RAZEN / SHELDON SIEGEL split ((K-RAA-K)3) lp 16.98
We discovered this strange split lp via the always amazing WFMU in New Jersey, a freeform radio station we've collaborated with on numerous occasions in the past, most notably we shared a couple showcases at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas, which by the way was no coincidence, and it wasn't just because we're pals, it's also because WFMU constantly and consistently play the most amazing shit. We think we know about the craziest, most underground music, and then we tune into WFMU and routinely have our minds blown. And yeah, we blow their minds once in a while too, with stuff we recommend on our list, but pretty much every time we listen to WFMU, we have to have a pen and paper handy to jot down all the amazing things we need to track down, which happened recently with this here record. One track was all it took to know this was some serious aQ-worthy weirdness, dark and psychedelic, tripped out and bizarre and beautiful, on a label we love too, with a background story as cool and weird as the music itself. So we got as many as we could (it's limited to 300 copies!) but odds are they won't last, so grab one of these quick cuz once we describe it to you, we're pretty sure you're not gonna be able to live without one...
The oddly named Razen are a duo, who grew tired of the traditional rock band instrumentation, and decided to each pick a new instrument, one they had no idea how to play, which is how they ended up with a detuned santoor (like an Indian hammered dulcimer) and a drumset assembled from metal plates. And thus was born Razen. They've expanded their instrumentation to include still more instruments they don't know how to play (bouzouki, keyboards, horns), and have invited a handful of guests to contribute an even more impressive and bizarre arsenal of noisemakers, including bagpipe, chalumeau (a classical style recorder), sopranino (one of the smallest horns in the saxophone family), bass recorder, duduk (a Middle Eastern woodwind) and shenai (a North Indian oboe), and this is the result: a glorious, mysterious take on world music, dark and haunting, heavily percussive, cinematic, abstract and dramatic, the label mentions Moondog and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and David Lynch, but we also hear some Sun City Girls, some martial industrial music, while at the same time the sounds dip into African folk music and Indian style ragas, all rife with drone and buzz and strange melodies, lush textures, frantic rhythms, all filtered through Razen's distinctively non-world music perspective.
"Rammelaargong" begins with hypnotic tribal hand drumming, deep low end thrum, fluttering woodwinds, and haunting steel string shimmer, eventually building to a frenzy of howling horns, and frantic drumming, infused with plenty of drone and buzz, and a strangely motorik rhythmic pulse, with everything eventually dropping out, finishing off with a brief flurry of lo-fi percussion.
"Razen Zand" begins with a thick undulating raga like drone, rendered in glitchy electronics, before the drums kick in, and then the horns, and the sound is almost like a marching band playing some abstract African folk music, the drums and horns locked into staccato bursts, while in between those bursts, wild melodies are unfurled from buzzing steel strings, the sound manages to be epic, and majestic and HEAVY. "Richel" is all low end blur, and woozy snake charmer melodies, shimmery spidery buzzing strings, a sun baked sprawling raga-like drift, the vibe dark and emotional and intense, very cinematic, wild fluttering woodwinds flit above that mournful snake charmer cry, the track laced with sharp percussive strikes, and thick low end thrums, hummed chantlike vox, and swirls of metallic shimmer. "Rode Hond" too, begins with a deep metallic buzz, layered and lush, and those exotic intense snake charmer melodies, the percussion, spare and skeletal, but propulsive and rhythmic, the song growing more and more intense the drums more frenetic, the horns and woodwinds more tense, soaring and singing out, all the instruments slipping into a hypnotic groove, that we could listen to forever, and fades out way too soon.
So incredible, it's only 4 tracks, but they're so intense and detailed and blossom a little more with every listen, you might as well set your turntable to send the needle right back to the beginning, and let it play all night.
And that's just the Razen side. The flipside is taken up entirely by a single track from Sheldon Siegel, which is not in fact a person, but rather a group, a Belgian abstract free jazz outfit, made up of cello, drums, percussion, sax, vocals, tapes and music box, and don't be expecting regular old free jazz, they are after all teamed up with Razen for a reason, and not because they're both from Belgium, it's more likely, that like Razen, the guys in Sheldon Siegel approach their music similarly, looking to subvert the old, and invent something new, to create a music that while made up of free jazz elements, is more than free jazz, and what they've come up with does definitely strike out from the confines of free jazz, sure, a quick listen will sound like free jazz on the surface, but as you dig deeper, and the song develops, thick grinding cello drones ground the sound, a thick undulating textural buzz, underpinning, stuttery skronk and little flurries of percussive skitter, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer. Over the course of the side's 25 minutes, the group shift gears dramatically, slipping into a seriously twisted dirge, with the horns super processed and sounding almost electronic, blissing out, and letting blurts of feedback and spurts of rhythmic sputter spar over mournful cello melodies, sounding super dramatic and intense, after some bursts of almost traditional sounding avant jazz, the sound winds way down, the tapes warble and whir, the other instruments are muffled and muted, a strange landscape of scrapes and thumps, of fragmented melodies, and abstract ambience, before finishing off with a strange stretch of stumbling loping jazz flecked skitter, and swirling droned out weirdness.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: RAZEN "Rammelaargong"
MPEG Stream: RAZEN "Razend Zand"
MPEG Stream: SHELDON SIEGEL "Drie Mannen Stappen Aan Boord... (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: SHELDON SIEGEL "Drie Mannen Stappen Aan Boord... (excerpt 2)"

JAILL That's How We Burn (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
For every band the hype machine catapults into the stratosphere of underground indie rock next big thing-ness, a hundred others get pushed aside, forgotten or ignored, many of those WAY more deserving of the accolades, and the praise, and more importantly, the ears of the listener, but for whatever reason, wrong label, no hyped tours, bad business sense, no blogosphere freakouts, no connections to other even cooler bands, those bands can only do so much, which often means simply making an incredible record, that practically nobody hears. Some bands tough it out, make more records, eventually getting noticed, and then everyone can return to that old record and finally proclaim it a masterpiece, and lament the fact that it was so overlooked, but many bands put everything they have into that record, energy, creativity, money, time, and when nothing happens, they just give it up, which is always a sad sad thing.
So what does that have to do with Wisconsin psych pop combo Jaill? Nothing really, other than the fact, that these guys have been around since 2002, have released a bunch of other records, but with That's How We Burn, have made probably the best, catchiest psychedelic indie pop record of the year, maybe the last several years, yet they rarely pop up on blogs, we rarely hear tastemakers shouting from the mountaintops about Jaill, or about That's How We Burn. Compare that to, say, Best Coast, who we also love, but whose every move, every sound is covered by every blog in the world. It's weird, cuz this Jaill record, holy shit, for folks who hear hundreds of new records every month, many of them amazing, for ONE SINGLE record to get played over and over, as in 5, 6 even 10 times a day, well as far as recommendations go, it's pretty tough to beat. But as with most pop records, it starts with one song, that one song that sinks it's hooks into you, and won't let go, and no matter how good the rest of the record is, you just can't stop yourself from listening to that same song over and over and over. And on That's How We Burn, that song is "Thank Us Later", from the first few seconds, you'll be hooked, the slithery melody, the weird drum fill, the echoey guitar jangle, and then when the vocals come in, all weary, slipping from croon to almost falsetto, and then the chorus, a fucking KILLER, the sort of chorus that some bands build a whole career on, and then there's an equally catchy bridge, the whole song pretty much perfect, a little bit surf rock, a little bit Brit rock, a little bit modern garage pop, but the song itself, it's the kind of jam any of the current crop of lo-fi garage poppers would KILL for, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Sic Alps, Male Bonding, we could go on and on, but the songs on Jaill stand up to anything any of those bands can come up with, and then some.
And where as lots of records we love have one of those opening one-two-three punches, an opening salvo that slays, and makes the whole record super front loaded, but on That's How We Burn, those one-two-three punches are everywhere, in fact, pick a song, and it's the first in one of those kick ass salvos, and yeah, sure, the opening three tracks are tough to beat, "The Stroller" is dark and hypnotic and a little bit gloomy, mixing in some Interpol and Rapture to their more slacker surfy sound, and weirdly it suits them big time, and it has a wicked crunchy chorus, the whole thing driven by some serious bad ass riffing, and some cool harmony vocals, which leads right into "Everyone's Hip" which sounds more slackery, a little bit like the Soft Pack or the Strokes, mixed with a bit of pavement, with a weird angular verse, and totally insanely hooky bridge and a cool doo wop-y chorus. Finally, "On The Beat" finishes off that opening salvo with something a little bit more laid back and laconic, the guitars droney and hypnotic, and another irresistible chorus, lots of crunch and thump and chug, and some cool vocal harmonies.
Which leads us right into "Thank Us Later", 1-2-3 salvo number two, and of course we STILL aren't tired of listening to it, but after another time through, we're led right into "Summer Mess" an awesome stripped down acoustic jam, with some snarky lyrics, but with the heartfelt delivery, and the amazing melody, it's pretty tough to fight, and finally, another guitar comes in, and some simple percussion, making the last 30 seconds lush and sunshiney and summery. And finally part 3, "She's My Baby", a driving groover, with another cool chugging guitar part, clanging chiming chords, and yet ANOTHER amazing chorus, which by now should lead you to the conclusion that these guys know their way around a hook, and aren't afraid to jam a whole mess of them into a single song.
We could keep going, another three-fer, starting with "Snake Shakes", which begins with the bassline from Billy Squier's "Everybody Wants you", before the vocals transform the song into something much more lilting and jangly... But you get the drift, pretty much every song here is awesome, catchy and crunchy and jangly and hooky, and unlike the horde of bands today who think enough reverb and weird lo-fi production techniques will disguise the fact that there's nothing going on underneath, Jaill, don't bother, cuz they don't need to, maybe that's why they're not getting the hype the so deserve, not noisy enough, not weird enough, not lo-fi enough, not hazy sixties girl group enough, but fuck it, who cares, this rules, we love it, and we think you will too, and we can't offer up any more hype than making this an aQ Record Of The Week and the thousand or so words you just finished reading...
MPEG Stream: "Thank Us Later"
MPEG Stream: "The Stroller"
MPEG Stream: "Everyone's Hip"
MPEG Stream: "Summer Mess"

JAILL That's How We Burn (Sub Pop) lp 15.98
For every band the hype machine catapults into the stratosphere of underground indie rock next big thing-ness, a hundred others get pushed aside, forgotten or ignored, many of those WAY more deserving of the accolades, and the praise, and more importantly, the ears of the listener, but for whatever reason, wrong label, no hyped tours, bad business sense, no blogosphere freakouts, no connections to other even cooler bands, those bands can only do so much, which often means simply making an incredible record, that practically nobody hears. Some bands tough it out, make more records, eventually getting noticed, and then everyone can return to that old record and finally proclaim it a masterpiece, and lament the fact that it was so overlooked, but many bands put everything they have into that record, energy, creativity, money, time, and when nothing happens, they just give it up, which is always a sad sad thing.
So what does that have to do with Wisconsin psych pop combo Jaill? Nothing really, other than the fact, that these guys have been around since 2002, have released a bunch of other records, but with That's How We Burn, have made probably the best, catchiest psychedelic indie pop record of the year, maybe the last several years, yet they rarely pop up on blogs, we rarely hear tastemakers shouting from the mountaintops about Jaill, or about That's How We Burn. Compare that to, say, Best Coast, who we also love, but whose every move, every sound is covered by every blog in the world. It's weird, cuz this Jaill record, holy shit, for folks who hear hundreds of new records every month, many of them amazing, for ONE SINGLE record to get played over and over, as in 5, 6 even 10 times a day, well as far as recommendations go, it's pretty tough to beat. But as with most pop records, it starts with one song, that one song that sinks it's hooks into you, and won't let go, and no matter how good the rest of the record is, you just can't stop yourself from listening to that same song over and over and over. And on That's How We Burn, that song is "Thank Us Later", from the first few seconds, you'll be hooked, the slithery melody, the weird drum fill, the echoey guitar jangle, and then when the vocals come in, all weary, slipping from croon to almost falsetto, and then the chorus, a fucking KILLER, the sort of chorus that some bands build a whole career on, and then there's an equally catchy bridge, the whole song pretty much perfect, a little bit surf rock, a little bit Brit rock, a little bit modern garage pop, but the song itself, it's the kind of jam any of the current crop of lo-fi garage poppers would KILL for, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Sic Alps, Male Bonding, we could go on and on, but the songs on Jaill stand up to anything any of those bands can come up with, and then some.
And where as lots of records we love have one of those opening one-two-three punches, an opening salvo that slays, and makes the whole record super front loaded, but on That's How We Burn, those one-two-three punches are everywhere, in fact, pick a song, and it's the first in one of those kick ass salvos, and yeah, sure, the opening three tracks are tough to beat, "The Stroller" is dark and hypnotic and a little bit gloomy, mixing in some Interpol and Rapture to their more slacker surfy sound, and weirdly it suits them big time, and it has a wicked crunchy chorus, the whole thing driven by some serious bad ass riffing, and some cool harmony vocals, which leads right into "Everyone's Hip" which sounds more slackery, a little bit like the Soft Pack or the Strokes, mixed with a bit of pavement, with a weird angular verse, and totally insanely hooky bridge and a cool doo wop-y chorus. Finally, "On The Beat" finishes off that opening salvo with something a little bit more laid back and laconic, the guitars droney and hypnotic, and another irresistible chorus, lots of crunch and thump and chug, and some cool vocal harmonies.
Which leads us right into "Thank Us Later", 1-2-3 salvo number two, and of course we STILL aren't tired of listening to it, but after another time through, we're led right into "Summer Mess" an awesome stripped down acoustic jam, with some snarky lyrics, but with the heartfelt delivery, and the amazing melody, it's pretty tough to fight, and finally, another guitar comes in, and some simple percussion, making the last 30 seconds lush and sunshiney and summery. And finally part 3, "She's My Baby", a driving groover, with another cool chugging guitar part, clanging chiming chords, and yet ANOTHER amazing chorus, which by now should lead you to the conclusion that these guys know their way around a hook, and aren't afraid to jam a whole mess of them into a single song.
We could keep going, another three-fer, starting with "Snake Shakes", which begins with the bassline from Billy Squier's "Everybody Wants you", before the vocals transform the song into something much more lilting and jangly... But you get the drift, pretty much every song here is awesome, catchy and crunchy and jangly and hooky, and unlike the horde of bands today who think enough reverb and weird lo-fi production techniques will disguise the fact that there's nothing going on underneath, Jaill, don't bother, cuz they don't need to, maybe that's why they're not getting the hype the so deserve, not noisy enough, not weird enough, not lo-fi enough, not hazy sixties girl group enough, but fuck it, who cares, this rules, we love it, and we think you will too, and we can't offer up any more hype than making this an aQ Record Of The Week and the thousand or so words you just finished reading...
MPEG Stream: "Thank Us Later"
MPEG Stream: "The Stroller"
MPEG Stream: "Everyone's Hip"
MPEG Stream: "Summer Mess"

BODY, THE All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood (At A Loss) cd 10.98
We made the vinyl version of this incredible avant outsider doom opus a Record Of The Week a little while back, and figured that since a bunch of folks had been anxiously awaiting the cd version, it made sense to bestow Record Of The Week honors on the compact disc version as well, it's definitely good enough to warrant another spotlight on what is quite possibly one of the coolest and heaviest records of the year...
We've long been fans of burly bearded post doom crushers The Body, their sound like the classic two man pummel of godheadSilo expanded into something even more majestic and sprawling, black hole heavy, infusing their ultra doom glacial sludge with plenty of post and rock mathisms, the cinematic tension of groups like Godspeed, and heck, they even cover songs by folks like Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and Sinead O'Connor! For a two piece, these guys pretty much transcend and obliterate any sort of limitations that lineup would pose to most mere musical mortals, but that said, plenty of two pieces have seen fit to expand, say to a trio or a quartet, maybe just to record, get a few guests, or even permanently, ditching the duo which sometimes gets focused on more than the music. But few bands (dare we say, practically none) expand further than that, say from 2 members to THIRTY TWO! But that's exactly what The Body has done for All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood, their second proper full length in ages, one that marks ten years as a band, and more importantly, marks a serious sonic shift. No longer are they scrappy DIY punk rock noisemakers, setting their sites above and beyond, these guys have gone for it, meticulously crafting an album of extreme heaviness, of sonic mystery, haunting, and epic, metal for sure, even going so far as to include an actual 13 member choir, and not just for little random bits here and there, nearly seven minutes of the ten minute opening track, is just choir, lilting and angelic, lovely and otherworldly, only making the sudden shift from ethereal vocal harmony to crushing downtuned ultra doom all the more jarring. But the coolest part, is that the parts aren't clearly delineated. The choir continues on into the heaviness, so the howling churning crush, is peppered with gorgeous hymn like vocals, creating some sort of strangely liturgical sounding swirly sludge. And it's not just the vocals, there's saxophone, samples, piano, plenty of noise. And that pretty much sets the template for the whole record.
Besides the Assembly Of Light Choir, who are featured on almost every song here, the record also features Robert Lowe of Lichens offering up some additional vocals, not to mention the other 15 or 16 guests who contribute, beyond the core Body duo of drums, guitar, samples and vocals, a pretty crazy array of soundmakers, more vocals, saxophone, sousaphone, guitar, piano, keyboards, Moog, baritone saxophone and more drums. LOTS more drums. In fact, on the final track, "Lathspell I Name You" drummer Lee Buford is joined by EIGHT extra drummers!!! More on that in a moment.
The second track "A Curse" begins with a loping post rock beat, swirling synths, a melancholy melody, soaring chiming guitars, very moody and slow burning, before the band explodes into full doom, the sound shifts too, the crystalline clearness, becomes big and booming, the sound blown out, but more sort of warm and muted than in the red, the drums massive and pounding, while the guitars swirl in little chordal clouds, and the anguished vocals howl and wail, which gives way to "Empty Hearth", which sounds like some abstract experimental Swans style track, looped sample of what sounds like speaking in tongues, lurching mechanical crunch, glitched out electronics, shrieking vox, the whole song occasionally stuttering to a halt, as if the song was being remixed or was gloriously malfunctioning, there's also some awesome guttural throat singing, laced underneath the start stop, sample skitter, and super distorted bass buzz.
"Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss" starts with tarpit riffery and blurred hiss, strangely atmospheric, the drums skeletal but subtly mathy, the choir adding their gorgeous harmonies, an epic spiritual doom, tolling bells, everything dropping out, leaving just the booming drums, the shrieked vox, those bells, until a thick layer of low end washes over everything, and the track unwinds as some classic funereal doom.
"Song Of Sarin The Brave" begins all blown out and tangled up, sheets of feedback, huge heaving bursts of titanic metallic crunch, mysterious voices, finally the band launches into the song proper, and things get really weird, the drums stripped way down, the whole track slathered in strange murky blur and melting effects, while underneath, a strange sampled voice drifts, through clouds of other voices and mysterious sounds, totally creepy, and beautiful, and so mesmerizing, it goes on forever, and could have gone on way longer, but instead finishes off in a minute long blaze of shrieking black doom sludge crush.
"Ruiner" is another smoldering slow starter, haunting, downtuned minor key riffs ring out, doomic drums pound out a barely there rhythm, again, all underpinned by a strange staticky cloud of hiss and gauzy atmospheric hum, the track starting out super spare, but gradually growing more and more dense, more and more doomy, gathering momentum, not rhythmically so much as sonically, the progression laced subtly with strings and horns, little streaks of psychedelic guitars, until finally exploding into a lumbering dirge, the instruments blackened and crumbling, less riffy than a throbbing organic black buzz, pounding and pummeling before blinking out abruptly.
Which leads us to the final track, the 14 minute, multiple drummer-ed side long "Lathspell I Name You", a heaving, expansive ultra doom epic, a churning looped riff and some busy drumming start the track off, not doomy at all really, more noise rock or post rock, with some gorgeous folky melodies woven in, the choir offering up their lovely harmonies, but in this context, they sound less angelic and slightly demonic, locked into their own looped pattern mirroring, the motorik metal loop underneath, which gives way to a weirdly records, noise drum blowout, voices and instruments hissing and buzzing while a cacophony of drums pound and crash, mesmerizing and hypnotic, before the glacial chug resurfaces, along with the choir, and the band lock into a seriously slow motion, abrasive cathartic doom sludge crawl, the sound growing more and more blown out until every drum hit pegs the needles and distorts everything, making the sound that much more caustic and emotional and intense.
The roots of The Body's sound may be in doom or sludge, or even simply metal, but All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood has taken that sound so far beyond, transforming sludge and doom into something way more transcendent, way more difficult to immediately categorize, it's melodic, and poppy, and mathy, and drone-y, and electronic, and experimental, epic and majestic and mysterious, while somehow still remaining brutal, and pummeling and heavy as fuck. Fans of the usual suspects will probably dig this big time, Moss, Bunkur, Khanate, Monarch, Nihill, Otesanek (in fact the liner notes read: "All Praise To Otesanek And Man Is The Bastard"), Eyehategod, Habsyll, Fleshpress, but be prepared to look beyond the realms of traditional doom, or of conventional heaviness, because The Body are anything but traditional or conventional, and All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood just might be the coolest, weirdest, most original doom record EVER.
MPEG Stream: "A Body"
MPEG Stream: "A Curse"
MPEG Stream: "Empty Hearth"
MPEG Stream: "Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss"

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ALVARIUS B Blood Operatives Of The Barium Sunset (PlusTapes) cassette 6.98
Originally released on vinyl in 2005 on the Sun City Girls' Abduction label, Blood Operatives Of The Barium Sunset was at the time the first Alvarius B release in 7 years, a project of Sun City Girl Alan Bishop, accompanied by long time SCG accomplice Eyvind Kang as well as Randall Dunn, Tim Young and Andrew McGinnis.
Alvarius B is some sort of weirdo psychedelic cabaret folk music, somewhere between Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and show tunes (?). The opener is a swampy bit of country folk, all slithery acoustic guitars, junk yard percussion, weird voices, Bishop's snarly vox, lots of buzz and tense atmospheric shimmer, and the lyrics, an over the top tale of miserable miscreants, while the second track is even more Tom Waits-ish, a piano ballad, haunting and melancholy, distorted and creepy, over a chorus of nighttime crickets, as if Bishop was set up on the porch of some old house on the edge of a black swamp. From there on, the sound slips into a strange lilting doom folk, Kang's viola, moaning over some atonal strum, and Bishop ranting like a madman. Deep chanted vocals draped over jagged acoustic guitar, a distant choir competes with some strange grunting, jaw harp, moody hushed vocals drift over a latticework of spidery steel string buzz, super dramatic and over the top, helps that that one is actually a cover, a piece by Italian horror soundtrack composer Fabio Frizzi, lyrics of course courtesy of Bishop. Which is what turns it into something much sicker and more hauntingly demented than even Frizzi could have ever imagined.
They also tackle a Morricone track, and a traditional, but it hardly matters, Bishop and company make the songs their own, transforming them into oozing, misanthropic swamp folk dirges, creepy, and funny, and fucked up, exactly what you'd expect from one of the Sun City Girls, an aural roadtrip through the hellish mind of a madman, a lost world of run down houses, bleak swampland, of destitution and despondency, but viewed through a serious cracked lens, that makes even the most dismal and brutal and miserable situations and characters seem endlessly fascinating and mysterious. Awesome stuff, essential for Sun City Girls obsessives of course, but maybe a bit TOO out there for the general population, which is precisely what makes this so awesome.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!

AMEN DUNES Murder Dull Mind (Sacred Bones) 12" 14.98
When we first discovered the timeless otherworldly space drone psych folk of Amen Dunes, we couldn't shake the feeling that it had to be old, some lost psych holy grail. For all its fuzz and warble and crunch, it had this strange timeless quality, at once personal and intimate, as if, like many small private pressings, the actual pressing was just going through the motions, a sort of validation that meant very little to the creator, but for the listener, the fact that these sounds were captured, it was perhaps as important as the creation itself. We of course eventually accepted the fact that Amen Dunes was not in fact some strange guru-like mystic, white bearded and black robed, living in a cave somewhere (somewhere that just so happened to have recording capabilities of course) and was in fact, a young guy, a music maker, band dude, who just so happened to be able to channel the spirit of some lost time, be it the sixties, seventies, eighties... the sound of Amen Dunes, was, and is, a soft cacophony of jangle and buzz, laced with elements of raga and drone, folk and country, all woven into an idiosyncratic whole, that somehow sounds like all of those and none of those. Ever since that record, which of course we made a Record Of The Week, we had been dying for more.
With the release of Murder Dull Mind, the reason for no new recordings is made obvious, as the man behind Amen Dunes, Damon McMahon, was in fact living in China for the last few years, where this ep was recorded in his apartment. Mostly improvised, these songs manage to capture the same spirit as the debut, but definitely takes the Amen Dunes sound in a new, more hushed and intimate direction.
That sound is still ritualistic and psychedelic, beginning with a strange incantation, alien vocal harmonies, sounding a bit like a more ominous Beach Boys vocal track, wound around deep synth thrum and mysterious flickering electronics, before giving way to spare skeletal acoustic guitars, all reverby and hazy, wrapped in tangled psychedelic filigree, echo drenched vocals, and some soaring distorted and blown out choruses. It's like some sort of woozy Eastern tinged raga psych-folk, a bit like the first record, but more stripped down, occasionally abstract and buzzy, but just as often downright poppy. While elsewhere, simple snare drum skitter shuffles beneath urgently strummed steel string guitar, the sound almost Latin, way blown out vox, also suggestive of seventies acid folk. The A-side finishes off with a caustic noise jam, a swirling squall of chaotic psych guitar noise, buried voices and gnarled string buzz collide with buried percussive stutter and howling Haino-ish freakouts.
The B-side features 3 tracks of soft spacious almost country sounding reverby folk, strange vocals drift amidst hazy streaks of washed out sound, atmospheric and weirdly lush, very rainy day sounding (in fact, on one of the tracks, you can hear what almost sounds like rain in the background), the whole thing simple and stripped down, personal and emotional, yet still somehow subtly lysergic and psychedelic, a gorgeous intimate sonic missive, a fervent fever dream in sound. So good.

