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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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

MILLER, JOHNNY Your Shining Path (Bickering Bray) cd-r 8.98
It's a sad story, but it continues to happen, someone sends us an amazing record, one what will no doubt blow our minds, one that we won't be able to help but want to share with all of you, one that begs to be reviewed and hyped to high heaven, but then that single amazing record, somehow slips through the cracks, ends up in a box, in a closet, on the floor, in a pile, and sadly, sometimes disappears forever, but thankfully, like it this case, miraculously makes its way back from the great beyond.
We were going through piles of cd-r's, from boxes that had been piling up, and we came across this mysterious disc, adorned with a strange bearded mystic, painted with a third eye, a triangle superimposed over his face, that photo affixed to a cool looking digipak, surrounded by a mandala of some sort, lots of pyramid imagery, a Japanese style obi, and some strings with bells attached. We threw it on, and BLAM, totally mesmerizing tripped out raga like trance, the opening track alone, the 17 minute title track we ended up playing over and over. Andee loved it so much he played it on his radio show, after which he seemingly randomly emailed a friend of his, to ask if he knew anything about said record. To which that friend responded "I SENT YOU THAT RECORD. TWO YEARS AGO!!!"
After enduring a bit of well deserved mockery, it was time to get down to business, and track some of these down for the store, and for YOU. Johnny Miller was a new name to us, but he played in a Chicago psych-kraut combo called Sadhu Sadhu, who we have yet to review on the list, but from whose ranks recent aQ Record Of The Weekers the Great Society Mind Destroyers were born. Miller though doesn't traffic in the same sort of blown out psychedelic heaviness as TGSMD, no all that shamanistic imagery was our first clue, but Miller is more about serious blissed out raga-drone, looped cyclical mesmer, heady ur-drone shimmer, and abstract free folk drift. The aforementioned title track is one of the greatest things we've ever heard, laying down a thick, slowly undulating sheet of high end shimmer, sounding like a dreamier more soft focus Sunroof!, underneath which, Miller lays down a mesmerizing latticework of melodies and rhythms, playful and looped, circular and cyclical, it adds a subtle bit of propulsion, to the otherwise seemingly weightless drift, he also adds soft swoops of backwards guitar, it's really utterly divine, and we say it a lot, but this is the sort of song that should probably go on forever, and we like to think does, somewhere.
But the cool thing about Miller's record is precisely that it does NOT just do that, instead, it's surprisingly varied, layering tinkling thumb piano melodies over wheezing harmoniums, wreathing simple steel string strum in clouds of simpler percussion and softly swirling tape hiss, unfurling spare, dreamlike Appalachian folk, bare and unadorned, simple and beautifully hushed, and unleashing some churning heavily distorted riffage beneath a glimmering sky of hypnotic looped electronics and buzzing synths, sounding like a fantastic hybrid of Zomes and Amps For Christ. The other epic here, a gorgeous 12 minute sprawl, does return to the sound of the opener, but adds some gorgeous crooned chantlike vocals, the result like some ancient spiritual ritual revved up and modernized, a buzz drenched blissed out mountain top raga.
LIMITED TO JUST 50 COPIES!! Each one in a hand numbered cardstock digipak, hand painted, silkscreened and stamped, with a Japanese style obi, a folded full color origami like insert, and a little string with bells hanging from the spine!
MPEG Stream: "Your Shining Path"
MPEG Stream: "Pt. 3 The Jeweled Vial"
MPEG Stream: "Casting A Stream Of Light On The Tongue Of God"

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 A New Sound Of An Old Instrument (Kopf / Roof Music) cd 17.98
Compositions for organ... ominous glowing church... suspense and strength... two young players... mining gold from the Moondog vaults.

