LAINHART, RICHARD Ten Thousand Shades Of Blue (IX) 2cd 14.98
Another winner from AQ fave Phil Niblock's always eclectic and engaging IX label. While sometimes stuff on IX tends a little too much toward the academic (and maybe this one is no different), the music on 'Ten Thousand Shades Of Blue' sounds much more organic, pure and intense and dreamy. Monochromatic dronescapes built from multi-tracked and processed bowed tam-tams, bowed Japanese temple bells, voices, bowed and struck vibraphones, and a realtime interactive computer music system. Expansive and soothing washes of humming low end. One of the best late night/sleeping/chillout records of the year.
RealAudio clip: "Bronze Cloud Disk"

LAPORTE, JEAN-FRANCOIS Soundmatters (23five) cd 14.98
Those artists, musicians, misanthropes, and just plain weirdos who not only exist musically on the fringes but have planted their entire existence on the edge have long been the greatest inspirations of Aquarius Records. For proof, you could scroll through oddball recordings that have earned the honor of Aquarius Record Of The Week. There was the Finnish sound artist Terje Isungset who crafted not just one album, but two from untreated percussive instruments entirely made of ice. Hans Edler thrilled us with his 1970s transformation from teen idol into short-circuited electronic composer. The protracted ululations of the profoundly cracked Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant were as transcendent as anything that Lamonte Young had to offer, yet also had that creepy cult of personality vibe to boot. And who could forget Kathy McGinty? But one of the earliest recordings that truly made our collective jaw drop was the 3" cd from French-Canadian composer Jean-Francois Laporte called Mantra. Here was a mighty fine 20 minute composition of delicious vibrations, rattles, mechanical hum, and industrial drones that came with a particularly alluring back story: the source material to Mantra was a Zamboni -- the unusual machine only found at hockey rinks responsible for resurfacing its ice.
The one catch to Laporte's Zamboni sourced masterpiece was that we could never verify that a Zamboni was the actual source material. We heard from 'reliable sources' that Mantra is the sound of a Zamboni; and we wanted so desperately to believe that this was the case, just because the Zamboni is such an amazing and eccentric beast of industrial engineering. Before this turns into a dialectic on epistemology, we here at Aquarius discovered that we had been duped by a couple of mischievous DJs on KPFA without the knowledge or consent of Jean-Francois Laporte. It turns out that Laporte used nothing but a common air-compressor in composing Mantra. This factual unveiling should not in any way take away from the splendor of that piece. Here's what we had to say about Mantra many moons ago:
"Mantra opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. After a marvelous set of transitions between drones, there is the rattling sound as if a screw or bolt had been loosened by the vibrations, with two pieces of metal beginning a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda."
That 3" cd came out almost a decade ago, became a classic, and went out of print. Thankfully, 23five Incorporated has rescued Mantra from the dustbin by issuing the first major compendium of Laporte's work in the form of Soundmatters. While we've already sung the praises of Mantra, the remainder of Soundmatters is well worth investigating on its own. The opening track "Electro-Prana" is a pristine set of field recordings of a wind that ripped through Montreal, when the city was silenced by a winter time blackout. It's a pure, chilling sound of whistling wind overtaking the urban landscape. The next piece is the only digitally rendered composition on Soundmatters, yet Laporte brings his intuitive expressionism to a series of spiraling drones that easily rival those of your favorite minimalist (e.g. Niblock, Chalk, Hafler Trio, Xenakis, etc.). For those of you who have had the pleasure of experiencing Laporte's live concerts, the third piece will certainly be familiar. He's built an instrument with a series of car horns and elongated trumpet bells attached to an air compressor with each of the valves controlled by foot pedals. This instrument can generate infinitely sustainable, blaring drones from each of the horns; and Laporte craftily layers these sounds for incredible, dynamic results. Well, for this recording, Laporte lugged this instrument into the hull of a giant cargo ship and recorded this composition using the massive reverb of that space and the results are simply jaw-dropping. Imagine the most Nordic bellow from a Wagner symphony stretched out into its melancholic, raw sound and allowed to decay in space and time. Wow!
Following this is the aforementioned Mantra; and then Soundmatters' final piece which explores a quiet, yet thoroughly rich harmonic tapestry produced by a quartet of saxophones that could be Laporte's imagined summit between Evan Parker and Morton Feldman with rasping breaths of sound breaking across a silent event horizon with the ghostly energy of subatomic particles flickering and dissolving in a cloud chamber before amassing into a delirious swarm of Tony Conrad-esque acoustic dissonance. It's all utterly magnificent and one of finest collections of 'serious' composition that we've come across.
MPEG Stream: "Electro-Prana"
MPEG Stream: "Boule qui roule..."
MPEG Stream: "Danse le ventre du dragon"
MPEG Stream: "Mantra"

LICHT, ALAN A New York Minute (XI) 2cd 14.98
The usually academic-oriented XI label ventures into the "underground" with this release from the singular New York guitarist/critic/sometime indie-rocker Alan Licht. A New York Minute sees Licht exploring two muscial approaches, with one of these two discs revolving around studio-only projects and the other documenting live work. The studio compositions are, we must confess, a mixed bag of conceptualism, opening with the title track, a tape collage of weather reports broadcast by a NYC radio station during the month of January 2001. Licht's intent was to reveal that these weather reports are mediated experiences far removed from the actuality of the weather. Perhaps too obvious an idea, and it really just sounds like you've got the radio on. But things get much better for the remainder of the disc, as Licht ventures into a more satisfyingly "musical" zone of fragmented minimalism scribed from multi-tracked guitar, organ, and bass drones.
Disc two is where Licht really shines, live with no overdubs. Here he presents a series of guitar based compositions/improvisations that suggest the maturation of indie-rock into minimalist mantras. Unlike the guitar symphonies of Rhys Chatham or Glenn Branca, Licht's pieces are incredibly intimate and quiet meditations, with repeated phrases from his chiming guitar occasionally accompanied by a dissonant fuzz or a whistful minor chord tone. These two very long pieces are pleasant recapitulations of the drone-rock godhead prowess of Thurston Moore (as per his "Psychic Hearts" avant-jangle mode, not his big muff improv freak out mode), the monochromatism of Henry Flynt, and even the spartan blues solos of Loren Mazzacane Connors, with whom Licht has collaborated on a number of occasions. These transcendent drones of jangliness more than make up for the conceptual inadequacies found on disc one. Really nice.
MPEG Stream: "A New York Minute"
MPEG Stream: "14, Second, Fifth"

LIGETI, GYORGY Continuum / Zehn Stucke Fur Blaserquintett / Articulation / Glissandi / Etuden Fur Orgel / Volumina (Wergo) cd 18.98
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LIGETI, GYORGY Kammerkonzert / Ramifications / Lux Aeterna / Atmospheres (Wergo) cd 18.98
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LINDBLAD, RUNE RL (Firework Edition Records) lp + cd 19.98
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As decreed by the dual monarchs of the Kingdoms of Elgaland / Vargaland (those being CM von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren), Swedish composer Rune Lindblad should be held in the same canonical reverie as Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and Pierre Schaeffer. For Lindblad engaged the spirit of ardent innovation, brash risktaking, and an unwavering social agenda that could easily be found in the works of those more well known composers. Von Hausswolff -- having studied under Lindblad in the '80s -- had already released a number of Lindblad's compositions on his Radium 226.5 label (all of which have been reissued through Pogus on CD), now he, Elggren, BJ Nilsen (aka Hazard), Edvard Graham Lewis (of Wire), Kent Tankred, and a few others have put together this compilation as an homage of Lindblad's work. Sprawling across a cd and an lp, "RL" begins with two pieces from Lindblad himself - which are haunting musique concrete / electronic music compositions that also appear to involve some amplifier / microphone feedback synthesis, in the end sounding like lo-fi recordings of Morton Subotnik topped off with emotionally charged spoken word snippets. The cd portion of this package continues with various experiments that follow the sonic intent of Lindblad with Edvard Graham Lewis and BJ Nilsen offering a dark, fluid pieces of Eno ambience, Tankred and Elggren sputtering through amplified motors and shortwave dissonance, Von Hausswolff laces distant vocal samples with the ominous pulse of a ventilator.
The lp is much more loose in its interpretation of Lindblad with Brommage Dub pulling off a good Monolake / Chain Reaction piece of minimalist techno, and Jean-Louis HuhtaJ offering some leftfield electronica a la Two Lone Swordsmen or Plaid. Nice work, but doesn't really hold much insight into Lindblad's work beyond distant samples. Nevertheless, this is an excellent overview of Lindblad's work and his influence over contemporary Swedish experimental electronics.
RealAudio clip: RUNE LINDBLAD "Worship Op. 196"
RealAudio clip: EDVARD GRAHAM LEWIS "A Strong Candidate For Isolation"
RealAudio clip: C.M. VON HAUSSWOLFF "Out Of Optica 1"

LIVINGSTON, GUY Don't Panic: 60 Seconds For Piano (Wergo) cd 21.00
60 composers from 18 countries commissioned to score 60 second pieces for piano (and occasionally tape). Go! Quick!! FASTER!!!