ASHLEY, GREG Requiem Mass and Other Experiments (Birdman) cd 14.98
We're beginning to consider Greg Ashley to be one of the most underrated musical minds of the past decade. Whether with his band The Gris Gris or on his own great solo recordings, Ashley has demonstrated so much versatility and creativity in conjuring up the most sublime psychedelic sounds. Requiem Mass And Other Experiments is an instrumental outing that finds Ashley crafting a powerful work that evokes the dramatic and kaleidoscopic side of Ennio Morricone, the winding prog odysseys of Bo Hansson and the more cinematic moments of Pink Floyd, like on More and Obscured By Clouds. But Ashley has a distinct and instantly recognizable guitar sound and knows his way around swirling melodies, so that the sound becomes totally his own. And even beyond his own instrumental prowess, Ashley is able to set all of those other elements in such a warm and intimate sound. It's no surprise that so many Bay Area bands are turning to him to record their records, because he really does understand the beauty of analog warmth and is uniquely able to capture a timeless quality in overall sound. While it's a sprawling, pastoral and haunting ride, what makes Requiem Mass And Other Experiments such a satisfying listen is the way in which Ashley also understands restraint and constantly displays such exquisite taste. Its paced so well and ends before you want it to, which in our book is always a good thing, because then you want to go on the ride again and again instead of burning out on an overstretched vision. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Requiem Mass - Part II"
MPEG Stream: "Monolith"
MPEG Stream: "Symmetric Juggling"

ASHLEY, GREG Requiem Mass and Other Experiments (Birdman) lp 14.98
We're beginning to consider Greg Ashley to be one of the most underrated musical minds of the past decade. Whether with his band The Gris Gris or on his own great solo recordings, Ashley has demonstrated so much versatility and creativity in conjuring up the most sublime psychedelic sounds. Requiem Mass And Other Experiments is an instrumental outing that finds Ashley crafting a powerful work that evokes the dramatic and kaleidoscopic side of Ennio Morricone, the winding prog odysseys of Bo Hansson and the more cinematic moments of Pink Floyd, like on More and Obscured By Clouds. But Ashley has a distinct and instantly recognizable guitar sound and knows his way around swirling melodies, so that the sound becomes totally his own. And even beyond his own instrumental prowess, Ashley is able to set all of those other elements in such a warm and intimate sound. It's no surprise that so many Bay Area bands are turning to him to record their records, because he really does understand the beauty of analog warmth and is uniquely able to capture a timeless quality in overall sound. While it's a sprawling, pastoral and haunting ride, what makes Requiem Mass And Other Experiments such a satisfying listen is the way in which Ashley also understands restraint and constantly displays such exquisite taste. Its paced so well and ends before you want it to, which in our book is always a good thing, because then you want to go on the ride again and again instead of burning out on an overstretched vision. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Requiem Mass - Part II"
MPEG Stream: "Monolith"
MPEG Stream: "Symmetric Juggling"

BEST COAST Crazy For You (Mexican Summer) cd 13.98
It's finally here, the debut from Cali sunshine retro poppers Best Coast, and as much as all the internet hype might make you want to think otherwise, it's just as good as they all say. The seven inches we've heard definitely already had us hankering for a full length, and as much as we dug those singles, the band has benefited big time from some serious production upgrade, the sound on Crazy For you finally realizes their potential. All the comparisons to Spector's wall of sound and sixties girl groups, now totally make even more sense, the sound here is totally timeless, fuzzy and reverby, like a treasure trove of rare sixties 7"s, but at the same time lush and lustrous and subtly modern, the guitars warm and liquid, and the vocals, wow, Bethany Cosentino manages to channel every torch singer and chanteuse that she was ever inspired by, her voice rich and smokey and passionate, every line sung with such conviction, the songs melancholic and wistful, a heartbroken longing infusing the sad songs, a pure unfettered joy, and enthusiasm for all the little things, sunshine, love, friendship, oozing from the happy ones, the drums simple and propulsive, the background vocals soft focus clouds of oooohs and aaaahs, Bobb Bruno's understated guitar parts sealing the deal, mirroring the vocal melodies but occasionally spiralling off into soft psychedelic swirls, and the songs, the songs are so good, catchy and fun, and dreamy and heartfelt, and like the sound, totally timeless, opener "Boyfriend" is an instant classic, the melody utterly beguiling, the perfect encapsulation of what Best Coast do so well, right down to Bruno's minimal leads, which perfectly compliment Cosentino's harmonies, the soaring chorus, and the simple propulsive rhythm that drives the song. "The title track is another practically perfect summer pop gem, more jangly and driving, like a sixties girl group jam as interpreted by vintage Unrest, more oooh and ahhhs, and plenty more hooks. The whole record is overflowing with perfect pop, with summery vibes, everything you could possibly want from a feel good pop record. And while they last, we have the version that tacks on the bonus track "When I'm With You", the closest thing the band has to a 'hit', a woozy, soporific intro, quickly exploding into a gloriously infectious pound, the main melody so awesome, and the chorus, a stone cold killer, the harmonies, the arrangement, the fuzzy guitars, the drums, everything. Perfect. Yeah okay, we totally love this record. Like crazy, and we're pretty sure you will too.
MPEG Stream: "Boyfriend"
MPEG Stream: "Crazy For You"
MPEG Stream: "The End"
MPEG Stream: "When I'm With You"

BIG TROUBLES Bad People (Olde English Spelling Bee) 7" 8.98
We know very little about this band Big Troubles, but damn, the four songs on this 7" are totally kicking our asses. Reminding some of us of being stoned in a dorm room in the '90s listening to Unrest, Guided By Voices, Sentridoh, and The Pastels, all at their most DIY and primitive. With a fucked up lo-fi and reverb filled sound, Big Troubles do have a similar aesthetic as so many of the recent wave of lo-fi pop peddlers like Woods, Blank Dogs and Best Coast but they also tap into that cool C86 sound that the Art Museums explored earlier this year. But there is something a bit more scrappy and fucked up indie rock sounding about these jams. The 7" starts off with a guitar sound reminiscent of the opening to My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything, and then proceeds to slip into a more rudimentary rocking sound. We've loved so much of what Olde English Spelling Bee has put out (Ducktails, Rangers, Julian Lynch, Forest Swords, James Ferraro, etc.) and we're stoked to see them entering the world of 7"s now as this is the label's debut in this format.

BITTERS, THE Have A Nap Hotel (Sacred Bones) 12" 14.98
Maybe best know as a side project of post hardcore punks Fucked Up, the Bitters are a totally different proposition. Like their last record, their 12" on Mexican Summer, this record too is a primo slice of jagged ramshackle post punk, but this one's even MORE ramshackle than the last, which is in no way a bad thing.
The Bitters specialize in a sort of angular reverby crunchy jangle pop, that owes way more to early eighties groups like Swell Maps, guitars are sharp and jagged and distorted, the drums loud and in-the-red, but for all its clang and crunch, the sound is still lush and warm, dense with texture and melody, some twisted tangled riffage, all that wrapped around echoey vocals, strident and almost yelped, the resulting sound retro, but still vibrant and original, the jams rife with sonic references, the coolest being the ones that fall somewhere between Polvo and Blonde Redhead!
Sassy and sharp, punky and poppy, perfectly balancing between the new school of off kilter garage pop, and that classic C86 punk pop sound, the vocals are especially distinctive, the perfect match for the music, driving, propulsive, frenetic and hooky as hell. The two songs on the B-side get a bit moodier and tripped out, the songs extended and sprawling, one an almost ballad, the other just a perfectly noisy dirgey chunk of killer, classic retro post punk buzz and crunch.

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / GRIEFER split (Gnarled Forest) lp 14.98
It's definitely weird to call something like this 'pretty', but what can you do? Of all the Blue Sabbath Black Cheer records we've heard, this one is definitely the prettiest. Of course it's all relative, one man's pretty, is another's harsh head caving blacknoise, and perhaps another's ear shredding doombuzz brutality, and weirdly enough, it's sort of all of those things, but in the realms of doombuzz blacknoise, this sidelong sprawl is indeed, a strange shade of tranquil, at least at first.
It's BSBC so the ingredients should no doubt be familiar by now, the sound equal parts blackened crumbling, distorted buzz, and glacial hellish downtuned crawl, but here the crunchy, crumbling surface layer hides a slow shifting sonic interior, a whirling buried shimmer, soft sheets of crackle and whir, everything constantly bombarded by huge heaving industrial booms, like mortar shells, along with strange creaks and distant crashes, like some strange Wolf Eyes / Skinny Puppy hybrid, being broadcast through rusted out Soviet era loudspeakers, as the city literally crumbles all around you. Ambient but abrasive, tranquil but harrowing, a field recording of collapsing tectonic plates, rendered in 'music'. Near the end, the sound takes on a power electronics vibe, due in no small part to the creepy, bellowed guttural processed vocals, but still the sounds behind the demented caterwauling, continue to ooze and crumble and throb and crunch and creep.
BSBC are teamed up with an outfit called Griefer, who use their side of the lp to offer up a strangely cinematic stretch of buzz and glitch, lots of super distorted synth fuzz, peppered with strange machinelike creaks and groans, wrapped around super processed alien vox, all draped over a continuously throbbing synth pulse. Hypnotic and almost soundtracky, Griefer slip from heaving speaker destroying crumble, to whirring spaced out synthscape to blurred electronic crunch, often all three colliding in a thick noise-drenched psychbuzz synthdrone blowout, not so much harsh and brutal as intense and evocative.
Pressed on sick swirled green and brown sewage colored vinyl, housed in hand screened sleeves, with two printed, two sided cardstock inserts. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!

BORIS Absolutego (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
FINALLY! The 1996 debut (as reissued in 2001 with an extra track!) from this Japanese psychedelic sludge trio, now available on vinyl for the first time EVER, and we're talking super fancy thick vinyl, with gorgeous heavy gatefold sleeves, and all new artwork, and yeah, Absolutego does indeed come complete with that bonus track! And it's Boris, so you know these are WAY too limited and will be gone in a flash, so grab one now before you're trawling eBay for a copy later...
Here's our original review of this all time aQ slow and low, heavy heavy classic from when we first listed the cd and when many folks were hearing Boris for the very first time...
Ok, here's one for all the AQ customers who we know are always hankering for the state-of-the-art in "drone-metal" (i.e. those who can't get enough of the likes of Earth, Melvins' Lysol, SUNNO))), Corrupted, Esoteric, etc.). Thanks to noted label-of-doom Southern Lord, we've got the full-length debut from this amazing Japanese band. Southern Lord's new "Super Low Frequency Version" (a nod to Earth 2) of this former import, features new artwork and a seven minute appropriately named bonus track, "Dronevil2". That makes this a 73 minute, two-track disc, as the title track itself is one of those rare, slow motion, maximum riff glacial drone songs that stretches out over (previously) the entire length of the record! Heavy duty stuff indeed. It makes sense that the name Boris comes from a Melvins song. And also that one of their other albums is a collaboration with Japan's king of dark psych guitar, Keiji Haino. Recommended, for all doom freaks.
MPEG Stream: "Dronevil2"

BORIS Amplifier Worship (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
FINALLY! The second album (originally released in 1998, then reissued in 2001) from this Japanese psychedelic sludge trio, now available on vinyl for the first time EVER, and we're talking super fancy thick vinyl, with gorgeous heavy gatefold sleeves and revamped artwork! And it's Boris, so you know these are WAY too limited and will be gone in a flash, so grab one now before you're trawling eBay for a copy later...
Here's our original review of this all time aQ slow and low, heavy heavy classic from when we first listed the cd way back when...
Another masterpiece of heaviosity by the amazing Japanese band Boris, who have become HUGE AQ-faves over the past few years. The more-than-aptly-titled Amplifier Worship was their 2nd full-length release (after their mighty one-song drone-slab Absolutego"ut before the mind-blowing, semi-acoustic Flood and the stoner-rockin' genius of Heavy Rocks); it originally came out in 1998, but sounds as amazing and punishingly heavy as ever.
A good shorthand description of Amplifier Worship"would be to say that it sounds like a cross between the low-end riffage of Boris' obvious heroes the Melvins, and the more recent, rhythmic trance experiments of their countrymen the Boredoms. Psychedelic punk metal, utterly crushing. Pretty much essential to anyone who is into "heavy"! If you like the dirgey sludge of Corrupted and Earth, as well as the more rocked-out sludge of Sleep and Melvins (circa Ozma and Bullhead), you'll love Boris! Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Huge"
MPEG Stream: "Hama "
MPEG Stream: "Vomitself"

CANDY CLAWS Hidden Lands (Two Syllable) cd 12.98
We first discovered Colorado drone bliss pop-gaze duo Candy Claws via their last record, In The Dream Of Sea Life, a gorgeous collection of sounds and songs composed and recorded to sound as if they were in fact at the bottom of the ocean, warped and woozy, dark and aquatic, but for this new record, Hidden Lands brings the sounds of CC to the surface, lets them breathe, sprawl and blossom. Apparently based on a book called The Secret Life Of The Forest, these songs are meant to evoke all manner of 'secret lands', the worlds inside living creatures, the Earth millions of years before humans, all of the things that have gone on and still go on that we don't yet understand or can't yet observe. Pretty heavy, but fear not, the music is light in comparison, a washed out psychedelic dream pop, a little orchestral, a lot Elephant 6, chiming guitars, buried angelic voices, simple percussion, lush synths and singing strings, a sort of power pop blurred into something much more ambient and ethereal, there are hints of Neutral Milk Hotel, Beach Boys, Jellyfish, but in keeping with the science angle, it's like CC took scrapings from those bands and grew Hidden Lands in a petri dish, only to then plant the resulting lifeforms in the garden outside, in the shade of big oak trees, at the foot of some snow capped mountains, and then recorded the various growths, a hazy, slowly expanding sun dappled shimmer drenched fragmented pop. In some ways, the underwater element of the last record still feels present, it's like listening to jangly indie pop, broadcast through a hydrophone, the vibrations traveling through the water, and arriving at our ears, bent and twisted and beautifully warped. A little carnivalesque, a little psychedelic, a little shoegazey, this is some sort of otherworldly impressionistic pop, there may be hooks, and verses and choruses, but they're blurred and smeared and muted and mixed, the song structures seems to have come unglued at a fundamental level, allowing this dreampop to become even dreamier. So fantastic. And totally recommended for anyone into woozy, hazy, droney, dreamy blisspop.
MPEG Stream: "In The Deep Time"
MPEG Stream: "Warm Forest Floor"
MPEG Stream: "A Strange Land Discovered"

CAR COMMERCIALS Prisoner Of Type (Soft Abuse) 7" 7.98
Within a few seconds, eagle eared aQ-ers will most likely recognize that struggling vocal warble, that earnest about to crack falsetto, which just happens to belong to Daniel DiMaggio, frontman of those aQ faves, punky ramshackle noise poppers Home Blitz. But Car Commercials is a whole different ball of wax, instead of the frantic frenetic bounce of Home Blitz, in Car Commercials, DiMaggio and his CC partner Dave Sutton, weave something much more intimate and personal, way more twisted and bizarre, some seriously damaged outsider bedroom folk, think Jandek, Daniel Johnston, that sort of thing, detuned guitars, sporadic percussive flourishes, strange atonal chords, tangled not quite melodic melodies, the vocals, sung spoken, whispered, yelped, it almost sounds like a Sebadoh record that was left in the sun, all warped and melted and lysergic and fucking bizarre. Guitar thrum drifts through clouds of reverb, the vocals sounding like they were recorded through busted headphones, guitar chords ring out and seem to crumble to pieces, this is some seriously whatthefuck home recorded weirdness.
The flipside cranks up the volume a bit, but everything else remains appropriately twisted and detuned and damaged, just more psychedelic and chaotic and noisy, the junkyard percussion more intense. The record finishes off with the two part "Bag Saga", maybe the most musical of the bunch, part one, a haunting moody, dirge, all distorted acoustic guitar, and wheezing keyboard, the second part, all spidery and abstract, building to an electrified sonic catharsis, all buzz and thump and croon, before crumbling to a halt.
Definitely not easy listening, harking back to the early days of DIY tape trading, where you could send away for something sight unheard, and get back a home dubbed tape that could very well blow your mind, or your speakers, or both. We dig this a lot, but then we like a lot of weird demented shit. So reservedly recommended, folks after pretty melodies and dreamy pop and pretty harmonies, steer clear, but if you're in the market for some serious home brewed 4-track cracked bedroom folk damage, then this might be for you...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, includes a free download...
MPEG Stream: "The Bag Saga Part I"
MPEG Stream: "Supper On The Table"

CARISSA'S WIERD They'll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996 - 2003 (Hardly Art) cd 14.98
Long overdue collection from this sort of unsung Northwest indie rock combo, whose music was often described as "chamber rock" since most of their songs are hushed and contemplative, and laced with pianos and strings, all very dramatic and heartfelt, melancholic and dreamy. They did achieve a certain amount of notoriety, sold a bunch of records, but just never seemed to be able to make the jump to the next level, even though their sound was so obviously in line with lots of bands who did. Modest Mouse is an obvious comparison, the lilting vox, the strange harmonies, the bands even toured together, but CW's sound is much more folky and stripped down, the drums often played with brushes, acoustic guitars, the vocals urgent, and plaintive, the melodies sweetly sorrowful, the male female harmonies utterly sublime. A few of the tracks do in fact get weird, but that mostly means some strange effects, or adding a bit of noisiness, but for the most part, the songs here are soft and sweet and delicate, darkly dreamy, mysterious enough to appeal to folks into the darker slower side of underground pop, groups like Low, Galaxie 500, The For Carnation, Ida, Bedhead, and even more accessible indie rock like Modest Mouse or Pinback, but catchy and pretty enough that you'll definitely find yourself wondering why these guys (and gals) weren't more popular. Although two of 'em did wind up in another group that HAS had some success, Band of Horses!
A fantastic collection, gathering up tracks from the group's three out of print full lengths, as well as a couple compilations, lovingly packaged with a HUGE foldout poster/booklet, packed with photos, liner notes and other ephemera, all housed in a swank slipcover. Essential indie pop for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Low Budget Slow Motion Soundtrack Song for the Leaving Scene"
MPEG Stream: "Die"
MPEG Stream: "The Color that your Eyes Changed with the Color of Your Hair"
MPEG Stream: "One Night Stand"

CARLTON MELTON Pass It On (Agitated) cd 14.98
Finally available on cd, with 3 bonus tracks, two of them previously unreleased - over 30 additional minutes of material!!!
The field of psychedelic hypnno-drone rock in San Francisco keeps getting wider, and more amazing. Along with Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun and The Lumerians comes the slow growth space rock of Carlton Melton. We raved about their first self-released cd-r, Live at Point Arena, CA recorded in a genuine geodesic dome (sadly out of print now, but one of the bonus tracks comes from this disc!) and we're psyched that they have returned with a follow-up! While the first cd-r had a more rough around the edges shambling momentum to it (after all, the band had pretty much formed just to record in the dome!), Pass It On has a more penetrating and focused feel. Recording in the dome once again, the songs have the slow motion but still very heavy vibrations of White Hills, Moon Duo, Hawkwind and Pink Floyd. In fact, the album begins with a heavy cover version of Pink Floyd's "When You're In" from Obscured By Clouds, which builds with intensity setting up the stoned pillowy cushion freefall of follow-up track "Found Children". "Off The Grid" takes a more divergent path through the woods with freaked out tribal rhythms and strange loping pulsations and alien guitar swells. Side two begins with a reworking of a track from the Point Arena cd-r called "Fucking Funky Shit" now renamed "Digging In" that utilizes its bass and drum rhythmic foundation as a means for the guitars and organ to arc off into the stratosphere before descending into the final track "Sequoia", which burrows deep into the earth with a smoldering drone that leaves us, for the lack of a better analogy, cosmically wasted.
The two unreleased tracks, "Drizzle" and "Star of Hazel" are both slow motion epics. "Drizzle" is softer and prettier, more free-floating and cosmic, gently lilting and soaring. While "Star of Hazel" is more doomy, and heavy, drawing out its long repetitive riffs over burning simmering drones. Sandwiched in between the two tracks is the sweaty hypnotic ramshackle of "Against The Wall" from their first cd-r, that give off a glimpse of the sonic pummel of their live shows. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "When You're In"
MPEG Stream: "Diggin In (F.F Shite)"
MPEG Stream: "Against The Wall (Dome MIx)"
MPEG Stream: "Star of Hazel"

CHURCH OF MISERY Early Works Compilation (Emetic) 3lp 59.00
Yeah, it's expensive, but wait til you get a load of this sludge doom monstrosity, a massive triple lp, in a super deluxe heavy sleeve, it weighs a ton, as it should, cuz this is one serious slab of black hole groove laden death obsessed down tuned heaviness. Available on vinyl for the first time EVER!
Will the Japanese stoner sludge serial killer onslaught never end?? We sure hope not. Especially in light of this collection of old, rare, unreleased and out of print tracks from one of the heaviest bands in Japan. Corrupted may have the market cornered on sludge, and Boris definitely has the drone-dirge segment all sewn up, but that leaves Church Of Misery to duke it out with the equally brutal Green Machine for the groovy, druggy, sludge-y stonery BIG RIFF contingent. Early Works definitely helps the cause, with two discs bursting with splattery serial killer soundbites, plague-of-locusts riffery, skull crushing drumming, and a truly hellish howl of a lead vocalist. Plus unlike many of their metallic brethren, CoM can indeed SHRED, and whip out squiggly acid soaked leads at the drop of a hat, giving the proceedings a classic psych-rock / drug-rock feel, on top of the already suffocatingly heavy sludge already oozing from every crack. This compilation collects the long out of print split with sHEAVY, featuring odes to Manson, Charles Whiteman, and Jim Jones, as well as the Taste The Pain mini-album with songs about Dahmer, Graham Young, and Ed Gein, as well as an insane version of Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vidda." Tacked on are lots of random compilation tracks including a Trouble cover, a Black Widow cover, a Death SS cover and an unreleased track. Church Of Misery are so amazing, it's too bad that their singleminded obsession with serial killers, and their continued use of serial killer soundbites keeps them from appealing to a wider audience. It is too bad, but who can argue? The music is strangely and perfectly suited to CoM's tales of murder and mayhem, victims and killers.
MPEG Stream: "Spahn Ranch (Charles Manson)"
MPEG Stream: "Room 213 (Jeffrey Dahmer)"

CLUBROOT Solar Flares (LoDubs) 12" 8.98
We've been going pretty crazy around here for the epic atmospheric dubstep of Clubroot, heaping crazy effusive praise on both full lengths, the second of which, we managed to get a very few copies of a super deluxe edition, that featured a second bonus disc, that we thought was maybe even better than the album itself. Those tracks were not included on the vinyl version, or on the single cd version, but now, that bonus cd has been pressed up as a super limited 12", so folks who bought the vinyl, can grab one of these, to make their version of II-MMX complete, and folks who bought the cd but didn't get the bonus disc, now's your chance to nab those extra 3 songs, and trust us, it's well worth it.
And for those new to the magical musical mystery of Clubroot, the sound is lush and expansive, trading 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.
These sounds are an ever evolving mutant strain of dubstep, ethereal and ephemeral, washed out and spectral, melancholy and wistful, vocals play a much bigger part on the second record, 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, Clubroot 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...
The three bonus tracks from the original double cd bonus disc, take all of the above and weave them into something even more magical, incredibly captivating and catchy, but still haunting and otherwordly, groovy and funky for sure, but that's not really what it's about, as much as painting pictures in sound, or opening a portal to another dimension, these tracks are like the soundtrack to some space station chillout after hours session, or some early morning fog cloaked empty earth stroll, or an eyes closed, mind open astral projection inner space exploration. This stuff is both epic and cosmic, intimate and personal, and still ranks as some of the most incredible electronic music being made today.
And a note for vinyl folks who bought II-MMX on wax, the sleeve for the lp version is oversized, just a bit, to leave space for this here 12"!!

