THORNS VS EMPEROR Thorns Vs. Emperor (Peaceville) cd 14.98
Originally released way back in 1999, this strange split/collaboration was at the time, just about the coolest weirdest black metal (and otherwise) record we had ever heard, a record that really sounded like it was made just for aQ, unfortunately, that was long enough ago that the aQ list was still in its infancy, and thus, this amazing and baffling and brilliant record got short shrift. Just three sentences. But really those three sentences should be enough to convince you:
"Emperor covers Thorns songs, Thorns covers Emperor, although it's hard to tell which band is which, a good thing we think. Ends up sounding like a gothic, black metal soundtrack that's been given a John Oswald-style Plunderphonic treatment. The most evil use of Cubase we know of. Bizarre and amazing!!"
If there was ever a should-have-been-Record-Of-The-Week, this was most decidedly it. Thankfully, this just got reissued, and with bonus tracks to boot, so it seemed like the perfect time to revisit, and give this record the aQ love it so very much deserves, and heck, odds are lots of current aQ customers might not have been getting our list back in the day, so this is for you, and for anyone who needs (or just wants) a little more than those three sentences...
Emperor should need no introduction, they are elite members of the black metal pantheon, alongside Burzum, Satyricon, Mayhem, Immortal, Ulver and Enslaved. Their sound epic and majestic, symphonic and super technical, easily still one of our favorite black metal bands EVER. Thorns however might need a bit more of an introduction. Folks who read Lords Of Chaos, might recognize Thorns mainman (only man!) Snorre W. Ruch as having played a part in the infamous murder of Euronymous, by Varg Vikernes of Burzum. Ruch was with Vikernes that fateful night and was sentenced to 8 years in prison as an accessory to murder. Thorns only ever released one proper full length, and that was not until 2001, well after this collaboration.
But this collaboration, wow, not sure where to start, and not even sure how it came to be. It seems it had been years since the very first Thorns demos (not to mention the pre-Thorns outfit Stigma Diabolicum), so this split was intended to introduce Thorns to the scene, in preparation for his upcoming full length, and featured various older Thorns tracks reinterpreted by Emperor, as well as Thorns covering some classic Emperor jams. It was Thorns first new material since 1992, and weirdly enough actually featured Satyr from Satyricon on vocals. So it sounds like a pretty bad ass black metal match up, but it doesn't necessarily explain how goddamn weird it turned out.
The opening Emperor track is some strange sample heavy orchestral industrial workout, all looped samples, field recordings, strange metallic clanks, martial snares, moaning horn like melodies, faux strings, bursts of glitchy distorted vocals, frenzied guitars, and a super intense cinematic orchestral outro that leads right into a new version of Thorns' "Aerie Descent" from his first demo, a buzzing midtempo bit of blackness, laced with soaring synths, programmed electronics, definitely that modern Moonfog black metal sound that came to define the label and the scene, there are some strange samples, but for the most part the song is a dirgey bit of black metal buzz, laced with various bits of strange sonic filigree, finishing off with a stretch of church organ, haunting and mysterious.
The next track is where it gets really strange, a new Emperor created from various bits of an old Thorns demo, and it begins as a strange collage of weird electronics, backwards rhythms, whispered vox, disembodied guitar buzz, again weirdly industrial, before the black buzz kicks in, but it's all wrapped around that electronic skitter, not to mention some bizarre industrial percussion, the sounds looped and chaotic, changing speeds, the voices processed, skittering and stuttering, laced with rhythmic bursts of static, circus calliope, and then finally a furious blast of looped black metal right at the end. Still one of the coolest and weirdest black metal jams EVER.
Next up Emperor tackles Thorns' "Aerie Descent" and it sounds like classic Emperor, epic and majestic, furious buzzing, super intricate and heavy, the drumming incredible, the production massive, the organ outro somehow even creepier here. Emperor go again with "Thus March The Night Spirit", a classical reworking of their classic "Thus Spake The Nightspirit" from their brilliant Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk, and the black buzz of the original is transformed into some Tim Burton-ish soundtrack, all soaring strings, darkly moody and tense, with flurries of rapid fire notes, and soaring strings, no wonder Emperor sounded so majestic.
Thorns takes control again, redoing yet another old demo track, a creepy almost industrial sounding crawl, the guitars liquid and warbly, the riff slippery and strange, while a mechanical rhythm plods and creaks, the guitars get buzzier, the song gradually growing more and more blasting and black, but the vocals are weirdly processed, and even at it's pounding heaviest, the song is peppered with strange programmed beats and subtle electronics, exactly the sort of stuff that would end up defining Thorns weird mechanized take on black metal. "The Discipline Of Earth" is a Thorns original, and is the perfect blend of orchestral bombast, technical black metal, and brooding black ambience, again laced with programmed rhythms, swirling FX and electronics, creepy vox, before finally erupting into full on black buzz mode, only occasionally slowing down, at which points the underlying electronics and programming come to the fore. And finally, Thorns finishes things off with a cover of Emperor's "Cosmic Keys To My Creation And Times", a plodding doomy dirge, with huge crumbling chords, strange sung/spoken vocals, thick swaths of buzz, muted Teutonic pounding, all strangely and fantastically mechanical and industrial.
In addition to the record proper, this new reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, two pre-production mixes of tracks from the record, and a previously unreleased track, the Thorns demo "You That Mingle May", featuring Satyr again, but also Fenriz from Darkthrone. So totally essential, black metalheads who have somehow made it this far without owning this, right that wrong RIGHT NOW. And the thing is, this record is so cool and weird and varied and textured, that even folks with only a passing interest in or curiosity about black metal, might just find themselves blown away...
MPEG Stream: EMPEROR "Aerie Descent"
MPEG Stream: EMPEROR "I Am"
MPEG Stream: THORNS "Aerie Descent"
MPEG Stream: THORNS "The Discipline Of Earth"

V/A (THE NECKS / DAVID GRUBBS / MIRA CALIX / MUTE SOCIALITE / O-TYPE) Strade Transparenti (Staubgold) cd 17.98
Yo, people!! One word: NECKS!!! Whoops, we could have easily overlooked this, a soundtrack to some foreign film we'd never heard of, but thankfully we did happen to notice the artists involved (which, to make sure YOU don't miss this, we've noted above). One of our all time faves, Australian drone-jazz trio The Necks, happens to appear here, track one "Transparent Roads" is theirs, the title track, and it's over 28 minutes long! So, right there, your money's worth, the rest of the disc could be considered a bonus. And a very worthy bonus, considering it includes diverse contributions from a bunch of interestin' artists in their own right, namely David Grubbs, Mira Calix, Mute Socialite, and O-Type. Quite a varied, even unlikely group, we're curious how they all happened to be invited to make music for this project, which was an Italian art film apparently about a bus trip through the Brazilian countryside, a "cinevoyage" visiting both the land and people. The film's director, Augusto Contento, certainly avoided using the obvious - Brazilian music - though a few of the tracks here do give a nod to such, Mute Socalite's song for instance titled "Samba Outlaw".
First, though, The Necks. Their track is, as any fan might guess, glorious. It's a quite Alice Coltrane-ish sounding Necks set, glittering cosmic jazz hypnosis. If you've heard The Necks, you won't be surprised - though the instrumental textures of "Transparent Roads" differ somewhat from their most recent album Silverwater. Skittering drums, repeating, brief piano melodies, and what sounds more like an electric guitar than their usual stand-up bass, all locked into impossibly precise yet organic sounding pulsations, surging, cyclic, building building building. With subtle complexities, incredible control, The Necks are truly masters of their art. Hard to imagine that they use the entirety of his piece on the soundtrack, that would be a bus trip through otherworldly realms, leaving Brazil, however beautiful and fascinating, far behind. Whew!!
A tough act to follow. After that, what? David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, Bastro) is up next, his ten and a half minute solo electric guitar track "To Know A Veil" acting as a palate cleanser, sparse with simple clangorous chords ringing out, abstract scrabbling filling the spaces, or not, drones forming in both memory and reality, it's pretty powerful, like a no wave SUNNO))) perhaps. So that plus The Necks, and good grief, this is worth buying twice, already.
Then Warp's Mira Calix contributes "I Carry You In My Heart", a moody pitter patter percussion piece, over twelve minutes long, quite nice (it kinda goes with another release on this particular week's list, the Fairlights Mallets And Bamboo mix of '80s Japanese avant-bliss). That's followed by the Bay Area's own avant-weirdos Mute Socialite, who really begin to echo or suggest some sort of Tropicalia vibe, however abstract. Their rather groovy "Samba Outlaw" (5:23) turns this disc into the sort of dance party to which you'd invite the Sun City Girls... Another good one. And then finally, there's former MX-80'ers O-Type (featuring guitarist Bruce Anderson) offering up an amazing 23 minute finale to the soundtrack, "Shadowgram" giving The Necks a run for their money in fact, in terms of making repetitive, mesmeric music that actually reminds us a lot of Circle (a tropical Circle?), with shuffling rhythms and nervous textures that makes you wonder just where this Brazilian bus ride is going to end up, or if you want to find out.
So, buy this for The Necks for sure, but stay for the rest and you will be extra pleased. Again, we've never seen the movie and are quite curious, just to see how it could live up to its own soundtrack, which rules!!! More Italians should make movies in Brazil and have soundtracks commissioned for release on German label Staubgold, based on how well this turned out...
MPEG Stream: THE NECKS "Transparent Roads"
MPEG Stream: DAVID GRUBBS "To Know A Veil"
MPEG Stream: O-TYPE "Shadowgram"

ALVARIUS B Baroque Primitiva (Poon Village) cd 17.98
Here's the much anticipated cd reissue of this way-too limited Alvarius B album which came and went on vinyl in a matter of days early in 2011. Alvarius B is the solo project of Alan Bishop, better known as one of the Sun City Girls - a project which dissolved after over twenty years following the death of drummer and fellow provocateur Charles Goucher. The Girls (a trio rounded out by Bishop's brother Richard) were specialists in frustratingly brilliant psychedelic-punk, damaged with free jazz, Southeast Asian pop, and fucked-up beat poetry. They were notorious for their designed lack of editorial constraints in situating brilliantly over-charged weirdo-pop melodic crescendos often hybridizing the likes of Ennio Morricone and Vietnamese songwriter Trinh Cong Son next to an uncomfortably misogynistic rant from Alan Bishop's slimy Bukowski parody as Uncle Jim. Even the most die-hard Sun City Girls fans who could stomach and perhaps grow to love their confrontational affronts will undeniably say that it's Torch Of The Mystics or 303,003 Crossdressers From The Rig Veda that are the masterpieces of borderless songwriting.
So with the Girls no more, where would Alan Bishop take his own work? The Sir Richard Bishop records have been uniformly brilliant in their fiery elliptical fingerpicking, exploding the Takoma handbook; and Alan has often given off the appearance of being a trickster figure, presenting himself as a minstrel with an immense emotional range only to pull back the mask to reveal a devilish, blackened heart intent on causing misery upon all who hear. With all of this as a preamble, we can say that Alan has followed where the Sun City Girls ended their career on Funeral Mariachi, with this gorgeous record in the form of Baroque Primitiva.
The album is rich with covers, although an Alan Bishop cover would certainly amount to a delirious transfiguration. The man has long been obsessed by Ennio Morricone, and this expertise has been applied to some of the best compendiums of Morricone's best work during the '60s and '70s. And 6 of the albums 12 songs are attributed to Morricone, or "Maestro Padre Supremo" as Bishop describes him in the liner notes. These songs enjoy the lilting yet complex melodies that Morricone had been so known for, with Bishop crooning all of the wordless oohs and ahhs that Morricone had originally penned for a female vocalist. Bishop has long been known for his ability to hit sharp falsettos in the Girls. Even though he does bend many of the notes towards atonality, he is quite reverential towards the Morricone text. In fact, the contrast between Morricone's ecstatic songs and the many cracks in Bishop's deliberately lo-fi production (think Sebadoh's four-track recordings with just multi-tracked voice, guitar and chord organ) serves to heighten the drama of these recordings. There are a couple of Bishop originals, "Humor Police" is very much a manic carnavalesque number and "Well Known Stranger" is a classic downer jam of strum and vocal mope that sounds like it could be a lost Neil Young tune, but done way better. The two other covers on the album are also quite noteworthy: the only song to emerge from his aborted album of John Barry covers in the form of "You Only Live Twice" and one hell of jubilant romp through the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows."
This is very nicely packaged in the form of a 30 page hardback book, featuring various close-ups of the nude mandala artwork photographed by Kristen Anderson, to sweeten the deal. Already proving to be one of the best albums of 2011. So don't let the cd pass you by, if you didn't have the good fortune of getting hold of the vinyl already.
MPEG Stream: "Well Known Stranger"
MPEG Stream: "Funny Thing Is..."
MPEG Stream: "God Only Be Without You"
MPEG Stream: "Humor Police"

----*
----* Highlights :
----*

ALUK TODOLO Ordre (Ajna) 10" 14.98
Finally, the long awaited return of these mysterious French audio alchemists, whose sound is a strange amalgamation of black metal buzz, krautrock mesmer, and psychedelic ambience. And the aforementioned mystery lies not with the group itself, whose lineup features members of black metal outfit Diamatregon and psychedelic rockers Gunslingers, both big time aQ faves, but rather in their sound, and how a sound so minimal and spare, how seemingly reductive on the surface, manages to transcend, to exist as something wholly other, a band who at times can sound like other bands that came before, but only fleetingly, those sounds subsumed and reimagined, and spit back out in a shape that is distinctly Aluk Todolo.
This ritual is not a new recording, but in fact archival material recorded at the same time as their Descension record, and is a This single track, spread out over both sides of a 10", and begins with a loping dirgey rhythm, pounding through clouds of swirling cacophony, shards of jagged guitarnoise and layers of chordal shimmer, an electrified field that seems to crackle around the groups core pulse/groove, the surrounding noise, not so much just noisy as haunting and ominous and textural. A brief bit of super creepy, deep garbled vocals intone what must be some sort of warning, as the sound continues to drift, mesmerizing and hypnotic, dense but at the same time almost ethereal, seasawing between noisy and chaotic, washed out and woozy, until eventually the noise recedes, leaving just long streaks of hiss and glitch and static, all wreathed in a blurred melodic haze.
Finally an even slower, more spare rhythm begins, this one plodding along through a black haze, pelted by squalls of super distorted buzz, quick blasts of blown out crunch, those blasts themselves strangely melodic, as if they were spaced out notes to some other, mysterious melody, the sound eventually building to a much more rocking final blast, organ like whirs underpinning muddy riffage and still more explosive bits of grinding guitar crunch.
The flipside is much more relentless and abrasive, the dynamics ditched in lieu of something more textural, a wall of buzz and crumbling crunch, the drums an anchor, buried in the murk and mire, the noise surprisingly nuanced, textural one minute, caustic the next, blurred and melodic, but also hissy and harsh, creating all sorts of constantly shifting and evolving textures and overtones. A washed out spate of abrasive guitardrone fashioned into something almost riff-like, wrapped around that constant motorik beat, that krauty rhythm that definitely reminds us of German Oak, albeit way noisier and more blackened, the track pounds and drones and buzzes away before finally finishing off with a surprisingly woozy, buzzy, drifty dramatic outro. Wow.
As always, super striking packaging, pressed on heavy vinyl, and yeah, most likely very very limited.

ANNAPURNA ILLUSION / HIGH WOLF split (Group Tightener) lp 14.98
Another fantastic batch of looped psychedelic mesmer from High Wolf, this one a sidelong sprawl, a 4 part epic of swirling electronics, Eastern melodies, warm whirling buzz, all wound around muted looped propulsive rhythms, a smoldering spaced out new age krautrock drift. Slipping drowsily from soft swirls of layered thrum, laced with tablas, to hazy, hiss-laden warbled melodies, almost sounding like Philip Jeck spinning Eighties 7"s on a phalanx of old beat up turntables. With wah wah guitar drifting in and out, the is sound psychedelic, and a little bit dubbed out, eventually blossoming into a glimmering starfield of blurred blissy sonic sparkles and blooping bleeping electronics, draped over an ever shifting backdrop of thrum and hum. The side finally culminates with a chorus of childlike voices drifting above a churning bit of psychedelic whirl, a gorgeously and hypnotically playfully choral outro.
The big surprise here though, might have to be Annapurna Illusion, who we had never heard before (and it seems is actually the same guy behind High Wolf weirdly enough), but whose sound is incredible, a wash of thick warm buzzy drones, layered loops and dense synth shimmer, all pulsing and undulating in a bleary eared expanse of alien FX and gauzy atmospherics. The sound is thick and mesmerizing and almost heavy, but stays just soft and washed out enough to keep from slipping into guitar dronedirgedrift territory, instead, hovering someplace much more abstract and psychedelic. The looped mesmer very reminiscent of a less cacophonous more mediative Our Love Will Destroy The World.
The buzz gives way to soft swirls of downtuned chords, and avalanches of descending tones, all over an hypnotic loping looped rhythm. The last stretch takes the above mentioned sounds, and adds some seriously synthy-sci-fi swirl to the mix, not to mention a surprisingly Sabbathy guitar riff, but all blurred into a dreamy druggy chunk of drowsy looped psychedelic dronemusic. Awesome.

ARZACHEL s/t (Klimt) lp 24.00
Vinyl reissue of this 1969 British psych gem, currently out of print on cd so all the more welcome. - "The definitive British psych album" says Nick Saloman of Bevis Frond, in fact - It's well worth checking out for fans of early Pink Floyd, Cream, The Nice, as well as the more obscure heavy psych likes of T2, whose vinyl reissues we listed not long ago also. Arzachel not only had a weird name, the band members had unlikely names (pseudonyms, actually) too. Meet guitarist "Simeon Sasparella" (aka Steve Hillage, later of Gong, and solo fame), drummer "Basil Dowling", faux-Kenyan bassist "Njerogi Gategaka", and organ player "Sam Lee-Uff", actually one Dave Stewart (not the Eurythmics guy) who is better known for being in progsters Egg later on. With both Hillage and Stewart as members, this was a sort of a "super group" that didn't know it yet! Possibly why Nick Saloman of Bevis Frond considers this the "definitive British psych album" (though we'd sort have thought an argument could be made for Sgt. Pepper's).
The first half of this album features their poppier psych/garage numbers, including the lovely instrumental "Queen St. Gang", which seems to feature the "Hey Joe" bass line coupled with the melody from the theme to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly! The second half of the album indulges in extended heavy psych jams of the sort Arzachel specialized in playing at London's tripped out Middle Earth club. The acid blues of "Leg" sounds like an organ-led Cactus, while the howling, epic "Metempsychosis" is nearly seventeen minutes of primitive, pounding, distortion-filled psychedelia that could be mistaken for Amon Duul II. Good stuff! With their teenage enthusiasm and ambition, the Arzachel boys managed to wax a classic - totally of their times in so many ways and yet unique and timeless as well. Doubtless Simeon, Basil, Njerogi, and Sam, with pseudonyms discarded, improved their musical skills in subsequent years, yet can anything from their later proggy careers really stand up to Arzachel?
MPEG Stream: "Queen St. Gang"
MPEG Stream: "Clean Innocent Fun"

ASH BORER / FELL VOICES split (Eternal Warfare / Gilead Media) lp 14.98
This killer two way avant black metal split, previously only issued as a crazy limited tape, now available on vinyl! Comes with a nice printed insert and a silkscreened patch too...
Originally released to coincide with a recent tour, this split (and the tour it commemorated) teams up Ash Borer from Arcata with Fell Voices from Santa Cruz. A seriously brutal and kick ass Northern California USBM match up for sure. We've raved about Fell Voices before, but this is the first we've heard from Ash Borer, who sound pretty perfect alongside their sonically similarly brethren, offering up a 21 minute side long black metal epic, that slips smoothly from soaring, frenzied majestic black metal riffery, to woozy, loping, but still super distorted and raw, postrock flecked doom, to swirling black ambience, to lumbering spaced out psychedelic drift, lacing shimmery sheets of washed out guitar over plodding minor key melancholy, before building gradually back into a dense tribal crush, and then finally another bout of thrashing black buzz.
Fell Voices fill up their half of the tape with another single sidelong jam, which much like last year's self-titled lp, unfurls a dark, brooding epic bit of blackness, beginning with a cloud of looped muted riffage, streaks of burnished feedback, slowly swelling and swaying, stretched out into some serious droniness, before some warped minor key guitar melodies, and buried in the mix blast beats surface, not turning the song into blasting blackness, instead just adding some strange texture to that deep black drone, the song wavery and woozy, until finally the band kicks in full bore, but even then, it's not typical black metal, it's super mathy, and intricate, lots of dynamics, all spaced out, guitar harmonics drifting over insanely dense drumming, and riffage so blurred and black, it almost just sounds like pulses of blacknoize. The song seems to coalesce into a driving blast of murky black thrum, bits of melody surfacing from the blurred black expanse, super tranced out and hypnotic and most importantly, especially in a genre like black metal, totally twisted and unlike almost any other BM we've heard.
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES! Pressed on 180 gram vinyl.

BATAGOV, ANTON The Wheel Of The Law (Listen Different) 3cd 38.00
This incredible, gorgeous chunk of dreamy modern minimalism, finally back in stock, for a VERY limited time...
The very moment we we first heard this, we knew it was something special, and something we just had to list! Recorded in 1999, and originally released in 2002, The Wheel Of The Law compiles three epic pieces of gorgeous minimalism from Russian composer Anton Batagov. Three discs, three tracks composed for organ, glockenspiel, xylophone, piano and percussion, inspired by Buddhism and the Quest for Nirvana, and the practices involved: peace, meditation, deep thought, breathing, consciousness. Repetitive and melodic, lush and so so beautiful. Someone once referred to Batagov as sounding "like Reich on vodka", not sure we hear the vodka, or even any sounds distinctly and immediately recognizably Russian, but there is certainly plenty of Reich here, as well as Riley, and most definitely some Harold Budd, especially in the delicate, spare piano arrangements. The first disc, "Circle Of Time" is four long movements of warm rich swells of organ, flowing lazily beneath delicate cyclical chimes and abstract piano figures, very dramatic and hypnotic. The second disc, the 4 track Voidness cycle: "Appearances And Voidness", "Clarity And Voidness", "Bliss And Voidness", "Mind And Voidness", introduces the same delicate chimes found on the first disc, but this time over a repeating series of haunting moaning violin melodies. Minor key and mildly atonal, the melodies are spread out over a spare background of complex overtones, all drifting dreamily into space. The final disc: "Liberation Through Listening In The Between" is again a massive sprawl of lush static organ drones, wavering and subtly pulsing, with simple three and four note melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds, chiming and ringing, resonating above the organ's mesmerizing drone, the whole thing supported by a barely there framework of simple percussion, so subtle and simple that it's basically a single drum, muted and way down in the mix, offering a sort of pulse for the piece, a musical heartbeat, slowed down, as if in meditation or contemplation.
So completely and utterly breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Dus-Kyi Khor-Lo 1"
MPEG Stream: "Dus-Kyi Khor-Lo 4"

BLOUSE Into Black (Captured Tracks) 7" 6.98
At this point, there is most definitely a Captured Tracks sound, and thankfully it's one we love, and can't seem to get enough of, but CT keep digging up these bands who sound like they could have been conjured up in some sort of Captured Tracks laboratory if such a thing existed (it doesn't?).
Blouse might be one of our favorite CT bands so far, their sound a gorgeously dark and moody, brooding and minimal eighties style gloom pop, but very stripped down and skeletal, the rhythm section tight and muted, the female vocals ethereal and drifty, with the occasional cool reverbed guitars, the A side featuring a sultry, breathy almost 4AD sounding chorus, very brief before the group slip right back into those low slung minimal verses, while the B side is a bit janglier, still plenty dark and moody, with a very Cure like mottled bassline, the vocals even breezier than on the flipside, the arrangement similarly spare, the songs both surprisingly hooky. One of those singles we find ourselves flipping back and forth and listening to over and over, which is always a good sign...