LOCKWOOD, ANNEA A Sound Map Of The Danube (Lovely Music) 3cd 37.00

LOCKWOOD, ANNEA Early Works 1967-82 (EM Records) cd 22.00
Hooray, Japan's EM Recordings is back with two new discs! You never know what sort of stuff they're gonna dig up for reissue, only that it's probably going to be pretty far-out and interesting. The releases we're reviewing this week both fit that general description, thought they couldn't be more different. One's an amusing and strange attempt at calypso-punk (!) from 'Wild' Billy Childish, the other, this, is an anthology of early sound-experiments from New Zealand-born avant garde composer Annea Lockwood. She studied in England and Europe during the sixties and early seventies, and since 1973 has been a professor at Vassar College in New York. Her music, as heard here, is on the conceptual side, abstract but fascinating and listenable. Her 1970 album The Glass World (previously reissued on cd in 1997 by What Next? Recordings) appears here in its entirety, plus her 19 minute droning musique concrete tape piece "Tiger Balm", originally released on a 10" record in 1970 that came with issue number 9 of SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde magazine.
Moody and mysterious, her Glass World is a weird and wonderful place, indeed. Clinking, tinkling, scraping, shimmering, humming, droning... every sound you could imagine somehow generating with pieces of glass, and more! It originated as a performance piece she developed in 1966, of "discreet sound actions" all using glass as the prime source material which has been bowed, scraped, shattered, tapped, etc. There's 23 individual tracks, each one with a straightforward title ("Glass Rod Vibrating", "Water Gong", "Wine Glass", "Bottle Tree Showered With Fragments") more or less explaining what's going on, usually with a glass object noun and sound-producing verb. It's a veritable catalog, sort of a Smithsonian Folkways approach: The Sounds Of North American Glass Objects! Meanwhile "Tiger Balm" features a woman's orgasmic sighs, tinkling bells, and of course the purring of a big cat... it's pretty trippy!
This includes two booklets, one with vintage photos, scores, and Lockwood's own liner notes. The other documents the realization of her conceptual art piece "Piano Transplants" (i.e. "Piano Burning", "Piano Garden", etc.). As with all EM releases, this is really nicely presented (and now, EM's putting things out in non-jewel case, cardboard digi-packaging).
Oh, and EM fans, look out for this summer's "EM Under Water Series" of five surfing-related reissues from '60s/'70s Australia, all really cool stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Micro Glass Shaken"
MPEG Stream: "Glass Rod Vibrating"
MPEG Stream: "Vibrating Pane"

LOCKWOOD, ANNEA The Glass World (What Next? ) cd 15.98
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"For me, every sound has its own minute form - is composed of small flashing rhythms, shifting tones, has momentum, comes, vanishes, live out its own structure." - Annea Lockwood. 'Glass World' originated a two hour performance of discreet sound actions, using glass as the prime source material which has been bowed, scraped, shattered, tapped, etc.

LUCIER, ALVIN I Am Sitting In A Room (Lovely Music) cd 15.98
This 1970 piece for tape and voice by Lucier contains 32 repititions of the same piece of text : "I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back again and again until the resonant frequencies reinforce themselves so that any semblance of speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have." Over the course of time, an almost robotic droning overtakes the hypnotic repetition of the voice. A very interesting phenomenological composition. (Not a new release, but we thought it worthy of a mention on our list.)

LUCIER, ALVIN Still Lives (Lovely Music) cd 14.98
Three new compositions from composer Alvin Lucier. Each piece, composed for a solo stringed instrument accompanied by an oscillator, focuses on the beating phenomenon that occurs when two pitches vary only slightly in frequency. In two of the compositions the pitch of the oscillator varies and the performer -- piano for both pieces -- plays notes which cause the beating to speed up and slow down -- dependent on the distance from unison of the two notes. In the other piece a solo koto player is accompanied by a fixed oscillator drone and creates the beating effects by moving the bridge slightly while playing. All three compositions, though simple, are haunting: full of uneasy shimmering as the notes interact with one another. Like an almagamation of Ryoji Ikeda and Morton Feldman.
RealAudio clip: "Music For Piano w/ Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators"
RealAudio clip: "On The Carpet Of Leaves Illuminated By The Moon"

LUCIER, ALVIN Theme (Lovely Music) cd 15.98
"Theme" contains three separate pieces from Alvin Lucier. Two lengthy drone pieces are featured, one for magnetized piano wires (resembling his epic "Music For A Long Thin Wire"), the other a beautifully meditative piece for amplification of Gamelan intruments. The third is a vocal piece in which four vocalists recite a poem by John Ashberry which in turn was recorded through a variety of natural acoustic filters (mostly bottles and hollow objects).

LUCIER, ALVIN Vespers (New World Records) cd 15.98
A new collection of early works by Sonic Arts Union co-founder Alvin Lucier. Perhaps more than any other composer Lucier has been obsessed with the physical space in which a performance is occupied. his later works "I Am Sitting In A Room" (in which the composer's speech is repeatedly recorded and played back within the same space until the resonant frequencies of the room wipe out any semblance of the original source) or "Music On A Long Thin Wire" (in which a 50' wire, driven by an oscillator, is amplified, but which is constantly changing, determined by the micro-climate of the room which is in itself affected by the presence of people.) Lucier's fascination with space is evident on some of the works presented on this disc. With "Vespers" (1969) Lucier uses sonar-dolphin echolocation devices to propel focused clicks at varying rates throughout a performance space. Along with the walls of the room, every object within becomes an interacting element with the sound. Of course, translating the effects of this onto a recording -- a mere two channels at that -- is a futile task. In an attempt to overcome this limitation the piece was recorded using the "Environ-Ears Recording System" which was apparently some sort of binaural recording system. "Chambers" (1968) presents an equally, if not more, difficult problem for recording in that the sounds presented in this piece are all "packaged" in their own unique space. The result on disc is a sound collage in which each element carries with it the effect of the box it's packaged in. With "North American Time Capsule" (1967) Lucier used a Sylvania Electronic Systems Vocoder (an early voice encryption device used by intelligence agents) to render them completely unrecognizable. "(Middletown) Memory Space" (1970) is a little different than the others on this disc, in that it is not an electronic composition but written for performers (any instrument, any number of performers.) In it the performers are instructed to bring into the performance space a snippet of sound from the city outside which they have recorded by means of tape, notation (graphic or otherwise), or memory and then to play this back on their instrument. They are further directed not to interact with the other performers, but only to follow the instructions of the conductor for when to begin and end. Though there is no indication of the performers for this rendition, it seems as though the instruments used were piano, flute, harp, double bass, percussion and accordion. The results are not entirely unlike some of Morton Feldman's works. The final piece "Elegy For Albert Anastasia" (1963) -- notorious Murder Incorporated hitman who was gunned down in a barber shop -- was created on magnetic tape and consists almost entirely of subharmonic sounds, most inaudible to the human ear. Includes liner notes by fellow Sonic Arts Union co-founder Robert Ashley.
RealAudio clip: "Vespers"
RealAudio clip: "Elegy For Albert Anastasia"