COHEN, TIM Laugh Tracks (Captured Tracks) lp 16.98
We often marvel at how songwriters can keep churning out the hits, especially someone like Tim Cohen, who not only writes all the songs for the Fresh & Onlys, who have averaged close to 5 releases a year since their inception, but somehow, even after all of those records, has so many songs, that he also needs to release solo records, and that's not even counting all his various other groups and side projects. But as we've said in the past, if it ain't broke don't fix it. And yeah, it can sometimes be frustrating keeping up, especially if you're a completist, which many of us record nerds tend to be, but heck, the extra effort is most definitely worth it.
Cohen's newest solo full length continues his winning streak, with another collection of weird wonderful pop, folk flecked, with strange arrangements, lush harmonies, and incredible hooks, take the opening track, "Oh Oh Oh", with its cool drum/handclap rhythm, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, and rough crooned vocals, and then with about a minute left, the song shifts gears, and multiple vocals join in, for a gorgeous harmony refrain. Then there's "Wonderful Life", that sounds like some classic fifties jam, except for the weirdly gloomy basslines, the woozy keyboards, the reverbed guitar twang, and the super dynamic start stop breakdown. "A Mind Of Their Own" is all horns and harmonicas, "Laughter" evokes just the opposite, dark and brooding, with a distinctly Scott Walker vibe, "Send No Sign" is another old fashioned classic pop sounding number, all walking basslines, jangly guitar, but then there's some cool surprisingly prog sounding keyboards, and then more horns, super dramatic and EPIC, and that's sort of the magic of Cohen's songwriting, especially on his own, on the surface, what sounds super familiar, classic even, is quickly, often subtly subverted, and transformed into something else entirely, but something else, that impossibly STILL sounds familiar and classic, even though it's so obviously not. Another fantastic collection of fantastically twisted and (im)perfect pop from one of favorite modern songwriters...
MPEG Stream: "Oh, Oh, Oh"
MPEG Stream: "Wonderful Life"
MPEG Stream: "Send No Sign"

CONAN Horseback Battle Hammer (Aurora Borealis) cd 17.98
Obviously, if you're gonna call your band Conan, your sound had better be pretty darn burly! And barbaric. Well, this UK doom outfit is definitely worthy of the name. Their music is not by, nor for, wimps. Slow, low, and loud = HEAVY. Even Arnold might have had trouble bench pressing these riffs! The plodding, shuddering distortion on display here is kinda like ultradoom in the vein of Moss or Bunkur, but not quite so slow, speeding up as necessary when the crushing riffs are really ready to go in for the kill. The production is amazing, as are the downtuned sounds these dudes get out of their guitars and amps, sooooooo bludgeoningly blown out. Conan's a guitar/bass/drums trio but sounds more like bass/bass/bass/bass/bass/bass/bass... oh yeah and drums which hold up their end of the heaviness equation just fine. Meanwhile, the vocals, when there are any, are a distant bellow, a high wailing, soaring over and staying out of the way of the massively occupied bass frequencies. They make us think of Yob for sure, but quite not so Geddy Lee, a bit more shout-y, so Harvey Milk would be another good comparison. For a lot of this, actually, not just the vocals. And the Melvins too, say one of their epic sludgeathons like "Charmicarmicat" or "Night Goat". And as long as we're namechecking other bands, how 'bout godheadSilo? Corrupted? Early Sleep (circa Volume One)? Yeah Conan is worthy of being cited amongst such legends. Again, they'd better be, with a name like Conan.
Originally released on limited vinyl last year by Throne over in Spain, sadly, we didn't get any of those. But now thanks to Aurora Borealis, we have it on compact disc, in a nice silver and black digipack. 4 songs, 33 minutes, infinite heaviness.
MPEG Stream: "Krull [excerpt 1]"
MPEG Stream: "Krull [excerpt 2]"
MPEG Stream: "Satsumo"

DEATHBEDS No Funeral (Young Lungs LTD) 7" 4.50
Some seriously heavy, seriously groovy metallic sludge from these Philly bangers, three tracks of crushing downtuned heaviness, and while the sludge factor is pretty high, so is the groove factor, which keeps Deathbeds from slipping into torpid trudgery, and instead let the bands swing. Somewhere we saw these guys described as Iron Monkey meets Entombed meets Helmet, which now that we think about it is a pretty decent description, but you might also want to mention Eyehategod, maybe Crowbar or Down, there's a definite NOLA vibe, a slithery Sabbathy pound. The drums are way up in the mix, like getting pelted with cannonballs, the guitars thick and crunchy and massive, then there's the vocals, a monstrous deep bellow, reminiscent of Coalesce, that impossibly intense rrrooooaar, which is a weird match for Deathbeds' stonery groove, but fuck it, it definitely works, or doesn't work, but in not working, makes it work even more. Or at least makes it its own thing. And the vocals do shift gears here and there, slipping into something more shrieky, but always back to that monstrous howl. And yeah, the songs are pretty dang catchy too. Churning and chugging and pounding, we've actually gotten a little obsessed with these three jams, listening to this 7" over and over, and it definitely has us dying for a full length.
Cool creepy full color sleeve, pressed on green vinyl, comes with a download coupon too, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "No Funeral"

DEMDIKE STARE Liberation Through Hearing (Modern Love) 12" 22.00
Part two, in Demdike Stare's planned trilogy of 12"s, a comprehensive hauntological study in sound. For those new to Demdike Stare, we tend to fall back on this succinct description: black metal dubstep, or sometimes this one: a blackened dub record on Chain Reaction. Either one should give you an idea of the sort of dark sonic energy these guys conjure up. Thick claustrophobic atmospheres, skeletal rhythms, thick throbbing bass, skittering dubbed out beats, disembodied voices, all woven into a swirling organic mass of dub flecked blacktronica, the sound seeming to grow ever darker, as evidenced here on part two, which is thematically related to the Book Of The Dead, and focuses on the space between death and rebirth. Rendered in greys and blacks, in buzz and rumble, beginning with some woozy late night Portishead style downtempo trip hop, low slung looped skitter and swell, lush swirls of cinematic strings, ghostly choirs, a softly lurching rhythmic stutter, a deep cavernous throb, sounding like a ghostly stripped down dubstep. Which gives way to heaving expanses of black tidal thrum, muted scrapings, all wound into hypnotic pulses of dark energy, laced with distant chiming melodies, a haunting, gauzey faded memory in sound, drawn from radios with dying batteries and gradually slowing turntables, a soft focus symphony of creaks and rumbles and blurred low end shimmer. The A-side finishes with a swoonsome smear of looped ambience, like a field recording of an after hours nightclub captured in a temporal loop, warm an druggy and fuzzy, strangely hypnotic and rhythmic, totally trancelike, a creeped out wasteland soundscape, mysterious and chilling, which is eventually augmented by thick slabs of corrosive low end, and heavily reverbed industrial clatter, which eventually emerges into a strange sea of crackle and hum, of warbly rhythms, chiming bells and distorted crunch, sounding a bit like Jeck spinning Pole record, abstract and spaced out and hauntingly lovely.
The B-side opens with thick streaks of ghostly mesmer, all washed out and slowly decaying, underpinned by thick swaths of dubstep style bass wobble, but muted and smoothed into soft smears of undulating blackness. Subtle skitter surfaces, as do distant voices, the sound getting more and more dubby, a bit like a Caretaker record on Chain Reaction, that sort of hazy abstract drift, but anchored to barely there beats, the buzz building to an intense coda, all the while wrapped in throbbing woofer punishing low end.
Some super stripped down rhythms are laid over a swirling ghostly backdrop of fragmented melodies and a buried house music thump, tangled and blurred strings wrap the proceedings in a veil of softened reverb and subtle echo, the almost Eastern sounding pulse and swell reminding us a bit of the late great Muslimgauze.
Finally, the record collapses into some sort of melancholic sonic reverie, a hushed ambient outro, a tranquil sea of soft swirling swells, clouds of echo and reverb, a dreamy darkness, a blackened pop ambience, laced with muted streaks of fuzz and hiss, but all gradually sinking into Demdike Stare's endless trancelike billowing blackness.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!

DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES Archive 2003-2006 (American Dust) cd 14.98
***Grizzly Bear Alert!!!***
Department Of Eagles has been going at it even before Daniel Rossen's voice would become so recognizable via his work in Grizzly Bear. In fact he started Department of Eagles before he even joined Grizzly Bear, and when you listen to DOE records you really do see the special ingredients that he brought to GB and which really helped bring that band to the next level on their last two records, Yellow House and Veckatimest. There is something so woozy, warm and haunting about his vocal delivery and songwriting. This is a collection of unreleased songs & sketches from 2003-2006 and shows both the very moody as well as catchy and poppy sides to Department Of Eagles. Stripped down to their core, these are songs that you could imagine augmented by a full orchestra, but what makes them cool is that they stand so strong on their own, with Rossen handling guitars, bass, banjo, drums, piano and cello all on his own, while his partner in crime Fred Nicolaus adds additional guitar and takes care of the drums. It might be a little while until there's a new Grizzly Bear album, but this collection will tide us over in the meantime. A must have for Grizzly Bear fans!
NOTE: The lp also comes with a cd version of the record.
MPEG Stream: "While We're Young"
MPEG Stream: "Brightest Minds"
MPEG Stream: "Practice Room Sketch 3"

DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES Archive 2003-2006 (American Dust) lp + cd 15.98
***Grizzly Bear Alert!!!***
Department Of Eagles has been going at it even before Daniel Rossen's voice would become so recognizable via his work in Grizzly Bear. In fact he started Department of Eagles before he even joined Grizzly Bear, and when you listen to DOE records you really do see the special ingredients that he brought to GB and which really helped bring that band to the next level on their last two records, Yellow House and Veckatimest. There is something so woozy, warm and haunting about his vocal delivery and songwriting. This is a collection of unreleased songs & sketches from 2003-2006 and shows both the very moody as well as catchy and poppy sides to Department Of Eagles. Stripped down to their core, these are songs that you could imagine augmented by a full orchestra, but what makes them cool is that they stand so strong on their own, with Rossen handling guitars, bass, banjo, drums, piano and cello all on his own, while his partner in crime Fred Nicolaus adds additional guitar and takes care of the drums. It might be a little while until there's a new Grizzly Bear album, but this collection will tide us over in the meantime. A must have for Grizzly Bear fans!
NOTE: The lp also comes with a cd version of the record.
MPEG Stream: "While We're Young"
MPEG Stream: "Brightest Minds"
MPEG Stream: "Practice Room Sketch 3"

DIE ANTWOORD 5 (Interscope) cd ep 4.98
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year, or don't have ANY access to the internet at all, you no doubt know all about these guys, South African rappers, whose video for their jam "Enter The Ninja" seems like maybe the most watched video on YouTube, and hell, it makes sense, besides being a goofy jam, with some ridiculous rapping, the video itself is incredible, besides frontman Ninja's wild gesticulating delivery and weird homemade tattoos, there's the strange figure who pops up throughout, a weird looking dude suffering from progeria (the premature aging disease), the set decorated with strange Keith Haring style drawings, and best of all the utterly crushworthy Yo-Landi, who sings the refrain, a little elfen pixie with super angular haircut, who over the course of the video, lays on the bed in a school girl uniform, eventually stripping down to a flash dance T-shirt and some dollar sign panties, the whole time doing ninja sword moves. Even more notably, Yo-Landi was offered the leading role in the American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which she sadly turned down). Besides all that, the jams are often, goofy, funky, over the top, catchy as hell, it seemed too good to be true, and it sort of was. It was eventually revealed that Die Antwoord was a high concept musical art project, Ninja and Yo-Landi having both been members of an art collective, and active performers in the South African hip hop scene for years, and doing TV comedy, but fuck it, that almost makes it even cooler, that all those tattoos are fake, that the whole South African redneck angle is a put on, but it's no more of a put on than some satanic devil worshipping black metal band, it's all theater, and Ninja and crew are masters.
This little 5 song teaser is pretty great, but as with most bands who rely heavily on image, without the videos, it's a whole 'nother situation. And for most of us, who have spent the last year obsessively watching Die Antwoord videos, and worshipping Yo-Landi from afar, it's just not the same without the visuals, that said, this is some pretty serious synth driven hip hop techno synth groove, "Enter The Ninja" is the most commercial of the bunch, which makes it the least interesting, definitely a Die Antwoord gateway jam, but then "Wat Kyk Jy?" makes it all better, thick synths, pounding rave beats, goofy raps, strange voices, intense thick bass lines, then there's the autotuned "I Don't Need You", a sort of Kanye style hip hop ballad, but "Fish Paste" is THEE jam here, formerly titled Jou Ma Se Poes In A Fish Paste Jar", which translated is "Your Mom's Pussy...", yep, ridiculous, but the track itself is a stripped down Miami Bass style strutter with some bad ass rapping from both Ninja and Yo-Landi, and some more thick synths, deeeeep bass, and some totally over the top lyrics. The record finishes off with a remix of "Enter The Ninja", which is pretty cool, but we still find ourselves listening to "Fish Paste", watching the videos, and waiting patiently for the full length.
For those who did somehow miss out, peep this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_pS46YRMIQ (keep an eye on those Dark Side Of The Moon boxers!) and of course this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc3f4xU_FfQ
Real or not, Die Antwoord might just be our new favorite band. And yours...
MPEG Stream: "Enter The Ninja"
MPEG Stream: "Fish Paste"

ENDLESS BOOGIE Full House Head (No Quarter) cd 14.98
Here's the second album for No Quarter from Brooklyn's Endless Boogie, and boy howdy do they live up to their name, there's a couple songs here upwards of eight minutes long, also tracks that clock in at 9:36, 10:49, and even 22:36! That one, entitled "A Life Worth Leaving", is the album's finale, recorded live on cassette for maximum sweat and grit and grunt. Though the whole album isn't much different. With extreme repetitive blues rock grooves, Beefheartian holler, and loads of wild electric geetar wail, it's hypnotic shitkickin' psychedelia like Wooden Shjips and ZZ Top and Circle and the Rolling Stones all jammin' together for ever and ever.
If you liked EB's previous album Focus Level, you'll like Full House Head too. And like we said about that record, the one thing that sometimes doesn't work for us is the vocals, they're a bit too "authentic" to really be authentic, if you know what we mean. But we could be wrong, maybe the singer (whom we assume is also playing guitar or something) really is a grizzled old white blues hippie dude with a long beard, wearing a floppy leather hat, and spitting tobacco juice out the side of his mouth when not pouring the whiskey in. 'Cause that's what he sounds like, or sounds like he's trying to sound like. But anyway he certainly shuts up and plays his guitar plenty so we're not really complaining. And actually, when he is on the mic, we like him at his most gruff, psychotic and strangled, like the ranting of "Top Dollar Speaks His Mind", not so much the more intelligible singing/speaking of "Slow Creep", which is one of the album's mellower moments, if you can call a nearly 11 minute long track a moment.
But mellow this mostly isn't. Mesmeric, though, yes. At their best, Endless Boogie's psychedelic choogle gets positively savage, and we start thinking, it's like Blue Cheer's Randy Holden crankin' it out backed by the Plastic Ono Band rhythm section, or something equally fantastical. Not sure if it really sounds like that, but that we'd even think it for a second is a good thing. So, yeah, while we once had our doubts about this band, again we've been convinced. The real deal, or what passes for in this day and age. Go unto it and get into it, brothers and sisters! Unless the name Endless Boogie totally turns you off. In which case, 'tis truth in advertising, thus this ain't for you.
MPEG Stream: "Empty Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Mighty Fine Pie"
MPEG Stream: "Pack Your Bags"

ENDLESS BOOGIE Full House Head (No Quarter) 2lp 23.00
Here's the second album for No Quarter from Brooklyn's Endless Boogie, and boy howdy do they live up to their name, there's a couple songs here upwards of eight minutes long, also tracks that clock in at 9:36, 10:49, and even 22:36! That one, entitled "A Life Worth Leaving", is the album's finale, recorded live on cassette for maximum sweat and grit and grunt. Though the whole album isn't much different. With extreme repetitive blues rock grooves, Beefheartian holler, and loads of wild electric geetar wail, it's hypnotic shitkickin' psychedelia like Wooden Shjips and ZZ Top and Circle and the Rolling Stones all jammin' together for ever and ever.
If you liked EB's previous album Focus Level, you'll like Full House Head too. And like we said about that record, the one thing that sometimes doesn't work for us is the vocals, they're a bit too "authentic" to really be authentic, if you know what we mean. But we could be wrong, maybe the singer (whom we assume is also playing guitar or something) really is a grizzled old white blues hippie dude with a long beard, wearing a floppy leather hat, and spitting tobacco juice out the side of his mouth when not pouring the whiskey in. 'Cause that's what he sounds like, or sounds like he's trying to sound like. But anyway he certainly shuts up and plays his guitar plenty so we're not really complaining. And actually, when he is on the mic, we like him at his most gruff, psychotic and strangled, like the ranting of "Top Dollar Speaks His Mind", not so much the more intelligible singing/speaking of "Slow Creep", which is one of the album's mellower moments, if you can call a nearly 11 minute long track a moment.
But mellow this mostly isn't. Mesmeric, though, yes. At their best, Endless Boogie's psychedelic choogle gets positively savage, and we start thinking, it's like Blue Cheer's Randy Holden crankin' it out backed by the Plastic Ono Band rhythm section, or something equally fantastical. Not sure if it really sounds like that, but that we'd even think it for a second is a good thing. So, yeah, while we once had our doubts about this band, again we've been convinced. The real deal, or what passes for in this day and age. Go unto it and get into it, brothers and sisters! Unless the name Endless Boogie totally turns you off. In which case, 'tis truth in advertising, thus this ain't for you.
MPEG Stream: "Empty Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Mighty Fine Pie"
MPEG Stream: "Pack Your Bags"

FRESH & ONLYS, THE Impending Doom (Agitated) 7" 9.98
What more can we say about these SF garage poppers that we haven't already? This here's another double shot of pretty much perfect pop music, less and less garage rock sounding with every release, conjuring up that perfect mix of a little bit 'now', fuzzy, reverby, crunchy, and a little bit 'then', lush harmonies, timeless hooks, wall of sound production, female back up vox... not to mention plenty of jangle and strum, ooohs and aaahs, and songs that stick in your head like crazy.
The A-side is all propulsive drumming, fuzzy organs, chiming guitars, some low slung Joy Divisiony basslines, and an almost new wave croon, dreamy falsetto back up vox, and of course everything wreathed in echo and soft focus effects, transforming classic sounding jangle pop into something slightly more swirly and psychedelic. The B-side is much more swaggery and groovy and surfy, with one of those riffs you know you've heard somewhere before, total old school classic Beatles-esque pop, weary heartfelt vocals, some tinkling xylophone style melodies, and the back up vox steal the show, wrapping the track in an irresistible almost ethereal sounding sixties girl group haze. So good. Any other band this prolific, close to 10 releases in less than 2 years, might be hitting some sort of saturation point, but with these guys, we still can't ever seem to get enough.

GANGRENATOR Tales From A Thousand Graves (Apocalyptic Empire) cd 8.98
You kinda know what you're getting into with a band name like Gangrenator, and a title like Tales From A Thousand Graves, not to mention the eye popping cover art, some sort of demonic battle between a feather headed monster (that looks a bit like Iron Maiden's Eddie), and a huge muscled and horned behemoth, surrounded by rainbow colored skulls, blue faced yetis, and sword wielding Viking skull demons, okay, maybe you don't know -exactly- what you're getting into, but it's a safe bet, it's gonna be heavy and brutal. Which Gangrenator's debut indeed is, a blasting thrashing grinding onslaught of howled, glass gargling vokills, that sound a bit like a way meaner and blackened Lemmy; churning downtuned riffage; and some seriously chaotic skull caving programmed drum damage. A swirling frantic avalanche of grinding death metal / metallic grind, depending on the track, some jams are furious metal blow outs, complete with wild howling guitar leads; others are gnarled blasts of tangled grind freakout, super complex arrangements and some serious metal chops all wound into a crusty blackened crush.
Make sense really as these just aren't any grinders, these guys have a serious metal pedigree: Dodheimsgard, Decrepit Spectre and Code among others, big time aQ faves, but here, ditching their avant metal leanings and getting filthy, indulging in some serious downtuned caveman pound and pummel, and we're digging it big time.
MPEG Stream: "Taste The Skull"
MPEG Stream: "Irradiated Renegades"
MPEG Stream: "Dr. Mangler"

GLITTERBUG Privilege (c.sides) 2cd 19.98
After a bit of a dry spell, in terms of electronic records that had us freaking out, it's been pretty much nonstop freakouts for the last little while. Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise record, the reissue of his This Bliss and Diamond Daze albums, all three records minimal and skittery, bleary and chilled out, moody and synthy and drone-y, occasionally pulsing and throbbing, a little groovy, a little pop ambient, a little techno, all wound into an ever evolving world of mysterious and magical electronic sound. Then came Actress, the new record Splazsh, not to mention his earlier Hazyville, again, both dancing on the edges of electronica, pushing the boundaries, skittery minimalism, weird playful collages, looped and hypnotic, chopped and recontextualized vocals, glitch and squelch and ambient shimmer, as well as twisted beats. And that's not even mentioning other electronica faves like T++, Vex'd, Klimek, Thomas Fehlman, Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never, but the reason we mention Actress and Pantha Du Prince, is that the music of Glitterbug seems to exist in a similar sonic continuum, melding washed out dreamlike ambient shimmer, with stripped down minimal post techno, pulsing kosmische krautrock with more earthbound stutter and skitter, and while this is in fact record number two from Glitterbug, aka Till Rohmann, a German DJ / producer / artist, we're already pretty smitten, as we imagine you might be too, especially if like us, you've been listening to the above records as much as we have.
A sprawling double disc, recorded in the studio and on tour, with field recordings from various tour stops incorporated into some of the tracks, sometimes as just another unrecognizable sample, adding rhythm and texture, but other times it's more obvious, the sounds of life and the world, only further adding energy and emotion to an already organic electronic sound. The record begins with a warm softly pulsing expanse of glimmering synths, a subtle melody, looped and hypnotic, laced with shimmering melodic counterpoint, all hazy and sun dappled and dreamlike, peppered with bits of piano, the perfect blend of abstract kosmische krautdrone and pop ambience. The second track introduces some drums, which sound real, and a bit jazzy, before a more obviously electronic beat joins in, then some thick warbly buzz, some deep low end rumble, some chiming melodies, and we're off, propulsive and mesmerizing, washed out and softly psychedelic, but super chilled out and warm and luxurious and lush. The next track slips right back into more cosmic synth space bliss, reverbed tones ring out, overlapping, layered, underpinned by awesome intense slabs of low end, more felt than heard, the result is almost like a more stripped down, more electronic Expo 70, spacey and abstract, but with some subtle momentum, less driving and more drifting, but so dreamy and divine, another track that could have filled up the whole rest of the record and we would have been perfectly happy, and there are plenty of tracks like that on these two discs.
And so it goes, for the next two hours, Glitterbug's sound slipping seamlessly from pulsing minimal skitter, to murky muted throb, to ethereal glimmering drift, to hushed crystalline shimmer, to abstract drone flecked house music, to dark, almost dirge-y Carpenter style synthscapes, more often than not, those various sounds bleeding into one another, overlapping, intertwining, the sounds lush and lustrous, rich and organic, the rhythms spare and skeletal, sometimes delicate, other times dense and dark, but always fantastic and futuristic, blissed out and beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Lionheart"
MPEG Stream: "Swirl"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Rifts"
MPEG Stream: "Wide & Near"

GOD s/t (Afterburn) 2cd 21.00
Not to be confused with '90s Pathological Records heavies God, THIS God were from Australia, and in the eighties, these teenagers kicked up a serious ruckus, a ramshackle rambunctious grinding guitar heavy punk rock equal parts Stooges, KISS, the Replacements, the Ramones, the riffs crunchy and fuzzy, the drums wild and loose, the vocals a buried bark here, a deep Nick Cave-ish croon there, the songs KILLER, heavy and hooky and melodic, the vibe snarly and snarky and pissed off, just listen to "Gunk" and you'll be sold, a seriously hard and heavy blast of punky pop, churning riffs giving way to some sweet melodies and some bad ass guitar leads, and that's just the first track, from there on out, it's non stop rock. Big riffs, big hooks, fuzzy and distorted, trashy and ramshackle, occasionally dipping into something a bit more restrained, more melodic, but it's never long until the next burst of adrenalized crunch and pound. This is definitely some primal rock energy, essential listening for all worshippers of THE RIFF.
Super nice packaging, their complete recordings on two discs, all remastered, including singles, and rare covers (KISS and the Stooges!), as well as a recording of their final gig in 1989, also includes a big ol' booklet of liner notes and photos.
MPEG Stream: "Gunk"
MPEG Stream: "Headin' For The Id"
MPEG Stream: "Golly Wolly Golly Wolly Hoo Ha"
MPEG Stream: "Sook"
MPEG Stream: "Snake Charmer"

GYPSYHAWK Patience and Perseverance (Creator-Destructor Records) cd 10.98
All right, another "hawk" band. Lately there's been Freedom Hawk, and Doomhawk. Being somewhat "stoner rock", this is one that should also appeal to the same folks who liked Freedom Hawk. And going way back, maybe even Hawkwind. Though the classic '70s rock band that these guys most remind us of is Thin Lizzy. A LOT. They're overtly, utterly under the spell of Thin Lizzy (a band that's more influential now than ever it seems). The melodic but husky vocals are like a gruffer Phil Lynott, the twin guitars twine together harmoniously in classic Lizzy fashion. And heck, in case we didn't get it, they even do a song entitled "For Those Who Love The Lizz" that not only sounds like Lizzy, but has lyrics that cleverly consist of references to that band's songs, like "the hero and the madman", "renegade boys back in town", "that blue orphanage in the shade", etc., as a tribute to their Irish inspiration! Although, overall, Gypsyhawk are more than a tribute, bringing in elements of garage, doom, punk, prog, and good ol' metal along with the specific Lizzy/Lynott influence.
Turns out, Gypsyhawk vocalist/bassist Eric Harris used to be in blackened thrashers Skeletonwitch, another killer band we like quite a bit. What we heard was that he got kicked out of Skeletonwitch, or otherwise quit the band, while they were on tour. This happened in Los Angeles, and instead of catching a Greyhound bus back home to Ohio where Skeletonwitch are from, though, Harris decided to stay in LA and start his own band there! Which, we gotta say, is a pretty darn rock n' roll thing to do. Thus, Gypsyhawk was born. And they're quite a bit different from Skeletonwitch (whose dual guitars dated from a different era) but equally awesome. For those into more melodic stuff, anachronistically proto-metal, especially so. These guys have the riffs, the leads, the melodic hooks, and the heaviness, to be right up there in the "hawk" band pantheon. Rockin' and majestic stuff that should go down well with fans of Lizzy-lovin' bands like Bible Of The Devil, Hot Fog, Falcon, and Valkyrie.
A fine debut, and it's adorned with fantastic purpley-blue and gold artwork (that looks a bit Erol Otus-y), nicely packaged in a digi (the cd) or gatefold sleeve (the lp). And the vinyl version is limited, there's 200 on purple wax, 200 on half-and-half purple/multicolored splatter, and 100 clear with color splatter, we've got an assortment of the first two.
Hopefully we made it clear, we're stoked on this!
MPEG Stream: "Gypsyhawk"
MPEG Stream: "For Those Who Love The Lizz"
MPEG Stream: "Rebellion On The Western Shore"