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 In Europe (Kopf / Roof Music) cd 17.98

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"

MORTON, JOHN Outlier: Music for Music Boxes (Innova) cd 14.98
New York pianist / composer / instrument builder John Morton has composed 5 pieces based around electronic and physical augmentation of traditional music boxes. Thus, the whirring plinks and tiny melodies of his arsenal of music boxes are central to Morton's work, but have occasionally been modulated by computer synthesis into odd timbres or altered like a prepared piano with tiny pieces of metal shifting the tones into clumsy thuds. While his multiple music boxes have an interesting rhythmic and harmonic complexity, his additional instrumentaions for clarinet (which are particularly dorky), piano, guitar, and vibraphone are not as sonorously complementary as Morton would like them to be.

MOTHER MALLARD'S PORTABLE MASTERPIECE CO. Music By David Borden (World Arbiter) cd 16.98
First time release of these 1976-77 recordings by Moog minimalism pioneer Dave Borden and his Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpice Company, oddly enough released on the World Arbiter label, from whence we got the great "Lost Sounds of the Tao" and "Roots of Gamelan" cds we've recently praised. I guess their notion of world music can encompass white Americans with synths as well!
Composer Borden's all-Moog ensemble drew upon his experiences as Bob Moog's "test pilot" in the late '60s, and acknowledged inspirations Philip Glass and Terry Riley. As demonstrated here, Mother Mallard was all about looooong tracks of repetitive, bubbling synths, pleasantly trancey and mesmerizing, with complex interlocking cyclic rhythmic layers like a futuristic (circa the '70s) take on Medieval cantos. The cover photo shows a whole choir onstage behind the long-haired Moog-operators, and indeed after many minutes of build-up, human voices join the electronics. Famed avant-garde singer Joan LaBarbra solos, backed by the Thomas Sokol Chorale. It sounds a bit Magma-like, actually, certainly religious -- the text comes from the Revelation of St. John the Divine. If you liked the Cuneiform reissue of this band's "Like A Duck To Water" or dig on the idea of Moogs n' minimalism, check this out.
MPEG Stream: "The Continuing Story of Counterpoint Part 3"

MUHLY, NICO Mothertounge (Bedroom Community / Brassland) cd 14.98

MUHLY, NICO Speaks Volumes (Bedroom Community) cd 15.98
Although young enough to be their son, Nico Muhly seems to have a great grasp of the kind of elegance in chamber music that folks like Steve Reich and Philip Glass have developed over the last several decades. The first release on a new label from Iceland, Muhly's name is no upstart in Icelandic music circles as he helped Bjork on Medulla as well as for her score to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The company Muhly keeps gives pretty good insight into the majestic and moving music that he creates. As well as Bjork, Muhly has also collaborated with Philip Glass on lots of stage and film works, and Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, who appears on the last track here. Muhly has a sensitive songwriting hand which keeps the songs on Speaks Volumes subtle enough to remain riveting but with enough emotional weight to keep us coming back for more. So very nice!
MPEG Stream: "Clear Music"
MPEG Stream: "Pillaging Music"

MUMMA, GORDON Electronic Music of Theatre and Public Activity (New World Records) cd 16.98

MUMMA, GORDON Live-Electronic Music (Tzadik) cd 16.98
Collection of pioneering electronic composed between 1963 and 1985. Having collaborated extensively throughout the 60's with contemporaries Robert Ashley, David Tudor, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier and David Behrman often helping them with the construction of their own electronics. Mumma's distinction lies in the construction of his own analog gear which he then uses to process, in real time, the sounds produced during a live performance, either solo or with another musician and for each piece Mumma has fashioned a unique device for its execution. The 5 compositions on this disc feature collaborations with William Winant (percussion), David Tudor (bandoneon), Robert Ashley (voice and piano) and George Cacioppo (voice) with one solo performance by Mumma on waldhorn, valve horn and cybersonics.
RealAudio clip: "Hornpipe"
RealAudio clip: "Medium Size Monograph 1963"

MUMMA, GORDON Studio Retrospective (Lovely Music) cd 14.98
"Studio Retrospective" is a collection of six of Mumma's electronic compositions dating from 1959 to 1984. Four of the pieces were originally composed for the quadraphonic theater systems, and have been digitally remastered in stereo for this collection. Mumma's work is full of grinding metallic drones, (think Stockhausen, Nordheim, Ussachevsky) electronic pings & clicks, and buzzing FM synthesis. Evocative (and not too stodgy) academic work.