LYE, LEN Composing Motion (Atoll) cd 17.98
Len Lye was a staple of the 50's and 60's art scene in Greenwich Village and a leading figure in the burgeoning field of kinetic art. He designed and built a series of large scale metal sculptures that not only moved, but also created sound. Just to look at, the sculptures are breathtaking, very sleek and modern, simple and stunning, large sheets of steel, strange little metallic antennae, long twisted metal strips, all hanging or spinning or vibrating. Like some alien machines, whose function can not be discerned. So mysterious and lovely. This disc is the first time the sounds of Lye's sculptures have been recorded and released commercially. And they are just as haunting and beautiful as the strange pieces of metal that produced them. The sounds are quite varied, depending on the piece, from reverberating pulses, like a struck spring, whirring metallic drones, the overtones shifting in pitch as the metal bends and twists, warm subterranean whirs, musicbox like melodies, simple subtle chimes, clattery clang and crash, subtle almost industrial rhythms, like a sprinkler or the blades on a helicopter, scraping metallic soundscapes, like a million little metal bugs rustling alongside one another, and then there's some full on spaced out swirl and hiss and shimmer like wires whipping in the wind, which sounds like Merzbow or Total, way too dense and weird to be the work of nothing but a big piece of metal, but it is. Magical, mysterious and pretty darn amazing.Ê
Comes with a big book of linernotes, text about the performances / recordings as well as lovely photos of each of Lye's sculptures.
MPEG Stream: "Blade"
MPEG Stream: "Universe"
MPEG Stream: "Roundhead"

MACE Circulations (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98
Circulations is an instrumental album in four sections, for four instruments: drums, guitar, harp and clarinet. And tape. Which we'll explain in a second. First though, let's just say: this is so GREAT. But it's been tough to review. 'Cause there's a lot of explaining to do. And it's the sort of thing where, yup, the construction of the music IS interesting, but reading about it sorta might make it sound like an academic exercise. Which it may be, in part. But our point is, that even if you don't know how it came about, academics aside it's a really really great listen! Like a crazy soundtrack, sort of (a lot of this would be perfect for some freaky '70s Italian horror/sci-fi/suspense flick). Sometimes bewilderingly dense, at others beautifully melodic and simple. There's a chaotic tangle of sounds but it's carefully crafted, moving through (and returning to) many moods.
You'll encounter moments of heavy distorto-percussion frenzy that sound not unlike Village of Savoonga, This Heat or Dead C. Passages of pretty melody carried by the harp or the clarinet. Intense, echoing drumscapes. Shimmering textures, loud stabs of skronk guitar, placid strings, stirring arpeggios, glitchy stutter. It's very dynamic indeed. Sometime simple and serene, sometimes seriously scrambled and spliced. A complex assemblage of sounds constantly morphing and mutating...
But let's give the background on this, 'cause we're sure that some of you will be intrigued. Basically, the deal here is that young French composer Pierre-Yves Mace (who has one other album out, on Tzadik), wrote out four solos for the four instruments (drums, guitar, harp, clarinet). The musicians in question recorded these solos. Then Mace took those recordings and created four processed tape-collage backing tracks to accompany each of the original individual solos, which were then slightly revised and performed again over the tapes that Mace created. Thus four movements, created in four stages, for Percussion/Tape, Guitar/Tape, Harp/Tape, and Clarinet/Tape. (It says "tape" here, so we will too, though we suspect a computer was involved at some point, not just old-fashioned cut and splice procedures.) The 'solo' instrument is the focus of each track, but you'll hear from all of 'em throughout the disc. Fortunately, Mace's talents extend beyond this disc's conceptual framework, however interesting. While it's fun to listen and try to pick out the sounds from each solo that have been processed and transposed and otherwise recontextualized in the taped accompaniment (you'll be cross referencing from one movement to another, looking for traces of a guitar lick or clarinet motif heard elsewhere), the end-result music is just as interesting and enjoyable without even thinking about how it was created.
It stands on its own as a highly-charged, detailed and often gorgeous instrumental piece of music, which could be a brilliant electro-acoustic improv session, kinda like Ground Zero or Supersilent or those Spring Heel Jack improv projects, that blend live instruments with live electronics and sampling (self-sampling in this case). But with a 20th (21st?) century classical feel. And it's definitely composed and purposeful. Very impressive. There's certainly been a few great releases lately from the Belgian label Sub Rosa (Tibetan Buddhist Rites, Mitchell Akiyama's Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep) and now this. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "1st Movement For Percussion / Tape"
MPEG Stream: "4th Movement For Clarinet / Tape"

MACE, PIERRE-YVES Faux-Jumeaux (Tzadik) cd 15.98

MACEDA, JOSE Gongs and Bamboos (Tzadik) cd 16.98
When Tzadik says something like "one of the most original and underappreciated composers in contemporary music" it should be taken with more than one grain of salt, yet the presentation of Philipino composer Jose Maceda certainly holds up to such critical praise. Well versed in both the temple musics of Southeast Asia and the conceptually minded compositions of Varese and Xenakis, Maceda explores an interesting form of minimalism using very large ensembles performing upon Southeast Asian instruments. "Pagsamba," for example, is a massive composition for 100 bamboo flutes, 100 bamboo, 100 bamboo clappers, 100 wooden bars and beaters, 100 bamboo scrapes for 100 instrumentalists, 8 gongs with stopped sounds, 8 gongs with free sounds, 5 male vocal quintets, and 100 mixed vocals. Whew! In a score that seems rather open-ended and no apparent lyrics to the free-floating vocals, "Pagsamba" has more than a few similarities to "The Great Learning" by Cornelius Cardew. "Suling-Suling" is another piece of extended minimalism for a 30 member ensemble for flutes, bamboo buzzers, and flat gongs with a composition that again is somewhat open-ended. As the performance of "Suling-Suling" was done by the Mills Contemporary Ensemble, it has much more of that "stumbling down the stairs" feel. The final piece "Colors Without Rhythms" (as perfomed by the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra) is a piece for intertwining percussion, vibraphone, harp, strings, woodwinds, etc... recalling Terry Riley's painterly "In C."

MARCHETTI, WALTER De Musicorum Infelicitate (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
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Eccentric Italian composer Walter Marchetti (whose albums "Nei Mari Del Sud" and "Antibarbarus" are two excellent and highly evocative pieces of electro-acoustic composition) here accompanies his "De Musicorum Infelicitate" with a fragmented manifesto that pines for "a magniloquent destructio musicae, the destruction of an administrated practice, or a tautological exercise devoid of inner necessity." The 10 six-minute pieces of incredibly dense piano solos found within this composition are meant to be so impenetrable as to merely reflect back upon themselves, thus revealing that music merely speaks of itself. Purposefully frustrating and complex.

MARCHETTI, WALTER Nei Mari Del Sud. Musica In Secca (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
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Beautiful calligraphic tones -- the result of a piano triggering six magnetic tapes, whose signals are displaced out-of-phase, reverberating quietly and slowly over empty space in this stunning piece by Marchetti -- dark and ominous. Along with some excessive liner notes (if you thought we could be long winded), there's an awsome photo of Walt on the back cover enjoying a martini at some dark hotel bar.

MARCHETTI, WALTER Per La Sete Dell'Orecchio (Cramps) cd 19.98
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This disc features three distinct pieces from the sonically adventurous composer Walter Marchetti. The first "Per La Sete Dell'Orecchio" is a beautiful action piece in which a burly Latvian man methodically hurls boulders into a deep cavernous pool (although when I listen to it, I like to pretend it's my coworker Byram tossing rocks into a swimming pool)... and the 'score' might not have specified Latvian brawn, but nonetheless the carefully recorded resonations and the natural echoes from objects dropped into deep waters were intentionally composed for this meditative piece. "Da Nulla E Verso Nulla" appears to be an homage to Harry Partch with playful wooden percussion over oscillating electronics. And Marchetti's "Song For John Cage" is a tranquil collage sewn from multitracked chirps of grasshoppers.

MAXFIELD, RICHARD / HAROLD BUDD The Oak Of The Golden Dreams (New World Records) cd 15.98
A split release between Richard Maxfield and Harold Budd (known for his collaborations with Eno) showcasing their 1960's experiments in electronics and free jazz. Maxfield's work ranges from synthetic 60s concrete / electronic pieces to narrated poetry over uptempo Ornette Coleman style free jazz. Budd's "The Oak of the Golden Dreams" is the highlight - a gritty piece of Steve Reich / Angus MacLise inspired minimalism of persistantly droning chords and loopy flanging notes making the whole piece sound like an electronic bagpipe.

MAZZY STAR So Tonight That I Might See (Capitol) cd 14.98
With close to 20 years of hindsight, so much of what came out of the 1990s sounds dated and rather predictable, an obvious and angsty cheese, even less palatable than much of the 1980s synthetic curd. However, Mazzy Star's albums, despite containing countless guitar solos, have absolutely no cheesy moments. Their brilliant records draw from the bluesy drones of Spacemen 3 and The Jesus and Mary Chain (amongst others), dropping most of the irony and jagged edges to create music that might be described as the soft(er) psychedelia to Spacemen 3's harder stuff. As readers of this list know, Hope Sandoval, the singer, sometime rhythm guitarist, and (many would argue) the force behind Mazzy Star, has gone on to create amazing records with her new band the Warm Inventions. She has a voice that penetrates with a whisper, that carries like a wind floating above the music, that is instantly recognizable, and that influenced scores of singers. David Roback wrote most of the basic melodies on all three Mazzy Star records and plays all of the guitar solos. He has an innate sense of space and sound, a slightly twangy simplicity that might fade into just a few notes, or that can explode into reverb drenched ecstasy. You won't find better guitar tones anywhere, especially on So Tonight That I Might See. A lot of the arrangements are sparse, almost minimalistic, but the quality of the recordings and the melodies make even a track with only vocals, a guitar and an organ seem full. Especially through headphones, the warmth of Sandoval's voice is a magical compliment to Robeck's guitar. Everyone from Beach House to Grouper to Cat Power to PJ Harvey owes Mazzy Star a huge debt, or at least a big shout-out.
1993's So Tonight That I Might See that Mazzy Star perfects their sonic elegance. The band's most commercially successful record, it's probably got the songs you remember: "Fade Into You", "She's My Baby", the title track. The beats have slowed way down, the vocals have decided to ride parallel to the music instead of right up on it, and the arrangements have become simple and piercing. A shoegaze classic.
MPEG Stream: "Fade Into You"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Light"
MPEG Stream: "Into Dust"

MCBRIDE, BRIAN The Effective Disconnect (Kranky) cd 14.98
Brian McBride, for those who don't know, is one half of beloved slowcore drone drift soundscapers Stars Of The Lid, and based on the reviews on the aQuarius website, you might assume they were one of our all time favorite bands, and well, you would most definitely be correct. If there was indeed an official aQ pantheon, Stars Of The Lid would absolutely be included, their records, spanning the last two decades now, have without fail been absolutely breathtaking works of sublime ambient brilliance, from raw blurred 4 track shimmer, to the more orchestral and composed later releases, we can't think of a SOTL record that we didn't love.
The Effective Disorder is a score McBride recorded for a documentary film called Vanishing Of The Bees, and in the liner notes, McBride explains that he tried his best to compose music that was hopeful, striving to capture in music the "gloriousness of the bees", but that the result was more in keeping with his past works, pieces that tended toward the melancholy and lamentable, that dark and haunting and sweetly sorrowful. And we're not complaining one bit!
The Effective Disorder plays out like it could very well have been a new Stars Of The Lid records, lush and orchestrated, but still intimate and emotional. Separated into suites, the opening two parter mixes the muted sitar-like buzz of old SOTL soundscapes, with soaring strings, swirling streaks of minor key melody, and lots of space, the sounds unfurled in glacial swells, gorgeous harmonies left to gradually fade and drift into nothingness.
"Girl Nap" is about as close as The Effective Disorder comes to sunshiney, but even then it's just barely, sun dappled shimmer dissipates in a haze of hushed soft focus blur, peppered with far away reverbed piano, "Several Tries (In An Unelevated Style)" is another assemblage of longform tones, lushly layered, the overtones adding color and movement, "Supposed Essay On The Piano (B Major Piano Adagietto)" adds horns, the mournful brass moans giving the already sorrowful sound a funereal cast, but shot though with warm hints of hope.
The three part "Toil Theme" is brooding and ominous, haunting and delicate, another dreamscape of minor key swells, while "Beekeepers Vs Warfare Chemicals" drapes tinkling chimes over streaks of stings, and warm sun dappled melodies, the track gradually transforming into something much darker and depressive.
The brief closer, "Chamber Minuet" is the perfect coda, a brief recapitulation of the rest of the score, and of the two sides of McBride's composing style, beginning with a rough bit of low fidelity drift, gauzy and hushed, before it blossoms into a more traditional sounding string quartet, dramatic and majestic, only to slip right back into the opening ominous minimal drift. So lovely and captivating.
The music perhaps darker than the film makers intended, but for the purposes of pure listening, removed from the visuals, Stars Of The Lid fans will not be disappointed, nor will fans of dark brooding ambience.
MPEG Stream: "Melodrames Telegraphies (In B Major 7th) Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Girl Nap"
MPEG Stream: "Several Tries (In An Elevated Style)"
MPEG Stream: "Beekeepers Vs Warfare Chemicals"

MCBRIDE, BRIAN The Effective Disconnect (Kranky) lp 14.98
Brian McBride, for those who don't know, is one half of beloved slowcore drone drift soundscapers Stars Of The Lid, and based on the reviews on the aQuarius website, you might assume they were one of our all time favorite bands, and well, you would most definitely be correct. If there was indeed an official aQ pantheon, Stars Of The Lid would absolutely be included, their records, spanning the last two decades now, have without fail been absolutely breathtaking works of sublime ambient brilliance, from raw blurred 4 track shimmer, to the more orchestral and composed later releases, we can't think of a SOTL record that we didn't love.
The Effective Disorder is a score McBride recorded for a documentary film called Vanishing Of The Bees, and in the liner notes, McBride explains that he tried his best to compose music that was hopeful, striving to capture in music the "gloriousness of the bees", but that the result was more in keeping with his past works, pieces that tended toward the melancholy and lamentable, that dark and haunting and sweetly sorrowful. And we're not complaining one bit!
The Effective Disorder plays out like it could very well have been a new Stars Of The Lid records, lush and orchestrated, but still intimate and emotional. Separated into suites, the opening two parter mixes the muted sitar-like buzz of old SOTL soundscapes, with soaring strings, swirling streaks of minor key melody, and lots of space, the sounds unfurled in glacial swells, gorgeous harmonies left to gradually fade and drift into nothingness.
"Girl Nap" is about as close as The Effective Disorder comes to sunshiney, but even then it's just barely, sun dappled shimmer dissipates in a haze of hushed soft focus blur, peppered with far away reverbed piano, "Several Tries (In An Unelevated Style)" is another assemblage of longform tones, lushly layered, the overtones adding color and movement, "Supposed Essay On The Piano (B Major Piano Adagietto)" adds horns, the mournful brass moans giving the already sorrowful sound a funereal cast, but shot though with warm hints of hope.
The three part "Toil Theme" is brooding and ominous, haunting and delicate, another dreamscape of minor key swells, while "Beekeepers Vs Warfare Chemicals" drapes tinkling chimes over streaks of stings, and warm sun dappled melodies, the track gradually transforming into something much darker and depressive.
The brief closer, "Chamber Minuet" is the perfect coda, a brief recapitulation of the rest of the score, and of the two sides of McBride's composing style, beginning with a rough bit of low fidelity drift, gauzy and hushed, before it blossoms into a more traditional sounding string quartet, dramatic and majestic, only to slip right back into the opening ominous minimal drift. So lovely and captivating.
The music perhaps darker than the film makers intended, but for the purposes of pure listening, removed from the visuals, Stars Of The Lid fans will not be disappointed, nor will fans of dark brooding ambience.
MPEG Stream: "Melodrames Telegraphies (In B Major 7th) Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Girl Nap"
MPEG Stream: "Several Tries (In An Elevated Style)"
MPEG Stream: "Beekeepers Vs Warfare Chemicals"

MCLEAN, BARTON AND PRISCILLA Electronic Landscapes (EM Records) cd 23.00
Back in print, back in stock!
More pioneering electronic music unearthed by Japan's EM Records (previous releases include discs by Barton Smith, David Rosenboom, and Noah Creshevsky). This time, it's Barton and Priscilla McLean. A husband and wife team, but no Sonny and Cher here!! This duo performed live as the "McLean Mix", and were responsible for a bunch of sought-after Folkways LPs in their time, including 1979's "Electro-Symphonic Landscapes" (all the tracks from which are found here). The cover of this cd is an adaptation of the cover of that LP, the artwork actually being the graphical score for Barton's "Song Of The Nahuatl" (it's interesting to note that while the McLeans worked together, they didn't collaborate compositionally it seems -- half the tracks here are by the Mr. and half by the Mrs.). The McLeans got their start together in electronic composition in academia, at the University of Indiana, South Bend, 'round about 1973, when the Music Department there brought in a huge EMS Synthi-100 synthesizer and Synthi-256 sequencer. Hours of tape-splicing creativity would ensue! That mega-synthesizer was later repossessed (!) so the McLeans turned to musique concrete techniques (bouncing steak knives on violin strings, metal bars on piano strings, that sort of thing) to source their sounds, combined with the output of what electronic equipment they were able to access. Much of this disc, tracks dating back to 1975, feature this sort of laborious processing of sound. And the results are fantastic! Reminds us a bit of the classic Forbidden Planet soundtrack by Louis and Bebe Barron, another husband and wife team who preceded the McLeans in the annals of electronic music... In addition to the vintage '70s stuff here, there's a couple tracks of some newer material from the digital age... which holds up quite well, actually! Keening drones, mysterious pulses, psychedelic bleepage -- yep, way better than Sonny n' Cher!
EM has graciously provided both English and Japanese liner notes, so the 22 page cd booklet makes good reading for anyone curious about the McLeans' musical methodology, as well as providing cool graphics and intriguing photos to ponder.
MPEG Stream: PRISCILLA MCLEAN "Voices Of The Invisible"
MPEG Stream: BARTON MCLEAN "Song Of The Nahuatl"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR KMH (Unseen Worlds) cd 15.98
Ever since we heard Wave-Lox, possibly the most famous piece by composer/pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, we were totally smitten. The sound an impossible mashup of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine. A modern reimagining of the minimalist tradition, with his Continuous Music system developed over years and years, finding inspiration in harmony and expressing it through fluidity and virtuosity, dense flurries of notes. Later, the playing would become faster, even setting a world record, but always at the core of Melnyk's sound, was harmony and melody and simple beauty.Ê
It's appropriate that KMH is the first actual Melnyk cd ever released (all the rest have been cd-r's) as this was his first actual recording. After years of perfecting this new technique, KMH was finally released in 1978, and while reminiscent of Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, it was something entirely new. Sound based on the movement of dancers, the music of moving and standing still all at once.Ê
For those of you familiar with other Melnyk discs we reviewed, the sound here, while notably different, will at once be quite familiar, the main difference being that the sound is not so dense, there are not so many notes, the playing is not quite as fast, instead, it's deeper, and slower and almost dreamier, still warm and magical, but like a slowed down, relaxed version of Wave-Lox. Almost more traditionally twentieth century sounding, but at the same time, still wonderfully unique, and much more emotionally resonant than much modern minimalism.Ê
For those who have yet to experience the amazing sounds of Lubomyr Melnyk, this is the perfect introduction, the first recorded instance of his Continuous Music, a technique involving continuos melodies, constant playing up and down the keyboard, with the pedals constantly depressed, allowing the notes to ring out and drift into one another, the various notes and overtones blending and beating, creating strange and mysterious harmonies.Ê
Little fluttering clouds of notes drift in weightless swirls, like dust motes in beams of sunlight. It's like the musical equivalent of a snowglobe, notes drifting and floating everywhere, forming shapes, and then just as quickly turning back into separate notes again, the sound both wintry and warm, dreamily dizzying and serenely soothing. So totally captivating. A glorious glimpse into the formative stages of one of our favorite modern composers.Ê
Packaged with all new artwork, new liner notes, photos, and the original liner notes from the original release.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Legend and Song of Galadriel (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
The name Lubomyr Melnyk is most likely not familiar to you. It definitely wasn't to us. Until a customer suggested we check out this unique piano player. He told us he thought it sounded like playing three Terry Riley records at the same time, which sounded pretty darn good. And we were not disappointed. It was everything we hoped it would be and more. We got a disc called Wave-Lox in, and we have been unable to keep it in stock, a swirling flurry of impossibly fast notes, a billowy cloud of piano ambience. How about a quick recap on the illustrious Mr. Melnyk:
In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.
That's right. World's fastest pianist. But Melnyk uses his powers for good. This is not wanky showboating, or Yngwie style pointless shredding, no this speed is necessary to realize his music, dense swirls of hundreds and hundreds of notes, whirling and swirling, overtones shifting and tonal color slowly changing. It's like looking at a pointilist painting close up, or sitting two inches from the television, colored dots, streaks of light, weaving in and around and all about each other, creating almost dronelike ambience, that seems almost static from a distance, but up close, it's made up of millions of tiny flitting parts and pieces. See the review for Wave-Lox elsewhere on the site for more about Melnyk and Continuous Music, because while The Song Of Galadriel employs similar technique, the results are a bit different.
It's hard to know what to say about this piece. On first listen it is much more traditionally classical sounding than Melnyk's other works, but according to the liner notes it is "one of the composer's most deeply personal and melodic works so far", and one can almost hear that in the music. Much darker, with much more attention paid to the lower registers, giving the piece a dark and ominous feel. The low end rumbles and sustains creating a warm dark drone above which little squalls of tinkling melodies swirl and soar. The main melody is quite subtle, being that it is created by hundreds of notes together, a lot like looking at a picture too close, so all you see are dots and lines, but as you step back, a picture begins to take shape. This is indeed lovely, and mournful and rich with emotion, while Melnyk's other pieces are more abstract and serve more as abstract and meditative, Galadriel definitely seems to have a narrative, and listening from start to finish, one definitely feels like a story was told, life and love and loss and hope and death and forgiveness all somehow represented in tiny little piano pixels. So totally fantastic.
It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!
These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing.
MPEG Stream: "Song Of Galadriel"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Music For Solo & Double Pianos (SP1) (Bandura) cd-r 16.98

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Niche / Nourish / Niche-xon: Continuous Music For 2 Pianos (Bandura) cd-r 16.98