GYPSYHAWK Patience and Perseverance (Creator-Destructor Records) lp 14.98
All right, another "hawk" band. Lately there's been Freedom Hawk, and Doomhawk. Being somewhat "stoner rock", this is one that should also appeal to the same folks who liked Freedom Hawk. And going way back, maybe even Hawkwind. Though the classic '70s rock band that these guys most remind us of is Thin Lizzy. A LOT. They're overtly, utterly under the spell of Thin Lizzy (a band that's more influential now than ever it seems). The melodic but husky vocals are like a gruffer Phil Lynott, the twin guitars twine together harmoniously in classic Lizzy fashion. And heck, in case we didn't get it, they even do a song entitled "For Those Who Love The Lizz" that not only sounds like Lizzy, but has lyrics that cleverly consist of references to that band's songs, like "the hero and the madman", "renegade boys back in town", "that blue orphanage in the shade", etc., as a tribute to their Irish inspiration! Although, overall, Gypsyhawk are more than a tribute, bringing in elements of garage, doom, punk, prog, and good ol' metal along with the specific Lizzy/Lynott influence.
Turns out, Gypsyhawk vocalist/bassist Eric Harris used to be in blackened thrashers Skeletonwitch, another killer band we like quite a bit. What we heard was that he got kicked out of Skeletonwitch, or otherwise quit the band, while they were on tour. This happened in Los Angeles, and instead of catching a Greyhound bus back home to Ohio where Skeletonwitch are from, though, Harris decided to stay in LA and start his own band there! Which, we gotta say, is a pretty darn rock n' roll thing to do. Thus, Gypsyhawk was born. And they're quite a bit different from Skeletonwitch (whose dual guitars dated from a different era) but equally awesome. For those into more melodic stuff, anachronistically proto-metal, especially so. These guys have the riffs, the leads, the melodic hooks, and the heaviness, to be right up there in the "hawk" band pantheon. Rockin' and majestic stuff that should go down well with fans of Lizzy-lovin' bands like Bible Of The Devil, Hot Fog, Falcon, and Valkyrie.
A fine debut, and it's adorned with fantastic purpley-blue and gold artwork (that looks a bit Erol Otus-y), nicely packaged in a digi (the cd) or gatefold sleeve (the lp). And the vinyl version is limited, there's 200 on purple wax, 200 on half-and-half purple/multicolored splatter, and 100 clear with color splatter, we've got an assortment of the first two.
Hopefully we made it clear, we're stoked on this!
MPEG Stream: "Gypsyhawk"
MPEG Stream: "For Those Who Love The Lizz"
MPEG Stream: "Rebellion On The Western Shore"

HAZARD, GRANT Genus Euphony (QPM) cd 14.98
Some of you may know Grant Hazard from Oakland-based band The Very Hush Hush, whom we have carried records from in the past. For his first solo effort, Hazard gives us an instrumental cd of icy cool but beautifully melodic ambience. Comprised mostly of minimalist solo piano inflected with spacious textures and droning loops, Hazard's classically-trained musicianship serves him well in recalling the dulcet tones of impressionist composers such as Debussy and Satie, the modern day minimalism of Brin Eno and William Basinski, and touches of the dark-natured cinematic temperaments of Bohren & der Club of Gore. Limited to 500 copies. An excellent debut!
MPEG Stream: "Marionette"
MPEG Stream: "Trepanning"
MPEG Stream: "Shards"

HIGH CONFESSIONS, THE Turning Lead Into Gold With The High Confessions (Relapse) cd 14.98
Some 'supergroups' seem more likely than others, often made up of guys who already played together, or who had shared histories, maybe toured together, but then there's this one, called The High Confessions, which barring some secret connections (which probably do exist), seems pretty dang mysterious and unlikely, but then the unlikely ones are always the best ones.
One part Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, one part Chris Connelly of Ministry and Revolting Cocks, one part Sanford Parker (Minsk, Nachtmystium and Twilight) and one final part, Jeremy Lemos of White/Light, who has also recorded Smog and Stereolab among others. Wow. A pretty motley crew for sure, but it definitely works. And like all good collaborations, it never obviously points to a single member. There's definitely an industrial vibe, especially on the opener "Mistaken For Cops", with its Teutonic pound, and sung/spoken vox, but then there's spidery swirls of psychedelic guitar, thick washed out production, deep low end pulses, there's even a little bit of a proggy vibe as well. The 17 minute "Along Came The Dogs" begins with a rumbling stretch of black drones, and martial drums, sampled voices and collaged vocals, thick warbly low end synth buzz, a skeletal motorik pulse, which gradually transforms into a sort of industrial / krautrock hybrid, all swooping muddied electronics, a little bit Can or Faust, more sung/spoken vocals, this time tangled and overlapping, a strange sort of round almost, the jam wreathed in swirling clouds of buzz, and peppered with thick stabs of reverbed bass synth crunch, growing more and more stripped down and skeletal before finally grinding to a halt. Only to have "The Listener" creep in, a brooding moody drift, all minimal percussive pulse, driven by lush piano chords, and woozy dramatic vocals, shot through with bits of feedback, the vibe still pretty krauty, and proggy, spaced out and psychedelic.
"Dead Tenements" begins with a thick corrosive churn of synthdrone, which is soon joined by some smoldering guitar growl, some muted feedback, and an I-am-Iron-Man kick drum throb, before the vocals come in, a snarled croon, a gorgeously bleak sonic death march, that about halfway through explodes into something much more fierce, dense tribal drumming, the various strands of drones growing more incendiary, the vocals more intense, before dropping out completely and leaving the drums to drive an awesomely hypnotic heavy krautdrone coda, trancelike and divine. Finally, "Chlorine And Crystal" finishes things off, another brooding dirge, the bassline thick and distorted, wreathed in fuzz, the guitars crystalline and lysergic, a pop song slowed way down and transformed into a sort of depressive Wipers style ballad, albeit with a bit more crunch, a lumbering chunk of hypnorock dirgery, that seems to crumble as the track progresses, eventually leaving a strangely distorted rhythm, pounding it's way through a cloud of glistening harmonics, held aloft by some low slung bass fuzz, and a slowly fading industrial kraut groove.
MPEG Stream: "Mistaken For Cops"
MPEG Stream: "Along Came The Dogs"

JEFFERSON, BLIND LEMON See That My Grave's Kept Clean (Monk) lp 22.00
Monk Records returns with a second collection from legendary Texas blues master Blind Lemon Jefferson. The bulk of these songs were recorded in Chicago in 1927, showcasing Jefferson at the height of his powers, before boozing and the reckless lifestyle practiced by many bluesmen caught up with him at the end of the decade.... unless he died in a snowstorm, as has commonly been reported. Either way, Jefferson was the first superstar of the blues, and while he laid the groundwork for many other artists, he is truly one of a kind, an unbelievably powerful guitarist with a voice to match. Despite his star status, most of Jefferson's story remains a mystery, but when you listen to his music, you know this could be no one other than the man on the cover (the one known picture of him). His voice is a ghostly, high register wail rendered even more distant by Paramount Records' notoriously lousy sound quality. Still, none of Jefferson's power is diminished, and you will be blown away by his playing and his unconventional song structures, which often switch rhythms mid song for totally unexpected results. Two of the songs here, "He Arose From The Dead" and "See That My Grave's Kept Clean", were released under Jefferson's gospel oriented alter ego "Deacon L.J. Bates", presumably to put off record buyers who might take issue with prime Jefferson cuts like "Black Snake Moan" and "Easy Rider Blues". Lighter numbers, such as "Teddy Bear Blues" and "Hot Dogs", with its tap dancing rhythm accompaniment, help to showcase the wide range of material Jefferson knew so well, and this is essential stuff for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the blues. It doesn't get better than this.

KONER, THOMAS Permafrost (Type) lp 19.98
In Permafrost, we have the third and final chapter of this series of reissues from Type, documenting the long out-of-print isolationist composition from Thomas Koner. As with the previous recordings - Nunatak and Teimo - the German sound artist has masterfully captured the frigid atmospheres of the most northern ecosystems, and the title Permafrost leaves little to the imagination as to where this one will be travelling. Cold. Barren. Black. Sublime. The sounds are thoroughly abstracted into shifting blocks of grey noises slipping above seismic rumblings of infinitely bellowing low-end frequencies. By doing so, Koner eschews the use of the gong scrapes and metallic glistenings which graced those early records, adopting the bleak ethos which he continued to master on such albums as Kaamos and Daikan (the latter of which is probably the pinnacle of his career).
All of Koner's work is required listening for anyone who has been interested in drone-based recordings from any time period (e.g. Eno, Lustmord, Chalk, Hafler Trio, Roland Kayn, Alan Splet, Bernhard Gunter, BJ Nilsen, Kevin Drumm, etc.). His subtle use of movement and half-melodic phrasing in his arctic-driven ambience has warranted him quite a reputation, and fortunately none of his reissues fail to sound timeless, breathtaking, and bone-chillingly beautiful. Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Permafrost 1"
MPEG Stream: "Permafrost 3"
MPEG Stream: "Permafrost 4"

LETHE Catastrophe Point 7 & 8 (Invisible Birds) 2cd 63.00
It's hard not to jump right into discussing the packaging that Invisible Birds has crafted for this opus by the peripatetic Japanese experimentalist Lethe (aka Kuwayama Kiyoharu), but that will have to wait for later on in the review as it's the incredible, occluded sounds that Lethe generates that are of true import here.
For many years now, Kuwayama had been recording the resonance of various abandoned spaces, first around his native Japan and more recently from sites far far away. He seeks out an old warehouse, airplane hanger, the hull of a ship, or any massive slab of architecture shaped by concrete and/or steel which happens to have an open door (or broken window) and a choice amount of natural reverb and resonance. There he collects whatever he can find within the space to use as source material to resonate those industrial spaces: slabs of metal, empty water tanks, sodden wood, broken glass, small bones, and the flotsam that had collected on the floors after years of neglect. Out of these found objects, Kuwayama has an uncanny knack for producing natural, acoustic drones which hold a haunted aesthetic amplified through the cavernous reverb of those crumbled cathedrals to industry. Given the seemingly surreptitious nature of Kuwayama's wanderings, these recordings are swaddled in the darkness of night with only candles or a bonfire somewhere in the far corner of the building as his illumination. It has to be said that Kuwayama does overlay and edit all of his recordings into composition, following liked minded artists such as Tarab, Eric La Casa, or John Grzinich.
Catastrophe Point 7 begins with this process at a site deliciously referred to as Arsenic in Lausanne, Switzerland. Well, it turns out that Arsenic is a contemporary theater space in current use, and despite his non-feral residence, Kuwayama offers an incredible assortment of acoustic drones, noises, and textures. Bellowing tones emanate from a variety of long plumbing pipes, replicating the circular breathing strategies of Yoshi Wada; and around these leaden flutterings, he scrapes uneasy textures and builds clattering crescendos. The point about Arsenic not being a totally disused space comes to the forefront about halfway through Catastrophe Point 7 as he rolls a piano into the empty theater space and sets forth a melancholy series of clustered piano tones, much like his one time collaborator Jonathan Coleclough produced on his signature album Period.
Catastrophe Point 8 was recorded in an abandoned space. This time, it's a former power station in Scotland. A mournful acoustic drone, perhaps from a similar set of plumbing pipes heard in the Swiss recordings opens this disc, with small crumblings of wood, glass, and concrete positioned close to the microphone. Set in spatialized contrast to these closely miced sounds, Kuwayama captures various clanks, thumps, and other bumps in the night all decaying in the prolonged reverb of that power station. It's a much more Spartan affair than the first disc, but just as effective in its haunted sensibility. Highly recommended listening!
And yes, the packaging. The discs themselves are housed in a beautifully printed letterpress folio, with a lengthy booklet written by fellow industrial shadow-master Giancarlo Toniutti. For this small art-edition, Invisible Birds has housed the two discs in an archival, embossed box with another booklet of photographs from Kuwayama and a snippet of 8mm film. The art edition is beautifully done and well worth the expense. Needless to say, they made just 100 of the art edition!
MPEG Stream: "Catastrophe Point 7.2"
MPEG Stream: "Catastrophe Point 8.1"
MPEG Stream: "Catastrophe Point 8.3"

LOWER DENS Twin-Hand Movement (Gnomonsong) cd 13.98
We've been fans of Jana Hunter's from her first split with Devendra Banhart a few years back. Here with her new band project, Lower Dens, Hunter shakes off her usual singer-songwriter mode and gives us a more beautifully atmospheric indie-rock side that we just can't stop listening too. With big crunchy distorted dueling guitar riffs, driving rhythms and reverbed vocals that have a more urgent and energetic feel sort of like vintage PJ Harvey fronting early Deerhunter, while occasionally veering down a hazy and somnolent path giving off a Low or Galaxie 500 vibe. Plus some of the song titles are hilariously vivid, especially the last one, "Two Cocks Waving Wildly At Each Other Across A Vast Open Space, A Dark Icy Tundra". How can you not be curious? Probably one of the most rocking and energetic albums we have heard on this label. Solid!
MPEG Stream: "Completely Golden"
MPEG Stream: "Hospice Gates"
MPEG Stream: "Two Cocks..."

LOWER DENS Twin-Hand Movement (Gnomonsong) lp 14.98
We've been fans of Jana Hunter's from her first split with Devendra Banhart a few years back. Here with her new band project, Lower Dens, Hunter shakes off her usual singer-songwriter mode and gives us a more beautifully atmospheric indie-rock side that we just can't stop listening too. With big crunchy distorted dueling guitar riffs, driving rhythms and reverbed vocals that have a more urgent and energetic feel sort of like vintage PJ Harvey fronting early Deerhunter, while occasionally veering down a hazy and somnolent path giving off a Low or Galaxie 500 vibe. Plus some of the song titles are hilariously vivid, especially the last one, "Two Cocks Waving Wildly At Each Other Across A Vast Open Space, A Dark Icy Tundra". How can you not be curious? Probably one of the most rocking and energetic albums we have heard on this label. Solid!
MPEG Stream: "Completely Golden"
MPEG Stream: "Hospice Gates"
MPEG Stream: "Two Cocks..."

LYNCH, JULIAN Droplet On A Hot Stone (Underwater Peoples) 7"+cd-r 8.98
Another gorgeous missive of warped hazy dream pop from the guy who is fast becoming a sort of figurehead for that scene, a scene that includes Ducktails, Ariel Pink, Gary War, John Maus, not to mention the more rocking outfits like Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps, Ty Segall, but Lynch has definitely struck out on his own, chucking the reverb and low-fidelity-for-low-fidelity's-sake for something much more melodic and heartfelt, a soft focus classic pop that is as much about song as sound, and which definitely looks to groups like The Kinks, the Bee Gees, the Zombies, and other classic pop combos, but manages to infuse that sound with some of the fuzzy warble that the kids seem to dig so much.
These two songs are no exception, "Droplet On A Hot Stone", is a loping, fuzzy, heart-on-the-sleeve pop gem, lots of fuzzy keyboards, lush vocals, simple spare drumming, jangly guitar, some crunchy buzzy psychedelic melodies, all wreathed in a gauzy sun dappled production. "Nen Vole" dips back into a little bit of the tropical summer flavor that was such a big part of Lynch's former outfit Ducktails, it's the lo-fi pop equivalent of mint juleps on the lawn, a lazy hazy summer afternoon pop drift, acoustic guitars, and still more wheezing keyboards. It almost sounds like Ween, if they were less jokey and more serious about crafting perfect pop. So nice.
And both songs were originally recorded for a full length called Born2Run, which was never released, but is included as a bonus cd-r here, with both the tracks from the 7", but also the rest of that unreleased record, all of which is just as nice, woozy, washed out, fuzzy, softly psychedelic, a little bit tropical, a lot summery and sunshiney, jangly and dreamily warped. And other tracks are definitely more warped than the single's tracks, mostly instrumental, with lots of tripped out production, a sort of Joe Meek meets The Beach Boys vibe, heavy on the experiments, but even the experiments end up being dreamy and hooky and gorgeously mesmerizing. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Droplet On A Hot Stone"

MENACE RUINE Union Of Reconcilables (Aurora Borealis) cd 17.98
Not quite black metal, though doubtless Menace Ruine would happily bask in the smoldering embers of a charred church somewheres up north. Not exactly militaristic neo-folk either. Nor are they a noise band. Well, maybe noise. But that's only part of it. Their dark, distorted drone textures are also often adorned with witchy female vocals, a la Jex Thoth. So, three albums in, this Quebec girl-boy duo of Genevive and S. de la Moth are still quite hard to define, though we know we like 'em, and the Menace Ruine music they make (indeed a mix of noise, drone, folk, and black metal moves) is grim as well as sometimes quite gorgeous, that is if you're like us and can find the beauty in ten-minute long tracks of misanthropic sonic miasma. Perhaps it's the way the ceremonial lamentation of Genevive's gentle singing merges with the slowly churning electronic extremes of intense, dense distortion and feedback... Certainly this new release via Aurora Borealis (following previous efforts on Alien8 and Tour De Garde) is a fine continuation of their unique post-black metal noise-folk aesthetic. If you liked The Die Is Cast that came before this, you'll probably like this too. And fans of bands as diverse as Burial Hex, Dead Raven Choir, Velvet Cacoon, Current 93, Wolf Eyes, and Alcest, among others, ought to check out Menace Ruine if you haven't already.
MPEG Stream: "Collapse"
MPEG Stream: "The Upper Hand"
MPEG Stream: "Not Only A Break In The Clouds But A Permanent Clearing Of The Sky"

NASCIMENTO, MILTON Courage (Verve/ A&M) cd 12.98
Milton Nascimento's North American debut record from 1969 came at the end of the huge wave of the bossa nova movement that had infiltrated the American imagination since Astrud Gilberto's "Girl From Ipanema" with Stan Getz in 1963. A&M records and producer Creed Taylor were behind some of the best records of this period including albums by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sergio Mendes and Joao Gilberto, and Nascimento's Courage is no exception. Beautifully arranged and sung, this is where many of his most popular Brazilian songs were heard for the first time including "Vera Cruz", "Morro Velho" and "Bridges (Travessia)". Singing in Portuguese, English and sometimes wordlessly, this is a breathtaking record. While it doesn't have the psych flourishes and Tropicalia bent of Cluba Da Esquina, from a few years later (a unanimous store favorite!) it's still an essential record and perfect for lazy and wistful summer evenings.
MPEG Stream: "Vera Cruz"
MPEG Stream: "Rio Vermelho"
MPEG Stream: "Cancao Do Sol"

NGOZI FAMILY 45,000 Volts (No Smoke) lp 32.00
NOW ONCE MORE AVAILABLE ON VINYL! Expensive, yeah, but worth it! Here's what we said about the compact disc reissue of this electrifying album:
Man, have we been waiting for this! Why? Well, does Chrissy Zebby Tembo mean anything to you? The group that backed him up on his wonderful My Ancestors album from 1974 have a rare record of their own that's just been reissued, 45,000 Volts, and it's another killer document of Zambian heavy fuzz rock ("Zamrock"!) from the '70s! Founded by Paul Dobson Nyirongo, otherwise known as Paul Ngozi, a Hendrix-styled guitarist (he even did the trick of playing with his teeth), the Ngozi Family band released this winning album in 1977, and now that we've heard it, it goes right to the top of the selection of awesome garage fuzz rock from Africa in our collections, a small but ever growing category thanks to ruling reissues like this (we're also looking forward to Shadoks' impending cd edition of The Witch album, also from Zambia, next month, you should be too). And it's not so lo-fi as that Tembo disc, much better sound, though the production still sounds very "live", we think it's perfect, capturing both the thud and grace of the Ngozi Family's music.
There's ten tracks (including one bonus from a 7"), containing so much raw FUZZ! Burbling, sizzling, wah wah action. Along with wicked beats, soulful sincere vocals (some songs in English, others in a Zambian language, Nyanja perhaps), and groove that just won't quit. Most of the tracks are in a Western psych-rock style with distinct African influences, though a couple tracks near the end of the disc are much more like traditional Afrobeat, with hand percussion and mass chanting vocals. As far as the rock stuff goes, even when they kick back on the mellower, more sunshiney numbers there's still lotsa fuzz and snappy beats. And Ngozi actually translates to Danger in English, so you know that they don't neglect the harder and heavier fare on this album. Particularly proto-metal-ish is "Night Of Fear", with immensely fat riffing and echoed lyrics about graveyards and nightmares! Here and elsewhere we're reminded of Los Dug Dugs. Heck even a little Blue Cheer. And of course Ofege and Chrissy Zebby Tembo and others from Africa.
Timeless stuff, highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Everything Is Over"
MPEG Stream: "Nizaka Panga Ngozi"
MPEG Stream: "Night Of Fear"

NILSEN, BJ Draught #1 (Ash International) cassette 7.98
By now, most faithful aQ list readers are quite familiar with Swedish sound artist/field recordist/musician BJ Nilsen, we've heaped praise on most of his records, each a dark delicate balance of strange haunting sonic landscapes, and deftly manipulated sound, drones and textures and abstract explorations of sound, from the macroscopic to the micro, from thick sheets of rumbling low end thrum, to hushed crystalline chimes, to barely there snippets of found sound, to charged stretches of barren electronics.
This super limited cassette gathers up two live performances from back in 2008, both gorgeous examples of Nilsen's delicate and expressive soundscaping. Barely there shimmers, strange animalistic croaks and grunts, shimmering ultra delicate sine wave skree, deep whirling almost industrial sounding thrum, swoonsome stringlike melodies stretched into yet more layered drone, shards of muted glitch and crackling buzz, smeared into gauzy clouds of soft focus haze, the sounds whirling dizzily, druggy and drifty and dreamy, lush almost sci-fi cinematics, draped with softly crumbling melodies, and fragmented streaks of grinding high end, all woven into a surprisingly lush chunk of blown out dreamdoomdronemusic, a bit shoegazey, a little ethereal, but still rife with mechanical whirs and strange bits of found sound, samples and other sonic detritus, that makes it sound a little like a Philip Jeck performance, all warped and warbly. Whew! Fantastic stuff, not surprisingly, and most likely super limited, so grab one pronto!
Fancy full color covers, with some cool Savage Pencil collage/artwork inside and out!

NOTHING PEOPLE Enemy With An Invitation (Permanent) 7" 8.98
Straight out of Orland, California it's another slab of hot wax psych rock scorchers from Nothing People. With Doug Pearson of Monoshock fame now a part of the band, these two songs find NP in fine form. Continuing their driving explorations in punchy and dirty rock that reminds us a lot of Chrome, Moon Duo, Hawkwind, Mission Of Burma, Naked Raygun, Wire, A Place To Bury Strangers, Oneida, and MX-80. What makes Nothing People so cool is that while so many other psych minded bands seem to really just narrow their focus on a very specific era of psych rock, Nothing People have found a way to bring together multiple elements from the last several decades into a punk spirited reverberation that doesn't come off like a simple imitation, but instead rings loudly with stripped down sincerity. The 7" comes in classy packaging with gold foil stamping and there were only 500 pressed so grab one fast!