BODY, THE All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood (At A Loss) 2lp 23.00
This mind blowing chunk of crushing, psychedelic, multi drummer-ed, choir laden avant ultra doom /sludge, a former aQ Record Of The Week, is finally available on (three-sided) vinyl once more, this time on nice colored wax via At A Loss (previously it was on Aum War). This new pressing is limited to 1100 copies, and the heavy duty gatefold is pretty swank, with embossed "Euro-style" inner sleeves. Comes with a download coupon as well!
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.
Incredible packaging too, heavy vinyl (3 sided, the 4th side is blank), thick, gatefold sleeve, with some chillingly striking artwork, printed and embossed inner sleeves, with lyrics and liner notes...
MPEG Stream: "A Body"
MPEG Stream: "A Curse"
MPEG Stream: "Empty Hearth"
MPEG Stream: "Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss"

BURMESE Lun Yurn (UgExplode) cd 10.98
We're not sure how these guys (and gal) do it, but somehow, SF's own sludge/dirge/grind/noise mavens Burmese, make record after record, everyone a mind blowing slab of ultra heaviness and absolute head caving pummel, on all sorts of cool labels, tUMULt, Rock Is Hell, Enterruption, Planaria, Load, Not Not Fun, Heart & Crossbone, New Scream Industry, Crucial Blast and now UgExplode, yet they somehow remain for the most part totally under the radar. They've definitely had some bad luck, but this is crazy. If you've ever seen Burmese play, in any of their permutations, they utterly destroy. Their worst shows are better than most band's best shows. In fact, their worst shows might just be their best shows. Two basses, manned by two Mikes, each with a stack of amps piled to the ceiling, two drummers too, at least on this record, spewing out wild octopoidal tangles of beats and rhythms, no guitar, they sure as fuck don't need one of those, and then to top it off Tissue, their diminutive female lead vocalist, who dresses in skirts and sweaters, but then turns into a beast on the mic, with some impossibly throat shredding vokills, the band so impossibly tight, especially considering how insane their songs are slipping from ultra intricate mathy grindprog, to spaced out nearly abstract free noise whatthefuck.
We say this about every record, but this just might be their best yet. And c'mon, that's how it should be with all bands, every record should be better than the last, and considering how goddamn good their first record was about 10 records back, well then guess how good Lun Yurn is. Yep. Exactly.
They're pretty hard to describe actually. Heavy, for sure. Metal, sort of. Punk, absolutely. Noisy. Grindy. But also mathy, proggy, droney, noisy, chaotic. Their songs generally flail from blasting D-beat pound, to doomy lurching plod, to grinding noise drenched blast, to weird super dynamic stop/start breakdown, and back again, the two basses unleashing thick gouts of power violence style riffery, the multiple drummers (one of which is Weasel Walter on this record) anchoring the impossibly chaotic crush, somehow all of these disparate elements, and all of this intense caustic sound, is deftly assembled into the sort of grinding metallic noisepunk jams that actually stick in your head. It's true. Not sure, how, or why, but we never get tired of this band or these songs, or seeing them lay waste live. It'd be pointless to go song by song, listen to the sound samples, if you're not totally bowing before the altar of Burmese, well then there just might be something wrong with you.
Stick around to the very end cuz there's an extra track, a whopping 45 minute jam, that one track 50 percent longer than the whole rest of the record, and it's an impossibly relentless, insanely chaotic, non stop frantic, frenzied, frenetic, blown out grindpsych blowout. Fuck.
MPEG Stream: "Diu Nei Si Fud, Diu Nei Gore Jui"
MPEG Stream: "Lok Ga Goul Diu Dole Ngo Gou Hu Lum Tao"
MPEG Stream: "Ong Goul Goul"
MPEG Stream: "Hai Sui Butt Lau Bit Yen Tin"
MPEG Stream: "Tsit Tset Bo Tong Pai Gaai Fong"

CELESTIIAL Desolate North ( Handmade Birds) lp 16.98
This crushing avant doooooom epic, finally available on vinyl, the latest release on new boutique vinyl label Handmade Birds, run by R. Loren of Pyramids, White Moth and Sailors With Wax Wings, and like the other HmB releases, some of which are already out of print, EXTREMELY LIMITED...
There was a time where all you had to do was add umlauts to every vowel (heck how about a few consonants too?) to make your band name more evil. More mysterious. For glam rockers it simply meant changing s's to z's, BOYZ, TOYZ, NOYZE... oh and changing i's to y's, and double o's always helped... Bad Noose. But recently, there have been several examples of grim black and doom metal bands adding an extra 'i' for no apparent reason. When it was just French black metallers Mutiilation, we thought, okay, they're just French and little bit strange, or maybe it was a typo but they thought it was cool. We can dig that. But now with Minnesotan funereal doom lords Celestiial jumping on the double 'i' bandwagon, we're beginning to think something is going on. Something sinister. Er... siiniister we mean.
Anyway, we'll just have to keep our eyes peeled for more of the evil double 'i' but in the meantime, Celestiial has more than just the 2 i's going for them. They also have a gaggle of o's. that's right. Celestiial are definitely one of those bands who have earned the multiple o'd doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. They're in the tradition of bands like Skepticism, Thergothon, Disembowelment, Evoken, Winter and more modern practitioners of the ultradoom like Catacombs, Esoteric and the like, but Celestiial are no ordinary doom band, sure their songs are lengthy and glacial, guitars are nothing but black smears in a starless sky, the plodding drums are dropped reverently amidst a bleak and barren sonic landscape. Vocals growl and gurgle and float weightless like some dark wind. Celestiial's doom is even more spacey and blissed out than any of their influences. The guitars are thick and dense and tuned impossibly low, but they sound soft, like someone shaking out a huge black blanket and letting it settle over you, blocking out all light. The programmed drums are so dense with reverb, and the cymbals seem to sizzle endlessly, the percussion just turns into a wash of hiss and whir, that adds a strange fuzzy glow to the already murky and blissy sound. The other thing you can't help but notice, is the sound of nature, everywhere, in every song, crickets, wind blowing through the trees, frogs, whippoorwills, thunder, rain falling on leaves. You know how Skepticism sounds like it was recorded in a forest? This is like that too but it's not metaphorical, it really has forest sounds. It's almost like their is some black doom funeral procession, trudging through the forest, lit only by torchlight, the creatures of the night, gathered just outside the circle of fire. So intense and strangely serene, especially for a 'doom metal' record.
And the thing is it's not just for effect. Celestiial are from Minnesota and are quite possibly the first reflective, isolationist, naturist doom band ever. From the band's website: "Celestiial was created to mirror mysticism in nature. Its heart lies not in its medium but in its dreams. It is a reflection of astral light shown upon the earth--sinking into its soil--waiting and dreaming. It wishes to be the pulse of woodlands and water. Nothing more? Understand that funeral doom isn't always slow for the sake of being slow. It is slower than the beat of the human heart. Its pulse is dead. The pulse of CELESTIIAL aims at being completely parallel to continual motion in everything of this earth. From the seasonal changes to representations of myth."
Woah. But if you really listen, Celestiial's slow motion doom does sound perfectly at home amidst the sounds of nature. Like some living breathing shadowy doomic creature living among the insects and wild birds, lurking in tree tops and curled up upon soft piles of wet leaves. It's almost like a doom metal version of recent record of the week Osmose, by Ariel Kalma, but instead of synths and rainforests, it's doom and dark forests. And as if to further tie the music to the land, and the peoples of the land, Celestiial incorporate an unlikely selection of traditional instruments into their slow motion dirges, such as Celtic harp and Native American flutes.
All of that, strange instrumentation, nature sounds, the two i's, combine to make this wonderfully weird, hauntingly mysterious and quite possibly one of the dreamiest and most blissed out doom records ever!
MPEG Stream: "Haunting Cries Beneath The Lake Where Our Queen Once Walked"
MPEG Stream: "Lamentations In The Citadel Of God"

CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO No Arriba (ZZK) cd 16.98
When we first heard Chancha Via Circuito's debut a few years back, it was one of the those magical moments when a record by an unknown artist seemed to stop time and everything around us as we became completely emerged in their dubbed out, Latin American cumbia-inspired sounds.
With the follow up, Chancha Via Circuito prove that record number one was no fluke, as this album melts and sizzles with its own seductive flair. Sonically it's like some awesome mix of Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, Fauna, Kit Clayton, Massive Attack, Prince Far I, and Rainbow Arabia.
Mixing elements of cumbia, minimal techno, dub, and adding strains of traditional folk from the sprawling roads they've traveled near their home outside Buenos Aires, which has taken them across the border to Bolivia and beyond. Like one of our other favorite modern South American psychedelic music makers Las Malas Amistades, Chancha Via Circuito have this amazing ability to incorporate their surroundings and heritage and bring it into the future without compromising its integrity.
MPEG Stream: "Rio Arriba"
MPEG Stream: "Jos Larralde - Quimey Neuqun (Chancha Via Circuito remix)"
MPEG Stream: "Amelia"

CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO No Arriba (ZZK) 2lp 16.98
When we first heard Chancha Via Circuito's debut a few years back, it was one of the those magical moments when a record by an unknown artist seemed to stop time and everything around us as we became completely emerged in their dubbed out, Latin American cumbia-inspired sounds.
With the follow up, Chancha Via Circuito prove that record number one was no fluke, as this album melts and sizzles with its own seductive flair. Sonically it's like some awesome mix of Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, Fauna, Kit Clayton, Massive Attack, Prince Far I, and Rainbow Arabia.
Mixing elements of cumbia, minimal techno, dub, and adding strains of traditional folk from the sprawling roads they've traveled near their home outside Buenos Aires, which has taken them across the border to Bolivia and beyond. Like one of our other favorite modern South American psychedelic music makers Las Malas Amistades, Chancha Via Circuito have this amazing ability to incorporate their surroundings and heritage and bring it into the future without compromising its integrity.
MPEG Stream: "Rio Arriba"
MPEG Stream: "Jos Larralde - Quimey Neuqun (Chancha Via Circuito remix)"
MPEG Stream: "Amelia"

CHRISTIAN MISTRESS Demos (Unseen Forces) lp 21.00
Four new songs - well actually four OLD songs, but new to us and probably new to you too - from the mighty Christian Mistress, whose debut on the 20 Buck Spin label was a very popular, very metal Record Of The Week here last year. Now illustrator/metalhead Dennis Dread's new label Unseen Forces has, for their very first release, reissued CM's original 2009 4-song demo tape on 12", 45rpm vinyl, in a limited edition of 350 copies, already sold out at the label. And we got just a tiny handful. The songs: "Poison Path", "Never Let Go", "Anoxic Living", "Black Out". All good examples of what makes these female-fronted, NWOBHM-infuenced retro-metal rippers so damn great.
Remixed, remastered for vinyl, with new cover art by vocalist Christine Davis, handscreened, with lyrics sheet.

COLDWORLD Melancholie 2 (Cold Dimensions) cd 17.98
One of our big time 2009 BM faves, finally re-pressed and available again!! (AGAIN!)
Quite possibly, one of the best depressive black metal records we've ever heard. Although defining Melancholie2 as a depressive BM record might be a bit reductive. It will make more sense, read on...
A dizzying mix of lilting melancholia, furious blackened blasts, epic morose arrangements, awesome drumming (a definite shortcoming in most bands), kick ass and ridiculously catchy riffing, and most importantly, incredibly evocative atmosphere and ambience, even when a song is buzzing along frantically, beneath the surface there is always some sort of drifting crystalline melody, or whirring drone, or chant like vocal line, it sounds a bit confusing, but the mix is magical.
The sound on Melancholie2 is so dynamic, so majestic and heavy, no lo-fi boom box recording here, the guitars are massive, thick and crunchy and buzzy, the vocals raw and primal, the keyboards and synths lush and shimmery, the drums somehow perfectly audible amidst all the buzz. And as with most black metal records, buzz is a key component, and here that buzz is all encompassing, warm and expansive, coating everything in its warm embrace.
The slower tracks are definitely Burzumic, the lumbering riff, the plodding rhythm, underpinned by a gorgeous keyboard melody, the midtempo tracks are like a less weird Lifelover, the music hooky, and weirdly poppy, but still grim and black, slipping from melodic lilt to intense speaker shredding blowout, rare that a band, or man as the case may be is equally adept and crafting doomy dismal blackness AND intense blasting black metal. The ambient tracks are surprisingly effective, moving and lovely, most black metal bands use cheesy synth sounds, but here, those parts sound like antique music boxes, or the soundtrack to a soft snowfall in some forgotten forest, dark, and haunting, but definitely beautiful and breathtaking, only moreso when they lead directly into another intense burst of blackness.
Some of the tracks are dangerously poppy, but the band manages to pull it off, channelling the sweeping sound of Katatonia, but adds some truly bizarre, almost robotic sounding vocals, which definitely sounds goofy, but in fact, the effect is anything but. It's more some sort of abstract alien doom, that is truly creepy and otherworldly. A few of the tracks are gorgeous sprawls of washed out sorrowful doom, but at least one shifts part way through into a strange pounding bit of minor key midtempo black metal, before slipping back into that depressive plod.
It's really hard to do this music justice. It's at once so familiar, embodying so much of what we already love about this sort of music, at the same time, it manages to sound unlike anything we've heard before, every song manages to be both heavy and wistful, depressive, but weirdly rocking, as a whole it's an incredible, expansive song suite, culminating in the final track, a skittery glitched out ambient landscape, bits of static and hiss drift between simpler percussion, and a shuffling rhythm, moody minimal guitar, slightly twangy, all draped over a swoonsome bit of minor key drone, with a crunchy metallic middle, before slipping back into more skittery melancholic drift. So goddamn good.
Easily one of our new favorite records, black metal or otherwise!
MPEG Stream: "A Dream Of A Dead Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Tortured By Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "Winterreise"

CRASS Christ - The Album (Crassical Collection) 2cd 19.98
We reviewed the first three reissues from legendary punk rock outfit Crass a few lists back, and now here's the 4th (of 6) in the series Anarcho-punk legends Crass are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all the Crass records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Christ The Album, Crass's 4th full length, might be the group's most famous (or infamous), again not shying away from controversy, right down to the record's title, and of course the lyrical content, sonically, Christ found the band sounding as full and lush and well produced as ever. The sound was still frantic, and frenzied, blasting and thrashing and relentless, but surprisingly polished, and the band at their least 'punk', the tracks rife with killer hooks, and plenty of pop, but the record itself remained difficult, and as concerned with the message as the music, loads of samples, all the tracks beginning with a little filmstrip style beep, followed by snippets of newscasts and interviews and various other politically charged recordings before the songs kicked in.
And nowhere was this poppier sound more evident than on "Beg Your Pardon" which sounds almost like their own version of "Train In Vain" (the song infamously left off the sleeve of the Clash's London Calling, supposedly because it was WAY too poppy, although officially it was because the track was added at the last minute), which is funny, considering Crass' outspoken disdain for The Clash, but "Beg Your Pardon" is impossibly hooky, with jangly guitars, irresistible melodies, and at times does sound quite a bit like the Clash. There's also the brooding, super rhythmic "Birth Control Rock 'n' Roll", with its frantic drumming and harmony vox, and the soaring, epic, drone-y and almost proggy "Reality Whitewash", and we could go on and on...
After this, the band would release just one more record (the sprawling single song/album Yes Sir, I Will) so Christ definitely stands as the final testament to Crass's sonic journey from the raw punk of The Feeding Of The 5000, to the polished pop flecked punk found here.
Like the original vinyl reissue, the original disc is augmented by a second disc, a collection of demos and studio outtakes, called Well Forked - But Not Dead, and like the other reissues, there's a massive booklet including liner notes and lyrics, as well as a fold out poster, all housed in a super swank slipcover, which fits together with all the other reissues, the various covers combining to form a single image. Cool.
MPEG Stream: "Have A Nice Day"
MPEG Stream: "Mother Love"
MPEG Stream: "Nineteen Eighty Bore"
MPEG Stream: "I Know There Is Love"

DEAFHEAVEN Roads To Judah (Deathwish) cd 10.98
Deafheaven are a new band from right here in the Bay Area, who have been causing quite a stir lately in the metal underground, their soaring epic, super melodic black metal dividing the grim hordes right down the middle. Obviously, purists don't consider this to be black metal at all, which in some ways is fair, just listen to the opening 4 minutes of record opener "Violet", there's not a trace of blackness to be found, instead, you'll here Explosions In The Sky, Godspeed, Mogwai, majestic, bombastic, melodic, gorgeously lush and expansive. But then wait a few more seconds... and BAM, the band EXPLODE in a frenzy of buzzing and pounding blackend crush, rife with howled vokills, gnarled riffage, and there's no doubt that this is black metal, but not Immortal / Mayhem / Darkthrone black metal, no, it's more in line with the more melodic end of the BM spectrum, think Alcest, Fell Voices, Fauna, Wolves In The Throne Room, Deafheaven definitely have that Cascadian BM vibe going on too, but all of their blackness and buzz is most definitely tempered with heaping helpings of melody. Even at its most frenzied, Deafheaven essentially sound like Mogwai or EITS supercharged and metallized, it's still soaring and epic and majestic, just wrapped in thick swirling sheets of black metal buzz, and hell, it sounds pretty goddamn amazing.
The production is lush, the sound MASSIVE, the guitars thick and distorted, except when they're ringing out all clear and chiming, the arrangements are pretty expansive and epic too, blasting buzz giving way to droned out drift, which in turn gives way to another blast of furious melodic blackness.
Just four tracks, but they're all long, lots of parts, all moody and melodic, a dizzying hybrid of black metal, screamo and post rock, reminds us a little of a WAY more metal version of recent Record Of The Week-ers Pianos Become The Teeth, but where that band melded old school screamo to epic post rock, Deafheaven do the same with buzzing melodic black metal, the result, while perhaps not grim enough for some, is pretty tough to resist. And while we love how the songs shift from slow build brood to black blast, and back again, the real magic of Deafheaven is how they combine the two, taking churning buzzing blackness and laying some soaring coruscating shoegazey guitar chords over the top, or winding majestic, chiming, impossibly melancholic clean guitar melodies and lush textures into howling vokills and grinding black riffage, and while in battles between good and evil, we usually bet black, in this case, melody always seems to prevail, transforming what could have been just another chunk of blasting buzz into something gorgeous and transcendental.
MPEG Stream: "Violet"
MPEG Stream: "Language Games"

DECIMUS Decimus 5 (Kelippah) lp 15.98
A heady slab of tripped out psychedelic sonic spirituality from this new project of Pat Murano, who also counts himself a member of NY free jazz / drone rock / avant hippy collective No Neck Blues Band, weirdo black metal horde Malkuth and cosmic outsider explorationists K-Salvatore. Murano continues on his own peculiar and bafflingly brilliant path, with the debut release from his solo project Decimus, the first in a high concept, 12 part (as in 12 lp) series of records based on the medieval zodiac of Decimus Magus Ausonius, a Latin poet and rhetorician.
Two side long meditations, the first begins with soft shimmering clouds of tinkling melodies, and ethereal ambience, over some haunting processed mantra like looped vox, hazy and druggy, wreathed in keening high end and lilting barely there melodies, and muted bits of abstract percussion. Eventually, FX drenched sitar like buzz surfaces, adding a whole other dimension to the trancelike drift, that buzz pulsing and stuttering percussive and slightly corrosive, the sounds growing ever more spacey and swirly, a warped dreamlike buzz that gradually decays and crumbles, the effects growing more and more chaotic, before finishing off with a brief super intense white hot sonic squall.
The second side is another slow burning musical mantra, loping, warm woozy buzz over a bed of softly roiling hiss and soft focus whir, sounding almost like Zomes or Daniel Higgs or Amps For Christ, cyclical, repetitive and mesmerizing. The dreamy drift is soon joined by a crunchy corrosive rhythm, which lurches and lumbers before transforming into a weird skeletal beat, the sound almost Middle Eastern, the low end super distorted, a deep rib cage rattling thrum, all the sounds again gradually growing more and more blurred and distorted, some freaky creepy robotic vocals only adding to the confusional cacophony, but still that initial loop/groove remains, a solid rhythmic anchor, keeping the track trancelike, while all around sounds swirl and swoop, flecks of fragmented melodies surface and are quickly swallowed up, before everything dissolves into a cloud of staticky hiss.
We already can't wait for the next 11 volumes! (we actually have the next one, Decimus 1 in stock, just ask if you want one of those too!)
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in hand painted and hand stenciled covers.
MPEG Stream: "I (excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "II (excerpt)"

DODOS All Night b/w Horns (French Kiss) 7" 4.98
It's been a few weeks since the madness and fun of Record Store Day, but actually there were a few intended-for-Record-Store-Day releases that were delayed, and are only now, luckily, falling into our laps.
Here's one, a shredding 7" from local heroes The Dodos that just arrived and whoo boy we're happy that it has, as these are two of the most rocking and raw tracks from these guys that we've ever heard. Both tracks are previously unreleased and show how great these guys are at crafting impassioned and driving songs, so focused and so ecstatic. What's extra cool about these songs is they are a bit less produced and shiny than their albums, showing that this is indeed a band that sounds just as good raw and rugged as lush and orchestrated. Makes us so excited to see these guys play and experience all this frenetic sonic energy live. Grab one of these while they last! LIMITED NUMBERED EDITION!

EARTH Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I (Southern Lord) lp 23.00
Here, at last, the vinyl version of the latest Earth opus. We were expecting these for Record Store Day, but they only just showed up this week!! Heavy duty gatefold sleeve double vinyl, 180 grams, with "special etching"... Limited of course, we have the red vinyl, of which they only pressed 1000.
The further Earth evolves, the harder it is to believe they were once THEE progenitors of the doomdronedirgesludge sound that's so prevalent these days. They began life as a sludgey, druggy, slo-mo avant riff behemoth, no one could have imagined they would have turned into this, a dusty, twangy, deserty, moody minimal slowcore combo, with a sound that has essentially evolved into a score to some stark, spare, imaginary black and white independent film, more soundtrack, imagined or not, than proper rock band, let alone, METAL band, which is how they have been traditionally categorized. But Angels Of Darkness, like the last few Earth records before it, are most definitely not metal, not even heavy really, at least in the traditional sense, this one even in the NON traditional senses, instead, it's again, dark and brooding, evocative and emotional, cinematic and soundtracky, the core sound has again been expanded to include strings, which only adds to the whole moody minimal soundtrack vibe. But hell, it still suits them, we now have enough other bands doing the whole slow and low dirge and drone thing, and if anything, Angles Of Darkness might be Earth's most full realized stab and capturing their 'new' sound. No pretenses, no strings attaching them to the old Earth, very few allusions, sonic or otherwise, to the ghost of doom past, they're even more secure on the new path they set out on years ago, and it shows, each of the long tracks here unwinds gradually, a slow, swirling smoldering bit of twang flecked slowcore, a little bit droney, the guitars spidery and crystalline, the bass and drums super minimal, the cello doing much of the heavy lifting this time around, its deep throaty buzz, the perfect compliment to the band's sun baked shimmer, and bleak drowsy moodiness. Not a huge shift in sound, but then nobody wanted that, we just wanted more, more slithery, sun dappled darkness, more summery shadowy twang, and that's what Angles Of Darkness is, more just a honing and perfecting of a sound that's already pretty perfect, and exactly what you'd want to be playing in the background as you wandered down the dusty street of some old ghost town, and a perfect fit alongside the rest of your 'Ghost Town' mix alongside Scenic, Tulsa Drone, Barn Owl, Calexico, Sixteen Horsepower, and the rest.
MPEG Stream: "Old Black"
MPEG Stream: "Father Midnight"
MPEG Stream: "Descent To The Zenith"

ENSEMBLE ECONOMIQUE The Vastness Is Bearable Only Through Love (Agents Of Chaos) cassette 9.98
Ultra limited cassette from Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle, 1/2 of Humboldt avant abstractionists Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. We've long loved the SW's sprawling rhythmic dronescapery, and on his own, Pyle explores similar sonic territory, but Pyle's approach sans partners seems to be more dense and dark, caustic and abrasive, the rhythmic element balancing the atmospheric elements, like here on the title track, which spreads out over all of the first side. A thick, swirling low end thrum oozes and undulates, it's a hazy blurred rumble, over which Pyle layers heaving shards of crunch, thick throbs, deep bell-like tones, rhythmic machine gun stutters, all of which pile up and overlap, creating a soft cacophony of clatter and crunch, chug and churn, a strangely haunting, and sorta noisy, almost industrial creepscape, that sounds like some weird hybrid of Wolf Eyes, Philip Jeck and Umberto performed by some strange robotic minimalist chamber ensemble. A swirling, heady, and darkly psychedelic barrage of loops and rhythms, layers and textures, mesmerizing and intense.
The flipside is another permutation of Pyle's abstract beat laden drones, another thick swirling morass of sitar-like buzz and sci-fi synth squelch, this time the beats buried, little flurries of stutter and shuffle, squalls of glitchy tangle, more coloring the proceedings than driving them. The last track is a tense soundtracky stretch of layered buzz, haunting melody, a sprawl of pulsing high end over deep ominous rumbles, like the music from the scariest moment in some lost Italian giallo, stretched out into minutes instead of seconds, all tension, no release, brooding and intense, haunting and mesmerizing, fantastic stuff.
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! We only have a handful direct from Mr. Pyle himself when he was in town, and it's very likely that these are the last copies we'll be able to get...

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Temporary Residence) cd 14.98
It's hard to know what to say about these guys. Every record of theirs is great, moody, emotional, lush and layered, smoldering one second, explosive the next, and while instrumental post rock bands may be a dime a dozen, few can match the depth and emotion of EITS (or Mogwai, or Godspeed for that matter). It says something that even though there are a million bands doing something similar, it only takes a few seconds to recognize Explosions. Not sure if it's the sound, the arrangements, the production, or all of those, but they have a sound that is so distinctly their own, all they have to do is play, and we're whisked away.
The opening track here is actually quite a weird one by EITS standards, beginning with some strange samples, a looped rhythm, before the drums come in, some stately piano, and some soaring high end guitar, within seconds the vibe is stirring and intense, a chiming reverbed melody drifts in, and we're gone, this is the sound of warm Summer days, of walking through the woods with friends, it's the musical version of Super8 films of small towns, and late nights, the sound so evocative and expressive, shimmering chords all hazy and washed out, the rhythm oddly loping, everything fading out leaving just fingerpicked acoustic guitar, a weird hiccuping rhythm, distant whirs, some softly tangled melodies, and then when the song picks up again, it's crystalline and sun dappled and so gorgeous, the sound growing more and more lush and layered, not necessarily loud or bombastic, before finally fading out.
The rest of the record plays out exactly how you might expect/hope, warm languid chords drift over hazy dreamy expanses of blissy ambience, big drums pound over lush soaring chords and woozy melodies, post rockisms abound, those sort of loping rhythms, and that distinctive guitar/drum interplay, but EITS add all sorts of subtle (and not so subtle) colorations, little bits of electronic flutter, lush liquid horn like melodies, thick chordal swells, tribal tom fills, layer after layer of guitars crating strangely haunting harmonies, a few bursts of almost explosive heaviness, the final track maybe our favorite of the bunch, with weirdly processed voices, blurred into an atmospheric haze, the drums subtle and skittery, the guitars almost jazzy, soft piano chords, very softly psychedelic, sort of droned out and dreamy, and the track does have a few crescendos, crunchy and heavy and soaring, but those moments are brief, with most of the track spent drifting and brooding. A gorgeous sonic denouement, hushed and haunting, and so so good.
Some of the most amazing packaging EVER. Both the cd and the lp sleeves fold out into a little house, the artwork on the outside of the house, all wood and stone, ivy, a chimney, the wooden door, a mailbox full of letters, some old bikes leaned against the house, inside a fireplace, some old frames leaning against the wall, hardwood floors, an old telephone, with the receiver off the hook, the window and the door open revealing storm clouds and a tornado in the distance. Even the underneath is printed with the framing under the floor of the house. And there's a poster of the land the house sits on, right down to the empty foundation and the surrounding land on one side, the dirt and roots on the other. WOW.
MPEG Stream: "Last Known Surroundings"
MPEG Stream: "Let Me Back In"

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Temporary Residence) 2lp 36.00
It's hard to know what to say about these guys. Every record of theirs is great, moody, emotional, lush and layered, smoldering one second, explosive the next, and while instrumental post rock bands may be a dime a dozen, few can match the depth and emotion of EITS (or Mogwai, or Godspeed for that matter). It says something that even though there are a million bands doing something similar, it only takes a few seconds to recognize Explosions. Not sure if it's the sound, the arrangements, the production, or all of those, but they have a sound that is so distinctly their own, all they have to do is play, and we're whisked away.
The opening track here is actually quite a weird one by EITS standards, beginning with some strange samples, a looped rhythm, before the drums come in, some stately piano, and some soaring high end guitar, within seconds the vibe is stirring and intense, a chiming reverbed melody drifts in, and we're gone, this is the sound of warm Summer days, of walking through the woods with friends, it's the musical version of Super8 films of small towns, and late nights, the sound so evocative and expressive, shimmering chords all hazy and washed out, the rhythm oddly loping, everything fading out leaving just fingerpicked acoustic guitar, a weird hiccuping rhythm, distant whirs, some softly tangled melodies, and then when the song picks up again, it's crystalline and sun dappled and so gorgeous, the sound growing more and more lush and layered, not necessarily loud or bombastic, before finally fading out.
The rest of the record plays out exactly how you might expect/hope, warm languid chords drift over hazy dreamy expanses of blissy ambience, big drums pound over lush soaring chords and woozy melodies, post rockisms abound, those sort of loping rhythms, and that distinctive guitar/drum interplay, but EITS add all sorts of subtle (and not so subtle) colorations, little bits of electronic flutter, lush liquid horn like melodies, thick chordal swells, tribal tom fills, layer after layer of guitars crating strangely haunting harmonies, a few bursts of almost explosive heaviness, the final track maybe our favorite of the bunch, with weirdly processed voices, blurred into an atmospheric haze, the drums subtle and skittery, the guitars almost jazzy, soft piano chords, very softly psychedelic, sort of droned out and dreamy, and the track does have a few crescendos, crunchy and heavy and soaring, but those moments are brief, with most of the track spent drifting and brooding. A gorgeous sonic denouement, hushed and haunting, and so so good.
Some of the most amazing packaging EVER. Both the cd and the lp sleeves fold out into a little house, the artwork on the outside of the house, all wood and stone, ivy, a chimney, the wooden door, a mailbox full of letters, some old bikes leaned against the house, inside a fireplace, some old frames leaning against the wall, hardwood floors, an old telephone, with the receiver off the hook, the window and the door open revealing storm clouds and a tornado in the distance. Even the underneath is printed with the framing under the floor of the house. And there's a poster of the land the house sits on, right down to the empty foundation and the surrounding land on one side, the dirt and roots on the other. WOW.
MPEG Stream: "Last Known Surroundings"
MPEG Stream: "Let Me Back In"