NAGATA, KAZUNAO The World of Electric Sound 2: Live In Concert 1996-1997 (Zero Gravity) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

NANCARROW, CONLON Lost Works, Last Works (Other Minds) cd 14.98
Like the title says, this cd collects not only some of the late works of avant garde 20th century composer Conlon Nancarrow circa 1990-3 but also a variety of previously unpublished pieces from the '30s and '40s. There's music written for piano, tape, prepared player piano, string quartet, and more. Plus, there's a rare half hour interview with the man himself concluding the disc.

NANCARROW, CONLON Studies for Player Piano Vol. 1-5 (Wergo) 5cd 56.00
"This set brings together all five volumes of Nancarrow's prize-winning player piano recordings in one deluxe, slipcase package. With their dazzling acrobatic complexities, well beyond the technique of any human, Nancarrow's works are both amazingly beautiful and strangely unsettling. Wergo's recordings were made in 1988 at Conlon Nancarrow's Mexico City studio, using the composer's own custom-altered Ampico reproducing piano. The 140-page booklet includes numerous unpublished photographs, an essay by producer Charles Amirkhanian and a probing musical analysis by James Tenney." - Wergo liner notes. Originally this collection was issued in separate editions with Vol. 1 + 2 together, Vol. 3 + 4 togather, and Vol. 5 separate, but all sets have subsequently been deleted by Wergo. This set with the book is the only way now to get these awesome mind numbing recordings.

NARATI, XENIA Moondog Sharp Harp (Ars Musici) cd 25.00

NATH, PANDIT PRAN Earth Groove: The Voice Of Cosmic India (Change / Mississippi) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***
Like a Pavlovian bell, just the mere utterance of this vinyl-only Portland label gets everyone aflutter, ready to eagerly acquire, no matter what the sounds contained inside. We suppose if they put out a record solely of sounds made by cement mixers, back-hoes or traffic noises and packaged it in a sweet homemade album cover with nostalgic photos of antique construction equipment, and called it something like "My Heart Belongs To The Public Works", we'd sell out of them just as fast as their awesome compilations of pre-war blues or their reissues of obscure post-punk groups. As cool as that actually sounds, the not one, but TWO Mississippi releases we have this week are both super stellar and we know everyone is going to want at least one if not both of them.
Earth Groove is a reissue of the debut 1968 recording by Master Hindustani classical singer Pandit Pran Nath. Considering his major influence on the giants of twentieth-century minimalist composition and drone music of all forms, as well as the amazing dearth of available recordings on cd let alone on vinyl, this is a MUST HAVE!! Featuring two fantastic side long ragas, Raaga Bhoopali designed for meditation after sunset and Raaga Asavari designed for meditation after sunrise, this is spiritual music of the highest order made for the purpose of destroying negative energy. But it is its amazing sounds of buzzing tamboura drones and tabla rhythms with Pran Nath's perfectly intonated and slowly unfolding vocal style that should please all fans of otherworldly cosmic sounds.
Master of the Kirana Ghirana school, it is believed that Pran Nath spent five years of his life in a cave perfecting his austere intonated singing style. Heavily emphasizing the alap, the opening section of the raga that is unmetered, improvised and unaccompanied (except for the tamboura drone), that sets up a slow tempo and can often last more than an hour. Pran Nath's unwavering adherence to the principles of his vocal style was not that popular to the ears of modern Indians, but it is this recording that reached the open minds of minimalist composer La Monte Young and visual artist Marion Zazeela who persuaded Pran Nath to move to America and start his own school of music in New York. Just rattling off the names of his top students shows what an indelible influence Pran Nath was to late twentieth century music: Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine, Henry Flynt, Jon Hassell, Douglas Leedy, Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, Jon Gibson, Yoshi Wada, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, W. A. Mathieu, Sufi Pir Shabda Kahn, Catherine Christer Hennix, and Simone Forti. Enough said.
After being completely enraptured with the extensive and expensive double disc Midnight we reviewed a while back, some folks may not have had the time or means to see what we were raving about, so it's really nice to have this perfect and affordable introduction to Pran Nath's intense and penetratingly beautiful sound world, while they last!

NATH, PANDIT PRAN Midnight / Raga Malk (Just Dreams) 2cd 41.00
This recording, the musical life of Pandit Pran Nath, his influence on Western minimalism, his importance to music, both modern and traditional, is steeped in history, but just as important, if not harder to describe, is the sound. A warm drifting dreamscape, layers of buzz and hum and drone, Nath's perfectly intonated vocals, hovering weightless above a thick swirl of Sitar string buzz and slowly shifting drones. This is true drone music. Warm and rich, thick and effervescent. Densely layered but light and airy. Truly difficult to describe, but a record that has immmediately become one of the most played / listened to records around these parts. Nath spent most of his life studying and performing in India, and became well known for his strict adherence to the authentic rendering of traditional ragas and an unwillingness to change his style or sound to be more 'modern'. His focus on the slower 'alap' sections of ragas was an obvious influence on seventies minimalists like La Monte Young and Terry Riley (both students of his), and other students / followers included Don Cherry, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt and many others. He eventually became a US citizen and continued performing, composing and teaching right up until his death. There is a definite dearth of recordings, considering how long Nath had been performing, this 2 disc set was originally released in 2002, and has luckily been reissued. The price tag is steep, but once these sounds hit your ears, any thoughts of price or money as well as all of your other earthly worries will just drift away. Both of these performances, one from 1971 recorded in San Francisco, the other in NYC in 1976, feautre Nath accompanied by Western musicians, Terry Riley, Ann Riley, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, who seem perfectly in tune with Nath's sound and vision. Anyone who loves the music of Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Organum, any of that minimal drone music, would do well to dig deep and discover the roots of that music. This is most definitely some of the most beautiful, transcendental drone music we have ever heard.
MPEG Stream: "Midnight (4 VIII 71 SF)"

NEUHAUS, MAX Electronics & Percussion - Five Realizations By (Sony Japan) cd 29.00

NEUHAUS, MAX Fontana Mix-Feed 1965/1968 (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is one of three separate shards of electronic music history (Ashley, Neuhaus, and Palestine) recently unearthed by Italian audio archaeologists Alga Marghen.
Max Neuhaus' "Fontana Mix-Feed" features six "realizations" of an indeterminate John Cage score, in Neuhaus' hands an electro-acoustic feedback concerto created with timpani, contact microphones, amplifiers, and a mixer. Shrill, high-end death drone, different at each performance. This is common stuff nowadays, but back in 1965 before such genres as "power violence" and "no-input mixing board" music, it must have fascinated and/or severely disturbed the listeners (generally in some posh academic setting -- the booklet is full of great photos and flyers for Neuhaus' performances). Like the Ashley's "Wolfman", this Neuhaus disc is cool when you consider that context: as depicted on the cover, a nerdish young Neuhaus in suit and tie, on stage at Carnegie Hall causing audience discomfort and pain with his knob twisting! Definitely of historic import, at the very least.
MPEG Stream: "Chicago, April 1965"

NEUHAUS, MAX Four Realizations Of Stockhausen's Zyklus (Alga Marghen) cd 17.98

NEUHAUS, MAX The New York School. Nine Realizations Of Cage, Feldman, Brown (Alga Marghen) cd 17.98

NEW BAND Playing On The Original Harry Partch Instruments (Innova) cd 14.98
New Band is a group spearheaded by Dean Drummond, custodian of Harry Partch's collection of unique micro-tonal instruments. The group's mission includes both performing the works of Harry Partch (which can only be played on Partch's own instruments for the most part) and premiering new works composed for the instruments, primarily Drummond's own. This disc has two compositions by Harry Partch -- "Eleven Intrusions" and "Dark Brother" -- and two by Dean Drummond -- "Before the Last Laugh" and "Congressional Record". "Eleven Intrusions" (1950) is a suite of nine texts set to music by Partch and two instrumentals, while "Dark Brother" (1943) is a 10 minute piece based on the final paragraphs of Thomas Wolfe's "God's Lonely Man." Drummond's "Before the Last Laugh" is a reworking of a larger work that Drummond had composed for the 1925 silent film "The Last Laugh". "Congressional Record" is a satirical piece which utilizing the United States' Congressional Record as a source for its libretto, including: Jesse Helms' arguments for the abolishment of the N.E.A., Kenneth Starr's Independant Counsel Report on hanky panky in the White House and something from The Plumbing Standards Improvement Act of 1999. Drummond's pieces both feature new instruments built by Drummond in the spirit of Partch.
RealAudio clip: PARTCH, HARRY "The Rose"
RealAudio clip: DRUMMOND, DEAN "Congressional Record"

NIBLOCK, PHILL Touch Strings (Touch) 2cd 19.98
Awesome. Simply, awesome. Phill Niblock is an artist that every musician should aspire to be. He's tirelessly composing, performing, and hosting this seminal series at his own Experimental Intermedia loft, all well into his late '70s! If you were to think of so many artists who had started to suck when they hit 30 or 40, the fact that Niblock is continuing to amaze as the elder statesman of NY Minimalism is all the more impressive. Never one to be effusive in his titles, Niblock's Touch Strings is a double disc of compositions for stringed instruments. The first disc is a 60 minute piece for electric guitar and bass, performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss (both from Band Of Susans) each restricted to only a few notes (E, F, and F#, to be specific) to coax sounds through their respective instruments with ebows. The resulting composition is an unhurried set of majestic drones, whose microtonal shifts delicately unfold over the course of the hour. Changes are definitely noticeable but only after they've happened, as Niblock's compositional genius is thoroughly hypnotizing. The second disc is broken into two pieces, both sourced from acoustic strings. The microtones from a single cello are ripped apart and layered back as a densely packed, monumental drone that buzzes, blurs, and bends for 25 minutes. The next piece applies the same strategy but to a four piece ensemble, all of whom are building harmonic intervals along a single drone arc that Niblock then reconfigured digitally after the fact. So fucking good!
MPEG Stream: "Stosspeng"
MPEG Stream: "Poure"
MPEG Stream: "One Large Rose"

NIBLOCK, PHILL Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy and Voice (Touch) cd 16.98
Phill Niblock is a minimalist contemporary of LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, and Tony Conrad, yet has been seemingly overlooked, minus a few avant rock footnotes from the likes of Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and Band of Susans. In the liner notes, essayist Kyle Gann offers an unconvincing argument as to the reason for his relative obscurity, claiming that Niblock's work is too challenging, compared to his minimalist brothers... Well, Niblock's approach is certainly more complex than Young's static explorations of fundamental pitches or Conrad's scraping antagonism toward traditional intonation, but more challenging? I think "more interesting" is a better read of Gann's thesis. While them's fightin' words in the quick-to-slander political world of NYC '60s minimalism, Niblock's "Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy and Voice" is certainly a formidable album that stands firmly on its own merits, without Aquarius adding any fuel to the fire.
The first piece "Hurdy Hurry" is an extended drone, based on samples of Jim O'Rourke and his hurdy gurdy. Niblock begins the piece simply enough with a single sustained whir of the wooden machine, but thickens the mix with multi-tracked layers of more hurdy gurdy drones tuned to specific pitches. The result is a glistening audio kaleidoscope of rich ambers, oranges, and blood reds.
The two versions of "A Y U (aka As Yet Untitled)" are based upon a similar multi-tracked technique as before, but based upon recordings of baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner. These two tracks have a nasally warble to them, sounding similar to the circular breathing of Tuvan throat singers. While sonically similar, the first version is open and diffuse, and the second is lumbering and forceful.
As with all Touch releases, Jon Wozencroft offers his usual amazing design sensibility to an amazing piece of minimalist composition.
RealAudio clip: "A Y U (part one)"
RealAudio clip: "Hurdy Hurry"