NOVELLER Desert Fires (Saffron Records) cd 13.98
This one is going to be a major contender for drifty/dreamy/droney record of the year! We really have loved everything we've heard (and seen!) from Sarah Lipstate (she is a great filmmaker as well as a blissed out drone music maker). And each release of hers seems to soar just a little higher and reach new levels of daydream hazy washed out perfection. Desert Fires might just be our favorite outing yet from her, as it drifts and drips with a drugged out disposition that wanders through the outer realms yet flows so totally serenely. It reminds us a bit of the more spaced out and glacial outings by Kawabata Makoto, Steven R. Smith and Roy Montgomery. It's remarkable the way she's able to use her guitar to create such an ethereal and tripped out ambience, similar to the sound and feel that folks like Tim Hecker and Emeralds create in their soundscapes. It's a record that makes you want to close your eyes and just get lost in its soft focus and hypnotizing waves of sound forever. Utterly beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Almost Alright"
MPEG Stream: "Kites Calm Desert Fires"
MPEG Stream: "Toothnest (for Chris Habib)"

ON (REWORKED BY FENNESZ) Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not (Type) cd 15.98
Record number three from the duo known simply as On, made up of composer / producer Sylvain Chauveau and percussionist Steven Hess, a member of both Pan American and Haptic, all favorites around here, so it's no surprise that we dig On as well. And their recording technique has always been pretty cool, capturing various improvisations, song fragments, completed songs, various textures and sound experiments, and the handing the whole thing over to another musician to shape into whatever sort of record he or she imagined. Deathprod was the guest arranger/producer/assembler on the last album, and this time around, it's none other than long time aQ fave, experimental guitarist and soundscaper Christian Fennesz, and Fennesz definitely works his magic, assembling the various parts into sweeping smoldering minimal epics, gorgeous dronescapes and wide swaths of glimmering ambience. The record opens with a cloud of layered feedback, all high end skree, before gradually dissipating into something more delicate and tranquil, hushed chiming melodies, and crystalline overtones, give way to a much more soothing stretch of throb and thrum, wreathed in gentle static and subtle glitch, dark tones glide and shift, drifting through clouds of cymbal shimmer, fields of click and skitter, but all smeared into a slowly unwinding spiral of smoldering lysergic swells.
The record switches gears part way through, and becomes much more woozy and soft focus, muted tones, a warm washed out haze, and finally some stripped down skeletal drumming, the vibe almost krautrocky, simple and spare and propulsive, the background ever swirling and whirling, a softly lopped melody drifting in and out of earshot, the whole thing mesmerizing and hypnotic, before the drums eventually fade out, leaving a bleary landscape of slowly melting tones, and gently collapsing melodies, a hushed abstract, dreambliss outro.
Which makes the darkness of the next track that much more dramatic, churning buzzing muted riffage, looped and layered, wrapped in a cloud of delicate cymbal sizzle, subtly rhythmic, locked in an awesome groove, WAY too short at a little over 4 minutes, but that leads right into the epic 20 minute closer, mirroring the opening track, with another field of hushed and muted feedback, tangled buried melodies, the various bits of guitar, and barely there percussion woven into a slowly shifting gradually mutating dreamscape, sounding more and more like a proper Fennesz record, prismatic, kaleidoscopic, warm and lustrous, lush and fantastically abstract, very reminiscent of Oval, that sort of looped glitchery, but here, it's much more organic, much more soothing and entrancing, totally captivating and utterly lovely.
MPEG Stream: "The Inconsolable Polymath"
MPEG Stream: "Blank Space"
MPEG Stream: "Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not"

ON (REWORKED BY FENNESZ) Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not (Type) lp 19.98
Record number three from the duo known simply as On, made up of composer / producer Sylvain Chauveau and percussionist Steven Hess, a member of both Pan American and Haptic, all favorites around here, so it's no surprise that we dig On as well. And their recording technique has always been pretty cool, capturing various improvisations, song fragments, completed songs, various textures and sound experiments, and the handing the whole thing over to another musician to shape into whatever sort of record he or she imagined. Deathprod was the guest arranger/producer/assembler on the last album, and this time around, it's none other than long time aQ fave, experimental guitarist and soundscaper Christian Fennesz, and Fennesz definitely works his magic, assembling the various parts into sweeping smoldering minimal epics, gorgeous dronescapes and wide swaths of glimmering ambience. The record opens with a cloud of layered feedback, all high end skree, before gradually dissipating into something more delicate and tranquil, hushed chiming melodies, and crystalline overtones, give way to a much more soothing stretch of throb and thrum, wreathed in gentle static and subtle glitch, dark tones glide and shift, drifting through clouds of cymbal shimmer, fields of click and skitter, but all smeared into a slowly unwinding spiral of smoldering lysergic swells.
The record switches gears part way through, and becomes much more woozy and soft focus, muted tones, a warm washed out haze, and finally some stripped down skeletal drumming, the vibe almost krautrocky, simple and spare and propulsive, the background ever swirling and whirling, a softly lopped melody drifting in and out of earshot, the whole thing mesmerizing and hypnotic, before the drums eventually fade out, leaving a bleary landscape of slowly melting tones, and gently collapsing melodies, a hushed abstract, dreambliss outro.
Which makes the darkness of the next track that much more dramatic, churning buzzing muted riffage, looped and layered, wrapped in a cloud of delicate cymbal sizzle, subtly rhythmic, locked in an awesome groove, WAY too short at a little over 4 minutes, but that leads right into the epic 20 minute closer, mirroring the opening track, with another field of hushed and muted feedback, tangled buried melodies, the various bits of guitar, and barely there percussion woven into a slowly shifting gradually mutating dreamscape, sounding more and more like a proper Fennesz record, prismatic, kaleidoscopic, warm and lustrous, lush and fantastically abstract, very reminiscent of Oval, that sort of looped glitchery, but here, it's much more organic, much more soothing and entrancing, totally captivating and utterly lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Blank Space"
MPEG Stream: "Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not"
MPEG Stream: "A Tardy Adminssion That The Crisis Is Serious"

OXYKITTEN Toucht (Field Hymns) cassette 7.98
Everything about this cool little tape that showed up in the mail one day hit the spot, the bright red tape, with silver metallic lettering, the eye popping crocheted cover art... Everything that is except the band name, not sure why, but the name Oxykitten just had us imagining the music would be way too twee, to cutesy, too fey, a sort of Hello Kitty vibe, but in the interest of not judging a book by its cover, or a tape by its band name, we threw it on, and BAM. Or POW. Or KABLOW. Or whatever sound would indicate you that you just stumbled on the bad ass, old school electro synth lo-fi party jam of the summer. Or whenever. The opening track is a killer, with super buzzy synths, some simulated 'meow's, retro drum machines, thick deep ominous synth basslines, the melodies weirdly haunting, a weird combo of mysterious and groovy, creepy and funky, with some rad squiggly synth freakouts, very soundtracky, or like the music to the best video game you've never played. The closest reference might be Black Moth Super Rainbow or Tobacco, that sort of lo-fi 8-bit bastardized hip hop, but the sound here is way more retro, and weird. That aforementioned opener throws in some creepy John Carpenterisms too, as if Carpenter had scored Castlevania for the Sega Saturn.
The rest of the record definitely mixed it up, from super stripped down electro grooves, to goofy vocoder driven electropop, to fuzzed out Ed Banger style synth blowouts, to full on 8-bit videogame music, to wild and seriously damaged eighties party jams, to awesome, creepy soundtracky creepscapes, and on and on and on. Definite contender for party jam tape of the year, odds are a bunch of these songs will end up on summer fun mix tapes, or get blasted at full volume from car stereos, or at the very least, get pumped through those headphones, rollerskates, parachute pants and satin jackets optional.
Bright red cassette, full color eye popping covers, and a download code for those of you who no longer sport that walkman clipped to your belt...

PAN SONIC / KEIJI HAINO Synergy Between Mercy & Self-Annhiliation Overturned (Blast First Petite) 2lp 33.00
Recent AQ Record Of The Week honorees Pan Sonic team up again with surprise partner Keiji Haino, the Tokyo psych shaman himself. More proof of the mysterious Finland-Japan connection. Previously the extreme electronic duo and the guttural guitar guru had collaborated on a live-in-concert cd for Blast First Petite, Shall I Download A Black Hole And Offer It To You, which we heralded as the next best thing to a Fushitsusha recording. Apparently only days after that show in Berlin, Pan Sonic and Haino went into the studio for another go-round. Again, drone and darkness are manipulated here by the masters.
As bombastic as Pan Sonic has been throughout their career, it shouldn't be a surprise that Keiji Haino is the dominant force on this record (he was on the live one too) with Pan Sonic sublimating their Tesla coil bursts of electricity into a reverberant tapestry of rumbling basstones and undulating frequencies. On only a few occasions will you find the Vainio / Vaisanen duo sequencing anything rhythmic, with Haino taking that opportunity for a rather clean-sounding guitar solo on the quintessentially Haino title "Without Doubt, An Attestation Written From That Time, Will No Longer Have Effect, Because The Wound Has Widened So Much." The pairing works much better when Haino channels voice, guitar, electronics, and drums through an abstracted slant on his existentialist poetics such as manifesting his lung-torn shrieks and obliterated guitar distortion in parallel to the dive-bomb electrical storms from Pan Sonic on "I Have Embedded It Approximately 2 Minutes And 7 Seconds Into The 4th Song, In Order To Return Here Whenever I Wish." Perhaps, this was originally conceived as an electronic recapitulation of Fushitsusha, but Synergy works best when evoking the shadowy ritualism of Haino's more ambient act Nijiumu to manifest this expressively infernal recording.
So, while Keiji Haino and Pan Sonic only managed a couple of days working together back in 2007, it seems that not a minute was wasted during that time, as they managed to make two great recordings together. We don't know why the live one was cd-only, and this studio album released as lp-only, but that's the way it is. Again, art/design by Stephen O'Malley, a deluxe package indeed, and quite LIMITED.

PANDISCORDIAN NECROGENESIS Cerebral Quasaric Lacerations (self released) cd-r 9.98
The return of thee only one man black metal band in the world!!! But wait you say, what abut Xasthur, and Striborg, and Leviathan, and... And you go on and on naming all the SUPPOSED one man black metal bands, but then we point out, that those bands are indeed populated by a single member, but they record like a band, one instrument at a time, the drums, then while listening to the drums, the guitar, and then the bass, finally the vocals, and they don't play live, because THEY CAN'T. That's what makes Pandiscordian Necrogenesis aka Lord Ephemeral Domignostika (also known as Mastery, the man behind the SF black metal monster of the same name, who have a double cd coming out any day now on tUMULt, and who was also the vocalist and bass player for Horn Of Dagoth), the only truly TROO one man black metal band, cuz he DOES play live, ALL the instruments at once, playing drums with his feet, riffing wildly with his hands, and of course spitting out some hellish vokills, and if that wasn't enough, it's all improvised, these tangled twisted, gnarled black metal blowouts are made up on the spot. Pretty incredible. Granted, some of the magic is lost on a recording, we're thinking a dvd or a VHS tape might be more appropriate, to watch this corpsepainted figure, hunched over his strange drum contraption, a snare with a kick drum pedal, and a bass drum with a DOUBLE kick drum pedal (he only just upgraded to double kick), while his hands flutter wildly over his axe, his contorted face spewing blackened vitriol into the mic.
But hell, even minus the visuals, Cerebral Quasaric Lacerations is some seriously raw and grim blasting blackness, the guitars grinding and superdistorted, the riffing frenzied and frantic, the drumming fast and fucked up, laced with flurries of double kick, the vocals croaked and shrieked, the songs dense twisted serpentine arrangements, this shit is definitely primitive, seriously lo-fi, and way KVLT, and the crazy thing is, even though this stuff is mostly improvised, there's some incredible riffing, some super catchy blackness, some impossibly tight vocal/guitar/drum interplay, the songs slipping from old school classic thrashing blackness, to twisted Black Flag flecked BM gnarl, and back again, spitting out classic sounding black metal off the cuff, the sort of shit most black metallers couldn't come up with after months in a proper practice space.
Gloriously buzzy and black, twisted and demented and about as true and grim as it gets, like the first, long out of print cd-r, another fucked up chunk of bafflingly brilliant outsider blackness.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered and screen printed, the cover a weird snake sword brain intestine thing on a smeared blood red backdrop that actually IS BLOOD. The whole cover is in fact soaked / painted in actual blood! It looks amazing, every one is different, and they all smell a bit odd, not dramatically so, but enough to know this is in fact REAL BLOOD. Doesn't get much more grim than that. We got nearly a quarter of the pressing, but if the last record was anything to go by, these won't be around for long...
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"

PHARAOH OVERLORD Siluurikaudella (Ektro) cd 14.98
Our favorite Finnish hypnorock band Circle, and related offshoots, are always both doing the expected, AND the unexpected. Expected, in that in almost all cases, Circle hew to the repetitive, rhythmic, krautrock-inspired "circular" grooves from whence they get their name. Yet, while adhering to that basic concept, they've managed to put out umpteen dozen upon dozen albums that are all completely different... some spacey and pretty, some heavy and riffy, some with Gregorian style chant, some with operatic metallic vokills, and all brilliant (ask anybody, but especially us!). Pharaoh Overlord, one of the more popular and prolific Circle "side projects", with a lineup almost (exactly?) the same as Circle, has pretty much followed the same path. Originally, ostensibly a "stoner rock" version of Circle (which you can definitely hear on the live lp we recently listed), they got even more truly metal with their last album, #4, maybe the ultimate "NWOFHM" statement from the Circle camp.
That said, this new, 5th album from Pharaoh Overlord is way more unexpected than the expected, content-wise!! Totally different from #4 for sure. There's three long, instrumental tracks here, and each of them is quite different too. The disc begins with the 22:33 of "Vesitorni", a seemingly improvised piece that's extremely quiet, abstract, mysterious. Sudden skitter of the drums. Chiming glimmer of the guitars. Shimmering cymbals. Pulsation of the bass. It's almost "onkyo" in its sparse, low-key, quasi-jazz loveliness. Really nice, and really not at all remotely "NWOFHM".
Then, wham! Maybe we shouldn't even warn you. Track two, "Valujuhla" (12:47) erupts with a frenzy of loud, chaotic, freeform freaking-out. Here is where we wonder, is Siluurikaudella the record on which the PO/Circle guys go free jazz? Seems like it. And it kinda makes sense. Up until now, they've been famed for their motorik, locked-in, precise clockwork rhythms. With this, it's like those clockwork gears have come unsprung, gone completely haywire, and everyone's playing everything all at once, anarchy reigns! It had to happen, something had to give. But, then this track too quiets down, and we can tell Pharaoh Overlord still have it under control.
Following that, the eighteen minute "Piirros" takes over the final portion of the disc. It shares some similarities with the first track, staying mostly quiet and abstract. But it's definitely got more of a propulsive groove-shuffle going on underneath. And rather than abstract jazz... it reminds us of an abstract, creaky, cavernous blues. Super moody and dark and weird. Probably our favorite of the three.
So, PO definitely surprised us with this one. Took a short while to get our heads around. But now we're definitely digging it. And think that Circle, Doktor Kettu, Keiji Haino, Nels Cline, Tetuzi Akiyama, even Jandek fans will totally dig it too. Improvised, instrumental, eccentric! Oh yeah.
MPEG Stream: "Vesitorni"
MPEG Stream: "Valujuhla"
MPEG Stream: "Piirros"

PIGEONS Si Faustine (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 19.98
Pigeons are a Northwestern husband and wife psych folk duo, augmented by members of No Neck Blues Band and other NNBB offshoots, and this is Pigeons full length number two, released appropriately enough on the always kick ass Olde English Spelling Bee label, and this is indeed a gorgeous chunk of psychedelic folk, dark and heavy and hypnotic, big simple motorik drumming, distorted psychedelic guitar leads, simple acoustic guitar strum and heavenly ethereal vocals, not to mention various keyboards, and bits of percussion, total Wicker Man seventies style acid folk, but definitely modernized, imagine a young hippy folksinger in the UK in the seventies, suddenly transported to now, hooking up with the new breed of lysergic bedroom folk pop alchemists, well, this is the most likely result, at its core, pure lilting dream folk, but all wrapped up in strange swooping backwards guitars, fluttering flutes, detuned doomy riffs, skittery percussion, glitchy electronics, buzzy swaths of processed effects drenched psychswirl, wild spidery melodies, tons of reverb, and strange little bits of sonic detritus, all blurred into gorgeously lush lysergic acid folk, at once timeless and classic sounding, but also weirdly modern, almost like a Karen Dalton or Vashti Bunyan for the warped lo-fi garage pop set. Which is just as good as it sounds.
Housed in super swank tip on style jackets, comes with a download coupon as well!
MPEG Stream: "Wrong Man"
MPEG Stream: "Fade Away"

RIGGS, DAX Say Goodnight To The World (Fat Possum) cd 13.98
If we had to pick a favorite rock vocalist, or more specifically VOICE, it would be pretty tough to not pick Dax Riggs. His croon is so intense and emotive and powerful, able to brood and croon, as well as howl like a banshee, or even shriek in full on metal mode. Having done time in the mighty Acid Bath, not to mention Deadboy And The Elephantmen and Agents Of Oblivion, Riggs' voice was always the defining element in all of those bands, beginning with Acid Bath, a serious metal band, whose sound was tempered by Riggs' incredible voice, transforming it into something totally unique, giving it a dark almost cabaret element that was lacking from most metal, most music. As he drifted from Agents Of Oblivion to Deadboy, and finally going it alone, the music got less and less heavy, the sound more and more dramatic, which definitely suited his voice. A voice that sits somewhere between Robert Plant, Glenn Danzig, Mark Lanegan, David Bowie and Jeff Buckley. Super expressive, super unique, and a little bit glammy. His solo records have tended toward the dark and bluesy, the stripped down, Say Goodnight To The World is no different, although the opening title track gets pretty fuzzy and heavy, and might be the most rocking thing we've heard from Riggs in a while, slithery and dark, the riff a little bit sludgey, but it's really just a showcase for his voice, and it soars and trills, and almost cracks, and gives you chills, goosebumps, all that, if there was ever a case of "he could sing the phonebook" it's Riggs.
Folks hankering for the heaviness of the old days probably won't be too into this new record, but if you're like us, and appreciated all the slower jams, the acoustic numbers, even as far back as Acid Bath, then Say Goodnight To The World will sound pretty darn sweet, broody and smoldering, and to be fair, pretty dang rokcing and heavy at moments, the new band is pretty bad ass, and at least half of these tracks get pretty fierce, but those tracks are balanced by some grim balladry, hell, there's even a cover of "Heartbreak Hotel", transformed into some sort of murder ballad, slowed way down, to a crawl, the melody changed quite a bit, the result something seriously harrowing and sinister and awesome. Which pretty much describes this whole record.
WAY recommended for anyone into sounds mysterious and passionate, bleak and intense, heavy and emotional, dark and dramatic...
MPEG Stream: "Say Goodnight To The World"
MPEG Stream: "I Hear Satan"
MPEG Stream: "You Were Born To Be My Gallows"

SAMPS s/t (Mexican Summer) lp 26.00
You think Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti is weird, wait until you hear APHG offshoot Samps, who basically take all the fucked up retro FM radio-ims and tweaked yacht rock tropes of Ariel Pink, and tosses it all into a blender, chops it all up, twists it into crazy head spinning shapes and spits them back out in the form of the most fucked up, drug addled seventies coke party disco dance freak out you've ever heard.
From fat fuzzy funked out basslines, to stuttery sampled vocals, to blown out AM radio melodies, to record crackle crusted synthfunk grooves, to cheesy MTV style new wave pop, to creepy jittery collages of slap bass, wah wah guitar, fuzzy synth and electronic drums, but Samps fuck it all up, piling on layers, looping samples, sometimes into full on blown out blissed out almost shoegazey sounding sheets of ethereal buzz and shimmer, but just as often into some sort of stumbling, lurching, unfunky, eighties pop-funk free for all. It's cheesy as all get out, but it's so tweaked and twisted and fucked up, that it basically becomes a sort of low brow high art, a dizzying psychedelic sampledelic mash up that in some weird way transcends all the references, and creates something pretty bad ass out of the musical detritus we've all tried to leave behind.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one hand numbered, comes with a download coupon, we're not sure we can get more of these once they're gone...
MPEG Stream: "Wizard Sleeve"
MPEG Stream: "Hyperbolic"

SHANNON AND THE CLAMS Paddy's Birthday (South Paw) 7" 7.98
Oakland's Shannon And The Clams are quickly becoming one of our favorite Bay Area bands. Their live shows are so fun filled and thrilling and their full length debut totally won us over the way it channeled old school rock n' roll, girl groups, garage rock, and RnB, all wrapped into a singular charismatic punk rock aesthetic. Recently Shannon joined the live incarnation of Hunx & His Punx or as they call it now Hunx & His Punkettes, and when you see them live you realize how much Shannon's vocals and playing really help make Hunx's live shows so much more satisfying.
Paddy's Birthday continues to show us why we love this group so much. Shannon is possessed with one of the strongest and moving voices of any vocalist around, she really owns every single note and word she sings. Like some awesome combination of Etta James, The Shirelles, and The Gits, this is a 7" that shows off a band that really is creating their own sound and doing it so damn well.

SIR LORD BALTIMORE Kingdom Come (Universal) lp 16.98
In the annals of the "early heavy", the Sir Lord Baltimore (from Brooklyn) is up there with the likes of Dust, Bang, and yes Blue Cheer. Too bad their two albums have been pretty much out of print for ages, the last official cd reissue, a two-fer, was back in the early '90s. But, proto-metal fans rejoice, 'cause now both SLB records are back in action, individually, on vinyl! 1970's Kingdom Come and the self-titled 1971 sequel, both of 'em essential slabs of heavy hard rockin' from this seminal band in heavy metal history.
The debut, with the spooky trippy "ghost ship" painting on the cover, alone justifies SLB's cult status. Very few bands in 1970 were this heavy (though, it must be said, Black Sabbath were on an other level entirely). Aside from the primly pretty, baroque ballad "Lake Isle Of Innersfree", this whole record is pretty much a frenzied fuzz blaster par excellance. And when we say fuzz, we mean FUZZ! Just check out the title track, a majestic six and half minutes mixing tripped out lyrics with savage bursts of ultra distorted guitar. There's definitely a sixties vibe to the proceedings; you can imagine bikers totally digging it. And it's as energetic as the proto-punk coming out of Detroit at the time, too.
The follow-up album is a little fancier, more diverse, and dramatic, the band expanded from a trio to a quartet, with extra instrumentation (acoustic guitar, organ). There's a 10+ minute prog epic called "Man From Manhattan" (which still gets heavy!), but also ragin' rockers like "Woman Tamer". And you get to hear SLB kicking out the jams in concert on the live track "Where Are We Going".
What's not to love about this band? They're a Sir, they're a Lord, they even have a singing drummer! So if you haven't yet been flattened by SLB's fuzz, time to add these to your collection, especially if said collection already includes the likes of High Tide, Tiger B. Smith, Highway Robbery, Leaf Hound, Toad, etc.
MPEG Stream: "Kingdom Come"
MPEG Stream: "Master Heartache"

SIR LORD BALTIMORE s/t (Universal) lp 16.98
In the annals of the "early heavy", the Sir Lord Baltimore (from Brooklyn) is up there with the likes of Dust, Bang, and yes Blue Cheer. Too bad their two albums have been pretty much out of print for ages, the last official cd reissue, a two-fer, was back in the early '90s. But, proto-metal fans rejoice, 'cause now both SLB records are back in action, individually, on vinyl! 1970's Kingdom Come and the self-titled 1971 sequel, both of 'em essential slabs of heavy hard rockin' from this seminal band in heavy metal history.
The debut, with the spooky trippy "ghost ship" painting on the cover, alone justifies SLB's cult status. Very few bands in 1970 were this heavy (though, it must be said, Black Sabbath were on an other level entirely). Aside from the primly pretty, baroque ballad "Lake Isle Of Innersfree", this whole record is pretty much a frenzied fuzz blaster par excellance. And when we say fuzz, we mean FUZZ! Just check out the title track, a majestic six and half minutes mixing tripped out lyrics with savage bursts of ultra distorted guitar. There's definitely a sixties vibe to the proceedings; you can imagine bikers totally digging it. And it's as energetic as the proto-punk coming out of Detroit at the time, too.
The follow-up album is a little fancier, more diverse, and dramatic, the band expanded from a trio to a quartet, with extra instrumentation (acoustic guitar, organ). There's a 10+ minute prog epic called "Man From Manhattan" (which still gets heavy!), but also ragin' rockers like "Woman Tamer". And you get to hear SLB kicking out the jams in concert on the live track "Where Are We Going".
What's not to love about this band? They're a Sir, they're a Lord, they even have a singing drummer! So if you haven't yet been flattened by SLB's fuzz, time to add these to your collection, especially if said collection already includes the likes of High Tide, Tiger B. Smith, Highway Robbery, Leaf Hound, Toad, etc.
MPEG Stream: "Woman Tamer"
MPEG Stream: "Caesar LXXI"

SOCIAL STUDIES Wind Up Wooden Hearts (Antenna Farm) cd 11.98
Second album from this great energetic San Francisco pop band, who pack lots of nice twists and turns into their sophomore outing. With infectious keyboards fueling the songs alongside driving guitars and beautiful vocals, Social Studies have developed a sound that's punchy, catchy and intimate. Listening to Wind Up Wooden Hearts makes us think of so many of our favorite interesting indie pop peddlers. Like if Hanne Hanne Hukkelberg was backed by Casiotone For The Painfully Alone; or The Finches doing Broadcast covers; or Wye Oak, Mates Of State, Feist, The Postmarks, Dirty Projectors, and Victoria Bergsman all jamming out at a fun filled pajama party. There is such a brightness to the sounds that Social Studies create, full of color and wide eyed possibility. It's refreshing when so many bands seem to be going for detached cool, and layers of fuzz to hide their songs, to hear a really good pop band very upfront and comfortable with creating songs that make your head bop and heart pound, the perfect soundtrack for a long stroll with that special crush, soft serve ice cream cones in your hands, and these sweet sounds in your head and a carefree breeze defining that moment. So nice.
MPEG Stream: "Charioteers"
MPEG Stream: "We Choose Our Own Adventures"
MPEG Stream: "Time Bandit"

SUPERCHUNK Digging For Something (Merge) 7" 5.98
We really can't think of one bad Superchunk record. Really, not one lousy ep, 7", comp track, etc. They've been putting out records for over twenty years now and not one release has been less then spectacular. While their output has slowed way down in the last decade, last years ep. Leaves In The Gutter was vintage Superchunk all the way, reminding us all why we all fell in love with them so hard in the first place. These two brand new songs continue to do the same. Punchy, poppy, catchy and full of impassioned fire. No one writes hookier and more satisfying pop gems than Superchunk. And both of these two songs show off their undying spirit and peerless chops so damn well. With a brand new full length promised for later this year (it's been nine years since a proper long player!) this is whetting our appetite big time for the full on return of these indie rock legends.

SVARTE GREINER Penpals Forever (And Ever) (Type) cd 15.98
This long out of print cassette, from one of our favorite practitioners of gorgeous and haunting grimdrone doomfolk, finally reissued on cd (and vinyl, which we listed a few weeks back). And with a whole extra chunk of unreleased music...
Penpals Forever proper begins with a flurry of percussive guitar thrum, tons of reverb and buzz, a shimmering black forest of metallic shimmer and deep rumbles, all woven into what up close is a dizzying swirl of sound, but step back and the pattern is evident, a slow sprawling minor key melody, a haunting horror movie creep. A roiling black sea of huge slabs of glacial low end, that blot out the sun, swallowing the various guitars beneath it, moving like massive deathships, the shadows only allowing brief glimpses of the melody beneath. Truly ominous and cinematic. Eyes closed, these are the kind of sounds that would give the weak hearted nightmares, while the rest of us luxuriate in its thick blackened drone drenched buzz.
The unreleased bonus tracks, which are like a whole 'nother record tacked on, are just as good as the original tape. Three long tracks, all flowing together, the first a Philip Jeck like creepscape, all woozy and otherworldly, warbly tones, warped guitar buzz, everything stretched and smeared into languorous layers, while a fog of distant melody hovers in the distance, peppered with soft focus harmonies, drifting and reflective. Which gives way to a thick heady swirl of muted fuzz and slowed down sound, like some mysterious cityscape field recording played at 16rpm and wreathed in a haze of drone and buzz. Until finally the side finishes off with another smoldering dronescape, beginning quietly, while layers of grinding distorted guitars unfurl heaving blackened whirs and rumbles over a backdrop of streaked feedback and strange sounds buried in the murk.
MPEG Stream: "A1"
MPEG Stream: "A2"

TECUMSEH Sea(s) (Black Horizons) lp 14.98
Latest batch of grim drifting blackness from these Portland low end necromancers, two side long tracks, still using Earth's classic 2 album as a template, but taking that churning glacial riffage and stretching it even further out, infusing the sound with more ambience, more subtle electronic flourishes, adding space and strange shifting textures, a glancing listen will still conjure up visions of robed axemen, and fog drenched walls of glowing amplification, but Tecumseh offers up the sort of ritualistic heaviness that rewards total subjugation, each track an immersive world of black buzz and rumbling creep, rife with mysterious melody, and all manner of sonic wonder.
As with past releases, the band strike a perilous balance between suffocating crush, and blackened mesmer. The A-side here is the perfect example, lumbering low end thrum, pulses and throbs, underpinned by wheezing ephemeral synths, a shimmering texture barely audible through the wall of crumbling riffage, but then it gets even heavier, and more dense, as layer after layer are piled on, and the various strands of rumble and buzz, coalesce into a seriously crushing, massive funereal dirge, corrosive, distorted, but still strangely tranquil and hypnotic, the whole track locked into a woozy soporific lop. So minimal, the sounds is more drone than metal, the undulating riffscape warm and liquid, laced with sweeps of muted electronics and buried bits of whir and glitch.
The second side starts off much more eerily, with distant voices, streaks f feedback, the sound of some overheard ritual, wrapped in cavelike acoustics, subterranean and haunting, eventually, peals of lower register buzz begin to surface, and again the track builds gradually, thickening and growing darker and blacker and heavier, slowly slipping into another expanse of rumbling glacial dirgery.
And while this was meant to play at 45, give it a spin at 33, even more abstract and minimal and dronelike, the heaviness and crush transformed into something way more abstract and psychedelic.
LIMITED TO 333 COPIES, housed in super swank, 3 color hand screened jackets, with printed cardstock inserts.