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Remnants Of A Man / The Fountain (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
This is the fourth record we've reviewed from Lubomyr Melnyk, pianist and inventor of the Continuous Music technique. A customer suggest we check him out describing him as sounding like three Terry Riley records being played at once. And it does. And it's amazing. Anyone who owns any of the other three will most likely want this one too. It's definitely similar as are all the pieces utilizing Melnyk's technique, but it has its own unique sound and arrangement that makes it just as special as any of the other recordings we've had. And as with many things we just can't get enough.
For those of you who missed the titles we already listed or are new to the AQ list, here's a little info about Melnyk and his amazing technique:
In the early '70s Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. At once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away.
Just re-reading that gets us excited all over again. This music is indeed amazing and incredibly unique. A dizzying swirl of solo piano. So dense and deep it doesn't sound like it could possibly be coming from just two pianos. It's almost like someone took a million pianos, removed every note from each piano, placed them in some sort of giant container, shook it up, and then dumped all the notes over our heads. But somehow, the notes fall in perfectly predetermined patterns creating impossibly complex melodies and totally breathtakingly lovely textures and arrangements.
"Remnants Of A Man" was recorded in Stockholm in 1985 and is probably the least abstract and most directly dramatic piece we've heard. Beneath the flurries of high notes are huge resounding minor key chords. So dark and ominous. Within the piece is included a direct melodic reference to Beethoven, a short bit from his 9th symphony, Melnyk's tribute to Beethoven and his unhappy life. In fact the piece is themed around the futility of love, and you can totally hear it in the notes. Sad and sorrowful, intense and so emotional.
"The Fountain" is more of what we might consider traditional Melnyk, the cascade of notes composed to sound like the water of a fountain. And unlike most of his pieces, the first half of "The Fountain" is performed without the sustain pedal depressed, which means the notes are dry and there are no drawn out overtones, it's remarkable to hear the complexity of performance and composition. Almost like looking up into a sky full or raindrops or snowflakes.
The final track "Niche" is an excerpt from a longer piece and is an example of solo piano in the Continuous Mode, a glistening, sparkling, shimmering world of lighter than air melodies, gentle drifts of notes, cobwebby tangles of delicate melody, completely effervescent and dreamlike. Awesome.
Lots of super technical liner notes as always, with a brief history of Melnyk and the Continuous Music technique. Be sure to check out Wave-Lox, The Voice Of Trees and the Legend And Song Of Galadriel too!
MPEG Stream: "Remnants Of A Man"
MPEG Stream: "The Fountain"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR The Lund-St. Petri Symphony (Bandura) 2cd-r 32.00
It's been a while since we've heard from pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, master and creator of the Continuous Music technique, a playing style that involves incredible dexterity, the player creating swirling flurries of notes, in fact, Melnyk holds the record for most notes played per second! But as we've mentioned in past reviews, Continuous Music is no mere gimmick, Melnyk uses his technique to create dense shifting soundscapes, almost like a 20th Century Classical Oval, notes and melodies constantly in flux, dizzying and dreamy, a massive shape shifting organic whole, that seems to constantly change shape and tone and timbre. But the music of Melnyk is not difficult listening, just the opposite. His music is serene and hypnotic, mesmerizing and gorgeous. You can read way more about Melnyk and his technique in some of the other reviews, but needless to say, every new release is a thrill. And yes, it's another cd-r, but according to Melnyk and the label, there are so many pieces, that they'd rather make them all accessible, instead of making 1000 copies of just one. Who are we to argue? Besides, there's the fact that aQuarius is one of the only places in the world you can get Melnyk records.
Anyway, The Lund-St. Petri Symphony is another example of Melnyk's incredible skill and his deft arranging. This piece, originally composed and performed on organ, is recorded here on solo and double piano and is another shimmery expanse of Continuous music, with Melnyk sustaining a speed of 11-14 notes in each hand for the entire duration of the piece! What's even crazier, is it was meant to be played on THREE pianos (or organs), but was never recorded due to the fact that according to Melnyk, that much sound would not translate to modern recording techniques. There were plans to record the third part and release it as a separate lp so folks with two turntables could experience it in all its 3 piano glory, but it hardly matters, even on one piano, the sound is stirring. Minor key and melancholy, the notes glisten and glimmer, the melodies dense and ever shifting, the whole thing so completely entrancing. If you can imagine Pop Ambient music being created with just pianos, it would probably sound something like this.
As always, WAY recommended, this one only available at AQ as far as we know, and limited (maybe only 50 copies?). You like Oval, Eno, new age, Pop Ambient, or just wondered what it would sound like to hear 10 or 12 'normal' piano players all playing the same piece simultaneously, well, a little like this. Divine!
MPEG Stream: "NKR 22 Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "NKR 22 Pt. 2"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR The Voice Of Trees (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
The name Lubomyr Melnyk is most likely not familiar to you. It definitely wasn't to us. Until a customer suggested we check out this unique piano player. He told us he thought it sounded like playing three Terry Riley records at the same time, which sounded pretty darn good. And we were not disappointed. It was everything we hoped it would be and more. We got a disc called Wave-Lox in, and we have been unable to keep it in stock, a swirling flurry of impossibly fast notes, a billowy cloud of piano ambience. How about a quick recap on the illustrious Mr. Melnyk:
In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.
That's right. World's fastest pianist. But Melnyk uses his powers for good. This is not wanky showboating, or Yngwie style pointless shredding, no this speed is necessary to realize his music, dense swirls of hundreds and hundreds of notes, whirling and swirling, overtones shifting and tonal color slowly changing. It's like looking at a pointilist painting close up, or sitting two inches from the television, colored dots, streaks of light, weaving in and around and all about each other, creating almost dronelike ambience, that seems almost static from a distance, but up close, it's made up of millions of tiny flitting parts and pieces. See the review for Wave-Lox elsewhere on the site, because while The Voice Of Trees employs similar technique, the results are quite different.
The Voice Of Trees is a piece for 3 tubas and 2 pianos, composed and performed to accompany a dance performance by the Kilina Cremona Dance Company. In the liner notes it states that since NO other piano player has the skill to play Melnyk's compositions, he had to pretape on of the piano parts and play the other live. And this is a live recording, so if you listen very closely you can sometimes hear the feet of the dancers. This piece also holds the distinction of being composed partially in "Geometric Form" a type of musical composition invented by Melnyk (after the works of Russian philosopher Ouspensky) where musical events are dictated by mathematics, geometry and the Fourth Dimension (!?). Woah! But fear not, you don't need a physics degree to sit back, close your eyes and let this loveliness carry you right off.
The focus is still Melnyk's Continuous Music, a flurry of notes like leaves carried on the wind, but it's the tuba that adds an unlikely slant to the proceedings. By themselves, the two pianos are a hypnotic drone, dense and slowly moving and constantly shifting, totally lovely. But the tuba adds structure, and its low mournful melodies add a certain morose quality to the piece, and make it sound classical and more like some abstract epic post-rock, played on piano and tuba. Sound weird, and it is, but it's also so gorgeous, and so intense. The piano is dizzying, the listener sort of drifts back and forth from letting the notes blend together into a swoonsome whole, and seeing every note, trying to make sense of the thousands of notes, trying to understand the patterns and the composition. And that's where the tubas come in, allowing the pianos to act as a lush backdrop, while the tubas moan and croon their lonesome melodies. Amazing.
It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!
These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Vocalizes & Antiphons (Bandura) cd-r 16.98

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Wave-Lox (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
This AQ fave finally back in stock!
We had never heard of Lubomyr Melnyk, nor his 'Continuous Music method' before. But the more we learn the more we fall in love with this iconoclastic modern innovator. In the early '70s Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. Someone described Wave-Lox as three Terry Riley playing at once, which is not that far off the mark. Or imagine a thousand George Winstons spinning weightless in space, notes everywhere careening wildly, but with some strangely indescribable pattern. The sound of Wave-Lox is at once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away. Wave-Lox is actually a piece for 2 pianos (giving you an idea of the density and number of notes we're talking about here) and 3 contra-bass, which offer the same sonic complexities as the piano, making a rich sonic stew even more deliriously dense.
It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!
These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing. We currently have about 10 different titles in stock, and while Wave-Lox is our favorite so far, one of the others features Melnyk on piano accompanied by multiple tubas! So drop us an email if you're interested in any of the other titles, but for now revel in the beautiful beautiful music of Wave-Lox!
MPEG Stream: "Wave-Lox 1"
MPEG Stream: "Wave-Lox 2"