FEELIES, THE Here Before (Bar None) cd 14.98
Reunion records can be a huge let down. Sure it's fun to see a band get together and play all their old hits, but the minute you hear those famous last words "Here's a new song we've been working on", most of us tune out. So when those new songs they've been working on get maid into an actual album, we're definitely wary.
But c'mon, it's the Feelies, who as we admitted to in another review, we actually missed out on back in the day, but when we did finally hear the amazing Crazy Rhythms record, and the almost as amazing The Good Earth, we were definitely kicking ourselves. And ever since those records got reissued recently, we have been playing them nonstop. And we were pretty excited to hear this new record. It has been THIRTY ONE years since Crazy Rhythms, and TWENTY since their last full length, but the second this got put on in the store we knew just what it was. The sound is definitely classic Feelies, not as jittery and percussion heavy as Crazy Rhythms, but then neither were any of the other records. The vibe is maybe a bit more mellow and laid back, the guitar playing not as strange and layered as on some of the old records, and the vocals more sung/spoken a la Lou Reed, but we're digging it, a LOT. The sound is warm and familiar, shimmery and jangly, that classic eighties/nineties college/indie rock sound we love so much, and like classic Feelies records, Here Before is a grower, the sound as we mentioned is great, but on repeated listens, the songs begin to seep in, the hooks gradually revealing themselves, and suddenly any of these songs could get stuck in your head.
If you're new to the Feelies, we'd probably recommend Crazy Rhythms or The Good Earth first, although this is really not all that bad a place to start and of course if you're already a fan, you won't be disappointed.
MPEG Stream: "Nobody Knows"
MPEG Stream: "Should Be Gone"
MPEG Stream: "Again Today"
MPEG Stream: "When You Know"

FEELIES, THE Here Before (Bar None) lp 19.98
Reunion records can be a huge let down. Sure it's fun to see a band get together and play all their old hits, but the minute you hear those famous last words "Here's a new song we've been working on", most of us tune out. So when those new songs they've been working on get maid into an actual album, we're definitely wary.
But c'mon, it's the Feelies, who as we admitted to in another review, we actually missed out on back in the day, but when we did finally hear the amazing Crazy Rhythms record, and the almost as amazing The Good Earth, we were definitely kicking ourselves. And ever since those records got reissued recently, we have been playing them nonstop. And we were pretty excited to hear this new record. It has been THIRTY ONE years since Crazy Rhythms, and TWENTY since their last full length, but the second this got put on in the store we knew just what it was. The sound is definitely classic Feelies, not as jittery and percussion heavy as Crazy Rhythms, but then neither were any of the other records. The vibe is maybe a bit more mellow and laid back, the guitar playing not as strange and layered as on some of the old records, and the vocals more sung/spoken a la Lou Reed, but we're digging it, a LOT. The sound is warm and familiar, shimmery and jangly, that classic eighties/nineties college/indie rock sound we love so much, and like classic Feelies records, Here Before is a grower, the sound as we mentioned is great, but on repeated listens, the songs begin to seep in, the hooks gradually revealing themselves, and suddenly any of these songs could get stuck in your head.
If you're new to the Feelies, we'd probably recommend Crazy Rhythms or The Good Earth first, although this is really not all that bad a place to start and of course if you're already a fan, you won't be disappointed.
MPEG Stream: "Nobody Knows"
MPEG Stream: "Should Be Gone"
MPEG Stream: "Again Today"
MPEG Stream: "When You Know"

FRESH & ONLYS, THE Secret Walls EP (Sacred Bones) cd ep 13.98
Yet another new record from SF's own Fresh & Onlys, and another fantastic batch of moody, melancholy jangle pop, and while it's hard to know what else to say about these guys, what with them seeming to release a new record practically every month, the minute we get an earful of the latest record, all we wanna do is forget all that and get lost in the new set of songs, mainman Tim Cohen's reservoir of classic pop songs still seemingly bottomless. And with every record, we find ourselves proclaiming some song their best yet, or a new favorite, and hare to say it but we're about to do it again. The title track here is practically perfect, Cohen's deep reverby croon, laid atop a low slung post punk bassline, wrapped in chiming guitars, the production lush and polished, but still quirky, with huge swaths of sound dropping out to let a little guitar lick float all on its own, before the band launch right back in, bit and bombastic. Catchy and hook, broody and darkly dreamy.
The rest of the ep is just as good, the songs ranging from twangy organ driving strum (sounding a bit like Calexico actually), to hazy, melodic sixties dream pop shuffle, and from moody lilting garage-y jangle pop, to moody, murky, dark doleful dirge, the last song "Poison WIne" definitely one of our new F&O favorites, bombastic, lush and buzzy, the refrain a haunting descending minor key melody, the bass thick and fuzzy, the guitars crunchy, the vox weary and washed out, one of their darkest yet, and yeah, we know, but still, maybe one of their best. As always, recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Secret Walls"
MPEG Stream: "Keep Telling Everybody Lies"

FRESH & ONLYS, THE Secret Walls EP (Sacred Bones) 12" 16.98
Yet another new record from SF's own Fresh & Onlys, and another fantastic batch of moody, melancholy jangle pop, and while it's hard to know what else to say about these guys, what with them seeming to release a new record practically every month, the minute we get an earful of the latest record, all we wanna do is forget all that and get lost in the new set of songs, mainman Tim Cohen's reservoir of classic pop songs still seemingly bottomless. And with every record, we find ourselves proclaiming some song their best yet, or a new favorite, and hare to say it but we're about to do it again. The title track here is practically perfect, Cohen's deep reverby croon, laid atop a low slung post punk bassline, wrapped in chiming guitars, the production lush and polished, but still quirky, with huge swaths of sound dropping out to let a little guitar lick float all on its own, before the band launch right back in, bit and bombastic. Catchy and hook, broody and darkly dreamy.
The rest of the ep is just as good, the songs ranging from twangy organ driving strum (sounding a bit like Calexico actually), to hazy, melodic sixties dream pop shuffle, and from moody lilting garage-y jangle pop, to moody, murky, dark doleful dirge, the last song "Poison WIne" definitely one of our new F&O favorites, bombastic, lush and buzzy, the refrain a haunting descending minor key melody, the bass thick and fuzzy, the guitars crunchy, the vox weary and washed out, one of their darkest yet, and yeah, we know, but still, maybe one of their best. As always, recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Secret Walls"
MPEG Stream: "Keep Telling Everybody Lies"

GIRLS NAMES Dead To Me (Slumberland) cd 10.98
We first heard these Irish garage rockers on a split with SF outfit Brilliant Colors, their sound reminding us of big time aQ faves Crystal Stilts, their brand of jangly garage rock similarly haunting, and listening to their full length, we definitely still hear shades of CS, we're imagining it has much to do with the vocals, a deep reverbed croon, that even here reminds us of groups like Celibate Rifles, the Lime Spiders and the Scientists, but the difference is that the Crystal Stilts' SOUND was also similarly gloomy and dour, a sort of garagey jangle pop via brooding post punk, but Girls Names traffic in something much more jangly and poppy, melodic and a little twee, their sound more in line with groups like Black Tambourine, the Pastels, the Shop Assistants, Creation Records and that classic C86 pop sound. And yeah, the deep male vocals do change the feel, in some cases making Girls Names sound like a bit like Felt, and again, sometimes positioning them closer to Crystal Stilts. And while a few of the tracks here do find the band exploring darker sonic territory, with brooding reverby guitars and gloomy minor key melancholia, for the most part, they focus more on dreamy pop jangle, a hazy, super melodic, catchy and sixties garage style pop, but that, when wedded to the deep crooned vocals, the occasional gloomy overtones and some subtly haunting moodiness, make Girls Names something special for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Lawrence"
MPEG Stream: "I Could Die"
MPEG Stream: "When You Cry"

GIRLS NAMES Dead To Me (Slumberland) lp 13.98
We first heard these Irish garage rockers on a split with SF outfit Brilliant Colors, their sound reminding us of big time aQ faves Crystal Stilts, their brand of jangly garage rock similarly haunting, and listening to their full length, we definitely still hear shades of CS, we're imagining it has much to do with the vocals, a deep reverbed croon, that even here reminds us of groups like Celibate Rifles, the Lime Spiders and the Scientists, but the difference is that the Crystal Stilts' SOUND was also similarly gloomy and dour, a sort of garagey jangle pop via brooding post punk, but Girls Names traffic in something much more jangly and poppy, melodic and a little twee, their sound more in line with groups like Black Tambourine, the Pastels, the Shop Assistants, Creation Records and that classic C86 pop sound. And yeah, the deep male vocals do change the feel, in some cases making Girls Names sound like a bit like Felt, and again, sometimes positioning them closer to Crystal Stilts. And while a few of the tracks here do find the band exploring darker sonic territory, with brooding reverby guitars and gloomy minor key melancholia, for the most part, they focus more on dreamy pop jangle, a hazy, super melodic, catchy and sixties garage style pop, but that, when wedded to the deep crooned vocals, the occasional gloomy overtones and some subtly haunting moodiness, make Girls Names something special for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Lawrence"
MPEG Stream: "I Could Die"
MPEG Stream: "When You Cry"

GOUDE, JEAN-PHILIPPE Drones (Lion Productions) cd 14.98
Moogs. Magma. Need we say more? All right, we will. This reissued 1980 album is both very Moog-y and very Magmoid. Mostly instrumental, it was the work of classically trained French pianist Jean-Philippe Goude, who was also interested in jazz, rock, and minimalism, and who had played keyboards with the Magma offshoot band Weidorje in the late '70s. So though this is a solo album, he got a lot of help from various heavy friends... usual suspects from the French prog-synth-rock underground, including members of Magma and Heldon (Klaus Blasquiz, Bernard Paganotti, Patrick Gauthier, Richard Pinhas, Francois Auger, and many more, what a lineup!). Thus this fits in snuggly with the Magma-inspired, jazz meets prog "Zeuhl" movement, especially tracks like opener "Les Saturnales" (with Blasquiz on vocals) or the exciting quadruple-guitar heaviness of "Dies Irae". But this is a varied album, and despite all the guests, two tracks feature no one but Goude alone, including the quite strange and effective soundscape piece "Coma". He also does a piano/synth duet with Heldon's Pinhas on the original album's final track "Cantiliene", which has that sort of Romantic, classical vibe we associate with Cluster's Roedelius. We say original album's final track, 'cause this cd reish closes with a bonus cut, the relaxed, loping, rather happy-sounding "Trio Des Mini-Moogs". Another track we should mention is the fantastic "Machine", wherein the melancholic strings of a chamber music quartet are overtaken by bleeping, burbling mad scientist synth and chugging mechanical beats.
The entire album is a delight, being both experimental and avant-garde, AND mesmerically melodic. Like we said, interestingly varied, but always with an aura of refinement, elegance and careful composition. It makes sense that Goude would go on to make a career out of library music and soundtracks for film and television. Indeed, if we understand the liner notes correctly, several of the tracks here were rearranged from pieces Goude had previously written for a pair of privately pressed lps, commissioned for the use of the French national gymnastics federation (???).
You'll find those extensive liner notes, vintage photos, etc. in the cd booklet. Lion has done their usual thorough labor-of-love job here, although this could have used one more round of proofreading, as we noticed a few insignificant typographic errors. The only potentially confusing one, being that the tracklist on the back cover has the songs numbered 1-12, omitting 5 though, as actually there's only 11 tracks... whoops. But other than that minor glitch, this is nicely done, with the original album's retro-futuristic graphics carefully reproduced. Love the neon-looking script for the text!!
Definitely glad they reissued this, having never heard it before, many of us here at AQ are digging it, even the not so Magma obsessed. And while perhaps "warmer" than some French coldwave, fans of that sort of thing should check this out, it certainly has something in common (including personnel) with Bernard Szajner's stuff, for instance.
MPEG Stream: "Machine"
MPEG Stream: "Dies Irae"
MPEG Stream: "Tintinnabulum"

GRANDPA JONES Makes The Rafters Sing / Yodeling Hits (Omni) cd 16.98
Latest reissue from the Omni Recording Corporation, and as with most of the Omni releases, it's an odd one. But what's so odd about Grandpa Jones? A kindly older gentleman, dressed like and old time prospector, playing banjo, yodeling occasionally, playing classic old timey bluegrass, lush vocal harmonies, plenty of twang and strum, the music itself is not especially strange, just some classic country and bluegrass. Well, it's all in the way Jones BECAME a "grandpa" - before he was even 20 years old! And no, he didn't somehow sire a child at an impossibly young age who then sired a child at an equally impossibly young age. He apparently was grumpy during early morning recording sessions, which earned him the nickname Grandpa, and at some point he decided to BECOME Grandpa Jones, which entailed, an old hat, some silver hair dye, a big fake mustache, and some old clothes, and voila! Grandpa Jones was born, and would then go one to record and perform for decades, until presumably, he could do away with the fake mustache and dyed grey hair, and no one would be the wiser. Although apparently he DID perform at the Grand Ole Opry, as a real grandpa, dressed up as a fake grandpa!
The story behind Grandpa Jones may be pretty far out, but the persona was in part tied to his love of old timey music, and suited his sound, playing classic bluegrass ballads, gorgeous steel string strum, intricate banjo, shuffling percussion, slippery slide, timeless tales of heartbreak and misery, farms and trains, the Wild West, Jones' vocals a warm and weathered croon, that could also yodel with the best of them.
This reissue collects two of Jones' classic albums, and tacks on various singles and B sides, and like all Omni releases, includes a massive booklet with meticulously researched liner notes and loads of photos.
MPEG Stream: "Make The Rafters Sing"
MPEG Stream: "It's Raining Here This Morning"
MPEG Stream: "I've Just Been Gone Too Long"
MPEG Stream: "Lullaby Yodel"

GRAVEYARD Hisingen Blues (Nuclear Blast) cd 16.98
For a lot of young Swedes, it's apparently still 1973... what with bellbottomed bands like Witchcraft, Horisont, Noctum, Dead Man, and Graveyard, eh? Here's the latest from the latter, their second full-length, and yeah as the title suggests - and as everyone who heard their self-titled, stonery debut would expect - it's heavy '70 style blues rock, all right, rollin' and tumblin' with amped up urgency and authentic analog-recorded old school mojo.
As always, Graveyard remind us a bit of aforementioned fellow countrymen Witchcraft, with whom they share roots in the late '90s band Norrsken (when oh when will there be a reissue of that awesome band's obscure output we wonder?!). For that matter, both bands also share members with another outfit, Spiders, that we've reviewed some singles by recently. But Graveyard do their psychedelic blues thing their own way, with less of Witchcraft's admitted Pentagram influence for one thing. Instead, we're (again) hearing echoes of good ol' Monster Magnet. Maybe even Thee Hypnotics. And of course the '70s bands, that inspired those bands...
Graveyard's vocalist has a nice raspy edge to his voice when he wants, like when wailing away on opener "Ain't Fit To Live Here", one example of the many galloping rockers to be found on this disc... which also has its moody slow moments, take the lovely, lumbering 2nd track "No Good, Mr. Holden" with its backwards effects, for instance. Or the wide-open spaces, spaghetti western whistling atmospherics of "Longing", which sounds like a nod to Ennio Morricone, or maybe to Bjorn Olsson. Fans of another very '70s sounding Swedish band (and AQ-fave), Elope, should feel right at home with this more mellow side of Hisingen Blues.
Furthermore, while the amount of cowbell and whoo-whoo backing vocals found here could come across as cliched in lesser hands, Graveyard sound like they really mean it, these tracks possessing real emotional resonance alongside their retro radness.
From experience, we know they're a great live band, but this is the sort of record that would make you very much suspect that, anyway. Will we get to hear 'em kick out these jams in person sometime soon? Sure hope so!
MPEG Stream: "Ain't Fit To Live Here"
MPEG Stream: "Buying Truth (Tack & Forlat)"
MPEG Stream: "The Siren"

GROUP DOUEH Zayna Jumma (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
Yet another record from this incredible Saharan outfit, number four if you're keeping track, their first was an aQ Record Of The Week, and the other two might as well have been, wild guitar driven African folk, rhythmic and percussive, all very hypnotic and mesmerizing, trancelike for sure, with some incredible vocalizing, soulful and emotional, all wound into some of the most jubilant, energetic, emotional and original music we've ever heard.
Our first impulse this time around was to say that this was simply more of the same, but in fact, the sound has definitely changed, due in no small part to what seems to be an expanded lineup, as the elder Doueh has enlisted his next oldest sons, on synth and drum kit, and it's really the drums that are the big difference. The first track is immediately more propulsive, the production better than ever, the low end thick, the vocals way up in the mix, the drums so hypnotic, and of course the guitars, impossible tangles of super intricate melody, gnarled riffs, all woven into a sound that's surprisingly super rocking.
And actually 'super rocking' might just be the best way to describe the whole record. The aforementioned drums are powerful and ever present, and the guitars remain impossibly wild, wooly and wonderful, drenched in effects, wah and flanger, or some approximation, making the notes and riffs twist into fantastic new shapes, the keyboards adding all sorts of texture, and the newly added trio of female backup singers adds even more oomph, the choruses and call and response vocal harmonies so rich and lush.
There are a couple tracks that stand out, where the band set aside their new rocking-ness, and instead unfurl gorgeous hazily psychedelic expanses of guitar buzz, sounding more like a sitar, the melodies all tangled and interwoven, while the drums offer a deep resonant pulse, and the vocals wail passionately way down in the mix, cuz here it's about the crazy intricate dense guitar playing, which is incredible, so hypnotic and utterly mesmerizing.
The record finishes off with a lengthy jam that is definitely another of our favorites, sounding a bit more laid back than the rest of the record, less buzzy, and more warm and washed out, the guitars unfurling gorgeous little flurries of notes, the rhythms and main riff locked tight so that it almost sounds looped, and at times like the record must be skipping, those moments eventually blossoming into synth laden, softly droney stretches of strummy folk and sun dappled Afro-pop bliss, dreamy and so divine. Like all the records before, utterly fantastic, and totally recommended. We can only imagine how great it must be to see Group Doueh live, but thankfully, we won't need to imagine much longer, as this record coincides with their first US tour!!
MPEG Stream: "Zayna Jumma"
MPEG Stream: "Aziza"
MPEG Stream: "Wazan Doueh"

GUISHER Hide Your Cold Dome (self-released) cd-r 11.98
We weren't sure what to expect from a Scantily Clad side project, but it certainly wasn't this! But we like it. In fact we sort of LOVE it. Unlike the cosmic synth drone of Scantily Clad, Guisher specializes in a dizzying, short attention span collection of home brewed lo-fi cut and paste, slice and dice, collaged, sample heavy, hyper rhythmic loopscapes. Sped up soul samples, snippets of songs off the radio, are slathered in crumbling distortion, then assembled into strange stuttery beatscapes, waves of white noise swallow up the proceedings, only to spit out fragmented shards of pop on the other side.
The sound is awesomely raw and primitive, like some caveman Art Of Noise at times, but the structures and rhythms are often surprisingly complex, and downright groovy at times, while pulverizingly noisy at others. The sound is pretty fantastic, slipping from DJ Shadow like moody skitter to weird world music collage to barely there short wave static in the same track, only to weave some sort of analog assembled electronica on the next track, all lumbering rhythm surrounded by flurries of tangled melodies, and weird swooping backwards effects. And so it goes, a head spinning kitchen sink concoction, a blast of crunchy electric guitars, shards of yacht rock, blasts of static and slowed down voices one second, warm and warbly, shuffling sort-of-electronic woozy rhythmic groovescape the next. So great! And apparently all recorded while on prescription drugs, which definitely might explain everything...
SUPER SUPER LIMITED. ONLY 55 COPIES, partially because the packaging is so deluxe, an oversized photocopied booklet with tons of fold out pages, secret panels, a little multi paneled triangular booklet in the middle, and a foldout poster, all in a plastic bag, each one individually sewed shut with multi-colored thread.
MPEG Stream: "Cuddle Consent"
MPEG Stream: "Chewed Popcorn"
MPEG Stream: "Spine Bottom Dimples"

HAEMOTH Mortuales Delecti (Nihilward Productions) cd 13.98
We've said it before. A bunch of times. In lots of reviews, but we'll say it again. There's just something about FRENCH black metal. Not sure what it is exactly, some of it sounds similar, but plenty of it definitely does not, but somehow, there's some ineffable -thing- that makes French black metal, special, hell, maybe BETTER than most black metal. Just off the top of our heads here's a list of French black metal bands (one that we've probably enumerated in other reviews before, but again, it bears repeating): Deathspell Omega, Katharsis, Mutiilation, Antaeus, Blut Aus Nord, Diamatregon, Peste Noire, Vlad Tepes, Aosoth, Hell Militia, Alcest, Otargos, Arrival Of Satan, S.V.E.S.T., Wolok
So yeah, we love French black metal, and one band we've dug for ages, but never reviewed on the list is this one, Haemoth, who released a couple full lengths back in 2003-2004, but this is a collection of all the band's demos, from 2001-2004, and they KILL. The sound appropriately raw and black, the guitars super distorted and blown out, the vocals sick and processed, and the songs oozing all sorts of crazy atmospheres, the opening track, with headphones on, there's all this weird low end thrum, and strange buried melodies, all swirling and pulsing beneath the buzz and pound, even without headphones it makes the song sound creepy and dense and really really cool. It might be some sort of bass or synth or processed guitar, cuz it's on the next track too, which has some seriously thick crumbling distortion, all laced with lots of drone and weird murk, the sound SO in-the-red, and so crazy heavy, check out the first couple sound samples, you'll be sold.
The older demos are more brittle and lo-fi, but still ooze menacing alien atmosphere, and are bizarrely arranged, and slip from crusty creepy plod to blurred and buzzy blast, the drums murky pulses in the thick swirls of guitarbuzz and howled vokills. There are plenty of drones and ambient breakdowns and lots of weird experimentalism scattered throughout, enough to satisfy folks into the more twisted shit, but raw and grim and black enough for the true / old school black hordes.
MPEG Stream: "Dependance"
MPEG Stream: "Aversion"
MPEG Stream: "Defects & Perversion"

HARRIS, XANDER I Want More Than Just Blood - High Heels Mix (100% Silk) 12" 11.98
Xander Harris's recent Urban Gothic lp ranked among our favorites of the new wave of cinematic sci-fi Euro disco Carpenter/Goblin worshipping soundtracky electronica, precisely because Harris seemed to ditch much of the whole dance/disco vibe in favor of something much more creepy and cinematic. But on this 12"s, those very elements are shined and polished and put on display, this side of Harris' sound positioning him even more appropriately alongside folks like Umberto and Zombi. "I Want More Than Just Blood", maybe the danciest track on Urban Gothic, gets stretched out to almost 11 minutes, creepy vocodered vox over pulsing eighties synths, the sound still hypnotic and minimal, but the groove, and the beat, jacked up a bit, lush melodic swells, swirling effects, almost a sort of euro disco space prog, especially with the epic noodly synth jams sprinkled throughout.
The B side is more of the same, the first track another stretch of Euro synth sci-fi space groove, whooshing and hazy and softly psychedelic, rife with plenty of lazer like sound effects all lashed to that relentless Eighties kraut-wave pulse, while the second track is even more spare and skeletal, a cinematic groove that might be the cheesiest of the bunch, but in a good way, the Eighties Carpenter/Goblin worship in full effect.
Comes in a super cool, full color disco 12" style sleeve, this one of course adorned with imagery much more sinister and sexy than most disco 12"s though...
MPEG Stream: "I Want More Than Blood (High Heels Remix)"

JON AD Mega-Plaskweeebo (Grand Cooley) cassette 6.98
SKWEEE!! DJ Jon AD (who runs the LoDubs and losonofono labels as well as the kick ass Anthem Records store in Portland) claims responsibility for the "first skweee mixed cassette in the known universe". Yep, that's probably correct. Kudos to him, and as skweee connoisseurs ourselves, we can tell you it's a damn fine mix, dense with percolating glitch and electronic future-funk freakiness from some of the best in the biz.
And you're reading this and wondering what the heck this "skweee" is of which we speak, well first off this tape will school you, and secondly, just do a quick search on our site and you'll find reviews of previous skweee comps like Skweee Cruise and Skweee Tooth that should explain it.
Jon wanted to demonstrate that skweee can rock a (dance) party, and definitely succeeds. We like how he mixes in a few ringers - non-skweee, or perhaps we should say pre-skweee (?) tracks by the likes of Boogie Down Productions and the Beastie Boys, to give the listener a sense of skweee's hiphop, b-boy roots. The tape is also crammed, of course, with the work of such Scandinavian skweee luminaries as Limonious, Daniel Savio, Spartan Lover, Mangrove, Uday, Rigas Den Andre, V.C., Randy Barracuda, Slow Hand Motem, Beem, and Joxaren. The new wave of American skweee is represented too, with Portland's Lazercrotch leading off side A...
Over the whole tape, there's nearly 30 individual skweee cuts seamlessly mixed together, in quite a dense and frenzied fashion. Each side of this C-60 cassette was recorded in a single take, with two turntables, mixer, and effects ('cause skweee can always use MORE video game zipps and zapps).
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Comes with download code, so you don't actually need a tape deck...
MPEG Stream: "excerpt side A"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt side B"

KAHN, JASON Vanishing Point (23five) cd 14.98
Strange that we, of all people, didn't realize this before - the Jason Kahn who has been producing extraordinary minimalist compositions and beautifully subtle sound installations in recent years is the same Jason Kahn who had stints as the drummer for mid-'80s, SST bands Trotsky Icepick, The Leaving Trains (one of Andee's all time faves!), and Universal Congress Of. Believe it! Around 1990, Kahn moved to Europe, dropping out of the US art-punk / post-hardcore scene and effortlessly transitioning into the avant-garde improv community in Zurich. He soon began experimenting with feedback systems resonating within the architecture of his drum kit, discovering a vocabulary of noises that have become the building blocks for his current body of work. A man of numerous collaborations (Gunter Muller, Ralph Steinbruchel, Asher, Steve Roden, Kevin Drumm, Jon Mueller, Toshimaru Nakamura, etc.), solo Jason Kahn records don't happen ever so often; and this one on 23five is exquisite!
On Vanishing Point, Kahn's techniques shift a little bit from the feedback bouncing around the innards of his drum kit to a series of colored noises generated from his custom built, patch-bay synth. The album reveals itself as a subtle and hypnotic elegy for rattling metals, timbral vibration, gossamer static, hissing field recordings, and those aforementioned softened noises. Soon into the piece, Kahn introduces a flickered ghost of melody whose luminous tones manifest ever so slightly against his contrails of noise. The upper register hiss and statics of these layered noises slowly drop in pitch and frequency over the duration of the piece, revealing subharmonic rumblings and an oceanic current that tugs at the agitated textures of Kahn's surface noises. This glacial, minimalist shift renders Vanishing Point elegant and meditative.
For those familiar with the 23five catalogue, this fits snugly next to those awesome records on 23five from Jean-Francois Laporte and Tim Catlin, and for those who are not, the calm surfaces of Kevin Drumm, the crackled surface noise of Loren Chasse's Hedge Of Nerves, the spectral reflections from Alan Lamb's wire recordings, and even the placid side of Taiga Remains could be good sonic reference points for this excellent album.
MPEG Stream: "Extract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"

KIRBY, LEYLAND Intrigue & Stuff Vol. 1 (History Always Favours The Winners) lp 19.98
Leyland Kirby's sprawling Sadly The Future Is No Longer What It Was collection, which compiled the vinyl double lps When We Parted My Heart Wanted To Die, When Did Our Dreams And Futures Drift So Far Apart, and Memories Live Longer Than Dreams, sounded exactly how those titles would lead you to believe: wistful, melancholy, a blurred sonic approximation of fading memories and tarnished dreams, of lost loves and long lonely nights, the sounds so achingly beautiful, a bleary collage of loops and field recordings and layered ambience, lush drones, and fragmented melodies, it easily became a unanimous favorite, and a record we couldn't keep in stock. We had a similar response to the Caretaker, an alter ego of Kirby's, who as the Caretaker explored a similarly obfuscated, antique filmstrip sound, but culled from slowed down jazz records, ancient chunks of vinyl reimagined, rendered in blurred and smeared streaks, and evoking a similarly emotional response. Thus we, and lots of you, became OBSESSED, needing to own everything Leyland Kirby or the Caretaker released, and always hankering for more.
So now, after a protracted silence, Leyland Kirby returns, with yet another series, this one entitled Intrigue & Stuff, spread out over 4 separate lps, this being volume 1, and this time, with a whole different sound. And we mean WAY different. Gone is all the scratchy ambience, the warped and warbly loops, the haunting minor key pianos, the mysterious moody textures, the blurred bleary beauty, and in its place is a strange chunk of warped electronica. Yep. Just have a listener to opener "Video 2000", which plays like a super distorted, slightly fractured Boards Of Canada, or like some techno record slowed waaay down, and run through a handful of effects pedals with dying batteries, the sound are super distorted, buzzy and fuzzy, the beat drags, gloriously, the rhythm loping, the melodies sun dappled and glimmering, a sort of blown out lo-fi downtempo avant IDM, which leads directly into the bloopy bleepy moody drift of "Re-Record Not Fade Away" with majestic synth shimmer laid beneath a blooping alien melody. "Neon-Lit Atoms" is up next, and again, is super distorted, the beats crumbling and crunchy, even the synth sounds seem to crumble, the sound a bit like some strange DJ Screw jam, but here wreathed in swirling sci-fi synths, lush and Eighties sounding, but when wedded to the weird crunch and crumble, it becomes something else entirely, eventually blossoming into something that definitely borrows from the whole Carpenter / Goblin soundtrack sound, but then twists it all up into something fractured and fantastically fucked up.
"Live For The Future, Long For The Past" was apparently used for a BBC documentary, which is a little surprising, because, while it is stately and elegant, majestic and moody, it's also dark, and droney, super distorted, and creepy as hell, the grinding distorted buzz that seems to wreath all the sounds make the vibe downright apocalyptic, the synths slightly new wave-y, but here stretched into long tense tones, and buried in thick layers of distorted sonic rubble, like the theme music for some futuristic sporting event, recorded and stored on some way too fragile media, only to be dug up hundreds of years later and played back in all it's decayed and nearly destroyed glory, seeming to slowly fall apart as it plays. "Low Entropy" sounds like an interlude of sorts, a descending plink plonk piano melody coupled with a blown out ultra distorted counter melody, the two in a woozy, tangled otherworldly harmony, which finally leads into the final track, "Ruined Visions", which is perhaps a reinterpretation of a John Denver song, but regardless, is a fantastically abject chunk of slo-mo, cough syrup synth, dreamdrone drag, the sounds seeming to melt and ooze and crumble and fracture, the melodies wavery and woozy, the main melody so mournful and melancholic, but all the sounds slightly off kilter, a little bit witch house-y, its a gloriously warped and druggy electro-ballad, a chopped and screwed synthscape, stretched into streaks and warbles, and winding down like a battery of synths being played on some old, slowly dying Victrola.
Ultra minimal packaging, plain black big-hole disco style 12" sleeve, and of course, very very limited.
MPEG Stream: "Video 2000"
MPEG Stream: "Live For The Future, Long For The Past"

KODE 9 & THE SPACEAPE Black Sun (Hyperdub) cd 17.98
It's been YEARS, exactly FIVE in fact, since the last Kode 9 and Spaceape record, Memories Of The Future, which at the time was one of the darkest dubstep records we had heard yet, it was like a more grim, less soulful Burial, with Spaceape's growled slo-mo toasting adding a whole 'nother level of darkness. Slithery and sinister and haunting, it was exactly what we wanted from dubstep.
But much has changed in the last 5 years, so we were curious what this new record would sound like. We wouldn't have been disappointed at all if it was the same thing all over again. But while many of the elements are still present, much has changed here too. Most distinctly, the record is not nearly as dark. Beyond that, the dubsteppiness is not nearly so pronounced, and the sound and sounds are surprisingly varied, slipping from electro to house to dub, but still all wound together by Kode 9's distinctive production and of course Spaceape's vocals, which sound more sung this time around, less growled.
Opening track "Black Smoke" uses some Burial like dubstep as a stepping off point, but then adds all sorts of rhythmic skitter, not to mention swirling synths, and some soaring percolating 'choruses'. It's strange, but definitely cool. "Promises" is all backwards loops, and muted thrum, but then some shimmery synth sneaks in, and the beat, more like a pulse, with a looped vocal carrying the main melody, sounding a bit like How To Dress Well, with Spaceape toasting over the top. "Am I" sounds like it could have been an M.I.A. jam, but here, it's more stripped down and skeletal, but with some ominous synths, and clipped handclappy beats, and here Spaceape actually sings. "Love Is The Drug" is almost house-y, like some weird dark Kompakt jam, and so it goes. From slow motion soul, to clipped RnB skitter, minimal slice and dice dancehall, to hazy dubbed out electro, warped and woozy droned out synthscapes, to jittery reggae flecked techno, washed out electronic dreamdrift, to crackling cinematic synth heavy buzz ballad. Cool stuff for sure. Dubstep purists might be bummed out, but anyone whose been digging How To Dress Well, Dirty Beaches, Hype Williams and other left field electronica will dig this big time.
MPEG Stream: "Black Smoke"
MPEG Stream: "Love Is The Drug"
MPEG Stream: "The Cure"
MPEG Stream: "Bullet Against The Bone"

KODE 9 & THE SPACEAPE Black Sun (Hyperdub) 2lp 29.00
It's been YEARS, exactly FIVE in fact, since the last Kode 9 and Spaceape record, Memories Of The Future, which at the time was one of the darkest dubstep records we had heard yet, it was like a more grim, less soulful Burial, with Spaceape's growled slo-mo toasting adding a whole 'nother level of darkness. Slithery and sinister and haunting, it was exactly what we wanted from dubstep.
But much has changed in the last 5 years, so we were curious what this new record would sound like. We wouldn't have been disappointed at all if it was the same thing all over again. But while many of the elements are still present, much has changed here too. Most distinctly, the record is not nearly as dark. Beyond that, the dubsteppiness is not nearly so pronounced, and the sound and sounds are surprisingly varied, slipping from electro to house to dub, but still all wound together by Kode 9's distinctive production and of course Spaceape's vocals, which sound more sung this time around, less growled.
Opening track "Black Smoke" uses some Burial like dubstep as a stepping off point, but then adds all sorts of rhythmic skitter, not to mention swirling synths, and some soaring percolating 'choruses'. It's strange, but definitely cool. "Promises" is all backwards loops, and muted thrum, but then some shimmery synth sneaks in, and the beat, more like a pulse, with a looped vocal carrying the main melody, sounding a bit like How To Dress Well, with Spaceape toasting over the top. "Am I" sounds like it could have been an M.I.A. jam, but here, it's more stripped down and skeletal, but with some ominous synths, and clipped handclappy beats, and here Spaceape actually sings. "Love Is The Drug" is almost house-y, like some weird dark Kompakt jam, and so it goes. From slow motion soul, to clipped RnB skitter, minimal slice and dice dancehall, to hazy dubbed out electro, warped and woozy droned out synthscapes, to jittery reggae flecked techno, washed out electronic dreamdrift, to crackling cinematic synth heavy buzz ballad. Cool stuff for sure. Dubstep purists might be bummed out, but anyone whose been digging How To Dress Well, Dirty Beaches, Hype Williams and other left field electronica will dig this big time.
MPEG Stream: "Black Smoke"
MPEG Stream: "Love Is The Drug"
MPEG Stream: "The Cure"
MPEG Stream: "Bullet Against The Bone"

KRALLICE Diotima (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
Thee latest blast of confusional sonic chaos from this sort-of black metal supergroup, featuring avant outsider axeman Mick Barr (Orthrelm, Ocrilim, etc.) and bass shredder Colin Marsten (Behold The Arctopus, Dysrhythmia, etc.) is Krallice album number three, the follow up to the awesomely titled Dimensional Bleedthrough, and it's pretty much another opus of epic, soaring and majestic, yet convoluted and confusional black metal as only these guys can play it. There are moments, where you might, MIGHT think this could be some other black metal band, but those moments pass, and before long, when the band lock into their blazing blasting fury. As with the other records, the real surprise is how melodic Krallice can be, judging from the pedigree, one might be forgiven for assuming this would be incredibly difficult, and it is, in some ways, but it's also weirdly catchy, a pretty good mix of classic black metalisms, and the player's obtuse and obviously idiosyncratic take on the genre. The sound this time around actually seems a lot cleaner, and arrangements a bit more straight ahead, and the melodies much more pronounced, and it definitely suits them, but just when we begin to think that, the song we're listening to will fracture into some impossible tangle, or some super tripped out sort-of guitar lead, before slipping right back into more soaring buzzing melodic black metal. Which is just fine with us. Be sure to check out the epic 15 minute closer "Forgiveness In Rot", which is maybe the most melodic thing they've done, with some impossible hooks, and some subtle poppiness, all woven into the buzzing and blasting, almost like Krallice channeling Alcest AND some sort of epic post rock!
MPEG Stream: "Inhume"
MPEG Stream: "The Clearing"

LES RALLIZES DENUDES Great White Wonder (Phoenix) 5lp box 95.00
As promised, this expansive underground '70s Japanese psych document, first available as a 4cd box set, is now also out on vinyl. Five 180 gram lps in a big white box, a pretty essential Rallizes fetish object if there ever was one (outside of Japan, where there's been plenty, much more pricey than this!). Here's what we wrote about the cd version...
Every time we come across a new Les Rallizes Denudes reissue, not only are we absolutely thrilled, cuz we're sort of WAY obsessed, as are many of you we're discovering, we just can't get enough of these Japanese underground legends' crazed guitar-heavy freaked out, in-the-red psychedelia, but we also begin to marvel that there even IS another Rallizes release. After all, these guys only ever had ONE single proper release, and spent very little time in the studio, so pretty much every other record is a collection of live performances, some recorded straight through, others collaged into 'proper' records, but hell, we're not complaining, these guys sound like they were made for tearing it up live. And the varying sound quality, only adds to the whole freaked out-ness, the sound crumbling, or the levels peaking and the whole band seeming to disappear in a cloud of muted buzz, before emerging and exploding into another frantic bout of wild tangled leads, or some chugging proto-metal psychedelic blues.
Great White Wonder was originally released in 2006 on Japan's Univive label, and now it's now been reissued with a whole extra disc's worth of music, the set compiling, yep, a handful of live shows from 1974 to 1980, with lots of the same song performed at each, but in true Les Rallizes fashion, you'd never know, in fact sometimes we think the titles were just a formality, the same song will be 9 minutes on performance, 5 the next, 6 the next, super loose and high end and chaotic one performance, dark and muddy and riffy the next, murky and heavily reverbed and way more rocking the next, but that's kind of what's so magical about these guys, and what keeps most of us complaining about the inevitable overlap, cuz it all sounds so good, and it always sounds different, the arrangement, the sound quality, the tone and timbre, and listening to these discs, if you edited out the breaks and between song spaces, it's easy to imagine this would flow pretty excellently as a nearly four hour super jam. And it is pretty divine, these guys are the undisputed masters, slipping from brooding, and soulful crooned balladic blues, the guitar leads super emotional and soaring and epic, to wild and loose and chaotic, the guitars impossibly frantic and furious and freaked out, the sound easily shifting between the two, a moody crooned verse will explode into freaked out psychedelic frenzy, an endless heart-of-the-sun jam will slip smoothly into a loping bit of midtempo brood. And with Les Rallizes, it's totally about the jam, sure there are songs, and there is singing, but most songs eventually (d)evolve into something much more transcendent, total epic majestic psych rock nirvana.
Fans of all things PSF, modern Japanese Psychedelia, and newer psych rock like the Heads and White Hills, odds are you're already as obsessed with these guys as we are. If you're not, well, give the sound samples a listen and try and see if you can resist... heck chances are you've been WAITING for this!
MPEG Stream: "Field Of Artificial Flower"
MPEG Stream: "The Last One"
MPEG Stream: "Deeper Than The Night"
MPEG Stream: "White Waking"

LITURGY Aesthethica (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
What is it about this band that inspires such controversy? Sure, any band of short haired hipsters that decides to play black metal is bound to get some heat from the true grim hordes, but with Liturgy it's off the charts. Could be frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's diatribes on the intellectual roots of his band and music, maybe that combined with his pretty boy looks and his valley girl like diction - but hey it's all about the music, and as far as we're concerned Liturgy have definitely taken black metal and twisted it all up and made it their own. Sure we love the true grim classics, corpsepaint and raw primitive buzz, blasting necro metal, we do, and we maybe always will, but we gave up long ago on the whole 'troo' thing. If being true means only listening to one kind of music, and even then, only made by a certain approved sect of musicians, who would want that. It's a discussion that could go on for ages, and does on pretty much every metal messageboard on the web, but if you're reading this, odds are you're like us, you like cool, weird, GOOD music, and you don't care if someone thinks the music you love is 'true' or 'pure' or whatever, and odds are you don't just like black metal.
Which we think is probably a prerequisite for liking Liturgy. Because while this is most definitely black metal, all of HHH's intellectual posturing, just might not be posturing after all, cuz this stuff is WEIRD. FUCKED UP. SUPER COMPLEX. Minimal, but somehow totally maximal too. The black metal tropes are present and accounted for, super fast picking, soaring minor key melodies, insectoid buzz, frantic blast beats, howled vox, but, the arrangements, the song structure, even the sound, is far removed from Burzum and Immortal and Satyricon and Mayhem and all the rest. In the past, we've described Liturgy as sounding like a black metal Arvo Part, and that definitely still applies, it's as if these guys filter their BM through Part and Feldman and some sort of modern minimalism. The songs are rife with drones, and intricate harmonies, the rhythms complicated and convoluted, the buzz often wound up into soaring sheets of high end frenzy, the drums locked tight with the guitars, the songs often, a series of short phrases repeated over and over, very minimal and mesmerizing.
Opener "High Gold" is the perfect example, with it's soaring majestic black metallisms, arranged into seemingly brief blasts, lush high end swells, a sort of psychedelic ur-drone rendered in blasts and buzz. "True Will" is slightly more traditionally black metal, but even here, the band lock into these impossibly dense drones, where all the instruments lock onto a single high note and hold it, and keep holding it, creating so much tension, before splintering back into something more traditionally buzzy, but only slightly. The sound is ALL high end, all upper register, brittle and soaring. There did seem to be one other element in play, but on we couldn't put our finger on until
"Generation" which finds the band loosing a serious math rock onslaught, super technical, totally repetitive, the guitars churning, locking tight into these gnarled bits of crunch and chug, the drums mathy and meticulous, it's like these guys took 2 or 3 of their favorite riffs from Don Caballero songs and composed a super heavy, super minimal, almost looped sounding in places, math rock epic. It's so good. And you can hear the other element that finds it's way into the more black metal jams on the record, AND you can also observe the band's unique compositional strategy more easily in the math rock context, so when the next track begins, it's a killer mix of blasting soaring blackness, and gnarled mathiness, AND of course modern minimalism.
So yeah, the true grim corpsepainted hordes should definitely avoid this, they wouldn't enjoy it, or even get it, anyway, but for everyone else, this is some epic, majestic, and yeah, transcendental, math infused minimal black metal majesty of the highest order.
MPEG Stream: "High Gold"
MPEG Stream: "Returner"
MPEG Stream: "Generation"
MPEG Stream: "Veins Of God"

LITURGY Aesthethica (Thrill Jockey) 2lp 17.98
What is it about this band that inspires such controversy? Sure, any band of short haired hipsters that decides to play black metal is bound to get some heat from the true grim hordes, but with Liturgy it's off the charts. Could be frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's diatribes on the intellectual roots of his band and music, maybe that combined with his pretty boy looks and his valley girl like diction - but hey it's all about the music, and as far as we're concerned Liturgy have definitely taken black metal and twisted it all up and made it their own. Sure we love the true grim classics, corpsepaint and raw primitive buzz, blasting necro metal, we do, and we maybe always will, but we gave up long ago on the whole 'troo' thing. If being true means only listening to one kind of music, and even then, only made by a certain approved sect of musicians, who would want that. It's a discussion that could go on for ages, and does on pretty much every metal messageboard on the web, but if you're reading this, odds are you're like us, you like cool, weird, GOOD music, and you don't care if someone thinks the music you love is 'true' or 'pure' or whatever, and odds are you don't just like black metal.
Which we think is probably a prerequisite for liking Liturgy. Because while this is most definitely black metal, all of HHH's intellectual posturing, just might not be posturing after all, cuz this stuff is WEIRD. FUCKED UP. SUPER COMPLEX. Minimal, but somehow totally maximal too. The black metal tropes are present and accounted for, super fast picking, soaring minor key melodies, insectoid buzz, frantic blast beats, howled vox, but, the arrangements, the song structure, even the sound, is far removed from Burzum and Immortal and Satyricon and Mayhem and all the rest. In the past, we've described Liturgy as sounding like a black metal Arvo Part, and that definitely still applies, it's as if these guys filter their BM through Part and Feldman and some sort of modern minimalism. The songs are rife with drones, and intricate harmonies, the rhythms complicated and convoluted, the buzz often wound up into soaring sheets of high end frenzy, the drums locked tight with the guitars, the songs often, a series of short phrases repeated over and over, very minimal and mesmerizing.
Opener "High Gold" is the perfect example, with it's soaring majestic black metallisms, arranged into seemingly brief blasts, lush high end swells, a sort of psychedelic ur-drone rendered in blasts and buzz. "True Will" is slightly more traditionally black metal, but even here, the band lock into these impossibly dense drones, where all the instruments lock onto a single high note and hold it, and keep holding it, creating so much tension, before splintering back into something more traditionally buzzy, but only slightly. The sound is ALL high end, all upper register, brittle and soaring. There did seem to be one other element in play, but on we couldn't put our finger on until
"Generation" which finds the band loosing a serious math rock onslaught, super technical, totally repetitive, the guitars churning, locking tight into these gnarled bits of crunch and chug, the drums mathy and meticulous, it's like these guys took 2 or 3 of their favorite riffs from Don Caballero songs and composed a super heavy, super minimal, almost looped sounding in places, math rock epic. It's so good. And you can hear the other element that finds it's way into the more black metal jams on the record, AND you can also observe the band's unique compositional strategy more easily in the math rock context, so when the next track begins, it's a killer mix of blasting soaring blackness, and gnarled mathiness, AND of course modern minimalism.
So yeah, the true grim corpsepainted hordes should definitely avoid this, they wouldn't enjoy it, or even get it, anyway, but for everyone else, this is some epic, majestic, and yeah, transcendental, math infused minimal black metal majesty of the highest order.
MPEG Stream: "High Gold"
MPEG Stream: "Returner"
MPEG Stream: "Generation"
MPEG Stream: "Veins Of God"

MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE Totem Three (Important) cd 14.98
Yet another mantric missive from these musical missionaries and cosmic sonic seers, a collective of sorts, its membership drawn from several somewhat similarly likeminded groups, including Earth, Sun City Girls, and Burning Witch among others. And as with past installments in the ongoing Totem series, here the Master Musicians weave lush, slow building soundscapes, drawing on all manner of musics, Eastern ragas, Western space rock, minimal dronemusic, experimental ambience, freaky forest folk and who knows what all else, woven deftly into dark, brooding, expansive epics.
Totem Three begins ominously with chiming bells, a deep rumbling synth drone, tinkling chimes, a darkly meditative drift, deep vocals, horns and other low tones, are all layered on top of that initial drone, the sound swept up by slow shimmering swells, laced with strange spacey effects, just below the surface, an intro of sorts, leading directly into the much more traditionally song-y "In The Twilight Of The Kali Yuga", those shimmering swells from the first track carrying over, but in the place of the drone, strummed steel string guitars, fluttering flutes, sitar like buzz, Eastern hand drums, and the quickly song coalesces into a surprisingly jaunty bit of Middle Eastern sounding folk, rife with hazy vox, and tabla, as well as other percussion. Before the record returns to the drone of the opener. But again, that rumbling buzzing synth is overlaid with some sort of woodwind, balancing the ominous vibe of the drone, thick downtuned guitar chords are unfurled, as are bells, and chantlike vox, the result a strange sort of Eastern style folky dirge, SUNNO))) like guitars beneath a meditative raga.
The record splits the rest of its time between a buzzy, Middle Eastern style folk, lush with fiddles and handclaps, and group vocals, albeit with a bit more buzz and strange sonic filigree than actual traditional music, soaring string laden almost soundtracky ambience, moody and dramatic, and haunting minimal dronemusic, replete with moaning horns, creepy incantations, glitched out electronics, finally finishing off with a seriously left field bit of cinematic weirdness, that basically sounds like the soundtrack to some eighties straight to video Indian movie, all cheesy eighties synths, groovy Euro disco rhythms, and of course some bloopy bass and some shredding guitar solos, the sort of thing that would definitely appeal to folks into Zombi and Umberto and the like. Compared to Totems One and Two, Three seems to lean a bit more towards the atmospheric, away from the heavy.
As always weird and wonderful, with appropriately eye popping psychedelic cover art courtesy of Seldon Hunt.
MPEG Stream: "Bardo Sidpa"
MPEG Stream: "Prophecy Of The White Camel / Namoutarre"
MPEG Stream: "Failed Future"

MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE Totem Three (Important) lp 17.98
Yet another mantric missive from these musical missionaries and cosmic sonic seers, a collective of sorts, its membership drawn from several somewhat similarly likeminded groups, including Earth, Sun City Girls, and Burning Witch among others. And as with past installments in the ongoing Totem series, here the Master Musicians weave lush, slow building soundscapes, drawing on all manner of musics, Eastern ragas, Western space rock, minimal dronemusic, experimental ambience, freaky forest folk and who knows what all else, woven deftly into dark, brooding, expansive epics.
Totem Three begins ominously with chiming bells, a deep rumbling synth drone, tinkling chimes, a darkly meditative drift, deep vocals, horns and other low tones, are all layered on top of that initial drone, the sound swept up by slow shimmering swells, laced with strange spacey effects, just below the surface, an intro of sorts, leading directly into the much more traditionally song-y "In The Twilight Of The Kali Yuga", those shimmering swells from the first track carrying over, but in the place of the drone, strummed steel string guitars, fluttering flutes, sitar like buzz, Eastern hand drums, and the quickly song coalesces into a surprisingly jaunty bit of Middle Eastern sounding folk, rife with hazy vox, and tabla, as well as other percussion. Before the record returns to the drone of the opener. But again, that rumbling buzzing synth is overlaid with some sort of woodwind, balancing the ominous vibe of the drone, thick downtuned guitar chords are unfurled, as are bells, and chantlike vox, the result a strange sort of Eastern style folky dirge, SUNNO))) like guitars beneath a meditative raga.
The record splits the rest of its time between a buzzy, Middle Eastern style folk, lush with fiddles and handclaps, and group vocals, albeit with a bit more buzz and strange sonic filigree than actual traditional music, soaring string laden almost soundtracky ambience, moody and dramatic, and haunting minimal dronemusic, replete with moaning horns, creepy incantations, glitched out electronics, finally finishing off with a seriously left field bit of cinematic weirdness, that basically sounds like the soundtrack to some eighties straight to video Indian movie, all cheesy eighties synths, groovy Euro disco rhythms, and of course some bloopy bass and some shredding guitar solos, the sort of thing that would definitely appeal to folks into Zombi and Umberto and the like. Compared to Totems One and Two, Three seems to lean a bit more towards the atmospheric, away from the heavy.
As always weird and wonderful, with appropriately eye popping psychedelic cover art courtesy of Seldon Hunt.
MPEG Stream: "Bardo Sidpa"
MPEG Stream: "Prophecy Of The White Camel / Namoutarre"
MPEG Stream: "Failed Future"

MELTED TOYS Washed & Dried (Underwater Peoples) lp 14.98
Here comes a great new San Francisco band making some melt worthy washed out pop. Right at home on Underwater Peoples who have also released records we love by folks like Ducktails, Julian Lynch, Air Waves, and Pill Wonder. They for sure have the kodachrome soaked old cassette recording C86 happening, but there is something nice and subtle about their delivery that sounds so refreshing and earnest. We love how much of a daydream haze these songs put us in, synth pop that is less about beating you over the head with the sounds of synthesizers and more about casting a spell of timeless daydreams and melancholy memories. If you've been digging folks like The Art Museums, Puro Instinct, Memory Tapes, and Holy Shit then for sure you should jump all over this Melted Toys debut. It's some of the best dreamy and druggy, hazy and seductive pop that we've heard in a long time!

MOONBELL Figurine (self released) cd ep 6.98
Is 'Moon' the new 'Wolf' or 'Skull'?, could be, as lately some of our favorite records have been coming from bands like Moon Duo, Moon Unit and The Soft Moon. Now we get to add Moonbell to the awesome list of psych driven moon moniker bands that we've been digging. We'd been having a lot of folks asking us about this band before we heard them, seems folks around town knew that this was a great new San Francisco band to take notice of. With a sound equally influenced by shoegaze and drugged out rock, Moonbell sound exists in some really awesome place right between Spacemen 3 and early Ride, Swervedriver, and Chapterhouse. Lilting vocals, soaring and dazed guitars all in a smoky vapor of entrancement. Such a great debut!
MPEG Stream: "Figurine"
MPEG Stream: "Nostalgia For The Future"

MOORE, STEVE Zero-Point Field (L.I.E.S.) 12" 10.98
Almost like a teaser for the forthcoming Zombi full length, Escape Velocity, comes this killer two track 12" from one half of Zombi, Steve Moore, whose solo recordings are (thankfully) not all that far removed from the Zombi mothership.
It's easy to be dismissive at this point of this sound, cuz there are just soooo many folks doing it, sci-fi soundtracks, eighties straight to video B movies, John Carpenter, Goblin, but Zombi were there first, and still do it better than most, and hearing Moore's latest blast of cosmic disco sci-fi nu-age techno synthscapery it's easy to see why he and his two man crew inspired such a legion of similarly sonically obsessed sci-fi minions.
The title track here is a fantastic chunk of outer space sci-fi synth drift, the robotic pulse underscores sweeping swells of moody melody, pappered with occasional bits of percussive bloopery, the rhythms muted and minimal, the pulsing synths driving the proceedings more than the beats, but the beats are still there, adding texture, and eventually a skittery skeletal framework for Moore's cinematic synthesized cosmic drift.
The flipside begins all washed out and woozy, lush, layered synth swirls, a slow moving outer space shimmer, but soon, the synth low end begins to percolate right below the surface, not quite disrupting the new age vibe, but adding a bit of momentum and propulsion. Eventually the beat comes in, but it's not so much a beat, as a pulse, a single house-y kick drum, but the result is perfect, adding just the slightest bit of groove, allowing the rest of the track to swirl and whirl and drift, all hazy and dreamily druggy and spaced out, the sound building to a driving and dramatic crescendo, before slipping away in a soft hazy swirl of slow fading synth shimmer. So good!
Needless to say, absolutely required listening for fans of Umberto, Zombi, Xander Harris, John Carpenter, Goblin, Blizaro, Applehead, Gatekeeper, Expo 70, Roll The Dice, Nightsatan, Twins and all the rest. Packaged in a plain black disco style big hole 12"s sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Frigia"
MPEG Stream: "Zero-Point Field"

MOUNTAINS Air Museum (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
Latest disc of pastoral dreamlike synthdrone ambience from this East coast duo, whose past records have been unanimous aQ faves, as this one is fast becoming as well. Every track here is a mini epic of slow building drones and lushly layered textures, the sound rich and full, strings buzzing, synths shimmering, sometimes stretched out for ages, but often blossoming into sun dappled Technicolor bursts of sweet sonic radiance, sparkling and glimmering, just as often wrangled into pulses, and crafted into weirdly sc-fi synthscapes, borrowing a page from the book of all the Carpenter/Goblin worshippers out there, but instead of creating some futuristically retro Euro disco, those pulses are blurred and layered, and turned into something more along the lines of Tangerine Dream, hazy and gauzy and deeply melodic and almost new agey.
Elsewhere the duo wreath their hushed high end drift in thick swaths of hiss and hum, creating Tim Hecker like landscapes of bleary eared ambience, all pixelated and indistinct, a soft focus shimmer, but Mountains add streaks of synths, again making it sound more like classic new age/krautrock than modern experimentation.
The second half of the record is heavy on the pulsing synths, simple lilting melodies, repeated, looped, layered, conjuring up mesmerizing chunks of electronic minimalism, that definitely look to Reich, and Riley, as well as Fripp and Eno, but in the hands of Mountains, at times much noisier, the sound more dense, but that warm glowing melodic sense always shining through. The record closes with a thick swath of warm whirring buzz, tangled melodies beneath think swirls of whir and thrum, crumbling synths, which fade out during the last few seconds, to reveal a guitar, which may very well have been in there all along.
MPEG Stream: "January 17"
MPEG Stream: "Thousand Square"
MPEG Stream: "Newsprint"

MOUNTAINS Air Museum (Thrill Jockey) lp 15.98
Latest disc of pastoral dreamlike synthdrone ambience from this East coast duo, whose past records have been unanimous aQ faves, as this one is fast becoming as well. Every track here is a mini epic of slow building drones and lushly layered textures, the sound rich and full, strings buzzing, synths shimmering, sometimes stretched out for ages, but often blossoming into sun dappled Technicolor bursts of sweet sonic radiance, sparkling and glimmering, just as often wrangled into pulses, and crafted into weirdly sc-fi synthscapes, borrowing a page from the book of all the Carpenter/Goblin worshippers out there, but instead of creating some futuristically retro Euro disco, those pulses are blurred and layered, and turned into something more along the lines of Tangerine Dream, hazy and gauzy and deeply melodic and almost new agey.
Elsewhere the duo wreath their hushed high end drift in thick swaths of hiss and hum, creating Tim Hecker like landscapes of bleary eared ambience, all pixelated and indistinct, a soft focus shimmer, but Mountains add streaks of synths, again making it sound more like classic new age/krautrock than modern experimentation.
The second half of the record is heavy on the pulsing synths, simple lilting melodies, repeated, looped, layered, conjuring up mesmerizing chunks of electronic minimalism, that definitely look to Reich, and Riley, as well as Fripp and Eno, but in the hands of Mountains, at times much noisier, the sound more dense, but that warm glowing melodic sense always shining through. The record closes with a thick swath of warm whirring buzz, tangled melodies beneath think swirls of whir and thrum, crumbling synths, which fade out during the last few seconds, to reveal a guitar, which may very well have been in there all along.
MPEG Stream: "January 17"
MPEG Stream: "Thousand Square"
MPEG Stream: "Newsprint"

NEGATIVE PLANE Stained Glass Revelations (Ajna) 2lp 21.00
Here's a "now on vinyl!" we know a lot of you have been waiting for, the 2nd album from black metal cult Negative Plane, at last unleashed on double vinyl. We listed the cd version back in January, here's what we said about it then:
Hmmm, we must have done something to obtain Satan's approval, since he has recently rewarded us with releases from two of our absolute favorite cult black metal bands, and both exceedingly idiosyncratic ones at that. There's Inquisition's highly anticipated and indeed amazing Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm opus, which we'll be reviewing next time (we ran out this week!), and this, the equally eagerly-awaited 2nd album from Negative Plane, whose 2006 debut caused us to describe them as "very special", a band so underground and cult that they require the devotion of "servitors rather than mere fans". As such, we bow and praise, for five years later, this second strike is another slab of antiquarian, abyssic genius.
Doomy, dramatic, delirious black metal that's so thick with true old school feeling that after a few spins, the only thing you can follow it with are crackly vinyls by '80s and early '90s underground overlords like Bathory, Venom, Celtic Frost, Possessed, and Mayhem. Yet their artistry is directed down their own path, not that of retro nostalgia, even if they stir up the same Satanic vibrations as those ancient ones.
Negative Plane are masters of mystique, their music a masterful combination of atmospheric (and not only that, but also interesting) interludes, that evoke eerie olde silent film musick, and much more metal onslaughts, that emerge intricately from the hissing murk with pounding drums, swarms of guitar, and raw guttural vokills. Field recordings, bells, cello, piano, organ, and some female vocals are all woven into the mix, creating something quite unique and effective.
These rumbling, rollercoastering compositions, with their sepulchral production and strangely classical motifs, are all cloaked in weird, haunting ambience, it's like they recorded with Leyland Kirby or Indignant Senility in the producer's seat. If it's truly possible for metal to not just be about the occult, but actually BE occult, the reverby rituals recorded by Negative Plane are, and leave us with a Lovecraftian "indescribable" to add to this review.
3 sides of music, plus booklet, in jacket.
MPEG Stream: "The Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Lamentations And Ashes"
MPEG Stream: "Angels Veiled Of Bone"

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Big Shadow Montana (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) lp 16.98
Collaborations in the experimental scene come and go, so it's so great to see one that has some longevity. This is album number seven from BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa, and the fourth released by the discerning Helen Scarsdale Agency label. Since this trio (Benny plus Sigtryggur and Helgi of Stilluppsteypa) unleashed their drunken drone trilogy through the aforementioned Agency, they've been venturing into all sorts of delirious bouts of murky psychedelic collages and imagined soundtracks. There were the weird ruminations upon a found cassette, turned into a mondo filmscore on Man From Deep River; and then the sci-fi opus of synth meanderings found on Space Finale. Now what may be the best to emerge since that earlier alcohol-inspired trilogy is this, the mercurial and hauntological album Big Shadow Montana. Two long-form pieces make up the album, with the A side standing as a hallucinatory foreshadowing of what is to come on the flip. Here, ghostly drones broadcast directly out of the haunted ballroom from The Shining, flickering with half-received transmissions, bumps in the night, and any number of other worldly sounds. Bits of structure emerge in this slow-motion churning of drone, shadow, and filigree coming across somewhere between the fucked up collages that seem to bring all of the Teenage Filmstars records to a close and the subterranean drone-rock sensibility of German Oak. When the record flips, a cosmic stream of vintage synths slump toward oblivion paralleling what has been done by Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never (both of whom have released work alongside this trio on Editions Mego), but before this can venture any further down the rabbit hole of Schnitzler and Schulze references, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa slip into a faux-exotica guise with cheap Casiotone melodies swaying to and fro through old Les Baxter and Martin Denny records. It's a signature move for Stilluppsteypa, if anyone remembers how they mustered a similar strategy on The Best Possible Yet back in 1997. But the maudlin organ harmonies and percolating tone-bloop oscillations are much more confident here, emerging perfectly out of the drone fog like those organ-led numbers on that Deathprod boxset, only to slip into a twin engine thrum of inner-space expansion. In listening back to the second side of the album, it's clear that the first is a lengthy dub of the second, recast and recontextualized as a percussive ghost. Totally captivating through and through, and with a damn trippy cover sporting a vibrantly hypnotic, candy-colored mandala. Yup, it does have a download card. Yup, it is limited. Yup, it is highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Big Shadow Montana 1"
MPEG Stream: "Big Shadow Montana 2"

NJIQAHDDA The Path Of Liberation From Birth And Death (Pagan Flames) cd 9.98
Latest blast of avant UN-blackness from the awesome and unpronounceable Njiqahdda. The latest project of the man who seemed to single handedly define the UN-black metal scene we were so enamored of, with his label EEE, and his various other awesome and aQ approved projects Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial and a bunch of others. But Njiqahdda was always way weirder. Which is saying a lot considering that the weirdness of those other projects is precisely what made them so appealing to us in the first place.
So when we say this stuff is weirder, well prepare yourself. Sprawling super intricate and convoluted blackened epics, we hesitate to call it black metal, even though it most definitely is, guitars buzz, drums blast, the vocals and howled and anguished, the melodies minor key and majestic, but those tropes are all twisted up here, into something way more unique. More like a mathy blackened prog, or some avant blackened hypno-rock. Both would apply, the parts constantly shifting, the arrangements always in flux, the drums wild and dense and intricate, the guitar playing both gnarled and frantic, chiming and soaring, songs as likely to erupt into a grim burst of furious buzz, as a woozy, almost poppy bit of melodiousness. The sound too is distinctly un-black metal, and not UN-black in that sense, more like NOT black at all, murky and muddy, warm and a little washed out, not buzzy and brittle, the voice buried in the murk, the drums also a bit muted, occasionally some more traditional blackness surfaces, but usually just as quickly the sound shifts to something more rhythmic or mathy or proggy, tranced out and droney, all of the songs seemingly parts of a single massive and majestic whole.
The record's centerpiece, a 25 minute epic, even breaks down part way through into some glimmering shimmering post rocky drift, all hazy and washed out and dreamlike, acoustic guitars and little high end melodic trills, before disappearing in a cloud of alien FX, processed percussion, mysterious electronics, before finally emerging on the other side reverted back to its moody, murky, repetitive hypno rock blackness, somehow more melodic and poppy than ever.
The whole record is overflowing with sonic surprises, and yet somehow every random bit of sonic weirdness, doesn't stick out, instead it all sounds perfectly organic, from brooding acoustic folk, to manic mathy super frenetic stop start dynamics, from jangly almost post rock, to gnarled, almost impossibly complex blackprog, and from weirdly muddy washed out almost gothy sounding black buzz to abstract electronics flecked foresty folk.
As much as we love all the other Njiqahdda, and hell, pretty much all the other groups that came before, this one definitely takes the cake. Stretching the realms and bounds of the black metal sound about as far as they can go, while impossibly still managing to retain a sound that is both black AND metal. A new favorite for sure.
Some super stunning artwork as well, a massive booklet, filled with gorgeous photos of the sea, overlaid with blue metallic sigils and mysterious mantras...
MPEG Stream: "Transcendental Knowledge Upon The Battlefield"
MPEG Stream: "Attaining The Confidential Supreme Absolute"

OH SEES, THEE Castlemania (In The Red) cd 13.98
Hot on the heels of their recent double lp singles collection comes yet ANOTHER new full length from local garage rock heroes Thee Oh Sees, and it's a good one, but unlike the sweaty stomp of blown out crunch of recent records, Castlemania is a bit more fuzzy and washed out, hazy and reverby, could be because it's not actually a 'proper' new full-band Oh Sees record, instead, it's a little bit like a return to Thee Oh Sees of old (back when 'they' were a 'he'), with Oh Sees mainman John Dwyer playing all the instruments himself, vocals, drums, guitar, flute, bass, clarinet, keyboards, trumpet, synth, harmonica and percussion, the whole thing recorded in his former Haight Street apartment (this being the last thing recorded there before, according to the liner notes, "control was assumed by rich assholes").
That said, Castlemania is absolutely an Oh Sees record, it only takes about 10 seconds of album opener "I Need Seed" before you're whisked away by Dwyer's reverby jangle fuzz pop, but as mentioned above, the vibe is way more summery and sunshiney, the guitars are acoustic, fluttering flutes, simple percussion, the vocals wreathed in reverb, but WAY less distorted than usual, heavy on the hooks, lots of jangle, background 'oooohs' and 'aaaaahs'. The awesomely titled second track "Corprophagist (A Bath Perhaps)" sounds like classic Oh Sees, but stripped way down, laced with bells and electronic bloops, with a killer main hook, some fantastic vocal harmonies, more flutes, the drums a minimal shuffle, and so it goes.
The rest of the record follows suit, from the string laden balladic wooziness of "Stinking Cloud" with its druggy atmosphere and twisted brass, to "Pleasure Blimps" that almost sounds more like the Fresh & Onlys than Thee Oh Sees. There are still some crunchy garage jams, but for the most part, it's way more strummy and jangly, groovy and fuzzy and catchy almost sixties style pop, appropriately warped and tweaked of course.
The record finishes off with some awesome (and unlikely) covers. "I Won't Hurt You" by sixties psychedelic pop folk outfit West Coast Pop Experimental Band is a murky brooding pop gem, with woozy washed out low end, muted propulsive rhythms, and some gorgeous boy/girl harmonies, the boy parts provided by Ty Segall, the girl parts provided by Oh Sees keyboardist Brigid Dawson. "If I Stay Too Long" by post Squirrel Bait Louisville rockers Big Wheel sounds like it could be an Oh Sees original, chiming guitars, a little bit of twang, big drums, and a super hooky falsetto chorus, and finally a song called "What Are We Craving" by sixties/seventies folk singer Norma Tanega (who dated Dusty Springfield!), also sung by Dawson, a loping simple rhythm emerges from a cloud of strange reverby percussion, droning wheezing organs laid over the top, the atmosphere hazy and softly psychedelic, the vocals angelic and drifty, a gritty garage rock vamp slowed down into a hazy strummy jangly fuzzfolk ballad, dreamy and druggy and divine.
On both cd and vinyl, the vinyl version is a double lp, the 4th side adorned with a killer etching by artist William Keihn who also did the cover art!
MPEG Stream: "I Need Seed"
MPEG Stream: "Corprophagist (A Bath Perhaps)"
MPEG Stream: "Stinking Cloud"
MPEG Stream: "Corrupted Coffin"

OH SEES, THEE Castlemania (In The Red) 2lp 17.98
Hot on the heels of their recent double lp singles collection comes yet ANOTHER new full length from local garage rock heroes Thee Oh Sees, and it's a good one, but unlike the sweaty stomp of blown out crunch of recent records, Castlemania is a bit more fuzzy and washed out, hazy and reverby, could be because it's not actually a 'proper' new full-band Oh Sees record, instead, it's a little bit like a return to Thee Oh Sees of old (back when 'they' were a 'he'), with Oh Sees mainman John Dwyer playing all the instruments himself, vocals, drums, guitar, flute, bass, clarinet, keyboards, trumpet, synth, harmonica and percussion, the whole thing recorded in his former Haight Street apartment (this being the last thing recorded there before, according to the liner notes, "control was assumed by rich assholes").
That said, Castlemania is absolutely an Oh Sees record, it only takes about 10 seconds of album opener "I Need Seed" before you're whisked away by Dwyer's reverby jangle fuzz pop, but as mentioned above, the vibe is way more summery and sunshiney, the guitars are acoustic, fluttering flutes, simple percussion, the vocals wreathed in reverb, but WAY less distorted than usual, heavy on the hooks, lots of jangle, background 'oooohs' and 'aaaaahs'. The awesomely titled second track "Corprophagist (A Bath Perhaps)" sounds like classic Oh Sees, but stripped way down, laced with bells and electronic bloops, with a killer main hook, some fantastic vocal harmonies, more flutes, the drums a minimal shuffle, and so it goes.
The rest of the record follows suit, from the string laden balladic wooziness of "Stinking Cloud" with its druggy atmosphere and twisted brass, to "Pleasure Blimps" that almost sounds more like the Fresh & Onlys than Thee Oh Sees. There are still some crunchy garage jams, but for the most part, it's way more strummy and jangly, groovy and fuzzy and catchy almost sixties style pop, appropriately warped and tweaked of course.
The record finishes off with some awesome (and unlikely) covers. "I Won't Hurt You" by sixties psychedelic pop folk outfit West Coast Pop Experimental Band is a murky brooding pop gem, with woozy washed out low end, muted propulsive rhythms, and some gorgeous boy/girl harmonies, the boy parts provided by Ty Segall, the girl parts provided by Oh Sees keyboardist Brigid Dawson. "If I Stay Too Long" by post Squirrel Bait Louisville rockers Big Wheel sounds like it could be an Oh Sees original, chiming guitars, a little bit of twang, big drums, and a super hooky falsetto chorus, and finally a song called "What Are We Craving" by sixties/seventies folk singer Norma Tanega (who dated Dusty Springfield!), also sung by Dawson, a loping simple rhythm emerges from a cloud of strange reverby percussion, droning wheezing organs laid over the top, the atmosphere hazy and softly psychedelic, the vocals angelic and drifty, a gritty garage rock vamp slowed down into a hazy strummy jangly fuzzfolk ballad, dreamy and druggy and divine.
On both cd and vinyl, the vinyl version is a double lp, the 4th side adorned with a killer etching by artist William Keihn who also did the cover art!
MPEG Stream: "I Need Seed"
MPEG Stream: "Corprophagist (A Bath Perhaps)"
MPEG Stream: "Stinking Cloud"
MPEG Stream: "Corrupted Coffin"

OOOOO s/t (Triangle) cd 11.98
Killer 'witch house' 12", now available on cd!!!
Dig the creepy cover, the extended claw like arms extended above a shadowy shawled woman, the whole image hazy and ghostly, and inside, strange electronic ghostly minimal dream pop that is the perfect soundtrack for that image, and for a lost world of similar sights, of blood red moons, of creatures in the dark, of low lit mysterious after hours underground gatherings, welcome to Witch House. No doubt most folks have already heard something about this new movement/genre, a twisted sample heavy dark minimal electronic music, which may have begun life as a witchy sort of house music, but has blossomed into a whole cadre of bands, make spooky, and evocative, and darkly lovely music. Most of these sounds released on limited tapes or cd-rs or as free downloads, the bands all named with strange option-control heavy keyboard characters, little black triangles, underscores, tiny crosses, jumbles of &'s and *'s, even OOOOO is written oOoOO, and who knows how it's pronounced. We could list some of the other bands, but it's probably just as easy to set your font for Zapf Dingbats and peck away at random!
But for all the secrecy and purposeful obfuscation, when you finally get your ears on this stuff, it is indeed, pretty fantastic. Woozy, warped, haunting, hypnotic, mysterious, dark, retro, futuristic, minimal, electronic, sampled, looped, depending on the group, it could be some sort of bewitching IDM shuffle, or some horror movie sampling bit of plunderphonia, or in the case of oOoOO, a gorgeous chunk of electronica flecked otherworldly dream pop. Skeletal and shoegazey, a soft pop cold wave wreathed in a ghostly haze, like Cocteau Twins or Slowdive but chopped & screwed. There's a little of that eighties sci-fi synth soundtrack stuff that's so popular right now, but somehow here it sounds more genuine, more a part of the admittedly twisted whole. Swirling effects, spectral ambience, atmospheric synth shimmer, occasionally slipping into some dark and sinister propulsive kraut disco, vocals clipped and looped into clouds of psychedelic soft noise, other times, the sound drifts more toward eighties MTV style yacht rock, but again, dubbed out, slowed down and wrapped in a blurred gauze, and throughout it all, the wispy angelic wraithlike female vocals, ethereal and ephemeral, a dreamy sonic thread that holds it all together.
Gorgeous stuff for sure. Anyone into all that hypnogogic pop stuff, or tripped out lo-fi cold wave, as well as folks like Zola Jesus, Nite Jewel, or even Beach House and other shoegazey dreampoppers, here's something just a bit darker, and a bit more out there, for when you're wandering the streets at night, or holed up in your house, lights out, candles lit and emotions dark, needing something pretty and poppy still, but infinitely more murky and mysterious.

PANTHA DU PRINCE V Versions of Black Noise (Rough Trade) lp 14.98
Leave it to Pantha Du Prince to breathe new life into the often tired world of remix records. It was last year that we became huge fans of his, thanks to the amazing Black Noise album, which was a unanimous AQ favorite and got us to dig into his back catalog and find so much more to fall in love with.
While remix records can often sound thrown together and all filler no killer, Pantha Du Prince keeps up his commitment to excellence and for HIS remix record recruited talented folks with a wide ranging sonic scope, folks like Moritz Von Oswald, Four Tet, Animal Collective, Walls, and Die Vogel. It becomes immediately clear that all these artists really understand and respect PdP's aesthetic and they do such a great job of subtly accenting it and giving these tracks a new sonic coat of paint. Another problem with other remix records is that they usually don't have their own cohesive flow. But these versions work so nicely with each other and most definitely create their own late night seductive sizzle.
FYI, the cd has 11 tracks, and but the vinyl just 5, hence the differing titles (apparently some of the versions left off the vinyl, appeared on other 12"s...).
MPEG Stream: "Moritz Von Oswald The One version of "Welt Am Draht""
MPEG Stream: "Animal Collective version of "Welt Am Draht""
MPEG Stream: "Walls version of "Stick To My Side""

PANTHA DU PRINCE XI Versions of Black Noise (Rough Trade) cd 14.98
Leave it to Pantha Du Prince to breathe new life into the often tired world of remix records. It was last year that we became huge fans of his, thanks to the amazing Black Noise album, which was a unanimous AQ favorite and got us to dig into his back catalog and find so much more to fall in love with.
While remix records can often sound thrown together and all filler no killer, Pantha Du Prince keeps up his commitment to excellence and for HIS remix record recruited talented folks with a wide ranging sonic scope, folks like Moritz Von Oswald, Four Tet, Animal Collective, Walls, and Die Vogel. It becomes immediately clear that all these artists really understand and respect PdP's aesthetic and they do such a great job of subtly accenting it and giving these tracks a new sonic coat of paint. Another problem with other remix records is that they usually don't have their own cohesive flow. But these versions work so nicely with each other and most definitely create their own late night seductive sizzle.
FYI, the cd has 11 tracks, and but the vinyl just 5, hence the differing titles (apparently some of the versions left off the vinyl, appeared on other 12"s...).
MPEG Stream: "Moritz Von Oswald The One version of "Welt Am Draht""
MPEG Stream: "Animal Collective version of "Welt Am Draht""
MPEG Stream: "Walls version of "Stick To My Side""

PETERLICKER Nicht (Editions Mego) lp 21.00
Why the hell would you call your band Peterlicker? And even if you did give yourself such a terrible name, why would you keep it after you broke up over 20 years ago, especially when the band in question hardly even managed a couple of practices and maybe one gig? These are the important questions we ask here at aQuarius, and perhaps we can feel justified in asking these questions, since they themselves admit theirs is a stupid band name following the tradition of the Butthole Surfers and Throbbing Gristle.
So, with that discussion out of the way, here at last is the debut LP from Peterlicker, a monstrously good electro-doom-dirge-noise-rock quartet featuring Peter (Pita) Rehberg. While Pita's brain-drilling power electronics are a component of the crawling noise structures in Peterlicker, it's clearly not just his project. F. Hergovich is the vocalist in the band, whose ominous deepthroating vocalizations loom over the entire production, timestretched into undefinable gaping bellows and monstrous Lustmordian howls. C. Schachinger takes his cues from Swans' stalwart guitarist Norman Westberg, in his bent atonal screeches, gritty crackling of white-hot distortion, and dive-bomb arcs of noise that settle upon the ever crawling post-doom basslines of G. Weissegger. Pita and Weissegger fill in the gaps with plenty of crunched noises that buttress the grim arsenal of crusty noise. Imagine Godflesh, if Broadrick forgot to bring his drum machine to the studio, or Swans (circa Cop and Filth) with Gira even more amped up on amphetamines and taking his vocals on a really fucked godhead trip. Needless to say, Nicht is pretty fucking brilliant, regardless of what they chose to call the band.
MPEG Stream: "Always Right"
MPEG Stream: "C-Slide"
MPEG Stream: "Schleim"

PREFUSE 73 The Only She Chapters (Warp) cd 14.98
There was a time when it seemed like every month would see a new release by one of Scott Herren's projects. Whether as Savath & Savalas, Prefuse 73, Diamond Watch, Piano Overlord, Delarosa & Asora, etc. But it seems like he's allowed himself some breathing room and dedicated some real concentrated time and vision to craft this new Prefuse 73 album, which stands for sure as the most emotive and moody recording we've heard from him in ages. Without reading too much into the titles of these tracks like "The Only Valentine's Day Failure", "The Only Recollection Of Where Life Stopped", and "The Only Guitar To Die Alone" it's easy to believe that this may be the first true heartache/heartbreak record Herren has made so far. And while we're sorry if his heart has in fact been broken, we're happy with the intricate and witchy electronics that have been born out of that heartbreak.
The album finds Herren teaming up with some great haunting vocalists on a handful of the tracks including Zola Jesus, Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, and what may possibly be the last recording that Trish Keenan of Broadcast did before her passing earlier this year. In fact we get the feeling that Herren may have been listening to the great collaboration that Broadcast and The Focus Group made together as this album also is made up of ghostly miniatures that float and sway casting a mystical spell in their wake. So nice to be reminded that Herren is still one of the most talented and creative electronic music makers around.
MPEG Stream: "The Only Valentine's Day Failure"
MPEG Stream: " The Only Direction In Concrete (featuring Zola Jesus)"
MPEG Stream: "The Only Trial Of 9000 Suns (featuring Trish Keenan)"
MPEG Stream: "The Only Lillies And Lilacs"

PUFFY AREOLAS / PURLING HISS split (Permanent) lp 16.98
Originally a special Record Store Day release, now sold out and out of print, we managed to get an extra little handful of these (we're talking 5 or 6) so if you were kicking yourself for missing out, grab one of these quick before they are really gone for good.
Puffy Areolas unfurl a slow burning sprawl of flanged psychedelic guitar riffage, and growled distant vox, into a strange bit of droned out strum and jangle, buried drums, fractured electronics and warped effects, wild wah guitars, all wound into a spaced out drift that ruptures a few minutes in and becomes a frantic space drone drugrock pound, the guitars swirling and whirling, the drums pounding, all tangled into a glorious and explosive bit of psychedelic space rock freakout, that wouldn't sound all that out of place on a record by White Hills or The Heads, endless wild riffing and soloing, over loose chaotic drumming, and clouds of constantly shifting effects, seriously druggy and damaged and divine.
Purling Hiss counter with some swaggery Stooges-y garage rock stomp, snarly vox over some sludgey fuzzy riffing, and some awesomely tweaked leads, infusing that Stooges-y swagger with the classic rock/power pop vibe that made us dig these guys so much in the first place, the result something much more dirgey and noisy, the track laced with falsetto vox, and layer after layer of noodly guitars, until the track shifts gears, and the band slip into an almost Aerosmithy style groove, which swaggers and slithers and unwinds woozily through clouds of psych guitar swirl as the track gradually fades out...
And as we mentioned above, crazy limited, as in THESE ARE THE VERY LAST COPIES WE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO GET!!
MPEG Stream: PURLING HISS "My Hell"
MPEG Stream: PUFFY AREOLAS "Walking Down The Street"

RELIGIOUS KNIVES Smokescreen (Sacred Bones) cd 14.98
For some reason we didn't realize that Religious Knives was in fact members of late great noise/drone combo Double Leopards, but it does make sense. Religious Knives, albeit a lot less noisy, do seem to explore a similarly spaced out and psychedelically minimal path, but where DL wove thick drones, Religious Knives beagan to move away from the freeform drift and toward a sort of psychedelic spaced out krautrock, all low slung bass, tribal drumming, woozy wheezing organ, deep crooned vox, buzzing guitars all stretched out into longform slow burning space psych drifts that definitely exist in the same space as Wooden Shjips, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Naked On The Vague, Sun Araw, Fabulous Diamonds and the like. There's also a serious nineties New Zealand vibe going on, which has a lot to do with the deep vocals, but there are also female vocals, and those tracks tend to sound a bit more poppy, but all the songs are rife with long tones and deep drones, the organ thick and buzzy, the guitar spidery and minor key, all woven seamlessly into the band's blissed out psych jams. Hazy and druggy and so good. Kind of surprised more of the Moon Duo / Wooden Shjips / Lumerians / Carlton Melton space/drone rock obsessives haven't flipped out over these guys too, could be because they're less rocking, more moody and brooding and minimal and spare, but we're thinking even so, it's only a matter of time...
MPEG Stream: "The Message"
MPEG Stream: "Paper Thin"
MPEG Stream: "Smokescreen"

RELIGIOUS KNIVES Smokescreen (Sacred Bones) lp 19.98
For some reason we didn't realize that Religious Knives was in fact members of late great noise/drone combo Double Leopards, but it does make sense. Religious Knives, albeit a lot less noisy, do seem to explore a similarly spaced out and psychedelically minimal path, but where DL wove thick drones, Religious Knives beagan to move away from the freeform drift and toward a sort of psychedelic spaced out krautrock, all low slung bass, tribal drumming, woozy wheezing organ, deep crooned vox, buzzing guitars all stretched out into longform slow burning space psych drifts that definitely exist in the same space as Wooden Shjips, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Naked On The Vague, Sun Araw, Fabulous Diamonds and the like. There's also a serious nineties New Zealand vibe going on, which has a lot to do with the deep vocals, but there are also female vocals, and those tracks tend to sound a bit more poppy, but all the songs are rife with long tones and deep drones, the organ thick and buzzy, the guitar spidery and minor key, all woven seamlessly into the band's blissed out psych jams. Hazy and druggy and so good. Kind of surprised more of the Moon Duo / Wooden Shjips / Lumerians / Carlton Melton space/drone rock obsessives haven't flipped out over these guys too, could be because they're less rocking, more moody and brooding and minimal and spare, but we're thinking even so, it's only a matter of time...
MPEG Stream: "The Message"
MPEG Stream: "Paper Thin"
MPEG Stream: "Smokescreen"

RENE HELL The Terminal Symphony (Type) cd 15.98
Full length number two from Rene Hell, aka Jeff Witscher, is, according to the man himself, a bit of a departure from the sound of his first record, the aQ beloved Porcelain Opera. The Terminal Symphony, is as the title suggests, Witscher's stab at creating a modern minimal classical music record, using the same sounds and tools as he did to create his first record, but here, reimagining those sounds in a different context. The songs tighter, more controlled and composed. The opener is a thick caustic corrosive drone, the synth sound super buzzy and distorted, dense and pulsating, wreathed in effects, and pelted by blasts of static and industrial crunch, seemingly random rhythms careening back and forth, very dark and meditative, before giving way to the sci-fi synth pulse of "Quiet Detail Muse", murky effected vocals riding atop the undulating synths.
"Cello Suite #3" is most definitely not, instead it's a dizzying collage of random voices, bits of glitch and hiss, a looped high end melody, flurries of fragmented effects, the result a sort of creepy electronic ambience. "E.S. Des Grauens In Fifths" sounds classical, but more like alien kosmische new age krautdrone synth classical, percolating melodies, buzzy and fuzzy over sweeping swells and lush layered shimmer, the sort of soundtrack that must accompany watching an alien star emerge from some distant planet. "Baroque Ensemble Coda" too is a strange little cloud of swirling electronics and intertwined melodies, looped and rhythmic, and in its own way strangely psychedelic, the track soon shifts gears and becomes a landscape of rubbery pulsations and layered shards of buzz and hum.
The whole record, for all its classical aspirations, manages to be dark and droney, softly chaotic and lushly layered and looped, and without the background on the record and its genesis, one might not notice anything 'classical' about it, playing out instead as just a super melodic, fantastically varied, and surprisingly dreamy experimental minimal electronic record, bloopy and bleepy one second, a frantic avalanche of overlapping melodic loops the next, warped and atonal outer space psychedelia one second, blurry, bleary sun dappled new age synthscape the next.
Fans of The Porcelain Opera will definitely dig this, and again might quite possibly not notice a dramatic difference, but then does it really matter, the sounds are divine, and to some they may sound more 'classical' to others they may just sound like more of the same, either way, we're digging it.
MPEG Stream: "Chamber Force"
MPEG Stream: "E.S. Des Grauens In Fifths"
MPEG Stream: "Baroque Ensemble Coda"

SAXANA - THE GIRL ON A BROOMSTICK (MICHAJLOV, ANGELO) OST (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 16.98
Usually here at AQ, when we have a record that's pertains to witches and/or witchcraft in some way, it's from a metal band... like, obviously, Acid Witch, or Witchcraft, or Witch... then there's the "hauntological" likes of Broadcast & The Focus Group, and Demdike Stare, and let's not forget witch house... And, ok, the '70s Afro-fuzz of the other, original Witch from Zambia.
But THIS witchy record isn't like any of those, at all. It's a B-Music release and has a lot more in common with another B-Music fave, the soundtrack to Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders! This is a soundtrack too, and also from a cult New Wave Of Czech cinema flick from the early '70s. Unlike Valerie, we've never seen this movie, but we'd like to, based on this quirky, cool soundtrack. The music for Valerie was dreamy and delirious, suitable for a phantasmagorical, dark fairytale, and some of this is too. But since Saxana is about the more lighthearted adventures of a very modern teenage witch (we're thinking Daisies meets Harry Potter??), it gets a more suitably groovy, modish, jazzy score, with "psychedelic effects". There's lots of spooky and/or sprightly instrumental interludes, with titles like "Rats And Rodents", "Haxipola's Trip", and "Algebraic Airbrush", along with a couple songs sung by Czech chanteuse Petra Cernocka, including a version of the film's infectious theme song. Of the 27 tracks here (including one bonus cut from a 45rpm single), five of 'em, interspersed throughout, aren't actually songs or music, but "spells" - Latin sounding arcane incantations presumably uttered by teen witch of the title, each one heralded by those psychedelic effects, ominous echoings conveying magickal mysteries. Quite (literally) charming, as is this whole previously unreleased soundtrack, and nicely presented here with a thick booklet of text and graphics, by Finders Keepers/B-Music (of course). Oh, and there's an import vinyl version on the way, we'll have it soon too.
MPEG Stream: "Divka Na Kosteti"
MPEG Stream: "Telescopicas Humerus"
MPEG Stream: "Algebraic Airbrush"
MPEG Stream: "Dexem Po Krumplex"

SUPERCHUNK Here's Where The Strings Come In (Merge) cd 13.98
It's hard to know what to say about Superchunk after all this time. Easily one of the best, and most consistently GREAT indie rock bands EVER. We can't actually think of a Superchunk record we don't love. And sure, while some are in fact better than others, every single one has at least a few tracks that rank among their best. And Here's Where The Strings Come In is no exception. Their fifth record, originally released in 1995, and re-issued/re-released for this year's Record Store Day, Here's Where The Strings Come In starts off with what has to be one of our favorite Superchunk jams ever, the super kinetic and wildly rocking "Hyper Enough", with its unforgettable main guitar melody and killer chorus, Mac's impassioned vocals, it's pretty much a perfect slab of indie rock power pop. And an auspicious start to a killer Superchunk record. Elsewhere there's the equally hook filled and rocking "Detroit Has A Skyline", the more jangly and laid back "Silverleaf And Snowy Tears", and the crazy catchy title track, and hell, pretty much every track in between. The cool thing about Superchunk is that even though this is record number 5, it could just as easily be number 1, or 2, or 8, their sound timeless, their songwriting perpetually brilliant, the playing energetic and rambunctious, one of those one-in-a-million bands where all the ingredients, the members, the songs, the sound, all coalesce perfectly, and create something special and magical and totally kick ass.
As with all Superchunk records, totally and wholeheartedly recommended. And the video for "Hyper Enough" is pretty great if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7YK6zW4nI
MPEG Stream: "Hyper Enough"
MPEG Stream: "Detroit Has A Skyline"
MPEG Stream: "Here's Where The Strings Come In"

SUPERCHUNK Here's Where The Strings Come In (Merge) lp 17.98
It's hard to know what to say about Superchunk after all this time. Easily one of the best, and most consistently GREAT indie rock bands EVER. We can't actually think of a Superchunk record we don't love. And sure, while some are in fact better than others, every single one has at least a few tracks that rank among their best. And Here's Where The Strings Come In is no exception. Their fifth record, originally released in 1995, and re-issued/re-released for this year's Record Store Day, Here's Where The Strings Come In starts off with what has to be one of our favorite Superchunk jams ever, the super kinetic and wildly rocking "Hyper Enough", with its unforgettable main guitar melody and killer chorus, Mac's impassioned vocals, it's pretty much a perfect slab of indie rock power pop. And an auspicious start to a killer Superchunk record. Elsewhere there's the equally hook filled and rocking "Detroit Has A Skyline", the more jangly and laid back "Silverleaf And Snowy Tears", and the crazy catchy title track, and hell, pretty much every track in between. The cool thing about Superchunk is that even though this is record number 5, it could just as easily be number 1, or 2, or 8, their sound timeless, their songwriting perpetually brilliant, the playing energetic and rambunctious, one of those one-in-a-million bands where all the ingredients, the members, the songs, the sound, all coalesce perfectly, and create something special and magical and totally kick ass.
As with all Superchunk records, totally and wholeheartedly recommended. And the video for "Hyper Enough" is pretty great if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7YK6zW4nI
MPEG Stream: "Hyper Enough"
MPEG Stream: "Detroit Has A Skyline"
MPEG Stream: "Here's Where The Strings Come In"

SUTEKH HEXEN Ordo Adversarial (Wands) 7" 5.98
This local black metal / drone-noise duo have been cranking out recordings like crazy, not that you would ever know it, as all of them were released as lavishly packaged, outrageously limited cassettes (and all in batches of something like 50 copies). Finally, the band seem to be making waves beyond the WAY underground, and a comprehensive reissue campaign is under way, as well as a whole spate of about-to-drop new releases. But THIS, this is the first recording we've been able to get from these guys to list, and fans of noise drenched blackness, and super distorted psychedelic heaviness will be in heaven (hell?). A blasting, blown out, ultraviolent blend of raw, primitive black metal buzz, dense drones, lysergic psychedelic atmosphere and caustic abrasive blacknoise, these two tracks require iron ears, a black soul and preferably some headphones to get lost in SH's bizarre black cacophony.
"Bled Thy Likeness" is a blurred and muted expanse of crackly, staticky black thrum, murky and muddy, a writhing, swirling sprawl of hazy washed out minor key riffage, laced with streaks of soaring guitars woven into a background of distorted black ambience, eventually exploding into a whitenoise drenched blast of heaving, crumbling, ultra distorted blackdrone crush, hellish shrieked vokills smeared into undulating sheets of Merzbowian buzz, all underpinned by a haunting monkish chantlike melody, adding a strange bit of melancholy mystery to the harsh hellish buzz.
"Murmur" is just as intense, a wild frenzied blown out assault of fierce and fucked up blacknoise chaos, the shrieked vox distorted and processed into another layer of furious buzz, tangled up in the frenzied berserker riffing, the whole sound a twisted, gnarled tangle of face melting, ear shredding, soul shearing fury, the song somehow blossoming part way through into something subtly more melodic, the blacknoisebuzz and grim black-blast infused with a strangely lush and warm melodic undercurrent, a deep sonic swell, rife with epic black metal majesty, but nearly suffocated by the caustic clouds of brittle buzz and in-the-red roar overhead.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Super striking, thick black and white jackets, and printed on nice heavy vinyl...
MPEG Stream: "Bled Thy Likeness"
MPEG Stream: "Murmur"

ULTRABUNNY Volume Merchants (TPOS) lp 10.98
The late great Bunnybrains were definitely an acquired taste. One usually only acquired by folks who already had a taste for Harry Pussy, Liquorball and other purveyors of a similarly difficult sound. With the death of Bunnybrains, thus was born Ultrabunny, a band that on the surface, seemed to be less fucked up, and less jokey than the Bunny that came before, their sound more noise rocky, more spaced out and psychedelic, heavy and druggy and more musical. But fear not, it's still plenty fucked up.
On this latest full length, presented as two side long song suites, each meant to be listened as a whole, the band begin the first movement with a hazy bit of tripped out drone swirl, some deep, blackened drift, which quickly erupts into some seriously cacophonous rhythmic churn, super tribal rhythms pelted by sheets of hiss and skree, a bit like some strange Crash Worship / Merzbow mashup, but soon the sound transforms into some heavy, fuzzed out noise rock, droney and hypnotic, a sprawling bit of almost-groove, the guitar gnarled and tangled, twisted and psychedelic, a sound not all that far removed from groups like Burnt Hills or The Heads, equal parts space rock, krautrock, and that classic Homestead Records Midwestern pigfuck noise rock, culminating in a glorious spaced out buzz drenched psych jam outro. The second side/movement is way more relentlessly rocking, slipping from Butthole Surfers style dirgey rhythmic freakouts, replete with helium-ed processed vox, to trippy psych drone ambience to pounding druggy space/noise rock pummel.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered, packaged in old school paste on bootleg style sleeves.

UNHOLY CADAVER (AKA HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE) s/t (Shadow Kingdom) 2lp+cd 28.00
Some of you may have heard of Unholy Cadaver. But a LOT of you have heard of Hammers Of Misfortune, San Francisco's best rock-operatic political power prog metal (and more) band, featuring members of Ludicra and (formerly) The Lord Weird Slough Feg, among others. Our own Andee's tUMULt label put out their first album, The Bastard, in 2001. That's been followed by three (or four, depending on how you count, 'cause one was a double!) albums for Cruz Del Sur and Profound Lore. Their entire discography was then recently reissued by Metal Blade, who also signed the band for a new, upcoming opus.
Well, not quite their entire discography... 'Cause before The Bastard, Hammers Of Misfortune were known by another name - Unholy Cadaver. Who recorded an unreleased album back in 1997. They put out a rare demo cd-r at the time, with just three of that album's nine tracks on it, none of which sound like "demos" despite being recorded in the band's practice space. But until now, the entire hour-long recording - which includes a song called "Hammers Of Misfortune", by the way, a nearly 15 minute epic, all of side C here - has never been properly released. The always on top of it (when "it" is cult metal) Shadow Kingdom label has rectified that, and then some, with this limited, deluxe edition of what's essentially the real Hammers Of Misfortune debut, done as a double vinyl lp with cd version also included!
This is where it all started, mastermind John Cobbett & Co.'s unusual, amazing mash up of epic / traditional stylings with "extreme" metal mayhem, with loads of guitar shred, dramatic dynamics, majestic bombast, and an influx of avant garde / black metal weirdness. Unholy Cadaver's line up consisted of Cobbett (guitars/vocals), Chewy Marzolo (drums), still the core of Hammers today. They enlisted several guests for the male and female "operatic" singing parts: Mike Scalzi (of Slough Feg), Erica Stolz (of Lost Goat), and Lorraine Rath (currently in Worm Ouroboros, formerly of The Gault), who also did the cover art and logo. In some sort of quid pro quo, Cobbett joined up for a stint in Slough Feg on 2nd guitar not long afterwards, and Scalzi stayed on with Hammers for their first three albums, playing guitar live as well as singing.
The prototypical Hammers herky-jerky stop-start loud-soft songwriting style is already in full effect, incorporating glorious guitar harmonies and bludgeoning brutality both... with social commentary (and a sense of humor) hidden, or not so hidden, in the often allegorical fantasy lyrics. Signs of their origin in "abso-futurist" metalpunk band Thunderchip remain, both the presence of John's rasping black metallish (and guttural death metallish) vokills (which were dropped entirely after The Bastard), and seemingly silly (but actually serious) song titles/concepts like "Fuck The Galactic Police".
John and Chewy also do clean, sorta chant like vocals on some of the tracks, presumably written/recorded before they had availed themselves of Mike's triumphant baritone, the inimitable sound of which you'll hear here, appropriately enough, on the aforementioned epic "Hammers Of Misfortune", that's where they really become Hammers Of Misfortune! Not that the rest of this doesn't sound like Hammers, it sure does, but the male-female mock-operatic thing utterly comes to the fore, on that tour-de-force of a track (which also features a surprising amount of profanity from Rath's "caged princess" character).
We should also mention the final cut, all of side D, the nine-minute "Kloven Septum", which is more of an experimental, freaked out "noise" composition, but still metal. We expect the unexpected from 'em, but yet it's unlike much else in their discography, and actually we could do with a whole album of this, too! It and the other extreme metal aspects of Unholy Cadaver perhaps could be seen as feeding in to Cobbett's Ludicra project later on, as well.
Eventually Janis Tanaka took over the female vocalist/bass player position from Erica, and with a solid, full band lineup instituted, they relegated these early recordings to the vault, changed the name (good call) and plunged ahead into forging The Bastard... but Unholy Cadaver's long lost album was definitely more than a warm up, hearing the whole thing now we wonder why it took so long for this to finally see the light of day.
Considering that The Bastard happens to be our favorite of the Hammers albums, and this is what led up to it, a most welcome and highly recommended release! And we're guessing it's kind of limited, too. The packaging is quite fancy, a double gatefold lp, with one of the inside panels holding the compact disc version. There's also a 12"x12" insert on some sort of glossy photo-paper, with old b&w pictures of the band back then, complete lyrics, and new liner notes giving the history of UC/HoM. The cover features L. Rath's painting, originally used for the demo cd-r, bigger and better than before, 'cause it's now in full color. Oh and both the vinyl and the cd versions have been individually remastered! Nice work. Epically recommended!!!
MPEG Stream: "On This Final Night"
MPEG Stream: "Unsheathe The Sword Of Blasphemy"
MPEG Stream: "Hammers Of Misfortune"

V/A BART: Bay Area Retrograde (Vol. 1) (Dark Entries) lp 17.98
A few years back, Minimal Wave offered some choice crate digging collections of nearly forgotten darkwave and post-punk electronics through their Lost Tapes and Found Tapes collections, highlighting the differences between the European and American models of underground new wave. Dark Entries produced this anthology in that same tradition, focusing even more tightly on the geography of the Bay Area. As Johnny Ray Huston so rightly points out in the liner notes, San Francisco in the '80s had its own unique crucible of local events that shaped the Bay Area's particular sound (e.g. the assassination of Harvey Milk, the growing AIDS epidemic and the fear surrounding the disease, etc.). While there's none of the art-damaged abstraction filtered from The Residents, Snakefinger, or Tuxedomoon in an obvious lineage to the artists featured here, BART (named after the subway that connects Oakland, Berkeley, and other parts of the East Bay to San Francisco) is a great collection of quirky minimal wave electronics, with a fair amount of unreleased material from obscurant Bay Area new wave bands.
Nomimal State opens the compilation and was from the suburban hamlet of Danville, recording this demo 1983 with a militantly uptempo drum machine and urgent synth lines. It's a track that easily fits next to the likes of The Units and Nervous Gender in terms of manic, punkish use of electronics. Speaking of The Units, they round out the compilation in contributing their sci-fi pop anthem "Mission," which is still bitchin' after all these years! Voice Farm is the other 'big name' to appear on this compilation, contributing a sinewy darkwave number from their 1982 album "The World We Live In." Batang State, Quiet Room, and Necropolis Of Love offer more Joy Division / Wire / Kraftwerk atmospheric post-punk number with considerable panache. The Wasp Women were a crossdressing trash-punk outfit, whose demo featured a wastoid lo-fi number and had appeared in the 1982 film "What Ever Happened To Susan Jane." Danny Boy & The Serious Party Gods offer a fabulously campy disco number with suitably over-the-top raunchy lyrics that ramble on and on against anthemic synths. If there's one track that you need to hear from this compilation it's this one! But the whole collection is very well done, and comes highly recommended as with everything that Dark Entries releases.
MPEG Stream: NOMINAL STATE "Middle Class"
MPEG Stream: UNITS "Mission"
MPEG Stream: DANNY BOY & THE SERIOUS PARTY GODS "Castro Boy"
MPEG Stream: VOICE FARM "Voyeur"

V/A Cartagena! Curro Fuentes & The Big Band Combia And Descarga Sound Of Columbia 1962-72 (Soundway) cd 16.98
Once again Soundway continues to unearth amazing tracks from yet another overlooked international scene. This collection digs into the cumbia and descarga sounds out of Columbia in the '60s to early '70s that were being released on the Discos Fuentes label. Jose Maria 'Curro' Fuentes ran the label which would become Columbia's largest. In many ways he was like the Berry Gordy of Columbia, using his immaculate taste to curate an amazing roster of musicians. Sadly most of these artists never had their music heard or even released in other parts of the globe, so this release marks the first time most of these nineteen tracks have been released anywhere outside of Columbia. The raw recordings really serve the music so well as these aren't the kind of tracks you would want overproduced or with a shiny slick veneer. Instead the infectious rhythms within the songs emerge organically with such rich and warm grooves. With sunshine time hitting us in a big way the past week, this is becoming the perfect soundtrack to outdoor get togethers and rooftop afternoons. No denying how damn hot this is!
MPEG Stream: CANTINA Y SU COMBO "Santa Marta Cumbia"
MPEG Stream: CLODOMIRO MONTES Y EL SUPER COMBO CURRO "Puerto Rico Zumbando"
MPEG Stream: ORQUESTA SONORA CURRO "Patuleco"
MPEG Stream: ALEX ACOSTA Y SU ORQUESTA "Cumbia Del Monte"

V/A Cartagena! Curro Fuentes & The Big Band Combia And Descarga Sound Of Columbia 1962-72 (Soundway) 2lp 26.00
Once again Soundway continues to unearth amazing tracks from yet another overlooked international scene. This collection digs into the cumbia and descarga sounds out of Columbia in the '60s to early '70s that were being released on the Discos Fuentes label. Jose Maria 'Curro' Fuentes ran the label which would become Columbia's largest. In many ways he was like the Berry Gordy of Columbia, using his immaculate taste to curate an amazing roster of musicians. Sadly most of these artists never had their music heard or even released in other parts of the globe, so this release marks the first time most of these nineteen tracks have been released anywhere outside of Columbia. The raw recordings really serve the music so well as these aren't the kind of tracks you would want overproduced or with a shiny slick veneer. Instead the infectious rhythms within the songs emerge organically with such rich and warm grooves. With sunshine time hitting us in a big way the past week, this is becoming the perfect soundtrack to outdoor get togethers and rooftop afternoons. No denying how damn hot this is!
MPEG Stream: CANTINA Y SU COMBO "Santa Marta Cumbia"
MPEG Stream: CLODOMIRO MONTES Y EL SUPER COMBO CURRO "Puerto Rico Zumbando"
MPEG Stream: ORQUESTA SONORA CURRO "Patuleco"
MPEG Stream: ALEX ACOSTA Y SU ORQUESTA "Cumbia Del Monte"

V/A Fairlights Mallets And Bamboo (Tsukiji) cd-r 6.98
We can't remember the last time a compilation so captivated everybody here, but this collection is really something else. A gorgeously compiled cd-r of tracks sourced from Japanese lps circa the years 1980-1986, featuring at least a few names we'd heard, like Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Inoyamo Land, but so so many we hadn't: Mkwaju Ensemble, Yasuaki Shimizu, Seigen Ono, Masahide Sakuma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Danceries, Dip In the Pool, we could go on, but we're guessing these are all new to you too. It's a single 74 minute continuous mix, that slips dreamily from synth and percussion minimalism, to mysterious electronic laced rhythms, from new agey krautrock to dreamy clouds of percussive melodies, from playful childlike toy piano melodies to synthy sci-fi drones, haunting electronic flecked Asian ballads to fluttery flute folk, from mesmerizing vibraphone melodies underpinned by haunting drones to loping jazzy almost prog, from hazy washed out kosmische electronics to lush layered chorales and on and on and on.
The tracks are so perfectly combined, and so seamlessly mixed, it almost sounds like it could be the coolest, weirdest record ever by some impossibly brilliant single artist, who somehow crafted one epic sprawling sonic exploration, a series of sounds that manage to be at once warm and familiar, yet also strange and mysterious, strange looped birdsong lays atop distant choir like vocals, and a strangely mechanical rhythm peppered with strange symphonic bursts melts into soaring strings, chamber music devolves into some fantastically dada-ish assemblage of voices and sound effects, thick sitar like buzz underpins deep foghorn like melodies, the vibe strangely melancholic, deep, dense new age swirls hover above a super minimal dripping faucet rhythm, warm, muted melodies unfurl over distant bells and deep reverberating tones, vibraphone melodies are layered atop a groovy, almost jazzy rhythm, and a mournful brass melody before gradually disappearing in a washed out woozy sonic haze
So fantastic, and so cheap too! Besides being just about the best mix/comp/collection we've heard in forever, odds are it'll have you trying to track down records by all the artists, which is always the sign of a good mix. The entire list of artists (some with more than one track): Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mkwaju Ensemble, Mariah, Yasuaki Shimizu, Mkwaju Ensemble, Seigen Ono, Masahide Sakuma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Yasuaki Shimizu, Danceries, Yukihio Takahoshi, Dip in the Pool, YMO.
So great! And so utterly and unequivocally and whole heartedly RECOMMENDED!!
LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Packaged with full color covers in plastic mini dvd-style sleeves. And nicely priced! We're one of only two places in the whole world where you can get these, and we're guessing they're gonna go fast, so grab one quick before they're gone.
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 3"
MPEG Stream: ""