TERROR DANJAH Power Grid (Planet Mu) cd ep 14.98
Once again, Planet Mu steps up to the plate, to single handedly provide us with our grime/dubstep fix, this time in the form of Power Grid, a brand new ep of avant abstract griminess from mysterious producer Terror Danjah, who mixes classic rave sounds and playful melodies, with blown out buzzy bass warble, warped stuttery beats, clipped vocal snippets, spaced out FX, fuzzy squelchy synths, into something simultaneously cosmic, groovy, melodic, yet rough and gruff and a little bit aggressive.
"Space Traveller" is all synth and minimal, sounding a bit like Ital Tek or Zomby, but then "Menace" swoops in, sounding, well, menacing, with a woozy atmosphere, swirling melodies, dramatic strings and orchestral stabs, all sent skittering, maybe one of our favorite electronic jams in recent memory.
"Twisted" is another killer, that drops big beats, over buzzing FX drenched warped synth swirl, some twisted (yup) toasted vox, a clinical two step beat, all wound up into some seriously tense dancefloor damage. "Horror Story" is haunting and harrowing and skeletal, the beats cloaked in grit and buzz, the track laced with weird haunted house ambience, the rhythm sliced and diced, sped up vox, all creepy and crawly, but still fuzzy and funky.
This stuff is so goddamn good. Can't imagine it'll be too long before Terror Danjah finally gets the same sort of hype as folks like Zomby and Benga and Skream and the like, especially considering the fact that this stuff is SO much cooler and weirder...
MPEG Stream: "Space Traveller"
MPEG Stream: "Menace"
MPEG Stream: "Horror Story"

THOR Only The Strong Survive (Ektro) cd 14.98
Yes, this week we do have releases on our list by both Conan, and Thor! How 'bout that. In "real life" we imagine that Thor, being a god, could beat up Conan, tough as Conan is. In fact, we think that Marvel once issued a comic book about that very match-up. And in even more real real life, we're also pretty sure that Jon Mikl Thor, former bodybuilding champion and cult '80s heavy metal icon, could probably wallop the three guys in the doom band called Conan reviewed above. Or at least bend their big ol' horseback battle hammer into a pretzel with his bare hands. Sonically, however, Conan's sub-bass SUNNO)))-like sludge riffage is definitely heavier than the more traditional heavy metal rockin' of Thor and band. Yet, if you're into '80s metal, you'll agree, Thor kicks ass. Certainly Jussi from our fave Finnish band Circle thinks so - this is the third Thor reissue he's put out on his Ektro label so far! And we think so too. Especially when it comes to this album, 1985's Only The Strong, generally considered to be Thor's best. It contains his biggest "hits", and a lot of 'em, beefy kitsch metal classics like "Knock 'Em Down", "When Gods Collide", "Let The Blood Run Red", "Ride Of The Chariots", and best of all, "Thunder On The Tundra". Songs that Thor definitely still sings even today, heck they're likely encore material.
We said Ektro's reissue of Live In Detroit, also from '85, was the one Thor to get if you were to only get one. Well, that's perhaps been superseded by this release. If you're ready to rock, and want do it to in the company of a musclebound he-man, this album should definitely get you pumped up. Bombastic, catchy, straight up very very metal!
Nicely done reissue, with slickly designed booklet, complete with a back cover photo of a vintage Thor logo patch, and the slogan "Beware The Fury Of The Ice Viking", which sounds like something one of Jussi's NWOFHM bands like Steel Mammoth would use as a song title. The disc also includes a bonus bonus live track, "Warriors Of The Universe", boasting impressive crowd sing-along action only possible in Europe, recorded at Sweden Rock Festival we think in 2009, with original Only The Strong guitarist Steve "Lightning Lord" Price in the band!
MPEG Stream: "Thunder On The Tundra"
MPEG Stream: "Hot Flames"
MPEG Stream: "Ride Of The Chariots"

THOSE ATTRACTIVE MAGNETS Electromagnetic Pulse (Dark Entries) lp 17.98
Where does Dark Entries find all this stuff? Sure, Dark Day was certainly a known quantity; but before the label reissued the Eleven Pond LP, had any one really heard "Watching Trees?" Ditto for the Second Decay album? Those Attractive Magnets were a band that the world forgot, except for the discerning ears over at Dark Entries, who compiled this album from a handful of tapes produced in the late '70s and early '80s. And yes, it's another great piece of archival synth-wave! This primitive synth driven / new wave outfit was from small village of Tamworth, located in the English midlands, but their heart seemed to be directed north to Sheffield where the likes of the Human League, The Future, Clock DVA, and Cabaret Voltaire were blossoming at the same time. Those Attractive Magnets revolved around the charismatic frontman Rikk Quay, who had been inspired by the punk class of 1977 but wanted to channel that spirit through electronics. Joined by a couple of like-minded musical partners from Tamworth, Quay propels his urgent tunes along surprisingly catchy minimalist synth melodies, whose darkened atmospheres were amplified in futurist bleeps and alien bloops; but it's Quay's voice that is really key to making the band work, as he does what he can to emulate an early Phillip Oakley (of the Human League) without sounding too smug or contrived as Oakley was want to do. Recommended for any and all keen on the resurgence of the minimal wave aesthetic!
Like all Dark Entries releases this is limited to a pressing of 500 and comes with an 11x17 poster of artwork, lyrics and liner notes.
MPEG Stream: "1500"
MPEG Stream: "Love Chimes"
MPEG Stream: "Venus"

TONETTA 777 (Black Tent) lp+cd 28.00
Wow, is this record ever bizarre, not at all what you might expect from the same label that released the record of Pajo Misfits covers or Paz Lenchatin's gorgeous country drone folk record, but like those records, Tonetta's 777 is truly unique and weird and to some ears perhaps also wonderful. Incredibly strange music for sure...
Some folks might recognize the name Tonetta (or Tonetta 777) from his various videos on YouTube, and no doubt some of you were probably forwarded them as they are truly truly odd and were becoming a sort of sensation. So we were trying to find a simple succinct way of describing Tonetta, and decided to turn to the online source for all things freaky, Freakipedia (oddly enough there was no entry for Tonetta on Wikipedia) where Tonetta's entry described him as "an incredibly gay older man on YouTube who dances half naked to songs he pre-recorded. While most of the music sounds the same in his videos, his lyrics largely differ dealing with sexual fetishes such as pissing and pooping, larger women and men, and ass to mouth." Which does pretty much sum it up. Tonetta dresses in strange ripped Flashdance style outfits, g-strings, torn sweatshirts, bustiers, weird masks, sometimes pantyhose over his head, wigs, dresses, whatever, sometimes he's practically nude, he shimmies and shakes, in a diamond shaped frame surrounded by trippy colors, in front of a backdrop that looks like it's probably in his basement, white curtains, a black sheet hung on the wall, a bunch of balloons, and we haven't even gotten to the music yet, simple primitive drum machines, looped disco basslines, blown out guitars, everything in the red and blown out and distorted, the vocals either a deep croon, or a weird almost falsetto trill, the sound warped and warbly alternatingly funky, groovy, and/or psychedelic, sometimes the music sounds like some underground post punk lo-fi disco, other times it sounds almost like Ariel Pink or John Maus, and then there's the song tiles and lyrics, which as the Freakipedia entry alludes to, are subversive and sexual and bizarre and problematic and pretty goddamn funny: "My Bro", "Still A Slave", "A Really Big Cock", "Toronto Is Starting To Stink", "Metal Man", "Peeping Tom", "Drugs Drugs Drugs", "God Treats You Right", "I'm Gonna Marry A Prostitute", and on and on. Fucked up and freaky, but weirdly addictive, and as skeptical as we may have been about a whole album of this stuff, after seeing a bunch of his videos, we find ourselves digging this a whole lot, and listening to it more than we ever thought we would, which pretty much says it all!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, housed in a super nice thick cover, adorned with a 2 color serigraph, and comes with a cd version of the record as well.
MPEG Stream: "John And Yoko"
MPEG Stream: "My Bro"
MPEG Stream: "Still A Slave"
MPEG Stream: "A Really Big Cock"

UNSWORTH, CATHI Johnny Remember Me (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
Another batch of sonic mysteries from UK tape label The Tapeworm, and if you didn't think the Tapeworm was eclectic already, these two will undoubtedly convince you. Johnny Remember Me is not a band, or really a record, instead, it's actually a book on tape, written by UK author Cathi Unsworth, who has a pretty serious resume (Sounds, Bizarre, Mojo, Uncut, not to mention a handful of novels), and besides writing about music, also writes about crime, but through a pop culture, new music filter, a hip hybrid of bands and artists and gangsters and criminals, which is what you get here. Unsworth is teamed up with musician Pete Woodhead, from the group O Yuki Conjugate, who did the music for awesome Rom-Zom-Com Shaun Of The Dead, for a pretty straight reading of Unsworth's novel Johnny Remember Me.
It's a pretty cool story, rife with pop culture references, loads of music, and yeah, some criminal activities, with Unsworth and Woodhead each tackling half the story, both with appropriately thick UK accents, which gives Unsworth's tale the perfect British crime novel vibe.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. With killer cover art by Savage pencil.

V/A Cloud Cuckooland (Finders Keepers) 2lp 27.00
NOW ON VINYL!!
Even if we weren't already aware that the early '70s output of the German record label Kuckuck was pretty darn cool, being a significant part of the whole incredible krautrock thing, we'd be eager to hear this new compilation, following as it does B-Music's other recent celebrations of labels like BYG in France (The BYG Deal comp) and Belter in Spain (the Absolute Belter comp), all of 'em awesome. This well-researched collection, part of the B-Music / Finders Keepers "krautsider music" series, is a tribute to the vision and dedication of the Kuckuck label's founder, Eckart Rahn (about whom several fascinating pages of the text and photo filled cd booklet are devoted). Presented with distinctive graphic style, Kuckuck's always adventurous and ever eclectic roster made records ranging from progressive pop to acid folk to out there kosmische electronics, in other words krautrock at its finest.
There's nine bands represented across the 20 tracks here. You get, among others, the heavy blues rock of Armageddon, the proto-New Age bliss of AQ fave Deuter, Antiteater's soundtracks to Rainer Werner Fassbinder films, the brilliant minimalist hypnorock of Out Of Focus (another AQ fave), the Moog synthesizer experimentation of American composer Sam Spence, and proggy pop pioneers Ihre Kinder (plus various spinoffs), and more. Of the several artists we hadn't ever heard before, Sam Spence was particularly intriguing, especially since the liner notes explain that his Moogs were paid for by the National Football League, for whom he made film soundtracks! We'd be curious to hear more of his Kuckuck recordings based on the two tracks from him included here, which sound something like a more tripped out Perrey and/or Kingsley.
Dunno why they didn't include some Murphy Blend, too, but it's a fine comp anyhow! Any Finders Keepers follower or krautrock fancier should be keen on this. Can't go too wrong with Kuckuck.
MPEG Stream: SAM SPENCE "Water World"
MPEG Stream: DEUTER "Der Turm"
MPEG Stream: IHRE KINDER "The Dice"

V/A Grind Bastards 4 (Grind Freaks) cd 14.98
Okay grind bastards, time for round 4, another awesome collection of some of the best grind that Japan, and the rest of the world, has to offer. But like on past installments, this is not the grind you know and love, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Last Days Of Humanity, Discordance Axis, Hayaino Daisuki, Brutal Truth, Pig Destroyer, Nasum, that's all mainstream by comparison, this is the grind underground, some names you might know, you might even have records by Unholy Grave, whose label Grind Freaks is responsible for this mayhem, or Total Fucking Destruction, and then there's a bunch of bands you probably only know from past installments of Grind Bastards like Mortalized, Fortitude, Little Bastards, and in addition this time around a there's whole new crop of bands we'd never heard 'til now: Vulgaroyal Bloodhill, Zomba Green, Disgunder, Diborce, Ada Max, Black Ganion, and more more more.
This isn't really for dabblers though, this is sort of the grind version of grim, kvlt, true, the sounds here insane and ultra aggressive, over the top, a relentless assault on the senses, a crushing barrage of grinding buzzsaw riffage, blasting hyperspeed drumming, crazed vocals that yelp, howl, grunt, screech, the songs ultra proggy, a million parts and tempos crammed into the space of a minute or two, the sounds vary from blasts of blacknoise, to groovy almost classic metal, to white hot blasts of old school grind, to twisted effects drenched grinding avant metal freakouts, to galloping fastcore, to helping almost Melt-Banana sounding hypergrind, to epic war grind, to some almost poppy grind, some seriously gurgling goregrind, a few tracks get into 3 and 4 even 5 minutes, while others blow by in seconds, furious and frenzied and frantic and fantastically fucked up, this is some of the raddest, heaviest, most brutal and inventive grind you'll hear, anyone into fast and heavy, blasting brutality, this will kick your ass big time, and like past volumes, this would be a pretty epic grind primer, and like those volumes, this couldn't be more recommended.
Killer packaging too, a massive fold out punk rock poster, with each band getting their own little panel of liner notes...
MPEG Stream: MORTALIZED "Hate Your World"
MPEG Stream: DISGUNDER "Ruminate / Incise"
MPEG Stream: ADA MAX "Electric Shock"
MPEG Stream: TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION "Battle Command In Future"
MPEG Stream: VULGAROYAL BLOODHILL "Quitar Las Tripas A Un Dios"
MPEG Stream: FORTITUDE "Cadaverous Faces"

V/A Magnetic Traces (Swarming / Metamkine) cd 14.98
This cultural exchange of sound artists from Australia and France was curated by sonic ecologist Eric La Casa and the electro-acoustic composer Philip Samartzis, having presented a series of performances and installations in both countries, exploring secret channels of communication through post-concrete composition and experimentation. The compilation as a whole is a fantastic listen, dynamic presentations of field recordings, found object manipulation, tuned instrumentation, and/or pure acousmatic works, with contributions from plenty of exceptional artists (e.g. Tarab, Cedric Peyronnet aka Toy Bizarre, Camilla Hannan, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Thomas Tilly, Thembi Soddell, etc.). From an overhead view, many of the tracks seamlessly blend together in the rustlings of damp earth and scrabbled soil juxtaposed with drones engineered out of environmental sources, cut with decontextualized snippets of language. It's hard not to see the connections of all of artists - both Australian and French - to the early '70s concrete pieces of psychologically agitated collages and concrete constructions. Throughout the compilation, there are some inevitable highlights. Tarab, as always, delivers a gem of a piece, overlaying rusted water drips upon a spatialization of huge objects being wrangled in a vacant architecture. Not surprisingly, these sodden sounds originated from the Estonian netherlands of post-Soviet crumble and toxic ruin. Cedric Peyronnet's aggressive drones spiral and collapse like the best minimalist pieces of Charlemagne Palestine or Jim O'Rourke. By contrast, Lizzie Pogson's layered atmosphere from harpischord is hauntingly beautiful. Philip Samartzis's composition of breath and aerated sound is at once creepy as hell and strangely seductive. One of the best things we've heard from him since his days in Gum! Camilla Hannan's insectoid miniatures extracted from the Amazon begins with delicate clicking of beetle shells and ant thoraxes and blossoms into a huge organic chorus that transitions nicely into Eric La Casa's buzzing swarm of processed bees. Like we said, an excellent listen through and through, showcasing the best and brightest coming out of the French and Australian sound communities these days.
MPEG Stream: TARAB "Vald"
MPEG Stream: CEDRIC PEYRONNET "kdi dctb 039"
MPEG Stream: PHILIP SAMARTZIS "Insect Woman"
MPEG Stream: CAMILLA HANNAN "Mamori Spectre"
MPEG Stream: ERIC LA CASA "Zone Sensible"

V/A Rara In Haiti (Soul Jazz) cd 17.98
Haitian Rara music is the strange street festival music heard in ritual celebrations and processions often during Easter Week, commemorating the African ancestry of Afro-Haitian masses in a celebration that combines elements of Catholicism and Vodou in frenzied, ecstatic and often confrontational musical performances. Instruments are often bamboo trumpets, or metal pipes called vaksen, that are rhythmically struck while being blown into, and drums, metal bells and other percussive elements are combined in a trance inducing call and response of rhythms, horns and voices.
For this release, the folks at Soul Jazz ventured to Port-Au-Prince and recorded roving rara groups during Kanaval. The performers often stop traffic and demand money before moving on. Accumulating more followers as they march along, it's a truly communal experience that anyone can join who has any stick or bucket to bang on. Raw and anarchic, a fury of beautiful noise made by people. No amplification necessary!
MPEG Stream: "Le Map Pale / Reziye / Aroyo / Sepavre / Dilene"

V/A Solid Gold (Italians Do It Better) cd 13.98
No doubt we've loved so much of what Italians Do It Better has released recently, in so many ways they really helped reignite the love of dance music in indie culture. With different shades of smoky, slow burning spaced out disco, techno and house music, their roster really reads like an exciting list of some of our favorite synth heavy late night dance floor favorites. Solid Gold is a collection of tracks from 12" singles IDIB have released over the last few years by folks like Invisible Conga People, T&K, Bottin, Twisted Wires, and even Beyonce's sister Solange. We dig this collection so much because as much as we like so much of the Johnny Jewel fueled sounds that have come from the Italians Do It Better camp (Glass Candy, Chromatics, Desire), it's nice to hear a set of songs that have a bit of a different angle and perspective to dance music, than just one group/guy's vision. From total spaced out ravers to cold and thrilling chillers we've been listening to this loud and nonstop ever since it came in to the shop. We even noticed that folks who are usually a bit dance music shy are getting way into this as there are so many awesome prog and psyched out synth moments on this record.
Much like their last compilation After Dark, Italians Do It Better have once again provided us with a seamless compilation that flows so perfectly from start to finish and is making us move in the most sensual and satisfying ways. So smoking!
MPEG Stream: RUBIES FEAT. FEIST "I Feel Electric (Tiedye Remix)"
MPEG Stream: BOTTIN "No Static (Club Version)"
MPEG Stream: TWISTED WIRES "One Night At The Raw Deal (Guitar & Vocal)"
MPEG Stream: SOLANGE "Robots Are Dub American"

V/A The Internalization Of Massy (Massy Recordings) cd 14.98
Yay, skweee!
The vinyl 7" single may be the preferred format for the damaged DIY Scandinavian electro funk music called skweee that we love so much here at AQ, or at least, we've certainly seen a lot of 7" skweee releases come through here recently. But actually, when we're listening to skweee, we don't want to stop (to get up and flip the record, y'know). So a compact disc mix is much more OUR preferred skweee format. And that's what we have here. In the tradition of other skweee cd comps like The Museum Of Future Sound (vols. 1 & 2) and Skweee Tooth, comes The Internalization Of Massy, a mix on the Helsinki label Massy, put together by skweee artist Spartan Lover. He's on here, along with some others we know (the great Randy Barracuda among 'em, with an effervescent cut called "Sex People") and many more we don't. 14 tracks, 12 artists, 49 minutes. Glitchin' and poppin', slippin' and slidin', there's a wide range of skweee happenin' here. To mention just some of it specifically, well... The mellow woozy zink-zonk of "Bjhbj Nkknkn Kl" by Coco Bryce is quite pleasant and vaguely suggestive of some sort of mechanical accordion music. Boston's Stickem drops some haunted bass on "Hoi Poloi". Compiler Spartan Lover contributes an edit of "Silk Smooth Skin" that's got a nice layer of distortion on it, a real fuzzy sheen. Motem's track "Unexact" has some quasi rap vocals, generally a rarity in the mostly instrumental world of skweee. Hybakusha turns in a nicely disjointed groove called "The Number Of The Glitch". Whereas both Mother North and Beatbully go a more shimmery disco-friendly route, we could almost imagine their tracks coming from Italians Do It Better, or on one of those Milky Disco comps. Much darker and creepier is Jyrkka Pajulasskso's "Twisted Bar Game". And even more messed up (but still groovy) is the flutter-stutter and frog-like croak of V.C.'s "Jello On Springs", which appears to be a Mesak remix. And that's not all. So, if you like skweee, or think you might like skweee, this disc is quite recommended.
We've noticed that most skweee releases tend towards minimal art/packaging, and this is no exception, the disc coming in a cardboard sleeve with a simple but nice graphic of waves... and a shark fin?
MPEG Stream: MISK "Mantis Shrimp"
MPEG Stream: RANDY BARRACUDA "Sex People"
MPEG Stream: SPARTAN LOVER "Silk Smooth Skin (Editor's Cut)"

V/A The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970's Nigeria (Part 1) (Sound Way) 3lp 32.00
NOW ON VINYL!! Separated into two volumes, both a bit pricey sorry to say, but might just be worth it for vinyl fiends, one of the best Afro-funk-psych compilations in recent memory! Plus each volume has TWO bonus tracks not on the cd version! Here's more or less what we said about that:
This one's pretty much an "add to cart" no-brainer; the subtitle says it all, "Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970s Nigeria". And it's on the wonderful Soundway label, who've brought us such prior treats as Nigeria Rock Special, Nigeria Disco Funk Special, and Ghana Soundz. Really, do you need to know more? There's 32 killer cuts spread across the two cds here, from almost as many bands, exuberant electric guitar wielding garage acts most of 'em, and funky too, super funky. Anyone eager for a sequel to that Nigeria Rock Special in particular, start freaking out now! Some of the names here are familiar from that comp or other reissues, but we don't think there's any overlap songwise. Others are way more obscure to our ears. So you get Ofege, Ofo The Black Company, The Mebusas, The Hygrades, Colomach, and The Action 13, alongside, among others, P.R.O. (People Rock Outfit), Chuck Barrister & The Voices Of Darkness, The Thermometers, The Comrades, The Ceejebs, The Funkees, The Hykkers, Bongos Ikwue, The Lawrence Amavi Group, The Ify Jerry Krusade, Sonny Okosuns & Paperback Limited, Cicada, The Identicals, and even a band called The Semi Colon! The Semi Colon's song is pretty badass, by the way, with Moog-y "Blow Your Head" style synth and wicka-wicka chicken scratch guitar, shades of The JB's for sure, James Brown's backup band probably a big influence on a LOT of these groups, along with psych rock from the West as well, especially various Frisco ballroom jammers. While there's variety, there's definitely a Nigerian scene "sound" of the era on display here, and that scene must have been a pretty competitive one, these bands are HOT. While there's some lovely, mellowed-out moments (like PRO's laidback ballad of "Blacky Joe"), mostly this collection consists of uptempo, dancefloor filling groovers, full of percolating percussion, wild wah-wah, and soulful vocal exhortations. A few have horns, there's a lot of funky electric organ, and in all cases, the rhythms are, not surprisingly, first and foremost the focus, driving these songs into your heart, mind, and soul via the involuntary head nodding, foot tapping, get up and get down reaction your body will have to 'em...
The compilation takes its name from The Black Mirror's "The World Ends", found on part 2. Meanwhile, "Soundway" by Wrinkars Experience, from part 1, could be the theme song for the label! Kinda akin to a Nigerian "Nuggets", this is indeed yet another awesome Soundway comp, one of our faves from them so far and that's saying a lot. Can't argue with music this funky and fuzzed, though!
MPEG Stream: THE HYGRADES "Somebody's Gotta Lose Or Win"
MPEG Stream: TONY GREY SUPER 7 "Yem Efe"
MPEG Stream: CICADA "Oli Nkwu"
MPEG Stream: THE LIJADU SISTERS "Life's Gone Down Low"

V/A The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970's Nigeria (Part 2) (Sound Way) 3lp 32.00
NOW ON VINYL!! Separated into two volumes, both a bit pricey sorry to say, but might just be worth it for vinyl fiends, one of the best Afro-funk-psych compilations in recent memory! Plus each volume has TWO bonus tracks not on the cd version! Here's more or less what we said about that:
This one's pretty much an "add to cart" no-brainer; the subtitle says it all, "Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970s Nigeria". And it's on the wonderful Soundway label, who've brought us such prior treats as Nigeria Rock Special, Nigeria Disco Funk Special, and Ghana Soundz. Really, do you need to know more? There's 32 killer cuts spread across the two cds here, from almost as many bands, exuberant electric guitar wielding garage acts most of 'em, and funky too, super funky. Anyone eager for a sequel to that Nigeria Rock Special in particular, start freaking out now! Some of the names here are familiar from that comp or other reissues, but we don't think there's any overlap songwise. Others are way more obscure to our ears. So you get Ofege, Ofo The Black Company, The Mebusas, The Hygrades, Colomach, and The Action 13, alongside, among others, P.R.O. (People Rock Outfit), Chuck Barrister & The Voices Of Darkness, The Thermometers, The Comrades, The Ceejebs, The Funkees, The Hykkers, Bongos Ikwue, The Lawrence Amavi Group, The Ify Jerry Krusade, Sonny Okosuns & Paperback Limited, Cicada, The Identicals, and even a band called The Semi Colon! The Semi Colon's song is pretty badass, by the way, with Moog-y "Blow Your Head" style synth and wicka-wicka chicken scratch guitar, shades of The JB's for sure, James Brown's backup band probably a big influence on a LOT of these groups, along with psych rock from the West as well, especially various Frisco ballroom jammers. While there's variety, there's definitely a Nigerian scene "sound" of the era on display here, and that scene must have been a pretty competitive one, these bands are HOT. While there's some lovely, mellowed-out moments (like PRO's laidback ballad of "Blacky Joe"), mostly this collection consists of uptempo, dancefloor filling groovers, full of percolating percussion, wild wah-wah, and soulful vocal exhortations. A few have horns, there's a lot of funky electric organ, and in all cases, the rhythms are, not surprisingly, first and foremost the focus, driving these songs into your heart, mind, and soul via the involuntary head nodding, foot tapping, get up and get down reaction your body will have to 'em...
The compilation takes its name from The Black Mirror's "The World Ends", found on part 2. Meanwhile, "Soundway" by Wrinkars Experience, from part 1, could be the theme song for the label! Kinda akin to a Nigerian "Nuggets", this is indeed yet another awesome Soundway comp, one of our faves from them so far and that's saying a lot. Can't argue with music this funky and fuzzed, though!
MPEG Stream: THE HYGRADES "Bullwalk"
MPEG Stream: THE COMRADES "Somebody's Gotta Lose Or Win"