MESSIAEN, OLIVIER Oeuvres Pour Piano Et Orchestre (Koch) cd 15.98

MIMAROGLU, ILHAN Agitation (Locust) cd 14.98

MOE, OLE-HENRIK Ciaccona / 3 Persephone Perceptions (Rune Grammofon) 2cd 22.00
Not for the faint of heart. But pretty bad ass. If you can say that about an academic, avant-garde, micro-detailed, solo VIOLIN recording. Two discs worth to boot! Norwegian composer Ole-Henrik Moe (henceforth known as OHM as per the liner notes), who studied with extreme 20th c. classical dude Iannis Xenakis, offers up 43+40 minutes of stark, scary musick, all brilliantly performed by his wife, violinist Kari Ronnekleiv. Disc one, "Ciaccona", is a tour-de-force of scratching and sawing and scraping, tortured strings sculpting some kind of strange and terrible beauty out of the vast (yet intimate) soundspace that the resonant silences present here delineate. In fact, these recordings took place an a (presumably empty) church, that Ronnekleiv alone fills with menacing drones. It's pretty frickin' amazing that this is all played straight through by one person. She's got incredible stamina and such subtle, awesome control, her fingers commanding overtones, with no overdubs.
More high end shriek and suspenseful shimmer is to be heard on disc two, "3 Persephone Perceptions". On both discs, at times it's like you're hearing the violin analog to a free jazz saxphonist's circular breathing freakout, or for that matter a demented little kid's frantic balloon-rubbing. But plenty of it is quiet and atmospheric as well, full of droning delicate waver, suggesting the weeping of a frightened child. Sudden bursts of sound are the whip hand coming down.
With all these dynamics of hush and hysterics, this is a palate cleanser that puts other stuff in perspective... put on some, say, Wolf Eyes or Yellow Swans on after this and they'll sound like campfire singalongs. Heck try this back to back with some black metal, we swear the corpsepainted ones will seem just a little less intense than they previously did. Hmm...Orthrelm/Octis might be a match for it though. Maybe it's the association we make between stabbing violins and stabbing knives due to Bernard Herrmann's infamous score to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but this is definitely "shower scene" music at times. And the whole thing could easily be running through the head of any self-respecting resident of your local Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Play it LOUD. And tremble.
Perhaps how we're describing this isn't what OHM intended... but c'mon it's what any normal person's gonna hear. And also what any abnormal person (i.e. typical AQ customer) who digs the weirder, out-there edges of "20th Century Classical" (a la Xenakis), is gonna like.
Comes in the usual nice Rune Grammofon packaging with a suitably evocative Kim Hiorthoy designed digipack sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Ciaccona track 14"
MPEG Stream: "3 Persephone Perceptions track 3"
MPEG Stream: "Ciaccona track 2"

MOONDOG And His Friends (Honest Jon's) 10" 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This vinyl-only reissue from the eccentric Mr. Moondog gets a guest review here from our pal Dave Katznelson of Birdman Records:
Originally released on Epic in 1953, this long-playing EP is one of the greatest artifacts of the blind New York percussionist available. On par with the excellent Prestige years, with a similar vibe. However, there is something darker here, with an almost acid edge...and the sounds come ripping off the well-mastered vinyl ever so thickly. This classically packaged ten inch boasts an instrumental round that is the precursor to the great All Is Loneliness To Me, "Rim Shot" which is reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Ruminy Soup", and two suites that brilliantly use lush strings behind the signature Moondog hypnotizing percussion. "Be a hobo and go with me," Moondog sings...and why not join him?

MOONDOG And His Friends 2006 (Moondog's Corner) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally on cd, this is an AQ favorite from one of our most beloved musicians of the last half century. This new edition includes 3 bonus tracks of some current day folks like Stefan Lakatos adding their own flavor to preexisting Moondog tracks. But of course the real gold here is the original record which is Moondog in his full glory! We only wish this reissue had a little bit more in the way of elaborate packaging as this just comes in a cardboard sleeve. Here is what our pal Dave Katznelson of Birdman Records said about this record when he reviewed it for us back when we had the 10" version in stock:
Originally released on Epic in 1953, this long-playing EP is one of the greatest artifacts of the blind New York percussionist available. On par with the excellent Prestige years, with a similar vibe. However, there is something darker here, with an almost acid edge...and the sounds come ripping off the well-mastered vinyl ever so thickly. This classically packaged ten inch boasts an instrumental round that is the precursor to the great All Is Loneliness To Me, "Rim Shot" which is reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Ruminy Soup", and two suites that brilliantly use lush strings behind the signature Moondog hypnotizing percussion. "Be a hobo and go with me," Moondog sings...and why not join him?
MPEG Stream: "Theme And Variation - Rim Shots"
MPEG Stream: "Tree Frog - Be A Hobo"
MPEG Stream: "Suite No. One Third Movement"

MOONDOG H'art Songs (Kopf / Roof Music) cd 17.98
There are so so many sides of Moondog, and so many and incredibly varied sounds he's created throughout his long and eccentric life of music making. From inventing his own instruments to performing on street corners to incorporating field recordings into his songs, to collaborating with the London Philharmonic, the list goes on and on. While Moondog is mostly lauded for the sounds he created with his wide range of instruments, it's the sound of his voice in the songs he sang sprinkled throughout his catalog that have always left us in such awe, generating both bewilderment and delight. Originally released on LP in Germany in 1978, H'art Songs is an awesome disc of Moondog vocal tracks, a few of which we had heard on other collections and were already in love with, as well as a bunch that are brand new to our ears. With piano and his own percussion as the musical backdrop, it's Moondogs's totally unique and intimate vocal delivery and word play that makes these songs so weirdly enchanting. Playful and poetic while also emotional and personal. Just like everything else Moondog created in his life, these songs do feel like they are from a different world. So strange and so damn good. This is a must have for Moondog fans!
MPEG Stream: "I'm This I'm That"
MPEG Stream: "I'm In The World"
MPEG Stream: "Enough About Human Rights"
MPEG Stream: "Pigmy Pig"

MOONDOG More Moondog (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Every time we get a chance to review a Moondog reissue we can't help ourselves from going on and on about what a musical genius and true visionary Moondog was. Mind boggling that from the 1950's all the way up to his death in 1999 he was making such otherworldly sounds, influenced by his love of classical music and driven by a wild imagination that led him to create his own instruments, weave field recordings into his work and compose some of the most adventurous, impacting and delightful sounds anyone has ever created.
Moondog was completely self-taught, and was blind resulting from an accident when still very young so he composed all his music in braile! Just another dimension to the truly unique backstory that shaped who Moondog was. The ultimate proto-weirdo-outsider musician, but all backed up with pure original genius.
More Moondog was originally released right after his 1956 self-titled debut on Prestige, and opens with two field recordings, the first of which finds him doing a 'duet' on his bamboo pipe with the sounds of the whistle from the Queen Elizabeth cruiseship. As the record goes on he explores such amazing percussive possibilities as well as continuing to weave in and out of a psychedelic array of sounds created with varied instrumentation of his own invention. The album also features one of his stunning vocal rounds "All Is Loneliness" which was later covered by Janis Joplin/Big Brother And The Holding Company.
It's been so awesome to play these Moondog records in the store as lots of our younger customers who are into all the latest experimental and weirdo sounds, always seem to freak out when we play this and then tell them it was recorded in 1956. We see their eyes light up with excited disbelief and we totally understand why. Essential!

MOONDOG Rare Material (Roof Music) 2cd 30.00

MOONDOG s/t (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Every time we get a chance to review a Moondog reissue we can't help ourselves from going on and on about what a musical genius and true visionary Moondog was. Mind boggling that from the 1950's all the way up to his death in 1999 he was making such otherworldly sounds, influenced by his love of classical music and driven by a wild imagination that led him to create his own instruments, weave field recordings into his work and compose some of the most adventurous, impacting and delightful sounds anyone has ever created.
Moondog was completely self-taught, and was blind resulting from an accident when still very young so he composed all his music in braile! Just another dimension to the truly unique backstory that shaped who Moondog was. The ultimate proto-weirdo-outsider musician, but all backed up with pure original genius.
This, his Prestige debut, came out in 1956 and still sounds like it belongs in another era/galaxy. Whether playing piano, percussion or magical sounds with the instruments he created from his imagination, the sounds on this album are as dazzling as anything he would create throughout his lifetime. So mind blowing the way he intertwined real life field recordings into his songs, and basically created a musical language all his own. Moondog was a man so present and creative with his daily surroundings. Who knew someone often mistaken for nothing more then a street hobo was capable of such musical genius?
It's been so awesome to play these Moondog records in the store as lots of our younger customers who are into all the latest experimental and weirdo sounds, always seem to freak out when we play this and then tell them it was recorded in 1956. We see their eyes light up with excited disbelief and we totally understand why. Essential!

MOONDOG Snaketime Series (Moondog) lp 12.98

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

MOONDOG The Story Of Moondog (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
Psychedelic percussion, field recordings, long never ending beards, a Viking helmet, homemade instruments, a warped sense of humor, playing music, writing poems and making art on dirty street corners. Sounds like the ingredients for someone in today's experimental music scene, but Luis Hardin (aka Moondog) was doing it all and more back in 1957! Holy shit, we love Moondog so much even we forget sometimes that he was making these totally left-field yet completely entrancing and musically visionary sounds over fifty years ago!
Listening to The Story Of Moondog is like a crazy collaged snapshot of all the sounds that we love at AQ. He truly created music from another world, as these songs would sound perfect on any of the amazing Nonesuch Explorer Series or Sublime Frequencies releases, that is if they had installments for music from other worlds! The songs and sound here are like the blueprints for everyone from The Boredoms to Philip Jeck To Ricardo Villalobos. Without a doubt Moondog is one of the most innovative, creative and genre defying composers and music makers of all time. The instruments he invented and played on this recording leave us in awe, and the rhythms, moods and melodies that come leaping out of these grooves definitely transport us to that fantastical otherworld that Moondog created with his music. Until now the only way to track down this record was on the cd issue of More Moondog/The Story of Moondog so it's so great to finally have these songs on vinyl!

MOONDOG The Viking of Sixth Avenue (Honest Jon's ) cd 17.98
In our minds, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century was a man with a long white beard and a Viking helmet on his head -- Louis Hardin (aka Moondog). Whether it was how he incorporated field recordings into his compositions, unleashed riveting vocal cannons or created confusional worlds of percussion that were light-years ahead of their time, he had such a singular touch and far reaching vision, it's no surprise he's an all time AQ favorite!
While we love so many avant composers of the 20th century, there tends to be an undeniable academic angle to their work which sometimes leaves us a bit cold. Moondog on the other hand employed such a playful approach to his work. Whether he was building his own instruments, creating new scales, experimenting with field recordings, inserting fun wordplay into otherwise austere pieces, you get this amazing sense of playfulness, childlike wonder and a totally unique strangely sophisticated kind of joy. The outsider that he was, Moondog answered to no one. No movement, no school, no tradition. He took his love, appreciation and deep-seated knowledge of classical music, his poetic mind, and his free spirit and created sounds that were like nothing of its time. Losing his eyesight at an early age he began writing scores in Braille. Like most truly special artists, he spent much of his life in relative obscurity, he spent much of the 50's and 60's on New York street corners where he would sell his poems, record the sounds of daily life, and soak in all aspects of his atmosphere. Most New Yorkers just thought they were walking by some crazy homeless guy in a Viking costume, they had no idea they were passing one of the most brilliant musical minds of the last century. Thanks to the help of some of his big fans like Janis Joplin, who covered "All Is Loneliness" on her first outing with Big Brother Holding Company, he got a record deal with Columbia and eventually recorded with the London Symphony, and then spent the last 20+ years of his life in Germany where a rich family supported him while he continued to make music, up until the time of his death. His influence runs so deep and continues to spread among the musical underground, but also slowly but surely permeates into mainstream music. There is talks of a tribute album coming soon, in the '90s many hip-hop and electronic producers sampled his works and many avant electronic folks were definitely influenced by his strange musicks, including Mr. Scruf, DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin. Antony and The Johnsons have been doing an amazing version of "All Is Loneliness" in their live show, and you can hear echoes of Moondog's sounds in everyone from Rhys Chatham, to Jon Brion, to Steve Reich, to Philip Glass and even The Residents. The cost on this collection finally dropped down from a prohibitively steep import price so now we finally can list this and urge you to let these 36 songs introduce you to what will no doubt be a life long love affair with one of our favorite musical minds of all time!
MPEG Stream: "All Is Loneliness"
MPEG Stream: "Oo Debut"
MPEG Stream: "Oasis"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation"

MOONDOG The Viking of Sixth Avenue (Honest Jon's ) 2lp 27.00
In our minds, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century was a man with a long white beard and a viking helmet on his head -- Louis Hardin (aka Moondog). Whether it was how he incorporated field recordings into his compositions, unleashed riveting vocal cannons or created confusional worlds of percussion that were light-years ahead of their time, he had such a singular touch and far reaching vision, it's no surprise he's an all time AQ favorite!
While we love so many avant composers of the 20th century, there tends to be an undeniable academic angle to their work which sometimes leaves us a bit cold. Moondog on the other hand employed such a playful approcach to his work. Whether he was building his own instruments, creating new scales, experimenting with field recordings, inserting fun wordplay into otherwise austere pieces, you get this amazing sense of playfulness, childlike wonder and a totally unique strangely sophisticated kind of joy. The outsider that he was, Moondog answered to no one. No movement, no school, no tradition. He took his love, appreciation and deep running knowledge of classical music, his poetic mind, and his free spirit and created sounds that were like nothing of its time. Losing his eyesight at an early age he began writing scores in Braille. Like most truly special artists, he spent much of his life in relative obscurity, he spent much of the 50's and 60's on New York street corners where he would sell his poems, record the sounds of daily life, and soak in all aspects of his atmosphere. Most New Yorkers just thought they were walking by some crazy homeless guy in a viking costume, they had no idea they were passing one of the most brilliant musical minds of the last century. Thanks to the help of some of his big fans like Janis Joplin, who covered All Is Loneliness on her first outing with Big Brother Holding Company, he got a record deal with Columbia and eventually recorded with the London Symphony, and then spent the last 20+ years of his life in Germany where a rich family supported him while he continued to make music, up until the time of his death. His influence runs so deep and continues to spread among the musical undeground, but also slowly but surely permeates into mainstream music. There is talks of a tribute album coming soon, in the 90's many hip-hop and electronic producers sampled his works and many avant electronic folks were definitely influenced by his strange musicks, including Mr. Scruf, DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin. Antony and The Johnsons have been doing an amazing version of All is Loneliness in their live show, and you can hear echoes of Moondog's sounds in everyone from Rhys Chatham, to Jon Brion, to Steve Reich, to Philip Glass and even The Residents. The cost on this collection finally dropped down from a prohibitively steep import price so now we finally can list this and urge you to let these 36 songs introduce you to what will no doubt be a life long love affair with one of our favorite musical minds of all time!
MPEG Stream: "All Is Loneliness"
MPEG Stream: "Oo Debut"
MPEG Stream: "Oasis"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation"

MORRICONE, ENNIO Psycho Morricone (GDM) cd 16.98
Ah, Morricone compilations. So many to choose from, so little time (and money). Being an avowed Morricone fan-atic, I (Windy) have had to be very very picky with all these records suddenly appearing out of the woodwork. I mean, we want quality, right. Some bang for our buck. It's quite nice that Dagored has taken to releasing worthy, whole soundtracks to single films that Morricone scored (altho please put out Come Maddalena!), and yes, it's also nice when a variety of labels collect the best tracks for those of you who only want one or two Morricone cds. But the *point* of the collections is to represent his best work, and to dispense with the filler tracks, or the ones that just obviously don't work when there's no images to accompany them. Unfortunately it would appear that Psycho Morricone, which claims to feature tracks from twelve Morricone-scored films such as Copkiller, Il Serpente, L'Attentato, Revolver, etc, is comprised of just that: filler! It's decent music of course, but Morricone fans will not find any unearthed gems, or even any memorable melodies or effects. It's basically lot of scary high-pitched violins, and some rackety percussion, and it's only slightly scary or 'psycho'. I'm looking forward to hearing the other attempts by GDM to collect Morricone stuff, namely the Bizarre Morricone and the Chase Morricone titles, but this one is, sadly, a disappointment.
RealAudio clip: "Rapimento"
RealAudio clip: "Paura e aggressione"