WOODEN SHJIPS s/t (Holy Mountain) 2cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Whoo-hoo! We thought these bonus disc havin' Wooden Shjips cds were all gone, gone, gone... but there was a serendipitous "warehouse find" and now we have a few more for anyone who missed out! Act fast, though!
From right here in our sunny San Francisco neighborhood, comes an eagerly anticipated new release that clinches its Record Of The Week status not only by comprising a fantastic debut full-length album of hypnotically searing garagey psych jams, but also by including a BONUS disc (limited edition, first 2000 copies only) in a cardboard sleeve shrinkwrapped to the jewel case, featuring all the tracks from the now-out-of-print 10" and 7" vinyl records released last year that first made us -- and so many others, foremost among 'em Tom Lax of Siltbreeze/Siltblog fame, and Byron Coley at The Wire -- into drooling Wooden Shjips fanatics.
And yes, if you haven't run into them before, it's Wooden ShJips with a J, that's not a typo, just a way we guess of making their moniker more psychedelic (and easier to Google, too). They've garnered a lot of deserved attention from folks into minimalistic psych throb, that's for sure, and further whetted everyone's appetites for this album with the "Summer Of Love" 7" single that came out a couple weeks ago and has already sold out (2nd pressing in the works, be patient).
So, this new self-titled album follows on from that single with five more fuzzy, super groovy, guitar/organ/bass/drums slowburners, somewhere between Comets On Fire and Circle, with a definite Doors-y vibe as well, in part due to the keys which give this an almost loungey relaxed feel at times, and in part due to the occasional laidback Morrison-ish vocals of guitarist Erik Johnson. Erik also makes us think of Neil Young as well, as his more "out" guitar solos -- some if 'em SCORCHING -- could be off of Young's feedback-filled Arc. Or a Les Rallizes Denudes record! Track four, "Blue Sky Bends", having the best Rallizes-ish drone-factor of the disc. Overall, we'd say that these tracks, as a development from their earlier material, exhibits more and more of a throwback to the ballroom Frisco style of the sixties... now they just need to get a light show happening! But something tells us they'd be all about stark bright white strobes and dark black shadows only, maybe some b&w op art spirals, if their monochrome packaging aesthetic and the general heavy lidded mood of the music is anything to go by...
And then there's the limited bonus disc. Don't dawdle, you don't want to miss it (particularly if you didn't score the original vinyl releases). It's got the three tracks from their debut Shrinking Moon For You 10" (the one that they didn't even tell us about even though we see these guys on the street every day, we had to find out about it from Mr. Lax's blog!) and both cuts from their Dance, California / Clouds Over Earthquake 7". We'll try to summarize what we said about these songs before. The music from the 10" starts off with the title cut, a fuzzy garagey stomp, a groove that locks in and plows forward relentlessly. We began to feel like we were listening to some sort of garage rock Steve Reich. Guitars just sort of buzzing along, blooping new wave bass right underneath, simple solid drumming. But then in swoops some super feedback guitar that sounds like a demented horn section, and before you can examine it more closely it disappears, and we're back to the groove. That happens a few more times before the vocals kick in, sort of sing songy, but SO drenched in delay that the words get all jumbled up and are sort of jettisoned into outer space. There is also a subtle wash of fuzzy keyboards giving the whole thing a sort of Loop vibe. the second track is quite similar except the vocals are a bit more distinct, sort of laidback and mumbly. After a few listens, it became clear that there is some sort of minimal thing going on, but it's more like some lost Velvet Underground track arranged for Reich and Riley. Droney and drifty and druggy and totally mesmerizing. The third track bucks the trend and instead veers off into some tripped out ambience, with drifting motes of guitar fuckery, random sounds and noises, and some cool creepy backwards vocals. Sort of like an indie hipster freenoise "Revolution #9." Cool.
The two tracks from the 7" are also quite sonically similar to the 10" cuts. First up, surprise surprise a buzzy lo-fi garage groove, beneath bizarre super distorted insectoid guitar leads, buzzing WAY up in the mix and sounding almost like some primitive malfunctioning synth. But the whole time, beneath the alien buzz, the groove just hums along, like some extra baked Velvet Underground outtake. "Clouds Over Earthquake" is way more laid back, some blown out sun baked riffage, a super lazy groove, like Loop played at 16rpm, decorated with warm hornlike melodies that eventually stretch out into some serious outerspace psych rock explorations. The vocals we loved so much on the 10" resurface here too, laconic, drawled sung/spoken and super affected, very Lou Reed sounding albeit buried way down in the mix and absolutely drenched in thick reverb and fuzzy delay. Awesome!
So those tracks are all here (not in that order though) along with a radio edit of "Dance, California" for completists. These are the songs that had us jonesing for a full length, which you've just read about up above, and now all this music is together in one crucial package, while they last.
FYI, a vinyl version of the full-length is to follow in a month or two we're told... and maybe Holy Mountain can come up with some better cover art for it too? We were a bit underwhelmed by the blurry black & white photo of the band sitting around on the steps to someone's house, but then again their vinyl releases were in clear sleeves with no art to speak of, so I guess elaborate packaging ain't their thing. But motorik minimalist krautrocky pulsations, mellow Doorsy '60s groove, and out and out geetar psych-splosions are, so we can't complain!!
MPEG Stream: "We Ask You To Ride"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Sky Bends"
MPEG Stream: "Clouds Over Earthquake"

CIRCLE Arkades (Fourth Dimension) 2cd 19.98
BACK IN STOCK! At last... not sure if this actually got repressed, or if our supplier just found a few in a misplaced box or something, but we've got about a dozen of these now, and may or may not be able to get more. Probably not, actually. So if you missed it before, don't sleep on it now. Here's our review from back last summer....
Finland's mighty masters of metallic hypno drone rock, Circle, have slowly transformed into a sort of musical Jeckyll and Hyde. Beginning life with a twisted take on motorik murk, hypnotic riffing, relentless rhythms, and circular song structures, the band gradually became obsessed with metal, and thus Circle records got heavier and riffier, with more wild vocals and metallic bombast, resulting recently in a wildly productive explosion of Circle releases and Circle related side projects, the sludgey rifflords Pharaoh Overlord, the forthcoming Steel Mammoth records, and the most recent Circle release, Panic, perfectly reflecting their split personality split evenly between ambient whoooosh and grinding old skool punk rock. Confusing sure, but also wild and glorious and completely and totally kick ass.
But as Circle records generally got heavier and riffier, they were balanced by a series of lp only releases, all of which seemed to be meditative and droney and dreamy. But for listeners sans turntables, a whole side of Circle must have seemed like it was simply fading way. Well, now one of our favorite vinyl only releases from Circle has gotten re-released on cd, and with a bonus disc to boot (3 tracks, 40+ minutes). So those of you who were wondering what was going on over in Circle lp land, now's your chance to get a glimpse, and obviously all you Circle obsessives who have the lp already, will probably have to pick it up for the extra disc, essentially an entire new (live!) Circle record!
Here's a retooled version of our review of the lp when it first came out (folks who already own the lp, skip down to the end to read about the bonus disc):
Finland's mighty masters of metallic hypno drone rock return, with yes, another brand new record (previously lp only, now on cd), and their obsession (one of their many strange obsessions) with Southern Rock has finally reached critical mass. Not so much musically, although there are subtle hints here and there, as visually and conceptually. This set, recorded live on Brian Turner's radio show on WFMU when Circle were in the states a year or two back is a monster. Two epic and massively long tracks, combining the metallic leanings of their later records (albeit subtly), with the murky propulsiveness of their earlier records, as well as their droney improvised abstract side (most noticeable on the lp only Mountain). It's kind of remarkable how all of Circle's disparate musical personalities fit so well together. But before we get to the music, let's talk about the sleeve. And the Southern Rock. The cover features a knotty pine background, riddled with bullet holes, two crossed pistols above the band name. Very Sergio Leone... The tray card features a band photo seemingly branded into the wood, with Circle donning cowboy hats and sombreros, whooping it up like that last freeze frame in an episode of Bonanza (maybe it was CHiPs, but Bonanza makes more sense here). Then there's Brian Turner's eyewitness account of the musical showdown that occurred when Circle showed up at WFMU to record their set printed like an old weathered Western town wanted poster. Woe was the pasty British garage band that felt Circle's wrath. Broken glass and tobacco spit figure prominently. And let's not forget the Confederate flag on one cd, and the crossed bandoleers on the other (the discs are labeled Rebel Platter and Bullet Platter after all).
Thankfully (or maybe not, some might be thinking) this Southern Rock doesn't filter all the way down to the music. Instead we've got more of that Circular genius we just can't get enough of.
The first track, "The Greatest Kingdom", begins as an abstract soundscape of spacey effected riffs, sort of blurry and drifty, above strange mumbled mutterings and what sounds like alien scat singing. The vibe is strangely dubby and Middle Eastern sounding. Eventually a warm wash of woozy distorted guitars builds into a monstrous swell of sound, warm and thick and sort of heavy, while buried beneath is a burbling cauldron of electronic squiggles and gurgling vocal sputters. Out of nowhere, like a beam of sunlight with a small flock of faeiries flitting about, comes a strange dreamy drift of almost renaissance faire sounding festive folk, which dissipates quickly into a swirl of speaking-in-tongues vocals and insect like electronics before drifting off.
Track two, "The Ghost Of The Highway", is a bit darker, with faux throat singing over ominous psych sludge riffing like classic Circle but slowed way down. Groovy and dark, peppered with subtle tribal percussion. Weirdly enough, that weird dreamy stretch of faerie flecked folk sunniness that surfaced briefly on side A, shows up again here in a slightly different form, and disappears just as quickly, returning to a VERY Circular propulsive groove. Drums skitter instead of pound, while a guitar drifts and stutters, sounding a bit like the guitar line from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" but way more druggy and psychedelic!
This double disc reissue tacks on a whole 'nother record, three more loooong tracks, the shortest ten minutes, the longest sixteen plus, and starts off sounding as Western as the artwork would have led us to believe. Lots of random shuffling, crowd noise, recorded live, a murky haze, like smoke in an old West barroom, then the riff kicks in, somewhere between classic spacey krautrock and Morricone spaghetti Western twang, the drums simple and propulsive, the riff slowly drifting and changing shape, while the vocals growl over the top, things like "Sixxxxxx, sixxxx, sixxxx" or "Kaaaaaaay, kaaaaaaay, kaaaaaay" and assorted other mumblings and guttural whispers. Very ominous and evocative. Right smack in the middle, the riff gives way to a strange chaotic interlude of sustained chords, simple rhythmic pulses, swooping synths, and wild nearly operatic vocals, before giving way to a simple drums only coda.
The second track begins with some strange rave-y synthesizers, wrapped around the same growled vocalizations, building and building, but never completely rocking out, instead, lingering in some endlessly repeating world of tension and no release, the synths looping, the drums mirroring the synths, and a wild array of vocals, some breathy and earnest, some wild and over the top, and of course plenty of mysterious grunting and growling.
And they close out the record with one of the highlights from their live sets, not the song necessarily, but the RIFF, a super kick ass, super rocking MEGA-riff, can't remember what record it's from, but what a riff, live it's the sort of riff that induces immediate headbanging, with a killer dynamic stop start "DAH DAH.... DAH DAH.... DAAAAAAHHHH", it's the kind of part in a song, you NEVER want to end, but leave it to Circle to confound, and after a few run throughs, the band pulls back and blisses out, into some strange, super extended FX drenched free floating jam, guitars hover and swirl, the drums a distant shuffle and skitter, the keyboards tinkling abstractly, vocals crooning dramatically throughout, like some theater production gone well off the rails, all culminating in a dense cloud of drum splatter, FX chaos, super affected vocals, and thick swooshes of instrumental buzz and blur. But just as you think it's over, in true Circle fashion, they explode back into action, and finish off with a blistering blast of THAT riff. Awesome.
So it seems that maybe we'll all have to keep waiting for the inevitable, that record they keep threatening us with, when Circle finally become a bizarre krautrock psychrock dronemetal version of the Marshall Tucker Band, but for now, just crack open that Jack Daniels, throw those boots up on the desk (careful with those spurs!), pull the brim of your ten gallon down over your eyes, put a little pinch between your teeth and gums, turn it up and drift off...
MPEG Stream: "The Greatest Kingdom"
MPEG Stream: "The Ghost Of The Highway"