V/A This Is Dubstep (Vol.1) (Get Darker) 2cd 17.98
By now, you probably don't need to be told again how much we love dubstep, that beat, that killer thick bass wobble, and for all the mutant strains of dubstep that have been popping up, we still love the hard stuff, dark and haunting and mysterious, the beats massive, the bass thick and corrosive, the sort of thing that played loud enough would set off all the car alarms in the neighborhood. And judging from how many folks we get coming in looking for more dubstep, well then we're not alone.
We raved about the awesome second volume in the This Is Dubstep series, always bummed that the first volume was not released as an actual physical release, just a download, but lo and behold, that digital release has now been made flesh, or at least aluminum and plastic, and it's just what the doctor ordered. Assuming he ordered some rib cage rattling tinnitus producing bass heavy crunch.
Which is precisely what you get here, some of the biggest baddest dubstep jams of the last few years, light on the diva vocals, or the good time raviness, heavy on the beats, and even heavier on the bass. Pretty much every track here, even the lighter ones, at some point spit out a huge slab of speaker shredding low end, total headphone / car stereo blasting / club destroying dubstep BLISS.
Right out of the gate, with Joker's classic jam "Tron", it's on, a lurching lumbering stuttering groove, with some buzzing synths and yeah some bad ass bass, and so it goes, lots of names you probably know Distance, MRK1, Cyrus, Pinch, Kromestar, and a bunch you maybe don't, YET.
But some of the jams here are MASSIVE, Chasing Shadows' "Dr Sin" features some of the meanest buzziest bass ever, warped and caustic and so awesome, Cyrus & Distance offer up their own bit of low slung groove, more minimal, but still dark and ominous and hard, Macabre Unit's "Sunshine" is anything but, instead it's a creepy soundtracky basscape, all minor key melodies, and thick swaths of buzzing synth rumble, not to mention some cool vocals, Truth's "Burglar" is another one that's all about the bass, had our speakers crying uncle, even with the bass dialed all the way down. We could go on and on, track by track, needless to say, this is maybe the darkest, heaviest, buzziest dubstep comp yet, and for folks who have been hankering for more of the hard stuff, this will definitely hit the spot. Includes two discs, one mixed, one unmixed, with slightly different track listings. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: CHASING SHADOWS "Dr Sin"
MPEG Stream: MACABRE UNIT "Sunshine"
MPEG Stream: TRUTH "Burglar"
MPEG Stream: JAKES & JOKER "3K Lane"
MPEG Stream: ZED BIAS "Neighbourhood 09 (Chimpo Mix)"

WAGONER, PORTER What Ain't To Be, Just Might Happen / Sings His Own (Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
Finally, these two legendary records from the late, great Porter Wagoner get a well deserved 2-on-1 cd reissue courtesy of the amazing Omni Recording Corporation, who've done some other Wagoner releases, including the Rubber Room compilation.
By the early 1970s, Wagoner's career had stumbled a bit as the charts shifted their focus to the hairier, more socially irredeemable characters within the outlaw movement. Wagoner, however, maintained the regal image he always presented with sparkly nudie suits and his giant golden pompadour. With his skills still fully intact, his personal struggles helped to create an amazing and dark album with What Ain't To Be..., which includes the timeless and depressive ode to losing your mind in "The Rubber Room". Released in 1972, the album also features the amazing "Waldo The Weirdo", which some of you may remember from the recent Troubled Troubadours comp (also on Omni) and a slew of tunes that somehow manage to incorporate a mild but undeniable element of psychedelic weirdness to the affair.
Originally released in 1971, Porter Wagoner Sings His Own is more traditional in its execution but no less enjoyable, with tunes like "Albert Erving", "The Agony Of Waiting", and "Be A Little Quieter" all focusing on the personal torment explored later on What Ain't To Be...
This massive 30 song collection also features 10 bonus tracks, including "I Haven't Learned A Thing" with Merle Haggard and an ill-advised but still enjoyable foray into clavinet/synth driven funkiness with "I'm Gonna Feed 'Em Now". All in all, another great reissue from one of country music's greatest and most respected ambassadors.
MPEG Stream: "The Rubber Room"
MPEG Stream: "More Than Words Can Tell"
MPEG Stream: "The Agony Of Waiting"
MPEG Stream: "Stranger's Song"

WATER BORDERS s/t (Disaro) cd-r 5.98
Local duo Water Borders makes their debut with this 6 song ep, and anyone with a sweet spot for electro-goth weirdness will find plenty of reasons to rejoice. These guys earned their stripes in the enigmatic New Thrill Parade, whose status at this time is uncertain. Whatever the case, this stuff is right up our alley and sure to appeal to anyone digging the current revival of all things gothy, and yet Water Borders' take on things seems much more effortless and not concerned with racking up scene points. The songs seem to swirl within the self-contained atmosphere, with spooky keyboards and simple but incessant throbbing rhythms forming a nice cocoon for the dramatic and crazed vocals. Some of this stuff reminds us of Coil, while other numbers bring to mind a more, cough, "organic" version of Six Finger Satellite circa Machine Cuisine with more of an emphasis on actually singing. The sounds are both noisy and surprisingly majestic, and we are definitely digging the demented dance floor vibe on songs like "Even In The Dark". Limited to 100 copies, so don't snooze on it. A nice surprise, we can't wait to hear what these guys whip up next!
MPEG Stream: "Even In The Dark"
MPEG Stream: "Yawning While Laughing"
MPEG Stream: "Instincts Stink"

WATKINS, ZACHARY JAMES Black Spirituals (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
One of two new strange sonic artifacts this week from the seemingly bottomless vaults of The Tapeworm, a UK tape label trafficking in the strange, the mysterious and the bizarre, this right here, an interesting bit of sound art based on the concepts of race and gender and sex and politics, and how those inform the works of artists, and what's at stake for artists as they try to push the boundaries and strictures of art, especially in terms of the above powerful themes. These references are however not so obvious on a purely musical level, Watkins weaves a slowly undulating dronescape, of deep sonic swells and muted electronic buzz, utilizing analog synths, guitars, drums and percussion, cassette, Casio, bass, and of course SuperCollider(!). Those deep swelling drones, grow more and more corrosive, the buzz intense and crumbling, building to a SUNNO))-like squall, but shot through with streaks of glitch and crunch, all draped over swirling clouds of hiss, and haunting undulating melodies before slipping back into a more tranquil stretch of deep resonant dronemusic. The piece is somehow based on a cassette tape Watkins found of a lecture by scholar and musician Bernice Reagon, a member of vocal group Sweet Honey On The Rock, which Watkins sometimes incorporated into live performances, though we don't hear it here. Definitely recommended for all the drone lovers out there, had this been a super limited cd-r, in mysterious black packaging, with some name like Blackened Blood Sphere, all you grim heavies would be all over this, so maybe that's actually what the dripping oozing crucifix cover is all about, and the title, cuz these are indeed some seriously grim black sonic spirituals. And are thus, as with pretty much all Tapeworm stuff, totally recommended.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. With cool dripping crucifix cover art by Savage pencil.

WAVVES King Of The Beach (Fat Possum) cd 13.98
The bands that you really end up loving and having life long relationships with are often the bands who you follow through all their incarnations, from their most primitive and noisy to when they flesh out and refine their sound, removing all the extraneous layers and creating something seemingly far removed from that first chunk of raw sound, but in reality, to you, it's just another side of that amazing artist. And it's the bands who you love in all their various sonic shadings and with all the twists and turns that become the ones who are the soundtracks to our lives. Guided By Voices, Pavement, Jawbreaker, all bands who we have loved from their sloppiest and most raw incarnations to their most poppy and catchy outings.
Wavves seem to be on the way to joining that elite crew. After unleashing two smoking records of way blown out garage pop burners, Nathan Williams has returned with a much more refined, up front and catchy gem of a pop record. As much as we loved the sound and aesthetic of the first two Wavves records we knew that the reason it struck such a chord with us was because we could tell this was a kid who had the gift of writing memorable and catchy pop songs, no matter how obscured those songs were by fuzz and crunch.
King Of The Beach ditches most of the blown out distortion and trades it in for even more colorful hooks, addictive melodies and songs that will be stuck in our heads for the rest of the summer and beyond. It's not like it's all totally slick or overproduced, in fact there is a really cool washed out sound that glides through much of the record, but instead of it being about going all into the red, it flows more freely, creating a perfect beachside vibe of an album. Williams is still singing about boredom, girls, the betrayal of friends, being a fuck up, etc., all long standing ingredients for some of the best mischievous pop of all time.
It hit us the other day why we love this record. It reminds us so much of so many of our favorite bands who injected punk spirit into such memorable pop songs. Bands like The Descendents, Screeching Weasel and Lifetime, who represented the great possibility of pop-punk. There is that same kind of impassioned, snotty, smart and spirited side to King Of The Beach that's been making us jump up and down in pure wide eyed grinning joy when we listen to it blasting as loud as it can.
The record also offers up the most varied collection yet of Williams' recordings, songs that evoke '50s girl groups, hand clapping head shaking ecstasy and stoned and whirling garage pop ravers. Start to finish this is an undeniably great pop record. Total contender for record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "King Of The Beach"
MPEG Stream: "Post Acid"
MPEG Stream: "Baby Say Goodbye"

WAVVES King Of The Beach (Fat Possum) lp 14.98
The bands that you really end up loving and having life long relationships with are often the bands who you follow through all their incarnations, from their most primitive and noisy to when they flesh out and refine their sound, removing all the extraneous layers and creating something seemingly far removed from that first chunk of raw sound, but in reality, to you, it's just another side of that amazing artist. And it's the bands who you love in all their various sonic shadings and with all the twists and turns that become the ones who are the soundtracks to our lives. Guided By Voices, Pavement, Jawbreaker, all bands who we have loved from their sloppiest and most raw incarnations to their most poppy and catchy outings.
Wavves seem to be on the way to joining that elite crew. After unleashing two smoking records of way blown out garage pop burners, Nathan Williams has returned with a much more refined, up front and catchy gem of a pop record. As much as we loved the sound and aesthetic of the first two Wavves records we knew that the reason it struck such a chord with us was because we could tell this was a kid who had the gift of writing memorable and catchy pop songs, no matter how obscured those songs were by fuzz and crunch.
King Of The Beach ditches most of the blown out distortion and trades it in for even more colorful hooks, addictive melodies and songs that will be stuck in our heads for the rest of the summer and beyond. It's not like it's all totally slick or overproduced, in fact there is a really cool washed out sound that glides through much of the record, but instead of it being about going all into the red, it flows more freely, creating a perfect beachside vibe of an album. Williams is still singing about boredom, girls, the betrayal of friends, being a fuck up, etc., all long standing ingredients for some of the best mischievous pop of all time.
It hit us the other day why we love this record. It reminds us so much of so many of our favorite bands who injected punk spirit into such memorable pop songs. Bands like The Descendents, Screeching Weasel and Lifetime, who represented the great possibility of pop-punk. There is that same kind of impassioned, snotty, smart and spirited side to King Of The Beach that's been making us jump up and down in pure wide eyed grinning joy when we listen to it blasting as loud as it can.
The record also offers up the most varied collection yet of Williams' recordings, songs that evoke '50s girl groups, hand clapping head shaking ecstasy and stoned and whirling garage pop ravers. Start to finish this is an undeniably great pop record. Total contender for record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "King Of The Beach"
MPEG Stream: "Post Acid"
MPEG Stream: "Baby Say Goodbye"

WHITE, PAUL Paul White And The Purple Brain (Now-Again / One-Handed Music) cd 17.98
First we've heard from sampledelic South London producer Paul White, whose new album for Now-Again ought to appeal to everyone who liked the Madlib Medicine Show No. 6 disc we listed last time (which was a crazy DJ mix of vintage psych/funk/prog from around the world). Paul White likewise takes a chopped-up, dial-spinning, hiphop approach to quite similar, psychedelic material coming from but ONE source: the records of cult Swedish psych purveyor ST Mikael (who records for the Subliminal Sounds label, same as Dungen). Sampling, editing, looping, and layering snippets of ST's stuff, Paul also contributes additional synth, percussion and vocals, constructing a veritable psychedelic fantasmagoria, 25 delirious and delightful tracks that mash n' meld hiphop beats, popsike melody, Eastern string zing, folky strum, freaky electric guitar, odd sound FX, head nodding funky grooves, mystical atmospheres, non sequitur spoken bits, etc.
While we must admit we were only passingly familiar with the work of ST Mikael (and what we'd heard, or maybe it was just his record covers, seemed a bit cheesy, in an aging New Agey hippie sort of way, he's from the '90s after all) but Mr. White's hiphop makeover of Mikael is definitely cool. The results are a bit like the aforementioned Madlib, also remind us of When albums like The Lobster Boys and Pearl Harvest, as well as the likes of DJ Shadow, BMSR, and Rockford Kabine. Dreamy and druggy and definitely A.D.D. Recommended for sure. YOUR brain will be purple by the time you're through listening.
The cd version comes in a cardboard wallet, the vinyl in deluxe "paste-on" jacket, and in addition, the vinyl version includes a bonus 12" (first 1000 copies only) featuring Paul White together with Guilty Simpson.
MPEG Stream: "Pride"
MPEG Stream: "Ancient Treasure"
MPEG Stream: "Marshen Signals"
MPEG Stream: "My Guitar Whales"
MPEG Stream: "Every Breath"

WHITE, PAUL Paul White And The Purple Brain (Now-Again / One-Handed Music) 2lp + 12" 30.00
First we've heard from sampledelic South London producer Paul White, whose new album for Now-Again ought to appeal to everyone who liked the Madlib Medicine Show No. 6 disc we listed last time (which was a crazy DJ mix of vintage psych/funk/prog from around the world). Paul White likewise takes a chopped-up, dial-spinning, hiphop approach to quite similar, psychedelic material coming from but ONE source: the records of cult Swedish psych purveyor ST Mikael (who records for the Subliminal Sounds label, same as Dungen). Sampling, editing, looping, and layering snippets of ST's stuff, Paul also contributes additional synth, percussion and vocals, constructing a veritable psychedelic fantasmagoria, 25 delirious and delightful tracks that mash n' meld hiphop beats, popsike melody, Eastern string zing, folky strum, freaky electric guitar, odd sound FX, head nodding funky grooves, mystical atmospheres, non sequitur spoken bits, etc.
While we must admit we were only passingly familiar with the work of ST Mikael (and what we'd heard, or maybe it was just his record covers, seemed a bit cheesy, in an aging New Agey hippie sort of way, he's from the '90s after all) but Mr. White's hiphop makeover of Mikael is definitely cool. The results are a bit like the aforementioned Madlib, also remind us of When albums like The Lobster Boys and Pearl Harvest, as well as the likes of DJ Shadow, BMSR, and Rockford Kabine. Dreamy and druggy and definitely A.D.D. Recommended for sure. YOUR brain will be purple by the time you're through listening.
The cd version comes in a cardboard wallet, the vinyl in deluxe "paste-on" jacket, and in addition, the vinyl version includes a bonus 12" (first 1000 copies only) featuring Paul White together with Guilty Simpson.
MPEG Stream: "Pride"
MPEG Stream: "Ancient Treasure"
MPEG Stream: "Marshen Signals"
MPEG Stream: "My Guitar Whales"
MPEG Stream: "Every Breath"

YETI #9 magazine + cd 11.95
Just like clockwork, a killer new issue of long running magazine Yeti, shows up on the day of the list. So instead of giving a detailed rundown, of all the stuff in the new Yeti we've read about and the killer Yeti cd we listened to as we dug deep into Yeti number nine, we'll have to give you a thumbnail version, since it literally showed up about 10 minutes ago, although once the list is in fact done and sent, we will of course, be taking Yeti home and digging in for real.
So number nine is here, featuring visionary Australian singer/songwriter Pip Proud, two interviews with American musician/installation artist Maryanne Amacher, some rare writings from The Fugs' Tuli Kupferberg (R.I.P.), photos and observations on tour from Dean Wareham, comic artist James Turek, some fiction from Mimi Lipson, comic artist Lizz Hickey, Indian music scholar and crazy record collector VAK Ranga Rao, new artwork by Arrington De Dionyso, artist filmmaker Bruce Conner, musician Alasdair Roberts, new art by Alissa Wessler, writings by Joaquin V. Gonzalez, comics and illustrations by Beatriz Monteavaro, and then as always, a bunch of ads crammed into the back of the mag.
Also as always, included is a companion cd, this time featuring rare and exclusive recordings from Pip Proud, Teenage Panzerkorps, US Girls, Plankton Wat, Spencer Moody, The Art Museums, Human Eye, Fantastic Palace, Bobby Charles, KO + Friends, Rhythmical Wright Singers, Rev. Lonnie Farris, AIAS, Bishop R. McDaniel, Arrington De Dionyso's Malaikat Dan Singa, Geoff Soule, Reading Rainbow, X-Ray Eyeballs, Marisa Anderson, Modern Women, and a bunch of awesome Indian music from VAK Ranga Rao's 78 collection, selected by Rob Millis!
Needless to say, as always, totally recommended.

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CAROLINER RAINBOW FINGERS OF THE UNDERGROUND & THEIR BREAKABLE BONES The Sabre Waving Saracen Wall (self released) cd-r 11.98
There was a time a few years back, that if you lived in San Francisco, you could stumble into a bar, or a club, and find yourself transported to some fucked up and freaked out otherworld, an eye popping blacklight, dayglo world of huge cardboard buildings, and weird costumed, big headed characters, a musical world, set to the strains of some sort of demented detuned, industrial post bluegrass, a noise drenched 1800's hoedown, all detuned banjos, screeching violins, wheezing organs, scattered percussive splatter, little bursts of frantic bluegrass with twisted falsetto vocals, set amidst, thick streaks of undulating drones, and shards of crumbling noise, it was a bit like a stage production of Oklahoma, as performed by members of Faxed Head, stumbling and demented and confusional, a massive crumbling sprawl of sonic whatthefuck for sure.
In keeping with their confusional / obscurist approach, Caroliner took on a different name for every record. The Sabre Waving Saracen Wall originally released on vinyl in 1992, found the band christened Caroliner Rainbow Fingers Of The Underground & Their Breakable Bones, and was yet another document of the group's fractured faux historical sonic explorations, equal parts avant rock prankery, pure demented songsmithery, and an unhealthy interest in musics of the past, not to mention a visual aesthetic that fell somewhere between special ed kindergarten and drug addled Keith Haring, all blobby shapes and retina burning patterns, geometric constructions, and of course gallons of dayglo paint. The perfect backdrop for the group's unhinged pageantry. On record, it plays out like some unearthed wax cylinder, a recording of some sort of educational radio play, about the old west, but translated into some alien language, the soundtrack a demented deconstructed noise drenched country / folk, complete with random sound effects, strange voices, and what sounds like a small chamber ensemble wrestling with a bluegrass band, as the various players begin to lose brain function, resulting in a gloriously stumbling, lurching soundtrack, that starts out weird, and only manages to get weirder.
Not sure why suddenly this reissue popped up, but Grux from Caroliner just popped in with a stack, packaged in that distinctly Caroliner fashion, all strange folded multi color papers, glued and photocopied, the sort of packaging that once you open, you can never reassemble, which when you think about it, suits the group's sound to a 'T'. Not necessarily limited, but they are pretty fancy and handmade, so when we run out, it might take us a little while to get more...
RealAudio clip: "Side 1"
MPEG Stream: "Side 2"

CISFINITUM Devotio (Drone) 10" 14.98
Warehouse find! Here's a great release from a few years back, released as part of Drone Records 10" series. Cisfinitum is the work of the Russian dark ambient practitioner Evgeny Voronovsky, who augments his sound design with a grim intensity with more than a few industrialist illusions. During a concert that Voronovsky presented in Germany for a Drone Records showcase, it's been reported that he managed to empty the room through the cross-contanimation of his deleterious frequencies. We gotta wonder just what the hell he did, as the audience who would go to Drone performance in 2005 would surely know what they're getting themselves into!
Devotio was clearly not the recording that he presented there. While psychologically dark, both of these extended tracks are sourced entirely from church bells. Voronovsky stretches out the incredibly rich resonance and compacts dense layers of these drones whose fundamental frequencies begin to detour away from harmonic purity and into uneasy dissonance. This isn't a dissonance of scraped metal or overblown distortion, but rather a finely tuned cross-hatching of frequencies beating against each other. Voronovsky couples this slow development of aggressively tuned minimalism with additional layerings from alarm bells (or he's processed his church bells to sound like alarms), and growling swells of blackened noise. Certainly for fans of Hazard, Troum / Maeror Tri, any of the more clinical aspects of Cold Meat Industries, and the headspace of Lustmord. Highly recommended!

DANGER MOUSE & SPARKLEHORSE Dark Night Of The Soul (Capitol / Lex) cd 16.98
After all the hype, the drama, the "is it coming out or isn't it?", the beautiful book packaged with the blank cd-r so you could download this record illegally, we sort of expected to be blown away, but at first it was just the opposite, we were actively bummed out, not just disappointed, but appalled. Mostly because this was the last recorded music we'd hear from two of our favorite songwriters EVER, Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse and Vic Chesnutt, both of whom took their own lives. And frankly it kind of sucked. But we've listened to it a few times now, and it's not nearly as bad as we first thought. It seems more like a case of too many cooks, there's no way a record featuring so many guest stars and contributors could be cohesive, or at least the chances are pretty slim. Especially when you look at the list: Black Francis, Julian Casablancas, Vic Chesnutt, The Flaming Lips, David Lynch, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, James Mercer of The Shins, Nina Persson of the Cardigans, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega and Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. And the record sounds exactly like you'd expect from that list, like a crazy mish mash of styles and personalities, of sounds and approaches, none of which really work at all with each other. The real question is WHY all of those people? Some sort of friend rock situation? Strip away all the bullshit and all the guest vocals and probably hidden in there is a really good Sparklehorse record. But instead, it's more like a compilation, and not an especially cohesive one, which is maybe fine, but some of the songs, the more rocking ones specifically, are stinkers, and definitely disrupt the flow. Chesnutt's track is pretty great, his voice always so intense, tortured and emotional, perfectly complimented by Linkous's gorgeous hazy production. Which in places does sound incredible, the guest-less Linkous tracks are pretty good, or the ones where the guests try to fit themselves into Linkous' sound instead of the other way around, but even then, for the most part there are no rough edges at all, which was always the best part, the crackle and buzz, the glitch and hum, the happy accidents, but throughout, the production slick and glossy, a little TOO slick. How we would have preferred some sort of super intimate DIY Linkous / Chesnutt collaboration, but alas, it's never to be. So best we just take what we can from this mostly disappointing collection. We'll probably end up picking 4 or 5 songs, to load on to the iPod, and then just forget all about the rest...
MPEG Stream: "Revenge (Feat. The Flaming Lips)"
MPEG Stream: "Grim Augury (Feat. Vic Chesnutt)"
MPEG Stream: "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It) (Feat. David Lynch)"
MPEG Stream: "Pain (Feat. Iggy Pop)"

DANGER MOUSE & SPARKLEHORSE Dark Night Of The Soul (Capitol / Lex) 2lp 21.00
After all the hype, the drama, the "is it coming out or isn't it?", the beautiful book packaged with the blank cd-r so you could download this record illegally, we sort of expected to be blown away, but at first it was just the opposite, we were actively bummed out, not just disappointed, but appalled. Mostly because this was the last recorded music we'd hear from two of our favorite songwriters EVER, Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse and Vic Chesnutt, both of whom took their own lives. And frankly it kind of sucked. But we've listened to it a few times now, and it's not nearly as bad as we first thought. It seems more like a case of too many cooks, there's no way a record featuring so many guest stars and contributors could be cohesive, or at least the chances are pretty slim. Especially when you look at the list: Black Francis, Julian Casablancas, Vic Chesnutt, The Flaming Lips, David Lynch, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, James Mercer of The Shins, Nina Persson of the Cardigans, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega and Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. And the record sounds exactly like you'd expect from that list, like a crazy mish mash of styles and personalities, of sounds and approaches, none of which really work at all with each other. The real question is WHY all of those people? Some sort of friend rock situation? Strip away all the bullshit and all the guest vocals and probably hidden in there is a really good Sparklehorse record. But instead, it's more like a compilation, and not an especially cohesive one, which is maybe fine, but some of the songs, the more rocking ones specifically, are stinkers, and definitely disrupt the flow. Chesnutt's track is pretty great, his voice always so intense, tortured and emotional, perfectly complimented by Linkous's gorgeous hazy production. Which in places does sound incredible, the guest-less Linkous tracks are pretty good, or the ones where the guests try to fit themselves into Linkous' sound instead of the other way around, but even then, for the most part there are no rough edges at all, which was always the best part, the crackle and buzz, the glitch and hum, the happy accidents, but throughout, the production slick and glossy, a little TOO slick. How we would have preferred some sort of super intimate DIY Linkous / Chesnutt collaboration, but alas, it's never to be. So best we just take what we can from this mostly disappointing collection. We'll probably end up picking 4 or 5 songs, to load on to the iPod, and then just forget all about the rest...
MPEG Stream: "Revenge (Feat. The Flaming Lips)"
MPEG Stream: "Grim Augury (Feat. Vic Chesnutt)"
MPEG Stream: "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It) (Feat. David Lynch)"
MPEG Stream: "Pain (Feat. Iggy Pop)"

DECIBEL #70 August 2010 magazine 4.95
Cool cartoony comic book cover portrait of Danzig (back in saddle with a new album, y'know). Inside this issue of the USA's best glossy metal magazine: Coliseum, Wormrot, Apostle Of Solitude, Nevermore, Dismember (in the Hall Of Fame with their 1991 classic Like An Ever Flowing Stream), Pantera's Vinnie Paul, and a eulogy for Ronnie James Dio. Among much else!

INDIAN JEWELRY Totaled (We Are Free) lp 16.98
Now available on vinyl...
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.
The lp comes with a free digital download of the record.
MPEG Stream: "Lapis Lazuli"
MPEG Stream: "Excessive Moonlight"
MPEG Stream: "Touching The Roof Of The Sun"

KULZICK, ALFIE Chatterbox: Biography Of A Bar - San Francisco 1986-1990 (Chatterbox) book 16.95
We listed the documentary about the notorious late '80s Valencia Street rock bar, The Chatterbox, a few lists back. Now we have copies of the official book written by vintage Aquarius Records employee, Alfie Kulzick!
SF music scene vets will no doubt fondly recall the days of the Chameleon Lounge bar which was located on Valencia Street a few blocks away from aQ. It was a beer-soaked and black velvet painting festooned underground rock haven through most of the '90s. These days that spot is now occupied by a considerably less gritty and tattered bar called Amnesia. However, you'll score super duper old school cred points if you can remember the venue that predated the Chameleon... The Chatterbox!... even more so if you have some first hand memories of your own! And if you do happen to have some of your own then you're probably in this book, aren't you?
Most of us here at aQ were either still underage back then and/or hadn't made our way to the Bay Area yet. So unfortunately we weren't privy to the club's glory years circa 1986-1990, but we all can now catch a time machine-esque sneak peek via this book. It's packed with plenty of live rawk photos, punk fliers and vivid anecdotes with the likes of Hewhocannotbenamed, Boom (of Boom & The Legion Of Doom), Buck Naked, Ginger Coyote, Blag Dahlia, Gary X Indiana, SF Dogs, Sister Double Happiness, among many many others. Plus amazing photos and stories of touring bands such as the Dwarves, The Mentors, and Nirvana. We spotted friends like Chewy and John from Hammers Of Misfortune in there too (back then, in the band Osgood Slaughter). It makes for a wildly colorful patchwork of recollections (er, though the pics themselves are all black and white)! And it gives equal love to the music acts, the staff and the patrons, conveying the beloved neighborhood bar's strong sense of community, and offering a vivid raw glimpse of the late '80s SF music scene.
The book's layout and content really captures the feel of a well-worn zine from back in the day. Y'know, cut'n'pasted together with love and very rough around the edges, almost like it was assembled in the wee hours at the Kinko's on Market Street (back when it was open 24 hours).
Fuck Yeah!

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM This Is Happening (DFA / Virgin) 2lp 21.00
Now available on vinyl.
Newest one from James Murphy finds him going back and forth between dancefloor burners and less electronic more rock sounding numbers. Lots of people are freaking out about this one. Somehow it's not moving us too much. Sorry.
MPEG Stream: "Dance Yrself Clean"
MPEG Stream: "All I Want"
MPEG Stream: "Pow Pow"

MAIDEN VOYAGE / AMARANTHINE TRAMPLER The Journey Embarks / As The Colour Of Love Flows From My Shattered Teeth (Endless Desperation) cd 13.98
We find stuff all the time, tucked away in the close, in the backroom, copies of records that somehow slipped through the cracks, record we hoped to eventually get more of, but eventually forgot about, it's pretty exciting to (re)discover these mysterious releases, even more exciting when we can't for the life of us remember where they came from, who ordered them, or when we actually got them.
Which is the case with this killer split of ultra heavy funereal doom metal, which we've had for almost 5 years, but only just now realized we had never listed. Which is a shame, cuz both these bands are pretty incredible.
Maiden Voyage are from the UK, and traffic in some seriously extreme miserablist doom, not crushingly heavy, as much as depressive and dark, reminding us a bit of Esoteric, that same sort of weird production, spaced out and a little bit brittle, making the sound more druggy and psychedelic, the guitars are still thick and fuzzy, the riffs glacial, the rhythms a snail's pace pound, the vocals a belched demonic grumble, but the melodies are skeletal, and the songs seem to dissipate into near ambience, the riffs ringing out, leaving just ghostly traces of spidery psychedelic guitars, it's actually more like some sort of doom-d slowcore, than any sort of true doom, which is what makes it so cool. Haunting, and creepy and atmospheric and a little bit damaged.
Maiden Voyage are teamed up with another UK funeral doom combo, the awesomely monickered Amaranthine Trampler, whose sound is strikingly similar, which makes sense, as both bands are one man bands, and than one man is THE SAME GUY! Amaranthine Trampler offers up another weirdly lo-fi bit of lumbering bleak misery, the vocals a bit more chantlike, the vocals a little bit more caustic, but overall, still moody and miserable, a bit ambient and abstract, thick swaths of chugging, some almost groove, giving way to grim funereal crawls, and like Maiden Voyage, those spidery psychedelic melodies and the weirdly lo-fi vibe and doom-ed slowcore feel.
Needless to say, if you're a fan of haunting mysterious outsider doom, and depressive ambient grimness, twisted drugginess and damaged black psychedelia, all spread into thick swaths of downtuned creep and crawl, then best snag one of these before they're gone...
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one hand numbered, but since this came out close to 5 years ago, odds are it's undoubtedly out of print by now. We only have 4 or 5 copies, so if you want one, you'll have to move a little faster than either of these guys...
MPEG Stream: MAIDEN VOYAGE "Opaline Waterfalls"
MPEG Stream: AMARANTHINE TRAMPLER "Autumn Is Dying - Winter Is Dead"

MIRAH Don't / The Tears That Fall (Mississippi) 7" 5.98
Back in stock!!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Taking a break from obscure reissues, lost world music artifacts, and unearthed country and folk and blues treasures, Mississippi looks to long time aQ fave Mirah for a brief two song blast of fuzzy, horn flecked reverby sixties girl group sounds. Yep, not what we usually expect from Mirah, but we're loving it. The first clue is the cover photo, which features Mirah in fishnets and knee high boots on an old motorcycle in a grafitti'd alley, and once inside, that's exactly what it sounds like, warm washed out old school 'Leader Of The Pack' style jangle and croon, shuffling rhythms, loads of delay and reverb, soulful horns, plenty of back ground "oooooh's and 'aaaaah's, total Lesley Gore, Supremes worship.
The flipside is another soulful groover, this one more sultry, a woozy sexy after hours sixties soul ballad, Mirah's voice lush and smoky, the horns warm and languid, all wrapped around an irresistible main melody, at once total old school, but somehow re-envisioned as a modern bit of retro garage groove, so good.

MULTER Schauzeichen (Auf Abwegen) 10" 11.98
The moody, obscurantist ensemble Multer had its origins in the industrial / field recording outfit ABGS, who in turn had some connections to Cranioclast. Of course, these are references that mine the post-industrial currents of German experimental music; those dour atmospheres persist in the current Multer guise, but with an ear for what the likes of Village Of Savoonga had been up to (remember how great that band was?), in addition to all things Drone Records. The first of the three tracks on this 10" interweaves drone guitar chords into a two note melody that oscillates plaintively above of a set of electrical pulses. The whole ambience of the track is thoroughly evocative in its gloom that elegantly sits upon the lattice work of skittering rhythms and that simple turgid melody. The second cut wraps fuzzed out stabs of guitar noise above angular march of drum machines and electronics. Much closer to the Morr Records sound than what's ever appeared from Multer in the past. And the finale returns to the guitar drone, but blown out through distortion, all shoegazing and maudlin in its slice of noise that sheds all of its layering to reveal the melody hidden with. Really nice work found here; but limited stock!

QUEEN VICTORIA Auld Lang Syne (Abaddon) 7" 4.50
Really cool doomy layered folk by Nick Malkin, who is now a member of Sun Araw. Like a slowcore record covered with gobs of dirt and dust. We were only able to get a few of these from him when Sun Araw were last in town so grab one of these before they are gone.

SLEIGH BELLS Treats (Mom + Pop / N.E.E.T.) picture disc 2lp 17.98
Now available on a swank looking picture disc lp!!! Here's what we said about the cd:
It was pretty impossible to not want to hate this band. The hype was unprecedented, they didn't even have a record out, and blogs and magazines and newspapers were hailing them as not just the next big thing, but the only new band that mattered. M.I.A snapped them up and signed them to her Mom + Pop label, and every tastemaker that mattered were singing the praises of this 'electro-metal' duo, so of course anyone with a punk rock or subversive anti-mainstream bone in their body, recoiled, and already knew, somehow, that the record would be a piece of shit. But guess what, it's totally not. It's actually pretty great. Listening to Sleigh Bells now, it's easy to see why people were freaking out, with nothing but live shows to go on, this stuff is total hipster dance party manna, big beats, stuttering and loping, big crunchy super distorted riffs, swirling synths, and woozy sing songy almost double-dutch style vocals. The similarities to M.I.A are undeniable, the same sort of beats and vocal cadences, makes a lot of sense they would find each other, and no doubt anyone who digs M.I.A. will probably like this too. Fun and funky, hooky and a little bit heavy, rambunctious, sweaty, groovy, definitely a perfect party record, we can almost imagine the sorts of herky jerky YouTube dancing this stuff will inspire, but you know what, fuck it, fuck the haters, this stuff is awesome, it's maybe not as important and genre shattering as some folks might want to believe, but it killer, and whether we wanted to or not, we find ourselves listening to this a LOT.
Still seems so strange though that one half of the Sleigh Bells duo is the guitarist from metalcore combo Poison The Well...
MPEG Stream: "Tell 'Em"
MPEG Stream: "Kids"
MPEG Stream: "Riot Rhythm"
MPEG Stream: "Inifinity Guitars"

TERRORIZER Issue #197 magazine + cd 9.25
The Wire magazine of Metal magazines. As far as we're concerned. From England, a must read, etc. This issue... Watain are the cover stars, looking like they just stepped out of a "troo grim" version of Time Bandits. Also, inside: Skyforger, Annihilator, Keep Of Kalessin, Armored Saint, Jucifer, Karma To Burn, The Howling Wind, and the delightfully named Dew-Scented. Plus lots more, like Grand Magus in the studio, Ivar from Enslaved making a mix tape, and a Roadburn report. Plus reviews... and the bonus free cd sampler on the cover.

TERRORIZER Issue #198 magazine + cd 9.25
Hmm, got two issues to review this list! Either Terrorizer's publication schedule is screwy, or ours is. Probably ours! Well, twice the Terrorizer won't hurt, you like to read, right? This issue features such worthies as Grand Magus (on the cover this time), Nachtmystium, the Melvins, Ramesses, Harvey Milk, Lair Of The Minotaur, and much more, including a studio report from Torche, a label profile of Bindrune Recordings, and a eulogy for Ronnie James Dio. Plus a free cover-mounted sampler cd. As always, essential for the metal fan who wants to keep informed.

TO ROCOCO ROT Speculation (Domino) lp 22.00
Also on vinyl!
We've always thought there was something special about To Rococo Rot, we've heard moments on their records that really show they can reach next level brilliance in their ability merge such a pronounced feeling and mood with their deep hitting grooves and beats. Before dubstep and any of the other new million electronic subcatagories To Roccoco Roc were making really rich, moody and nuanced sounds that didn't conform to one single style. Speculation is their first album in many years and it finds the Berlin trio in top notch form. The album opens with Cluster like pulsations and as it organicaly moves forward with a post-kraut-rock sensibility as the sounds shift and sway going back and forth from a tense & haunting sensation to something more free and exploratory. There are moments where they tap into the kind of sound we imagine Tortoise and Mouse On Mars creating if they collaborated yet there is something a bit more sinister seething under the surface of To Rococo Rot's sound. Their versitility in sound really sets them apart from so many of their peers. So nice to have them back!
The vinyl comes with a digital download.
MPEG Stream: "Away"
MPEG Stream: "Seele"
MPEG Stream: "Ship"

WAX POETICS Issue #42 magazine 9.99
Special RnB issue. 2 different covers, Barry White or Gil Scott-Heron. Back covers too, D'Angelo or Erykah Badu. Inside, all those folks, plus plenty more, including "An Oral History Of The Wah-Wah Pedal".

WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY Against Love (Secretly Canadian) lp 16.98
Now available on vinyl too.
We had kind of lost track of Windsor For The Derby over the years, we weren't even sure if they were still around but when this new record arrived we realized that they've been at it all along, releasing a new record every couple years. This doesn't stray too much from what made many of us here dig them so much. Intimate and breezy indie rock with a a dreamlike shoegaze vibe. We really love when they get more into the atmospheric side of of their sound, conjuring up such beautiful hazy and wistful states. Against Love divides its time between those dreamy atmospheres and a more straight ahead intimate indie rock sound. Cool.
The vinyl comes with a coupon for a free digital download of the album.
MPEG Stream: "Autumn Song"
MPEG Stream: "Queen Of The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Moon Shadows"

WIRE, THE #318 August 2010 magazine 9.98
On the cover, field recordist extraordinare Chris Watson (a marvelous photograph featuring him getting up close and personal with an array of butterflies or moths)! Inside, also: Chicks On Speed, Terror Danjah, Julian Lynch, Surgeon, an essay on/overview of cosmic disco, and plenty more...

XLR8R #134 July/Aug 2010 magazine 4.99
Minimalist techno maven Robert Hood on the cover. Also: Actress, Oval, Mount Kimbie, Diskjokke, De Tropix, and more. Including lots of ads for electronic music making gear and software (the full-page one for Roland's AX-Synth being our fave).





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V/A I'm Going Where The Water Drinks Like Wine (Sub Rosa) lp 15.98
Now available on vinyl, sweet!
As of late anyone with even a passing interest in the blues has had plenty of reasons to rejoice. Almost every list we are blessed with something vinyl on Monk or Mississippi, but even with the wealth of material available, there are still plenty of lesser known artists who will go unheard, due to their obscurity, lack of recordings, or inability to fit comfortably within the predominantly white myths that have, for better and/or worse, shaped the history of blues music and its legacy. That's why it's so great having this awesome new comp focusing on some of the less influential but still powerful bluesmen. With a whopping 24 tracks, this collection spans from 1923 (with, reportedly, the first recorded use of a guitar slide, or more appropriately, knife, as wielded by Sylvester Weaver) to 1929, one of the most noteworthy of years for recorded blues music. Some of these musicians you may recognize, like Ishman Bracey (whose Suitcase Full Of Blues we reviewed not too long back), but many of them are just names we've read about, and others still are completely new to us. No matter, it's all prime stuff carefully selected to help show us what we have been missing. Carrying on in the tradition of legendary labels like Yazoo and Arhoolie, Sub Rosa has done us a great favor with this one, and we're hoping even more labels will take a cue and excavate essential recordings from the past. Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: BO WEAVIL JACKSON "Why Do You Moan"
MPEG Stream: BUDDY BOY HAWKINS "Workin' On The Railroad"
MPEG Stream: ISHMAN BRACEY "The Fore Day Blues"
MPEG Stream: KID BAILEY "Mississippi Bottom Blues"

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

A-FRAMES "333" (S-S) 3lp 36.00
AMMAN, JOSH "Places - Folio Series" (Dynamophone) cd ep 9.98
ARCADE FIRE "Suburbs" (Merge) cd 15.98
AUTOMELODI "s/t" (Wierd) cd 11.98
BOOKS, THE "Way Out" (Temporary Residence Ltd.) cd 14.98
CLINE, NELS SINGERS "Initiate" (Cryptogramophone) 2cd 16.98
COLE, DUSTIN AND THE SPECIALEST "Try And Love Me" (Scratch Recordings) cd
CUT CHEMIST "Sound Of The Police" (Stable Sound) cd/lp 17.98/21.00
DDAMAGE "Aeroplanes" (Ascetic) cd 19.98
DIVORCE "s/t" (Optimo) 10" 13.98
DRUMM, KEVIN "s/t" (Thin Wrist) 2lp 31.00
DUKES, THE "s/t" (Red Lounge) cd 23.00
EARLY MAN "Death Potion" (The End) cd 12.98
EAST BAY GREASE "Just Head" (Classic Bar Music) 7" 5.50
ETRAN FINATAWA "Tarkat Tajje / Let's Go" (Riverboat / World Music Network) cd 16.98
EVERYTHING BUT THE GARGOYLE "Four Flies On Grey Velvet" (Panaxis) cd-r 9.98
FABULOUS DIAMONDS "Fabulous Diamonds II" (Chapter Music) cd 16.98
FOOD "Quiet Inlet" (ECM) cd 17.98
GALBRAITH, ALASTAIR "Mass" (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
GATE "A Republic Of Sadness" (Ba Da Bing) lp 14.98
GUITAR MAGAZINE / LEADERS "split" (Classic Bar Music) 7" 5.50
HEATER "God And Hair" (Permanent) lp 16.98
HIGH WOLF "Ascension" (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
HOUR OF 13 "The Ritualist" (Eyes Like Snow / Northern Silence) cd 14.98
HURLEY, MIKE "First Songs" (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 16.98
ILL PROFESSOR "Miracle Of Luck" (Plus Tapes) Cass 5.98
INTERNATIONAL HELLO "s/t" (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
J DILLA "Donut Shop" (Stones Throw) lp + serato control tone 40.00
JACKSON, BOBBY "The Cafe Extraordinary Experience" (Jazzman) cd 17.98
JONNYX AND THE GROADIES "TV Party: Re-Runs And Lost Episodes" (JX:ATG) cd 10.98
K-X-P "s/t" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 18.98
KEBAB "s/t" (Softspot) lp 14.98
KNUT "Wonder" (Hydra Head) cd 14.98
LAIVUE "Kiitos" (Ektro) cd 14.98
LAZER ZEPPELIN "American Derivative" (People In A Position To Know) lp 14.98
MADLIB "Medicine Show No.7 - High Jazz" (Madlib) cd 17.98
MAN FOREVER "s/t" (St. Ives) lp 16.98
MAX PLANCK "Kill The Pain" (Buried By Time And Dust) lp 32.00
MCBEE, HAMPER "The Good Old-Fashioned Way" (Twos & Fews) lp 16.98
MONTOYAN ARTESIAN CONNECTION "s/t" (Plus Tapes) Cass 5.98
MORTON, JELLY ROLL "The Chant" (Monk) lp 22.00
MOUNT KIMBIE "Crooks & Lovers" (Hot Flush) cd 17.98
OPTIMO "Fabric 52" (Fabric) cd 17.98
PERSEUS NOBLE "s/t" (Plus Tapes) Cass 5.98
PERSONAL AND THE PIZZAS "Raw Pie" (1-2-3 Go!) lp 14.98
RABELAIS, AKIRA "Caduceus" (Samadhisound) cd 16.98
RADAR EYES "s/t" (Plus Tapes) Cass 5.98
RATTO JA LEHTISALO "UU Mama" (Ektro) cd 14.98
ROSE, JACK & GLENN JONES "The Things That We used To Do" (Strange Attractions) dvd 20.00
ROSE, JACK WITH D. CHARLES SPEER & THE HELIX "Ragged And Right" (Thrill Jockey) cd ep 11.98
RUSKO "O.M.G" (Mad Decent / Downtown) cd 14.98
SCHICKERT, GUNTER "Samtvogel" (Wah Wah) lp 30.00
SEDIMENT CLUB, THE "The Hughes Affair" (Softspot) 7" 6.98
SO PERCUSSION & MATMOS "Treasure State" (Cantaloup) cd 21.00
SPIN "August 2010" magazine 4.99
TONSTARTSSBANDHT "Midnite Cobras" (Psychic Handshake) 7" 5.98
TOP TEN "Girls Understand / Don't Talk About Us" (Classic Bar Music) 7" 5.98
TRANS AM "Thing" (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
TRAP THEM "Filth Rations" (Southern Lord) lp 14.98
V/A "Absolute Belter" (Finders Keepers) 2lp 27.00
V/A "Clicks And Cuts 5.0" (Mille Plateax) cd 17.98
V/A "Fundamental Experiment" (self-released) lp 17.98
V/A "Milano New Wave 1980-83" (Spittle) cd 21.00
V/A "Turkish Freakout" (Bouzouki Joe) cd 17.98
VERSUS "On The Ones And Threes" (Merge) cd/2lp 14.98/24.00
VIRULENCE "If This Isn't A Dream...1985-1989" (Southern Lord) cd 13.98
VON OSWALD, MORITZ TRIO "Live In New York" (Honest Jons) 2lp+cd 30.00
WEAVER, JANE "The Fallen By Watch Bird" (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 15.98
WOLF PARADE "Expo 86" (Sub Pop) cd/lp 13.98/17.98
YOUNGS, MATTHEW "Traveler's Advisory" (Drag City) lp 15.98
YOUNGS, RICHARD "Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits" (Jagjaguwar) lp 16.98
YOUNGS, RICHARD AND SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH "20 Years" (VHF) lp + 3cd 35.00
ZOROASTER "Matador" (E1) cd 15.98


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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 in fact
Yob "Great Cessation" vinyl version on Southern Lord
Angel Face "Wolf City Blues" 3cd on Apachefilm
OHO "Okinawa" cd reissue on Vintage/Rockadrome

----} August 3rd or so
David Cross "Bigger & Blackerer" vinyl version on Sub Pop
Hammers Of Misfortune cd reissues (The Bastard, The August Engine, The Locust Years, Fields/Church of Broken Glass) on Metal Blade

----} August 10th
Blood of Kingu "Sun in the House of the Scorpion" cd on Candlelight
Yaotl Mictlan "Dentro del Manto Gris de Chaac" cd on Candlelight

----} August 17
Boris & Ian Astbury "BXI" ep on Southern Lord
Lo Borges "s/t" vinyl reissue on 4 Men With Beards
Walter Gibbons "Jungle Music" cd on Strut

----} August 24th
Apocalyptica "7th Symphony" cd on Jive
Christian Mistress "Agony And Opium" cd/lp on 20 Buck Spin
James Blackshaw "All Is Falling" cd/lp on Young God
Venetian Snares "My So-called Life" cd/2lp on Timesig

----} September 7th
Dawnbringer "Nucleus" cd on Profound Lore
Cloudland Canyon "Fin Eaves" cd/lp on Holy Mountain
Arp "Soft Wave" cd on Smalltown Supersound

----} September 7th
Of Montreal "False Priest" cd/2lp on Polyvinyl

----} September 21st
Nekrasov "Extinction" cd on Crucial Blast
Outsiders "CQ" vinyl reissue on Jackpot

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later or whenever
Blizaro "Nightmare City" cd on Razorback
Bitchin Bajas "Tones & Zones" cd on Important
Slough Feg "The Spirit Animals" cd on Profound Lore
Xasthur "Portal" vinyl on Hydra Head
Randy Barracuda "On The Low" 12" on Harmonia
Limonious "House Of Usher" lp on Flogsta Danshall
Expo 70 "Sonic Messenger" and "Black Ohms" vinyl editions on Beta-lactam Ring
The Sticks "s/t" cd/2x7" on Upset The Rhythm
Harvey Milk "s/t" vinyl edition 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
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
Swell Maps "International Rescue" clear vinyl LP reissue on Alive
Loss "Despond" cd on Profound Lore
Boduf Songs "Strait Gait" cd/lp on Latitudes
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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FYF FEST
Saturday September 4th
Labor Day Weekend 2010
Los Angeles State Historic Park
1245 N. Spring Street Los Angeles, Ca 90012

$27 tickets at aQ

FYF Fest Sept 4th @ LA State Historic Park...it's our 2nd year at the park and our 7th Fest.

SLEEP
THE RAPTURE
PANDA BEAR
TED LEO
THEE OH SEES
ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
WASHED OUT
WAVVES
VETIVER
THE SOFT PACK
BEST COAST
COLD CAVE
THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
!!!
DEAD MAN"S BONES
7 SECONDS
SCHOOL OF THE SEVEN BELLS
ABE VIGODA
WARPAINT
and more more more

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ON LAND

September 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th - 2010
Café DuNord / Swedish American Hall - San Francisco
Sponsored by: Aquarius Records / Stumptown Printers / KUSF / The Wire
Advance tickets on sale now!

September 2nd
Barn Owl
Starving Weirdos
Pulse Emitter
Danny Paul Grody
Rene Hell
En

September 3rd
Oneohtrix Point Never
White Rainbow
Pete Swanson
Operative
Golden Retriever
Aster (Eli Keszler & Ashley Paul)
Robert A.A. Lowe

September 4th
The Alps
Zelienople
Xela
Date Palms
Grasslung
Metal Rouge
Le Révélateur

September 5th
Charalambides
Grouper
Dan Higgs
Bill Orcutt
Ilyas Ahmed
Common Eider, King Eider
Higuma

http://www.onlandfestival.com/

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aQuarius Records presents...

Social Studies (CD Release Party)
Maus Haus
60 Watt Kid (LA)
Montra

DJ Mr Soft

Saturday, August 7th
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell St.

All Ages, $10

Here's the Rickshaw Page for getting tickets:
http://www.rickshawstop.com/calendar/event_details/?tfly_event_id=11937

And here's the facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138164369543933&ref=mf


2 pairs of tix to giveaway. SOCIAL STUDIES TIX


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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickJonandAndrew