite, soundtracked by a warped collage of shortwave buzz, reverbed horns, electronic glitches, swirls of hiss and grit and a brief flurry of marital snares, "Saturno Contro" commences, a lazy, lugubrious bit of dour acoustic dreampop, laced with tinkling chimes, moaning strings, softly cinematic and quite lovely.
Which leads into the records closing salvo, a three track, 20 minute fugue, that is the record's climax for sure, beginning with "Black Mountain", a piano laced buzzing raga, a gorgeous sprawling slow burn, that builds to something slightly more rhythmic, a sort of brooding chamber folk, bookended by field recordings of crickets, as if the track was merely the soundtrack for an early evening stroll through the forest. The title track is up next, a lush, loping chunk of hypnorock slowcore krautdrone drift, the drums simple and skeletal, the other instruments subtly urgent, the tone tense and intense, like the final few minutes of some space rock epic, stripped way down, slowed way down and stretched way out, still psychedelic and space-y, but more earthbound, the sound of night and day viewed in time lapse, flowers opening to the sun, and then folding back up to shut out the dark, the shadows rushing across the ground, the sky and ever shifting prismatic expanse, dark and emotional and gorgeous, eventually fading into the buzzing final track, another hazy druggy raga, thick layered buzz wrapped around a simple propulsive bassline, the song building bit time, the drums crashing, the various tones and sounds seeming to blossom like miniature supernovas, the various elements bleeding into one another, a lush cloud of swirling buzzing bliss, that could go on forever, but instead, crumbles into a fractured dubby outro before blinking out completely.
A perfectly realized hybrid of krautrock, new age, raga, Appalachia, dronefolk, an ever shifting expanse of cinematic sound, a pop music redefined and reinterpreted as something much more esoteric, hauntingly beautiful, and darkly mysterious.
MPEG Stream: "Drop In"
MPEG Stream: "Crossing The Sands"
MPEG Stream: "Le Voyage"
MPEG Stream: "Telepathe"

BEST COAST Sun Was High (So Was I) (Art Fag) 7" 8.98
We've been trying to get a hold of any Best Coast records, but damn has it been near impossible. With a handful of very limited 7"s under their belts the excitement and deserved buzz about this West coast duo featuring Bethany Cosentino (Pocahaunted) and Bobb Bruno (The For Carnation, Polar Goldie Cats, Goliath Bird Eater) seems based entirely around the fact that these noiseniks make completely infectious pop music that is unlike any of their past bands. But rightfully so, cuz this stuff is fantastic!
Luckily a small number of this great 7" has finally been repressed so we can finally review it and gush about what perfect sun soaked breezy and infectious girl group inspired garage pop this duo whip up (and be sure to check out the new cd ep elsewhere on this week's list!). "Sun Was High (So Was I)" is one of those totally made for 7" songs as you can't help but want to play that side over and over. A laid back washed out anthem, like a DIY stripped down Go-Go's. The B-side features "So Gone" which has an awesome dreamy and fuzzy vibe reminiscent of The Breeders, and the record is rounded out with an awesome cover of Lesley Gore's "That's The Way Boys Are" which is bubble gum girl group perfection filtered through a golden Southern California haze. So good! Grab it while we've still got 'em!

BEST COAST Where The Boys Are (Blackest Rainbow) cd ep 9.98
It's been nearly impossible to get our hands on any Best Coast records, they all seemed to go out of print in the blink of an eye. Those of us lucky enough to snag one or catch them live totally understand why everyone is freaking out about them, because we are too! Bethany Cosentino of Pocahaunted fame let go of her more abstract musical roots to create pretty and primitive, lo-fi, reverb soaked bedroom garage pop that is as raw as it is infectious. Now you finally have a chance to snag a Best Coast release as Blackest Rainbow has released this cd ep of songs that Bethany recorded in her bedroom last summer (we also got some copies of the most recent, repressed 7", might as well grab one of those too before they disappear again!). It's a lot more raw and blasted out than some of their newer, way more poppy and lo-fi Go-Go's like material that we've heard recently, which could be due to the fact that the current incarnation of Best Coast finds her joined by Bobb Bruno (The For Carnation, Goliath Bird Eater, etc.).
These 5 songs represent the birth of Best Coast and what an awesome incarnation it was. Like a way more bleached out and fucked up Breeders, these are songs that embrace the sun and California in all its faded and washed out glory. Sort of like a female counterpart to the awesome Wavves records, as they both are so much about creating the perfect drugged out soundtrack to a beach party in a dusty basement. So fucking good! Not sure how many of these were pressed but it's already out of print, so make sure to act fast on this one.
MPEG Stream: "Moody"
MPEG Stream: "Boy"
MPEG Stream: "Gloomy"

BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY & THE CAIRO GANG The Wonder Show Of The World (Palace / Drag City) cd 14.98
It's easy to take Will Oldham for granted at this point as he has become as prolific as he is talented, but when you can continually write and create such warm and wise music , well, then we're fine with the abundance of recent releases.
The Wonder Show Of The World might just be the most free flowing and affecting BPB album in a while. We're not exactly sure who/what the Cairo Gang is, but we're definitely enjoying their contribution. And we do know that long time contributor/collaborator and super talented guitarist Emmet Kelly (The Cairo Gang?) takes on a much bigger role than he has in the past. It's a way more subtle, subdued and minimal approach to production and song structure and we have to say we kind of love it this way. Sometimes the over-the-top instrumentation and full on country jams that have made up some of his recent releases takes away from the core of what makes Oldham's songwriting so intimate and special.
The Wonder Show Of The World finds Oldham getting back to that more sacred and refined sound. It's not about riffing on a certain genre (country, gospel, etc.) instead it's just about creating moving, emotional and haunting songs. At this point it's really not too far fetched to think of Oldham as possibly the closest thing to this generations Dylan, a storyteller who has found music as the best medium to share his gift of language and evoking emotion. Oldham fans are sure to love this and even those of us who had taken a little break from him are finding that this record is reeling us back into his world.
MPEG Stream: "Troublesome Houses"
MPEG Stream: "Kids"
MPEG Stream: "Go Folks, Go"

BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY & THE CAIRO GANG The Wonder Show Of The World (Palace / Drag City) lp 17.98
It's easy to take Will Oldham for granted at this point as he has become as prolific as he is talented, but when you can continually write and create such warm and wise music , well, then we're fine with the abundance of recent releases.
The Wonder Show Of The World might just be the most free flowing and affecting BPB album in a while. We're not exactly sure who/what the Cairo Gang is, but we're definitely enjoying their contribution. And we do know that long time contributor/collaborator and super talented guitarist Emmet Kelly (The Cairo Gang?) takes on a much bigger role than he has in the past. It's a way more subtle, subdued and minimal approach to production and song structure and we have to say we kind of love it this way. Sometimes the over-the-top instrumentation and full on country jams that have made up some of his recent releases takes away from the core of what makes Oldham's songwriting so intimate and special.
The Wonder Show Of The World finds Oldham getting back to that more sacred and refined sound. It's not about riffing on a certain genre (country, gospel, etc.) instead it's just about creating moving, emotional and haunting songs. At this point it's really not too far fetched to think of Oldham as possibly the closest thing to this generations Dylan, a storyteller who has found music as the best medium to share his gift of language and evoking emotion. Oldham fans are sure to love this and even those of us who had taken a little break from him are finding that this record is reeling us back into his world.
MPEG Stream: "Troublesome Houses"
MPEG Stream: "Kids"
MPEG Stream: "Go Folks, Go"

BRAIN DRILL Quantum Catastrophe (Metal Blade) cd 14.98
With a name like Brain Drill, you can pretty much imagine what to expect. Which is what had some of us so flipped out over Brain Drill's debut Apocalyptic Feasting (which somehow didn't get reviewed here, but we could still order it for you though!), a furious ultra technical blast of insanely complex death metal, pretty much universally dissed for being more about parts and technical craziness than songs, but again, pretty sure that's what made it so appealing. Like a big budget version of aQ faves Necrophagist, Brain Drill cram about a million parts into every song, filling every nook and cranny with bursts of frenzied leads, tangled melodies, the songs stuttering and lurching and leaping from time signature to time signature. That said, we found that record to be weirdly catchy, despite what everyone was saying, they pretty much became our new favorite (technical) death metal band.
So here we are, two years later, and Brain Drill return, and if anything, the songs are even more chaotic and over the top, the guitar playing is even more ridiculously INSANE, and the songs are again dizzyingly, head spinningly convoluted. This time around, the sound is way better, the production thicker and heavier, more leads all over the place, but much like the first record, it's an awesomely insane exercise in death metal excess, the whole record playing out like a single multi movement death metal epic, chugging and thrashing and grinding, crunch and squeal and pound and grunt and buzz, guitar squiggles everywhere, the drumming relentless and frantic, but again, they manage to make this stuff, as insane and UNmusical as it seems to some folks, sound downright catchy to these ears.
The whole thing culminates in the epic 16 minute title track (when's the last time you heard a 16 minute death metal jam?) a sprawling, expansive, uber complex, hyper grind monstrosity, rife with some surprisingly melodic elements, those moments deftly tangled up in ever shifting squalls of jagged death metal crunch and buzz, before finally disappearing in a cloud of shimmery black ambience, buried vocals, murky melodies, a strangely haunting drifting outro to an otherwise exhausting mayhemic metal workout. So awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Obliteration Untold"
MPEG Stream: "Beyond Bludgeoned"
MPEG Stream: "Awaiting Imminent Destruction"

BRILLIANT COLORS Never Mine (Slumberland) 7" 4.50
Another awesome slab of wax from San Francisco's Brilliant Colors. A bit more poppy than their full length, this is pretty much perfect post-punk with a distinctly lo-fi vibe and a timeless quality that connects the dots between folks like Black Tambourine, Chin Chin and The Vaselines to the present day. Both these songs find these ladies in absolute top form, in fact we think this may be our favorite release from them yet. Finding a way to a more melodic and even jangly feel yet sounding fuzzier and more free then ever. Cool to see that these songs were recorded by their pal Ty Segall who knows a thing or two about bringing together fuzz and melody. One of those amazing 7"s where you won't be able to decide which side is better, as both these songs are smoking!

BRILLIANT COLORS Walk Into The World (Make-A-Mess) 7" 7.98
Ok, make that not one but two new awesome 7"s from San Francisco's Brilliant Colors. Like the other reviewed BC 45 this week, these two new burners were also recorded with their pal Ty Segall and find the band reaching even higher. The band definitely seem to be coming into their own with their songwriting, finding such a great way to combine their lo-fi post punk sensibilities with such great hooks and incredible melodies. We hope it's just a matter of time before these ladies get the widespread attention and praise they deserve as their songs as just as infectious and raw as folks like Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls and Golden Triangle.
Make-A-Mess releases tend to disappear quickly so best to snag one of these before it's too late!

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE Forgiveness Rock Record (Arts & Crafts) cd 14.98
All of the tentacles of the ever-evolving Canadian musical entity known as Broken Social Scene are involved in his and her own very active and very awesome musical projects (such as but not limited to Apostle of Hustle, Do Make Say Think, Feist, Metric, Stars, Weakerthans....) so it's not surprising that it often takes years for them to reconvene in a recording studio for a new BSS album. That said, each time they do they waste no time getting reacquainted. It really seems no catch-up period is needed, as they effortlessly breeze right back onto your stereo with some fresh but warmly familiar sounding songs. This time, the core members number a relatively scant six - Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew, Sam Goldberg, Justin Peroff, Charles Spearing, and Andrew Whiteman. Yes, they're all gents, but the awesome BSS female alumni are by no means absent. The triple vocal whammy of Leslie Feist, Emily Haines (of Metric), and Amy Millan (also of Stars) dulcetly shine together on one of the album's sweetest notes "Sentimental X's". The pared down number of band members definitely doesn't mean a paring down of creative juices. Although Forgiveness Rock Record is somewhat less sprawling in both stylistic feel and instrumentation than previous albums, the songs themselves are totally solid, fully realized and craftily arranged. Their sound is pretty unmistakable, at times ultra catchy'n'buoyant and at others dreamily blissed out. We've come to the conclusion that the John McEntire produced Forgiveness Rock Record pairs wonderfully alongside the latest album by their fellow kickass Canadian songsmiths the New Pornographers. The spring is absolutely bursting with delirious pop blossoms from our friends to the north!
MPEG Stream: "Texico Bitches"
MPEG Stream: "Art House Director"
MPEG Stream: "Sentimental X's"

CAVE Pure Moods (Drag City) lp 12.98
Chicago based rhythmic psychlords and unanimous aQ favorites Cave spark up another set of burners on this 3 song (long songs, we might add) vinyl-only ep, their first for the mighty Drag City imprint. It's great to see this band taking off, going further with each release and pretty much becoming a more focused, more realized version of themselves with each new record.
Opener "Hot Bricks" sounds a bit like a more fleshed out Moon Duo, and boy, we ain't complaining one bit. It moves with a nice organ pulse and a cool hazy groove. The vocals are in the same vein as Moon Duo / Wooden Shjips frontman Ripley Johnson, you know, kind of an Alan Vega styled bad ass croon. The song is steady and rocking but also melodic and dreamy. "Teenager" surprises us once again with a more upfront vocal presence, which we are digging quite a lot. Overall it helps Cave seem more focused AND more stoned, always a good thing, and it's clear that everyone is operating on the same psychic wavelength. The song makes great use of the spacious production complete with some vocal harmonies that sound, for a second at least, like a couple of Gregorian monks after a few bong rips. The band constructs a thick psychedelic haze with burly bass, tight ass drumming, and some incendiary riffage.
Taking up all of side 2 is "Brigitte's Trip", which starts life as a cool, compact jam with more empty space than usual. Over the course of the song, things pick up and head into a heavy midtempo groove with the rhythm section acting as the anchor while everyone goes crazy and takes things skyward. Things slow down again and sound a bit like Dead Meadow's mellower moments, leading us to wonder what these boys will cook up next. Whatever that may be, we're looking forward to it. Until then, we're going to sit back and bask in the glow of Pure Moods.

CHALK, ANDREW Ghost of Nakhodka (Siren) cd 21.00
Here's the cd reissue of a 2009 cassette from the emissary of British dronemusik, Andrew Chalk. That cassette, like this cd version, had been released by the Japanese imprint Siren Records, although it seems that Chalk himself did all of the printing as with all of his Faraway Press productions. So, it certainly looks as lovely as it sounds. The album opens with a 22 minute abstraction of piano tones, smeared, stretched, and warbled by a process that seems more attuned to tape decay techniques than the placid smooth surfaces that have come from Chalk's recordings as of late. This has the sound more of the misty psychedelic ambient tapestries from Natural Snow Buildings or the hauntological loops of Indignant Senility. There's something very prescient about this track, as if Chalk were responding to many of the divergent streams of drone-based constructions that are happening throughout the world right now. The rest of the album is definitely a detour for Chalk, as he presents a series of sad, sodden snippets composed on guitar, koto, synth, piano, and field recordings. Unlike so many who attempts an album of gossamer, minimalist sounds, Chalk seeks the same chromatic hues through his sources. It's the same melancholy which runs through his impressionist drones that can be found in an ellipsis for untreated acoustic guitar or a melody upon cosmic-minded synth or an atypical strum upon his koto. That makes for quite a remarkable album for Mr. Chalk, once again.
MPEG Stream: "Ghost of Nakhodka"
MPEG Stream: "Three Rivers"
MPEG Stream: "Lena"
MPEG Stream: "Pillars"

CHALK, ANDREW & DAISUKE SUZUKI In Faxfleet Clouds Uplifted Autumn Gave Passage To Kind Nature (Faraway Press) cd 17.98
Andrew Chalk released In Faxfleet Clouds in 2009 as a tiny edition of vinyl, something like 300 copies. We were not fortunate enough to get a hold of any of those lps; but we do have the cd to offer. It's another collaboration with Daisuke Suzuki, who has long contributed field recordings and sympathetic tones to many of Chalk's productions, dating way back to those legendary Ora recordings some twenty years ago. The album opens with a 13 minute piece that interlocks a series of brightened tones which emit the pastoral, summery glow of Cluster's cosmic synthesis, lifting above a sodden floor of recordings that sound like a bubbling stream or maybe a delicate clattering of wooden objects. Chalk has always had an exceptional way of abstracting his sources while retaining a 'natural' aura to those sounds, and those skills may certainly be in use on the undercurrent of softened noises. But those rounded, elegant, church-organ like tones that Chalk manages from whatever synth he's got a hold of are just simply gorgeous. All of these tones hang with the signature melancholy that resonates through so many of his recordings. The second piece is a bit more nocturnal in hue, due in part to the field recordings of crickets and the minor key ambience from synth and very distantly situated piano. A brief three minute track stands as the finale, with distinctly cosmic tones, gently strummed guitar, and impressionist piano. At a hair under 25 minutes, this is a rather short excursion for Chalk, but very very lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Queen Of Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "Of Beauty Reminiscing"

CLUBROOT II - MMX (LoDubs) 2cd 16.98
The first Clubroot disc was our dubstep record of last year, and remains one of our favorites, a lush, expansive electronic record, that traded the skeletal skitter and ominous minimalism of most dubstep for something totally different, something otherworldly, bursting with warmth, synths and voices, everything gauzy and hazy and hauntingly beautiful, organic and dreamy. So hopes were high for this new one.
Number two more than lives up to our expectations, continuing to push the sound away from traditional dubstep. The only remaining vestiges being THAT beat, some low bass warble, but very little else. In every other way, the sounds on II are ethereal and ephemeral, washed out and spectral, melancholy and wistful, vocals play a much bigger part too, which we can tell you is what usually turns us off when it comes to jungle or dubstep, but this is no diva shit, instead, the female vocals are ghostly and soulful, drifting amidst the various other layers, adding a distinctly human dimension to Clubroot's sound.
Imagine some mysterious blend of the Orb and Portishead, a sort of dark, brooding, chill out sound, and you'll get a rough idea of what to expect here. Long stretches of gauzy synthy shimmer hovering over rumbling bass, but instead of just explosive squelches, the bass is sculpted into something way more melodic and textural, giving the songs heft and weight unconnected to the dancefloor. The vocals, while sometimes left to drift and float, othertimes are chopped and processed and become another rhythmic element, and the beats, well, while the 'beats' themselves hew pretty close to the dubstep standard, they deviate enough to keep things interesting, sometimes getting all shuffly and spare, but other times more tangly and dense like some sort of slowed down jungle, but always perfectly suited to the sounds swirling around it, and the beats remain unobtrusive, more a part of the overall sonic scenery, which helps to make the sounds here so soothing and mesmerizing.
For true dubsteppers, this might be so far removed as to not necessarily qualify as dubstep at all, but for the rest of us, that's not a bad thing at all, which is why Clubroot occupies a special space in our heart (and record collections) somewhere right between Kode9 and Burial...
WAY RECOMMENDED!
While they last, the cd version comes with a bonus disc, featuring 3 tracks, that might be even better than the tracks on the record proper, but only the first 500 copies have the extra disc, and once the 20 or so copies we have are gone, they are GONE. And fear not vinyl folks, the sleeve for the lp version is oversized, just a bit, to leave space for the forthcoming 12" version of the bonus disc, which we'll have as soon as they're ready!
MPEG Stream: "Orbiting"
MPEG Stream: "Waterways"
MPEG Stream: "Dry Cured"
MPEG Stream: "Cherubs Cry"

CLUBROOT II - MMX (LoDubs) 2lp 21.00
The first Clubroot disc was our dubstep record of last year, and remains one of our favorites, a lush, expansive electronic record, that traded the skeletal skitter and ominous minimalism of most dubstep for something totally different, something otherworldly, bursting with warmth, synths and voices, everything gauzy and hazy and hauntingly beautiful, organic and dreamy. So hopes were high for this new one.
Number two more than lives up to our expectations, continuing to push the sound away from traditional dubstep. The only remaining vestiges being THAT beat, some low bass warble, but very little else. In every other way, the sounds on II are ethereal and ephemeral, washed out and spectral, melancholy and wistful, vocals play a much bigger part too, which we can tell you is what usually turns us off when it comes to jungle or dubstep, but this is no diva shit, instead, the female vocals are ghostly and soulful, drifting amidst the various other layers, adding a distinctly human dimension to Clubroot's sound.
Imagine some mysterious blend of the Orb and Portishead, a sort of dark, brooding, chill out sound, and you'll get a rough idea of what to expect here. Long stretches of gauzy synthy shimmer hovering over rumbling bass, but instead of just explosive squelches, the bass is sculpted into something way more melodic and textural, giving the songs heft and weight unconnected to the dancefloor. The vocals, while sometimes left to drift and float, othertimes are chopped and processed and become another rhythmic element, and the beats, well, while the 'beats' themselves hew pretty close to the dubstep standard, they deviate enough to keep things interesting, sometimes getting all shuffly and spare, but other times more tangly and dense like some sort of slowed down jungle, but always perfectly suited to the sounds swirling around it, and the beats remain unobtrusive, more a part of the overall sonic scenery, which helps to make the sounds here so soothing and mesmerizing.
For true dubsteppers, this might be so far removed as to not necessarily qualify as dubstep at all, but for the rest of us, that's not a bad thing at all, which is why Clubroot occupies a special space in our heart (and record collections) somewhere right between Kode9 and Burial...
WAY RECOMMENDED!
While they last, the cd version comes with a bonus disc, featuring 3 tracks, that might be even better than the tracks on the record proper, but only the first 500 copies have the extra disc, and once the 20 or so copies we have are gone, they are GONE. And fear not vinyl folks, the sleeve for the lp version is oversized, just a bit, to leave space for the forthcoming 12" version of the bonus disc, which we'll have as soon as they're ready!
MPEG Stream: "Orbiting"
MPEG Stream: "Waterways"
MPEG Stream: "Dry Cured"
MPEG Stream: "Cherubs Cry"

DEFTONES Diamond Eyes (Reprise) cd 17.98
It's still so confounding to us that anyone into heavy music doesn't love the Deftones. Sure, they may have started life as a nu-metal band, but even then, it was obvious that they were destined for more. And it didn't take long for them to make good on that potential, transforming into a seriously kick ass, brooding avant post metal juggernaut, as capable of whipping out some Slayer-esque riffage, or some downtuned drop-D crunch, as some spare moody electronica flecked slowcore or some blissed out metalgaze. And the fact that they often effortlessly did all of the above simultaneously only made us love them more. Plus you gotta love any band that covers the Cocteau Twins, the Smith, Duran Duran, the Cure, Sade, Helmet, Lynyrd Skynrd and Jawbox. And that should also give you an idea of the sort of sounds that informs the sounds these guys conjure up.
In some ways Diamond Eyes is a bit less experimental than Saturday Night Wrist. That record had some seriously weird shit going on, long tripped out electronic jams with foul mouthed female spoken word, almost like some sort of cold Teutonic electro, mixed with plenty of dark balladic dirges and chugging metallic blow outs. It could be that the proposed follow up, Eros, might have been just as far out, but that record was put on hold indefinitely, as the Deftones bassist is in a coma after an automobile accident. Even so, while the weirdness is maybe not so overt, their sound is so unique anyway, equal parts doomy gothy miserablism, epic melodic bliss pop, and metallic crunch, a combo others have definitely tried, but no one does it quite like these guys. Another killer disc of heaviness and hooks, metal and moodiness, most definitely a new favorite...
MPEG Stream: "Rocket Skates"
MPEG Stream: "Cmnd/Ctrl"
MPEG Stream: "Beauty School"
MPEG Stream: "Prince"

EDDIE MARCON Shining On Graveposts (Preservation) cd 16.98
This AQ favorite from a few years back is FINALLY available again!!!
Ooooh. Some really nice, gentle Japanese acid-folk here, from this female duo, first heard (by us that is) on Alchemy's Night Gallery 2: 21st Century Psychedelic Underground compilation. If you like Nagisa Ni Te, or L's Holy Letters, or the ghostliest Ghost you'll certainly welcome the embrace of Eddie Marcon's dreamy, folky, psychedelic soundworld. As with Nagisa and L, you'll find here similarly drawn out and sparse compositions infused with strange and subtle atmospheres - mostly acoustic/electric guitars with some snare and piano (cymbal drones, scrapes, gasps - all acoustically hand-crafted). The record also has some haunting horn blasts and lots of rattling percussion, bells, etc., and the whole thing is sedated by ongoing mallet flourishes on drums and cymbals. Vocally, this could be Takako Minekawa or Tojiko Noriko stripped of the electronica element. There's all the seductive conventions of melancholy folk with just enough eccentricities to place this in a continuum of modern Japanese underground psychedelia, such as LSD-march (an early line-up of which apparently featured both Eddie Marcon's singer Eddie and guitarist Marcon - aha, now you see how Eddie Marcon came up with their name!) and the female bass-drums duo of Coa (singer Eddie's other band). Eddie Marcon is quite a bit more quiet and mellow than either of those outfits tend to be, though! And outside of the Japanese comparisons, we'd think anyone into anything in the psych-folk vein from Vashti Bunyan to Islaja might quite find this to their liking...
Australia's Preservation label has stylishly packaged this disc in/with an intriguing minimalist graphic design fold out poster. Totally recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Amime"
MPEG Stream: "Siro No Uta"

EFFI BRIEST Rhizomes (Sacred Bones) cd 14.98
A gang of totally talented women from Brooklyn making some intense and engaging off kilter psych post-punk that's been thrilling us big time via this new Sacred Bones release. We love how Effi Briest bring worlds of post-punk, krautrock, garage goth, and psychedelia into a propulsive whole that is so charged and hypnotizing. It's always a good sign when you can't immediately start rattling off other bands a record reminds you of, as there is something very honest and unique about the songs on Rhizomes. We do think of some of those awesome amalgamations that are fun to dream up. Like Erase Errata doing early Siouxsie & The Banshees covers, or White Magic shedding their folkish leanings and diving full throttle into psychedelic overload, Gang Gang Dance and Zola Jesus joining their mystical powers or Au Pairs and The Raincoats risen from the ashes but sounding a bit weirder and more rhythmic, or even a more intense version of those awesome Helium records that Ash Bowie from Polvo played on, or heck, maybe what early Wire might have sounded like with a young Patti Smith on vocals.
At a time when so many new records are so loyal to the one sound or style they are trying to capture it's so fucking cool to come across a band that is bringing together many great influences and undoubtedly have great taste (they are named after a great Fassbinder film after all) but for the most part are really bringing something fresh, immediate and unique to the table. One of those records that draws you into its world more and more with each listen. And we have to say we are totally and utterly hooked!
MPEG Stream: "Rhizomes"
MPEG Stream: "Cousins"
MPEG Stream: "Nights"

EFFI BRIEST Rhizomes (Sacred Bones) lp 17.98
A gang of totally talented women from Brooklyn making some intense and engaging off kilter psych post-punk that's been thrilling us big time via this new Sacred Bones release. We love how Effi Briest bring worlds of post-punk, krautrock, garage goth, and psychedelia into a propulsive whole that is so charged and hypnotizing. It's always a good sign when you can't immediately start rattling off other bands a record reminds you of, as there is something very honest and unique about the songs on Rhizomes. We do think of some of those awesome amalgamations that are fun to dream up. Like Erase Errata doing early Siouxsie & The Banshees covers, or White Magic shedding their folkish leanings and diving full throttle into psychedelic overload, Gang Gang Dance and Zola Jesus joining their mystical powers or Au Pairs and The Raincoats risen from the ashes but sounding a bit weirder and more rhythmic, or even a more intense version of those awesome Helium records that Ash Bowie from Polvo played on, or heck, maybe what early Wire might have sounded like with a young Patti Smith on vocals.
At a time when so many new records are so loyal to the one sound or style they are trying to capture it's so fucking cool to come across a band that is bringing together many great influences and undoubtedly have great taste (they are named after a great Fassbinder film after all) but for the most part are really bringing something fresh, immediate and unique to the table. One of those records that draws you into its world more and more with each listen. And we have to say we are totally and utterly hooked!
MPEG Stream: "Rhizomes"
MPEG Stream: "Cousins"
MPEG Stream: "Nights"

EIGHTIES LADIES Ladies Of The Eighties (Universal Sound) cd 21.00
Out of all the great rare-groove productions Roy Ayers did for other artists, Ramp, Ethel Beatty, Bobbi Humphrey, and Sylvia Striplin, the sole 1980 full length by Eighties Ladies may be the most sought after cult boogie classic. Their most well-known single, the monster jam, "Turned On To You", has been featured on so many DJ mixes and has been sampled rather heavily over the past couple of decades that for a long time, we thought that the track was their only output. Of course we're proven wrong by this hefty reissue. Hefty in the sense of the mean boogie (Rick James plays in the backing band!) and sass these five ladies bring to the groove, marrying Sylvester's sensual disco to Bettie Davis's harder-edged empowered funk. What the reissue lacks in backstory, more than makes up in eight fine jazz-laden funkified gems. These Eighties Ladies could have been better named, they were the template for all the eighties r&b/funk girl groups to come: Vanity 6, Apollonia 6, Mary-Jane Girls, The Flirts and Klymaxx. Listen in and get schooled!
MPEG Stream: "Turned On To You"
MPEG Stream: "Ladies Of The Eighties"
MPEG Stream: "He Is Mine Forever"

EIGHTIES LADIES Ladies Of The Eighties (Universal Sound) lp 23.00
Out of all the great rare-groove productions Roy Ayers did for other artists, Ramp, Ethel Beatty, Bobbi Humphrey, and Sylvia Striplin, the sole 1980 full length by Eighties Ladies may be the most sought after cult boogie classic. Their most well-known single, the monster jam, "Turned On To You", has been featured on so many DJ mixes and has been sampled rather heavily over the past couple of decades that for a long time, we thought that the track was their only output. Of course we're proven wrong by this hefty reissue. Hefty in the sense of the mean boogie (Rick James plays in the backing band!) and sass these five ladies bring to the groove, marrying Sylvester's sensual disco to Bettie Davis's harder-edged empowered funk. What the reissue lacks in backstory, more than makes up in eight fine jazz-laden funkified gems. These Eighties Ladies could have been better named, they were the template for all the eighties r&b/funk girl groups to come: Vanity 6, Apollonia 6, Mary-Jane Girls, The Flirts and Klymaxx. Listen in and get schooled!
MPEG Stream: "Turned On To You"
MPEG Stream: "Ladies Of The Eighties"
MPEG Stream: "He Is Mine Forever"

ESTES, SLEEPY JOHN I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More (Monk) 2lp 30.00
Sleepy John Estes was the son of a sharecropper and grew up in Tennessee, later finding musical work in Memphis' fertile blues scene. Blind in one eye from a childhood rock throwing incident (ouch) and known for his somewhat withdrawn demeanor (hence, "Sleepy"), his biggest claim to fame is his powerful, highly emotive vocal delivery and his lyrics. Indeed, Estes voice is loud and clear, capable of hitting notes many singers couldn't get to if their lives depended on it. These songs were recorded mostly in Memphis, but there are also sessions from Chicago and New York, and they span from 1929 to 1937. Many of Estes' songs were later covered by other artists, including Led Zeppelin and the Kinks, and he remained an active musician until his death in 1977. Estes is also known for his somewhat limited skill on the guitar, but rather than merely making do with this, he wisely surrounded himself with more talented musicians, most notably James "Yank" Rachell on mandolin and Hammie Nixon on harmonica, resulting in a full sound where his vocals could truly stand out. Throughout the course of these recordings, Estes' voice remains eerily clear and strong, but never forceful. Another welcome release courtesy of the always reliable Monk label.

FROG EYES Paul's Tomb: A Triumph (Dead Oceans) cd 14.98
What follows is a much appreciated guest review by the discerning Loren Chasse, a long time Frog Eyes fan, who herein explains why this band is so compelling, to certain special ears anyway. (Allan, who would have written a review expressing similar sentiments, gives the thumbs up as well, Paul's Tomb is indeed a triumph!)
Amidst all the bands these days which are busy resuscitating bygone genres (psych-folk, soft rock, new wave, krautrock, disco, '80s metal... and so on), there is Frog Eyes. Sure, everything derives from other things, shares a sound, borrows a riff... but there is a difference between trying to sound like vs. just sounding like. What does Frog Eyes try to sound like? Beats me. So what does Frog Eyes just happen to sound like? My first reaction to their music was confusion and maybe slight embarrassment. With things truly alternative or experimental there can be an experience of not quite feeling safe, not being sure of what to listen for. Frog Eyes delivers songs with complicated lyrical and musical structures. Their music is over the top, mostly - packed with monstrosity but also with subtlety and dynamic prowess. Blistering jags of guitar and fractured drumming often clear away on this record to blissful jams with sparse grooves (perhaps what some might identify more conventionally as 'psychedelic rock' even though the truly psychedelic parts are the ones in which my ears seemed turned on end and ripped a new hole, so to speak!) There are ingenious pop hooks on this record, but often there are long and arduous paths leading to them. This music is challenging. It requires its audience's full attention, like reading. This is a band much about the vocals and it's likely that folks will have a strong love/hate reaction (think of other artists such as Dylan, Bryan Ferry, Bjork, Jamie Stewart, Robbie Basho). Carey Mercer's vocals are overflowing with affectation... trills, croons and gasps moving ecstatically across the vocal spectrum. All the tropes of the rock n' roll singer are in his bag. His lyrics are surreal narratives... poetic, syntactically complex, confounding in their humor and darkness. His last solo effort, Skin of Evil, recorded under the name Blackout Beach, presented a suite of songs based on a character named Donna. Well, Donna's back for this latest Frog Eyes record (along with "Cassandra" and "Paul"). Does this mean anything to my listening or enjoyment of the record? Well, I must say, that it intrigues and captures my imagination the way my favorite prog rock albums from the '70s did - somewhere at the heart of this there's a 'concept'. In Mercer's case, it's literary and it's clear he does care about the words as they are always published with the notes to his records. Paul's Tomb certainly evokes something, but the 'what' is unclear and maybe best that way. The album art features photographic tableaux evocative of a specific point in history - maybe turn of the century exploration and the amassing of museum collections? (I admit a little disappointment in not finding one of Mercer's strange paintings adorning the cover of this record as they have in the past.)
The sounds on this record are raw and powerful. The guitar playing and the singing are clearly emanating from the same source... spasmodic and ecstatic phrasings (often gusty and menacing, at times sounding like Neil Young circa "Like a Hurricane" or Arc), delivered with plenty of rock conviction. Back to the prog rock analogy for a moment, there does seem to be a good deal of 'math' in these compositions, but the layers of noise and clouds of tone on top of the songs obscure the structures. I don't get the feeling the band is counting as much as they are feeling. A good thing!
Think of it this way... when I want to listen to Arthur Russell, I may mix things up a little and put on Caribou or Hot Chip. When craving Joy Division there are always bands like Interpol, Blank Dogs or Blessure Grave. Heard my favorite Incredible String Band too many times this month? Well then, maybe one of the many "freak folks" will deliver. Popul Vuh has stopped releasing records but somehow their catalogue seems to be growing thanks to a host of talented emulators. And when seeking a deep dark drone at bedtime, the choices are endless. However, the point is, when I want to hear Frog Eyes, there is only ONE place to go... And among Frog Eyes albums, this one is one of the best yet.
MPEG Stream: "A Flower In A Glove (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "A Flower In A Glove (excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "Violent Psalms"
MPEG Stream: "Paul's Tomb"

FROG EYES Paul's Tomb: A Triumph (Dead Oceans) 2lp 21.00
What follows is a much appreciated guest review by the discerning Loren Chasse, a long time Frog Eyes fan, who herein explains why this band is so compelling, to certain special ears anyway. (Allan, who would have written a review expressing similar sentiments, gives the thumbs up as well, Paul's Tomb is indeed a triumph!)
Amidst all the bands these days which are busy resuscitating bygone genres (psych-folk, soft rock, new wave, krautrock, disco, '80s metal... and so on), there is Frog Eyes. Sure, everything derives from other things, shares a sound, borrows a riff... but there is a difference between trying to sound like vs. just sounding like. What does Frog Eyes try to sound like? Beats me. So what does Frog Eyes just happen to sound like? My first reaction to their music was confusion and maybe slight embarrassment. With things truly alternative or experimental there can be an experience of not quite feeling safe, not being sure of what to listen for. Frog Eyes delivers songs with complicated lyrical and musical structures. Their music is over the top, mostly - packed with monstrosity but also with subtlety and dynamic prowess. Blistering jags of guitar and fractured drumming often clear away on this record to blissful jams with sparse grooves (perhaps what some might identify more conventionally as 'psychedelic rock' even though the truly psychedelic parts are the ones in which my ears seemed turned on end and ripped a new hole, so to speak!) There are ingenious pop hooks on this record, but often there are long and arduous paths leading to them. This music is challenging. It requires its audience's full attention, like reading. This is a band much about the vocals and it's likely that folks will have a strong love/hate reaction (think of other artists such as Dylan, Bryan Ferry, Bjork, Jamie Stewart, Robbie Basho). Carey Mercer's vocals are overflowing with affectation... trills, croons and gasps moving ecstatically across the vocal spectrum. All the tropes of the rock n' roll singer are in his bag. His lyrics are surreal narratives... poetic, syntactically complex, confounding in their humor and darkness. His last solo effort, Skin of Evil, recorded under the name Blackout Beach, presented a suite of songs based on a character named Donna. Well, Donna's back for this latest Frog Eyes record (along with "Cassandra" and "Paul"). Does this mean anything to my listening or enjoyment of the record? Well, I must say, that it intrigues and captures my imagination the way my favorite prog rock albums from the '70s did - somewhere at the heart of this there's a 'concept'. In Mercer's case, it's literary and it's clear he does care about the words as they are always published with the notes to his records. Paul's Tomb certainly evokes something, but the 'what' is unclear and maybe best that way. The album art features photographic tableaux evocative of a specific point in history - maybe turn of the century exploration and the amassing of museum collections? (I admit a little disappointment in not finding one of Mercer's strange paintings adorning the cover of this record as they have in the past.)
The sounds on this record are raw and powerful. The guitar playing and the singing are clearly emanating from the same source... spasmodic and ecstatic phrasings (often gusty and menacing, at times sounding like Neil Young circa "Like a Hurricane" or Arc), delivered with plenty of rock conviction. Back to the prog rock analogy for a moment, there does seem to be a good deal of 'math' in these compositions, but the layers of noise and clouds of tone on top of the songs obscure the structures. I don't get the feeling the band is counting as much as they are feeling. A good thing!
Think of it this way... when I want to listen to Arthur Russell, I may mix things up a little and put on Caribou or Hot Chip. When craving Joy Division there are always bands like Interpol, Blank Dogs or Blessure Grave. Heard my favorite Incredible String Band too many times this month? Well then, maybe one of the many "freak folks" will deliver. Popul Vuh has stopped releasing records but somehow their catalogue seems to be growing thanks to a host of talented emulators. And when seeking a deep dark drone at bedtime, the choices are endless. However, the point is, when I want to hear Frog Eyes, there is only ONE place to go... And among Frog Eyes albums, this one is one of the best yet.
MPEG Stream: "A Flower In A Glove (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "A Flower In A Glove (excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "Violent Psalms"
MPEG Stream: "Paul's Tomb"

GARDEN OF WORM s/t (Shadow Kingdom) cd 14.98
Two words: Finland, Doom. Think Reverend Bizarre style doom, specifically. That's where this Finnish band is coming from, on their debut full length for the Shadow Kingdom label (who remind us, in a handwritten note: "Shadow Kingdom always puts out unique metal"). Garden Of Worm, a trio that includes two members of post rock prog metallers Blueprint Human Being, whom you'll remember from their Paradigms release, aren't so unique that they don't remind us of those aforementioned fellow Finns Reverend Bizarre (RIP), with deep, declamatory vocals and heavy Sabbathy riffage, but they do have their own way of doing the doom thing, the guitar parts having a sometimes urgent, eerily off-kilter psychedelic post rock edge to 'em (reminding us of the genius of the late great Ved Buens Ende at times), with post rock loud-soft dynamics factoring into the songwriting as well, Garden Of Worm being blissfully dreamy and/or utterly crushing depending on just where you drop the (virtual) needle on a track like "Psychic Wolves". Elsewhere, experimental droneworks veer right into raging headbanging fare (specifically, towards the end of one of this disc's several epics, "The Black Clouds"). And one of the tracks here, "Rays Of Heaven", is entirely a placid, all-acoustic instrumental. Yet as post- and prog- as they can be, GoW are first and foremost a trudging traditional doom metal band, conjuring up the old school likes of The Obsessed (with a smidge of a Pentagram-y riff mixed in) on "The Ceremony", for instance. A band that's melodic, emotive, intelligent, maybe we'd even call them "psychological", what with some of the lyrics. But all in all to sum 'em up, with another word that's none of those, nor doom, nor Finland: there's something GLORIOUS about this band. Gloomy but grandly glorious. Recommended, especially if you like Reverend Bizarre, The Obsessed, Apostle Of Solitude, Fall Of The Idols...
Very nice b&w Justin Bartlett cover art, too, by the way! (Presumably that's a PSYCHIC wolf.)
MPEG Stream: "Spirits Of The Dead"
MPEG Stream: "The Ceremony"
MPEG Stream: "The Black Clouds "

GREEN RIVER Dry As A Bone / Rehab Doll (Sub Pop) cd 12.98
Not new, not reissued, just STILL FUCKING AWESOME! Been a while, years in fact, since we reviewed this, and Andee recently got to see the reformed Green River at the Sub Pop 20th anniversary, and they slayed, putting pretty much all the other bands to shame, so it felt like a good time to revisit this all time classic...
We don't know about you, but we were so into the grunge rock of the late eighties. Not the bandwagon jumping, flannel shirt wearing bullshit that came a little later (that's the crap that deservedly caused the grunge backlash), we're talking the first wave, the small group of bands that melded snotty punk rock and huge Sabbathy riffs, head banging and slam dancing, sloppy drunken free-for-alls and actual songwriting chops: Soundgarden (before they became an MTV cartoon), Tad, the Fluid, Blood Circus, Afghan Whigs, Nirvana, Skin Yard, Love Battery, Coffin Break, Codeine, Seaweed, Green Magnet School, Swallow and all of that stuff. But for me, no one (not even Nirvana) could touch Green River. Soundgarden had the metal side of the equation all sewn up, with their monster riffs and Chris Cornell's air raid siren wail, but Green River just seemed way more dangerous: sloppy and snotty, grungy and sludgy, soulful and bluesy, but bluesy the way Pussy Galore were bluesy, all ramshackle and dangerously close to just degenerating into a full-on musical brawl, and they just seemed really, really SCARY. Plus they had vocalist Mark Arm, who had the wickedest, raspiest, whiniest growl I'd ever heard (and to this day has one of the best/most unique rock voices ever), slipping and slithering from creepy, guttural growl, to banshee like howl, spitting bile and vitriol like he had a chip on his shoulder the size of a manhole cover. Plus all the awesome Charles Peterson blurry photos made them seem so mysterious. But it's always comes down to the songs, and these songs KILL. Grungy, bluesy, heavy, and super catchy, but not obviously so. Think New York Dolls mixed with a little Black Sabbath and a little Pussy Galore with just a dash of the Beatles or the Stones. Mix in a whole lot of alcohol and probably a handful of downers, and you begin to approximate Green River's druggy sludgy din. Hard to believe Pearl Jam was born of this beast, but Mudhoney was too, and seemed a more logical progression. This disc compiles the Dry As A Bone ep, the Rehab Doll lp, as well as three extra tracks, including a Dead Boys cover and a Bowie cover. And again, this isn't really new or anything, but this record informs so much of the music we love and have loved for years that we really wanted folks who may have missed out on these guys to discover just what it was they've been missing. It's been two decades, and this record still kicks ass and sounds totally fresh (in a dank, sludgy, crusty, scummy way!) and even after all that time, there are hardly any bands that even come close......
MPEG Stream: "Unwind"
MPEG Stream: "This Town"
MPEG Stream: "Swallow My Pride"
MPEG Stream: "Rehab Doll"
MPEG Stream: "Queen Bitch"

HEDZOLEH SOUNDS s/t (Soundway) cd 15.98
One of two great Afrobeat finds this week, unearthed by the awesome Soundway label (see the Sweet Talks review elsewhere on this list too). Hedzoleh Sounds were (and still are!) one of the most original "Afro" bands from the early seventies in Ghana, combining West African highlife with funk and western rock sounds. Famously recruited by jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela ("Grazing In The Grass") as his backing band after a recommendation from Fela Kuti for Maskela's 1973 Afro-jazz rarity "Introducing Hedzoleh Sounds" (which we're hoping will also get a reissue!), this self-titled release from 1972 is even rarer, documenting the band from their beginning singles and their stint as the house band at the Napolean Club. Known later in years as stalwart performers of more traditional sounds and horn-fueled highlife, this self-titled release not heard for over forty years is more remarkable for its lack of the horn section that later defined them. Making it a more lean, stripped down excursion, heavy on swinging funk rhythms and gorgeous sweet vocal harmonies. Killer!
MPEG Stream: "Kaa Ye Oyai"
MPEG Stream: "Hedzoleh!"

HEDZOLEH SOUNDS s/t (Soundway) lp 16.98
One of two great Afrobeat finds this week, unearthed by the awesome Soundway label (see the Sweet Talks review elsewhere on this list too). Hedzoleh Sounds were (and still are!) one of the most original "Afro" bands from the early seventies in Ghana, combining West African highlife with funk and western rock sounds. Famously recruited by jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela ("Grazing In The Grass") as his backing band after a recommendation from Fela Kuti for Maskela's 1973 Afro-jazz rarity "Introducing Hedzoleh Sounds" (which we're hoping will also get a reissue!), this self-titled release from 1972 is even rarer, documenting the band from their beginning singles and their stint as the house band at the Napolean Club. Known later in years as stalwart performers of more traditional sounds and horn-fueled highlife, this self-titled release not heard for over forty years is more remarkable for its lack of the horn section that later defined them. Making it a more lean, stripped down excursion, heavy on swinging funk rhythms and gorgeous sweet vocal harmonies. Killer!
MPEG Stream: "Kaa Ye Oyai"
MPEG Stream: "Hedzoleh!"

HIGGS, DANIEL Say God (Thrill Jockey) 2cd 16.98
Modern day shaman Daniel Higgs returns with a two disc collection of songs and poems recorded (mostly) in LA last year with production wizard David Andrew Sitek of TV On The Radio. Higgs has been blowing minds here in the Bay Area since his temporary relocation to Oakland, and we were even fortunate enough to have him grace us with a wonderful in store performance not too long ago. The material on Say God perfectly captures what a Daniel Higgs performance is, with minimal but highly effective musical accompaniment to go along with Higgs' unique brand of poetry delivered in his amazing, rich voice, an instrument unto itself. Some people may be confused by the direction Higgs has followed in recent years, after all, this might initially seem to be the farthest thing from Lungfish's dense psychedelic songcraft. But throughout his musical journey, Higgs has maintained a completely singular creative approach, and his solo work reflects this as much as anything he's ever done. The interesting thing is how his albums blur the lines between what Daniel Higgs is: musician, artist, poet, singer, soundmaker, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress, etc. The end results are pretty much unlike anything else, and it's not surprising how many people are moved by this stuff, especially after seeing the man perform.
Disc 1 opens with current best song title of all time, "Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind," which actually was recorded at a live performance in Germany, with Higgs announcing, "Holy Bible time" to what we can imagine was a stunned crowd. His vocals are accompanied by simple drone and a slight shaker rhythm. His voice carries the melody to new heights as he assures listeners that he intends to appeal to their (and our) standards of songcraft. Not surprisingly, he succeeds. "Song For Azariah" features a mournful folky Appalachian melody played on a banjo that also hints at some eastern influences. The lucky few who were able to snap up Higgs' super limited Hymnprovisations banjo freakout lp can certainly attest his ability on the instrument, and this only reaffirms that. "Say God" features some awesome trademark melodies from Higgs Lungfish/Pupils cohort and underrated guitar hero Asa Osborne, who some of you might also know from his Zomes project. Listening to this, you will wonder when and where this stuff is coming from. It possesses a strange timeless appeal, even though it may not be for everyone. Either way, it's something totally unique, and Osborne's guitar sweeps majestically beneath Higgs' vocals with some amazing results before ending with "A Message From The Beautiful", another piece with just harmonium and voice.
The second disc begins with "Root & Bough", with Higgs sounding a bit like a manlier Devendra Banhart (or maybe it should be Banhart we are comparing to Higgs?) as he recites a lengthy poem with a simple shruti box accompaniment. One of the best things about Higgs as a performer is his spontaneity, and these recordings represent the actual moment, with Higgs even coughing here and there to clear his throat. The power of his voice defines the song, and while definitely droney at times, unlike super blown out electric guitar drones, things here are much more intimate as Higgs weaves out his own mythology which will certainly keep you wondering for a while. At around the 6 minute mark, things take a dramatic shift as a heavy synth drone sweeps in, sounding like what you might expect from Expo '70 or Emeralds. Little whispy melodies begin to flutter about for a few minutes before returning to the drone that characterized the song earlier. About 12 minutes in (uh, did we mention that these are some long songs?), Higgs begins repeating the word "Sing" in a rhythmic pace. Make no mistake, this takes some patience to listen to, but the results are well worth the wait. It's not like you would expect little 3 minute pop songs with this guy, and you have to pay attention to even begin to understand what's going on in his world. However, the next song, "Jewel Of The East" is actually quite brief, a nice folky number performed on what might be a pump organ, it sounds like something you might find on the Wicker Man soundtrack. The song is repetitive and performed with the same loop like attention of Lungfish and Pupils. "Tumble Down" features Higgs' voice with no instrumentation save the sounds of crickets chirping outside. His natural vibrato is in good form as he goes from singing to speaking, all the while keeping things nice and tuneful. "Christ Among Us" finds Higgs breaking out his banjo again, always a joy to listen to. He also tells us, "This song possesses portal power", and one can tell he means it, as this is some transcendental stuff for sure.
We may be going out on a limb here, but some of us feel this is Higgs' strongest solo endeavor as of yet and a great place to start for the uninitiated. Say God is weird, mystical, and beyond comprehension (in a good way of course), but Higgs is the kind of artist with rabidly devoted fans who will no doubt agree with this album's absolute majesty.
MPEG Stream: "Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind"
RealAudio clip: "Say God"
MPEG Stream: "Root & Bough"
MPEG Stream: "Jewel Of The East"

HIGGS, DANIEL Say God (Thrill Jockey) 2lp 17.98
Modern day shaman Daniel Higgs returns with a two disc collection of songs and poems recorded (mostly) in LA last year with production wizard David Andrew Sitek of TV On The Radio. Higgs has been blowing minds here in the Bay Area since his temporary relocation to Oakland, and we were even fortunate enough to have him grace us with a wonderful in store performance not too long ago. The material on Say God perfectly captures what a Daniel Higgs performance is, with minimal but highly effective musical accompaniment to go along with Higgs' unique brand of poetry delivered in his amazing, rich voice, an instrument unto itself. Some people may be confused by the direction Higgs has followed in recent years, after all, this might initially seem to be the farthest thing from Lungfish's dense psychedelic songcraft. But throughout his musical journey, Higgs has maintained a completely singular creative approach, and his solo work reflects this as much as anything he's ever done. The interesting thing is how his albums blur the lines between what Daniel Higgs is: musician, artist, poet, singer, soundmaker, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress, etc. The end results are pretty much unlike anything else, and it's not surprising how many people are moved by this stuff, especially after seeing the man perform.
Disc 1 opens with current best song title of all time, "Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind," which actually was recorded at a live performance in Germany, with Higgs announcing, "Holy Bible time" to what we can imagine was a stunned crowd. His vocals are accompanied by simple drone and a slight shaker rhythm. His voice carries the melody to new heights as he assures listeners that he intends to appeal to their (and our) standards of songcraft. Not surprisingly, he succeeds. "Song For Azariah" features a mournful folky Appalachian melody played on a banjo that also hints at some eastern influences. The lucky few who were able to snap up Higgs' super limited Hymnprovisations banjo freakout lp can certainly attest his ability on the instrument, and this only reaffirms that. "Say God" features some awesome trademark melodies from Higgs Lungfish/Pupils cohort and underrated guitar hero Asa Osborne, who some of you might also know from his Zomes project. Listening to this, you will wonder when and where this stuff is coming from. It possesses a strange timeless appeal, even though it may not be for everyone. Either way, it's something totally unique, and Osborne's guitar sweeps majestically beneath Higgs' vocals with some amazing results before ending with "A Message From The Beautiful", another piece with just harmonium and voice.
The second disc begins with "Root & Bough", with Higgs sounding a bit like a manlier Devendra Banhart (or maybe it should be Banhart we are comparing to Higgs?) as he recites a lengthy poem with a simple shruti box accompaniment. One of the best things about Higgs as a performer is his spontaneity, and these recordings represent the actual moment, with Higgs even coughing here and there to clear his throat. The power of his voice defines the song, and while definitely droney at times, unlike super blown out electric guitar drones, things here are much more intimate as Higgs weaves out his own mythology which will certainly keep you wondering for a while. At around the 6 minute mark, things take a dramatic shift as a heavy synth drone sweeps in, sounding like what you might expect from Expo '70 or Emeralds. Little whispy melodies begin to flutter about for a few minutes before returning to the drone that characterized the song earlier. About 12 minutes in (uh, did we mention that these are some long songs?), Higgs begins repeating the word "Sing" in a rhythmic pace. Make no mistake, this takes some patience to listen to, but the results are well worth the wait. It's not like you would expect little 3 minute pop songs with this guy, and you have to pay attention to even begin to understand what's going on in his world. However, the next song, "Jewel Of The East" is actually quite brief, a nice folky number performed on what might be a pump organ, it sounds like something you might find on the Wicker Man soundtrack. The song is repetitive and performed with the same loop like attention of Lungfish and Pupils. "Tumble Down" features Higgs' voice with no instrumentation save the sounds of crickets chirping outside. His natural vibrato is in good form as he goes from singing to speaking, all the while keeping things nice and tuneful. "Christ Among Us" finds Higgs breaking out his banjo again, always a joy to listen to. He also tells us, "This song possesses portal power", and one can tell he means it, as this is some transcendental stuff for sure.
We may be going out on a limb here, but some of us feel this is Higgs' strongest solo endeavor as of yet and a great place to start for the uninitiated. Say God is weird, mystical, and beyond comprehension (in a good way of course), but Higgs is the kind of artist with rabidly devoted fans who will no doubt agree with this album's absolute majesty.
MPEG Stream: "Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind"
RealAudio clip: "Say God"
MPEG Stream: "Root & Bough"
MPEG Stream: "Jewel Of The East"

HORSEFLESH AND BORNEO Courage Rock (Chambara) cd-r 6.98
Two of our favorite local bands team up for some serious noisemaking. Horseflesh usually traffic in longform dronescapes and epic post industrial kraut drone, while Borneo specialize in a sort of pop infused heaviness, that we described as Harvey Milk or Jesu covering Lync or Seam or even Codeine. So the question is not necessarily why these guys decided to get together, the real question is what happened when they did. And Courage Rock is the answer.
A twisted post rock hybrid, not in the sense of post rock the genre, but rather POST-rock, beyond rock, beyond even post rock, the opening salvo finds the Borneo duo unfurling thick, repetitive anti-grooves, thick chugging metallic riffage, pounding motorik thumps, while Horseflesh bathes the whole thing is thick swaths of tripped out kosmische effects, streaks of white noise, layers upon layers of hiss and buzz and crunch, tossing in the occasional squall of bleeps and bloops and swoops. As the record continues, Borneo dial it back a little contributing some more minimal pulse like rhythmic minimalism, while the guitars rumble and buzz, and Horseflesh keeps things thick and murky and spaced out.
Elsewhere, full on bursts of white noise give way to hazy sun baked riffage, a doomy crawl, almost like Earth, wrapped in a speaker rattling undercurrent of tectonic rumbles, long stretches of layered haze wrapped around incendiary feedback, that pulse like thump holding it together, a gloriously noise flecked spaced out druggy drift, rife with stuttery loops, shards of FX and buried melodies, crushing downtuned doomy sludge, almost stonery, with heavy Neanderthal drumming, and woozy minor key guitars, pounding through a cloud of black fuzz and twisted effects, a seriously fierce psych-drone blowout, so good that it makes us almost think these guys should ALWAYS play together...
SUPER LIMITED, in hand painted and hand assembled packaging....
MPEG Stream: "Courage Rock"
MPEG Stream: "Permacast"
MPEG Stream: "Slate Cleaner"

HUMO DEL CAIRO s/t (Meteorcity) cd 11.98
If Argentina's awesome Los Natas was once considered a Kyuss clone (a band that had many clones) what does that make fellow Argentines Humo del Cairo? 'Cause it'd be easy to tag 'em as *Los Natas* clones, indeed at first we thought they were a Los Natas side project, maybe 'cause Meteorcity put this out and they also recently did the Ararat album too, which was indeed Los Natas related. But, while the Los Natas comparisons are unavoidable (long haired psychedelic stoner rock from Argentina!), and of course Kyuss comparisons are too, this trio is quite worthy of attention on their own, for sure.
'70s sounding heavy rock here, of course, with fat riffs, wild wah-wah solos, Spanish-language vocals, lots of skilled percussive coloration, and pot-headed mystic desert atmospheres. The Egyptian pyramid painting on the cover sets the vibe, an otherworldly ancient scene at dreamy dawn or dusk... No big surprises for those familiar with Los Natas, for sure, but the jams HdC are kicking out are being kicked out quite well, mighty and melodic and very jammy indeed. And, as we listen to this, we realize, wow, this band has really got a knack for suddenly putting things into a sort of psychedelic energetic overdrive about partway through several of songs on here, there's often a moment where they hit on a repetitive hypnotic part a la Pharaoh Overlord or something, but also crank it up a notch, and you really understand why they call it stoner ROCK. Can't really explain it, but you'll know it when you hear it. Say opening track, "A Tiempo", at about 6:25 (it's an 11 minute long song), or in "Fuego De San Antonio" at just past the 3 minute mark. Those amphetamine moments are balanced by the other sort of trance-inducing stoner rock, when they bring it down, slow it up, just lumber along, reveling in the riff, like the nod-scene that is "Nimbo", a track which also blasts into a full-blown wailing by the end. Yeah, within their chosen style, Humo Del Cairo mix it up nicely, rockin' out garage-like at times, or just drifting peacefully along, some parts drenched in heavy FX, others stripped down to acoustic bones ("Errantes" being their most backporch number, complete with bluesy harmonica blowin').
We'd recommend this for fans of Los Natas, naturally, also Tia Carrera, Sons Of Otis, Colour Haze, Monster Magnet, La Ira De Dios, '70s Argentine heavies Pappo's Blues, and we're even thinking Jimi Hendrix, who gets hinted at at times. ANOTHER winner from Meteorcity, who have been on a massive roll lately!
MPEG Stream: "A Tiempo"
MPEG Stream: "Nimbo"
MPEG Stream: "Cauce"

INDIAN JEWELRY Totaled (We Are Free) cd 15.98
Indian Jewelry's Free Gold emerged as a minor masterpiece of off-kilter neo-psychedelia back in 2008. Synths, drum machines, a sparse use of guitars, and way tripped-out effects spiralled throughout, but it was the vocal melodies - all ghostly, sexy, slightly confused, and daydreaming - that turned the record from becoming just another interesting diversion. For the 2010 album Totaled, the Houston duo turn inward for a more sinister take on their woozy, dreamtime psychedelia, that comes across almost like a ghetto-tech reanimation of the Flaming Lips' Embryonic. Indian Jewelry's fried electronics transmit throbbing, dirge-like sequences and skeletal rhythms, augmenting the fried neurons of zombified vocals, alternately delivered by Tex Kerschen and Erika Thrasher. The vocals are less of a focus here, positioned as an undercurrent of narcoleptic bad-vibes sort of like the sounds of a transistor radio murmuring in the apartment next door. The atmospheres throughout have the feeling of getting dosed /stoned on (insert drug of choice) and then wandering around an industrial wasteland at twilight. The colors beautifully serve to highlight the more rundown parts of urban living.
MPEG Stream: "Lapis Lazuli"
MPEG Stream: "Excessive Moonlight"
MPEG Stream: "Touching The Roof Of The Sun"

ISENGRIND Modlitewnik (Blackest Rainbow) lp 25.00
A fantastic new lp from the female half of freak folk duo Natural Snow Buildings, Solange Gularte, but once again, like pretty much everything NSB related, this lp was WAY too limited, it's already sold out, we got way less than we ordered. So fair warning, we'll probably run out in a heartbeat, and we will not be able to get more. Which is a huge bummer, because this record is quite lovely, and definitely deserves to be heard by more than the handful that will actually get their hands on it.
Like past Isengrind records, and much like some of the Natural Snow Buildings material, Gularte conjures up gauzy folky dreamscapes, sun dappled and shimmery, swirling clouds of distant buzz, spidery tendrils of gentle guitar melody, spread out lattice like, woodwinds flutter, definitely raga like, but washed out enough that at moments the sound is nearly ambient, while at others, the sound is more akin to some sort of Appalachia, Gularte's vocals wordless and ethereal, the steel strings buzzing warmly, the best moments where those two sides mesh, guitars strummed gently over crooned angelic vox, all over a hushed sea of layered fuzz, mesmerizing and hypnotic and dreamily druggy.
Most of the second side is spent droning and buzzing, but even the most minimal and abstract stretch is infused with subtle sweet guitar, and muted percussion, spectral vocals, and all manner of slowly unfurling melody. So gorgeous.
And again, crazy limited, already out of print, so act fast fast fast... and be prepared for us to say sorry they're already gone...

JAY, ABNER Folk Song Stylist (Mississippi) lp 14.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
It's possible that Abner Jay could have been completely overlooked and forgotten had his work not come to peoples' attention first with a collection on Subliminal Sounds and later with Mississippi, who issued the True Story Of... lp and the Terrible Comedy Blues 7" not too long ago. Mississippi is now back with another collection, featuring Jay on the cover looking poised and professional, a bit of a contrast from the wildman with a banjo, harmonica, and bass drum that we have familiarized ourselves with. Folk Song Stylist may at first seem to be a misleading title, because many of the songs here display an energized, '60s R&B approach, all driven forward by Jay's amazing, soulful vocals, which should certainly be enough to ensure his immortality in some circles. Lyrically, however, the songs focus on social injustices and personal struggle, namechecking Watts county, the state of employment, and the sub par state of housing as observed in Jay's native Georgia. Jay also finds time to offer his take on the classic Scottish ballad "Lord Randall", which he delivers with an amazing authenticity. Another welcome look into the incomparable style of this self proclaimed "Philosopher, Lecturer, Composer, Singer, and ONE MAN BAND".

KARKOWSKI, ZBIGNIEW Attuning / Attending (Musica Genera) cd 16.98
For all of the sonic force that Zbigniew Karkowski has inflicted on the world over the past two and half decades, it can be easy to forget that Karkowski had studied under Iannis Xenakis, the architect who turned to avant-garde composition by way of mathematics. Karkowski's signature performances of toxic orchestrations and polluted noise can be downright brutal. So when it comes to a restrained piece of electronic minimalism, as in the utterly compelling Attuning / Attending, it's much easier to hear the connections in Karkowski's composed sound to the Apollonian facets of Xenakis' work. On this hard-to-find Polish import, Karkowski presents an extended set of flickering vibrations and electrical tones which modulate and mutate against undercurrents of sinewaves and clouds of static. Occasional subharmonic rumblings, shadowy drones, and metallic, flanging rasps of grey noise allude to Karkowski's ill-tempered noise constructs; but they are always kept in check within looped, repetitive structures. All of this shares more than a passing glance at Xenakis' Concret PH, the seminal electro-acoustic piece composed from the crackle of burning coals. Karkowski's sources seem to be wholly digital in nature, but they are tempered with a granular tactility reflective of Xenakis' embers. Quite a nice surprise!
MPEG Stream: "[excerpt 1]"
MPEG Stream: "[excerpt 2]"

KIRK, RAHSAAN ROLAND Blacknuss (Atlantic) lp 12.98
It seems like time for a rant again. Don't worry, We'll make it short. Roland Kirk is God! Or at least as much a god as Mingus, Sun Ra, Davis or Coltrane. So here's your chance to see what you've been missing. And what the majority of jazz fans can't get their narrow heads around: soulful, jazzy, funky, groovy, funny, soul shaking, gut busting, tear jerking brilliance from this musical genius. Master of every instrument he picked up (as well as a handful he invented!), able to play three horns at once (not as a gimmick, as a way to play three melodies), blind since birth and later suffering paralysis from a stroke, wandering around NYC with a huge wheeled staff with various horns duct-taped to it as well as a portable tape recorder that he used to record the sounds of the world and would sometime incorporate into live performances, a brilliant and funny orator, telling jokes and stories, ranting and testifying, preaching and proclaiming, and once even handing out cocaine to folks in the crowd. This man was remarkable. Musically, socially, personally. Unclear why he tends to get overlooked, and underappreciated by the majority of jazz fans. Too weird maybe? But we know that won't bother you (speaking here to YOU, the discerning AQ list subscriber) !!!
So it's always a happy day, when some new Kirk gem is unearthed, or some classic Kirk record gets the re-release/remaster treatment. So big ups to whoever is responsible for this Kirk vinyl reissue campaign, the latest entry being his legendary Blacknuss record, originally released in 1972, which just so happens to include one of Kirk's most moving tunes ever, his sorrowful take on Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine", complete with soaring minor key strings and Kirk growling the lyrics through his flute! Mostly covers, this finds Kirk straddling the line between overt sentimentality, and more of that party/boppy/get-up-and-dance-dammit vibe. While some of the tunes here are bit straight ahead, there are moments where Kirk slays, the aforementioned "Ain't No Sunshine", the testifying gospel tinged "Blacknuss", and an unlikely cover of Bread's "Make It With You"?? Awesome.

KRISTOFFERSON, KRIS Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968-1972 (Light In The Attic) cd 15.98
It's safe to say that few people throughout the history of humankind have lived a life quite like that of legendary songwriter Kris Kristofferson. Kristofferson followed an unlikely path, from his youth as an Army brat, becoming a Rhodes Scholar and an Army Captain before ultimately ending up in Nashville where he worked a variety of jobs, including janitor at the studio where Dylan was busy recording Blonde On Blonde, construction worker, and helicopter pilot. All along the way things were fueled by a potent cocktail of booze, amphetamines, and weed. More importantly, however, Kristofferson spent his days honing his songwriting chops along with others in an elite songwriting circle referred to as the Nashville Underground, licensing his songs to other artists. Perhaps the most famous example being "Me And Bobby McGee" as sung by Janis Joplin, Kristofferson's lover at the time of her death. All of this culminated in a surprising rise to stardom in his 30s, and the guy even managed to find success as an actor, complete with some Barbara Streisand appearances, a staple of thrift store record bins... Goddamn.
This collection of early demos recorded between 1968 and 1972 offers an amazing insight into Kristofferson's process. He was a lifelong fan of William Blake, who inspired him to fiercely maintain "the duty of an artist to be an artist". Perhaps this is the reason others first had success with Kristofferson's songs, as these demos display a suitably raw approach from a singer who sounds like he "gargled with whiskey," according to the liner notes. Still, with all the rough edges it's clear that we are listening in on a supremely passionate singer. Kristofferson's weary voice is ultimately triumphant, but also loaded with booze soaked melancholy. These songs also display his unique sense of humor, like the amazing "If You Don't Like Hank Williams", and "Getting By, High And Strange", where Kristofferson's mistakes are followed by numerous mumblings of "Fuck!". Awesome.
The sound here is amazing, clear and upfront, and the musicians aren't afraid to let the tape keep rolling. Comes packaged in a nice looking, foil stamped digipack with a booklet literally bulging with information and recollections from people like Dennis Hopper, Merle Haggard, and others who have probably experienced way more than most of us could comprehend. All in all another essential document from the always amazing Light In The Attic label.
MPEG Stream: "Me And Bobby McGee"
MPEG Stream: "Just The Other Side Of Nowhere"
MPEG Stream: "If You Don't Like Hank Williams"

LAST ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC SPACE JAZZ & PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE, THE (MADLIB) Miles Away (Stones Throw) cd 17.98
Madlib is one prolific producer, one of our favorites actually, but there is something refreshing to hear his fine production techniques with a live jazz ensemble. Miles Away plays special tribute to all the cosmic jazz and groove we love from artists in the sixties and seventies, from John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, The Tribe's Phil Ranelin, Fred Walker, Roy Ayers, Larry Young, Woody Shaw, and Harry Whitaker amongst others. Basically, all of the cats who have inspired hip-hop over the last few decades. Lots of tribal percussion, piano, vibes and flutes in airy compositions that are as contemplative as they are grooving. Beautiful! Nicely packaged in a miniature lp style sleeve, too.
MPEG Stream: "One for The Monica Lingas Band"
MPEG Stream: "Tones For Larry Young"
MPEG Stream: "Mystic Voyage (For Roy Ayers)"

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

LOS CAMPESINOS! Romance Is Boring (Arts & Crafts) cd 14.98
We tried to fight it. We wanted to hate Los Campesinos! (exclamation point part of the name btw), and we tried our hardest, all the hype, the blog love, their extreme cuteness, the mandatory exclamation point, the fact that the band members all take the last name Campesinos (a la the Ramones), on the surface, barring the music, they seemed like a band we would hate. But we're big enough to admit when we're wrong, and so, here goes: we were wrong.
This Welsh troop of quirky pop kids are pretty dang great, we can't speak to past records, although odds are we'll be digging into those now too, but this record is fantastic. Weirdo pop, jangly and playful at its core, but rife with strange electronics, bizarre production, surprising horns, tinkling chimes, even glockesnpiel, but those quirky elements can't detract from how awesome and awesomely catchy these songs are. Equal parts Belle And Sebastien, Superchunk, Pavement and old Yoyo and Kill Rock Stars groups like Crayon, Nuzzle, the Cannanes, Some Velvet Sidewalk and the like. Exuberant and fun fun fun. Weird instrumentation, boy / girl vocals, crazy HOOKS everywhere, sing-alongs, goofy smart lyrics, crunchy and jangly and so goddamn catchy, and fun, did we say fun. Okay! We're sorry, we love these guys and gals, and we love this record, and you probably will too.
MPEG Stream: "In Media Res"
MPEG Stream: "There Are Listed Buildings"
MPEG Stream: "Romance Is Boring"

LOS CAMPESINOS! Romance Is Boring (Arts & Crafts) lp 24.00
We tried to fight it. We wanted to hate Los Campesinos! (exclamation point part of the name btw), and we tried our hardest, all the hype, the blog love, their extreme cuteness, the mandatory exclamation point, the fact that the band members all take the last name Campesinos (a la the Ramones), on the surface, barring the music, they seemed like a band we would hate. But we're big enough to admit when we're wrong, and so, here goes: we were wrong.
This Welsh troop of quirky pop kids are pretty dang great, we can't speak to past records, although odds are we'll be digging into those now too, but this record is fantastic. Weirdo pop, jangly and playful at its core, but rife with strange electronics, bizarre production, surprising horns, tinkling chimes, even glockesnpiel, but those quirky elements can't detract from how awesome and awesomely catchy these songs are. Equal parts Belle And Sebastien, Superchunk, Pavement and old Yoyo and Kill Rock Stars groups like Crayon, Nuzzle, the Cannanes, Some Velvet Sidewalk and the like. Exuberant and fun fun fun. Weird instrumentation, boy / girl vocals, crazy HOOKS everywhere, sing-alongs, goofy smart lyrics, crunchy and jangly and so goddamn catchy, and fun, did we say fun. Okay! We're sorry, we love these guys and gals, and we love this record, and you probably will too.
MPEG Stream: "In Media Res"
MPEG Stream: "There Are Listed Buildings"
MPEG Stream: "Romance Is Boring"

LUMERIANS Burning Mirror (Rococo Records) 7" 10.98
Another badass slab of psychedelic hypno dirge space rock courtesy of local boys The Lumerians, who definitely have the druggy drone-y dirge dirgey thing down pat. If you dig the Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, Cave, Moon Duo, and other practitioners of blown out drug rock mesmer, well then you're gonna love the Lumerians. Channeling Spacemen 3, mixing in some serious krautrock, adding heaping doses of spaced out FX, these guys lock into a groove and then ride it out, totally hypnotic, cyclical, trancelike. Reverb soaked guitars, murky distorted vox, washed out, looped bass, buried melodies, all blurred and smeared into lysergic drone rock that is totally captivating. Be sure to stick around for the B-side, a barely recognizable cover of the Osmonds' infamous killer jam "Crazy Horses", given a total hazy space drone dreamdrug makeover. So awesome.
Now we have just one question, WHERE'S THE FULL LENGTH?!?

MALE BONDING Nothing Hurts (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
If we had to describe these guys in as few words as possible, we could probably do it in three: Dum Dum Boys. Or maybe even two: Vivian Boys. Yep, that's basically what Male Bonding are all about, yet another group carving out their own little chunk of sound in the ever dwindling sonic territory that makes up the current explosion of hazy lo-fi fuzz drenched reverby garage pop, but like the Vivian Girls (who guest on a track here) and the Dum Dum Girls, Male Bonding too manage to rise above, using lots of the same elements, but crafting a sound all their own. Sure they borrow from everybody, few modern bands don't, but their mix of Weezer and Guided By Voices, the Lemonheads, classic pop punk and nineties indie rock, all filtered through a the now sound of retro leaning warped garage rock, makes Nothing Hurts a serious contender for pop record of the year.
And it's all about the songs, the band deftly slip from crunchy feral punky garage rock, to totally infectious heavily hooky, power chord power, pop and back again, before exploding into another post punky workout that sounds like some obscure Polvo B-side. And when they team up with the Vivian Girls, one might expect a woozy, gauzy, reverb drenched sixties style Spector-ized wall of sound chunk of garage pop, but instead, it's an almost entirely acoustic jam, just guitar and vocals, with the Vivian Girls' contributing occasional "oooohs" and "ahhhhs", and then there's an unexpected bit of hazy washed out shoe gazey distorted guitar fuzz, before they slip right back into some dreamy druggy strum.
And that's sort of what's so great about the record, on the surface, it's fuzzy and punky and poppy, and all the folks into Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and Gary War and of course Dum Dum Girls, will dig it right out of the gate, but spend some time with it, and it ends up revealing itself as so much more, a super smart, surprisingly complex, crazy catchy chunk of classic sounding indie pop / post rock crunch.
MPEG Stream: "Year's Not Long"
MPEG Stream: "All Things This Way"
MPEG Stream: "Your Contract"
MPEG Stream: "Worse To Come (Featuring Vivian Girls)"

MALE BONDING Nothing Hurts (Sub Pop) lp 15.98
If we had to describe these guys in as few words as possible, we could probably do it in three: Dum Dum Boys. Or maybe even two: Vivian Boys. Yep, that's basically what Male Bonding are all about, yet another group carving out their own little chunk of sound in the ever dwindling sonic territory that makes up the current explosion of hazy lo-fi fuzz drenched reverby garage pop, but like the Vivian Girls (who guest on a track here) and the Dum Dum Girls, Male Bonding too manage to rise above, using lots of the same elements, but crafting a sound all their own. Sure they borrow from everybody, few modern bands don't, but their mix of Weezer and Guided By Voices, the Lemonheads, classic pop punk and nineties indie rock, all filtered through a the now sound of retro leaning warped garage rock, makes Nothing Hurts a serious contender for pop record of the year.
And it's all about the songs, the band deftly slip from crunchy feral punky garage rock, to totally infectious heavily hooky, power chord power, pop and back again, before exploding into another post punky workout that sounds like some obscure Polvo B-side. And when they team up with the Vivian Girls, one might expect a woozy, gauzy, reverb drenched sixties style Spector-ized wall of sound chunk of garage pop, but instead, it's an almost entirely acoustic jam, just guitar and vocals, with the Vivian Girls' contributing occasional "oooohs" and "ahhhhs", and then there's an unexpected bit of hazy washed out shoe gazey distorted guitar fuzz, before they slip right back into some dreamy druggy strum.
And that's sort of what's so great about the record, on the surface, it's fuzzy and punky and poppy, and all the folks into Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and Gary War and of course Dum Dum Girls, will dig it right out of the gate, but spend some time with it, and it ends up revealing itself as so much more, a super smart, surprisingly complex, crazy catchy chunk of classic sounding indie pop / post rock crunch.
MPEG Stream: "Year's Not Long"
MPEG Stream: "All Things This Way"
MPEG Stream: "Your Contract"
MPEG Stream: "Worse To Come (Featuring Vivian Girls)"

MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE The Visible Sign Of Invisible Order (Important) lp 28.00
NOW ON VINYL!!! Deluxe packaging, extra music too! The Important label vinylizes this out of print Abduction cd release from '04, which was the first thing we'd heard from the MMoB. This reissue includes 20 more minutes of music from the original sessions, it's on 180 gram vinyl, and comes in a gorgeous heavy duty gatefold sleeve with new, gold metallic artwork, wrapped in an obi, wow. Here's what we said about the cd edition back when:
Ostensibly the Master Musicians of Bukkake is one John Schuller and one Randall Dunn, but for the recording of The Visible Sign Of Invisible Order the two have called into service a veritable supergroup of the Northwest's avant-garde to assist in its recording including both Alan Bishop and Charlie Gocher of Sun City Girls, violinist extraordinaire Eyvind Kang, drummer Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs contributors among other things) and more. Of the parents here Master Musicians seems to take more of its genes from the Sun City Girls, but not so much that you couldn't be fooled into believing it was adopted. Spacious soundscapes comprising field recordings, relocated ethnic percussion of vague origin lays the foundation for haunting and murky acoustic guitars, flutes and wordless vocals. That both the Secret Chiefs and the Sun City Girls are avid usurpers and subverters of the world of music are common interests enough to spawn such a child.
MPEG Stream: "Bukkake Sunrise"
MPEG Stream: "Access of Evil"

MCNEILL, LLOYD QUARTET, THE Asha (Universal Sound) cd 19.98
We've heard tracks here and there from Lloyd McNeill, on that New Thing! Soul Jazz compilation, on the Freedom Rhythm & Sound revolutionary jazz comp, but this is the first full length we've heard, and it's magical.
Besides being an incredible flutist and composer, McNeill was also a painter, palling around with Picasso in Paris, he ran his own record label, has recorded with Nina Simone, Ron Carter, and lots of others. He's also a music anthropologist, a teacher and a poet. He was involved in the civil rights movement, recorded music for art installations and ballets. But his music, wow, totally breathtaking, Latin and Brazilian flecked spiritual jazz. Nothing skronky or far out, now wild and wooly, or in any way difficult, just incredibly passionate, and personal, lush and melodic, gorgeous and understated real jazz.
Originally released on his own label, the Asha Recording Company, a label he ran from the late sixties until the early seventies, Asha is a truly fantastic bit of classic jazz, the songs soar and swell and brood, exploding into flights of fancy, but just as quickly slipping back into deep introspection, the band is tight as hell, shuffling drums, moody understated piano, some Latin percussion here and there, but it's McNeill's flute and piccolo playing that really makes Asha so special, fluttery and breathy one moment, wildly melodic the next, weaving gorgeous melodies over dreamy jazzscapes. The title track might be one of the most perfect jams ever, slightly melancholy, super dynamic, minor key melodies, plenty of tension, so melodic and moody, and downright lovely. The 10+ minute "Warmth Of A Sunny Day" is sun dappled and dreamy, the piano and flute perfectly in sync, playfully sparring over a sunshiny bed of soft focus piano and warm liquid bass. So fantastic. Yet another jazz reissue that is becoming a fast fave.
MPEG Stream: "Asha"
MPEG Stream: "As A Matter Of Fact"
MPEG Stream: "Two-Third's Pleasure"

MCNEILL, LLOYD QUARTET, THE Asha (Universal Sound) lp 23.00
We've heard tracks here and there from Lloyd McNeill, on that New Thing! Soul Jazz compilation, on the Freedom Rhythm & Sound revolutionary jazz comp, but this is the first full length we've heard, and it's magical.
Besides being an incredible flutist and composer, McNeill was also a painter, palling around with Picasso in Paris, he ran his own record label, has recorded with Nina Simone, Ron Carter, and lots of others. He's also a music anthropologist, a teacher and a poet. He was involved in the civil rights movement, recorded music for art installations and ballets. But his music, wow, totally breathtaking, Latin and Brazilian flecked spiritual jazz. Nothing skronky or far out, now wild and wooly, or in any way difficult, just incredibly passionate, and personal, lush and melodic, gorgeous and understated real jazz.
Originally released on his own label, the Asha Recording Company, a label he ran from the late sixties until the early seventies, Asha is a truly fantastic bit of classic jazz, the songs soar and swell and brood, exploding into flights of fancy, but just as quickly slipping back into deep introspection, the band is tight as hell, shuffling drums, moody understated piano, some Latin percussion here and there, but it's McNeill's flute and piccolo playing that really makes Asha so special, fluttery and breathy one moment, wildly melodic the next, weaving gorgeous melodies over dreamy jazzscapes. The title track might be one of the most perfect jams ever, slightly melancholy, super dynamic, minor key melodies, plenty of tension, so melodic and moody, and downright lovely. The 10+ minute "Warmth Of A Sunny Day" is sun dappled and dreamy, the piano and flute perfectly in sync, playfully sparring over a sunshiny bed of soft focus piano and warm liquid bass. So fantastic. Yet another jazz reissue that is becoming a fast fave.
MPEG Stream: "Asha"
MPEG Stream: "As A Matter Of Fact"
MPEG Stream: "Two-Third's Pleasure"

MELTON, MATTHEW Still Misunderstood (Southpaw) lp 13.98
Regular readers of the list know how much we love local fuzz pop jangle garage rockers Snake Flower 2 and the equally fuzzy and jangly Bare Wires, both fronted by Mr. Matthew Melton, a long haired, leather jacket clad rocker, albeit one with a pop heart wrapped in prickly fuzz, which is precisely what we find so magical about Melton's songwriting.
Crunchy, fuzzy, buzzy, reverby, blown out, catchy and hooky and melodic, sounding almost like the musically wiser big brother to the current crop of lo-fi garage poppers like Thee Oh Sees and the Sic Alps and Ty Segall. Melton's songs just sound more world weary and experienced, there's still a youthful exuberance, but it's a bit tarnished, a little gritty and grimy, and it just suits the sound and the songs.
Still Misunderstood collects early tracks and demos from Melton that predate both Bare Wires and Snake Flower 2, and while it seems even back then his songwriting was fully formed, it is still developing in some ways, the influences of early rock and roll is way more obvious, the Kinks, the Who, the Flamin' Groovies, sixties and seventies garage pop, big choruses, clean jangly strum, tambourine, simple pounding drums, swirling wah guitar, a little psychedelic, a little lo-fi, but awesomely propulsive and fuzzy and rocking. At times it almost sounds like some obscure lost gem from the late sixties or early, some out-of-nowhere reissue of some band from the Midwest's only (unreleased) record, which only reinforces the timelessness of these tracks, and reaffirms Melton's position as one of our current favorite songwriters. Dig it!

MOEBIUS & PLANK Rastakraut Pasta (Bureau B) lp 16.98
Recently reissued on cd, now also available on vinyl!
Krautrock fans are familiar with these guys: Dieter Moebius, who is one one-half of Cluster, and Conny Plank, the producer/engineer responsible for recording sooooo many amazing albums in the '70s and '80s. Both were also members of Liliental. In the early-mid '80s they teamed up for a series of albums together, of which 1980's Rastakraut Pasta was the first.
Various instruments (and non-instruments too?) were played by the duo, then manipulated via Plank's mixing desk, with Moebius providing additional electronics. Can's Holger Czukay also dropped in to lay down bass on a few of the tracks. The results are all quite pleasant and playful, goofy even, tinged with a sunny Jamaican dub reggae influence (hence the Rastakraut title), most notable in the quirky percolating grooves of "Missi Cacadou". And it's quite obvious that this album has something to do with Cluster, nobody else really ever made music like this. Experimental and accessible, weird and wonderful, sorta surreal and not so serious, yet still quite affecting - and full of effects! From the chugging motorik distortion of "Feedback 66" to the looping lovely melodies of "Two Oldtimers" to the more abstract ambience of "Solar Plexus", Rastakraut Pasta is an airy delight. It's mostly instrumental, but when there are vocals, they are heavily treated and fragmentary, and with or without 'em you'll be humming and nodding along.
MPEG Stream: "Rastakraut Pasta"
MPEG Stream: "Feedback 66"
MPEG Stream: "Missi Cacadou"

NF ORCHEST Coagulant (Breaking Wheel Imprint) 3" cd-r 5.98
A necessary resurfacing of the NF Orchest. This was an East Bay post-noise project spearheaded by Jim Kaiser, Angela Hsu, and A.C. Way many years ago, marked by leaden electronics and acoustic dinscraping. The group found themselves with the rather trite problem of having too much on their plate - Kaiser performing almost constantly with Hsu, Thomas Carnacki, and irr.app.(ext.) amongst others; and Way taking up the cause of Maleficia, Carrion, and probably a few other blackened projects festering in Oakland warehouses. After five years since the last time we heard from the NF Orchest, the three found themselves plugged into the same PA at the Luggage Store in early 2010, where Kaiser bowed his trusted bicycle wheel, Hsu slashed across her violin, and Way produced all sorts of dread-inspiring, subterranean noises. The resulting sounds have the feel of being recorded way deep underground, with a molten snarl of hellish drone bubbling about atonal plucks and scrapes spiralling through phased delay patterns. Yeah, the violin improvisations in abandoned buildings do resonate with the Hsu / Kaiser end of the NF Orchest spectrum, but Way's heavy, black drones put this into an entire other catagory of spectral dark ambience.
MPEG Stream: "Coagulant"

NIGHTBRINGER Apocalypse Sun (Ajna) cd 14.98
Full length number two from one of the most revered US black metal bands around. And for good reason. Their Death And The Black Work record was near flawless, a swirling epic, spaced our psychedelic blackness, with insane insectoid riffing, inhumanly blazing drumming, filthy demonic vox, and some of the most tangled, gnarled and complex arrangements ever. Especially the guitars. Strip the guitars away, and you'd still be looking as a practically perfect BM framework, blasting, chaotic, dense, ultra heavy, to that you could add some generically grim and frosty riffage and have a decent slab of black metal, or you could add some warped and dizzyingly fractured Nightbringer style riffing, and suddenly, we're in a whole 'nother dimension. In some ways the sound is more death metal than black metal, in structure at least, furious and relentless, so fast, but cloaked in a filthy patina of grim ambient buzz, shot through with spidery mournful melodies, and those guitars, soaring and howling and tangly and layered and totally epic and relentless, as close to manic blackened riffing can get to non stop shredding without losing cohesion, instead it makes every track seem more epic, more spacey out, as if the band were trying to craft some impossible black metal ur-drone raga, a constant build, getting more and more and more frantic, the energy spilling forth it huge gouts of incendiary buzz and blast, totally exhausting, but also utterly exhilarating, one track feels like a whole record by other, less ambitious bands, like some strange hybrid of Deathspell Omega, Leviathan and Liturgy, the last especially in the way Nightbringer seem to transcend black metal, taking the traditional tropes and stretching them into something almost more akin to 20th century composition, black metal rendered in sprawling expansive soundscapes of light and dark, buzz and blast, grind and crunch, howl and shimmer, occasionally slipping into gorgeous swirling guitar drones, other times, pounding majestic doomlike lumber, and still other times face melting bursts of white noise blasts of grinding black crunch.
Nightbringer are easily one of the best USBM bands, and Apocalypse Sun is just latest in their ever expanding black world of sound, and is most definitely a contender for black metal record of the year. As if we were expecting anything less...
MPEG Stream: "I Am I"
MPEG Stream: "Supplication Before The Throne Of Tehom"
MPEG Stream: "Serpent Of The Midnight Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Upturning The Seventh Chalice"

OTTO; OR, UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE OST (Crippled Dick Hot Wax!) cd 17.98
We've never really been that into Canadian director Bruce LaBruce, but if any movie was gonna change our mind, it just might be Otto; Or, Up With Dead People. It looks pretty awesome just based on the pictures in the booklet. A super stylish gay punk zombie called Otto wanders the streets of Berlin, eventually finding himself cast in a low budget film. And then there's the soundtrack, brought to us by the ever awesome, always eclectic Crippled Dick Hot Wax!, a super varied collection, of almost entirely unknown to us groups, whose disparate sounds are somehow woven into a surprisingly cohesive collection. The names probably won't mean much to must folks, but the sounds, that's a different story. Haunting dramatic strings, cinematic (obviously) and ominous, gives way to some creepy chamber folk, all thumps and rumbles and deep dark guitar strum, dreamy, but mysterious. After some crackle encrusted strings, sounding a bit like a snippet of William Basinski, in come some skittery downtempo beats and some deep crooned vox, which transitions into some almost sunshiney psychedelic jangle, playful and poppy, you can almost envision Otto wandering through town, not a care in the world. OK, maybe not. But then up next is the awesomely titled Pandas Of Black Metal, with a sort of metal / electro hybrid, all frantic techno beats, grinding chugging guitars, warped 808's, bursts of static, strange samples, cool stuff, which eventually fades out, introducing some syrupy Scott Walker style balladry.
The other awesome proper band is up next, The Living Dead Boys, with some crunchy metallic guitars, wrapped around more techno beats and some super dramatic vocals, sounding a bit like a metallic Interpol, or a way more electronic Deadsy. After a bit of lilting twee music box pop, comes the sprawling 13 minute "On The Cusp Of Infinity" from Brittle Stars, which totally sounds like a band we would freak out over here, a blackened blown out, slow motion shoegazey doom sludge, Nadja, Tim Hecker, SUNNO))), massive metallic slowcore, dreamlike and glacial, and definitely worth further investigation. The rest of the record plays out as a dizzying assemblage of sample laced dream pop shimmer, skittery electronic weirdness, dramatic neo-classical, almost operatic black ambience, twisted free jazz 20th century soundscapes, Oval-like skip and glitch shimmer, finishing off with some cute playful folk pop, acoustic guitars and chiming bells, a brief little ditty, appropriately titled "Everyone's Dead".
Still can't say if we're sold on the movie, but we've been digging the soundtrack like crazy, and like we said, hard to resist a low budget gay punk zombie flick, especially with such a badass soundtrack...
MPEG Stream: BRITTLE STARS "On The Cusp Of Infinity"
MPEG Stream: PANDAS OF DEATH METAL "Kill Your Gods"
MPEG Stream: JEAN-LOUIS HUHTA "Halfway Between The World And Death"
MPEG Stream: THE LIVING DEAD BOYS "Discohell"

PORTAL Lurker At The Threshold (Chrome Leaf) 7" picture disc 9.98
These masked mysterious weirdo death metallers just drifted through town, their show, like their sound, a grim, almost dada-esque twist on classic death metal, a swirling chaos of gnarled buzzing riffage, blasting loose limbed drumming, and the creepy grunts and growls of hooded front man 'The Curator', the whole band masked and draped in black, spewing huge swells of twisted sonic malevolence.
All three Portal full lengths were huge favorites around here, every one a dizzying assemblage of warped blackness and fractured death metal fury, murky and muddy and washed out, frenzied and freaky and gloriously fucked up. Visually and sonically like a metal Faxed Head, Portal's death metal bears only a slight resemblance to regular death metal, which is precisely why it's so appealing.
This super limited picture disc 7" compiles 2 of the 3 songs from Portal's 2006 demo tape Lurker At The Threshold, and while re-recorded versions of both these songs found their way on to the Outre full length, these older, more raw (believe it or not) versions are well worth checking out. "Omnipresent Crawling Chaos" explodes in a blast of murky metallic grind, frenzied and frantic, but so blurred and smeared as to render it a strange shadowing deathmetalscape, all lurching and lumbering and blasting, a swirling black sonic cloud. "13 Globes" is another chunk of blown out grinding metal crush, but with some cool woozy warbly minor key melodies, stuttering start stop rhythms, and insane tangled riffage, all wrapped in a melted murky lo-fi blacknoize gauze.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Pressed on super thick 70 gram vinyl, super striking picture disc adorned with creepy Lovecraftian artwork, either already out of print or darn close, so get one while you can...

PSYCHEDELIC HORSESHIT Acid Tape (Fan Death) cassette 4.00
These shitgazers from Ohio started their recording career by just dubbing tapes at home and leaving them in local record stores, an endearingly haphazard way to spread the word about your band, and for a band like this, it seemed pretty perfect. Ramshackle and chaotic, DIY and constantly on the verge of collapse, no reason the format and the distribution shouldn't be representative of the music itself. Acid Tape finds PHS returning to the format where it all began, and thankfully even after all the hubbub and hype, after records on Siltbreeze and Woodsist, magazine articles and ridiculous blog love, these guys (and gal) still sound pretty much the same, and Acid Tape sounds like it could have come straight out of the free box on the floor by the front door of your favorite record store, but like those early tapes, it's the sort of 'holy shit' surprise that sometimes lurks in the free box or the bargain bin, part of the record shopping experience that ca never be replicated online. Acid Tape starts off with one of our favorite PHS jams yet, "Unseen Voids", a big swirling cloud of super distorted fuzzed out guitars, simple scattershot percussion, drawled sad boy vocals, tangled melodies, a gorgeous squall of home brewed bedroom psych, definitely worth the price of admittance.
After that, it's a meandering wander through a drugged out busted 4-track shoegaze FX pedal popscape, gnarled wah guitars, skeletal rhythms, woozy almost dubby bass (especially on "Hard As It Gets (Chill Sax Mix)"), super reverbed vox, detuned acoustic guitars, lots of tape hiss, tripped out electronic drums, gnarled riffs, finishing off with a pretty mighty two-fer, the brief but hooky "Gliderz", with it's melted lysergic fuzz guitar, warbly tape speed, and twisted melodies, and he 7+ minute "Bleak Vacations", a Velvets style blues jangle hypno jam, mesmerizing and spaced out, stripped down and dreamily druggy.

PUFFY AREOLAS In The Army 1981 (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
What's in a name? Well, with Puffy Areolas, pretty much everything. Or nothing. All we know is a google search offers up many interesting results, very few of them related to the band. Regardless, it's definitely an attention grabber. We missed them at South By Southwest, but listening to this now, we are kicking ourselves big time. These noiseniks from Ohio sound right at home on Siltbreeze, a sort of fiery feral punk infused with just the right amount of in-the-red noise, and chaotic about to collapse heavy rock, maybe if the Stooges existed now, and were signed to Amphetamine Reptile, the PA's offer up a crowd baiting explosion of noise punk, wild riffing buried in a sea of reverb and distortion, the drums a barely there chaotic crash and crunch, the vocals a wild yowl, frantic and frenetic, pounding and propulsive, this is the sort of record that just oozes sweat and blood and stale beer and cigarette butts, and invokes the sort of next day bruised and battered hangover that there shows must produce in spades. Not sure what else to say, if you like it heavy and noisy and chaotic, you probably can't do much better than the Puffy Areolas.
Comes with a download code so the damage can be digital as well. Fuck yeah.

SAVIO, DANIEL Nightmare Food b/w Sleeping Wit' Fish ( Losonofono / LoDubs) 7" 5.98
Skweee! Skweee! Skweee! (That's our onomatopoeic skweee alert siren, of course.) Daniel Savio is one of those peculiar Scandinavian skweee producers, making tracks in that funky, fun (and pun) filled '80s arcade-y, chiptune-y, instrumental electro genre we dig so much, you've heard his stuff on the Museum Of Future Sound comps, on the Skweee Tooth comp too, and he's got several 7"s and a full-length lp out as well... Here's his latest, released by an American label, actually a sub-label of Portland dubstep imprint Lo Dubs (who also brought us the killer new Clubroot set also highlighted this week), it's a 2-song 45 featuring skweee that maybe leans towards the darkness of dubstep a bit!
"Nightmare Food" is slinky-slunky skweee, jammin' the blip-blurp, with vaguely Middle Eastern motifs. "Sleeping Wit' Fish" is maybe even moodier, building up into whipcracks of suspenseful grooviness. If John Carpenter made skweee, it might sound like this. Apparently this single is the forerunner for a new full-length from Savio, of what he terms "apocalyptic skweee", eventually to be released on Losonofono, can't wait!

SHOEMAKER, MATT Tropical Amnesia One (Ferns) cd 15.98
In the handful of exceptional records from concrete/drone composer Matt Shoemaker, the field recording has been central to his work. Take the aggregate tumblings of minerals from Groundless or the woozy humidity from Spots In The Sun, Shoemaker's use of the field recording in his pieces is miles apart from the pastoral use of bird songs or a gentle rainstorm to offer something 'natural' for an electronic ambient record. No, Shoemaker amplifies the more threatening aspects of nature with insects emitting nightmarish chorales, beetles aggressively scurrying towards hapless prey, and the air of a landscape so heavy and pungent with decay as to be impossible to breathe. For Shoemaker, the world may be nasty, brutish, and short; but he's discovering a weird beauty way out there amidst the grotesqueries of the world.
On the last two records from Shoemaker, a greater emphasis on synthesized psychedelia shot through his tense drone constructs; so with Tropical Amnesia One, Shoemaker has built an album that's just field recordings, without much of the atypical filtering, gizmos, and effects that turn Shoemaker's studio into a scientific laboratory. All of these recordings came from a two week residency Shoemaker spent deep in the Amazon forest, where silence was never afforded amidst the constant buzz of insects, torrential cloudbursts, and burbling streams all teaming with life. Watery sounds introduce the first 20 minutes to this album with all sorts of sodden creaks, slurping movements, and mud-sucking events amassed together. It's as if the vantage point to Shoemaker's sounds were just below the surface of a stagnant body of water next to a muddy embankment, crawling with leeches, skin-breaching worms, and any other parasitic creature that could come to mind. Shoemaker then shifts his attention for the remaining 44 minutes upward to the tops of the trees, where the insects have conspired to broadcast an ominous nocturnal hiss worthy of horror film sound design. A few insects and birds puncture the swarming noise, making the environment seem a lot less threatening that Shoemaker has contextualized it to be. A powerful, sublime recording, and what looks like to the be first in a series of recordings from the Amazon.
MPEG Stream: "Tropical Amnesia One [excerpt 1]"
MPEG Stream: "Tropical Amnesia One [excerpt 2]"
MPEG Stream: "Tropical Amnesia One [excerpt 3]"

SINGH, CHARANJIT Synthesizing: Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat (Bombay Connection) 2lp 29.00
This is so absolutely brilliant and bonkers, that when we first heard it, we thought it must be fake, some modern day Rephlex artist putting everyone on, taking the piss, with a "raga-techno" album supposedly from the early '80s. But, no joke, this is the real thing! In 1982, Charanjit Singh, a famous Bollywood composer (he was featured on Sublime Frequencies amazing Bollywood Steel Guitar compilation), had a plan to translate ancient traditional Indian classical ragas to the synthesizer. Using the very synths that would later define Acid House (Rolands TB-303 and TR-808!), Singh unwittingly created a proto-acid masterpiece, before the techno genre ever existed. Since only a hundred or less copies were made originally, this release was mostly a rumor since its creation. We vaguely remember Drew Daniel from Matmos talking about it on Pitchfork, a couple of years back, saying someone should reissue it, but we weren't ready for how incredible and ahead of its time it sounds. Imagine if Kraftwerk (or even Oneohtrix Point Never) started composing music for a Bollywood Rave. Or imagine a more raga-inspired take on another proto-acid classic, Manuel Gottsching's epic E2-E4. While the "disco" rhythms are fast and frenetic and don't really vary that much between tracks (they're not really disco beats per se, but more akin to acid's trancey bounce), the synth flourishes and squelches of the raga over the top are soaring and floaty, making the tracks deliriously hypnotic. Capturing acid house's lysergic transcendence but with an outsider's economy that refuses to date it specifically to the era. While we only have the double lp, there will be a cd release sometime in the next month or so. But don't sleep on the vinyl too long as it's highly limited, and we guarantee there is not another release quite like this one in your collection. Highest Recommendation!
MPEG Stream: "Raga Bhairav"
MPEG Stream: "Raga Madhuvanti"

SOUVENIR'S YOUNG AMERICA The Name Of The Snake (Init) cd 10.98
The return of one of our favorite instrumental post rock combos finds the band exploring and expanding. Their old sound, one we already dug pretty heavily, has gotten revamped and supercharged, and we're liking this new version even more, but fear not, the change is not that dramatic, and yeah, the harmonica is still present, and definitely adds a distinct and unique vibe. Plus this new cdep tacks on the long out of print September Songs release, first time ever on cd. But first let's talk about The Name Of The Snake...
Right our of the gate, the band explode into some seriously heavy metallic post rock heaviness, chugging riffs, big drums, soaring guitars, but before long they slip back into their more contemplative drift, getting all minimal and spacey, but here's where it gets interesting, the song shifts into a strangely chuggy chunk of doom, laced with some mournful harmonica, a strange juxtaposition, but what's precisely why it sounds so good. The track flits back and forth between the chug and drift, a slowly unfurling sonic tangle. The second track is more classic SYA, mathy and meandery, busy drumming, muted guitar crunch, some woozy melodies, big chiming melodies, and long stretches of cool backwards ambience.
After a short-ish track, of harmonic laced dark Appalachia, with strange percussion and haunting almost Western styled ambience, comes the records finale, the 10+ minute closer, a classic sounding super sprawling post rock epic, all slow builds and explosive choruses, thick pealing guitars and thick rumbling bass, and that harmonica, one of the few times we find ourselves wondering why more bands don't have harmonica. Heavy and melodic, moody and mysterious, fucking awesome!
As a bonus, the cd tacks on the out of print, super limited tour only tape / 12" September Songs, a post rock record, a math rock record, dark and tangled instrumental rock, moody and epic, massive and emotional. And of course, HARMONICA!! And not just in the background. It's the one of the main melodic elements. And it sounds killer. Once you hear the opening track on September Songs, you'll wonder why the hell more bands don't have a harmonica player. But beyond the kick ass harmonica, this band just rules, huge convoluted riffing, strange mathy rhythms, thick swells of sound, killer complex emotional and heavy. Long stretches of dark brooding ambience, blissed out rhythmic shimmer, warm guitars over martial drums, slow building guitar jangle over mesmerizingly propulsive drumming, slippery slide and minor key melodic finger picking, there's really nothing not to love. The guys take a sound that's becoming more and more tired and turn it inside out and upside down, making their own sort of POST post rock, intense and alive and vibrant and super exciting.
And fucking harmonica!
MPEG Stream: "Water (Forgetting The Past)"
MPEG Stream: "Vanishing (Remaining)"
MPEG Stream: "6:38"

SOUVENIR'S YOUNG AMERICA The Name Of The Snake (Init) lp 14.98
The return of one of our favorite instrumental post rock combos finds the band exploring and expanding. Their old sound, one we already dug pretty heavily, has gotten revamped and supercharged, and we're liking this new version even more, but fear not, the change is not that dramatic, and yeah, the harmonica is still present, and definitely adds a distinct and unique vibe. Plus this new cdep tacks on the long out of print September Songs release, first time ever on cd. But first let's talk about The Name Of The Snake...
Right our of the gate, the band explode into some seriously heavy metallic post rock heaviness, chugging riffs, big drums, soaring guitars, but before long they slip back into their more contemplative drift, getting all minimal and spacey, but here's where it gets interesting, the song shifts into a strangely chuggy chunk of doom, laced with some mournful harmonica, a strange juxtaposition, but what's precisely why it sounds so good. The track flits back and forth between the chug and drift, a slowly unfurling sonic tangle. The second track is more classic SYA, mathy and meandery, busy drumming, muted guitar crunch, some woozy melodies, big chiming melodies, and long stretches of cool backwards ambience.
After a short-ish track, of harmonic laced dark Appalachia, with strange percussion and haunting almost Western styled ambience, comes the records finale, the 10+ minute closer, a classic sounding super sprawling post rock epic, all slow builds and explosive choruses, thick pealing guitars and thick rumbling bass, and that harmonica, one of the few times we find ourselves wondering why more bands don't have harmonica. Heavy and melodic, moody and mysterious, fucking awesome!
As a bonus, the cd tacks on the out of print, super limited tour only tape / 12" September Songs, a post rock record, a math rock record, dark and tangled instrumental rock, moody and epic, massive and emotional. And of course, HARMONICA!! And not just in the background. It's the one of the main melodic elements. And it sounds killer. Once you hear the opening track on September Songs, you'll wonder why the hell more bands don't have a harmonica player. But beyond the kick ass harmonica, this band just rules, huge convoluted riffing, strange mathy rhythms, thick swells of sound, killer complex emotional and heavy. Long stretches of dark brooding ambience, blissed out rhythmic shimmer, warm guitars over martial drums, slow building guitar jangle over mesmerizingly propulsive drumming, slippery slide and minor key melodic finger picking, there's really nothing not to love. The guys take a sound that's becoming more and more tired and turn it inside out and upside down, making their own sort of POST post rock, intense and alive and vibrant and super exciting.
And fucking harmonica!
MPEG Stream: "Water (Forgetting The Past)"
MPEG Stream: "Vanishing (Remaining)"
MPEG Stream: "6:38"

SPECTRAL LORE II (Temple Of Torturous) cd 12.98
The first we heard from Greek one man ambient black metal horde was on a split with Swedish psychedelic black metallers Underjordiska, then offering a washed out black ambient counterpoint to Underjordiska's furious spaced out black buzz, so when we finally got this cd in, a digital reissue of a long out of print cassette, we were expecting another disc of washed out ambient blackness, and while there is a bit of that present, Spectral Lore knocked our blocks off with this collection of totally intense, outsider avant black metal buzz.
After a two minute intro of delicate acoustic guitar, SL explode into a 24 minute epic, all stumbling crunch and grind in the beginning, before slipping seamlessly into soaring majestic epic buzzing black metal. The drums and vocals mostly buried beneath the frenzied riffage, weirdly minor key, haunting and space-y but thrashing and black and grim, until the sound shifts, getting muddy and murky, a loping midtempo pound that quickly shifts again, and stretches out into some woozy psychedelic folkiness, all warm buzzing guitars and crystalline melody, soaring strings, totally tranquil and dreamlike, before exploding in another frenzy of tangled and gnarled blackness, and so it goes, slipping back and forth, until finally the guitars coalesce into some classic metal sounding melody, then a weirdly Viking sounding blow out, before fading out completely, leaving a long stretch of hushed gauzey ambience. Heck that track alone would be worth $13, there's more packed into that 24 minutes than most bands manage in records twice that long, but there's so much more.
The rest of the record is a balance between woozy melodic drift, and warped black heaviness, often the line between the two heavily blurred. Black buzz grows more and more indistinct until it sounds more like Nadja, a sort of shoegazey black drift, guitars unfurl, chords unfolding slowly one at a time, moody synthesizer strings drift over hushed minimal swirls of soft focus sound, guitars rumble and bombinate, building to soaring lysergic ur-drones, long stretches of muddy murk give way to crystalline sonic whispers, black metal roils and churns and explodes in streaks of near white noise, the sound and production constantly shifting, blistering and in-the-red one second, mumbled and washed out the next, the sound as much a part of the music as the music itself.
Far out and epic, psychedelic and spaced out, ambient and black, and so goddamn good...
MPEG Stream: "The Thorns That Guide My Warpath"
MPEG Stream: "Towards The Great Crossroad"
MPEG Stream: "Recoiling Beneath The Waves"

STARKEY Ear Drums And Black Holes (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
As we've mentioned in some of our other dubstep reviews, dubstep as a genre has gone through a crazy amount of permutations, constantly shifting and twisting into new shapes and sounds, hell, even the folks we already dig will kick out a new record and they'll have gotten inspired and totally mixed it up. Which is what seems to have happened to Starkey, already a long time favorite, based on just a handful of 12"s and a couple DJ mixes. Not sure if his style did dramatically shift, or if it's just that since this is Starkey's first full length, it just so happens to be the record he always wanted to make. Whatever the reason, we're digging this big time. A weirdo hybrid of classic dubstep, glitchy 8-bit electronica, and that sort of Zomby style rave-step.
The first track sums up the Starkey sound pretty perfectly, some 8-bit bloops and beeps, some washed out eighties style synths, and then BANG, some thick fuzzed out bass warble, some glitchy warble lo-tech melody, and some woozy super dramatic, soundtracky melodies.
A bunch of the tracks have guest MC's and thus get all grimey, with stuttery beats, tangled fuzz bass, and mush mouthed flows, and yeah, more of that retro (borderline cheesy) synth, that when incorporated into the griminess sounds almost more ominous than cheesy. Some of the jams are super lo-fi, all glitchy and fuzzy, but eventually explode into something more block rocking and groovy.
The thing with this Starkey joint and lots of the newer dubstep records coming out, is that instead of stringing a bunch of beats together and calling it day, folks are concerning themselves more with actually writing songs, coming up with melodies, crafting actual music instead of just trying to get asses moving. But in the process, they're managing to do both.
Lots of Ear Drums And Black Holes veers way off the dubstep beaten path, getting all electro, dipping toes into electronic pop, fuzzy chill out techno, abstract jungle, with a little thread of dubstep running through them all, making this super varied record, impossibly cohesive. Anyone who's been digging Zomby, Ikonika, Rosko and any of the more melodic dubsteppers might just have found a new favorite...
MPEG Stream: "OK Luv"
MPEG Stream: "Murderous Words"
MPEG Stream: "11th Hour"
MPEG Stream: "Numb"

STARKEY Ear Drums And Black Holes (Planet Mu) lp 23.00
As we've mentioned in some of our other dubstep reviews, dubstep as a genre has gone through a crazy amount of permutations, constantly shifting and twisting into new shapes and sounds, hell, even the folks we already dig will kick out a new record and they'll have gotten inspired and totally mixed it up. Which is what seems to have happened to Starkey, already a long time favorite, based on just a handful of 12"s and a couple DJ mixes. Not sure if his style did dramatically shift, or if it's just that since this is Starkey's first full length, it just so happens to be the record he always wanted to make. Whatever the reason, we're digging this big time. A weirdo hybrid of classic dubstep, glitchy 8-bit electronica, and that sort of Zomby style rave-step.
The first track sums up the Starkey sound pretty perfectly, some 8-bit bloops and beeps, some washed out eighties style synths, and then BANG, some thick fuzzed out bass warble, some glitchy warble lo-tech melody, and some woozy super dramatic, soundtracky melodies.
A bunch of the tracks have guest MC's and thus get all grimey, with stuttery beats, tangled fuzz bass, and mush mouthed flows, and yeah, more of that retro (borderline cheesy) synth, that when incorporated into the griminess sounds almost more ominous than cheesy. Some of the jams are super lo-fi, all glitchy and fuzzy, but eventually explode into something more block rocking and groovy.
The thing with this Starkey joint and lots of the newer dubstep records coming out, is that instead of stringing a bunch of beats together and calling it day, folks are concerning themselves more with actually writing songs, coming up with melodies, crafting actual music instead of just trying to get asses moving. But in the process, they're managing to do both.
Lots of Ear Drums And Black Holes veers way off the dubstep beaten path, getting all electro, dipping toes into electronic pop, fuzzy chill out techno, abstract jungle, with a little thread of dubstep running through them all, making this super varied record, impossibly cohesive. Anyone who's been digging Zomby, Ikonika, Rosko and any of the more melodic dubsteppers might just have found a new favorite...
MPEG Stream: "OK Luv"
MPEG Stream: "Murderous Words"
MPEG Stream: "11th Hour"
MPEG Stream: "Numb"

STRANGULATED BEATOFFS Greatest Hits (Behemoth) cd 13.98
The Strangulated Beatoffs are a weird weird band. But then what did you expect from a band called the Strangulated Beatoffs? Or from a band that features members of infamous noise punks Drunks With Guns?
This demented duo sometimes use samplers and loops to make fucked up hypnotic grooves and seriously demented electronic weirdness, but as is evidenced by Greatest Hits, they're also puerile purveyors of sick sludgey noise rock and filthy drunkrock dirges. Greatest Hits is mostly a collection of seven inches, the earliest recordings of the Beatoffs circa 1988-1992 or so and thus are maybe the closest sonically to the late great Drunks With Guns. Some tracks like "Porky The Pig And Bess" and "Heeby Jeeby/Practicing To Be A Doctor" are heavy dirgey space rock drug jams that sound like they could have been yanked from a Butthole Surfers set, while others, like "Lick My Butthole" musically sound like Dutch post metallers Gore, but with the addition of some goofy fucked up lyrics, and some damaged shards of buzz and crunch.
"It's A Vile, Vile, Vile, Vile World" is a super lengthy collage of looped eighties Carpenter-ish soundtracks, that sounds like it could be James Ferraro, but it's from at least a decade before Ferraro delved into lysergic pop music, so the Beatoffs are unsung musical pioneers! Fuck yeah! There's a Troggs cover too, but you'd never know it, a murky field recording that sounds like it was captured in the bar around the corner from the show, there's a dorky acoustic ditty, some strange carnivalesque child molesting weirdness, some Mentors like punk rock, but the finest moments are when the band do their best Butthole Surfers, crafting longform drone dirge drug rock, all swirling spacey effects, gnarled looped guitars, and mesmerizingly motorik beats...
If you're not sold by now, maybe this will sway you: Strangulated Beatoffs are one of Andee's all time favorite bands. EVER. So much so that he contacted them about reissuing all of their records, maybe even a box set, but all they wanted to release on tUMULt was their record of Genesis covers! (And then he never heard from them again.) How rad is that???
MPEG Stream: "Lick My Butthole"
MPEG Stream: "Did Those Dumbfucks Even Name This One?"
MPEG Stream: "Fake Eyeball"
MPEG Stream: "Heeby Jeeby / Practicing To Be A Doctor"
MPEG Stream: "It's A Vile, Vile, VIle, Vile World"

SUDDEN OAK Banquet Years (Stunned) cassette 7.98
Been hearing lots about Portland's Stunned records, and we're happy to finally have one of their beautifully packaged tapes for your listening/viewing pleasure. This one comes from San Francisco's own sax and guitar duo Sudden Oak. Matt Erickson, who also rips it up solo under the name Radiant Husk, sends soaring sax tones up through the atmosphere while John Ward's guitar feedback freak-outs lay bubbling below. Together the duo travel through strange noise-jazz lands, up and over urban creep zones that move and flow into fluid rhythms and fucked up loops. Picture an old Pharaoh Sanders tape echoing through a blown out amp in a water tank, so weird and so rad. Limited to an edition of 111, each with pro-printed j-cards plus insert, these are already sold out at the source, so act fast if you want one of these beauties.

SUMMONS OF SHINING RUINS Bud Variations (Dead Pilot) cassette 11.98
Summons Of Shining Ruins is the nom de plume of Japanese post-shoegazing guitarist Shinobu Nemoto, who had released a rather exceptional piece of cinematic ambience for Experimedia in 2009 that came and went rather quickly. This is another one that will disappear in the blink of an eye as well, given the tiny edition of this pressing. There's only 53 copies around, probably due to the inclusion in the packaging of an antique chemists label culled from chain of British drug stores that at one time sold such things as 'liquid extract cascara sagrada' and 'camphorated oil.' A nifty piece of esoterica to go along with this tape of woozy, muffled drones from Nemoto. The tracks are much less dramatic than the album he did for Experimedia, instead these sullen ambient movements slowly waver along grey streamlined tones with upwelling melodies moving to the foreground from time to time. Certainly on par with the murky cassette work that Maeror Tri and Troum produced way back when, or maybe even some of the Lovesliescrushing driftworks but given a tape hiss makeover. Nice.

SWEET TALKS The Kusum Beat (Soundway) cd 15.98
The UK label Soundway pretty much kills it every time, concentrating on reissues and compilations of super groovy stuff from West Africa and Latin America in the '70s, especially wowing us with the material they've dug up from Nigeria and Ghana... that's what we have here, one of two new Soundway reissues on this week's list, both of bands from Ghana, the other being Hedzoleh Sounds, highlighted nearby. Sweet Talks (great name!) knock out six energetic, get up and dance numbers on this 1974 album, their second, originally a hit release for them in their native country, where they were one of the top acts of the day, mixing up Afrobeat, highlife, and Western JB's styled funk in a fresh and exciting manner. This music's always in motion, relentlessly rhythmic, the exuberant, expressive vocals vying with frenetic percussion and tooting horns. Catchy little melodies are also a big part of the Sweet Talks equation, with tasty electric organ licks galore...
Even though it's from a quite different part of Africa, we'd venture that this should appeal to folks into the funkier entries in the Ethiopiques series!
For this facsimile reissue, the compact disc comes packaged in a nice miniature lp style sleeve, and of course the lp format is packaged in a nice regular sized lp sleeve. Another great Soundway release, big thanks to them for performing such a service, since otherwise we'd probably never know about, nor be able to find or afford, the original records by these groups that so very much deserve lasting exposure and a wide audience.
MPEG Stream: "Mampam Sukuruwe"
MPEG Stream: "Sasa Abonsam"

SWEET TALKS The Kusum Beat (Soundway) lp 16.98
The UK label Soundway pretty much kills it every time, concentrating on reissues and compilations of super groovy stuff from West Africa and Latin America in the '70s, especially wowing us with the material they've dug up from Nigeria and Ghana... that's what we have here, one of two new Soundway reissues on this week's list, both of bands from Ghana, the other being Hedzoleh Sounds, highlighted nearby. Sweet Talks (great name!) knock out six energetic, get up and dance numbers on this 1974 album, their second, originally a hit release for them in their native country, where they were one of the top acts of the day, mixing up Afrobeat, highlife, and Western JB's styled funk in a fresh and exciting manner. This music's always in motion, relentlessly rhythmic, the exuberant, expressive vocals vying with frenetic percussion and tooting horns. Catchy little melodies are also a big part of the Sweet Talks equation, with tasty electric organ licks galore...
Even though it's from a quite different part of Africa, we'd venture that this should appeal to folks into the funkier entries in the Ethiopiques series!
For this facsimile reissue, the compact disc comes packaged in a nice miniature lp style sleeve, and of course the lp format is packaged in a nice regular sized lp sleeve. Another great Soundway release, big thanks to them for performing such a service, since otherwise we'd probably never know about, nor be able to find or afford, the original records by these groups that so very much deserve lasting exposure and a wide audience.
MPEG Stream: "Mampam Sukuruwe"
MPEG Stream: "Sasa Abonsam"

T++ Wireless (Honest Jons) 2x12" 22.00
Imagine if you can, some sort of modern electronica dubstep / traditional East African folk music hybrid. Sounds pretty amazing for sure. Definitely kind of difficult to conjure up, but Wireless, the final recording from techno producer T++, has taken these two sonically disparate elements and created something truly spellbinding.
T++ is just one of the many pseudonyms producer Torsten Profrock has used over the years, loosely affiliated with the Skull Disco collective, exploring various permutations of dub and techno, but this is the first we've heard from him in any guise, and we have to say it's pretty killer.
Combining super skeletal skittery beats with archival recordings from EMI's archive of historical music (the same one Honest Jon's as has been working through to compile its various reissues), Profrock takes various recordings of vocals and ndingidi (a one string fiddle like instrument) from old 78s and chops and cuts and reassembles and reinterprets, creating a super haunting minimal abstract techno that is ghostly and otherworldly but also very human and organic sounding. "Cropped" loops a simple 2 step rhythm around a gorgeous hummed melody, a refrain that gives the listener chills every time, while beneath the beat, various bits of buzz and shimmer, and fragments of melody drift and swirl. "Anyi" starts out thick and squelchy, only to splinter into some super abstract dub, peppered with shards of hiss and fuzz. Soft swells of intense vocalizing and mournful minor key melody undulate just below the surface, along side thick streaks of buzzy bass. "Voices No Bodies" is another stretch of skeletal skitter, wreathed in woozy spectral loops, the African elements barely audible beneath the hypnotic clipped shuffle. And finally "Dig", which is the most traditionally 'dubstep' sounding of the bunch, with bigger beats, and that lurching two step stutter, laced again with mysterious fragmented voices, bits of buzz, clouds of soft focus effects, all woven into a gorgeously rhythmic and hypnotic whole.