FAUST So Far (Polydor / Universal) cd 17.98
One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice.
But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"
MPEG Stream: "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl"
MPEG Stream: "No Harm"

EROC Eroc 2 (Zwei) (Revisited) cd 17.98
The Brain reissue series on Revisited continues to bring us the crazy krautrock goodies! Of course, having already raved about the first solo album from the drummer for theatrical prog loonies Grobschnitt, Joachim Ehrig aka Eroc, we were exceedingly curious about this second one. Ja, Eroc 1 was a HUGE hit 'round here. After all, we called it a "krautrock masterpiece" and compared it to all sorts of favorite things, from Harmonia to Fridge! So, what's the deal with Eroc 2, originally released a year later in 1976? The cut-up confusionality that was a deliberate, delightful part of Eroc's debut is continued here, but taken to further extremes, which makes this more of a DIFFICULT spin at times. It's more bizarre, with the curiosity factor up and the overall listenability factor slightly down.
Like Eroc 1, this has its share of moody, melodic, synth-laden instrumental bliss-outs for the Cluster fans in the house. Eroc 2's electronics also venture into carefree, Bavarian dances for Liederhosen wearing' hippies. And then there's a bunch of paranoiac freakouts to give Faust a run for their money! In a word: Quirky. Heck, downright weird. But it's krautrock, that's what we came for. The mood of the music displays good and bad vibes both -- and a sense of humor, we're pretty sure (though our lack of German makes it tough know just what's a joke). There's a healthy amount of talking (auf Deutsch) all over this album. Singing too. Though there's lots of purely instrumental parts as well. But with 30 tracks (13 of 'em bonus cuts!), some of them dense epics, many others brief under-a-minute interludes of insanity, the puzzling and the pleasing are in rough proportion. Amidst Eroc's wonderful spacey, synthy, psychedelic music, you'll hear all sorts of stuff. Children's voices. Babbling outbursts. Electronic squiggles -- and the sound of maniacal sawing? Oh and orgasmic (male) moaning... Perhaps it's all some sort of concept album and all this makes sense, tied together in some strange narrative. Or, they're all nonsense non sequiturs, anyway? We don't know, but are amused/intrigued/entertained. Definitely, get Eroc 1 first, but check this out too. If you like your krautrock to be uber krauty, full of surreal surprises and jokes you won't get, you'll probably dig this. Like Eroc 1, this consists of stuff recorded in Eroc's home studio, growing out of tapes intended to augment Grobschnitt's live shows. Both records turned into personal LP-length visions well worthy to stand alone.
Can't wait to hear Eroc 3, which is supposedly also been reissued or will be soon...
MPEG Stream: "Nebelwelt"
MPEG Stream: "Geleert Worte"
MPEG Stream: "Sonnenfluch"
MPEG Stream: "Morley's Orgasm"

HARVEY MILK My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be (Relapse) cd 13.98
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. What an awesome title. And the record cover, a bull and a rooster and an ornate candle, the words Harvey Milk in tiny blue type over the rooster. On the cd, the text: "Harvey Milk is Cronos, Mantis, Abadon". Song titles like "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", "The Anvil Will Fall" and "Merlin Is Magic". By now most avid AQ customers are very familiar with the mysterious sludge rock power trio Harvey Milk, but when we first laid hands on this disc, back in 1994, we had no idea what to think. As if the artwork wasn't enough to have us scratching our heads, the music inside was even more willfully difficult. And still is. Obviously borne of some serious Melvins worship, Harvey Milk, took the already difficult sound of the Melvins to new heights, or depths, crafting lengthy sludge jams, packed with as much space as riffs, long expanses of spastic John Bonham like drumming, vocals a whiskey soaked gravelly bellow, guitars thick black sheets. This was without a doubt some of the strangest music we had ever heard. But at the same time, somehow the most beautiful. The sound of Harvey Milk was some impossible blend of noise rock, math rock, post rock, punk rock, twentieth century composition and METAL. All tangled into one huge gnarled black hole of sound. A sound that crawls more than it rocks, but when it does rock, it blows away pretty much any other band in the land. 
Lots of you no doubt already own Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men, arguably one of the greatest records EVER, heavy, sludgy or otherwise. If you don't you need to stop reading for a second and go buy it right now. We'll wait...........
Okay, Courtesy was HM record number two, and found the band 'tightening' up their sound, taking the chaos of My Love, and crafting it into, well, more chaos. It's hard to say how they changed between these two records. My Love is a tiny bit faster. The best way to describe it is like this: My Love is to Courtesy, the way Nirvana's Bleach is to Nevermind, more immediate and raw, but with some of the best songs the band ever wrote, and like Bleach, it's a record that tons of fans continue to insist is the best thing they've ever done. And while we are of the mind that Courtesy is in fact the best Harvey Milk record ever (unless you ask Allan, who would probably say The Pleaser, the -other- HM reissue this week, a killer disc of Harvey Milked ZZ Top worship) returning to My Love has us maybe reconsidering. We can't actually decide. There are so many amazing songs on My Love that we had forgotten about, as good as anything on Courtesy. It would probably be more realistic to proclaim My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be / Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men as the ultimate math-sludge-slow-motion-dirge-doom-whatever one-two punch EVER. Maybe the greatest first and second record combo of all time. Needless to say, if you're at all into the current crop of slow motion doom mongers, and have somehow missed out on these records, you will lose your fucking mind (and odds are loads of you have never heard My Love as it's been out of print for ages). It's no exaggeration when we say every song on My Love is darn near perfect. But a few of our favorites:
"A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" was the absolute first peep we ever heard out of HM, and it's brutal and beautiful, so utterly confusing and unlike anything ever. A frustratingly obtuse abstract jam, even calling it a jam is stretching the definition of the word jam, there's LOTS of space, the track begins with a minute of weird electronic noodling, a huge wash of cymbals and guitar scrape, a killer BIG drum fill, and then... nothing... a weird barely there buzz, some cymbal dings, a moaning cello.... How amazing is that?!?!? It isn't until halfway through the song before the riff finally kicks in, and even then, it's like pulling teeth to get these guys to let loose and rock. In fact, it's not until the last two minutes that the band really go for it. And it was worth the wait, but before you know it comes "Women Dig it", slowing everything waaaaaaaaay back down. A super drawn out exercise in tension and release, with long stretches of just drums, big Zeppelin style drums, accompanied by mewled vocal, but which features one of the most awesome riffs EVER, so much so, that when it kicks in, it makes you want to rock the fuck out, which you could do if it wasn't just played once every couple minutes.... oh the glorious frustration!!! It's the sort of riff most bands would not only kill for, but that most bands would repeat over and over and over and base a whole song  around, whereas the Milk kick out that riff maybe twenty times, in the whole song, and all clumped together, with the rest of the song spent plodding and drifting and doing anything but locking into a killer groove. But that's what makes Harvey Milk so great, when that riff DOES drop, it's a ridiculous release, like an orgasm, this unbelievable rock-out relief, but like with most things it's the wait, the build up, that is the best part. Or at least the 'other' best part.
Another classic Milk track is "The Anvil Will Fall", a moody drifting whispery ballad, peppered by huge bursts of downtuned pummel, when out of nowhere, in come the strings, some patriotic hymn, an almost recognizable tune that Creston sings along too in his warbly raspy croon, even kicking it up into a wicked falsetto, before petering back out into the original hushed crawl, eventually launching into a super moving moody goddamned ANTHEM. The sort of song that should have sludge fans teary eyed with hat in hand, and hand over heart. And finally...
"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", besides being the best song title maybe EVER, it's also one of the greatest songs ever, a really really fucking weird song, howled tortured vocals over a relentless tribal drum fill with occasional bursts of Zeppelin like riffage, before the guitar transforms into a static rumbling drone, and the drums just sort of do whatever the hell they want, for ever it feels like... and then the band launches back into it and it's some relentless bastardized groovy Southern sludge jam, but like all HM songs, they stop not long after to just sort of wander, and plod and wait, and pause, before doing it all over again....
We could go one and on, and get all mushy and fanboy about every single song on My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be, but you get the drift. This record is magical. Majestic. Freaked out. Furious. Heavy as anything you've ever heard. Strangely pretty. Mind meltingly difficult. Crushing. Confusing. Baffling. Brutal. And pretty much one of our favorite records ever...
MPEG Stream: "A Small Turn Of Human Kindness"
MPEG Stream: "Women Dig It"
MPEG Stream: "The Anvil Will Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I"

HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (Relapse) cd 13.98
It's official Harvey Milk week here at AQ. Like another '90s epitome of heaviness, Earth, they're a band underappreciated the first time 'round, now a long last deservedly revered -and- better yet, back among us!!
Andee's already gone over a bit of the backstory of this amazing band in his review of their -other- Record Of The Week this week, the reissue of My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. That one HAD to be a Record Of The Week, heck it's one of Andee's all time favorites, a Harvey Milk album almost he loves nearly as much as the one that got a release on his own tUMULt label, Courtesy And Goodwill Towards Men. Now, along with reissuing their crucial debut, Relapse has also simultaneously reissued what (until recently, with the release of another AQ ROTW, Harvey Milk's reunion album Special Wishes) was HM's swansong, their 1997 album The Pleaser. And since The Pleaser happens to be Allan's very favorite Harvey Milk, it too had to be a ROTW, just to be fair (the idea being, get 'em both... but we'll go on with this review just a bit more).
This one has always stuck out as, uh, different, in the brief but utterly ruling Harvey Milk discography. Mindblowingly different. On The Pleaser, these dirgey, heavier-than-thou arty post-rockers decided to really rock out with their cocks out, to put it crudely. It's the surprise Harvey Milk for headbangers, a beer-foaming behemoth of explosive rock n' roll riffola! No more holding back for 20 minutes at a time, they'd had it with that. From song one, riff one, this is pure RAWK, inspired by Motorhead, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top. (Again, a bit of a parallel with Earth, whose last '90s album Pentastar also featured badass, muscle car, classic rock motifs.) And that would be enough for us to love it. Yet, 'cause it's Harvey Milk, there's more to it than that. They do the rawk thing with Harvey Milk style -- even though it's unusually uptempo for them, their weird avant-artistry is still at play. Song structures aren't so straightforward as they seem, that throaty Harvey Milk howl is still there, and strange chord progressions abound... and of course it's way HEAVIER than the hesher beloved bands that inspired it. And possessed of unexpected flashes of beauty, also in the Harvey Milk tradition.
Listening to this, you can imagine what the kind of band playing this music would look like: long hair, beards, jean jackets, maybe a backwards baseball cap or two, the bassist perhaps wielding an axe that's shaped like a Jack Daniel's bottle. Sweaty and hairy and throwing the devil horns, leering at the girls. But... that they're actually more like nerdy indie rock dudes (a la The Champs) might cause some confusion and/or consternation. And admittedly the very last track, "Rock And Roll Party Tonight" reveals some indie irony at work, tongues planted in cheek. But try to find the humor in the likes of "Shame" and "Misery". Or the slow, bluesy, balladic "Lay My Head Down". No, this is as serious as they ever were, just expressed in a far rock-ier mode.
They slow down to the turgid doomy pace of My Love Is Higher and Courtesy And Goodwill only occasionally ("Red As The Day Is Long" being one such example), instead preferring a more energetic attack, packed with shred guitar solos, catchy hooks, and hoarse but melodic vocals. Shorthand summation: it's kinda like the Melvins meets Tad meets Thee Speaking Canaries (the Van Halen influenced indie mathrockers), playing a wild kegger for a drunken crowd of revelers, the smarter few of whom realize they're witnessing something really amazing and weird and subversive of the party vibe, but ALL of them having a great time. It can't be denied, this is the Harvey Milk we put on when it's Miller Time, Allan definitely finding himself giving this more spins-per-decade than a lot of their other, equally awesome but much more spacious and difficult-to-grok output.
And wait, that's not all! There's more: this reissue comes with a bonus disc of the previously cd-r only live-on-the-radio set Live Pleaser, value added for fans picking this up for the first -or- second time. It's got kickass versions of all the tracks from The Pleaser -- plus a cover of "Deuce" by KISS, that fits in with songs from The Pleaser just perfectly like they wrote it themselves!
MPEG Stream: "Down"
MPEG Stream: "Get It Up & Get It On"
MPEG Stream: "Lay My Head Down"
MPEG Stream: "Shame (Live)"

HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (Chunklet) 2lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Available for the first time on vinyl! Thanks to the kind folks at Chunklet, Harvey Milk's The Pleaser is now available on lp, with a second lp featuring Live Pleaser, an out of print cd-r that was available as a companion disc with the Relapse reissue, also never before available on vinyl. Super thick, fancy pants gatefold sleeve, the gatefold a classic rock and roll collage of band photos, snapshots and live pix, inside a full color insert with lyrics, and the lps are pressed on colored vinyl, one red, one blue, housed in nice black inner sleeves. And since you knew this was coming, VERY VERY VERY LIMITED!!!! Here's what we had to say about the record itself:
The Pleaser has always stuck out as, uh, different, in the brief but utterly ruling Harvey Milk discography. Mindblowingly different. On The Pleaser, these dirgey, heavier-than-thou arty post-rockers decided to really rock out with their cocks out, to put it crudely. It's the surprise Harvey Milk for headbangers, a beer-foaming behemoth of explosive rock n' roll riffola! No more holding back for 20 minutes at a time, they'd had it with that. From song one, riff one, this is pure RAWK, inspired by Motorhead, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top. (Again, a bit of a parallel with Earth, whose last '90s album Pentastar also featured badass, muscle car, classic rock motifs.) And that would be enough for us to love it. Yet, 'cause it's Harvey Milk, there's more to it than that. They do the rawk thing with Harvey Milk style -- even though it's unusually uptempo for them, their weird avant-artistry is still at play. Song structures aren't so straightforward as they seem, that throaty Harvey Milk howl is still there, and strange chord progressions abound... and of course it's way HEAVIER than the hesher beloved bands that inspired it. And possessed of unexpected flashes of beauty, also in the Harvey Milk tradition.
Listening to this, you can imagine what the kind of band playing this music would look like: long hair, beards, jean jackets, maybe a backwards baseball cap or two, the bassist perhaps wielding an axe that's shaped like a Jack Daniel's bottle. Sweaty and hairy and throwing the devil horns, leering at the girls. But... that they're actually more like nerdy indie rock dudes (a la The Champs) might cause some confusion and/or consternation. And admittedly the very last track, "Rock And Roll Party Tonight" reveals some indie irony at work, tongues planted in cheek. But try to find the humor in the likes of "Shame" and "Misery". Or the slow, bluesy, balladic "Lay My Head Down". No, this is as serious as they ever were, just expressed in a far rock-ier mode.
They slow down to the turgid doomy pace of My Love Is Higher and Courtesy And Goodwill only occasionally ("Red As The Day Is Long" being one such example), instead preferring a more energetic attack, packed with shred guitar solos, catchy hooks, and hoarse but melodic vocals. Shorthand summation: it's kinda like the Melvins meets Tad meets Thee Speaking Canaries (the Van Halen influenced indie mathrockers), playing a wild kegger for a drunken crowd of revelers, the smarter few of whom realize they're witnessing something really amazing and weird and subversive of the party vibe, but ALL of them having a great time. It can't be denied, this is the Harvey Milk we put on when it's Miller Time, Allan definitely finding himself giving this more spins-per-decade than a lot of their other, equally awesome but much more spacious and difficult-to-grok output.
And wait, that's not all! There's more: this vinyl reissue (like the cd reissue before it) comes with a bonus lp of the previously cd-r only live-on-the-radio set Live Pleaser, value added for fans picking this up for the first, second -or- third time. It's got kickass versions of all the tracks from The Pleaser -- plus a cover of "Deuce" by KISS, that fits in with songs from The Pleaser just perfectly like they wrote it themselves!
MPEG Stream: "Down"
MPEG Stream: "Get It Up & Get It On"
MPEG Stream: "Lay My Head Down"
MPEG Stream: "Shame (Live)"

V/A A Visit To The Spaceship Factory (Psychic Circle) cd 16.98
Remember that rad White Lace And Strange compilation we highlighted not long ago? Some killer late sixties, early seventies psych rock from the USA, garage bands gettin' "heavy". Well this disc, on the same Nick Saloman-affiliated label Psychic Circle, is in some ways a sequel, featuring similar bands of the era from the UK (and one Israeli band that recorded in London, to be perfectly accurate). With the subtitle "20 Gems From The Early Years Of Prog", it's billed as a collection of obscure "progressive rock" tracks... but the stress is on the rock. After all, Black Sabbath was once considered a "prog" band too. Sure, there might be some keyboards, but there's lots of raw, raucous energy here, both singers and guitarists wailing away in full fuzzed-out psychedelic proto-metal glory, when they didn't know from headbanging but knew how to boogie! Being a comp, of course some of this is better 'n the rest, but quality control is pretty high. Some faves include the punkish Helter Skelter (ex-Crushed Butler), the powerful axe-action of Israel's Jericho, and the heavy blues thud of early UFO, among other treats here to be heard from these bands (some we already knew, some new to us): Treetops, Mousetrap, Deadwood, Fuzzy Duck, Incredible Hog, Mouse, Beggars Opera, Kingdom Come, Little Big Horn, Strange Fox, Onyx, Spontaneous Combustion, Sheephouse, Pussy, Axe, Sunchariot, and Kansas Hook. The liner notes provide interesting tidbits on each artist (ferinstance, if you're as much of a proto metal geek as Allan, you'll be excited to get the track by Pussy, a later incarnation of one-album wonders Jerusalem).
MPEG Stream: JERICHO "So Come On"
MPEG Stream: HELTER SKELTER "I Need You"
MPEG Stream: KANSAS HOOK "Nervous Shakin'"

REVEREND BIZARRE III: So Long Suckers (Spikefarm) 2cd 21.00
The end is nigh! Heck here it is, at long last. The final tolling of the bell for Finnish apocalyptic doomsters Reverend Bizarre. Thus this album is titled So Long Suckers, and there's a sticker on the front that says: "Doom Metal Is Dead". What could be doomier than that? Funny how these guys, who started off as not much more than an enthusiastic fanboy tribute to their favorite doom metal acts, have now become almost one with the genre itself. Or at least their own, admittedly redundantly denoted, subgenre of "Apocalyptic Doom".
When we heard they were breaking up, that was a bummer, but we were eager to hear this promised swansong release. So, sad to see them go... but what a way TO go. A sprawling double cd, six slo-mo (like swimming in a moat filled with molasses) songs of super heavy repetitive riffage and lyrical lethargy, lasting over two hours total. Everything that we love about the bizarre Reverend sorta summed up right there. Spirited, eccentric and extreme, the sort of band that thinks nothing of writing 25+ minute long songs, like some sort of oppressive, epic, plodding prog, giving them all the more space to display their guitar blunt force trauma and deep voiced vocal drama... so massive and monotonous. Disc one starts off with the twenty nine minutes of "They Used Dark Forces / Teutonic Witch". Track two, "Sorrow", is a 25 minutes. Track three, "Funeral Summer", a mere 11:41... and that's the whole of disc one. There's a few shorter numbers on disc two (like the fuzz ripping instrumental "Kundalini Arisen"), but also another 25 minute bruiser (the majestic and martial "Anywhere Out Of This World"), which becomes psychedelically trance-inducing by the end, for us, almost like Om.
Of course, song length doesn't put the o's in yr dooooooooooom alone. Reverend Bizarre take their final shot here at the classic crush of heroes like Saint Vitus (also a big influence on their cleanly-crooning vocalist), Cathedral and of course Black Sabbath. The riffs they repeat forever and ever are forged from the heaviest of distorted tones, the overall atmosphere is one of weighty, weary, weirdness. This is one monolithic tombstone all right, an end to this band's 13-year career that itself seems rather endless while you're listening to it. Endless and eternal. Reverend Bizarre, R.I.P... and doom on!!
MPEG Stream: "Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Caesar Forever"

LITMUS Planetfall (Rise Above / Candlelight) cd 13.98
We're pretty sure that the guys in England's Litmus, a new space rock / stoner metal outfit on Lee Dorrian of Cathedral's Rise Above records (home to Electric Wizard and Witchcraft among others), won't mind us -- and everybody else who reviews this -- saying that, basically, Litmus is a more modern, much more metal, version of Hawkwind. If you're at all familiar with the peculiar genius of that British prog/psych institution, particularly their early '70s classics like Hall Of The Mountain Grill and Space Ritual, you'll hear the Hawkwind just as soon as you start spinning Litmus' debut album Planetfall. And that's no bad thing. In fact, we're all for it. This is awesome!
Litmus kick out an absurd, energetic overload of outer space anthems, mixing headbanging riffage that Lemmy would love with a mad scientist's laboratory's worth of sci-fi bleeps and swooshes, on songs with titles like "Destroy The Mothership" and "Expanding Universe (Twinstar Pt.2)". The album's centerpiece is the 15 minute fourth track, "Under The Sign", a triumphant and impetuous epic full of heavy heads-down chuggery and soaring refrains. Among the five psychic space warriors in the band, there's one guy credited with playing these three things: "Mellotron, synthesizers, and gong". So prog! As are the contents of the cd booklet: pages of lyrics (we assume) inscribed in some sort of alien glyphs or ancient runes or something. We also appreciate that the "space noises" with which this disc is abundantly and enthusiastically littered are mixed pretty much higher than just about anything else. It really makes it sound like Litmus are rocking out from within some sort of cosmic storm of chaotic radiation. Where else are you gonna hear the howling Hawkwind blowing with such gusto? We doubt that the actual Hawkwind, in whatever incarnation they currently exist, could match this. Only maybe Acid Mothers Temple comes close, but they aren't metallized OR poppy enough to be exact competition for what Litmus is doing here. Voivod circa "Outer Limits" and old Pink Floyd are also orbiting in proximity to Litmus, with the likes of Tarantula Hawk and Morkobot somewhere in nearby space.
All 72 minutes of Planetfall are utterly black-hole dense with bombastic, hooky, Hawkwindy space metal gloriousness. Even if you haven't ever heard Hawkwind, this is recommended (but of course then you should check 'em out too)!
MPEG Stream: "Under The Sign"
MPEG Stream: "Tempest"

ELEGI Sistereis (Miasmah) cd 17.98
Hard for us to describe, but easy for us to enjoy... Elegi's Sistereis is an extremely moody, haunting soundscape, dismal and a-frighted, constructed around sparse, sad piano musings set amidst eerie ambient hiss and hum. What sound like close-mic'd "field recordings" of random background creakings, crackle and clatter, which are perhaps the nervous rustlings of the pianist himself, are layered with melancholic drones. Meanwhile, the aforementioned piano carries on, so slowly, and so lovely. The whole effect is like listening in to the near-silent, wordless "internal monologue" of the piano player, suffering quietly some mental/emotional distress. This Norwegian project reminds us in a way of the British band Reigns, in that you get a sense of hearing an audio document of events that are otherwise hidden from view, and perhaps should remain hidden. Elegi also brings to mind the similar "acoustic doom" sounds on the Type label, like Svarte Greiner and Xela, of which of course we're fans. This is actually released on the Svarte Greiner guy's own label, Miasmah.
The cd booklet is mysteriously evocative, with grey-toned Victorian photo collages depicting something of a dreary nautical theme, and text telling of a burial at sea... which all begins to make sense when you lean that the man behind Elegi, Tommy Jansen, supposedly has as a hobby (vocation?) diving down to explore wrecked ships in the watery depths! Depths which he evokes effectively on this disc...
MPEG Stream: "Despotiets Vesen"
MPEG Stream: "Time Lapse"
MPEG Stream: "Fyrtarnet part 3"

PEOPLE Ceremony - Buddha Meet Rock (Teichiku) cd 17.98
1971 strikes again! Here's a new cd reish of this beautifully freaky album by a Japanese "Buddhist-psych" band called People, featuring guitarist Kimio Mizutani (who played with Love Live Life + 1, Hiro Yanagida, and others, and did a solo album called A Path Through Haze). There's monk-like chanting and resounding gongs, field recordings of birds and street sounds, and even, strangely enough, samples from soulful psych-funk producer David Axelrod's classic 1968 album Song Of Innocence. And of course heavy wah wah guitar action. The album is a real 'trip', much of it indeed very ceremonial-sounding, venturing from blissful grooves with tick-tock rhythms ("Shomyo Part 2") and placid, lovely droniness ("Prayer Part 1") to sheer pounding electric fuzz riffage laced with screams of orgasmic ecstasy ("Prayer Part 2"). The puzzling use of those lush, orchestral Axelrod samples on the first and last tracks just helps to make this somehow both very much of its time and also way ahead of it (since Axelrod is heavily sampled by folks today as well!). Quite recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Flower Strewing "
MPEG Stream: "Prayer Part 2"

SUNNO))) Oracle (Southern Lord) lp 14.98
The ominous revving of a juggernaut engine. Shifting tectonic plates. Glacial drone-riffs as death-knell backing for the sinister intonations of ritualistic incantations in a foreign tongue... That's SUNNO))) we're talking about, all right!
Imagine a sealed white room, an otherwise-empty space with the cowled-in-black SUNNO))) set up on black risers, their massive backline of amplification and instruments also duplicated as full-scale frozen white sculptures manufactured of cast resin and salt by NYC artist Banks Violette. Entombed within, the band plays alone to no audience, the massive resonation of their sub-sonic prayers self-referentially worshipful, a cosmos unto itself. This LP contains music written as the soundtrack to such a performance, which took place at a gallery in London, England in June of 2006. These actual recordings, though, were studio-recorded in 2006 and feature the core SUNNO))) duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley joined by guests Atsuo (of Boris), Joe Preston (of Thrones), and Hungarian black metal icon Attila Csihar (of Mayhem). There's two side-long tracks: "Belulrol Pusztit" is a creepily quiet, hushed ceremony, Attila's whispering reptilian rasp met with rattlings and rumblings, hinting at the waves of distortion and feedback to be unleashed on the louder, heavier Skullflowering of "Orakulum"... DOOM!!
This limited (black) vinyl version of Oracle is probably the only format we're gonna get, though there IS (or was...) a compact disc edition, a double cd in fact, containing everything on this LP plus an extra disc's worth of live material called "Helio)))sophist", but it was only available for sale at SUNNO)))'s recent shows. If, and it's a big IF, they have any copies left over after their tour then we're told we may get a few, but considering that copies of that 2cd are already selling for hefty sums on eBay (fie on limited editions!!) we won't necessarily count on getting any... So probably best to grab one of these while you can...
MPEG Stream: "Belulrol Pusztit"
MPEG Stream: "Orakulum"

PUMICE Pebbles (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations -- while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
MPEG Stream: "Eye Bath"
MPEG Stream: "Stop Over"
MPEG Stream: "Greenock"

TAMAM SHUD Evolution (EM Records) cd 21.00
Last list we highlighted two somewhat unusual "surf music" reissues, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, both brought to us by our favorite Japanese reissue label, EM Records, as part of their Summer 2007 "EM Under Water Series"! Those were quite cool, and now we've got the remaining three discs in the series, all of 'em (like those first two) soundtracks to several now-legendary surfing movies from back in the sixties/seventies. With the exception of Farm (from the USA) all the bands in EM's series are Australian, and in all cases the movies they were doing soundtracks for were Australian productions and/or featured Australian surfers. And as before, this isn't your typical SoCal Jan & Dean, Beach Boys style surf music... it's *psychedelic* surf music. Well 2 out of 3 of these anyway (the Tim Gaze Band album being more of a yacht rock outing).
Now this one is a bonafide Australian garage psych rock classic! It's also the only disc in the "EM Under Water" series that we'd ever actually heard before, as there'd been at least one (possibly non-legit) cd reissue in the past, and so we already know it was a good 'un, which boded well for the series as a whole. Tamam Shud, who took their name from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (it's Persian for "The End"), were a heavy (for the era), fuzz-drenched psych pop combo who recorded two albums in their brief career. This was their first, from 1969, and it served as the soundtrack to a motion picture on the subject of surfing (natch) called Evolution. Which was appropriate 'cause these guys were indeed surfers, even if their music sounded a lot more like The Amboy Dukes, The Litter, and The Count Five than, say, The Ventures (though apparently earlier in the sixties they did, when they were called The Sunsets). It's total Nuggesty stuff (why "Mr. Strange" or one of the other 11 tracks on Evolution didn't appear on the Nuggets II box set is puzzling), with a "progressive", Sgt. Peppers bent, full of ripping wild FUZZ guitar soloing, stomping riffs, and catchy hooks. The Shud could do wigged out blues rock jamming, or they could do totally poppy vocal cuts...as long as there was plenty of freaky freeform fuzz action to go 'round, which, there was. Like we said, a classic, one any '60s psych lover will be happy to spin. This reish is of course presented with the usual deluxe-level of care and attention characteristic of EM Records, complete with lyrics, photos, graphics, movie stills, and extensive liner notes by both Aussie "surf music historian" Peter J. McParland and Evolution's director, Peter Witzig. And EM has also dug up three bonus tracks, from a 1972 ep called Bali Waters, material which appeared on the soundtrack to another surf move, Morning Of The Earth. Who knows, maybe there will be another "Under Water" series next year wherein EM will reissue The Shud's second album, 1970's Goolutionites And The Real People, which was a concept album against pollution... we can hope.
MPEG Stream: "Mr. Strange"
MPEG Stream: "Music Train"
MPEG Stream: "Too Many Life"

TULLY Sea Of Joy (EM Records) cd 21.00
Last list we highlighted two somewhat unusual "surf music" reissues, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, both brought to us by our favorite Japanese reissue label, EM Records, as part of their Summer 2007 "EM Under Water Series"! Those were quite cool, and now we've got the remaining three discs in the series, all of 'em (like those first two) soundtracks to several now-legendary surfing movies from back in the sixties/seventies. With the exception of Farm (from the USA) all the bands in EM's series are Australian, and in all cases the movies they were doing soundtracks for were Australian productions and/or featured Australian surfers. And as before, this isn't your typical SoCal Jan & Dean, Beach Boys style surf music... it's *psychedelic* surf music. Well 2 out of 3 of these anyway (the Tim Gaze Band album being more of a yacht rock outing).
Tully were apparently a pretty successful sixties rock act in their native Australia, despite playing total "head" music, not anything you could boogie to. They were popular enough to do a TV show, and even played with the Sydney Orchestra! They came from the same "alternative surf" scene as Tamam Shud, and were just as musically progressive, having the freedom to develop their material while touring as the backing band for an Australian production of "Hair", getting into poncho-garbed spirituality and electronic experiments (being the first band Down Under to possess a Moog). Somewhere along the way they merged membership with acid folk outfit Extradition, before recording their very freeform second album, this one, the 1971 soundtrack to Sea Of Joy, a surf movie directed by Paul Witzig (same guy who shot Evolution, for which Tamam Shud did the soundtrack).
Angelic female vocals, gentle organ grooves, hippie folk blissfulness, mellow instrumental textures -- it's truly glorious, lovely stuff. Quite exploratory too, with a freeform, organic feel. Tully's Sea Of Joy can be sunshiney (quite literally, on songs like "I Feel The Sun" and "Brother Sun") one moment, almost spooky the next (on such sinisterly electronics-laden tracks as "Follow Me" and "Down To The Sea"). And their interest in Eastern Indian mysticism comes through on the raga-like "Syndrone", for instance. EM says this moody, mesmeric album is the one in the series that's been selling best for them, and we're not surprised.
MPEG Stream: "Sea Of Joy (Pt.1)"
MPEG Stream: "Follow Me"
MPEG Stream: "I Feel The Sun"

BLOSSOM TOES If Only For A Moment (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
Nearby you'll find our review of the brand new reissue of this British band's wonderfully twee and surreal first album, We Are Ever So Clean, from the paisley daze of 1967. But on this, that album's 1969 follow-up, they left the Sgt. Pepperisms behind for an even freakier, and occasionally heavier, direction. It's kinda like how The Pretty Things went from S.F. Sorrow to Parachute, but weirder. The Mothers Of Invention might have been an influence, certainly the lead-off track "Peace Loving Man" is crazy enough. Heavy too, with gruff vocals and loud guitar riffs. Yep, compared to the ornate, orchestrated psych-pop of We Are Ever So Clean this whole album is waaaay more (acid) Rock, but still full of melodic hooks and '60s zaniness. Delicate vocals are deployed alongside bombastic, bluesy guitars. Pretty cool. Unfortunately this was to be their last album, but their guitarist did go on to join Family (we mention for those into the rock family tree thing). He also appeared on Magma's Kohntarkosz as well, of all things, though certainly this last Blossom Toes record points in a prog direction.
As with Sunbeam's reissue of We Are Ever..., this too comes complete with a info/graphics packed cd booklet, and also with a bounty of bonus tracks, seven of 'em, including several non-album singles sides and demos. The 45 A-side "Postcard" is a neat one, whimsical psych-pop in the vein of their debut, with lyrics that could have been, and maybe were, taken from an actual vacation postcard, a charming conceit for a song.
MPEG Stream: "Peace Loving Man"
MPEG Stream: "Kiss Of Confusion"
MPEG Stream: "Postcard"

BLOSSOM TOES We Are Ever So Clean (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
London, 1967: ground zero for the explosion of fab British pop psych rock bands, including many known today only to collectors -- among them, this bunch of mop tops, Blossom Toes. Now here's brand new, deluxe cd reissues of their two albums. As displayed on this, their debut, Blossom Toes' brand of psychedelic pop music was ornate, orchestrated, lush, and very British -- they songs called "Mrs. Murphy's Budgerigar" and "I'll Be Late For Tea" -- think Beatles, Zombies, Kinks, Kaleidoscope, very early Bowie, with dashes of surreal Pythonesque zaniness ("The Remarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dog", "The Intrepid Balloonist's Handbook, Volume One", etc.). Indeed, they even played Captain Beefheart covers live! Produced by Swinging Sixties London scenester Giorgio Gomelski (their manager, who also managed the Yardbirds among other claims to fame). And weirdly enough, guitarist Brian Godding went on to play in Magma, on their Kohntarkosz album, fyi!
This new reish adds ten bonus tracks, and features extensive liner notes. It was prepared with the full blessing and cooperation of the original band members (a 2007 interview with whom makes up the bulk of the thick cd booklet, along with tons of color repros of 7" sleeves, poster graphics, and vintage b&w photos of the band). Amongst the bonus tracks, you'll find LP outtakes, instrumental versions, live cuts, demos, and a brief but amusing radio interview with guitarist Jim Cregan wherein the very proper host asks him about his "freaky" music.
MPEG Stream: "Look At Me I'm You"
MPEG Stream: "I'll Be Late For Tea"
MPEG Stream: "The Remarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dog"

SLOUGH FEG Hardworlder (Cruz Del Sur) cd 17.98
San Francisco heavy metallists Slough Feg (aka The Lord Weird Slough Feg), led by vocalist/guitarist Mike Scalzi, have built up a deserved cult following over the years, whom we guarantee will NOT be disappointed with the contents of their latest epic, eccentric metal opus Hardworlder, their sixth full-length album. Indeed, Slough Feg's fans should be quite thrilled. And with luck Hardworlder will recruit some new devotees to the cult of 'Feg as well, they deserve it 'cause nobody but nobody makes albums with this sort of peculiar panache anymore these days. Not since the '80s, or even the '70s, from whence the guitars of Hardworlder seem to hail, and there's a heckuva lot of guitar here... memorable riffs and virtuoso solos and Maiden-ized twin axe harmonies... guitars guitars guitars! It's evident that Slough Feg's latest revised lineup (which features a change of drummer, and "Don" Angelo Tringali of cult doomsters Cold Mourning replacing Hammers Of Misfortune's John Cobbett on second lead guitar) has if anything only enhanced the "guitariness" of this band, as if that was imaginable. The Scalzi/Tringali dual guitar teamwork is phenomenal, and both guys peel off leads left and right, not just to impress with the notes they can play but because they simply can't contain their love for the raw beauty that can flow from fully cranked Gibson Les Pauls. They've got the power, and the responsibility, to play like they've taken up the torch of every great heavy metal band from the '70s and the '80s that's fallen by the wayside...
This album's title is a word they coined themselves, referring to the idea of a space-travelling adventurer bumming around on a rough planet in a bad part of the galaxy, a loner toughened by life on a "hard world" -- typified by Gully Foyle, the protagonist of sci-fi author Alfred Bester's 1956 classic The Stars My Destination (read it sez Allan and Andee!!). A book and character which provides the inspiration for the track "Tiger! Tiger!" as well as for the Kirby-esque comic-book illustration that graces this album's cover.
Interestingly, if you Google "Hardworlder", you'll find that Slough Feg managed to come up with a term that ONLY exists in connection with this album. You'll find their website, their MySpace page, their Wikipedia page, the review of Hardworlder in last week's Village Voice (yes, strangely enough, right next to the new Pharoahe Monch and Smashing Pumpkins -- how'd that happen??? The Village Voice says, "Badass sci-fi metal that it's finally cool to listen to"...we've been telling folks that for years...). You might also run across someone else's MySpace page, who goes by the handle Hardworlder -- but it turns out it belongs to an Australian university student who's a huge Slough Feg fanatic. He's gonna be happy when he hears this!
The album's opening one-two punch is hard to beat: the relentless build-up of adrenaline instrumental "The Return Of Dr. Universe" which leads us breathless into the impactful majesty of "Tiger! Tiger!", destined to be considered an instant classic in the Slough Feg canon we're sure!
But the rest of the album is up to that mighty task -- the majesty continues with midtempo maritime lament "The Sea Wolf", and thence through to the doomy riffs of the album's title track, and onward... Hardworlder seems to possess an anthemic, sweeping, saddened grandeur, a more uniform overall feel than its shorter and more schizo predecessor Atavism, although you'll find that Slough Feg sashay down all the (un)usual skyways and byways you might expect from them. The manly, melodic doom-paced epics coexist here with rollicking '70s styled hard rockers (such as "Frankfurt-Hahn Airport Blues", obviously a nod to Atavism's equally boogie-riffed "Starport Blues"). "Insomnia" starts off Thin Lizzyish to the max, but halfway through the band rides into the Halls Of Manowar, and a wordless Viking chorus rings out... The galloping requiem of the psychological tragedy "Poisoned Treasures" (reprised from their split 7" with Bible Of The Devil) will get stuck in your head, as will much more on this impossibly catchy album... And one of our favorite tracks here is the lengthy show-stopping instrumental "Galactic Nomad", with an almost-Allmans level of gorgeous guitar interplay, that could illicit a "we're not worthy" from The Fucking Champs themselves.
And while Hardworlder's obviously working the science fiction angle that proved popular for 'em on their concept album Traveller, it also serves up ye olde Celtic folk in the Slough Feg tradition -- in fact, one of the two (2) cover songs here is a version of "Dearg Doom" by '70s Irish folk-rockers Horslips. The other cover is "Street Jammer", originally by '80s American epic metal weirdists Manilla Road. Both are tributes to Slough Feg's influences in a general, not specific sense, since we happen to know that they'd never heard either band until years and years after Slough Feg's inception. Speaking of influences, if you listen close to "Street Jammer" you'll hear some Chuck Berry licks thrown in not found on the original... and we'll also note that Slough Feg deliberately selected an early Manilla Road song, that's a lot more hot rockin' than what people usually think of in connection with that band. Further, while we're usually more into covers that DON'T sound so much like the originals, in the case of these two songs it's OK that they do since a) they're pretty obscure and b) both still totally sound like Slough Feg could have written them.
Ok, we're rambling, and you get the idea... Hardworlder is another ripping masterwork from a band that will either dominate your metal-addled mind, or you just won't get. We hope you do. 'Nuff said.
MPEG Stream: "Tiger! Tiger!"
MPEG Stream: "Frankfurt-Hahn Airport Blues"
MPEG Stream: "Dearg Doom"

WEXLER, MIKE Sun Wheel (Amish) cd 15.98
Even if you think you've heard enough of the new weird acid folk underground to last you for a spell, you should check out this full-length debut from Brooklyn's Mike Wexler, a singer-songwriter who (with a little help from his friends, members of Psychic Ills and The Occasion) has recorded a remarkable song-cycle in the form of Sun Wheel. It's set apart from others in this burgeoning genre by the immediately noticeable, uniquely affected nature of Wexler's voice. Ok, maybe that makes him a male Joanna Newsom... and of course Devendra Banhart too has a distinctive manner of singing. But Wexler sounds like neither, and once you get used to his nasal exhalations, his intentionally elongated enunciations, you may find his singing to be curiously compelling, complementing the crystalline guitar picking and gentle piano motifs of his melodic, majestic prog-folk music quite well. And Wexler's vocal style is also indicative of a very personal, seemingly spiritual lyrical vision, fixated on sun, shadow, paradise, lots of lines like "Sun shadow dilating in the eye" and "Falling through the sunshine's ray in a dream of water". It's gorgeous, moody yet strangely uplifting stuff, glowing with lightbeams amidst its shadows. Something that fans of P.G. Six, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Robert Wyatt could find of eerie interest for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Pneuma"
MPEG Stream: "Sun Wheel"

STRIBORG Spiritual Catharsis (Displeased) cd 14.98
Once again, we head back into the grim black rainforests of Tasmania, to unearth more of one-man-black-metal-misanthrope Striborg's amazing back catalog, a constantly evolving and devolving soundworld of washed out buzz, chaotic black blur, and haunting dreamlike ambience. If you're already a fan, and have made it this far in Displeased's reissue campaign, odds are you're probably gonna want this one too, and if you've yet to experience the gloriously grim what-the-fuck brilliance of Striborg, then this is as good a place to start as any, in fact it might be one of the best ones to begin with as it's the most varied, and thus the most freaked out and bizarre.
Beginning with a surprisingly melodic almost poppy guitar part, 2004's Spiritual Catharsis quickly unravels into the buzzing stumbling confusional blackness that's so near and dear to our withered hearts. The core of Striborg's sound, is the ever present sheet of white noise guitars, that still sounds like a microphone placed on the floor of a shower, a constant and nearly overwhelming shhhhhooooosshhh. While behind this wash of hissy sibilance, lurk creaking shrieked vocals, and simple stumbling drums, and of course thick epic washes of grandiose keyboard. The drums flipping between punk rock pound and doomic plod, while that wall of blown out buzz remains fairly static. Totally hypnotic. At it's most straight ahead, it sounds like a way more blissy Burzum, loping and midtempo, with those haunting keyboards offering up creepy minor key melodies, but where Burzum buries those keys in the mix, Striborg shoves them right to the front, where they warble and whir and threaten to swallow up the rest of the sounds around it.
But as we mentioned before, Spiritual Catharsis is all over the map. "Glorification Of Mother Nature" is a gorgeously minimal expanse of ambient creep, sci fi synths swirling and shimmering, soft focus layers of sound shifting subtly like fog in an old crumbling graveyard, but then there's the title track, thirteen minutes long, probably the harshest and most chaotic of the bunch, the guitars whipped into a nearly Merzbowian frenzy, the effects so dense it's almost like black metal dub, the vocals careening and rippling out in all directions, the drums like a landslide of snares, the whole thing enveloped in a rippling cloak of black ambience, until part way through when the track shifts into some cinematic doom, the hiss and buzz pushed back a bit, allowing low end rumbles and whirs to play out a super intense melody, while the drums lurch and stutter, other keyboards joining the fray, drifting like soft glowing orbs against the jagged buzzy backdrop, before finally building back up into the fierce fury of the track's opening. The rest of the record constantly shifts between buzz and bliss, blast and crawl, from the minimal rumbling drone of "The Haunted Gum Trees", to the relentlessly blasting black chaos of "Misanthropic Necroforest", to the echo drenched plodding doom of "Dicksonia Antarctica" (replete with more of those dubbed out FX), to the tripped out funereal dreaminess of "Eternal Blackness Surrounds The Bushland", to the full on pounding in-the-red crush of "Black Metal Is The Forest Calling...", Spiritual Catharsis, is indeed just that, a spiritually cathartic, beautifully bizarre, darkly droning musical journey through a black forest of sound, and into the even blacker musical mind of Striborg
Re-mastered, with all new artwork, including a swank metallic silver front cover, and drawings and lyrics inside.
MPEG Stream: "Within The Depths Of Darkness And Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Beneath The Fields Of Rapacious Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Spiritual Catharsis"

WILD MAGNOLIAS, THE They Call Us Wild (Sunnyside / Universal France) 2cd 21.00
In the long wake of Hurricane Katrina, it's good to remind ourselves of the amazing musical legacy of New Orleans. So what better time than now to get this 2 disc reissue of one of the more unique and underrated funk groups of the early seventies, The Wild Magnolias. The first Mardi-Gras Indian group to get signed to a major label (they're not real Native Americans, but African-Americans partaking in a long-time tradition of street­based competition with rival tribal factions fully decked out in elaborately ornate, feathered Indian regalia), The Wild Magnolias were known for their gospel like call-and-response vocal chants over driving funk rhythms provided by The New Orleans Project led by keyboardist Willie Tee. Compiling their 1973 self-titled debut, and 1975 follow-up, They Call us Wild, the Magnolias mix up original songs sung in native-sounding patois ("Handa Wanda", "Ho Na Nae") with interesting takes on New Orleans folk standards such as "Saints" and "Shoo Fly". Includes a PDF version of a 68 page book about their impressive history. An awesome reissue of some bad-ass funk and an amazing peek into one of New Orleans most unique street traditions!
MPEG Stream: "Smoke My Peace Pipe (Smoke It Right)"
MPEG Stream: "Ho Na Nae"
MPEG Stream: "They Call Us Wild"
MPEG Stream: "Ah Anka Ting Tang Boo Shanka Boo"

STRIBORG Ghostwoodlands (Displeased) cd 14.98
Deep in the damp backwoods of Tasmania (yes, Tasmania!), one of our very favorite one-man black metal bands lurks. Sin-nanna is that man, Striborg is that band. The eagerly awaited Ghostwoodlands is the latest manifestation of Striborg's musical misanthropy, another extreme and extremely "outsider" statement of black metal idiosyncrasy and fucked up brilliance.
Starting with track one, "Bete Noirs", every other track on Ghostwoodlands is an ambient episode of beautifully droning, isolationist electronics, psychedelic blackness that's not overtly metal at all (and could give some additional weight to the ridiculous rumor we once heard that Sin-nanna is actually Australian dronologist Oren Ambarchi). The longer, even-numbered songs, though, are indeed recognizable as a species of black metal, wherein Sin-nanna's guitar (and voice, and keyboards, and much else) still sounds like some noxious gas escaping under pressure. This aerosol mist of grim musik is, as always, accompanied by his own primitive "timekeeping", percussive thump and clatter full of many confusional fills, blasts and beats. This drumming is seemingly (and sometimes startlingly) one of Sin-nanna's primary expressive outlets, having more active physicality than the spectral presences of his other instrumentation -- and its artistic effectiveness proves that desire trumps ability in his realm. With woozy alien synths wandering over from the "ambient" tracks, Striborg's steam clouds of croak-encrusted, broken-down black metal require hails all around. Indeed, the next time someone asks, "what's so great? -- and what's so fucked up?" about Striborg, track two here is one we'll immediately want to play 'em. The slowly paced, 19 and a half minute "Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery" is a monument to Sin-nanna's unique genius, as we're sure you'll agree after just a few minutes into it, when you're fully enveloped in his hissing, buzzing, chuddering world, and the ambient Aphex synth droplets start falling amidst his percussive extemporaneity. So good! Like a brain-damaged Burzum, and we mean that in the best possible way. And these abnormal atmospheres continue throughout the rest of the disc, furthering our love of Striborg. A great followup to the taster offered by the Striborg / Xasthur split single we listed just last week!
PS. God what we wouldn't give for a Striborg / Keiji Haino collaboration!!!
MPEG Stream: "Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery"
MPEG Stream: "Light Anomalies In The Phantom Woods"
MPEG Stream: "Ghostwoodlands"

STRIBORG Nocturnal Emissions / Nyctophobia (Displeased) cd 14.98
If black metal has a "Jandek" then Striborg might be it. Certainly, an argument can be made that black metal itself is already "outsider art" and then if that's the case, where to put Striborg? Outside the outside. So much of Striborg's eccentrically intimate, idiosyncratic output (this disc holding many fine examples, for instance at one point when it sounds like he's playing the violin in the shower) is so exquisitely wrong it's right, so inadvertently avant-garde and very much trance-inducing that of course Striborg is a big AQ fave. Until recently, though, it was easier for us to get Jandek cds than those of Striborg. But at long last the gates to Striborg's lair have swung open, and the many previously hard-to-find recordings by this Tasmanian black metal savant (as you may know, Striborg is a "band" staffed solely by the mysterious Sin-Nanna) are now readily available to us... and to you, the discriminating consumer of fucked-up black metal. Among the many Striborg discs that we for so long wanted but were unable to stock, is this one. Another essential in Striborg's damaged discography for sure. This cd combines two demos from 2002 and 2003, so it's material from pretty early on in Sin-Nanna's career of evil, though his demo-days go back as far as 1997, and these are in fact the final two (4th and 5th) demos released before he started making "proper albums" instead, although production-wise we can detect no great differences! This cd compilation of those two demos was originally released in 2003 by Striborg's own Finsternis Productions in a limited edition of 500 copies, and has now been resurrected by Displeased (along with, as we said, several other desirable Striborg artifacts).
Nocturnal Emissions consists of the title track, followed by "Despondent Cries", "Son Of The Moon", and "The Freezing Northland". The latter is interesting 'cause you'd think in Striborg's case it would be "The Freezing Southland", being so nearby to Antarctica, but it turns out that this track is a tribute to another one-man black metal cult, Norway's Ildjarn. We should also note that "The Son Of The Moon" is dedicated to Sin Nanna's baby boy, Zachariah aka Sin-Nanna junior (the name Sin-Nanna that of the god of the crescent moon in ancient Sumer, btw). This might be the first and only black metal song written by a proud father to his newborn son! In welcoming his child to "this world of tragedy, magic and sorrow", he tells him, "the stars of Aquarius is [sic] on your side".
Otherwise, Striborg's lyrical themes are entirely depressive and misanthropic, all mope-tropes matched of course by his music, the ever-present droning black buzz, a fuzzed-out spray of monochrome guitar distortion, through thick fields of which wander Striborg's special, utterly non-metroymic drum-stumble and o'er which he rasps his despondent cries.
The four tracks of Nyctophobia are next, "Under Black Rain", "Through The Dark Fog", "Across Thornfields", and "Into Night Moor". We'll single out "Under Black Rain" for mention, as it's composed entirely of what sounds like woozy violin improv, his jittering string-scrape punctuated by a resonating gong-blows, mixed with field recordings of drizzling rain and ominous thunderclaps... we'd be happy with just a whole disc of just that! But each track here has its unique charms, "Through Dark Fog" in particular notable for Sin-Nanna's excessively distorted vocal turn. And "Into Night Moor" is a beautiful outro of isolationist electronic ambience. It seems everything he touches turns, not to gold, but to blackened weirdness. Weird enough we assure you that you'll be giving your stereo strange looks and often rewinding to hear some choice bit of bizarreness again and again, if you share our taste in outsider black metal oddity! None more sublime than Striborg.
We'll have reviews of a couple more Striborg reissues soon (Trepidation and Spiritual Catharsis) and also look forward to a new release, the Journey Of A Misanthrope DVD...
MPEG Stream: "Nocturnal Emissions"
MPEG Stream: "Despondent Cries"
MPEG Stream: "Under Black Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Dark Fog"

3 INCHES OF BLOOD Fire Up The Blades (Roadrunner) cd 14.98
Right from the majestic, martial instrumental intro of "Through The Horned Gate" that begins this album, it's clear that the return of 3 Inches Of Blood is also the return of true, speedy, spikes n' leather metal in an updated '80s vein, hypercharged with aggressive modern metalcore technology. It's all about relentless shrieking, Maidenesque guitar frenzies, and song titles like "Night Marauders" and "Demon's Blade". Total galloping speed metal mayhem, and then some. It's like Judas Priest's Painkiller as performed by Converge!
Of course, 3 Inches Of Blood aren't the only band these days looking back to the glory days of the '80s for (ironic?) metal inspiration. But this Vancouver sextet is one of the best, most wholehearted, and surprisingly successful sales-wise (among North American bands anyway -- and this is way cooler than Dragonforce) and also have their own unique approach to this sound, which can be ascribed both to their hardcore heritage and to the presence of two vocalists (that's all they do!) in the band, doubling up on the mics, one a long-haired, raspy-but-melodic high-end falsetto specialist, the other short-haired one dealing in growlier throat abuse. And they kinda need two singers/screamers to compete with all the dual guitar fireworks going off around them.
Fire Up The Blades is a fine follow up to their breakthrough second album Advance and Vanquish, and is also already a definite headbanging AQ fave. We're into what seems to be an extra dose of, uh, rock n' roll riffage here -- there's some cowbell happenin' too. But it's still all pretty much rockin' at 150mph, pedal to the metal. This is one fierce, energetic album! For fans of everything from Accept to Children Of Bodom to Laaz Rockit to Darkest Hour to Lizzie Borden to Mastodon to Metal Church... gotta highlight this, as the FUN, fist-in-the-air quotient compared to some of the grim black metal we're always recommending is extremely high.
MPEG Stream: "The Great Hall Of Feasting"
MPEG Stream: "Trial Of Champions"

FARM The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun (EM Records) cd 22.00
Ah, yes it's summertime! Warm sunshine and trips to the beach! And what's more summery than surf music? Lo and behold, our favorite label for obscure and amazing reissues, Japan's EM Records, has a special new series of five, count 'em, five reissues devoted to lost "surf" music treasures. The first two, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, are out now, with the others to follow in short order. We're pretty sure all of 'em are awesome.
And if you're familiar with the eccentricity of this label, you'll know that this "EM Under Water" series isn't going to be about, y'know, "regular" surf music of the Jan & Dean or Ventures variety, nope. These first two releases are both soundtracks to rad '70s surfing movies, and are fully psychedelic, with tripped out grooves, synth experiments, and heavy rock jamming all part of the mix.
This one's really fantastic. The music for the legendary 1970 Australian surf documentary The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun was done by a hippy band called Farm from Santa Barbara who themselves were part of the SoCal surf scene. Their lead guitarist, Denny Aaberg, even wrote a novel about his surfing days called Big Wednesday that was eventually made into movie starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Gary Busey! Other members later on played with such bands as the Surf Punks in the '80s and the Beach Boys in the '90s... and weirder still, The Captain from Captain and Tennille is on here somewhere too. But this is like none of that, needless to say. Farm's sound was more of a special surf/soundtrack/psych hybrid...
There's plenty of glorious mellow jazzy groovers on here, with organ that reminds us a bit of Bo Hansson's stuff, as well tracks like the heavy electric blues of "Zan Ho Zay" and the gorgeous folky acoustic guitar intricacy of "Innerspace". Mostly instrumental, but for two charming vocal cuts, "Crumple Car" and "The Eater", this is surf-psych at its peak for sure. A lot of the record was constructed around live jams, including the soundtrack's finale, the 13 minute improv "Coming Of The Dawn", a track Farm recorded in real-time response to a projection of the film's most awe-inspiring "inside the pipe" sequence. The filmmaker had rigged up a waterproof camera contraption that he was able to strap to his back and use to shoot while riding his board, one of the innovative techniques that made it a groundbreaking surf movie. This soundtrack had to help too!
This reish, done in the usual thorough EM style, is packaged in a nice gatefold sleeve with a thick, fully illustrated booklet in English and Japanese and other bits of ephemera tipped in, and includes a QuickTime video clip on the cd of an interview with the band. As well, both this and also the soundtrack to Drouyn include liner notes by Aussie surf music expert Stephen J. McPharland (author of Waltzing The Plank: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Australian Surf Music 1963-2003).
MPEG Stream: "Crystal Shingles"
MPEG Stream: "Animal"
MPEG Stream: "Snake Charmer"

MARTIN, PETER & FINCH Drouyn (EM Records) cd 21.00
Ah, yes it's summertime! Warm sunshine and trips to the beach! And what's more summery than surf music? Lo and behold, our favorite label for obscure and amazing reissues, Japan's EM Records, has a special new series of five, count 'em, five reissues devoted to lost "surf" music treasures. The first two, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, are out now, with the others to follow in short order. We're pretty sure all of 'em are awesome.
And if you're familiar with the eccentricity of this label, you'll know that this "EM Under Water" series isn't going to be about, y'know, "regular" surf music of the Jan & Dean or Ventures variety, nope. These first two releases are both soundtracks to rad '70s surfing movies, and are fully psychedelic, with tripped out grooves, synth experiments, and heavy rock jamming all part of the mix.
This album is the soundtrack to a cult 1974 documentary film entitled Drouyn, that followed champion Australian surfer Peter Drouyn (hmm, depending on how it's pronounced, Drouyn could be a bad name for a surfer!) on a globetrotting quest for the perfect wave, a journey that took him and his surfing pals to a variety of exotic locales -- as far afield as Africa and Japan -- over the course of the two years spent shooting the film. Filmmaker Bob Evans commissioned composer and classical guitarist Peter Finch to do the music, and also Sydney-based hard rockers Finch were brought in on the project as well. These songs and incidental music passages fully capture the lure of sun, sand and sea, as well as the sheer excitement of the wave-riding sport. You get orchestrated pop instrumentals, Eastern ethnic interludes, and even a laidback Beach Boyish cut ("Morning Comes The Sun") with harmony vocals. The contributions from Finch add a dose of fuzzed-out rock and roll energy as well, with their song "Roses" being a kick ass bit of hippy hard rock kitsch with lyrics that go: "Anyone can grow roses / but it takes a green thumb to grow grass" and "Everywhere you go you get busted by the fuzz / get out of the system, have a natural buzz". Peter Martin makes good use of the Finch boys on here, and also offers up arrangements for soulful horns, wigged out ARP synth, and strings... it flows wonderfully, sunny and melodic and mostly mellow. A summertime treat, like the Farm album it's own special thing, lovingly reissued by EM with all the bells and whistles.
MPEG Stream: "Sailaway"
MPEG Stream: "Cynthia"
MPEG Stream: "Morning Comes The Sun"

EROC Eroc 1 (Universal) cd 17.98
This is a Krautrock masterpiece!!! This cd reissue of the 1975 debut release by Eroc has totally floored us. Eroc's the solo project of Joachim Heinz Ehrig, who was the drummer in Grobschnitt. He used his solo project as a way to explore electronics, cutups and sound collage all surrounding totally beautiful & harmonic instrumental pieces. Of the albums he made under the Eroc moniker this is the one that shimmers with the most beauty while still showing his crazy range and unpredictability. From the blissed out to the bizarre, Eroc 1 is one of those records that you can't believe you've never heard before, and one that once heard will surely go down as one of your favorite psych/kraut/prog gems of the '70s.
Every time this plays in the store, someone in the back inevitably comes up front to see what the heck is playing. And often they begin to think that if this keeps up, they just might just have a new favorite record. Striking the perfect balance between experimentation and melody, Eroc melded the use of modular synthesizers, tape, overdubs, sound generators, guitars and percussion into an incredibly forward thinking, densely layered, crazily original sound. There is a golden sonic glow reminiscent of the best moments of Cluster / Harmonia, every track is fantastic and original, each one drives us wild, and the four bonus tracks on this collection are just as good as any of the tracks on the album proper! You can hear the early blueprints of so many musical movements that would take shape in the decades following Eroc's 1975 debut. Moments of dreaminess that foreshadow Durutti Column, glimmering electronics that anyone on Morr Music would kill for, and an integration of so many elements that sonically predate groups like Fridge by decades! We can imagine Andy Votel (Prog Is Not A 4 Letter Word, Finders Keepers) freaking out over this album much like Julian Cope who sang this disc's praises on his Head Heritage website.
And certainly all of us here at AQ have discovered a record that is pretty much a shoo-in for many of our all time favorite lists!
MPEG Stream: "Kleine Eva"
MPEG Stream: "Norderland"
MPEG Stream: "Sternchen"

NOVALIS s/t (Revisited) cd 17.98
Now domestically available, another cool Krautrock reish from Revisited! Their recent cd-ifications of Eroc, Klaus Schulze, Embryo, and Amon Duul II, among others, have been in heavy rotation here at AQ, and this one joins the gang. Revisited appear to be reissuing titles from the legendary & collectable green-labelled 1000-series by the seminal krautrock label Brain, and this too is one of those "green Brain" records. Produced by AQ fave Achim Reichel, Novalis' 1975 self-titled release was the 2nd album from these keyboard-dominated, synthed-out "romantic" space rockers from Hamburg, and is a proggy, groovy, classical gas indeed. Imagine a krauty mixture of E.L.P., and Trans Am, perhaps.
Keyboard whiz Lutz Rahn doesn't stint on the symphonic synths, and Novalis seem to specialize in taking both folk and classical motifs from the past and using them in a "futuristic" rock context. There's also plenty of guitar here too (with two guitarists in the band). The very first track, the sprightly "Sonnengefecht", starts things off with something of a '70s TV cop-show vibe, but one that fans of Zombi should dig. Further cuts reveal Novalis to be flamboyant, yet moody. Energetic, epic, erudite. Some of their lyrics were derived from the 18th century poetry of Karl Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis, the band's namesake. Others are their own, as on one of this album's highlights, "Impressionen", which makes good use of themes borrowed from the 5th Symphony of Anton Bruckner.
Like many of the other Revisited reissues, this includes bonus material not found on the original vinyl. Here you get a ten and a half minute, live in '75 version of "Impressionen". As usual as well, this is nicely presented in a digipack, with color photos in the cd booklet, and liner notes in both German and English. Keep 'em coming, Revisited -- there's quite a few other "Green Brain" albums we'd like to have on cd!!
MPEG Stream: "Sonnengefecht"
MPEG Stream: "Impressionen"

HAACK, BRUCE The Electric Lucifer (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
Can you imagine if "Music To Moog By" maestro Gershon Kingsley had dropped acid, joined a commune, got religion, and jammed with the Silver Apples and Lothar And The Hand People? That might approximate what the unique, wondrous psych-pop "Mooglove" of 1969's The Electric Lucifer sounds like!
YES!!! It's about time. We've always wanted this album to come out on cd. This HAD to be our Record Of The Week. Heck, years and years ago, Allan (long before he worked at Aquarius) became a bit obsessed with this record. He'd found a beat-up old LP of it at a yard sale, bought it mainly 'cause of the title and the freaky colorful cover graphics, and then was blown away by the weird music within. It's what we've described as being "perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere." Allan actually went so far as to try to track down Bruce Haack for an interview, but without any luck (turns out Haack had already passed away back in 1988, a couple years before Allan discovered the record). And Allan's not the only one here at AQ to have a longtime soft spot for this record... so we're all so happy that it's finally, FINALLY been given the cd reissue treatment. It's absurd, really, that this wasn't reissued sooner. The legend of eccentric electronica pioneer Bruce Haack has only grown in recent years. There's been several compilations of his work (Hush Little Robot was the best, since it featured a couple tantalizing cuts from this album), expensive imported Japanese reissues of several of his Moog music albums for kids, a posthumous Electric Lucifer sequel from the vaults, and even a documentary released on DVD, entitled Haack - The King Of Techno! But Haack's crowning glory, his masterpiece The Electric Lucifer, wasn't available at all. Until now. And The Omni Recording Corporation (a label new to us) have done it right, even down to the very welcome notion of including a 5-minute track of silence to separate the 13 tracks of the album proper from the over thirty minutes of additional bonus material that they've added on -- which consists of a 1970 Canadian radio interview with Haack on the subject of Electric Lucifer and an alternate take of "Electric To Me Turn". The packaging is top notch as well, reproducing the amazing artwork and Haack's trippy sleevenotes from the original LP (wherein he discusses his concept of "Powerlove"), plus cramming tons of additional stuff into the thick cd booklet. There's loving liner notes by several of Haack's friends and colleagues and lots of vintage photos and graphics. Nicely done.
How can we explain the utter charm of this album? Well it's about as psychedelic as you can get, a concept album that's futuristic and Biblically ancient at the same time. Haack used an electronic "computer voice" (long before it was cliche) that he named FARAD, as well as regular human vocals, to convey deep Age of Aquarius astrological/philosophical concepts, sometimes in the form of sinister liturgies, at others like playful rhyming lullabies. These Moogy, moody and groovy compositions feature