VERTONEN We Had A Few Sprinkles Today, But Not Enough To Help Out In The Garden (Crippled Intellect Productions) cd 10.98
Chicago's power acoustician Blake Edwards has been recording as Vertonen for years now, with plenty of caustic noise and atonal hums that draw parallels to the likes of John Duncan, CM Von Hausswolff, and Joe Colley (who has released a number of works through Edwards' own C.I.P. imprint). Yet, this album is easily the most subtle production for Edwards, and it's almost as it he's gone out of his way to burnish away almost every plausible signifier to this album, leaving behind a stately drone construction of phased vibrations and bellowing rumbles. All he provides from the outset is a statement that his source material was culled from a tape made in 1979. While he doesn't come outright and say who made the tape, if you were to ask him (we did), he would honestly say that the tape was from Jonestown; and the title itself comes from the People's Temple book of shortwave radio codes, which is code for "this is not a code." His obfuscation of the source material was intended not to shroud the material further in occluded transgression, but an attempt to remove the potent sensationalism around the Jonestown massacre all the while trying to articulate his own metaphors of horror, control, and fear through an act of negation. The slowly developing passages of flickering, long-stare drones is thick with a creeping sense of dread, even as Edwards makes plenty of compositional gestures to the likes of Eliane Radigue and Roland Kayn. It's as if Edwards has erased everything from that Jonestown tape, except for feelings of tranced-out exhaustion and sun-bleached humidity from the People's Temple members who had left everything behind in the US to embark upon a utopian project that had already turned ugly but soon was to become tragic. This is probably Vertonen's best work to date and certainly comes recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Invocation"
MPEG Stream: "Jackal"
MPEG Stream: "High Silence Into The Winds"

VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M. 800,000 Seconds In Harar (Touch) cd 15.98
The Swedish conceptualist took a trip to Harar, Ethiopia at the behest of a director for a theater in Sweden who was going to be putting on a play based upon the life of Arthur Rimbaud and asked Hausswolff to compose the score. Harar was one of the last stopping points for Rimbaud in his peripatetic and often debaucherous life; and Hausswolff used that particular location as the jumping off point for his composition involving little more than field recordings, his trusted oscillator, and drones culled from a krar, a tradition Ethiopian lyre. The piece follows Hausswolff's signature ultra-minimalist strategies found on many of his earlier recordings, but the use of the krar as a sound source has proved to be a major find for Von Hausswolff. On the three part "Day And Night," he's built a series of subtle modulations from the sonorous low tones of the krar whose rasping dissonance gives more than a passing resemblance to the work of Eliane Radigue and Phill Niblock, accompanied by the field recordings of wind, insects, rustling leaves, and water. The final piece "The Sleeper In The Valley" is sourced from the Rimbaud poem of the same name, but fear not, this is not a spoken word piece as Von Hausswolff tells us that the morse code blips that run through the layered arcs of low-end sine tones are a transcription of that poem. As common as this is within the Hausswolff vernacular, it's hardly the dead-line drone that Hausswolff will sometimes produce in installations. Instead, this is much closer to the more composed (albeit minimally) of his classic collaborations with John Duncan and his Operation Of Spirit Communication album. Excellent stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Day"
MPEG Stream: "Alas!"
MPEG Stream: "The Sleeper In The Valley"

WINTER Into Darkness (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Available once again, this legendary doom/death classic, done up deluxe by Southern Lord. Available on vinyl for the first time in about 20 years, and again on cd...
We're always excited to sing the praises of this record, it's been one of our favorites for years, always on the iPod, and never far from the stereos of those of us into the DOOOOM. The last reissue came out way back in 1999, but wasn't always that easy to get, and so were were psyched about this new one, and Southern Lord's version makes perfect sense, especially with the ongoing interest in all things doomy and sludgy AND the fact that probably EVERY SINGLE band on SL owes a HUGE debt to these doom / sludge forefathers. We bet there's even some folks out there who don't realize there was any doom pre- Corrupted / Boris / Earth / SUNNO))). Well let's go all the way back to the very early nineties, head out to Long Island and re-discover the pummelling majesty of the mighty Winter. There's not a doom band worth its stripes who wouldn't cite Winter as an influence, and one listen proves why. Crusty, downtuned sludge metal, but unlike the current crop of ultra doomsters, Winter's roots were in much more traditional thrash and doom metal as well as crusty punk. Often described as a slowed down Celtic Frost, due in no small part to the vocal delivery, Winter managed to mix elements of Black Sabbath (obviously, what doom band doesn't), Hellhammer, diSEMBOWELMENT and UK political crust band Doom into a slithery, creeping, suffocatingly dense blast of chugging guitar, pounding drums and creepy growled vocals. On closer listening their are also strange bits of organ and found sounds and bizarre vocal snippets scattered throughout and buried here and there. There are even guitar solos!! But no normal solos, no these are all spikey and twisted and serpentine, chaotic squalls of prickly squealing freakout that fit perfectly into Winter's desolate doomscapes. The other thing worth mentioning is the lyrics, which at the time got them a lot of attention / flak, quite cryptic for sure, but they seem to focus on saving the environment, anti-pollution, anti-technology, ecological awareness (Exit-13 anyone?) displaying their crusty roots there for sure! Fans of the new crop of doom and ultra doom would do well to take a peek at a band who truly was ahead of their time, a band who helped lay the groundwork for the sonic pummelling provided to you on a daily basis by bands like Skepticism, Esoteric, Rigor Sardonicous, Moss, Bunkur, and even Electric Wizard and Sleep, who might not even exist were it not for Winter.
The vinyl is housed in a super heavy, deluxe, Stoughton style gatefold jacket, and both versions, vinyl and cd, include a big booklet full of lyrics, artwork and old flyers (the lp's booklet in the form of an oversized newsprint insert!)..
The only bummer about the Southern Lord reissue, is that for some reason, this version leaves off the bonus tracks that were included with the previous cd reissue, the equally kick ass Eternal Frost ep, but maybe/hopefully Southern Lord plan on reissuing that one later, on its own. Here's hoping!
MPEG Stream: "Servants Of The Warsmen"
MPEG Stream: "Goden"

WINTER Into Darkness (Southern Lord) lp 16.98
Available once again, this legendary doom/death classic, done up deluxe by Southern Lord. Available on vinyl for the first time in about 20 years, and again on cd...
We're always excited to sing the praises of this record, it's been one of our favorites for years, always on the iPod, and never far from the stereos of those of us into the DOOOOM. The last reissue came out way back in 1999, but wasn't always that easy to get, and so were were psyched about this new one, and Southern Lord's version makes perfect sense, especially with the ongoing interest in all things doomy and sludgy AND the fact that probably EVERY SINGLE band on SL owes a HUGE debt to these doom / sludge forefathers. We bet there's even some folks out there who don't realize there was any doom pre- Corrupted / Boris / Earth / SUNNO))). Well let's go all the way back to the very early nineties, head out to Long Island and re-discover the pummelling majesty of the mighty Winter. There's not a doom band worth its stripes who wouldn't cite Winter as an influence, and one listen proves why. Crusty, downtuned sludge metal, but unlike the current crop of ultra doomsters, Winter's roots were in much more traditional thrash and doom metal as well as crusty punk. Often described as a slowed down Celtic Frost, due in no small part to the vocal delivery, Winter managed to mix elements of Black Sabbath (obviously, what doom band doesn't), Hellhammer, diSEMBOWELMENT and UK political crust band Doom into a slithery, creeping, suffocatingly dense blast of chugging guitar, pounding drums and creepy growled vocals. On closer listening their are also strange bits of organ and found sounds and bizarre vocal snippets scattered throughout and buried here and there. There are even guitar solos!! But no normal solos, no these are all spikey and twisted and serpentine, chaotic squalls of prickly squealing freakout that fit perfectly into Winter's desolate doomscapes. The other thing worth mentioning is the lyrics, which at the time got them a lot of attention / flak, quite cryptic for sure, but they seem to focus on saving the environment, anti-pollution, anti-technology, ecological awareness (Exit-13 anyone?) displaying their crusty roots there for sure! Fans of the new crop of doom and ultra doom would do well to take a peek at a band who truly was ahead of their time, a band who helped lay the groundwork for the sonic pummelling provided to you on a daily basis by bands like Skepticism, Esoteric, Rigor Sardonicous, Moss, Bunkur, and even Electric Wizard and Sleep, who might not even exist were it not for Winter.
The vinyl is housed in a super heavy, deluxe, Stoughton style gatefold jacket, and both versions, vinyl and cd, include a big booklet full of lyrics, artwork and old flyers (the lp's booklet in the form of an oversized newsprint insert!)..
The only bummer about the Southern Lord reissue, is that for some reason, this version leaves off the bonus tracks that were included with the previous cd reissue, the equally kick ass Eternal Frost ep, but maybe/hopefully Southern Lord plan on reissuing that one later, on its own. Here's hoping!
MPEG Stream: "Servants Of The Warsmen"
MPEG Stream: "Goden"

YAN JUN Music For Listening On The Moon (Subjam) cd 16.98
Yan Jun is quite the mover and shaker in the experimental sound arts community in Beijing; yet unlike the avant-garde of China's visual artists, the big names of Chinese sound art are hardly known outside of the metropolitan areas of China. FM3 would be the only act that most people have heard of; yet artists like Yan have been very active bringing a number of European, Australian, Japanese, and American artists to the mainland as an act of cultural exchange. At the same time, Yan has been producing his own exceptional works including this contemplative album of innerspace travel. The album transcends its humble productions of sinusoidal flutterings of pedal sourced feedback and squiggling aquatic field recordings treated with ring modulation, as Yan seeks a radically different approach to the cosmic listening embarked by the likes of Cluster and Tangerine Dream, whose baroque expansiveness has been subsumed by the vacuum of outerspace (remember the vacant sound design of Stanley Kubrick's 2001?), with just those two sources intertwining in an endless mobius strip of silvery drone and pointilist tactility. It sounds more like Steve Roden taking over an Asmus Tietchens album and allowing the electronically treated sounds and tones to organically evolve into a radiant blossom instead of the purposefully cold and sometimes stiff compositions that Tietchens often produces. A very intriguing record to say the least! Limited stock on this one.
MPEG Stream: "Music For Listening On The Moon (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Music For Listening On The Moon (extract 2)"

YOUNG WIDOWS In And Out Of Youth And Lightness (Temporary Residence) cd 14.98
Up until now, Louisville noise rockers Young Widows have trafficked in a dense, bass heavy almost sludgey sort of crush, more in line with groups like Jesus Lizard, Harvey Milk, Karp, Lubricated Goat and Drive Like Jehu, total AmRep old school knuckle dragging, ass kicking pound and pummel. But over the course of the last full length and the series of 7" collaborations, the band did not shy away from melody, and displayed a keen pop sense, that in other bands might seem out of place, but YW just folded that poppiness right in along with the crashing drums, and buzzy basslines, and while we should have been prepared for this, we really just weren't. Some of that sound and vibe is still present, but In And Out Of Youth And Lightness is a whole 'nother kind of beast. Brooding and slithery, a little bit twangy, low slung, druggy and hazy and a little washed out, imagine a noise rock version of aQ slowcore faves True Widow, and you'd definitely be close. The drums are muted and minimal, shuffling more than pounding, the bass still thick and buzzy and driving the proceedings, but here it's more gloom pop than noise rock. The guitars are spidery and skeletal, minor key, unfurling haunting melodies and woozy chords. The opening track sounds like it could burst into proper noise rock action at any point, but it never does, it doesn't need to, instead, it just drifts drowsily, all drugged out and sun baked and gloriously languid.
But the band haven't ditched their noise rock past completely, they can still whip up a serious din, like on the churning riffy "Future Heart", but even then, the vibe is way more post punk, old school gloom rock, all wound up in TW's heavier guitars and mathy crush, yet even amongst all this roiling heaviness, the guitars are reverby, the vocals deep and dramatic, the sound not so heavy as moody, and then just as quickly as the band exploded into noise rock action, they slip right back into brooding blackened ballad territory, "In And Out Of Lightness" sounding a bit like Woven Hand or Sixteen Horsepower, all grimly bluesy, swampy, murky and moody. "Lean On The Ghost" is another slo-mo doom pop twang folk trudge, a hazy chunk of slowcore blues that melds Amrep to apocalyptic swamp folk, and on it goes.
The band having essentially totally transformed into a some glorious sort of of post punk slowcore combo, and as much as we loved them before, this new sound is WAY hitting the spot. Every song a grim black gem, heavy, hooky, haunting, the more we listen, the more we think this might be challenging the most recent True Widow as our record of the year. And it has us imagining our dream tour: Young Widows, True Widow, Crystal Stilts, Woven Hand... if only!
MPEG Stream: "Young Rivers"
MPEG Stream: "Future Heart"
MPEG Stream: "In And Out Of Lightness"

YOUNG WIDOWS In And Out Of Youth And Lightness (Temporary Residence) lp 25.00
Up until now, Louisville noise rockers Young Widows have trafficked in a dense, bass heavy almost sludgey sort of crush, more in line with groups like Jesus Lizard, Harvey Milk, Karp, Lubricated Goat and Drive Like Jehu, total AmRep old school knuckle dragging, ass kicking pound and pummel. But over the course of the last full length and the series of 7" collaborations, the band did not shy away from melody, and displayed a keen pop sense, that in other bands might seem out of place, but YW just folded that poppiness right in along with the crashing drums, and buzzy basslines, and while we should have been prepared for this, we really just weren't. Some of that sound and vibe is still present, but In And Out Of Youth And Lightness is a whole 'nother kind of beast. Brooding and slithery, a little bit twangy, low slung, druggy and hazy and a little washed out, imagine a noise rock version of aQ slowcore faves True Widow, and you'd definitely be close. The drums are muted and minimal, shuffling more than pounding, the bass still thick and buzzy and driving the proceedings, but here it's more gloom pop than noise rock. The guitars are spidery and skeletal, minor key, unfurling haunting melodies and woozy chords. The opening track sounds like it could burst into proper noise rock action at any point, but it never does, it doesn't need to, instead, it just drifts drowsily, all drugged out and sun baked and gloriously languid.
But the band haven't ditched their noise rock past completely, they can still whip up a serious din, like on the churning riffy "Future Heart", but even then, the vibe is way more post punk, old school gloom rock, all wound up in TW's heavier guitars and mathy crush, yet even amongst all this roiling heaviness, the guitars are reverby, the vocals deep and dramatic, the sound not so heavy as moody, and then just as quickly as the band exploded into noise rock action, they slip right back into brooding blackened ballad territory, "In And Out Of Lightness" sounding a bit like Woven Hand or Sixteen Horsepower, all grimly bluesy, swampy, murky and moody. "Lean On The Ghost" is another slo-mo doom pop twang folk trudge, a hazy chunk of slowcore blues that melds Amrep to apocalyptic swamp folk, and on it goes.
The band having essentially totally transformed into a some glorious sort of of post punk slowcore combo, and as much as we loved them before, this new sound is WAY hitting the spot. Every song a grim black gem, heavy, hooky, haunting, the more we listen, the more we think this might be challenging the most recent True Widow as our record of the year. And it has us imagining our dream tour: Young Widows, True Widow, Crystal Stilts, Woven Hand... if only!
MPEG Stream: "Young Rivers"
MPEG Stream: "Future Heart"
MPEG Stream: "In And Out Of Lightness"

----*
----* Selected New Arrivals :
----*

BARN OWL From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
2008 album repressed on vinyl once again, and back in stock, we'll see how long they last this time...
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep hitting and soul satisfying drone anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, they finally have a release that while still limited will at least get to reach a lot more ears then anything they've put out so far. These are sounds that deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare when you hear one that you really feel true soul and spirited passion from. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The lp format suits the duo so well, as their songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just listened to one side over and over and over before we even moved on to the second side with which we then did the same. There is both patience and payoff in Barn Owl's sound. Music that makes you want to close your eyes because you know you are entranced by artists that know so well what they are doing. While they pressed up way more lps than anything else they've released (and this is the second pressing!), it's all relative, meaning these LP's are still limited and are most likely not going to be around too long
Highly recommended, but act fast!

BURZUM Belus (Back On Black) 2lp 33.00
Repressed, we never got to list the vinyl of this before, when it came out last year, sold out too fast, but now it's available again, here's what we said when the cd came out:
Who would have thought? A new Burzum record, after 16 years in prison. Has it really been 16 years? And who would have thought the new Burzum would be really really great?! Certainly not us, especially after the last two stinkers, the made-in-jail all synth Daudi Baldrs and Hildskjalf. And the last one of those was more than 11 years ago! And let's not forget Varg's prison conversion, becoming a neo facist, a nazi, spouting white pride rhetoric, hell, this record was even originally titled "The White God", not to mention that he's a murderer and an arsonist. But it's always been like that with Burzum, and much of black metal, but in Burzum's case in particular, it's critical to not confuse the man with the music, and to be fair, for some that's not possible, no one could fault a person for not wanting to support a musician who espouses reprehensible views, and one way is by not listening to their music, and not buying their records. But as we've posited before, your record collection would begin to get pretty sparse, once you eliminated records made by assholes, and by people whose politics you disagreed with, but again, it's perfectly fair to do just that. But for those of you who can in fact separate the music from the musician, then Belus is a pretty serious and solid return to form. Not so much Filosefem as Det Som Engang Var and Hvis Lyset Tar Oss. The same guitar tone, the same epic riffage, the same raspy vokills, for someone who was not allowed a guitar for the last decade plus, it's pretty amazing that in the space of less than a year, he somehow managed to come up with this. Granted some of these tracks are older, but for the most part this is a brand new record, could be that it was formulated over the last decade, the result of all that pent up emotion, this fierce and furious chunk of black buzz, weirdly melodic in places, very trancelike all the way through, with lots of spoken word mixed into the frantic riffing and blasting beats, the record at its strongest when it's the most Burzumic, blown out buzz, frenzied riffing over loping midtempo rhythms, the riffing surprisingly layered and complex, check out "Morgenroede" with the relentless main riff shifting from fast picking, to dizzyingly looped arpeggiation, making the whole song swoon and warble, before lurching back into a buzz drenched lumber. The closing track, "Belus' Tilbakeomst (Konklusjon)" is pretty incredible as well, super intense and droney and atmospheric, the riffing almost static, building all sorts of tension, layer upon layer, various notes and overtones ringing out, the playing frantic and frenzied, but with very little forward momentum, almost like some weird sort of black raga drone, rendered in black buzz. There's lots of that sort of unlikely innovation going on here, every time we play this in the store, people come to the counter to find out what the heck it is, and then they can't believe it's Burzum.
It's too bad for Burzum, and for this record, that Belus will forever be saddled with so much non-musical baggage, cuz once you dig through all the shit, get past all the politics, all the rumors and racist rhetoric, past all the expectations and the various scenesters and tastemakers, past the fact that he's really just a total fuckhead, if you can forget just for a second what led up to the creation of this record, Belus could very well end up being one of the best black metal records of the year.
MPEG Stream: "II. Belus Doed"
MPEG Stream: "III. Glemselens Elv"
MPEG Stream: "IV. Kaimadalthas Nedstigning"

CURRENT 93 Honeysuckle Aeons (Coptic Cat) cd 14.98
As anyone with even a passing interest in the catalogue of Current 93 can attest, David Tibet's visionary poetry has always been a central facet to his work. The lyrics have gradually become more and more enmeshed into his deeper personal studies into the mythologies surrounding the Christian apocalypse, the various heresies involving Gnosticism and Patipatrianism, the texts of Crowley and other practitioners of the dark arts, and more recently, the ancient texts of Coptic Christians. The resulting imagery has become all the more convoluted beyond the pitting of Christ and Satan in existential conflict over the fate of the world. A brief bit of marketing states Honeysuckle Aeons to be "dreams of the crucifixion with Christ and two thieves ascending" and, we'll have to take Tibet at his word that all of his lyrical content is in someway revolving around this concept. Musically, Honeysuckle Aeons is a typically solemn affair, with the arrangements hedging towards the sparse end of the C93 spectrum (especially Soft Black Stars). The use of Theremin throughout the album is a novel one, interlocked with the delicate Satie-like notes on the piano from Baby Dee. We have to admit being much more partial to the heavier, darker, and / or more psychedelic incarnations of the C93 sound (e.g. Dogs Blood Rising, Thunder Perfect Mind, Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain, etc.), but here the Theremin-laced arrangements put all of the focus on Tibet's esoteric word (which is often "honeysuckle", he says that a lot here) and thought.
MPEG Stream: "Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Honeysuckle"

DECIBEL #80 June 2011 magazine 4.95
Reading is funda-METAL with Decibel magazine. Sorry. But it is a good read, if you're into metal. This month's issue bears a striking photo of Ghost's frontman on the cover, and those rockin' Swedish Satanists are profiled inside. Others this ish: Gorguts, Electro Quarterstaff (hey, glad to hear they're working on new stuff!), Altar Of Plagues, Scale The Summit, Vintersorg, In Solitude, Anaal Nathrakh, Mastodon, Eric Rutan of Hate Eternal, Killing Joke (Hall of Fame article on their self-titled debut), and more... including a look inside the upcoming Slayer Mag book (can't wait!) and tons of reviews, news, columns, etc.
Gotta tell you, we should be selling a lot more of these (and Terrorizer) than we do. At least as many as we sell of The Wire. C'mon...

ENGLISH, LAWRENCE Kiro No Oto (Digitalis) lp 19.98
Originally released on Touch as a cd, now available on vinyl via the always kick ass Digitalis...
Kiri No Oto was the first album that Lawrence English released for the venerable Touch Music label (now, as mentioned above on Digitalis). This after a number of releases via his own Room 40 imprint, which bridged environmental recordings and somber electronics with sublime results; but there's been little to indicate that he would generate something as stellar as Kiri No Oto. The Japanese title loosely translates as 'the sound of fog' or 'the sound of mist.' Both are applicable to the extended blur that this Australian sound-artist generates, with its miasma of soft-focus distortion arching into long-form compositions of minimalism. The album doesn't exactly erupt, as the sounds are more soothing in their softened textures; but English cuts into one of his grey-mass drones with little fanfare. English slowly glides his 'sound of fog' down to a muffled static, then brings up tectonic rumblings and kicks the overdrive in on his distortion box (or more likely, some patch on ye olde laptop) for one of those digital distorto-drones that Tim Hecker and Christian Fennesz have been sculpting over the past few years. And yes, we'll throw in an obligatory My Bloody Valentine reference, well because there are plenty of parts here which have the blissed out wash of the ambient interludes on Loveless.
The art, as on the Touch cd version, matches the depth, mystery, serenity, and subtle darkness of this very impressive album.
MPEG Stream: "Organs Lost At Sea"
MPEG Stream: "White Spray"
MPEG Stream: "Allay"

GABBY LA LA I Know You Know I Know (self-released) cd 9.98
Gabby La La is known in the Bay Area and beyond for her very imaginative and playful musical mind. She has played alongside folks like Les Claypool, who actually released her previous solo outing. I Know You Know I Know finds Gabby making all her beats and electronics with a Nintendo DS Lite as well as playing sitar, Theremin, ukulele and singing in her childlike voice. In fact the record sounds like it could be an awesome soundtrack for some new super cool psychedelic cartoon for kids...
MPEG Stream: "Alarm Clock"
MPEG Stream: "I Know You Know"
MPEG Stream: "Rainbows"

INCREDIBLE STRING BAND, THE Big Huge (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Yay, 180 gram vinyl reissues of two canonical Britfolk elpees, all right! For those who need some brushing up on their acid-folk history, England's Incredible String Band were a late sixties/early seventies outfit who blended folk rock, psychedelia, and Eastern ethnic musics. Very sixties, very hippy - they played at Woodstock, in fact. With their folky male and female vocals and expertise with a plethora of exotic stringed instruments, a shorthand description might be that ISB was kinda like Fairport Convention with sitars, and crazy costumes. Perhaps less truly traditional than Fairport, they made a bigger splash with the LSD crowd of The UFO Club where they played often with the likes of early Pink Floyd, Tomorrow, and Procol Harum. Their music encompassed British folk, Indian ragas, Dylan, blues, country, hoedowns, etc. - an eclectic stew indeed. Sometimes ISB can come off as a little *too* varied: you might be digging some Eastern drone track and find an abrupt switch to, say, music-hall country a bit jarring. But that just means there's plenty of different things on these albums to like.
While originally in 1968 these albums were issued together as a 2lp set, for reissue 4 Men With Beards have elected to do 'em as two individually available records... but you should get 'em both. Again the ISB mix their Celtic and Appalachian folkie roots with "world" influences, and although this is quite mellow and gentle, they also brought in some electric amplification at this point. With female vocals n' whistles n' fiddles n' sitar etc. this is quite pretty stuff, great summer morning sitting in a sunny meadow music. Both records are ISB fan favorites, with gorgeous four-part vocal harmonies, whimsical but sometimes dark moods, and of course lots of Incredible String-ed instrument playing.
We're always mentioning ISB in reviews of other folk-psych albums past and present, from Forest and Trees to P.G. Six and Tower Recordings, so it's nice to have some of their essentials here on vinyl...definitely if you're into that British folk-psych vibe you need to investigate this band if you haven't already!
MPEG Stream: "Maya"
MPEG Stream: "The Iron Stone"

INCREDIBLE STRING BAND, THE Wee Tam (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Yay, 180 gram vinyl reissues of two canonical Britfolk elpees, all right! For those who need some brushing up on their acid-folk history, England's Incredible String Band were a late sixties/early seventies outfit who blended folk rock, psychedelia, and Eastern ethnic musics. Very sixties, very hippy - they played at Woodstock, in fact. With their folky male and female vocals and expertise with a plethora of exotic stringed instruments, a shorthand description might be that ISB was kinda like Fairport Convention with sitars, and crazy costumes. Perhaps less truly traditional than Fairport, they made a bigger splash with the LSD crowd of The UFO Club where they played often with the likes of early Pink Floyd, Tomorrow, and Procol Harum. Their music encompassed British folk, Indian ragas, Dylan, blues, country, hoedowns, etc. - an eclectic stew indeed. Sometimes ISB can come off as a little *too* varied: you might be digging some Eastern drone track and find an abrupt switch to, say, music-hall country a bit jarring. But that just means there's plenty of different things on these albums to like.
While originally in 1968 these albums were issued together as a 2lp set, for reissue 4 Men With Beards have elected to do 'em as two individually available records... but you should get 'em both. Again the ISB mix their Celtic and Appalachian folkie roots with "world" influences, and although this is quite mellow and gentle, they also brought in some electric amplification at this point. With female vocals n' whistles n' fiddles n' sitar etc. this is quite pretty stuff, great summer morning sitting in a sunny meadow music. Both records are ISB fan favorites, with gorgeous four-part vocal harmonies, whimsical but sometimes dark moods, and of course lots of Incredible String-ed instrument playing.
We're always mentioning ISB in reviews of other folk-psych albums past and present, from Forest and Trees to P.G. Six and Tower Recordings, so it's nice to have some of their essentials here on vinyl...definitely if you're into that British folk-psych vibe you need to investigate this band if you haven't already!
MPEG Stream: "The Yellow Snake"
MPEG Stream: "Air"

JULY s/t (Guerssen) lp 31.00
This all time aQ favorite is now available on vinyl!
July is one of a myriad of UK psych bands to come out of the paisley maelstrom of the post-Sgt. Pepper's London psych scene in the late sixties. One who would still remain a minor footnote if they had never made this brilliant and amazing debut album. It's a highly collectible psych artifact for good reason. It's awesome!!! We've been playing it nearly non-stop since we got it, and it's pretty much an across the board store favorite.
Starting out years earlier as the Tomcats (amongst many other line-up changes and band names that defined the hectic scene back in the day) and influenced by the same wave of American RnB that bands like the Stones and Spencer Davis Group were, they soon realized the London scene was too crowded for them and headed off to the France and Spain for a couple of years to tighten their chops. When they came back in 1968, the sound and scene had changed once again from RnB to full on flowery acid-psych. Armed with good songs and well-rehearsed from touring, they quickly snagged a record deal and used the studio to augment their songs with all manner of gimmickry such as phasing, delays and tape-loops and far-out instrumentation of sitars, tablas, and African percussion.
The band quickly cut one of the finest examples of acid-y psych pop to come out of the era, an engaging mix of lysergic dreaminess and lo-fi garage rock urgency. The only thing was, none of the members really liked the result (unlike us). Certain choices like the "ugly" cover art and band name (changed to July to coincide with the album's release?!) were taken out of the band's control, and some members felt the studio gimmickry being used was far too gimmicky. At the time when so many bands like The Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, and Kaleidoscope were making stronger inroads with the psych sound and scene, July couldn't figure out what it should do with itself, and cutting only one more single (featured here among the bonus tracks), called it a day. Tragic! Listening to this today, you can hear its influence through bands like Olivia Tremor Control, early Guided By Voices, and Jennifer Gentle. If you have loved UK pop-psych albums such as Tangerine Dream by Kaleidoscope, S.F. Sorrow by The Pretty Things, and Pink Floyd's Pipers at The Gates of Dawn, July's self-titled debut will be one more jewel in that acid pop crown. So totally recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Jolly Mary"
MPEG Stream: "I See"
MPEG Stream: "Friendly Man"

LULLABY LEAGUE Filia Melusine - Parcel Series (Dynamophone) 3" cd-r box 8.98
Here's another addition to always dreamy sounding and delightfully packaged Dynamophone Parcel series (psst, we still have one final copy in stock of the now out of print Science Teacher edition... please let us know if you're interested in it or any of the others!).
Filia Melusine is a lovely spoken word piece read by Ms Phyllida Law. Her tender voice floats atop a soundscape of Evan Sornstein's soft drones and Jacob Phelps' delicate piano and guitar. The words can be traced back to a 15th century tale. Achingly intimate and deeply romantic, 'tis a magical bedtime story of personal quest and loss. The limited edition cd-r comes in a sweet little 3" box along with an added little treasure.
MPEG Stream: "Filia Melusine (excerpt)"

MATINEES, THE All These Days (self-released) lp 15.98
The Bay Area dreamy pop duo of Jaime Borschuk and P.F. Dumanis are back with their third full length. While the first two were delivered to our ears on cd, this one comes spinning on wonderful limited edition vinyl. Only 250 were pressed, so act fast! All These Days starts rolling in gentle fashion with "Fleeting", a lullaby tempo'd number that brings to mind the drowsy blanketing embrace of Yo La Tengo or Low. Wistful verging on downright melancholic. Then they get the toe tappin' and guitar strummin' on the considerably more upbeat second tune "Can i Love You Yet?" It's definitely more like what we recall from their previous releases. However, the bright burst of springy sunshine swiftly give way to the autumnal feel of the opening track, as the pair brings things back down again for the next tune. They stick to this slower, somber pace for the rest of the nine songs. While we certainly dig The Matinees' peppier side, on this album they prove to be just as engaging treading the more shadowier paths of pop.

PANDA BEAR Tomboy (Paw Tracks) lp 17.98
Also now in stock on vinyl!
How do you follow up one of the most well received and influential albums of the last decade? Well if you're Panda Bear you just make another brilliant record that isn't afraid to veer from the formula of the previous album, the beloved Person Pitch, and create a new tapestry of trance inducing unrivalled pop bliss. While not as immediately catchy and in your face as Person Pitch, Tomboy displays a more nuanced and subtle approach to Panda Bear's production and songwriting, while still filled with such lush sound and so many golden hooks and dreamy melodies. There is almost a song cycle feeling to Tomboy, each song interconnected and unfurling with such a tranquil and hypnotic flow . It's remarkable how Panda Bear is able to sing almost nonstop throughout this album yet his voice really does still seem like another instrument, perfectly floating just above the sea of sound below, radiating a glowing sonic warmth throughout the album.
It would have been easy for Panda Bear to do another take at Beach Boys influenced psychedelia, and there is plenty of that still present, but we love how he took his time making this record and really created a new record with a new sound with its own singular vision. There are moments of course, that seem to follow in the considerable wake of Person Pitch, but there are so many new sounds and approaches which all serve to make Tomboy its own fantastic and hauntingly original beast, as potent and satisfying as his past glories. Maybe even moreso. So great!
MPEG Stream: "You Can Count On Me"
MPEG Stream: "Tomboy"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Motion"

RAVEONETTES, THE Raven In The Grave (Vice) lp 15.98
Got 'em in on vinyl now too...
The Raveonettes have been on fire over the last several years. Their last two albums remain two of our favorite pop albums to come out last decade, and with their latest, Raven In The Grave, they've delivered another breathtaking and seductive set of songs that we've already been playing nonstop. In fact this album finds the band exploring a grittier and darker vibe that really suits them surprisingly well. The songs are both dirgy and sexy, mysterious and catchy. Before the latest wave of girl group inspired lo-fi pop bands hit the scene, The Raveonettes laid some nice groundwork and offered up a blueprint for how to take those influences and incorporate them into a very modern sound. This album even has some really nice shoegaze undertones, that matched with the grit and grim and ominously dark production make for such a seductive listening experience. Like sleepwalking through deserted city streets on an extra dark night, these are perfect songs for dazed and glazed fever dreams. Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "War In Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "Forget That You're Young"
MPEG Stream: "Evil Seeds"

SUPERSILENT 10 (Rune Grammofon) lp 24.00
When Supersilent 10 came out on cd, last year, it was accompanied by the simultaneous vinyl-only release of Supersilent 11. Well now at last they've gone and put 10 on vinyl too, yay! (Though it doesn't seem we're gonna ever get 11 on cd.) Despite the numbering, 10 is in fact Supersilent's most recent recordings, as 11 consisted of tracks left over from Supersilent 8.
For those of you who already have a good proportion of Supersilent's 1 through 9, need we really say much about 10? Each numbered Supersilent release thus far has been brilliant, right? Yet each somewhat different, in representing Supersilent's unique style of electronic / acoustic improv, which can range from glacially paced, spacious ambient drift to fractured rhythmic glitch, from mellow melodic bliss to distorted noisy chaos.
In the case of 10, it's tilted toward the hauntingly atmospheric, following on from the minimalistic approach of Supersilent 9 (wherein the group, without their former drummer, all played Hammond organ). These twelve (also simply numbered, as usual) tracks make evocative use of Arve Henriksen's limpid, moody trumpet solos, Stale Storlokken's sparse, somber Steinway grand piano, and the quietly droning, slightly gritty "audio virus" of electronics expert and producer Helge "Deathprod" Sten, who also plays electric guitar (whilst the other two in the trio contribute on electronics as well). Intriguing, gorgeous, suspenseful soundscapes are the result, replete with fragile melody and distant drone, and Supersilent 10 thus rates a 10 with us. So if you're just encountering Supersilent now, this would be a fine starting point, and then working backwards from 10 wouldn't be a bad idea.
Like 11, this is a lovely limited edition fetish object, 180 gram vinyl, lots of room for the artwork (hahaha, that's a joke, since as with all Supersilent releases, the Kim Hiorthoy cover design is a solid color with white Helvetica text... looks great though!).
MPEG Stream: "10.3"
MPEG Stream: "10.6"
MPEG Stream: "10.9"

WAX POETICS Issue #45 magazine 9.99
Whoops, almost skipped an issue... on the cover of this special "dance issue" Juan Atkins, on account of The History Of Detroit Techno found on page 74. Other articles: Bohannon, Ron Hardy and Chicago House, Konk, Tom Moulton and the Disco Edit, disco diva Jocelyn Brown, an obit for Teena Marie, and a ton more, all profusely illustrated with color photos and vintage record graphics. Get schooled on dance music history, here!

WAX POETICS Issue #46 magazine 9.99
More of a jazz-oriented issue here, the theme is in fact "Jazz's Mad Men". George Benson (on the cover), Billy Cobham, Phil Cohran, George Duke, and many more... also a piece on John Coltrane's lost recordings (or some being reissued), and Nostalgia 77.

WODENSTHRONE Loss ( Thorn Laceration ) 2lp 24.00
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Sometimes it gets pretty overwhelming with all the black metal we get coming through these doors, not that we don't love it, but it can become easy to lose track of everything. Which of course makes it really awesome when something just blows you away and reminds you why you got into black metal in the first place. Britain's Wodensthrone happen to be one of those bands. Not that there's anything mindblowingly original about these guys, it's just that Loss is delivered with a sincerity, not to mention an expert musical prowess, that really makes this one stand out among the sea of bands currently making the rounds. Featuring members of Atavist and Winterfylleth and recalling the majestic approach of bands like Emperor, Enslaved, Weakling, and Wolves in the Throne Room, Wodensthrone would be a pretty good example to explain what black metal sounds like to the uninformed. "Epic" would definitely be the word to use here, and this actually caught us a bit off guard considering how many bands have been taking a more raw approach as of late.
Wodensthrone are one of those bands who will remind you that synthesizers can be used for more than creating Cradle of Filth styled ridiculousness, as the keyboards here are both cinematic and sprawling, adding essential atmospherics to make you aware of black metal's obsession with the natural world. While these elements could very easily suck in the wrong hands, here they fit perfectly in conjuring Britain's pagan past. The production on Loss is enormous, and it makes total sense that the band ventured to Romania to record with members of Negura Bunget at their studio. Like Negura Bunget, Wodensthrone expertly merge folk-inspired elements from the respective country with a gigantic metal sound. It's worth noting the pagan influence here, as the melodies and overall mood of the album appear to be a little more, shall we say "positive", when compared to the all out evil of satanic black metal. There seems to be a serious awareness of classic British folk with melancholy acoustic guitars, mandolins, and flutes all commanding a pretty significant presence here, even in moments of all out metallic fury, and it's really refreshing to hear this stuff done so well. Definitely a nice surprise here, and enough to ensure that Loss will be on seriously HEAVY rotation for quite some time.
MPEG Stream: "Leodum On Land"
MPEG Stream: "Heofungfid"
MPEG Stream: "Those That Crush The Roots Of Blood"

XLR8R #138 March/April 2011 magazine 6.99
Electronic/indie music magazine XLR8R is on our reading list this month for sure, with Kode 9 + The Space Ape on the cover, also pieces on Tim Hecker, Hype Williams, Carl Craig, Rainbow Arabia, Seefeel, Mogwai and plenty more!







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

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

ACID MOTHER'S TEMPLE / STEARICA "Sterica Invade Acid Mothers Temple" (Homeopathic) cd 17.98
AERIAL RUIN "Valleys Of The Earth" (Vendlus) cd 12.98
ART MUSEUMS "S.H.O.P.P.I.N.G." (Dulcitone) 7" 5.98
AUTECHRE "EPs 1991 - 2002" (Warp) 5cd 40.00
BEASTIE BOYS "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two" (Capitol) cd 17.98
BIBIO "Mind Bokeh" (Warp) cd 15.98
BIRDS OF AVALON "s/t" (Bladen Country) cd 14.98
BLACK DEVIL DISCO CLUB "Circus" (Lo) cd/lp 13.98/25.00
BLOODLOSS "The Truth Is Marching In" (Memorandum) 2cd 19.98
CASSLE "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
CHURCH OF MISERY "Live At Roadburn 2008" (Roadburn) cd 14.98
CHURCH OF MISERY "Volume 1" (Emetic) lp + 7" 24.00
CLOUDLAND CANYON "Mothlight Pt. 2" (Bathetic) 7" 6.98
COFFINS "Ancient Torture" (Deep Send Records) 2cd 21.00
COMA / WESTWORLD / THE CAREY TREATMENT "OST" (Film Score Monthly) 2cd 23.00
COSMONAUTS "s/t" (Burger) lp 16.98
CRASS "Yes Sir I Will" (Crassical Collection) cd 19.98
CYCLO "Id" (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
DECIMUS "Decimus 1" (Kelippah) lp 15.98
DESPISE YOU / AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED "And On And On..." (Relapse) cd 14.98
DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE / FLORIS VANHOOF "split" (Experimedia) 7" 8.98
DREAM SYNDICATE, THE "The Day Of Wine And Roses" (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
DUELL, XANDER "Experimental Tape No. 2" (Mexican Summer) lp 17.98
EXCEPTER "Late" (Woodsist) 12" 14.98
FLEET FOXES "Helplessness Blues" (Sub Pop) cd 14.98
FORD & LOPATIN "Emergency Room" (Mexican Summer) picture disc 21.00
GREEN DOOR KIDS, THE "Muzikal Yooth" (Optimo Music) lp 16.98
GROSSKOPF, HARALD + VARIOUS ARTISTS "Synthesist / Re-Synthesist" (Rvng Intl) lp+cd 22.00
H.P. LOVECRAFT "s/t" (Subway Records) lp 32.00
INVISIBLE CONGA PEOPLE "In a Hole" (DFA) 12" 11.98
KUNG FU / MAN IN THE WILDERNESS "OST" (Film Score Monthly) cd 15.98
LARSEN "Cool Cruel Mouth" (Important) cd 14.98
LE SON DE L'OS "Grass Pillow" (PSF) cd 16.98
LECHEROUS GAZE "s/t" (Tee Pee) cd ep 6.98
LEVI / WERSTLER "Avalanche Of Worms" (Magna Carta Records) cd 21.00
MAJUTSU NO NIWA "Ecstatic Crystalization" (Musik Atlach) cd 16.98
MCCOMBS, CASS "Wit's End" (Domino) cd/lp 14.98/22.00
MCGUIRE, MARK "A Young Person's Guide To Mark McGuire" (Editions Mego) 2cd 23.00
METABOLISMUS "Mauser Ok" (Amish Records) 7" 10.98
MINEO, ATTILIO "Man In Space With Sounds" (Subliminal Sounds) lp 32.00
MOTION SICKNESS OF TIME TRAVEL "Seeping Through The Veil Of The Unconscious" (Digitalis) lp 19.98
MURDERBOT, CHRISSY "Bussin Down" (Planet Mu) 12" 8.98
NITE JEWEL "It Goes Through Your Head" (Mexican Summer) 12" 19.98
OSWALD, JOHN + 1,001 VINTAGE POP STARS "Perplexure" (Fony) lp 14.98
PERSONAL & THE PIZZAS "Tearjerker / Never Fine Me" (Windian) 7" 6.98
PERSONAL AND THE PIZZAS "Dead Meat" (Total Punk) 7" 5.98
PIG HEART TRANSPLANT "They Eat What We Eat / They Sleep Where You Sleep" (Rescued From Life) 7" 8.98
PSYCHIC REALITY "Vibrant New Age" (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE, THE "Departing" (Saddle Creek) cd 14.98
SATURNALIA TEMPLE "Aion Of Drakon" (Ajna) cd 13.98
SCROTUM POLES "Revelation" (Dulcitone) 7" 5.98
SEA AND CAKE, THE "The Moonlight Butterfly" (Thrill Jockey) cd/lp 14.98/15.98
SEGALL, TY "I Can't Feel It" (Drag City) 7" 5.98
SERPENT THRONE "White Summer - Black Winter" (Prophase) lp 32.00
SHIPP, MATTHEW "Art Of The Improviser" (Thirsty Ear) 2cd 16.98
SHIVER, THE "Walpurgis" (Garden of Delights) lp 34.00
SKELETOR "Death To All Nations" (Metal On Metal) cd 16.98
SONNY AND THE SUNSETS "Hit After Hit" (Fat Possum) cd/lp 13.98/14.98
SOURDELINE "Jeanne D'Ayme" (Guerssen) cd 17.98
SUMAC, YMA "Voice Of The Xtabay" (The Right Stuff) cd 12.98
SWEENEY, MATT & BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY "Life In Muscle / Must Be Blind" (Drag City) 10" 13.98
TEETH OF THE SEA "Orphaned By The Ocean" (Rocket) cd 17.98
THIN LIZZY "Johnny The Fox" (Back On Black) lp 29.00
TIA CARRERA "Cosmic Priestess" (Small Stone) cd 15.98
TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR "Gardet 12.6.1970" (Subliminal Sounds) 2lp 48.00
TRUST "Candy Walls" (Sacred Bones) 7" 4.98
TUCKER, ALEXANDER & DECOMPOSED ORCHESTRA "Grey Onion" (Latitudes) cd/lp /16.98
TV ON THE RADIO "Nine Types of Light (Deluxe Album)" (Interscope) cd 21.00
TV ON THE RADIO "Nine Types of Light" (Interscope) lp 14.98
TYRANNOSAURUS REX "My People Were Fair and Had Sky In Their Hair... But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows" (Vinyl Lovers) lp 17.98
ULVER "War Of The Roses" (Jester / K-Scope) cd 16.98
UMBERTO "Freeze" (Not Not Fun) 7" 9.98
V/A "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" (Harkit) lp 24.00
V/A "Black & Proud Vol. 1" (Trikont) 2lp 28.00
V/A "Casual Victim Pile II" (12XU) lp 14.98
V/A "Cult Cargo: Salsa Boricua De Chicago" (Numero Group) cd/2lp 17.98/24.00
V/A "Demoler: Rock Peruano 1965-1974" (Repsychled) cd 14.98
V/A "Echocord Jubilee" (Echocord) cd 16.98
V/A "Kosher Nostra: Jewish Gangsters Greatest Hits" (Essay) cd + book 22.00
V/A "Messthetics #108" (Hyped To Death) cd 14.98
V/A "Persian Funk" (Secret Stash) lp 27.00
V/A "Rhythm" (Gruenrekorder) cd 16.98
V/A "Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies: A Treasury Of Caucasian-American Gospel" (Social Music) lp 13.98
VANDERSLICE, JOHN "White Wilderness" (Dead Oceans) cd 14.98
VEKTOR "Black Future" (Heavy Artillary) 2lp 31.00
VENA "Nomadic" (Paradigms) cd ep 11.98
VILE, KURT "God Is Saying This To You" (Mexican Summer) lp 19.98
WHITE FANG "Greatful To Shred" (Marriage) cd/lp + poster 14.98/19.98
WHO MADE WHO "Knee Deep" (Kompakt) lp+cd 15.98
WRIGHT, WILLIE "Telling The Truth" (Numero Group) cd/lp 16.98/22.00

_______________________________________________________________________

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) : $5.00 USPS Priority Mail via flat rate box

4+ CD,orany 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 returneddue 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 beinternational 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
______________________________________________________________________

SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} on the way to us now
White Hills "Live On WFMU" cassette on Who Can You Trust?
Tony Tears "Voci Dal Passato" cassette version on Seedstock
Monarch "Sortilege" limited edition tour cdep on Heathen Skulls
Jerusalem "s/t" vinyl reissue on Vintage/Rockadrome
Acanthus "Le Frisson Des Vampires" cd/lp on Finders Keepers/B-Music
Ilaiyaraaja "Solla Solla" vol.1 and vol.2 lps on Finders Keepers/B-Music
Mala Morska Vila OST (Zdnek Liska) lp on Finders Keepers/B-Music
Starfuckers "Ordine '91-'96" cd on Sometimes Records
My Violent Ego "One day you'll laugh at the sad saga that was" cd on Sometimes Records

----} May 10th
The Gates Of Slumber "Wretch" cd on Metal Blade
Horseback "Gorgon Tongue: Impale Golden Horn & Forbidden" cd/lp on Relapse
Zombi "Escape Velocity" cd/lp on Relapse
Jesu "Ascension" cd on Caldo Verde
Gang Gang Dance "Eye Contact" cd/2lp on 4AD
Jonsi "Go Out" 12" on XL
Zomby "Natalia's Song" 10"
Tiago Sousa "Walden Pond's Monk" cd/lp on Immune
Cars "Move Like This" cd
Anvil "Juggernaut Of Justice" cd on The End
Aosoth "III" cd on Agonia
Forgotten Tomb "Under Saturn Retrograde" cd on Agonia
Sloan "Double Cross" cd on Yep Roc
Tyler The Creator "Goblin" cd on Beggar's Banquet
Urge Overkill "Rock&Roll Submarine" cd
Psychedelic Horseshit "Laced" cd on Fat Cat

----} May 17th
Bong "Beyond Ancient Space" cd on Ritual Productions
Starfuckers "Metallic Diseases" lp on Holy Mountain
v/a "Groove Club Vol.2: Cambodia Rock Spectacular" cd version on Lion
Ilaiyaraaja "Solla Solla" cd on Finders Keepers/B-Music domestic

----} May 24th
Electric Wizard "Black Masses" domestic vinyl release on Metal Blade
Boris "Attention Please" cd/lp on Sargent House (delayed from 4/26)
Boris "Heavy Rocks" (different from the old Boris album of the same name though!!) cd/lp on Sargent House (delayed from 4/26)
Thurston Moore "Demolished Thoughts" cd/2lp on Matador
Friendly Fires "Pala" cd/lp on XL

----} June 7th
Fucked Up "David Comes To Life" cd/2lp on Matador
Chris Watson & Marcus Davidson "Cross-Pollination" cd on Touch
Brute Heart "Lonely Hunter" cd/lp on Soft Abuse

----} June 21st
White Hills "H-p1" cd/lp on Thrill Jockey
Barn Owl "Shadowland" cd/lp on Thrill Jockey

----} July 19th
Eternal Tapestry & Sun Araw "Night Gallery" cd/lp on Thrill Jockey

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later or sooner or later or whenever
Circle "Infektio" cd/lp on Conspiracy
Anla Courtis + Tabata Mitsuru + Kawaguchi Masami "Aum Air" cd on PSF
Tecumseh "Return to Everything" cd on Beta-Lactam Ring
Marijata "This Is Marijata" cd on Academy
Marijata "Pat Thomas Presents Marijata" cd/lp on Academy
Dalek "Untitled" lp on Latitudes (delayed)
ONJT + "Lonely Woman" cd on Doubtmusic
ONJT + "Bells" cd on Doubtmusic
Bullet "Highway Pirates" cd on Black Lodge
Nurse With Wound "Skrag" cd on United Dairies

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________

On an evening in July, 1961, in the small East Bay community of Canyon, California, filmmaker Bruce Baillie hung a bed sheet in his front yard as a screen and put up a sign that read, Canyon Cinema. Originally a proto-micro-cinema, which held guerilla-style film screenings at underground venues across the Bay Area, this organization took various forms: a screening venue, a filmmakers network, a film zine publisher and an avant-garde film distributor. Separating its distribution activities from its exhibitions in 1967, San Francisco Cinemathequea consistent exhibitor to this daywas born. Canyon Cinema has continued to this day to care for and distribute an amazing collection of cinematic works. In celebration of the FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY of this primal screening, and the second edition of CROSSROADS, Cinematheques annual showcase of recent and rediscovered artist-made works, Cinematheque announces the following:

CINEMATHEQUE AT 50, BENEFIT & PARTY
MAY 19, 2011
AT 111 MINNA GALLERY IN SAN FRANCISCO
CO-PRESENTED WITH AQUARIUS RECORDS
MONEY MARK / DJ FELINA / PRIMARY STRUCTURES
LAWRENCE JORDAN / KERRY LAITALA / PAUL CLIPSON / DOUG KATELUS

FEATURING A MASH UP OF LIVE MUSIC BY MONEY MARK & FRIENDS WITH CINEMATIC PROJECTIONS

Join us for a special benefit and fiftieth anniversary celebration featuring an eclectic mash-up of cinematic art, psychedelic projections, vintage grooves and an avant-pop soundtrack. The evening will kick off with a VIP reception and silent art auction featuring works by George Kuchar, Lawrence Larry Jordan, Martha Colburn, Jeanne Liotta, Bill Daniel, Tomonari Nishikawa and more.
As the evening continues, Beastie Boys co-writer/producer Money Mark and neo-garage band Primary Structures (Lady Genius) will perform and DJ Felina will provide equatorial beats to a mash up of image and sound. Expect to be dazzled by hand-made collage animations by Lawrence Jordan, psychedelic chromo-explorations by Kerry Laitala and Doug Katelus and the super 8 optical odyssey of Paul Clipson.
Producer, keyboardist and sound experimenter Money Mark makes funky, retro-flavored riffs, which earned him the title as the fourth Beastie Boy. His infectious melodies, often recorded on vintage equipment, have played key roles in collaborations with artists as such as Jack Johnson, Beck, Yoko Ono, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Beastie Boys. Mark continues to produce, remix, compose for film, collaborate and co-write with many diverse artists. Money Mark will be joined by percussionist Alfredo Ortiz, who has played with the Beastie Boys, Offspring, Ozomatli, Blackalicious, Tito & Tarantula and Morningwood. Primary Structures is SF locals Jason Byers, Brian Caraway, Matt Stromberg and Kyle Williams. Primary Structures is swamp rock legend John Fogertys neo-folk / pop reincarnate. Named the city's "Best Mood Setter" by 7x7 Magazine, DJ Felinas lush sound centers around music from and inspired by the equatorial diaspora.
The benefit will take place on Thursday, May 19th, at 8 pm at 111 Minna Gallery. The gallery is located at 111 Minna Street (at Second Street) in downtown San Francisco. Tickets are sliding scale between $25 and $45. A $25 entry-donation includes one drink ticket and a $45 entry-donation includes two drink tickets, entry into the raffle and VIP early entry, at 7 pm, for the silent art auction. We would like to thank Lagunitas Brewing, RealFoods and Bi-Rite for their contributions to the benefit. For tickets or more information, telephone (415) 552-1990 or visit www.sfcinema.org.

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________


Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickJonandAndrew