BROCAS HELM Into Battle (Eat Metal Records) picture disc 15.98
Now on picture disc vinyl!!
YES! It's about time this was reissued! A cult metal fave, this debut record from San Francisco underground true metal masters Brocas Helm was originally released on LP by a label called First Strike back in 1984. New generation of metal fans can hear why this band is mentioned alongside the legendary likes of Cirith Ungol and Manilla Road (if you're wondering who those bands are, well, just think Iron Maiden but way more obscure).
Into Battle is a proud and powerful album of hyperkinetic epicks. It's fantasy metal that pounds beers and gobbles acid and loves to rock and roll, weaving in psychedelic elements as well. The songs are about wizards and warriors, but also with lyrics actually about guitars and amplifiers too! Definitely inspired by the NWOBHM and also '70s hard rock like Thin Lizzy, Van Halen, and Riot, Brocas Helm's debut might have catapulted them to commerical success in the '80s metal world if only more people had ever heard it... though the San Francisco Bay Area was a hotbed of metal activity, with Metallica, Exodus, Testament, and many others breaking big, Brocas was perhaps just too eccentric and medieval to make it. Fortunately they never gave up, so the brave and bold can STILL go see these guys play and slay here in San Francisco now and then. They've released two other albums since Into Battle, those being 1988's Black Death and after a sixteen year wait, 2004's Defender Of The Crown! All are brilliant, with Into Battle being both essential for fans and the obvious place to start if you're new to the band. With their galloping tunes, heroic vocals and guitar shred, Brocas Helm are metal incarnate. If you like their spiritual brothers (nephews?) Slough Feg, you'll like Brocas Helm!!
MPEG Stream: "Ravenwreck"
MPEG Stream: "Into The Ithilstone"

RODRIGUEZ Cold Fact (Light In The Attic) cd 17.98
Pop quiz! Quick: who's the "street poet" singer with no first name*, son of Mexican immigrants, born and raised in Detroit Michigan, whose debut album from 1970 sounded like a fuzz-soul-psych version of Bob Dylan and/or Donovan, and was an underground hit in South Africa of all places?? Duh, Rodriguez of course. It's about time his inexplicably obscure Cold Fact got the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves. Seriously, after listening to this for the first time, you'll feel like you just heard a bona fide '60s classic, and be amazed you had never heard these songs before. They ought to be all over "oldies" rock radio. It's ridiculous like that. Songs like "Sugar Man" and "I Wonder" seem like they should be fixtures of the baby boomer memory lane hit parade. It's so very of its era, "This Is Not A Song, It's An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues" is certainly a sixties song title, isn't it? Likewise "Rich Folks Hoax", "Hate Street Dialogue", and "Crucify Your Mind"... But, maybe he was just a little too freaky and right on, and (crucially) never got the right sort of record label support to become well known to the Woodstock Nation, though this album had some rather random, surprising success so far off in the Southern Hemisphere, in South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, which Rodriguez himself was unaware of for many years!
If left to his own devices, perhaps Rodriguez would have come off sounding a bit too much like Dylan. But Cold Fact was a "Theo-Coff" production, from the badass Motor City team of Mike Theodore and funk guitarist Dennis Coffey, and they helped accentuate the more underground and urban aspects of Rodriguez's sound. With his hip, Dylanesque poetry set amidst lush orchestration and gritty grooves, Rodriguez's Cold Fact is a super catchy, tripped out slice of street-level, soulful psychedelia, full of drug references and radical political critique. We alluded to "fuzz" above, but on the track "Only Good For Conversation" we mean FUZZ. That track's a stone(d) cold classic when it comes to heavy duty fuzz guitar crunch.
This reish comes in a nice digipack, with cover embossing and a big ol' cd booklet stuffed with text (liner notes, lyrics) and photos. One of the several cd booklet essays explains in part Rodriguez's unexpected appeal in South Africa - apparently, in that repressive society, it was due to the edgy, uncensored nature of his lyrics. "I Wonder", for instance, with its lines about "I wonder how many times you had sex / And I wonder do you know who'll be next" was considered so risque that if you were a teenager and wanted to be cool, you HAD to have this record. Apparently, many folks in South Africa thought of Rodriguez as being a star up there with the Beatles, and when they didn't hear more from him, all sorts of wild rumors spread that he'd died, been accidentally electrocuted, OD'd, or even committed suicide on stage! When, in fact, he simply had no idea how "big" he was in South Africa, and his recording career had stalled out elsewhere after his sophomore album, 1971's Coming From Reality (also soon to be reissued). Turns out he's still alive and well, today, and has actually gone to South African to pay arena (?!) shows in recent years.
In fact, when we've had album in the store before, it was only available on cd as an expensive import - from South Africa! So we're, again, super stoked that Light In The Attic put the effort in to do this long overdue, definitive domestic reissue.
*actually, his first name was Sixto, but he usually just went by Rodriguez.
MPEG Stream: "Sugar Man"
MPEG Stream: "Only Good For Conversation"
MPEG Stream: "Hate Street Dialogue"

MOSS Sub Templum (Rise Above) 2lp 31.00
Finally this dooooooooomy Record Of The Week from list #295 is available as a deluxe double lp!!
It's been a while since we've had to employ multiple 'o's in a review. A bit of a death of doom it seems. Or at least the sort of doom that requires all those extra 'o's. A loyal customer of ours even whipped up this "doom chart" based on our usage of multiple 'o'd doom in reviews!
And if memory serves, Moss was one of the bands that routinely got described as doooom, or doooooooooom, and sometimes even doooooooooooooooooooooooom. So we were all ready to put finger to key and just let the 'o's roll out, one after the other after the other, until we felt we had conveyed the crushing doom of Moss. That is until we pressed play, and were treated to "Ritus", a five and a half minute soundscape of whirring synths and washed out ambience, of cymbal sizzle and proggy keyboard drones, of whispered voices and buzzing shimmer. Hmmm. The liner notes say it's inspired by Doris Norton, an electronic musician who's also a member of AQ faves Jacula!! An interesting start from one of the sludgiest, crustiest bands around. Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. Ahh. That's better. The second track returns us to that dank dark sloooooooooow place Moss call home. Twenty three minutes of downtuned crush, the tempo only slightly faster than the growth of actual moss. But even all gnarled and sludge-y, something has definitely changed. It's not nearly as filthy, and harsh, it's actually weirdly pretty. Almost like it's some more melodic metal record being spun manually with one finger at 3 or 4 rpm. The distortion is still dense, the long drawn out chords seeming to crumble, the drums spaced way out, but somehow still more buys than you're average ultradoom drummer, the vocals are still harsh and howling, but somehow, they too seem to be a bit more smooth, further down in the mix, like another layer of sound, the howls allowed to unfurl into another layer of buzz. It's strange, but we definitely dig. And we're not saying this is NOTHING like old Moss, or folks into Bunkur and Esoteric and the like won't love it, you will, the differences are subtle, and the sound is just a little bit, well, prettier, if you can imagine something bleak and black and harsh and hateful being pretty. Which we can!
The next track, a nine minute dirge, is a bit more raw and rough, most of that prettiness we were blathering on about above is GONE. Shrieking feedback, the drums even slower and more spare, the guitars even more distorted and the vocals throat shreddingly harsh, the tempo slightly accelerated, bordering on Eyehategod territory.
But it's all bout the closer, "Gate III: Devils From The Outer Dark". Clocking in at 35 minutes + and beginning with a churning sea of downtuned rumble and buzz, before the drums finally kick in, and f course by kick in we mean pound sporadically. This track is WAY more than a dirge. It makes the track before it sound like thrash metal. This is slooooooow and so so so so dooooooooooooooooooomy. The guitars thick and corrosive, the chords allowed to ring way out and fade away before the next one drops in to take its place, but weirdly enough, this one too sounds sort of pretty, not like the opening track, but still very dreamlike and mesmerizing. Long streaks of feedback spread out over wide open expanses of minimal thud and warm warped slow motion buzz, when the vocals drop out, it becomes something entirely different, finishing off with several minutes of thick low end drone, the guitars rumbling and wrapped into a thick nearly static pulse, something truly hypnotic and almost spacey, but without sacrificing a single one of those extra 'o's.
Definitely a progression, a band can only pound and plod for so long, but so subtle that the casual listener might not even notice. "Oh yeah, heavy, slow, dooooooom", but as with most music, deep listening reveals a whole lot more going on beneath the surface, and once your ears lock on to that stuff, even the sounds on the surface begin to sound different.
WAY RECOMMENDED for the doom-ed amongst you. And just cuz we knew you were waiting for it, Sub Templum could very well be doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom disc of the year!!
MPEG Stream: "Subterraen"
MPEG Stream: "Dragged To The Roots"

HEY COLOSSUS Happy Birthday (Riot Season) cd 16.98
London's heaviest, most hypnotic head-cavers, Hey Colossus, have found a home for their third album on the Riot Season label, who have previously brought us noize from the likes of Mainliner, Shit and Shine, and Aufgehoben. Heck, the label's logo features a trio of tanks, so of course Hey Colossus is a good match for their aesthetic. Being so brutally heavy and all, tank-like basically.
Happy Birthday (ironic title we guess, this is about as far from "Happy Birthday" the song as you can get) sees Hey Colossus doing what they do best: throbbing, distorted, kill 'em all action. Uber heavy, totally bad trip psychedelic. From the feedback intro of opening track "War Crows" and the rasping, ranting throat abuse that follows amidst pulsating, amped up electric murk, this Hey Colossus album destroys like a more rockin' version of Khanate... the Khanate comparison even more apropos on the next track, the more slowly thudding "Tight Collar". Part metal, part punk, part psych... what to call it? Ugly rawk doom drone maybe? With wailing Hawkwindy ampfriedification n' FX, heading into tortured dead zones of sheer nihilistic sludge, Hey Colossus fits in with such faves as Indian, Brainbombs, Unsane, Cadaver In Drag, godheadSilo, Pissed Jeans, Vincent Black Shadow, Cavity, Rusted Shut... and those other Riot Season acts mentioned at the beginning of this review. In other words, glorious stuff for those so inclined (like us!), pulling the listener who dares inexorably into its extreme vortex.
There's eight tracks here, 46+ minutes of the Hey Colossus experience, which threatens to run itself (and you) off the rails into total insanity as it rocks and rumbles on. Can't pick fave tracks really, they're all pretty badass, but the driving uptempo umph of the waveringly blown-out "Fire Up The Tambourine" is certainly quite wicked. Even more out there, "Permanent Vacation" parts 1 and 2 is full of bottom-of-the-abyss, buried alive vocals in a shitstorm of droning distortion... And how can we not like a track, especially a pounding, noisy, rhythmic near-13 minute epic, that's called "Overlord Rapture In Vines Part 2"?? It's the psycho-delic explosion that ends this album appropriately apocalyptically. Happy fuckin' birthday indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Tight Collar"
MPEG Stream: "Fire Up The Tambourines"

TO BLACKEN THE PAGES None (Colony) cd 10.98
Highlighted last list, we had A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction, the most recent disc from Dublin, Ireland's To Blacken The Pages. Now we've got their prior release, None, released just a month or two earlier in 2008, which is essentially the part I to A Semblance's part II. Don't get 'em confused (and we'll try not to, too), 'cause they do look virtually identical, the same almost-black-on-black no-color scheme for the cover photo and logo. The black-on-black music is similar too, of course, but different and equally essential for anyone who loved the minimal doomdrone instrumental ambience of that other disc. And again, there's three tracks. 13:45, 16:10, and 8:06. Each stately, somnolent, fuzzed out and, this time, drumless... heavy in a restrained, spacey, spacious way.
Track one, "Alien", tiptoes in, super slow, individually suspended guitar notes one at a time connecting the dots of melancholic melody over a void of silence. Then, suddenly, the needle jumps. DISTORTION. An electric crackle and buzz. The song is still super sloooooow and sparse, but each note is now planetarily weighted with rumbling vibratory effect, surely speaker shredding if it all happened at once, and at volume. An underlying howling hum begins, buried beneath but gradually filling all that empty space with its own not so silent emptiness. The next piece, "None", starts with an eerie electric wind, and some sparse Earth-style guitar strum over it, reverberant and lonely, before sheer fuzzdrone kicks in, fuzzdrone nirvana to our ears, that continues in like manner on final track of the disc, "As If Forever"... Ah, yes, so glacially good. For fans of Earth, SUNNO))), Expo '70, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Slomo, Boris, Skullflower, Nadja, etc. All at their darkest yet dreamiest.
To Blacken The Pages is actually a solo project, the work of one guitar wielding, amp abusing man, Paul McAree. We're told he has a non-solo side project coming up, a band called Slaves Of War Orphan Farm (!) that is supposed to be a worthy offering of Les Rallizes Denudes worship! Can't wait to check it out...
MPEG Stream: "Alien"
MPEG Stream: "None"

BAD STATISTICS Lucky Town Gone (Pseudo Arcana) cd 13.98
Awesome! We'd been waiting and wanting more from New Zealand's bizarre Bad Statistics ever since we got their vinyl-only debut, Static, last year. In addition to thinking they had a really excellent band name, we loved the doomic, droning weirdness of their propulsive krauty NZ noiserock, made even weirder by the utter outsider vocal garble that arose over their ritualistic music, like spirits or specters seemingly summoned from the other side. Now, huzzah, there's this new full-length, an actual cd on the Pseudo-Arcana label, and it pretty much picks up where the LP left off! 47 and a half minutes more of mysterious musical ceremony, Bad Statistics style, on these seven tracks. Again, the vocals (produced from the throat of one Thebis Mutante) are really strange, unhinged alien hippy rant-chant, like Ya Ho Wah's Father Yod speaking in tongues, sometimes looped and layered. Together with the throbbing drum beats, distorted electronic textures from guitar and bass, and hollow horn bleat and twitter on a track or two, you have the basic tempel-vibrating template for Bad Statistics' repetitive, rumbling, mesmerizing murk. Best listened to from a yogic position of spiritual openness, legs crossed, mind clear, third eye unblinking. Though, at their loudest, most intense chugging psychrock peaks, some vigorous rocking back and forth will be called for, maybe even full-on writhing on the floor.
Let's take the 13-minute title track as an example... it's moaningly eased into, the percussive plod slow and sparse, but after a short while Thebis cries out quite like Can's Damo Suzuki, and the pace picks up, cymbals crashing... before another long droning lull with whistling and mumbling drifting over the slo-mo chug of the guitars and drums... then towards the very end, the singer suddenly seems possessed, his voice dropping into a guttural exhortations, the din of the instruments rising into a psychedelic swirling howl... welcome to the reverse exorcism!!
Imagine the kosmic-kraut-primitivism of early Amon Duul, Tangerine Dream, or Siloah, with Circle's Mika Ratto as voice coach, encouraging Yod x Yoko vocal vibrations. Or the linear lo-fi insanity of a secret Dead C meets Reynols monster jam, if directed towards the worship of some ancient god, recorded on cheap cassette only as an afterthought. Yeah. It's pretty much awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Balloon Outbreak"
MPEG Stream: "Three Swarms Of Bees"

UGLY THINGS Issue #27 Summer / Fall 2008 magazine 8.95
It's baaack! Another mammoth (216 pages!) issue of one of our favorite magazines, all about "wild sounds from past dimensions" as they put it - garage, beat, psych, punk, etc. Now, a lot of you reading this probably have some idea of what it's like to be a musician in a band today. You're in a band, or were in a band, or have friends who are in bands. But not so many of you probably know what it was like to be in a band back in, say, 1964. Sure in 2008 we have garage bands - and GarageBand too - but things were different back then. Let's see, the band you were in, did you have a manager, and were they your drummer's mom? That's part of what makes Ugly Things so interesting, the way it delves into what might be termed the "human interest" or "behind the music" stories of bands that otherwise you haven't heard, and in some cases, will never ever hear. For instance, the 30+ pages devoted this ish to a teenage surf/R&B combo from Orange County called The Spats. Remember them? And their bottom of the Billboard Top 100 hit "Gator Tails and Monkey Ribs"? No, well us neither of course, but we still enjoyed reading their detailed history here, which included regular gigging at Disneyland, and some tantalizing brushes with fame.
And of course Ugly Things isn't all about things quite that obscure - The Who and The Small Faces are also featured in this issue, with an article detailing the story of their tempestuous tour Down Under in '68. Also you get stuff about The Animals, The Koala, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, Bo Diddley (R.I.P.), Chile's Los Vidrios Quebrados, "Beat Girl" actress/singer Gillian Hills, '70s punks The Victims... There's also a glam rock/junk shop top 50 from Johan Kugelberg (as always with his contributions, a highlight of the issue), a psych top 10 from Clinic's Ade Blackburn, and the usual gizillions of reviews. Plus loads more. This will keep you busy reading for a while, though maybe not 'til the next issue is due out, in early 2009, which we're looking forward to already.

SUARASAMA Fajar Di Atas Awan (Drag City) 2lp 19.98
Wow!!! A few years ago, we were totally blown away by a compilation put out by Smithsonian Folkways called Indonesian Guitars, which among many amazing tracks happened to feature a song called "Fajar Di Atas Awan" by Irwansyah Harahap. It was of that disc's highlights, with haunting female and male vocal harmonies, lilting acoustic guitar, sruti box drones and cymbals. What we didn't know was that Harahap and singer Rithaony Hutajulu, both ethnomusicology professors at the University of North Sumatra, were the main composers and singers for a larger group of musicians and performers called Suarasama, and that song was the title track of THIS incredibly beautiful, blissful record by Suarasama, a 1997 live recording, now released for the first time in the U.S. by the fine folks at Drag City. We are so stoked, what a wonderful surprise this is.
Formed in 1995, Suarasama's musical influences are widely diverse, creating contemporary music based on vartious aesthetic and conceptual aspects of Middle Eastern, Indian, Sufi Pakistani, Eastern European, Southeast Asian as well as North Sumatra Batak and Malay traditional music. But the results are very far from academic. Instead the music is infused with a hermetic introspective devotional quality that seduces the listener with its soft trance-like rhythms and haunting vocal mantras. Persian and Indian percussion of tablas and defs meld with deft finger-picked guitar and gambus improvisations and dueling vocal harmonies that propel circularly forward in hypnotically beautiful interweavings. Meditative and organic, full of levitation-inducing majesty. For any devotee of raga folk, Masaki Batoh, Six Organs, Daniel Higgs, L, Robbie Basho, Sandy Bull, Congregacion, The Habibiyya, Malachi, Pandit Pran Nath, The Trees Community, or Bruce Palmer, this is absolutely essential!!
MPEG Stream: "Fajar Di Atas Awan"
MPEG Stream: "Sang Hyang Guru"
MPEG Stream: "Lebah"
MPEG Stream: "Habibullah"

GUNSLINGERS No More Invention (World In Sound) cd 23.00
Woah. What a surprise! See, the German psych/prog/kraut specialists at World In Sound have been responsible for a lot of cool '60s/'70s reissues and comps (Cold Sun, Modulo 1000, Psychedelic Minds Vol.1...) but they also have released some unfortunately not-so-hot cds by a bunch of modern prog and stoner rock bands doing the retro thing, and well, we haven't reviewed any of those based on the old "if you don't have anything nice to say..." principle. Just not worth bothering. BUT, that was until this disc came along. Like we said, a surprise. This Julian Cope approved (Record Of The Month for August '08 on his Head Heritage website) band has come up with a doozy of debut (?) here, a real humdinger from these Gallic guitarslingers. Featuring Matthieu Canaguier on "thunderbass", Antoine Hadhoannou on "prophetic drums", and most importantly, badass-in-chief Gregory Raimo on "guitar & guitar lighter, yaya preach, feedback", this trio's No More Invention sounds something like the French answer to The Heads, or White Hills, or even Mainliner. Utter aggro over the top distortodelic geetar excess. Frickin' savage. SAVAGE.
Nope, not at all what we'd have expected from World In Sound. Not only have they found a current signing that's good, in fact great, said signing are also a lot more punk than we'd have thought. Heck we bet these guys grew up on Metal Urbain, maybe even Soggy! The rabid vocals are somewhere betwixt Johnny Rotten and Mark E. Smith, babbling indecipherably. They also remind us a bit of the guy from The Trashmen (if "Surfin' Bird" was a raving, epick 12:50 long biker/garage meltdown blowout kraut jam called "Lighter Slinger Festival", ferinstance). Some other song titles, just to whet yer sick appetites: "Into The Garage", "The Beheaded Motorbiker's Head", "Black Dwarf Man", "Gigolo Albinos", and (uh-oh) "Auschwitz Boogie". Nothing holy here. Simply full tilt, fucked up, freaking out-out-out. Don't come looking to Gunslingers for songs and melodies and suchlike. Come looking for the blinding white lighting of FX overloaded, speed freak amp-sploitation, and the rhythm section rough-and-tumble of mainlined rock action energy, and you'll find it. Timeless stuff, heck if this WAS a '70s acid-punk reissue we would be less surprised. Gunslingers could do battle with the likes of Gaseneta, based on what we're hearing here. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Lighter Slinger Festival"
MPEG Stream: "Black Dwarf Man"

EKEROTH, DANIEL Swedish Death Metal (Bazillion Points) book 34.95
Metalheads, buy this! Author Daniel Ekeroth, a Swedish death metal expert (and Swedish death metaller himself, from the band Incision) has collected and presented an invaluable resource with this book, a weighty tome indeed. Due to a dearth of information on this fairly specific subject, the material within was compiled via a practical attempt to synthesize an accurate retelling of the history of Swedish death metal, based on varying accounts in zines and such, then by bouncing those stories back and forth in interviews with key band members, label bosses, etc. The book itself begins by outlining the myriad of influences behind the Swedish sound: San Francisco Bay Area thrash, NWOBHM, and the Tampa Bay Florida scene. Keep in mind, this was well before the internet, so tape and zine trading, and word of mouth, were the only ways to find out about music. Thus some of these band members were true metal geeks. There are accounts of various artists' own early exposure to metal and some really interesting stories about a few of the early Swedish bands, obscurities crossing over from the hardcore punk scene and so forth. Gripping reading for anyone into the book's subject matter. The second half of the book covers the pinnacle and strength of the scene at its brightest. But then there was black metal, and Ekeroth details how it helped usher out the popularity of old school death metal. He also delves into subgenres like grind, death n' roll, and of course the melodic Gothenburg sound.
And then in the back, there is an incredibly useful, opinionated encyclopedia of (possibly) all Swedish death metal bands. Awesome! Complete with band members and releases, where Ekeroth substitutes the term 'deathography' for discography. And this book covers not only the big shots, like Dissection, Unleashed, Entombed, Marduk - hey their first record was recorded with Dan Swano and their first singer was the guitarist from Edge of Sanity - but there are tons of lesser known bands that the Ekeroth goes into detail about. Graphics-wise, there are tons of flyers, demo tape covers, cool pictures, and everything else relevant that you could possibly want in print. It's pretty sweet.
There's not much else to say, really. You know who you are. There are those that would read a 456 page book on the Swedish death metal scene, and there are those who would not. If you are one of those people who WOULD, or just want it as a rad reference point, you need this. In a word, it's totally fucking killer. Recommended! And by the way, this is the new, expanded (and cheaper than the import) US edition, with extra art and interviews.

PADDED CELL Night Must Fall (DC Recordings) cd 22.00
Time for the noirishly groovy, '70s prog and funk infected, jazzily inflected debut full length from the UK's sinister, stylish Padded Cell. What time is that? About 2am maybe. Night must fall, indeed it must.
Those of you that picked up that excellent Milky Disco comp on Lo last year oughtta remember the track "Konkorde Lafayette", which also appears here in edited form. Padded Cell's contribution was a highlight of that comp, which also featured Studio, Sorcerer, Quiet Village and fellow DC artists The Emperor Machine, among others.
Almost entirely instrumental (there's only a couple of vocal cuts), generally dark and creepy and sometimes bleepy, Night Must Fall slow-burns through slinky, cinematic Goblinesque grooves that bring in some no-wave sax blat, and plenty of vintage analog synth zapp and bass brapp. Padded Cell certainly nods to Italo disco... and also the "disco not disco" NYC '80s downtown punk-funk scene - in fact Dennis Young of Liquid Liquid is this album's propulsive guest drummer! Imagine a spooky and suspenseful John Carpenter soundtrack gone dubby disco... Very cool, so cool in fact we had to import these directly from the label in England.
PS. we also got this on vinyl but unfortunately they all came with fairly badly bent corners...we'll try to get replacements but if you can't wait and want the wax, let us know...
MPEG Stream: "Savage Skulls"
MPEG Stream: "City Of Lies"
MPEG Stream: "Konkorde Lafayette (edit)"

CORRUPTED Paso Inferior (Nostalgia Blackrain) cd 14.98
By now, most aQ customers are well aware of Japan's mighty Corrupted. Most we would guess, like us, are HUGE fans. Sure everybody loves Khanate and Moss and Bunkur and all the other monsters of modern slow motion sludge NOW, but Corrupted are the undisputed masters, and have been or more than a decade, THE forefathers, back when other bands were thrashing wildly, Corrupted were trudging along glacially, frantic riffing, nope, Corrupted were spitting out massive sheets of barely moving heaviness, blast beats, hardly, monstrous lumbering caveman pound. Plus they were singing in Spanish!
We've been waiting for ages, but finally, the first Corrupted full length, Paso Inferior, released originally in 1997, coinciding with their last trip to the states, has been reissued. Gussied up a bit, remastered, with some new artwork, a Japanese obi, but inside, it's still a brutally filthy, gloriously crusty, grinding sludgey pummeling ultradoom masterpiece.
One song, about 42 minutes, of massive, epic downtuned heaviness. So slow, and so minimal in places it's almost like a super heavy drone record, everywhere else, it crushes and pounds and puts pretty much every other funereal doom band to shame. It's not just the riffing and the drumming, or the growling hellish vocals, the core component of Corrupted's doom, seems to be forever trapped in a swirling cloud of squealing feedback, of buzzing distortion, of rumble and whir and grinding crunch and keening high end wails, a haunting ever shifting noisescape, that adds some serious subtle psychedelia to Corrupted's tarpit sludge. A veritable symphony of shrieks and skree, these walls of unwavering downtuned buzz are dragged behind this unstoppable metallic behemoth like some filthy black wake. If you suddenly removed the drums and the main riff, you'd almost have some fucked up Wolf Eyes or Prurient record. It's almost like an inadvertent mashup, punishing super heavy glacial doom, and freaked out FX drenched abstract free noise. The record opens and closes with several minutes of blown out soaring guitar drone, buzzing and swirling and all tangled up in smeared squalls of crumbling abstract psychrock, book ending Paso Inferior's expansive sprawling, incredibly intense, yet strangely beautiful doomic dirge, that while utterly grim and brutal, does manage to sound almost symphonic, as if somewhere in this churning black doom, the seeds of what Corrupted were to become, were already beginning to germinate.
So recommended. Absolutely one of the greatest doom/dirge/drone/sludge records EVER!!
MPEG Stream: "Paso Inferior Excerpt I"
MPEG Stream: "Paso Inferior Excerpt II"

FAUST IV (EMI) 2cd 16.98
We've been wanting to correct a glaring omission from our site for some time now. Well, its not so much an omission as it's an overdue update on a very old review; one that was made when our reviews served only as shelf-talkers in the store instead of entryways into the vast online catalog of our website. And now with an affordable reissue with a bonus disc of rare BBC radio sessions and alternate versions, the time is right to reappraise this mighty, weird, and awesome jewel of classic krautrock greatness that is Faust IV.
Essential as any krautrock album we can name, including Can's Tago Mago or Future Days, Amon Duul II's Yeti, or Neu! 1, Cluster, Kraftwerk etc. It's also the record that coined the term "krautrock" which is the title of the nearly 12 minute opening track, a thick pulsating rumble of motorik groove that out-Neu's Neu!. But things definitely get stranger after that with bizarre forays into reggae, pretty ballads, prog, pop and free jazz. Yet for all the weirdness, this is the record to get if you've never heard Faust before as it's their most accessible and structured. Not nearly as kaleidoscopic and avant as, So Far or Faust Tapes, and even with the genre-hopping, the songs all seem to belong together. "The Sad Skinhead" has got to be the most left-field excursion into reggae we've heard, complete with marimba passages and echoing vocals, while "Jennifer" has to be about the prettiest song ever made. Each song linked together by odd passages of detuned piano, far away screams and noisy stews of synth warbles and feedback stabs. "Giggly Smile" obviously influenced Battles recent debut Mirrors, as strange effected vocals accompany groovy prog excursions that abruptly shift tempos into one of our favorite rocking moments ever put to tape before suddenly ending, launching into the sublime folk groove of "Lauft... Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald... Lauft". And it just keeps getting better and better.
The bonus disc features many alternate versions of the songs including a much longer version of "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)", plus rare BBC radio sessions of two songs "The Lurcher" and "Do So" and one previously unreleased piece, called appropriately "Piano Piece".
This is definitely one of those records, where we wish we could just invoke some physical force to reach out and grab you through the computer by the shoulders and just scream "Buy this already!!!!!!"
MPEG Stream: "Krautrock"
MPEG Stream: "Jennifer"
MPEG Stream: "Giggly Smile"
MPEG Stream: "The Lurcher"
MPEG Stream: "Piano Piece"

STONE HARBOUR Emerges (Lion Productions) cd 16.98
Though it may not always seem like it, these are blessed times in which to live. That is, in regard to the cd reissue of various record collector "holy grails". Sooner or later, it seems like every highly coveted, whispered-about psych/folk/prog masterpiece gets a reissue - recently, for instance, records by Joakim Skogberg, Bobb Trimble, Moolah, and Cold Sun. Of course, these reissues often as not go right back out of print all too soon, but that's the way of the world. The point is, at least we get a chance at 'em. We mention this on the occasion of this cd reissue of the privately-pressed Stone Harbour LP from 1974, not to imply that it's of uniformly mindblowing, out of this world quality, no not quite, but still it's pretty good. And when it's bad, it's maybe even better, 'cause this basement hippie multi-instrumental duo from Youngstown, Ohio had the shambolic, stoned DIY thing down, this album achieving a primitive, fucked up brilliance despite (or because of) the hissy lo-fi homebrewed production and the musicians' lack of technical chops. Imagine Bobb Trimble jamming with George Brigman, perhaps after listening to records by Syd Barrett and Uriah Heep, and getting super wasted and emotional, that's what a bunch of this sorta sounds like... well we mention Uriah Heep 'cause they do, this album's typewritten thanks list specifically highlighting Heep's keyboardist Ken Hensley, definitely an inspiration for all the ornate spacey synth sounds zapping in and out of the songs here.
We'll admit, though while the holy grail hype is mostly right, Emerges IS a bit hit or miss. Not every Stone Harbour song is a brilliant gem. But when they hit, they hit! You could happily buy this for the haunting likes of "Grains Of Sand" and "Summer Magic Is Gone", alone. But there's plenty more besides. With lots of lovely lalalas, acoustic strum, and lysergic electronic effects, this is a weird, magical mix of melancholic murk (drifting soundscapes like "Thanitos") and more grunged-out, garagey rock n' rolling (on the likes of "Rock & Roll Puzzle"). Heck, they fully boogie it up on "Still Like That Rock & Roll" (one of the aforementioned misses, but not without its charms).
As usual, Lion provides a jam-packed cd booklet, with lyrics and pics and as much background info as they could dig up (Stone Harbour's Rick Ballas blessed this reissue, but declined to be interviewed for the liner notes). This disc also includes four additional bonus tracks, recorded in 1975, that fit in quite nicely with the album tracks, the highlight among 'em being "Witch To You", a song that sounds sooo much like a lo-fi, real-deal version of the doom-prog vibe AQ faves Witchcraft are conjuring today. Most likely, it's 'cause on that track, Stone Harbour were heavily influenced by both Black Sabbath and Roky Erickson, much like Witchcraft are too, albeit from the further remove of a couple extra decades.
What more to say? Psych fans, we've done our duty, please check out the long lost Stone Harbour and be amazed.
MPEG Stream: "Rock & Roll Puzzle"
MPEG Stream: "Summer Magic Is Gone"
MPEG Stream: "Witch To You"

WOUNDED KINGS, THE Embrace Of The Narrow House (Eichenwald Industries) cd 12.98
Wow, what a surprising piece of downer metal artistry from a band we'd never heard of before! Though, we were curious about 'em 'cause this, their debut, is one of the first two releases from the new Eichenwald Industries imprint, which is closely related to the limited edition Paradigms label, who have put out a lot of cool stuff you probably have. On this, the Dartmoor, UK duo known as The Wounded Kings play classic, epic, dark doom metal (a la Sabbath) with an especially druggy, spaced out, very psychedelic vibe. The very first, and title track, sets the tone, being a three-part suite beginning with some proggy organ drone... soon joined by funeral paced, fuzzed-out guitar... and cleanly sung, eerie echo-effected vocals with a melancholic, Ozzyish croak to 'em. The album continues with much more in the way of morose heaviness, epic-ness, and ambience, full of the sort of sludgy riffs we like, having quite a haunted, occult vibe.
This should appeal to fans of both Electric Wizard and Witchcraft. Clearly their record collections include a lot of '70s psych and possibly also Italian prog too... there's hints of Goblin going on here with the organ and all. We might also cite Trouble, very early Cathedral, Fall Of The Idols, Wizar'd, Solstice, Reverend Bizarre, and early Candlemass (Epicus Doomicus era)... the obscure Detroit '80s act Coven too if you've ever heard them... all could be referenced to describe The Wounded Kings' somber sound. Definitely some recommended, traditional (but not too traditional) DOOM here, folks!
MPEG Stream: "Embrace Of The Narrow House"
MPEG Stream: "Melanthos"
MPEG Stream: "Master Of Witches"

COLD SUN Dark Shadows (World In Sound) cd 24.00
Dark shadows is right, dark shadows from a cold, old sun. Long dark shadows stretching across decades... This legendary 1970 demo recording from Austin, Texas psychedelic rock group Cold Sun has never before been on cd, and only just barely been on vinyl. There's record collectors sitting on desert islands somewhere out there, wishing they had a copy of this to keep them company. It's one of the most cult and obscure and oh so welcome psych reissues in recent memory, that's for sure. Well worthy of its whispered rep, Cold Sun is dark, spectral, tripped out garage-psych in the '60s Texas vein of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Indeed, the guys from Cold Sun went on to back up Roky in his band the Aliens, not much longer later.
Band leader Bill Miller sings, in an fragile yet urgent drawl, sounding rather like Roky himself, and also plays acid-rock leads on an electric, amplified autoharp (that's right, autoharp, a zither that's usually more of a country/folk/bluegrass instrument) which really gives Cold Sun an outsider edge... and while there's also the requisite dose of fuzz guitar here, Cold Sun can't be reduced to the "fuzz monster" category. It's all together weirder and more affecting than that. Aside from Miller's autoharp, part of what makes it so strange and so special are his lyrics. Take for instance the opening few lines of track one, "South Texas" (if we've transcribed 'em properly): "You have seen the eyes of the geko staring out watching from the crack in the wall you were thinking of going right through but it's outside it's not you you have heard the voice of the gekos telling each other here comes another robot it's a swarm of night climbing dragons crawling out searching just walking cross the ceiling..." Except when he says "robot" it sounds like someone else is saying "human" at the same time. And it just goes on and on getting weirder and weirder, its emotional essence aided by the outsiderishness of the delivery, acid-serious and plaintive. Goes so perfectly with Cold Sun's lysergic layers of sinuous sound. Yep, you can see that this is an example, perhaps thee ultimate example, of that unique Texas, desert psych style... they've got their own, otherworldly, feverish tradition of that down there.
The Cold Sun demo (and not even all of it) was pressed to acetate in 1973 in an edition of just ONE copy. And then it was lost to the sands of time, until reissue label Rockadelic did an LP version in 1990 that caused a bit of a stir amongst psych-hounds... and was limited to only 300 copies itself. But THIS cd edition is the definitive one, including all the music from the demo tape -and- two live bonus tracks! (The live tracks, recorded in 1972, are of songs not on the demo, and are quite worthy, being just a bit hissier and lower-fi than the demo itself, and maybe slightly harder rocking.) It's also got enthusiastic liner notes from noted psych nerd Jello Biafra (!), and also from Cold Sun's Bill Miller himself. World In Sound has done a nice job with this holy grail reissue, we're sure they took the responsibility pretty seriously. Now everyone, at last, can hear these truly psychedelic, (cold) sun-baked sounds...
MPEG Stream: "South Texas"
MPEG Stream: "For Ever"
MPEG Stream: "Fall"

GURU GURU UFO (Captain Trip) cd 29.00
What it is exactly that constitutes Krautrock is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedlia ever recorded. UFO is the former band's debut effort. Fans of heavy psych, German rock of the '70s, and free improv jams will consider this absolutely essential. And chances are, those fans already own this, or they simply haven't found a copy yet... here's the currently in print, Japanese mini-LP sleeve version. Repetitive, hypnotic, transcendent. And at the same time jarring. This is a fist full of mushrooms being shoved through the speakers. Embrace it.
MPEG Stream: "Stone In"
MPEG Stream: "Der LSD - Marsch"

IKEDA, RYOJI Test Pattern (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
Been waiting for this for a while, the new Raster-Noton disc from Japanese electronic artist Ryoji Ikeda! There's a bunch of other new Raster titles that we're excited about too (Coh, Alva Noto, Byetone, etc.) but this is the one we were anticipating the most. Sure, lots of folks make electronic music of the experimental glitchy, clicky variety - like many of Ikeda's just-mentioned labelmates - but in our book, Ikeda is the KING. His precision architect(r)onic computerized clicks and cuts are on a whole 'nother level, totally hallucinatory and 3-D spatial. An immersive environment you enter at your own risk (of epileptic seizure, perhaps). But if you pass the test (of his relentless electronic pitter patter patterns) you'll be entranced and entangled.
And we're pleased to report that Test Pattern is yet another strobing, brutally stereo display of his skills. 16 binaryily named tracks, "Test Pattern #0001" to "Test Pattern #0000", that provide prickly pleasure with rapid, stuttery nano-beats, like a frantic Geiger counter on the fritz, or some sort of Morse code madness. Ikeda's techniques include both minimalist repetition, and sudden shifts; his skittering, synthetic slices of sound arranged in complex, rhythmic patterns, an omnidirectional aural assault of high pitched, panicked, hissing sine tones, and deeper bass hums n' buzzing drones... it's a pretty incredible collection of constructions, vibrant and varied within Ikeda's self-imposed electronic boundaries and specific sets of data-based building materials. As ever with Ikeda's output, recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Test Pattern #0010"
MPEG Stream: "Test Pattern #0011"

MELTING GLASS BOX (TOKEDASHITA GARASU BAKO) s/t (Erebus) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Writing as many reviews as we do each week, trying to sell records to the people who will like 'em, we really appreciate it when a band makes it easy, as in this case, like, by being from Japan. And from the early '70s. Playing acid folk. And then they've got a cool name like Melting Glass Box. All that really remains is for us to tell you if is as amazing as it seems it might be - and it is.
Of course, though they're pretty obscure, you may have heard of them already, as this 1970 album has quite a deserved rep among connoisseurs of Japanese psych stuff - though it's mysteriously given short shrift in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler book, though he does praise albums by another band, Five Red Balloons (Itsutsu No Arai Fusen) from whom comes the main Melting Glass Box guy, singer-songwriter Takasi Nishioka, who is the pretty sharp looking denim clad hipster gent in the Melting Glass Box cover photo. MGB was a one-off studio project (though Takasi made many albums with Itsutu No Arai Fusen, and a bunch of later solo records as well) that also featured folks from such crucial underground Japanese psych acts of the era as The Jacks, Apryl Fool, and AQ faves Blues Creation. There's three members of proto-metal heavies Blues Creation on board here, actually, including Iommi-esque guitarist Takeda Kazuo. Not that this is at all heavy, it's actually a mellow, melodic record, quite gentle and pretty and placid, the lazy la la la's of their folky flowerpowered pop punctuated with such surreal details as the sound of shattering glass that startles the listener halfway through the lead off track "Anmari Fukasugite". Likewise, electronic FX, tape speed manipulations, ethnic instruments, and some stinging acid guitar licks are sparingly stirred into the mix throughout, this album one of many interesting, dreamy details and odd arrangements, but that still succeeds especially due to Takasi's balladic songs, that are so very melancholic and emotional - even though we can't understand the lyrics. We bet Masaki Batoh and Ghost grew up listening to this record!
Definitely a thrilling reissue that all of us here at AQ are digging, it's been getting a LOT of in-store play. Nicely done, too, by the Erebus label, with liner notes, original sleeve shots, and discographical information in the cd booklet.
MPEG Stream: "Anmari Fukasugite"
MPEG Stream: "Kimi Ha Dare Nanda"

Q65 Nothing But Trouble (Rev-Ola) cd 16.98
Q: Do you love '60s psych/beat/garage stuff?
Q: Do you have any Q65 records?
If your answer to Q1 is Yes, and your answer to Q2 is No, then YOU MUST BUY THIS, NOW! It's that simple.
Q65 were Holland's version of the Rolling Stones, seriously just as good. They had the hair, they had the hooks, they had the attitude. Even though they somehow never got huge outside of their own small country. Other good comparisons would be to the Yardbirds, and especially the Pretty Things. If you like the Pretties, make sure you get hip to Q65, and here's just the ticket. This brand new compilation brings together 24 crucial cuts from the Q65, spanning their career from early 1966 singles and their magnificent debut album of killer R&B freakbeat entitled Revolution, to the even more mindblowingly psychedelic stuff they cut afterwards, up through '68. It's a true labor of love from Q65's fans at Rev-Ola, as you can tell from the fancy full-color, 22 page cd booklet, and you'll know why when you hear their songs. There's 24 good reasons here that the back cover blurb so accurately states: "You need this cd more than you need food"! From crunching garage fuzz stompers like "Cry In The Night", "Summer Thoughts In A Field Of Weed", and the Who-ish "I Got Nightmares" with its Bo Diddley beat to the much moodier, more melancholic vibes of the likes of "World Of Birds" and "Sour Wine"... wow, man. Feast on this.
They could easily compete with any of the British bluesrock acts of the era (witness their fine covers of "Spoonful", "I'm A Man", etc.), and also any of the most savage Nuggets action out there. When they tripped out in post-Sgt. Peppers agonized ecstasy, they were just as effective. With the tough but melodic vocals of Wim Bieler leading the charge, backed by the wailing axe of guitarist Frank Nuyens (responsible for the post-Q65 solo album Rainman, the reissue of which we highlighted here not long ago), Q65 were a raw, energetic, psychedelic force to be reckoned with. We recommend you reckon with them now if you haven't already.
MPEG Stream: "Cry In The Night"
MPEG Stream: "So High I've Been, So Down I Must Fall"
MPEG Stream: "I Was Young"

TEENAGE FILMSTARS Star (Art Pop!) cd 15.98
By now, pretty much everyone knows who Kevin Shields is. He of shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine. Who over the course of the last 20 years or so have released all of THREE records. But what about Ed Ball. A musical contemporary of Shields. A man Shields described as "A sensitive soul from another planet. A modernist musical alchemist", going on to say "Where other people struggle, Ed Ball plays what we're thinking." Ball, over the last 20 years, has released close to 40 records, a whole mess of amazing discs with UK mod popsters The Times, a handful under his own name, and a bunch with power poppers the Boo Radleys, among others. But what Ball is most famous for, at least around these parts, is releasing three of the most perfect, and perfectly fractured genius shoegaze blisspop records EVER, as Teenage Filmstars: Star, Rocket Charms and Buy our Record Support Our Sickness. Each a kaleidoscopic blurred and blown out avant pop fantasia of sound, mixing in gorgeous melodies, with all manner of found sounds, backwards loops, ethereal vocals, studio fuckery, with very little regard for form or function, for the rules of pop. Instead, seemingly feeling their way through a totally tactile world of sound, everything bristly or buzzy or fuzzy, smeared or blurred, wah guitars wrapped around roaring motorcycles, Spectorish wall of guitars spread over, skittery almost Stone Roses-y rhythms. The most obvious reference is My Bloody Valentine. And at the risk of receiving an avalanche of hate mail, Teenage Filmstars are better. They may not have invented the sound, and they definitely didn't perfect it, instead, they fucked it all up, twisted it and chopped it and doused it in FX, and flipped it backwards, and let it sprawl and spin out of control, wrapped tightly into perfect pop gems one second, then let loose in unhinged squalls of sonic whatthefuck meltdowns the next. Each of the three records growing continually more abrasive, more intense, heavier, more backwards, more fractured and freaked out, and somehow only getting better and better and better.
Star is the first proper release from Teenage Filmstars, and was released a year or two after MBV's epochal Loveless. Opener "Kiss Me" is TOTALLY cribbed from Loveless, but it sounds like it was recorded on a busted 4-track, the rhythm track supplied by a fluttery backwards loop, the guitars super distorted but also brittle, woozy and wavery, all wrapped round the main hook, a guitar / vocal harmony that is just incredible, soaring and wistful but sort of super rocking, the whole thing dripping in effects, Loveless filtered through DIY bedroom pop, and then filtered through the twisted musical mind of visionary sonic alchemist Ball. The track crumbles near the end, the guitars disappear, motorcycles zoom by, the drums all distorted, snippets of classical piano, the twitter of birds, disembodied voices, one intoning "this just might be the finest composition I ever wrote", which it might have been, if it weren't for the follow up "Loving", which follows a similar template as "Kiss Me", with the main hook, a hushed wordless vocals crooning along to a slithery guitar line, all over a looped tribal rhythm, and tripped out wah guitar all over the place. If this was just a single, "Kiss Me" / "Loving", A side B side, it would be hands down one of the greatest singles ever! But we've barely just begun. And it only gets weirder and weirder.
"Inner Space" predates the fuzzy gauzy drift of Fennesz and Jeck and Tim Hecker by 20 years, unfurling sweeping vistas of sound, intertwined with buried melancholy vocals, muted rhythmic skitter, and deep whirring strings. "Apple" is all sixties strum and whirling effects laden swoosh, simple pop stretched out and blurred and distorted into something slightly alien, a warm dreamlike missive from beyond the stars. "Flashes" is a strange sort of electronic calypso, with a subtle techno throb beneath divine female vocals, propulsive krauty drums, and of course loads of FX. "Kaleidoscope" returns to the more MBV style rocking of the openers, and does indeed sound like a shoegazing fuzzrock kaleidoscope, a swirling dizzying space pop jam, the sounds slipping from speaker to speaker, the drums relentless and hypnotic, the vocals buried, but the main guitar melody soaring over the wavery sonic swirl beneath.
Then comes a three song suite of tripped out avant weirdness, drifting fuzzy almost melodies, strange intercepted radio broadcasts, a super deconstructed version of "Kiss Me", looped and flipped backwards and transformed into something else entirely, deep whirling drones, weird voices, samples, deep black ambience, shot though with streaks of glimmering buzz, the sounds of engines, choir like vocals, damaged effects laden rhythmscapes, flange and chorus and delay and reverb all wrapped around little sonic events, laced into a delicate framework of tripped out sound. Until the closer, "Moon", a gorgeous explosion of distorted pop effulgence, thick warbly organs, epic melodies, the guitar so distorted they almost sound like white noise, almost proggy keyboards, the whole thing fracturing into a brief falling apart coda of drum freakout, and skipping lurching guitars. Holy Shit.
So maybe it's not that Teenage Filmstars are -better- than My Bloody Valentine. Just weirder, more fucked up, more spaced out, more fractured, more challenging, more out there, less like ANYTHING you've ever heard, more... oh fuck it, okay... BETTER!!! Bring on the hate mail!!
This reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, all good enough to have been on the record proper, but with way more of the backwards production that would come to define their sound on future records, blissed out fuzzy shoegazey power pop, but crumbling and often in reverse, and thus fantastic. Also included lengthy liner notes, as confusing and obfuscated as the music itself.
The other two Filmstars discs are getting reissued soon, and will definitely also be Records Of The Week, so immerse yourself in Star while you can, cuz it only gets better and weirder from here on out...
MPEG Stream: "Kiss Me"
MPEG Stream: "Loving"
MPEG Stream: "Inner Space"
MPEG Stream: "Apple"

IKEDA, RYOJI 1000 Fragments (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
The first nine tracks of 1000 Fragments are not what you would expect from the Ryoji Ikeda of today. His contemporary installation work and accompanying audio documents have been researching pure frequency manipulation and psychoacoustic delirium with occasional bursts of Pan Sonic / Alva Noto ventures of post-techno rhythm. Albums like Dataplex or Test Pattern are uncompromisingly clean and conceptually simple; but in 1995, Ryoji Ikeda likened himself more a media provocateur than a minimalist technician. 1000 Fragments was originally released through Ikeda's own CCI label well over a decade ago and now enjoys the re-issue treatment care of Raster Noton. Those first nine tracks represent one of three distinct styles of work on 1000 Fragments, and collectively manifest as a frenzied media collage of disembodied voices, electro-shock noise bursts, and skittered militant rhythms, paralleling the dystoptic sound of Illusion Of Safety and The Hafler Trio from that same time period. The second section explores more sedate dronefield territory, still emerging from a post-industrial framework (again think Illusion Of Safety and The Hafler Trio albeit in their alchemical and gnostic guises) whose beating phasepatterns upon long-form tones refined from shortwave datastreaming anticipated where he would venture in many years later. The third chapter to 1000 Fragments is a subtle composition that weaves together the aerated reverb from what could be some forgotten choral piece by Ligetti. This finale is surprisingly delicate and beautiful for an artist best known for his cold, hard edges of pure electronica, although it has to be said that a track such as this does look forward to Ikeda's orchestral detour Op. While never intended to be a cohesive body of work, 1000 Fragments is an excellent overview of the origins of one of our favorite sound artists.
MPEG Stream: "What's Wrong"
MPEG Stream: "Zone 4"
MPEG Stream: "Luxus 1-3"

KISS Dynasty (Casablanca / Mercury) cd 10.98
Ok, we just realized there's not nearly enough KISS reviewed on our website. All that's there really is some weird Russian picture disc 12" versions of the Peter, Paul, Gene and Ace solo albums. Also two of the three multi-dvd volumes of video KISStory. And that's it. Well, I (Allan) am going through a bit of a Kiss phase right now, so I thought I'd start stocking and reviewing some Kiss albums, one at a time. They're cheap enough. And no, I'm not reliving my childhood, it's not a nostalgia thing, actually when I was a kid I wasn't into Kiss at all. I remember looking at elementary school classmates Kiss lunch boxes and thinking, that's meant for kids, it's way too clownish, so I'm not into it... is that the sort of snobbery that led me to work in a record store? just kidding. However, I've come around on Kiss. Now I'm a bit obsessed, and lately have been trying to build up my Kiss collection on (remastered) cd.
This is the most recent one I've acquired, and it wasn't high on my list 'cause usually it's derided as one of the weakest of the Kiss albums from the original makeup era, its 1979 release finding Kiss incorporating some DISCO elements to their music, much to the chagrin of Kiss's hard rocking fanbase. Of course, that almost makes it all the more appropriate for reconsideration in today's pro-disco musical climate. And I was surprised to find out just how much I liked it!
It was the first Kiss studio album to appear after those solo discs, and song-by-song it's striking how such stylistically disparate tracks co-exist, from the four Kiss members, almost as if it was a various artist collection. That's because, while not only do all four original members get songwriting credit (along with some outside helpers), all four get vocal turns as well (which, I think, only also ever happened on its 1977 predecessor Love Gun). There's three songs sung by Paul Stanley, three by Ace Frehley, two by Gene Simmons, and one Peter Criss.
The album starts off with the hit single "I Was Made For Loving You" (written by Stanley, with an assist from producer Vinnie Poncia and song doctor Desmond Childs). It was one of Kiss's biggest hits, actually, and you can see why, but also why diehard fans might have been upset... total, total disco. Stanley really lets loose his inner diva! It's a pretty great song though, even with the smooth cheese factor. Supposedly Stanley wrote it to show how easy it was to write a disco song, though that doesn't explain why he needed those other guys to help with it. We could imagine a banging remix by somebody like Lindstrom being a big hit today!! Love the propulsive disco drumming (not catman Criss, but secret session replacement Anton Fig, as on most of the album). Stanley also came up with another disco-ish cut "Sure Know Something" and the heavier (but still cheesy) "Magic Touch", all of 'em catchy as heck. Gene's "Charisma" is another cool KISS-style (of course) bubblegum hard rock meets disco crossover, with groovy echoey production touches. Definitely a highlight. "X-Ray Eyes" is his other entry here, and it's always nice to hear the distinctive singing of the demonic one. Ace does a cool Stones cover ("2,000 Man") and two originals of his own, including the punkish "Hard Times". His other number "Save Your Love" is pretty garagey too. And then the sole Peter Criss cut, "Dirty Livin'", sorta explains why he wasn't in the band for that much longer.
In some ways, it's all the more awesome, that the same disc featuring the most disco-ish stuff also has total punk rock on it too. I mean seriously, Ace's rough, super shitty, shouty singing on "Hard Times" (as well as the streetwise lyrics about living in the "citay", cutting school to "space our heads out" in the park) is pretty darn punk, especially when you realize it's found on three million selling album that also boasts a super polished, poppy disco hit single!
So, even on one of the most maligned (next to Music From The Elder, perhaps) of the make-up era Kiss platters, I found a lot to like. I've been playing it a lot (ask anybody). Maybe it's time you should give it another chance... or, for the younger of you, a first chance... and like I said, it's cheap! I'll review some more Kiss soon, maybe The Elder, which also actually has its moments too.
MPEG Stream: "Charisma"
MPEG Stream: "Hard Times"
MPEG Stream: "I Was Made For Loving You"

OSANNA Milano Calibro 9 (Vinyl Magic) lp 37.00
Finally reissued on vinyl, one our all time favorite Italian prog albums!!! Here's our gushing review when we listed the cd reissue not too long ago:
A few years back, we were all excited to review the first and best three albums by "possibly Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band" Osanna. As we said then, even limiting our discussion to the realm of Italian prog, it would be difficult to claim that Osanna are objectively better than the also amazing likes of Il Balleto, Le Orme, Area, New Trolls, Franco Battiato, Goblin, I Teoremi, RDM, Museo Rosenbach, etc. But, Osanna do somehow combine the key elements of what we like about those bands and prog in general into their first three crazy, colorful records, and thus deserve our hype. Ripping flute and sax solos, heavy psych guitar, powerful vocal choruses, hard rockin' prog drumming, weird musical changes and juxtapositions, electronic synth experimentation... Catchy, fun, fucked up prog from five nutty Italians, who want to rock out as much as be arty and display their adept musicianship. We went on to say that self-proclaimed "prog" dedication is not necessary for enjoyment of Osanna, as we think that these discs are good and weird and silly enough for AQ-customers into whatever sort of musical extremity (experimental, krautrock, psych, metal, classic rock) to dig.
This record was a soundtrack to a film called "Milano Calibro 9". Working in collaboration with arranger Luis Bacalov, who is also known for his work with the New Trolls' symphonic efforts, on this album Osanna incorporates strings, piano, and classical motifs. And, as befits a film soundtrack, many moods are touched upon... We don't know what the movie was all about, but it must have featured a fair amount of action, and trippy scenes. Osanna come up with super bombastic themes, high-energy instrumental freak-outs, suspenseful bits of jazziness, pretty vocal interludes, bleepy-bloopy synth fx, heavy electronic organ riff-drone, and the most heavy metal flute soloing you've ever heard. Totally kick ass. Osanna, you rock. Goblin was never this heavy.
MPEG Stream: "Preludio"
MPEG Stream: "Tema"

ROGUE MALE Animal Man (Metal Mind) cd 17.98
Those of you who exhibited the good taste to purchase the cd reissue of Rogue Male's debut album, the 1985 NWOBHM classic First Visit, highlighted here recently, are all probably wondering when the reissue of the band's second and last album, 1986's Animal Man, would arrive, right? And you might also be wondering, just how well does Animal Man stack up against First Visit anyway? Well good news all around. It's finally here, and damn right Animal Man is just as good as First Visit, maybe even better. Which means: tough, hard rockin' '80s British metal, catchy, somewhat speedy, and still semi-futuristic (as far as their Mad Maxish costuming goes anyway... also note the computer voices at the start of side one).
Motorhead is still an obvious influence, some Thin Lizzy too. We're hearing both in the vocal dep't., which are sorta gruff and yobbish... kinda punk really. "The Real Me" reminds us of some Di'Anno era Maiden, specifically "Running Free" from Killers. Love the harmonica blowin' coda on that one too! There's definitely a punk, streetwise element to this band's metallic stylings, lots of take-no-shit attitude certainly. In fact, anyone in the market for an uplifting personal anthem might try out track three, "Take No Shit"!
At their most pogoish punk, the poppy unemployment protest rocker "Job Center" could be a Rezillos track. And at times, particularly when they work in the quasi-industrial "sci-fi" effects, this sounds a bit Killing Joke, actually. But their influences go further back - "You're On Fire" includes a nod to the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.
As with the First Visit reissue, this too is limited (2000 copies) and comes in a digipack. One bonus track this time, the non-album cut "Rough Tough (Pretty Too)" from the "Belfast" 12" ep that preceded Animal Man's release. The cd booklet includes lyrics, and biographical liner notes that yet again misspell Rogue Male as Rouge Male. Whoops.
Remember, if Andee and Allan here at AQ had gotten their as-yet-unnamed and still utterly hypothetical '80s metal reissue label off the ground already, THEY might have reissued the two Rogue Male albums themselves, if they could have. Rogue Male was top of their list - get this (and First Visit) to really understand why, maybe.
MPEG Stream: "The Real Me"
MPEG Stream: "Progress"

LUCE, ED Wuvable Oaf #1 (Goat Blud Comics) comic 3.95
The return of Wuvable Oaf!!! If you remember a few months back when we listed the first issue of the Oaf (#0 for those keeping track), we gushed over the goofy funny story, the incredibly detailed art, the many many kitties, and did we mention the hair? ALL that hair!!
The first issue, if you don't remember, contained plenty of goofy dancing, man love, saucy almost sex, penis shaped birthday cakes, high fashion, reality TV, feline birthing, and an art punk band called Ejaculoid. The life and times of a big bearlike creature called Wuvable Oaf, and his friends, and his cats, and his dolls stuffed with his own body hair. Now seems like a good time to revisit the hair. The art is so intricate and detailed, all the characters so hirsute that it really must take as much time to draw the hair as it does the rest of the comic. But it's worth it, so over the top, and so completely and awesomely ridiculous.
So this issue gives us a glimpse into the creation of Oaf's stuffed little creatures as well as his ability to regenerate body hair just by 'forcing it', various 'worst' dates throughout the years, 1986, 1992, the origin of the Oaf, from his birth (his actual birth, euuw) to his misfit early years and eventual adoption, a visit to the gym, another feline misadventure, as well as a run in with punk rock band Ejaculoid, culminating in a visit to AQUARium records!! Hmmm. And that guy behind the counter, looks suspiciously like, OK, heck, it is! It's our own ANDEE, in all his Oaf drawn glory, surly and standoffish (not at all like the real Andee btw), giving Ejaculoid the cold shoulder, spouting his timeless catchphrase "I hate your band". Beside the thrill of being drawn into the Oaf universe, the record store is another example of artist Ed Luce's incredible eye for detail, the various records behind the counter, the posters on the wall, the band t-shirts, it's pretty amazing.
We're dying to see what happens as Oaf pursues his Ejaculoid lead singer crush, and of course we can never get enough kitties, drawn or otherwise, there are big plans in the works for Oaf, including more kick ass merch (check it out: http://www.wuvableoaf.com/) as well as an actual single from the imaginary(?) Ejaculoid.
Punk rock, kitties, lots and lots of hair, and of course big muscly dudes, what's not to love???

NADJA Truth Becomes Death (Conspiracy) lp 37.00
BACK IN STOCK!!!
Latest in Conspiracy's series of super deluxe vinyl Nadja reissues, this latest one the lp of a former Record Of The Week, our very first Nadja and still one of our top faves. The music is fantastic of course (keep reading), but like the other Nadja vinyl reissues, the packaging is spectacular. Housed in an embossed, diecut jacket, with printed thick full color inner sleeves, visible through the diecut, photos by Seldon Hunt, the vinyl thick as well, weights a ton and sounds amazing. Limited to only 750 copies, and there's an amazing forestscape etching on the fourth side too!! Super limited of course, so not sure if we can get more when we run out), and super expensive, but so worth it.
Here's what we said about the record when it was ROTW back on list 226:
Crashing waves of balls of yarn. That's one attempt to explain this band's sound... Along with bringing in the usual Earth, SUNNO))), and Boris comparisons. The Toronto based duo of Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, flute, piano, drum machines) and Leah Buckareff (bass and vocals) are an "atmospheric doom" band whose slow moving, heavy and heavily distorted music definitely shares something with the likes of early Earth, but although they've done a split 3" with UK doom nasties Moss (among several previous underground releases) you can't really define them as being a "metal" band at all. Their gauzy, droney, doom-spelled-backwards music has a warm, melodic underpinning, somewhere within the billowing clouds of distortion that form the three long tracks found here. I guess it's something like the churchy, "funereal" doom of Finland's Skepticism, really, but even more calm, echoed and ambient. Melancholic but very pleasant, with both growled vocals and gentle singing hovering just beneath the surface, this music somehow suggests rays of pure white light shining down from on high to illuminate their low-end murk... and during the final third of the last track "Breakpoint" the heaviness drops away altogether for a quietly sung coda that could be from the most mellow and poetic of indie-pop albums. Nadja's music is definitely more abstract and altered than, say, Ocean (another sludge-dirge outfit reviewed elsewhere this list), and is so much more beautiful than the monochrome darkness dwelt in by many other doom bands. If you can imagine an ultra-distorted hybrid of Growing, Codeine and, uh, Ras Algethi you'd maybe come close to the sound of Nadja... Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Bug / Golem"
MPEG Stream: "Breakpoint"

QUEST FOR BLOOD s/t (Ektro) cd 14.98
It may be difficult to believe at this point, but we don't actually love everything from Finland. Nor do we love everything from Japan. And what might be equally hard to believe, is that we don't love every band with a crazy name, a monicker equal parts ridiculousness and ultraviolence, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars, medieval and futuristic. Nor does the presence of flute supersede all other sonic considerations. And being chaotic and damaged and heavy and downright baffling is not, on its own, enough (although it's very very close).
But, and this is the very big BUT we must concern ourselves with here, we do love EVERY SINGLE band we've heard who hail from Japan, via Finland, with an awesomely over the top super metal name, who are heavy and noisy and mathy and fucked up and sort of black metal, and have tons and tons of FLUTE. But then again, there's only one band that fits that description. Japan's Quest For Blood. Released on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, championed by Reverend Bizarre's Albert Witchfinder (who also did the artwork and wrote the band's bio on the Ektro website), who create a dizzying complex bombast of proggy heaviness, of complex arrangements, of blackened metallic majesty, all gnarled riffing, furious drumming, riffy and groovy and buzzy, and flute everywhere, and it's the flute that defines the sound of Quest For Blood, whose sound is both metal and some sort of jazz, equally composed and abstract, black and buzzy, epic and deliriously dense, heavy yet folky and free. Quest For Blood began life as a slightly more traditional black metal band called Magane, but after a chance meeting with Yukihiro Isso, who had in the past played with Tatsuya Yoshida and Keiji Haino, the band changed direction, and blossomed into something else entirely, creating a sound never really heard before, and a sound that we now realize is one we had been fantasizing about for ages, black metal, Japanese folk, wild free flute, blast beats, weird chanted vocals, well, okay, we -would- have fantasized about it, had we ever imagined a band like that could actually exist. Well...
If you're anything like us, you'll be hooked after the first track, which begins with what sounds like Jew's harp and marimba, before launching into some blackened post metal riffing, over which a flute flutters and soars over the top, at once intense and melodic, but also airy and ethereal, it's like super dense metallic math rock meets black metal meets jazzprog, until suddenly the band drops out, leaving just solo flute, for 2 plus minutes, wild free jazz fluttery, folky, freaky, the melodies chaotic and complex one second, gentle and lilting the next, squeaks, skronks, wheezes, whistles, the sound falling somewhere between traditional Shakuhachi folk music and manic free jazz. Until finally, the band return, with some Japanese chanting, and epic Viking style riffery, the flute flitting right along, in its own way as aggressive and intense as the riffing beneath it. The second song follows suit, a roiling churning melee of riffs and blast beats, of serpentine riffing, of buzz and crunch, the flute again weaving dense tangled webs of melody draped over everything, a constant fluttering flitting sonic presence, relentless and breathless and truly dizzying.
The whole record is truly relentless, the flute in full on wild solo jam mode continuously, as the band wind and weave various metallic frameworks underneath. And while the sound is dynamic in its own way, it's also utterly ferocious and unrelenting, occasionally allowed some space, when the song unwinds and the flute is left to drift in long stretches of abstract shimmer, or the band slips into something slightly less manic, but for the most part, this is a gloriously mind blowing progjazzmathmetal onslaught.
As if the record wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder, and more varied, near the end, as the songs become more dynamic, the arrangements more stop / start, the various woodwinds offering up underwater gurgles and squiggly manic melodies, than more traditional flute sounds. "Yayema" sounds almost gospel-y, very melodic and dramatic, a little over the top, the melodies major key and majestic, but of course peppered with bursts of furious blasts and wild squall of flute freakout. "Uchina" begins like many of the other tracks, a jazz metal blow out, this time with raspy creature-like vocals, and some pounding piano, until the band drops out, leaving just drums and flute and vocals, reminding us a bit of a more freaked out version of that Dave Lombardo plays Vivaldi record, but with far out chanting, distant raspy vocalizations, all very tribal and weird, with a definite Ruins vibe, before launching back into full on metal mode, now with wailing guitar leads all tangled up with the wild flute.
The final track begins with solo flute, before the band joins in, all rough and raw and lo-fi, pounding out a simple mesmerizing riff, almost Circle style, the drums a murky thud, the flute ethereal and transcendent, eventually, the drums sputtering into some wide open space, before getting all wound up with streaks of scrabbly off kilter guitar in some sort of Ginn-ish guitar drum duel, laced with atonal piano pound, fiery flute and crumbling noisy chaos, finally finishing off in a blaze of metallic murk and abstract black jazz whatthefuck.
So awesome. And confusionally genius. Some seemingly impossible mix of black metal, free jazz, Italian prog, traditional Japanese folk, math rock and noise rock; a mind bending, ear melting mash up of Osanna, the Ruins, Absu, Solar Anus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Comus, Cromagnon, Ghost, Finntroll, Jethro Tull, Circle, Xynfonica, and who the fuck knows what else.
Needless to say, or perhaps worth saying over and over and over. WAY RECOMMENDED. And another contender for metal (or whatever) record of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Takasago"
MPEG Stream: "Noise"
MPEG Stream: "Rakuseki Kakugo"

TO BLACKEN THE PAGES A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction (Colony) cd 10.98
The world needs another SUNNO))) or Earth like it needsŠ well, it doesn't. Nor does it need another Slint, or a Mogwai, or a Justice, or an Animal Collective. Every time a band blows up, suddenly a million bands are there to get sucked along in their wake. But never was this phenomenon more egregious than with the new wave of doom/drone/dirge outfits. At the risk of repeating ourselves again, it seems like every band, heavy or otherwise, that features at least one member with a "drone side project" or a "minimal doom side project", barely keeping ahead of the various people dabbling in back metal, but we digress.
Like most things, it probably seems easy, but isn't. The whole leaning your guitar against the amp and letting it go, sure we joke about that in reviews, but it's way harder than that. Compare the millions of ho-hum guitardrone cd-r's to something like the last amazing record by Vulture Club (we still have some, if you haven't bought one, you should, really). It's like night and day. So we're always pretty cautious when we hear about a new guitar drone group or some doomdirge record we oughtta dig.
But once in a while, a group comes along, who only just barely fit into that whole genre, skirting it, creating something totally their own, with just the merest hints of sounds more familiar, like all great bands, borrowing and stealing freely, but not just regurgitating those sounds right back at us, instead, spreading them out in some underground lab, pulling them apart, exploring how they tick, dissecting them, then attempting to put them back together again, with some of their own parts, some sounds and songs that have been fermenting in a dusty corner of said lab, the results then something new, a patchwork of sounds, that in the right hands, can be deftly woven into something beautiful, something dark and mysterious, something like this.
A Semblance Of Something Appertaining to Destruction is the latest from the mysteriously monickered To Blacken The Pages, part four of an ongoing series in sound, a sprawling dirgescape that owes much to meandering post rock, downtuned slow motion sludge, drifty abstract doom, and the sort of heavy doomic countrified sludge that Earth has been exploring over the last few records.
Three tracks, the shortest 11 minutes, the longest nearly 18, each a dusty, moonlit drift, simple minor key twang, slowed down space rock riffage, streaks of feedback and buzzing distant drones, swirling FX, layers of guitar fuzzy and druggy. The opener, more than Earth or SUNNO))) or any of those, sounds much more in line with Loop or Spacemen 3, a drugged out soporific riff, that lumbers a little too slow to rock, even a little too slow to constitute any sort of groove. Instead, it's a dreamy droney drift, heavy and mutedly chuggy, churning onward through a sky of whirls and swirls and rumbles, underpinned by plenty of buzz and fuzz and blur. It's like a super slowed down way more abstract Loop, which we probably don't need to explain to you is in fact a very good thing.
The second track introduces drums, which do little to up the propulsion, this is still weary, dreary and delightfully spaced out. A super spare, abstract doomy lope, the sky above criss crossed with high end guitar skree, the drums supporting another blown out slow motion space rock riff, the whole track trudging across an endless expanse of shimmery buzz and swirling space-y effects. Everything muted and mumbly and lazily mesmerizing.
The final, longest track, ditches the drums, returning to the lazy smoky sprawl of the opener, but this time even more abstract, the central guitar part, drifting well below the constantly shifting layers of sound, coruscating high end, over billowing deep rumbles, a glacial, stately, almost funereal anti-groove, perfect late night, drift off, trip out slow motion space rock krautdrone. Fans of Earth and Expo '70 will dig especially, as in some ways, this does sound like a strange hybrid of the two, although all of you into the slow dreamy droney heavy minimalism would do well to check this out.
MPEG Stream: "Trek In"
MPEG Stream: "A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction"

RAVJUNK Uppsala Stadshotell Brinner (Transubstans) 2cd 29.00
This raw Swedish progg-punk band, whose name, delightfully enough, means "fox piss" in English, got their start back in 1970, a bunch of teenagers drinking beer and jamming and doing the occasional Black Sabbath or Jimi Hendrix cover. As they got a little more serious, they wrote more original songs, but jamming remained a big thing with them. They were part of the Swedish underground music scene in the '70s, playing the summer free festivals and hanging with freaks and anarchists and so forth... also they were friends with such better known bands as Guidbrallan and Samla Mammas Manna.
It wasn't until 1976, not long after they'd started calling themselves Ravjunk (named after some terrible coffee the drummer had been confronted with one morning), that they got around to recording an album, Uppsala Stadshotell Brinner, made on the cheap in their own, primitive but functional home-built DIY recording studio. They pressed up copies of the record themselves, and distributed it as best they could, indeed getting some good reviews and radio-play. It was to be Ravjunk's only album, but they did follow it over the final years of the decade, before their dissolution in 1981, with a number of 7" singles (not included here), the band apparently pursuing more and more of a heavy punk rock sound... which you can already hear hinted at on their album.
The album itself, is a heavily fuzzed out mix of bluesy jams, Hendrixian guitar wailing, krautrockish drone, and plenty of garagey proto-punk attitude, all recorded mostly live, with a raw, lo-fi sound... all the more charming for it, really. It's all here on this deluxe digipack double disc cd reissue, along with unreleased material from the Uppsala Stadshotell Brinner sessions, and recently discovered demos and even rawer live tapes, the complete recorded works of Ravjunk circa 1976-1977. It would have been cool if they had included Ravjunk's 1978-1980 singles too (one of which was banned in Sweden for political reasons), but there is -plenty- of music here, almost two hours of it, from the gruff blues punk of "Hey Little Girl" (something you might imagine the Baby Grandmothers would sound like if they'd heard Motorhead) to the brooding title track to the calm and blissful spacerock of "Nasten (Den Tysta Skogen)"... the krautrock of Can and the like is definitely an influence on these discs' many sinuous, rhythmic instrumental psych excursions like "Vi Ses (Vid Taj Mahal)". Other obvious inspirations include the Stooges, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Cream, the Groundhogs, Hawkwind, etc... the MySpace page for the (recently reunited) band even cites T2, Joakim Skogsberg and Magma! If you're into gritty '70s underground sounds, then this could definitely be your cup of fox's piss! Perhaps grittiest on the non-album material included, such as the 21 minute endless jamming rant and rave of the bonus track that ends disc one, "Naturbarn". (Meanwhile, the second disc ends with a 10+ minute live garage-psych punk stomper, a version of David Peel and the Lower East Side's "Who Killed Brian Jones? Was It One Of The Rolling Stones?"). Very cool.
MPEG Stream: "Hey Little Girl"
MPEG Stream: "Inferno (Maestro) part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Delerium"
MPEG Stream: "Snospar (Del 1, 2, & 3)"

EMERALDS Solar Bridge (Hanson) cd 14.98
For some mistaken reason, we thought this was gonna be really noisy. Maybe 'cause it's on Hanson (home to such earhole excruciators as Wolf Eyes, Metalux, Smegma, and Hair Police just to name a few of the noisniks on the label). But we were wrong wrong wrong. Instead, this is totally calm and lovely electronic space music in the 'kosmiche' vein of '70s and '80s Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and Ashra and the like. It won't harsh your mellow at all, quite the opposite! This is bliss-out droney stuff produced by a Midwestern trio using the equation: analog synthesizers x 2 + (electric guitar + effects). Something like that. Earlier in their career (this is the cd debut after lots of limited cassette and cd-r action) they used to use only TV sets as sound sources! Glad they gave that up, as Solar Bridge wouldn't be nearly so soothing if there were, like, breaks for commercials. You'd have to Tivo it.
Seriously, though, this is a droning delight. There's just two tracks here, but they are 'side-long' ones. The 12:34 "Magic" and the 14:14 "The Quaking Mess". It's almost New Age-y (as so much indie, experimental music is turning out to be, when you think about it) but not too too New Age-y. Though nicely mesmeric, it also has a quietly creepy edge to it, and a real grinding, full physicality at higher volumes. Emeralds create waves and layers of subtle, gently pulsating electronic gurble, but not in an overly wispy way. For instance, feedback whispers and glimmers through the cracks in the drone at the start of "The Quaking Mess", which then builds into more of a dense, fuzzy drone-sheen. The kind that radiates light, and that you want to wrap around yourself and your ears like a blanket. Definitely one of our faves from Hanson thus far, noisy or not!
MPEG Stream: "Magic"
MPEG Stream: "The Quaking Mess"

MASONNA Ultimate Collection Vol.2 (Alchemy) cd 21.00
What could be better (and noisier) than Masonna's Ultimate Collection Volume 1? Volume 2 of course. In honor of the man's 20 years of noisemaking madness, Alchemy has reissued several crucial, long out of print Masonna documents as two-on-one cds in this Ultimate Collection series. You can check out our review, elsewhere on our site, of Vol. 1 to read more about Masonna and his legendary place in the pantheon of Japanese noise, alongside the likes of Merzbow and Hijokaidan... suffice to say if you've never heard this stuff before, be warned! It's noisy all right. Not everyone will have the same reaction (no siree) but for us, when we hear the harsh sonic genius of Masonna, it's like, we freeze, fascinated, compelled - numbed and hypnotized even. It's really enjoyable... really.
So, Volume 2 comprises the early 1990 album Shinsen Na Clitoris (of which only 499 copies were pressed), and the 1998 cd-r Tripsy Sunshine (which was even rarer, in an edition of 49 copies!). Rather than the many short, sharp, shocking tracks found on Vol.1, there's just four long tracks here, each of the original albums split into two approximately 15 minute pieces. Though, on Shinsen Na Clitoris, it still sounds like a lot of cut-up edits.
That album is all about totally destroyed, distorted to hell vocals, Masonna's insane shrieking demonic baby babble in a swirling vortex of feedback and warped FX, the sounds of guitar (?), electronics, and his voice all one massive noisy jibber-jabber. Whew! He's really freaking out, hyperventilating probably. Later, on the Tripsy Sunshine tracks, Masonna moves more into the fuzzed out psych-synth territory of his Christine 23 Onna and Space Machine projects, with washes of fuzzy synth overload and throbbing pounding rhythms. So it becomes a bit more 'musical' but just barely. There's certainly gobs of sheer chaotic please turn that down NOISE to happily torment your earholes with as well, from start to finish.
You know how you can't fit more than, like, 80 minutes of music on a compact disc? Well this disc is one hour long, but it's probably got more (noisy) SOUND crammed into it than any cd you can find, whatever the length. Basically, Masonna takes to heart the principle that if you're gonna make noise, make it the noisiest. And he sure does.
MPEG Stream: "Shinsen Na Clitoris Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Space Psychetronics Erector"

AURAL FIT II (PSF) cd 16.98
Another of several new PSF titles new in stock, and this one's a BRUTE. Holy moly. Deafening sandpaper for the ears... and we love it, just like we love the likes of Skullflower, Aufgehoben, and Cadaver In Drag, all of whom share the same sonic sandpapery, amped up overload absurdity of this band. Aural Fit, you may recall, if you read our list attentively or are especially tuned in to the Japanese underground, had a track on the Tokyo Flashback 5 comp, followed by a self-released full-length (now out of print) that we recommended some years back to fans of Boris and Earth looking for an even more extreme dose of heavy-duty, doomy dirge. On this new disc, Aural Fit still do the dirge, some of the time, remaining ultra-heavy all of the time. But, their sound has gotten even more "cacophonic and dense" so that it's ridiculous the band's called, merely, Aural Fit. More like Aural Apocalypse! They're not having a fit, they've having a catastrophic explosion. The sound of mechanical monsters on the march, lumbering through the smoking ruins of civilization, crushing and killing anything that hasn't already fled or been vaporized by their initial onslaught. It's four tracks, 38+ minutes of feedback, distortion, pounding percussion, and buried screams. Punishing noise rock, psych rock insanity. Utterly blown-out freak-outs, so in-the-red that your shuddering stereo speakers would be glowing if you looked at 'em through infrared goggles!
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 2"

MELVINS Nude With Boots (Ipecac) cd 16.98
Y'know, the Melvins have been one of our favorite bands for so long we practically take 'em for granted. But when a new album comes out, it's still pretty exciting. Almost like it must have been in the '60s when, like, a new Beatles LP would be released, that's what it's like for us and the Melvins... except heck the Melvins have been around now for, like, 100x as long as the Beatles' whole career lasted.
So, yes, yah, yay, it's a new Melvins! Again on Ipecac, which means it's yet another Melvins cd wit