THOU Baton Rouge, You Have Much To Answer For (Robotic Empire) lp 16.98
What can we say? We love these Southern sludgelords, every record another fantastically grim pit of fetid sonic despair, crushing and pummeling and punishing heaviness, but still strangely catchy, few can really touch Thou, they're probably the most likely heirs to the Eyehategod throne, not that those guys would ever give it up, but still, that should give you an idea of what these guys are capable of.
Baton Rouge is 4 loooong, sloooooow, looooow tracks of extreme doom sludge, the opener, "Baton Rouge, Louisiana", an insanely downtuned ultralow, barely moving expanse of amp buzz and chordal stasis, like SUNNO))) only SLOWER. Long streaks of squealing feedback pepper the glacial creep, it's almost like an ambient intro, but stretched out into a whole songs, a whole gloriously sludgey song! Up next is something a bit more propulsive, but only a bit. "By Every Hand Betrayed" is a grinding chugging beast, with a killer main melody, and some super dynamic riffage, the vocals thoughout, harsh and hellish, but buried within all this crunch and rumble are some awesomely melodic, nearly poppy bits, that sound a bit like Torche oddly enough. "Out of the Mouth of a Fool" is almost groovy, like Southern rock, melted down and dipped in black tar, woozy and hypnotic, downright speedy by Thou standards, that is until about 4 minutes in when it downshifts to ULTRAslow.
But the final track is the deal sealer, a cover of Nirvana's "Sifting", which takes the already pretty sludgey original and totally transforms it into something even filthier and grimier and slower, but it sounds soooooooo rad, like playing the 45 at 16rpm, the combination of pop hooks and downtuned tarpit dirge is pretty tough to beat, and once again has us wishing their was actually a band that always sounded like that sort of extreme ultra sludge pop. But for now, we're perfectly happy playing this over and over and over and over.
Killer packaging too!!!

TOBACCO Maniac Meat (Anticon) cd 11.98
Yay! Put on your favorite monster mask and pour a big bowl of sugary breakfast cereal, Black Moth Super Rainbow's possibly groovier, more "hip-hop" alterego is back! Tobacco in the house!! And when we say possibly groovier, what we mean is that this is VERY groovy, about as groovy as it is distorted, and 'delic. Thick, fuzzy, flangey synths colorfully pulsate everywhere, amidst handclap-laced "Unholy Demon Rhythms" (as one song title here puts it)... and it seemingly never ends, hypnotic, head nodding, foot tapping, one track after the next, grooving out with laidback sunshiney good vibes and DayGlo exploding weird noize-energy, all at the same time. A lot of it's instrumental, and when vocals do appear, they're dreamily delivered, heavily treated with spacey electronic effects, the stoned flow far more like blissed out chant than regular "rap", although Tobacco's debut Fucked Up Friends did feature a cameo from rapper Aesop Rock, and this new one boasts guest rhyming on a couple cuts by none other than Beck, who is the godfather of druggy indie-tronic hiphop, right?
The lyrics, when there are lyrics, are usually brief (if not to-the-point), containing cryptic poetry and good advice (?), for instance from "Constellation Dirtbike Head", the lead-off track: "Feel the day, the hottest day / Don't eat the berries around you / Don't eat the berries around you / Burn all your things". Them's all the words. Tobacco returns to the themes of burning and eating later in the disc, but you'll grok just as much sense from the song titles (several of which sound like they'd fit nicely on a NWOFHM album by Steel Mammoth or somebody, e.g. "Lick The Witch", "Motorlicker", "Nuclear Waste Aerobics", etc.).
Basically, if you liked Fucked Up Friends (and why wouldn't you?), you'll like Tobacco's sophomore effort too, it's cut from the same cloth, another sixteen tracks of his friendly, freaky soundz. And same thing goes, if you like BMSR, Tobacco's for you too, but we explained that already when we reviewed the first one (which we made a Record Of The Week by the way, and maybe shoulda done the same this time too). Compared to BMSR, this is pretty similar, Tobacco just steps a little harder, funkier, totally rockin' the bells, with the ever-present, almost skweee-ish synths being even woozier and soooooo wonderfully distorted! Along w/ BMSR, this makes us think of what it might sound like if Fuck Buttons got Daft Punk'd...
One last thing to say, obvious, but we're on a deadline: Tobacco IS addictive! But that's ok, while this might get a Surgeon General's warning, it gets our recommendation!
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we've got this on a special $2 off sale deal, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 7/4/10!
MPEG Stream: "Constellation Dirtbike Head"
MPEG Stream: "Sweatmother"
MPEG Stream: "Creepy Phone Calls"

TWIN STUMPS Seedbed (Fan Death) cd 11.98
You know a record is gonna rule when even the amp buzz that precedes the record proper, sounds bad ass, but that's exactly how this heaving slab of noise rock begins, with a thick squelch of muddy glitchy buzz, which is soon joined by some caveman pounding, blurred and distorted, the sort of hypno thud sludge we could listen to FOREVER. But then more drums stumble into action, and we're in some sort of Cop Shoot Cop junkyard noise punk / Crash Worship tribal freakout territory, until the song kicks in proper, with super distorted howled vox, tangled detuned guitar crunch, squealing feedback, the whole song a lurching tangled of woozy off kilter riffage, crumbling distortion, constantly shifting recording quality, glitch and hiss and dropouts galore, a grinding monstrous slab of Neanderthal sludges that totally RULES.
As we mentioned in our review of TS's self titled debut, these guys seem to have a keen pop sense, one they seem dead set on obscuring behind walls of ugly, head caving, amp shredding noise. But thankfully that pop sense seems to leech into everything they do, the result sounding more like Jesus Lizard or Halo Of Flies, but does with some seriously bad acid, and let loose in a room full of busted amps, broken guitars and falling to pieces drum kits. Recorded on handheld tape recorded, broadcast by holding it up to a megaphone, holding the megaphone up to a cell phone, and then plugging the phone on the other end into a fucking MASSIVE amp, hooked up to a bunch of distortion pedals, all with batteries in various stages of running out of juice. A lurching noise rock, that not only seems on the verge of collapse, but seems to gradually melt and crumble and collapse before your very ears, as if every song is a desperate attempt to keep it going, before collapsing in a heap, only to explode into the next song and try again. And while this all does sound punishing and pummeling and brutal and chaotic and harsh, which it most definitely is, it's also weirdly catchy, and sorta groovy, repetitive and hypnotic, maybe like a pop flecked, slightly shoegazey, blurred and blackened, noise rock Butthole Surfers. Or something like that. Needless to say, this is some fucking crushing catchy, ruling shit, but only for those of you who have worked up a tolerance for stuff this bad ass and brutal, past exposure to Brainbombs, Whitehouse, Burmese, Rusted Shut, Billy Bao, Shit And Shine, Clockcleaner, Ancestors, White Mice, Liquorball, Strangulated Beatoffs, Violent Students perhaps not required, but definitely suggested...
MPEG Stream: "Landlord"
MPEG Stream: "Missing Persons"
MPEG Stream: "Pigs At The Trough"
MPEG Stream: "Lungs"

TWIN STUMPS Seedbed (Fan Death) lp 12.98
You know a record is gonna rule when even the amp buzz that precedes the record proper, sounds bad ass, but that's exactly how this heaving slab of noise rock begins, with a thick squelch of muddy glitchy buzz, which is soon joined by some caveman pounding, blurred and distorted, the sort of hypno thud sludge we could listen to FOREVER. But then more drums stumble into action, and we're in some sort of Cop Shoot Cop junkyard noise punk / Crash Worship tribal freakout territory, until the song kicks in proper, with super distorted howled vox, tangled detuned guitar crunch, squealing feedback, the whole song a lurching tangled of woozy off kilter riffage, crumbling distortion, constantly shifting recording quality, glitch and hiss and dropouts galore, a grinding monstrous slab of Neanderthal sludges that totally RULES.
As we mentioned in our review of TS's self titled debut, these guys seem to have a keen pop sense, one they seem dead set on obscuring behind walls of ugly, head caving, amp shredding noise. But thankfully that pop sense seems to leech into everything they do, the result sounding more like Jesus Lizard or Halo Of Flies, but does with some seriously bad acid, and let loose in a room full of busted amps, broken guitars and falling to pieces drum kits. Recorded on handheld tape recorded, broadcast by holding it up to a megaphone, holding the megaphone up to a cell phone, and then plugging the phone on the other end into a fucking MASSIVE amp, hooked up to a bunch of distortion pedals, all with batteries in various stages of running out of juice. A lurching noise rock, that not only seems on the verge of collapse, but seems to gradually melt and crumble and collapse before your very ears, as if every song is a desperate attempt to keep it going, before collapsing in a heap, only to explode into the next song and try again. And while this all does sound punishing and pummeling and brutal and chaotic and harsh, which it most definitely is, it's also weirdly catchy, and sorta groovy, repetitive and hypnotic, maybe like a pop flecked, slightly shoegazey, blurred and blackened, noise rock Butthole Surfers. Or something like that. Needless to say, this is some fucking crushing catchy, ruling shit, but only for those of you who have worked up a tolerance for stuff this bad ass and brutal, past exposure to Brainbombs, Whitehouse, Burmese, Rusted Shut, Billy Bao, Shit And Shine, Clockcleaner, Ancestors, White Mice, Liquorball, Strangulated Beatoffs, Violent Students perhaps not required, but definitely suggested...
MPEG Stream: "Landlord"
MPEG Stream: "Missing Persons"
MPEG Stream: "Pigs At The Trough"
MPEG Stream: "Lungs"

V/A Bird Songs (B-Music / Finders Keepers) 10" 16.98
All right! We managed to acquire a few more copies of this limited edition Record Store Day vinyl item from a Finders Keepers connection of ours, so we're now able to list it. Only a handful in stock, though, and we won't be getting any more. It's a 10" compilation featuring six female songbirds (as it were), or flocks of songbirds, from around the world, in the feminine freak/folk/funk fashion you'd expect, some of these lovely ladies hailing from the '70s, some happenin' now but still sounding like they belong on vintage vinyl...
From the modern day, there's samplings of the Vashti Bunyan inspired fairy tale folk of Magpahi (aka Alison Cooper), Italian troubadour Emma Tricca, and Misty Dixon's Jane Weaver, all of whom you might know from the B-Music Bearded Ladies comp.
Dug up from way back when, rare tracks from Iron Curtain era Polish girl group Ali Babki, Welsh teens Sidan, and the lovely Soledad Miranda, best known as an actress from the sexy cult horror flick Vampyros Lesbos! That one's a real standout, can't wait for the B-Music full-length Soledad anthology coming up!
Limited to 1000 copies, a 2010 RSD special.

V/A Ecstatic Music Of The Jemaa El Fna (Sublime Frequencies) lp 25.00
The Sublime Frequencies label is really on a roll lately, as always it seems, a flurry of new releases, all of them fantastic, including a recent Record Of The Week (Omar Souleyman), not one but two releases on this week's list (this, and one of our current Records Of The Week, Dara Puspita!), and new stuff upcoming soon as well. And as always, every time we get a new SF release, we can't help but think 'best one yet!', every single one is a thrilling earful of some remarkable sounds. This one is of particular note, as it's related to a past Sublime Frequencies release, the Musical Brotherhoods From The Trans-Saharan Highway dvd, which after watching repeatedly, we couldn't help but hope for a soundtrack, and well, this is about as close as we're gonna get. A handful of these tracks were in fact featured in that film, and in addition to those tracks, there are twice as many more, to let us experience the magic and mystery of the Jemaa El Fna, aka Rendezvous Of The Dead, aka a central square in the Marrakesh, Morocco, which during the day is a place for locals and tourists alike to gather, food and music and magicians and entertainers and story tellers, but at night, when the tourists are tucked away safely in bed, these musicians create some of the most intense and passionate music we've heard. Explosive and expressive and distorted and super blown out. Amps powered by car batteries, broadcast through beat up old megaphone speakers, hand built instruments, wild percussion, soulful ecstatic vocals, it's probably worth revisiting our review of the dvd, as the setting is as much a part of the music as the sounds:
"Ancient mystical brotherhoods', small groups of stringed instruments and drums, players managing to create intense and intensely emotional sounds and songs, that range from dark and simple, sweetly contemplative, to fierce and fiery and jubilant, explosive and over the top._Performing in bustling street markets, lit by fires and lamplight, a huge after dark celebration, story telling, eating, socializing but most importantly making music... Small lantern lit clusters of people gather around old record players, home made amplifiers, rusty old speakers, strange (to our eyes) stringed instruments, all manner of drums and percussion, the crowd eager to bask in this amazing music, and just as often to participate, whether it be as another drummer, a singer, a dancer or even just as an onlooker. The music, is a stripped down blues, the buzzing strings, the gorgeous hypnotic melodies, looped and cyclical, so hypnotic and catchy, the vocals soulful and impassioned, from solo crooning to strange harmonies, to chanting, and lots of festive sing alongs. The focus is the buzzing strings and the pounding drums, and there are plenty of both, but there are also buzzing snake charmer style horns, and of course the usual outdoor crowd sounds, folks talking and laughing, cars driving past. It's so much like wandering through Morocco, it's amazing. The rhythms and the melodies, a constant barrage of groove and drone, simple percussive thumps and shuffles, haunting melodies, huge tribal drum jams and of course some incredible riffing. Our favorite jams feature what appears to be a traditional banjo, but electrified and plugged into a rusty old handmade amplifier, turning the banjo into an awesome buzzing sitar like beast, emitting intense almost metallic chunks of incendiary riffing, raw and emotional, super distorted and intense, underpinning the wailing vocals and dense drumming.
And that pretty much is a perfect description of this whole record, a jubilant, celebratory, wild and exultant musical get together, the sound is fierce and vibrant and raw and in-the-red, super distorted and LOUD, like you were really there, the stringed instruments buzz and howl, the drums pound and thump and utterly mesmerize, the singers croon and wail, usually with the crowd joining in, the sound is just so intense and alive, really incredible. The pure joy of music making is rarely so palpable. Which makes this, yeah, we're gonna say it again, maybe one of our favorite Sublime Frequencies yet!
Comes in a thick full color gatefold, includes extensive liner notes. And like all the Sublime Frequencies vinyl, these are super limited, we order as many as we can, but once they're gone, we're not able to get more. You know what that means...
MPEG Stream: AMAL SAHA "Daouini "
MPEG Stream: MUSTAPHA MAHJOUB "Tal Raibak Arzali"
MPEG Stream: TROUPE MAJIDI "Rsami "

WILKINS, ROBERT That's No Way To Get Along (Monk) lp 22.00
The Monk label strikes again with another killer release, this one from legendary Memphis bluesman Robert Wilkins, whose contributions some of you may remember from the Mississippi compilations I Woke Up One Morning In May (the song "I'll Go With Her", unfortunately not included here) and Last Kind Words (the amazing "That's No Way To Get Along", which, true to the title of this record, is featured here). Wilkins ran in the same circle as Furry Lewis (whose "I Will Turn Your Money Green" Monk put out not too long ago), Son House, and Memphis Minnie. Like Lewis, Wilkins enjoyed a resurgence in the '60s when he was rediscovered by the folk scene, making appearances at Newport and other festivals. During the time after his initial run, he found time to become an ordained minister, playing music all the while, even going so far as to change the more evil lyrics of songs to suit higher powers. Of course, the stuff featured here is classic Memphis blues, with many of the songs including such time worn topics as rambling about ("Rolling Stone" pts. 1 and 2), solitary wondering, and serving time in the pen. The songs on Side A were recorded during 1928 and 1929, featuring Wilkins solo with guitar. His voice is a slow drawl, weary sounding but also wise to the realities of the world, sometimes distorting the speakers with its power. Side B contains songs from a session in 1930 as well as some later tunes from 1935 featuring accompaniment from Little Son Joe on guitar and Kid Spoons on, you guessed it, the spoons. Wilkins would outlive many of his contemporaries before passing away in 1987 at the ripe old age of 91. That's No Way To Get Along serves as a great compilation from one of Memphis' greats and will undoubtedly appeal to all you blues obsessives.

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COCOROSIE Grey Oceans (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
Much like Xiu Xiu, uttering the name CocoRosie will garner very extreme and polarizing reactions from people. They seem to be one of those bands that people either obsess over and love or are totally annoyed by and hate with equal passion. While the record cover will only fuel the fire for the latter, its the music that we should be talking about and while we're definitely equally split here at AQ, some of us are finding lots to like on Grey Oceans. Tender and delicate childlike tales with a vocal delivery that's kind of like the freak-folk equivalent to Billie Holiday. They do have a tendency to come off a bit forced in their desire to be 'weird' and 'haunting' but on lots of these songs they do really create a mood that's both chilling and playful. And as much as people have been freaking out about Gonjasufi as of late some of us here think that his voice is sort of similar to the women of CocoRosie. Probably not the record that's going to convert the CocoRosie haters, but fans will no doubt find Grey Oceans a perfectly imperfect addition to their canon.
MPEG Stream: "Lemonade"
MPEG Stream: "Trinity's Crying"
MPEG Stream: "Hopscotch"

COCOROSIE Grey Oceans (Sub Pop) lp 16.98
Much like Xiu Xiu, uttering the name CocoRosie will garner very extreme and polarizing reactions from people. They seem to be one of those bands that people either obsess over and love or are totally annoyed by and hate with equal passion. While the record cover will only fuel the fire for the latter, its the music that we should be talking about and while we're definitely equally split here at AQ, some of us are finding lots to like on Grey Oceans. Tender and delicate childlike tales with a vocal delivery that's kind of like the freak-folk equivalent to Billie Holiday. They do have a tendency to come off a bit forced in their desire to be 'weird' and 'haunting' but on lots of these songs they do really create a mood that's both chilling and playful. And as much as people have been freaking out about Gonjasufi as of late some of us here think that his voice is sort of similar to the women of CocoRosie. Probably not the record that's going to convert the CocoRosie haters, but fans will no doubt find Grey Oceans a perfectly imperfect addition to their canon.
MPEG Stream: "Lemonade"
MPEG Stream: "Trinity's Crying"
MPEG Stream: "Hopscotch"

ENOID Suicide Genocide (Bergstolz) 10" 13.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Another blast of furious blasting blackened sickness from Swiss one man horde Enoid, masterminded by Bornyhake, who also does time in the equally awesome Borgne. We reviewed the Enoid full length Ataraxiis a few lists back, and Suicide Genocide takes up right where that one left off, furious and frantically blasting black metal, Norwegian style, and yeah, he's Swiss, but the sound is classic Scandinavian black metal, the riffs epic and soaring, the drumming brutal and lightning speed, the vocals demonic and bile spewing, the buzz cranked WAY up, the tracks dense and complex lurching from maniacal frenzied blasting, to sludge-y doomic pounding to weirdly melodic, often all those elements colliding midsong. And he's not just a killer player, he's capable of crafting some pretty excellent songs too, hidden amidst all that gnarled blackness and buzz drenched blast, lurk plenty of hooks, subtle perhaps, but there nonetheless infusing this filth with a vibe that keeps it from being just another slab of grim black whatever.
What is it about the Swiss, it's hard to pinpoint, but we're becoming mildly obsessed with bands from Switzerland, Paysage D'Hiver, Darkspace, Wacht, Ordo Infandorum Rituum Occultus, Sun Of The Blind, Borgne, and yeah, like the Ukraine, it's probably all the same 4 or 5 guys, but who cares, they've tapped into something, that's positioning Switzerland to give France and Norway And heck, the Ukraine a run for their black metal money.

FLYING LOTUS Cosmogramma (Warp) 2lp 27.00
NOW ON VINYL!!
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"

KOES BERSAUDARA Koes Bersaudara 1967 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 17.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
Another incredible archival discovery from Sublime Frequencies, this the first in a series of releases chronicling Indonesian popular music from the fifties through the seventies. Koes Bersaudara were a band of brothers, heavily influenced by the Beatles, the Everly Brothers, the Byrds, and this collection is the first ever reissue of two of their impossible to find recordings, most notably, To The So-Called "The Guilties", considered by music historians THEE Indonesian garage rock masterpiece. And it is fantastic, jangly guitars, soaring vocals, some awesome guitar playing, super catchy, very poppy, but with hints of darkness running though many of the songs, which is not surprising, considering how difficult it was to be a rock band in Indonesia at the time, especially one playing Western styled rock and roll. In fact at one point, the brothers were jailed for three months for performing Beatles covers. Another interesting fact, is that aQ faves Dara Puspita (whose PlusTapes reissues we carried a while back) were performing around the same time, and rumors were circulating about various power plays, the Koeswoyo brothers being perhaps considered too difficult to control, with their flagrant disdain for authority, not just covering the Beatles, but for writing songs about the leader that imprisoned them ("Poor Clown") and many songs chronicling their time in jail ("In Jail", "The Ballad Of Room 15")
Once out of jail, their old label didn't want to have anything to do with them, but as the climate became more conducive to the modern styles of music, they found a new home, and recorded To The So-Called "The Guilties", the first album in Indonesian history to challenge the ruling regime. Their story is so fantastic and inspiring, it's strange to hear this music, which on the surface seems so innocuous, knowing just how controversial it was and how much of a harbinger of change it would be for Indonesian music.
But for fans of classic '60s garage rock, regardless of the back story, this is some seriously good stuff, the power and energy of life surrounding the music only infusing it with a passion and energy that transforms it from simple rock and roll to something more. This reissue includes the To The So-Called "The Guilties" lp, a 10" recorded the same year, with a bonus compilation track, extensive liner notes, chronicling the history of the band, the recording of these albums, the producer, and the music scene in Indonesia at the time. Tons of photos too, all in a swank digipak, the nicest Sublime Frequencies packaging yet. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Hari Ini (Today)"
MPEG Stream: "To The So-Called "The Guilties""
MPEG Stream: "Poor Clown"
MPEG Stream: "Balada Kamar 15 (The Ballad Of Room 15)"
MPEG Stream: "Djadikan Aku Domba Mu (Make Me Your Sheep)"

LALI PUNA Our Inventions (Morr) cd 15.98
Markus Asher had once been quite a prolific producer of avant poptones, beginning way back when with the underappreciated Village Of Savoonga and moving onto the arcing indietronica brilliance of The Notwist whose zenith occurred with Neon Golden back in 2002. Lali Puna was an Asher project that ran concurrent to both Savoonga and Notwist, with often sublime impressionist songs matching the breathy vocals of Valerie Trebeljahr with percolating electronics wrapped around twee pop ballads. Our Inventions is the first album by Lali Puna in quite a long time. Six years since the last proper record. Five since a collection of B-sides and remixes. Not much has changed for Lali Puna. The band settles upon polite, slightly melancholy melodies that flicker upon delicate rhythms built out of clockwork sequences and restrained tappings on the drumkit. Delicate as always.
MPEG Stream: "Remember"
MPEG Stream: "Our Inventions"

LANDSCAPE From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars .... To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus (Cherry Red) cd 16.98
Sooner or later, it seems like EVERYTHING gets reissued - even an album entitled "From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars... To The Hell-Holes of Uranus"! Actually this reissue is perfectly timely, as this UK band's futuristic electronic new wave nerd pop from 1981 fits right in with the retro eighties styles popular again today. Though, as "computery" as it is (they sing about microchips!) Landscape aren't exactly cold wave, not with their bopping, popping horn section (which might be entirely synthesized, however - electronic trombone anyone?).
They're allegedly best known for the hit "Einstein A-Go-Go" (don't worry if you don't remember it, we didn't either, they may have been bigger in England), that's from this album, along with another hit they supposedly had, "Norman Bates", those are fun, look 'em up on YouTube if you want to see the videos, but there's other songs here we like just as much if not more, actually.
Danceable (due to proto-techno beats, and handclaps) as well as dramatic (in a way that's charmingly pretentious and/or put on), Landscape offer up synth laden goofy good times with very much of an "only in the '80s" vibe. We especially like the weirder bits, like "The Doll's House", and the tick-tock title suite. Including a few bonus tracks, there's 14 cuts here in all, including an innocuous instrumental, "Computer Person", that reminds us a bit of Cluster, and a song, "It's Not My Real Name", that sounds like a mixture of Depeche Mode and Rockwell. Elsewhere, we're thinking Howard Jones, Gary Numan, or Wang Chung... Not a bad (obscure) nostalgic New Romantic fix.
MPEG Stream: "Norman Bates"
MPEG Stream: "Shake The West Awake"
MPEG Stream: "The Doll's House"

MAEROR TRI Multiple Personality Disorder (Purplesoil) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
Multiple Personality Disorder was the first cd and first major release for the seminal post-industrial ensemble Maeror Tri; and yes, the album's title does allude to one line of psychological research into the delineation of (in this case) four personalities that often correspond with acute cases of multiple personality disorder. On one hand, this thematic application does make a parallel to the pseudo-diagnostic aesthetics promoted by SPK and Lustmord in the early '80s; but on the other, Maeror Tri's Stefan Knappe was studying psychology throughout university, and those ideas clearly impacted the way he approached music, smearing dark drones and ethereal melodies out of heavily processed guitars, bass, synths, and other instruments through Maeror Tri to provide an evocative, enveloping, atmospheric, and occasionally threatening form of dark ambience.
The four suites of the album include "The Administrator," "The Anaesthetizer", "The Revenger", and "The Protector," each seeking to encapsulate the metaphoric sounds of those aforementioned personality traits. Hence, the first seeks something of a balance that's neither too dark nor too warm in the shimmering guitar drones and backwards masked swells of monochromatism. The second piece is a opiating, druggy drone track, that has a serpentine, oozing quality in the densely stacked rumbles of low-end distortion and shadowy murk. "The Revenger" is a suitably menacing track of down-pitched vocal snarls and demonic growls that grate against a noisescaping drone backdrop. The finale is downright beautiful certainly looking forward to the post-Maeror Tri project Troum and their luminous, billowing drones sculpted with lilting melodies buried under tons of smeared reverb. Multiple Personality Disorder was always one of the best Maeror Tri albums, and one that succeeded through this conceptual framework (which would have caused lesser artists considerable trouble). The reissue does do away with the original Korm Plastics artwork, which wasn't anything really to write home about; so, if you don't have the original and are keen on anything dark and droning, pick this up!
MPEG Stream: "The Administrator"
MPEG Stream: "The Anaesthetizer"

NECHOCHWEN Azimuthus To The Otherworld (Bindrune) cd 12.98
Somehow this got left out of last week's Black Metal roundup, though we just got a bunch back in stock! If you missed it, check it out, very original and yet very metal, on the always interesting and out-there Bindrune label...
Along with the gorgeous washed out ambient nature doom of Celestiial, and the epic outsider black metal mystery of the most recent Blood Of The Black Owl comes this, another new release on the cult Bindrune label, the first record from amazing one man band Nechochwen, a black metal act of sorts, whose intent is to explore Native American Indian heritage, through sound, but this is a strange hybridized exploration of Native American culture for sure.
Beginning with classical guitar, tribal hand drums, ominous spoken word, streaks of keening high end guitar, wailed emotive wordless vox, it definitely sounds a bit Native American, until the band launch into some seriously blasting full on metal, thrashing blackened riffage, pounding drums, with flurries of double kick, growled gruff vokills, rife with sprawling arrangements and epic melodies. It's thematically focused on the tribes that dwelled in the Ohio River Valley nearly two millennia ago, not that you'd necessarily know that from just listening, but it definitely infuses the sound with a unique vibe, that you're unlikely to find in much music, let alone black metal. Acoustic guitars, simple loping drumming, and chantlike vocals, in fact much of the record is acoustic, darkly melancholic, lush and warm and hauntingly beautiful, with fluttery flutes, hand drums, sitar like steel string buzz, occasionally erupting into blasting blackness, or twisted bits of rhythmic churn, or plodding ambient doom, or creepy black ambient drone, masterfully exectued, an expansive, incredible exploration of history through blackened folk flecked sound. Like other those Bindrune releases, not quite like anything else.
MPEG Stream: "Allumhammochwen: The Crossing"
MPEG Stream: "At Night May I Roam"
MPEG Stream: "Gissis Mikana"
MPEG Stream: "Red Ocher"

NILSEN, BJ Defeat (Ideal) cassette 10.98
Very limited stock on this one. Defeat looks back to Nilsen's earlier recordings as Hazard, when his frigid dronescapes engineered from field recordings of the Swedish hinterlands to articulate the desolation and cold of that region. Of course, this isn't to say that Nilsen's current collaboration with Stilluppsteypa or the new output for Touch isn't dark, cold, and barren. Defeat is an recording laced with horror-film minor-key melodies that repeat the sparse two or three notes overlapping his trademarked bleak washes of drone, hiss, and shadow. This ominous bit of sound design doesn't seem to rely all that much on the laptop trickery (unlike say Silent Night or This Invisible City), rather the sources of synth and guitars hold their own in producing these black sounds. 40 minutes long and limited to 100 copies. Already out of print from the label.

ROSKA s/t (Rinse) cd 17.98
One of the coolest things about the dubstep scene in the last couple years is how many different, new and exciting directions that sound has been stretched and twisted and expanded into. There has been everything from rave-step to tech-step to dark-step and even drone-step!
Roska use dubstep as an undercurrent to their totally upbeat, dancey and housey soulful sound. Sitting somewhere pretty exciting between the all out party sounds of Zomby and the more soulful and hypnotic elements of Burial. Or imagine any of our dubstep favorites infusing a touch of Lil' Louis and C+C Music Factory energy into their grooves (and we mean that in a good way!). Not sure if this will be dubbed house-step but we got to say it's a pretty awesome and refreshing sound. While so much dubstep has a very menacing, tough, ultra ominous bent, we love the feminine and R&B fueled perspective that Roska brings to the sound, all the while still having incredible beat making skills that can't be denied. In some of the more squeeching and swirling tracks we even think of what would happen if Mouse On Mars dipped their toes into the world of dubstep. A few tracks feature vocals including "I Need Love" which is one of the best, hypnotic dance tracks we've heard in ages. We think this is one of those records that not only dubstep fans will enjoy but a whole lot of other folks into the more soulful and free side of dance music as well. So damn good!
MPEG Stream: "I Need Love : Featuring Anesha"
MPEG Stream: "Time Stamp"
MPEG Stream: "Tomorrow Is Today"

VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR Time Vaults (Abstract Sounds) cd 13.98
Ok, so it's taken us a little while to list this, since it got reissued on cd domestically last year (originally this came out as a cassette release in 1982). But, doesn't matter, it's called Time Vaults after all, it's super old already, being an odds and sods collection of unreleased (at the time) material recorded in the early '70s by British progressive rock weirdos Van Der Graaf Generator, one of our fave prog acts ever, when the band was officially on hiatus (between their Pawn Hearts and Godbluff albums). So, these tracks are of varying production quality, some sound like they could have been on either of those two actual albums, while others have more bootleggy sonics. Likewise, while a few are fully realized songs (e.g. dramatic, melodic opener "The Liquidator", and the quite jagged and intense "Rift Valley"), many others are more improv/experimental/instrumental type things, like the bizarre collage style title track (shades of Faust), but still interesting though, and not just to VDGG buffs, though of course that's who we'd mostly expect to pick this up. If you like VDGG, and aren't uptight about "perfect sound quality" then it's quite recommended. With wonderfully distorted rehearsal space jams like "Drift (I Hope It Won't)" complete with background chatter and feedback, this is vintage VDGG with their hair down, their trademark sound (bombastic vocals, with sax-and-keys instead of guitar) gone all lo-fi, like a lot of bands in the current underground. It's almost like a shitgaze VDGG, a VDGG that you could put on a mix tape with Sic Alps or Ducktails or something like that! Heck, they should/could have reissued it on cassette, again...
MPEG Stream: "Rift Valley"
MPEG Stream: "It All Went Red"

WALLS s/t (Kompakt) lp+cd 15.98
Now available on vinyl (which comes bundled with a cd version as well!!)...
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"

WIRE, THE #316 June 2010 magazine 9.98
Another issue of the magazine we can't live without. Cover model: "Hamburg cosmonaut" Felix Kubin, interviewed by Momus. Also: Demdike Stare, Rangers, Hudson Mohawke (doing the Invisible Jukebox), Carsten "Alva Noto" Nicolai, Actress, and plenty more. Plus the usual helpful reviews, news, charts, scene reports (Fukuoka, Japan), etc.





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

2+2=5, THE "Into The Future..." (Spittle) cd 21.00
AGENCEMENT "Early Works 1983-1986" (Edition Omega Point) cd 27.00
ARCHITEUTHIS REX "Dark As The Sea" (Utech) cd 14.98
AWESOME COLOR "Flying" (Hat Energy) 7" 5.98
BLACK OATH "s/t" (Subject To Suffering) cdep 9.98
CELER "Dwell In Possibility" (Blackest Rainbow) lp 21.00
CORNERSHOP "Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast" cd 15.98
DEAD C, THE "Clyma Est Mort / Tentative power" (Jagjaguwar / Ba Da Bing) 2lp 23.00
DEAD C, THE "The Dead Sea Perform M. Harris" (Jagjagwar / Ba Da Bing) lp 14.98
DRUNKDRIVER "Born Pregnant" (Parts Unknown) lp 13.98
EMERALDS "Does It Look Like I'm Here?" (Editions Mego) 2lp 27.00
ENDTABLES, THE "s/t" (Drag City) cd 14.98
FLUXION "Perfused" (echocord) cd 16.98
FNS "s/t" (Miasmah) lp 19.98
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION "Meat Receiving" (Ultra Eczema) lp 27.00
GRAVEYARDS "Cinders" (Sergent Massacre) lp 24.00
HARVEY MILK "A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" (Hydra Head) cd 12.98
J-ROCC "J-Rocc V J-Man" (Jazzman) cd 17.98
JAPANDROIDS "No Singles" (Polyvinyl Record Co.) cd/lp 12.98/21.00
JARNOW, AL "Celestial Navigations: The Short Films Of Al Jarnow" (Numero) dvd 28.00
JAY, JEREMY "Splash" (K Records) cd 14.98
KEEPAWAY "Baby Style" (Lefse) lp 14.98
KONER, THOMAS "Nunatek" (Type) lp 19.98
LAINE, FRANKIE "Rocks And Gravel" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
LEMONADE "Pure Moods" (True Panther Sounds) 12" 8.98
LITTLE RICHARD "Here's Little Richard" (Doxy) lp 24.00
MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE "Totem Two" (Important) cd 14.98
MOEBIUS & PLANK "Material" (Bureau B) lp 16.98
MOLES "Untune The Sky" (Kill Shaman) 2lp 19.98
MONAE, JANELLE "Archandroid" (Bad Boy / Wonderland) cd 12.98
NEON "Oscillator" (Spittle) cd 21.00
PRIESTESS "Prior To The Fire" (Tee Pee) cd 15.98
QUIN, DOUGLAS "Fathom" (Taiga) lp 24.00
RANGDA "False Flag" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/15.98
SAFT, JAMIE "Black Shabbis" (Tzadik) cd 16.98
SERPENT'S KNIGHT "Silent Knight...Of Myth And Destiny" (Shadow Kingdom) 2cd 17.98
SPECIAL INTERESTS "Volume 2" magazine 3.98
SWEET APPLE "Love & Desperation" (Tee Pee) cd 14.98
TECHNO ANIMAL "Ghosts" (Pathological) cd 7.98
TONY CARO & JOHN "All On The First Day" (Gaarden) lp 16.98
TRANS AM "Thing" (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
TURZI "B" (Record Makers) cd 16.98
URAL UMBO "s/t" (Utech) cd 14.98
V/A "Head Over High Heels: Strong & Female 1927-1959" (Trikont) cd 17.98
V/A "Karl Rove: Courage And Concequence" (Seismic.Wave) lp 14.98
V/A "Milano New Wave 1980-83" (Spittle) cd 21.00
V/A "Murder: Songs From The Dark Side Of The Soul" (Trikont) cd 17.98
V/A "Neonbeats" (Klanggalerie) 2cd 25.00
VELASQUEZ, ANIBAL Y SU CONJUNTO "Mambo Loco" (Analog Africa) cd/lp 19.98/21.00
WEAPON "Drakonian Paradigm" (Ajna) cd/lp 14.98/15.98
WETDOG "Enterprise Reversal" (Angular Recordings) lp 30.00
WOVEN BONES "Minus Touch" (Zoo Music) lp 16.98
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
Gnod/White Hills "Gnod Drop Out With White Hills II" 2lp on Rocket Recordings
Pharaoh Overlord "Live In Suomi Finland" lp version on Klangbad
Magus Pelander (of Witchcraft) "s/t" cdep/12" on Svart

----} May 25th
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

----} May 29th
RM74 "Reflex" cd on Utech
M. Bassett / J. Graf "Peradam" cd on Utech
Arcn Templ (members of The Observatory) "Emanations of a New World" cd on Utech

----} June 8th
Watain "Lawless Darkness" cd/lp on Season Of Mist
Emeralds "Does It Look Like I'm Here?" cd on Editions Mego
v/a "Ethnic Minority Music Of Northwest Xinjiang, China" cd on Sublime Frequencies

----} June 15th
Oval "Oh" 12" on Thrill Jockey
Jack Rose with D. Charles Speer & the Helix "Ragged and Right" cdep/12" on Thrill Jockey
Simon Scott "Traba" mini-lp on Immune
Heavy Winged " Fields Within Fields" lp+bonus cd on Three Lobed

----} June 30th
Peter Howell & John Ferdinando "Alice Through the Looking Glass" cd on Lion/Acme

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

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later or whenever
Limonious "House Of Usher" lp on Flogsta Danshall
Pianos Became The Teeth "Old Pride" cd on Top Shelf
Ratto Ja Lehtisalo "UU Mama" cd on Ektro
Thor "Only The Strong" cd reissue on Ektro
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
LCD Sound System / Wooden Shjips "Drunk Girls" 7" on DFA

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Nibelungen Benefit @ Bootleg Theater Sat. May 22nd

Next Saturday 5/22, collision/theory will be hosting a night of music (melodic art-core to post-punk metal) at the Bootleg Theater, featuring Totimoshi, Distorted Pony, and EL-Haru Kuroi.

If you're in the LA area, please join us for this late night event. Listen to some music, have some drinks, and check out the new T-shirts and stickers we'll have for sale. It's going to be a fun way to help us make this project a reality. Thanks everyone, for all you have done to help us so far. Hope to see you there!

collision/theory PRESENTS A BENEFIT FOR BLOOD RED LOST HEAD DEAD FALCON: THE NIBELUNGEN
www.facebook.com/bloodredlosthead

BOOTLEG THEATER
2220 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90057
**Park at the Praise Christian Church across the street**
www.bootlegtheater.org/

SATURDAY MAY 22

$12 - ALL AGES (21 & OVER - ID FOR DRINKS)

DOORS @ 10:30 PM
BANDS @ 11:00 PM

EL- Haru Kuroi 11PM
http://www.myspace.com/harukuroi

Distorted Pony 11:45 PM
http://www.myspace.com/plaguebed

Totimoshi 12:30 AM
http://www.myspace.com/totimoshi

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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickSallyJonandAndrew