ECHOSPACE The Coldest Season (Baked Goods / Modern Love) cd 15.98
A few years back, we were enraptured by a strange alien sound, one that opened our ears to a whole genre we had ignored for the most part up until then, an offshoot of techno that eventually became affectionately (and surprisingly accurately) referred to as 'heroin house'. A strangely propulsive sound mired in dense fields of hiss and murk, of fuzz and blur, the beats relegated to a distant pulse. The label was Chain Reaction, and its tiny stable of bands, Fluxion, Matrix, Hallucinator, Substance, Vainqueur, Porter Ricks, Monolake and a few others, completely changed the landscape of techno, and had us all in a frenzy. Albeit a nocturnal druggy soporific one.
Chain Reaction folded, but the sound lived on, in the abstract dub of Rhythm And Sound (the same producers behind the Chain Reaction sound), in the sound of German Chain Reaction acolyte Pole, and the Pop Ambient of Kompakt, but as much as we love all that stuff, it wasn't quite the same. The sounds were similar, each twisted into some new shape, but there was just something so special about those Chain Reaction releases. So mysterious, the sound so haunting and otherworldly, like a rave on the ocean floor, barely audible through the walls of your submarine, further obscured by the hiss and low level buzz of all the onboard machinery. Or some DJ playing microhouse into the wee hours, 5 or 6 floors below you, or better yet, in the old concrete bunker across the street, the only hint of anything going on the muted throb felt more than heard.
It's one of THOSE SOUNDS we always go on about. Like old school ragga jungle or black metal buzz, a sound that is so pleasing to our ears, we could almost listen to a simple loop of those sounds forever. The Chain Reaction sound is another, gorgeous and creepy, moonlit and languorous, the perfect music to drift off to, or to troll the dark rainswept streets of some mysterious European city.
Thus we come to this debut full length from Echospace, the duo of Rod Modell and Soultek's Steve Hitchell, both legendary techno producers, who released a handful of 12"s at the tail end of the nineties, and who were taking the Chain Reaction sound in their own new direction. Years later, the duo returned to THAT SOUND and goddamn if it doesn't sound like being transported right back to mid-nineties Berlin. Using only old school analog equipment: Roland Space Echo, Echoplex, Korg tape delay, vintage signal processors, noise generators, Sequential Circuits 8-bit samplers and analog synthesizers, the sound these two have conjured up hews crazily close to Chain Reaction, but manages to make it sound modern and new at the same time.
All the tracks here are super creepy, slow motion, underwater muted blurs of abstract techno, where the beats seem like more a byproduct of the soundmaking than the reason for it. Some tracks do thump and bump but others merely drift in a thick haze of hiss and crackle. Basslines are deep and rubbery, drenched in reverb and pulled apart into super spare space dubs, bits of percussion are sent careening into a black void, but it's the textures and the ambience that make this record so special. The opener spends the first half of its 6+ minutes offering up huge slow motion crashing waves of surf like static, of buried melodies and off fuzzy shimmer, before any beats even surface, and when they finally do they pulse and throb for a couple minutes before they're swallowed up by the wash of soft white noise. In fact, in addition to sounding underwater, it sounds like the whole disc is being broadcast over a radio between stations, all the sounds wreathed in sonic gristle and buzzy static, but all smeared into huge billowing clouds of sound.
Most of the tracks definitely have a groove, a super slithery abstract alien funk, but more often than not, it's buried beneath gorgeous layers of constantly shifting sound, offering up some barely audible thump, a four on the floor framework for the glacially shifting tectonic sonic plates above. But there are some that don't, like the 11+ minute "Ocean Of Emptiness", a muted smeared ambient drift, that sounds like standing on some vast windswept snow covered plain, under a black sky, watching the snow fall, each snowflake a tiny bit of hiss or crackle, coming in epic waves, glistening and glimmering but strangely warm and inviting. Our favorite track might have to be "Winter In Seney", which sounds like a more dubbed-out Gas. A warm swirling hissy gristly minimal smear, sprinkled with bits of record crackle, and haunting echo drenched bits of glitch and melody, the whole thing wrapped in a gorgeously hypnotic, super spare rubbery bassline, the notes blurring into each other, spreading out like a thick black cloud of dub, totally and utterly mesmerizing.
There's been so much amazing techno lately, lots of Kompakt action, The Field, Gui Boratto, the last Pop Ambient comp, then there was the long overdue Vladislav Delay Chain Reaction reissue (C'mon! Someone reissue ALL those out of print CR discs!!), but this disc has been OWNING the cd player. At work, at home, and has quickly become the new drifting off, late at night, chill out, space out, record of choice. WAY recommended!
MPEG Stream: "First Point Of Aries"
MPEG Stream: "Abraxas"
MPEG Stream: "Ocean Of Emptiness"
MPEG Stream: "Winter In Seney"

EXIT-13 High Life (Relapse) 2cd 16.98
It's frustrating sometimes that lots of our all time favorite records came out well before the aQuarius list was established. We occasionally pick old favorites, like Rein Sanction, Archers Of Loaf, Hardship Post, Green River, stuff that's still available, and review them on the list. Cuz as far as we're concerned, released dates and the concept of 'new music' are pretty much useless. All records are new and exciting to someone who has never heard them. But often times those old favorites are long gone and out of print. So when one of those records does finally get reissued, we jump at the chance to be able celebrate and share that amazing music via the list. Which brings us to this double disc reissue from weirdo eco-radical doom drug grinders Exit-13.
A band we have loved for EVER (so much so, Allan even interviewed them for the first issue of his old fanzine, years and years ago), Exit-13 were only loosely a grind band, sure they were fast and furious, guitars buzzed, songs were short and complex, the vocals a monstrous gurgle, the lyrics way political, all about the environment, vegetarianism, etc.Š But for a grind band, they sure spent a lot of time spewing huge gory gouts of buzzing doomic plod, as well as incorporating convoluted jazz weirdness, freaked out psychedelic leads, thrashing punk rock, bizarre interludes with croony vocals, skittery rhythms, and noodly guitar jams, bits of angular retard-funk, Black Flag-ish gnarled riffing as well as confusional cut ups, dizzying collages of chopped and recontextualized vocals, Jello Biafra, bits of Jeopardy music, the theme from Underdog, Led Zep pastiche and whatever else they felt like tossing in there.
The best way we can describe it is John Zorn meets diSEMBOWELMENT meets Brutal Truth.
The original discs came with stickers that summed up the Exit-13 sound pretty succinctly:
"Mind warping philosophically contemplative environmental brain food from Pennsylvania's unique smoking grind rock extremists" (from Don't Spare The Green Love) and "An 80 minute head explosion of absolutely unique sonic intelligence from Pennsylvania's environmental grind rock hedonists. This band smokes, bud!" (from Ethos Musick)
Hard to argue with thatŠ
So, High Life collects almost everything the band has ever recorded (minus the ep of '20s and '30s cover songs, all about reefer, sung by the Pain Teens' Bliss Blood): their one proper full length, as well as all of their various singles, eps and splits (previously released as Don't Spare The Green Love). And by now, you've probably realized these guys were all about the pot. The songs buzz by in dense clouds of bong smoke, lots of samples about marijuana, lyrics about legalizing hemp and pot. The back of the booklet even features a huge pot leaf and the "Stop the madness - Legalize Marijuana" legend. But that's only one of their causes, a quick look through the lyrics, reveals a seriously 'green' agenda, environmentalism, vegetarianism, there's even a whole track that's just a snippet of the Phil Donahue show, on which he interviews members of Earth First!
But none of that would mean anything if this band didn't completely slay. And thankfully they do. Heavy and fucked, weird, but weirdly catchy, buzzing and blasting, then pounding and chugging. Furious blasts of blown out lightning fast grind are butted up against lurching doom sludge, peppered with super fucked up free jazz breakdowns. Guitars are serpentine, jagged and angular, the drums go from pound to blast beat and back
the vocals harsh and gurgly, there are bits of weirdly classic rock sounding jams, over sound samples, electronics and Goblin-like keyboards...
"Anthropocentric Ecocidal Conundrum" begins with an insistent folky strum over chirping birds and burbling brook, until the guttural death metal vocals kick in and the drums, then it's some sort of metallic death metal folk freakout, finally morphing into some gnarled convoluted math grind jam. Elsewhere, cool creepy acoustic guitars drift over moaning synths, and splattery drums, super cinematic and haunting on "Only Protest Gives A Hope Of Life". There is plenty of weirdness. Damaged is a descriptor that constantly springs to mind, as does demented, and most certainly fucked. Silly too. But at it's core, this is heavy, heady stuff. Brutal but musical, fierce and fractured, forward thinking and seriously far out.
The second disc is the older stuff, and is at once more furious and thrashing, much more grind, but also has lots more sound samples, songs dotted with all sorts of film snippets, voices, bits of dialogue all tangled up with the growling harsh vocals. "Spare The Wrench Surrender The Earth" is half funeral doom, before launching into a more grinding blast of punk rock. The stuff from the first 7" is almost like old school goregrind, with impossible gurgling loooooow vocals, the guitars a furious blur, the drums a furious splatter. Then there's "Fingernails" hinting at the weirdness to come, with its fake horns, and frog-like croaking super effected vocals, and that classic funeral march melody mixed into the chaotic rrroooaaar.
Any fan of heavy music, be it black, thrash, grind, doom, or sludge should be able to get into these guys. And they're just weird enough to maybe also appeal to the less metal inclined looking for something freaked out and heavy.
An interesting note: like any self-respecting grind band, Exit-13 made a regular practice of releasing records with different versions of the same songs, so the song "Disemboweling Party" appears three different times, while seven other tracks appear twice. But in most cases, the various versions, while not totally different, are varied enough to keep it interesting, even if it's just that one is super hot and in the red, and one is super muddy and lo-fi, or even just that different samples were used.
Our only complaint, is that this is only sort of the complete Exit-13, 'cause they left off the extended, potentially-speaker-damaging noisedrone jams that closed out both their records, the 28 minute "An Electronic Fugue For The Imminent Demise of Planet Earth" from Ethos Musick and the 21 minute "Snakes And Alligators" from the Just A Few More Hits ep. Most of us wouldn't have minded paying a few extra bucks for a third disc, and ruined speakers, but what can you do?
Killer packaging, all the original photos, images, lyrics, quotes and propaganda reproduced in a huge booklet.
MPEG Stream: "Societally Provoked Genocidal Contemplation"
MPEG Stream: "Ethos Musick"
MPEG Stream: "Facilitate The Emancipation Of Your Mummified Mentality"
MPEG Stream: "Legalize Hemp Now!"
MPEG Stream: "Oral Fixation"

FLESHPRESS Pillars (Kult Of Nihilow) cd 17.98
We love our doom. The slower, the doomer, the more o's the better. But it's easy to get burned out. Much like the wave of guitars-against-amps drone outfits who seemed to come out of the woodwork on the heels of the sudden popularity of Earth, SUNNO))) and other dronelords, lately it seems like everyone and their brother has a "doom band". Lots of non-metal bands suddenly seem to be sprouting doomier appendages, side projects, home recorded one offs, in part, because it's a sound that's easy to emulate. Tune your guitar really low, play really slow, and that's it. You're a doom band. But as with any other musical movement, it's not what you do, it's how you do it, and the simpler something seems, the harder it is to actually do it in a way that stands out, that separates it from the hundreds of other bands doing the same thing.
So in the world of ultra doom, or many o'd doom, or whatever, it's obvious which bands are doing something special, Boris, SUNNO))), Moss, Bunkur, and of course Finland's Fleshpress. And as much as we love all of those bands, we have a special affinity for Fleshpress, not just because they're Finnish (although there is that), but that they throw all doomic convention to the wind, and do whatever the fuck they want. Even if it's distinctly not doomy. Play fast. No problem. Blast beats, near grindcore, sure. Play soft and pretty, explore post rock, absolutely. Which is what makes them such a refreshing doom outfit. Or conversely, makes them not a doom band at all, rather a weird band that incorporates doom into their all-over-the-map sound.
Either way, Fleshpress rule, they're heavy, weird, slow (when they want to be), fast and furious (when they don't), they deftly craft mysterious soundscapes, they can also unleash huge torrents of soul crushing megadoom. And they do all of that and more on Pillars. Every record, gets a little weirder, a littler more expansive, a little less traditionally doom, and Pillars is no exception.
The first track is almost like Fleshpress's far out sound encapsulated into a single track. Beginning with minutes of spare guitar strum, lots and lots of space, ambient whir, the guitar letting loose distorted riffs, and letting them drift into the darkness. The bass comes in, and does nothing but offers a spidery framework for the seemingly abstract riffs, then the drums come in, a single crash, every few seconds, there is no real rhythm to speak of yet, finally the band lurches into a doomy plod, somewhere between Monarch slow motion sludge and Harvey Milk glacial groove, complete with weird woozy melody and strange slippery riffage, harsh vocals, drifting fields of feedback, briefly we're trudging through a wasteland populated by like minded mavens of doom. Khanate, Burning Witch, MossŠ But soon, the doom recedesŠ leaving just soft billows of sound, when suddenly the band launch into some full on crusty metallic grooves, eventually finishing off with two minutes of grinding hyperspeed buzz. Pretty all over the place, but the parts are all so deftly arranged that it doesn't sound like a bunch of random bits thrown together, it sounds like small varied pieces of the far out whole. That track is quickly followed by 5 minutes of soft flutter and whir, a detuned guitar plucking out a stumbling rhythm, all around, bits of hiss and hum, the sound of rain and wind maybe, all washed out and soft focus.
Then it's the record's massive two song one two punch, two tracks, both about twenty minutes, back to back, the first, begins all grim black metal buzz, furious fuzzed out riffage and harsh hellish vocals, before slipping into a brief mathy groove and then shifting into a midtempo Burzumic black trudge, which of course partway through gives way to more massive and epic and wide open dooooooooom, plodding drums, crushing sludgy dynamics, and a fluttering guitar melody droning along underneath, eventually building to an epic minor key psychedelic crescendo. The second track, is more of a post rocky drift, with clean guitar and a shuffling rhythm, the vocals still howled and harsh, but the main riff, warm and fuzzy, and subtly propulsive, the tempo a bit warbly and seasick, very hypnotic and repetitive, eventually slowing down, but not into a crushing doom plod, but instead, a sprawling space rock sludge, the drums slow and insistent, the guitars building into squalls of psychedelic freakout, like the outro to a Hawkwind track, before the band launches into a super metallic mathy jam, the FX getting thicker and more dense, the band playing harder and faster, the last 5 minutes or so sounding more like the Heads or White Hills, a gorgeous outer space trip through throbbing bass lines, clouds of spacepsych guitar, and killer chaotic drumming.
The final two tracks both clock in at about nine minutes each, and again, demonstrate some totally other side of Fleshpress' doomworld. The first, is a loping post rock dirge, the guitars ringing out, the rhythm more like the Slintish blackness of Ved Buens Ende, a head nodding mathy groove peppered with vocal howls and an awesome epic buzz drenched coda. The final track is all drone, a murky subterranean trawl, all slow building sludgy swells, dense metallic shimmer, strange bits of industrial sonic detritus and some mysterious backwards percussion right at the end.
Seriously mind blowing. It almost does it a disservice to call Fleshpress a doom band anymore, although those are the folks who will be most inclined to love this. But fans of weird black metal and freaky outsider heaviness might also have found one of their records of the year.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

NAGELFAR Virus West (Van) cd 17.98
We've been meaning to re-list this for a while now. A reissue of one of our favorite black metal records EVER. Virus West, originally released way back in 2001, was the final step in this German band's progression, from folky Viking black metal to experimental avant black metal to something way more primal and raw, but somehow no less original or avant.
AQ list subscribers who might not have been hip to these guys back in the day, might recognize the name, as some of the Nagelfar folks went on to form big time aQ faves Ruins of Beverast and Kermania as well as the equally brilliant Graupel and Verdunkeln (who we have yet to review/list).
So what is it exactly about this disc that makes it so amazing? It's a bit hard to describe. The sound is very Scandinavian, harkening back to the classic sound of the nineties Norwegian elite. The sound is thick and buzzing, the vocals a chaotic howl, the drumming a crushing pound as often as a thrashing blast, but as with most things like this, much of the magic is mood and atmosphere, and these guys conjure up a truly intense and darkly magical mood, while at the same time, kicking out some of the most classic sounding riffs ever. Much of their time is spent plodding doomily along, buzzing midtempo lurches in the spirit of Darkthrone, but they also offer up some serious thrashing blackness, peppered with long slow crawls, chanted monk like vocals, lots of dynamics, stop start riffing, weird keyboards, little bits of triumphant majesty giving way to brutal growling black metal buzz, field recordings, bits of dark fluttery folk, but again it's the mood that makes this record, the way the band capture a certain essence, the spirit of black metal, managing to be true and grim and classic sounding, but also just fucked up enough to make it special, and part of that is the fact that the songs are all crazy catchy, with a certain amount of groove, hooks everywhere, the riffs stick in your head, the songs, as black and buzzy as they are, linger like pop songs long after the record ends.
The final track, "Meuterei", is the perfect encapsulation of what was so great about Nagelfar. Beginning with some strummed acoustic guitars, some Viking style chanting, the band launch into a cool midtempo mathy metallic old school metal groove, underpinned by furious blast beats, until they switch it up into a triumphant metal march, complete with what sounds like horns playing a regal fanfare. Then we're back in the grimy old school black metal filth, a buzzing snarling midtempo crush, before exploding into some chaotic blackened riffing, various guitar parts all tangled up into a heaving roiling whole, the drums holding it together with their relentless pound, so goddamn good.
Such a shame this marked the end of Nagelfar, but for those who still need more, be sure and check out Ruins Of Beverast, Verdunkeln and all the rest...
MPEG Stream: "Hellebarn"
MPEG Stream: "Sturm Der Katharsis"

FEAR FALLS BURNING & BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL s/t (Conspiracy) cd 14.98
Here's another matchup that had to happen eventually. And it's the rare one of those that actually sounds as good as one might hope. Like all great collaborations, it's not just so much jamming together, as it is getting each contributor to not only give their all but to push the other collaborator to do the same. It's not a competition, but the spirit is similar, with both parties trying to get into the head of their counterpart, a push and pull, that can sometimes result in the players going places they don't normally on their own.
The long drawn out guitarscapes of Fear Falls Burning are the perfect foil to the more incendiary ambience of Campbell Kneale and his Birchville Cat Motel. Both are capable of face melting heaviness, but both are also quite comfortable crafting intimate worlds of soft sound and distant shimmer. This 49 minute single piece tends to fall more toward the latter at least in the beginning, with the incipient heaviness relegated to smoldering in the distance, while the foreground is a deliriously drifting set of abstract strums, folky fragments allowed to ring out and float freely amidst an almost Wolf Eyesian backdrop of keening feedback, grinding black whirs, and huge resonant swells. The sound is intense, humid, and very cinematic. Eventually the sounds build, layers upon layers, erupting into a blinding heart-of-the-sun nearly static raga, what sounds like a million guitars all left to drone endlessly amidst a cloud of tinkling glimmering sparkles.
The last twenty minutes or so, finds all the high end swallowed by the low, the guitars begin to grind and rumble, pulse and throb, until the sound becomes a dark viscous river of crumbling distortion, growing less and less distorted, until finally, all that's left is a warm, minimal whir, that gently shifts and drifts until it fades out completely.
Most folks (like us) see FFB and BCM and already know this is a must buy, but this is indeed pretty fantastic, even amidst the seemingly neverending (let's hope!) avalanche of amazing releases by both of these prolific noisemakers.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled"

OF The Sun & Earth Together (Ultra Hard Gel) cd 12.98
Loren Chasse, one of the chief swamis of the collective Jewelled Antler sound through such projects as Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Franciscan Hobbies, Ov, and too many more to list (boy, they used to crank out those cd-rs!), records solo under the moniker Of (the similarly named Ov being the duo of Chasse with his wife and AQ-employee Christine, full disclosure). Simply put, we love Of (and Ov), of course... and are always happy when Chasse takes some time away from his other activities (the somewhat less musical of which being his day job as a public school teacher) to craft a new Of album, a phantom tendril from his own personal dreamworld reaching through our shared reality to caress our ears and cause imaginary crystals to glow softly somewhere within that part of our minds attuned to such blissful vibrations. Not to make this sound like any sort of New Age fluff though, as while as ethereal and meditative as this is, Chasse always incorporates some primitive grit into his work, his music full of feedback hiss, quiet distortion, ambient elemental field recordings of nature, the magnified rubbings of rocks and plants, objects close to the ground, part of the earth, illuminated (and given shadow too) by the radiation of a far-off, flaming star.
The music of The Sun and Earth Together is akin to a slowly turning mobile, as if it were giving off drones and tones as well as glinting with color and the reflections of light. As light shimmers, so does this music. As light dims, it dims too. The abstract sculptural shapes of this imagined mobile move in beautiful indeterminate patterns, much as the sounds Chasse conjures from disparate sources* as cymbalom and stones, autoharp and voice, bells and bowls, guitar and zither all drift delicately, and droningly, in phosphorescent clouds and constellations. This disc clocks in at 51 minutes, consisting of four tracks, each one longer than the last, from the three minute opener "Ignimbrites" to the 26 minute closing title track. All composed of tingling, whispered layers of lo-fi loveliness, gentle and graceful and ultimately glorious.
*we're guessing on some of these...
MPEG Stream: "Archangelic Curtain"
MPEG Stream: "Ignimbrites"
MPEG Stream: "Vog Rings"

SOL Let There Be A Massacre (Van) cd 13.98
Finally, time to clear away the dirt, drag that huge concrete slab to the side, reach way down into the ancient gloom and haul that old wooden crate up from the depths, pry open that rusted padlock, unwind the heavy chains, and pull out the nails, one by one, until we can remove the lid, and unleash the many many 'o's stashed there long ago. Confused? Well, it's been a while since we needed a bunch of extra o's for a doom review, but now that we finally have enough copies of Sol's Let There Be A Massacre to review, all of these o's are most definitely going to come in handy.
And yes, this is most definitely doooooooooooooom, but not of the slow motion near static sludge variety, no the doom of Sol is much more classic, and epic, melodic and majestic, almost like a Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride record slowed down, fucked up, and turned into something at once, totally familiar, but also strangely twisted and bizarre. The work of one man, a Danish dude called Emil Sol Brahe, and while he definitely has his fundamentals in place. Lumbering tempos, mournful melodies, thick buzzing guitars, howled demonic vox, the sound of Sol is anything but typical doom. It's another one of those instances where if you stripped away the distortion, it would almost be some gorgeously lilting slowcore post rock. The main guitar soars and sings, over a swirling wash of droning buzz, pounding drum plod. And the rumbling guttural vocals. The first track almost sounds like some strange mix of Skepticism and Godspeed, You Black Emperor. Very cinematic, and emotional, not evil or brutal as much as melancholy and haunting.
Check out the third track "Boginki", with its strange martial drum intro, the sound of the drums weirdly effected, the cymbals a distorted sizzle, the guitar comes in, a warped downtuned looped churning almost static riff, and then the vocals, super distorted and anguished, all wrapped up by a strange almost jig like synthesizer melody. In some weird way it almost sounds like Laibach. Which is definitely not a bad thing. There are occasional stretches of folky acoustic guitar, murky drones, and roiling buzz, but for the most part, Brahe and his Sol unfurl thick heaving slabs of that gorgeous epic doom majesty they just don't seem to make that much anymore. The final track is a weary woozy lament, all muted rhythmic thump and wheezing minor key accordion, finishing off with creepy minimal backporch banjo, folky and somber, mysterious and quite lovely, but in some strange way just as crushingly sad and funereally heavy as the rest of the disc.
Definitely essential for doomlords and doomaidens, and for anyone who has been lamenting the recent lack of multiple o'd reviews, but also, just melodic and pretty enough to possibly appeal to fans of apocalyptic doomfolk like Kiss The Anus, Ignatz, Woven Hand, Svarte Greiner, as long as they can handle their doom folk, HEAVY on the DOOOOOOOM...
MPEG Stream: "Centuries Of Human Filth"
MPEG Stream: "Boginki"
MPEG Stream: "Apocalypse"

VERDUNKELN Einblick In Den Qualenfall (Van) cd 13.98
We've been meaning to list this record for ages, the second release from mysterious German horde Verdunkeln, a huge favorite around these parts. And while these guys are often compared to mid period Burzum, they are so much more than that.
Just take the first song, with its weird gothy into, processed Joy Division bassline, over plodding simple drum line, chanted monk like vocals, as far as we're concerned, the track could have continued on like that, a weird minimal stripped down goth doom jam, vibes of early 4AD, old militaristic industrial, but instead, the chorus offers up a thick slab of crunchy superdistorted guitar, and howled, effected shrieks, before slither back into the same gothy crawl, until it finished off with a furious freak out, all pounding drums, blown out guitars, wild leads and huge chunks of throbbing bass.
And that sort of defines their sound. It's almost like some eighties goth band, like Christian Death, the Abecedarians, or Kommunity FX, were transported to some grim black forest, where they continued to play basically the same music, but with the surroundings seeping into every note, the starlit sky, the dense canopy of trees overhead, the whipping wind, the snow capped mountains, turning them into something basically undefinable. Sure it's black metal. Sort of. And yeah, it's some kind of weird dark gothwave, but the way those two elements are incorporated transform Verdunkeln into something so bizarre, and so unique, that it's hard to really describe.
Each song begins as a lurching midtempo bass heavy crawl, the bass heavily reverbed and effected, the vocals haunting and deep, when the guitars do come in, they are massive, chugging away at one moment, soaring majestically the next.
Our favorite song might be the second track, "Im Zwiespalt", beginning with that haunting reverbed twang, the sound of rainfall, cracks of thunder, the guitars finally come in, and the song lurches into motion, some sort of lumbering downtuned blackdoom behemoth, that plods along until a sudden break, when a delay drenched guitar offers up a strummed minor key melody, and the song explodes into a weird majestic cinematic blow out, the chords and notes soaring, until that delayed guitar break comes back in briefly, and the song resumes it's dense plod, but this time the riffing following the clean guitar, a weird post rocky, mournful vibe. Bleak and harrowing, and super epic and emotional. Midway through the track, the tempo picks up and the band begins to rock seriously for the first time, replete with tangled leads, haunting melodies, still strangely melancholy and emotional, before fading out into a drifting drone-y shimmer, peppered with huge bursts of crumbling downtuned chug, beneath a washed out smear of lonely synths, only to finish with a strange mathy outro.
And even though for right now, that might be our favorite song, this is one of those discs, that whatever song you happen to be listening to is your favorite. Next song, "oh wait, THIS one is the best song". Next song. "Actually, THIS one is way better. And so it goes. The whole record is just this impossible black metal goth, downtuned post rock doom, majestic cinematic post metal, avant metallic rock, who the fuck knows, and really who cares. There are definitely some Burzumic elements, some distinctly black metal tropes, but Verdunkeln are one of the very few, incredibly rare BM bands around who absolutely and completely sound like nothing you've ever heard.
MPEG Stream: "In Die Irre"
MPEG Stream: "Im Zwiespalt"

MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS Gitchii Manitou (12 Step Retrance Program For Troubled Dream Warriors) (Pacific City Sound Visions) cd-r 9.98
The name Monopoly Child Star Searchers might not be all that familiar to you, but the man behind the music probably is, it's Spencer from long time AQ faves the Skaters, with a brand new solo tape, under yet another new and obtuse monicker.
But as weird as the band name is, it probably won't prepare you for what lurks inside. Sonically, it's definitely reminiscent of the Skaters, but where the Skaters dabbled in murky tribal jams, and stumbling free folk rituals, the sound here is much more chaotic and playful, almost circusy at times, sounding like some cracked pop record rolled in tape his, and played back at the wrong speed, all bass and no treble, so even the high end sounds like a buzzy blur. Super hypnotic, a looped landscape of hiccupping stuttering melodies, dizzying and dense, while in the background, long drawn out tones drift in the background, synths or vocals, hard to tell, but they sound angelic and haunting. The tape is all variations on this strange looped alchemy, sometimes stripped down to just percussion, but even then it's a mumbled barrage of thumps and skitters, all jumbled up into a chaotic little tangle of rhythms.
Not sure if you can tell from the above, but this just might be our the best thing we've heard from the Skaters camp EVER!
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

CONNORS, LOREN As Roses Bow: Collected Airs 1992 - 2002 (Family Vineyard) 2cd 17.98
Loren Connors has always had a special way with a guitar. An impossibly intimate rapport, the result of which is gorgeously dreamy and unlike almost any guitar music we've ever heard. Dark clouds of chordal shimmer, simple spidery melodies, experimental for sure, but not at the cost of intimacy or emotion. Connors explores some dark inner world of sadness and sorrow, melancholy and regret, his guitar practically singing, but not howling or wailing, instead crooning in slow low tones, his music like a collection of lost spirituals, unearthed, dusted off, and unfurled, allowed to hover and drift like motes of dust in the late afternoon sun. Wrapped in the soft whirring lo-fi production, and the moonlit murk of whatever space the sounds are being captured in.
This collection gathers up most of Connors' modern airs, shortform pieces inspired by classic Irish airs of the past (Irish traditionals like "Danny Boy" for instance), culled from 10 albums (8 of which are out or print).
But don't be expecting any sort of classic sounding Irish music, or recognizable traditionals, it's the spirit of the air that is more on display here, each track a gorgeous miniature. Epic, yet somehow broken down to its very melodic essence. A few tracks feature vocals, courtesy of longtime Connors collaborator Suzanne Langille, her voice deep and throaty, the perfect match for Connors' languorous melodies, but most of these tracks are instrumental, the guitar woven into spare, evocative soundscapes, where the space is just as important as the notes, the melodies drawn way out into glistening spiderwebs of sound, soft and shimmery and somnambulant, the sound of moonlight shadows, and warm breezes at dusk, the soft lapping of water on the shore of a fog shrouded lake, the whispered rustle of autumn leaves, each note a warm glowing orb, twinkling in a fuzzy expanse of muted ambience and breathless anticipation. So so so lovely.
MPEG Stream: "An Air"
MPEG Stream: "Sorrow In The House"
MPEG Stream: "Moonyean No. 7"
MPEG Stream: "Onora's Kid"

HIGUCHI, HISATO Butterfly Horse Street (Family Vineyard) cd 14.98
Been meaning to get to this one for a while... and then we reviewed it and our supplier was out of stock... but now they've got 'em again and here you go: Japanese guitarist Hisato Higuchi's previous disc on the Family Vineyard label, Dialogue, was all about the almost motionless, mysterious spare strum, a lonely n' lovely abstract guitar meditation. This newer disc starts off that way, with the quietly beautiful "A Hundred Signs Of Light"... but then, when track two, "Grow", kicks in, Higuchi's guitar playing suddenly, surprisingly takes a thrilling turn into amped up electric skree territory. It still sounds lonely and lovely - just WAY more loud and distorted. "Blood And Leaves" follows in the same vein. But then "Melody In The Mud" takes us back to the hushed, minimal moodiness of the first track... though 'tis only a brief (1:39) interlude before the next track, "Electric Guitar Light", erupts in full speaker shredding glory. It's a bit like Loren Connors sharing an album with Keiji Haino (hmmm, actually, those two have done that, but it's been a while and we can't say for sure that's what this sounds like...).
This album continues like this, Higuchi's somnolent, near-ambient songs (with some breathy, barely-there vocals), abutting others that aren't nearly so mellow... one of those is album-ender "Cry Baby Flowers", which sounds something like Eddie Hazel's "Maggot Brain" with a Merzbow makeover. Actually these crinkly-cranked distorted guitar solos -are- still sorta mellow, or at least mesmeric, but only if you're used to enjoying noisier stuff. Certainly they share the same slo-mo suggestions of melody and melancholia with the quieter pieces on here...
Definitely for fans of Neil Youngish fuzz freakout feedback side of Nagisa Ni Te, or Hjiokaidan noise guitar maven Jojo Hiroshige's more "musical" solo efforts. We really, really like it.
MPEG Stream: "A Hundred Signs Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "Grow"
MPEG Stream: "Blood And Leaves"

WITCHCRAFT The Alchemist (Candlelight USA / Rise Above) cd 14.98
The Japanese import version w/ bonus track is all gone, but now we've recieved the much cheaper, digipack'd domestic version of the new Witchcraft, here's our review...
Oh man. The third album from the Swedish prog/psych/doom wizards Witchcraft is finally here. We can barely contain ourselves. They say third time's the charm, and of course with Witchcraft it can't help but being so, since the first two times were charmed as well. This band's debut destroyed us with its incredibly authentic retro Pentagram/Sabbath stylings, with lashings of flute and folkiness too. Their second album, Firewood, captivated us with an equally early '70s heavy progressive vibe. Now The Alchemist succeeds at giving us what we want from Witchcraft -and- pushing further into the realm of melodic, folky proggy rock that stands on its own far beyond being a mere tribute to its '70s ancestors.
Guitarist/singer Magnus Pelander and his band Witchcraft have pretty much proved that the old adage "they don't make 'em like they used to" isn't always true. Witchcraft sure as hell does. That it's 2007 not 1972 isn't evident from anything on here, though it sounds as fresh as a daisy at the same time. These guys are so old school analog you halfway expect that their cd would be made out of black plastic and have visible grooves in it. We certainly could imagine some DJ's looking for breaks wanting this on vinyl real bad, you could do some badass hiphop mix with parts of "Remembered" ferinstance. Bet Andy Votel digs this band. Totally sounds like they could have gotten a deal with his favorite progressive record label back in the day (that'd be the famed Vertigo) had Witchcraft really existed in the '70s... certainly the inclusion of the sax solo (yes, a sax solo!) at the end of "Remembered" helps make it sound like something from an old Vertigo LP! Elsewhere Witchcraft get super sweet and gentle, or break out the heavy riffs Sabbath style (like you'd expect -- Sabbath originally being a Vertigo band y'know) in a blend we can't help but love.
Magnus' emotive, melodic vocals are so crucial here, one of this record's shining strengths. He still sounds a bit like a Swedish-accented Ozzy, yet with a graceful finesse, belting it out expressively or crooning with lilting loveliness. His vocals are matched by the absolutely powerful and gorgeous guitarwork throughout the disc. This album sweeps us off our feet immediately with the instant-classic opener "Walk Between The Lines", which is followed by a re-recorded version of the A-side of last year's 7" single, "If Crimson Was Your Colour", an urgent, witchy rocker embellished with some tasty Moog licks. Then there's the loping "Leva", which though Magnus sings it in Swedish, still goes straight to our soul. The Sabbath factor is ratcheted up on "Hey Doctor", a lumbering doom-riffed downer lamentation/accusation. The next track, "Samaritan Burden" combines the heavy riffs with a mellower mood and more acoustic-y moments, masterfully structured. It's followed by the aforementioned "Remembered", definitely an album-standout that's so '70s in so many ways that pretty much only Witchcraft could have done it in this day and age. And then, speaking of standouts, comes the nearly 15 minute long title track, "The Alchemist"! We'll omit description other than to say it's of course an epic mindblower, closing the album with magnificent, mesmeric, proggier than thou flourish.
Definitely a Top 10 Best of 2007 album, highly recommended. Seriously, we'd have been happy taking all day to write this review, just 'cause we love listening to this album so much.
MPEG Stream: "Walk Between The Lines"
MPEG Stream: "Hey Doctor"
MPEG Stream: "Remembered"

SEA HAGS s/t (Rock Candy) cd 17.98
With a lot of stuff on the AQ list, to us at least, the music often transcends its genre. And part of the fun of reviewing a record like that, is getting people who don't normally listen to that kind of music to check it out, and maybe even dig it. You know, some metal record that's so fucked up and damaged that it might appeal to folks into noise music or experimental music. Or some pop band that's so heavy and intense, that even metalheads might dig it.
Well, with this, the long long long overdue reissue of the first and only record from San Francisco's very own Sea Hags, we're not even gonna bother. This isn't fucked up or noisy or experimental. It's heavy, groovy, glammy hard rock that totally kicks ass. And if you don't dig stuff like Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Hanoi Rocks and the like, then odds are you aren't gonna dig this. But if you do (and if you don't what the hell's wrong with you?!), and somehow you missed out on the greatest hard rock band to ever come out of SF, then for fuck's sake, pick this up NOW.
Hailed back in the day as the next Guns N' Roses, and described by their manager thusly: "There's only so far you can go with three junkies and one alcoholicŠ", the Sea Hags were Bay Area rock heroes, who would hang out with Courtney Love, have Metallica's Kirk Hammett play lead on one of their tracks, almost get a song on the Sid And Nancy soundtrack after a tip from Love (who was fronting Faith No More at the time!), record with Mike Clink who produced Appetite For Destruction, kick their drummer out while recording, have the band nearly break up on tour after being busted for drugs, and (sadly) have one member die at age 26 of an heroin overdose a year after the band breaks up, but more importantly than all of that, record one of the best hard rock records of the nineties, and one of the greatest hard rock tracks EVER in the form of "Half The Way Valley".
Just listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. Filthy and dangerous, groovy and bluesy, glammy and heavy, and so crazy catchy, a pinch of the Stones, a bit of the Yardbirds, lots of Aerosmith, plenty of GN'R , all mixed up with their own unique take on sixties pop and seventies hard rock. Kick ass riffing, pounding drumming, boozy world weary vocals, and hooks galore.
Not sure what else to say. Amongst the hard rockers around these parts, the reissue of the Sea Hags record was a HUGE deal. So much so, that had it not happened, Andee and Allan might have considered it for their fledgling eighties metal reissue label!
Needless to say, this is essential listening for hard rockers. One of our favorite discs from the nineties. Finally reissued, and damn if it don't sound as kick ass as ever!
As with all the Rock Candy reissues, the packaging and presentation are amazing. If only ALL reissues were this well done. Bonus tracks, tons of photos, extensive liner notes, interviews with bandleader Ron Yocom, as well as track by track notes and a band history.
MPEG Stream: "Half The Way Valley"
MPEG Stream: "Doghouse"

PET GENIUS s/t (Hydra Head) cd 11.98
The more we hear from Mr. Stephen Brodsky, frontman of the mighty Cave In, the more we're beginning to wonder if maybe his particular genius was wasted in the context of a sludgy metal band. Or perhaps it was specifically that weird pop genius that made Cave In such a bad ass proposition. And that should have had people more prepared for their eventual shift into bombastic progpop.
Regardless, we've got two Brodsky projects on this week's list, the psychedelic power pop of Brodsky's Octave Museum, and this brand new disc right here, that sounds like some weird hybrid between Elope, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Beatles, XTC, Kyuss and the White Stripes... If that's even possible, and on repeated listening
This disc is pretty all over the map, some tracks are jangly and dreamy, others are crunchy and super heavy, many are both. But it's the perfect pop songwriting that holds all of these disparate sounds together. And perfect pop they are.
We were pretty much sold 10 seconds in, the opener is a barnstormer, a killer riff, with a lurching stop start verse, and some Beatles-esque falsetto vocals, all wrapped around one of the most killer hooks ever! The second track is more blessed out, folky and very British sounding, with epic melodic swells, and more falsetto vocals, gentle acoustic strum and some playful vocal guitar interplay. But track three, "Walls Of Etiquette" is the gem here, and most likely the single, if records like this actually have 'singles', groovy and stoner, with a slithery riff, keening vocals, a super catchy melody, and a churning super intense grinding metallic refrain, and a chorus to die for. Very reminiscent of Queens Of The Stone Age back when they were AWESOME. A lot of this record reminds us of that amazing Open Hand record we raved about a few years back. "Man Of The Mountain" is another killer, beginning with a crunchy metal intro, before slipping into a dreamy folky drift, all poppy shimmer and irresistible hooks.
The rest of the record plays out in a pretty similar fashion, with Brodsky pitting his Beatlesy pop heart against his distorted desert axe, the results pretty tough to beat. And this is one of those records we just gave a cursory listen to, but soon found ourselves spinning it over and over EVERY day. No better recommendation than that...
MPEG Stream: "Doomsday"
MPEG Stream: "Walls Of Etiquette"
MPEG Stream: "The Visiting Dynamiter"
MPEG Stream: "Man Of The Mountain"

INH HALENTROPY s/t (Metal Mind Control) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's a whole new world now, discovering music. MySpace, Youtube, people emailing MP3's and JPEG's. Easier maybe, but not nearly as romantic or as exciting as receiving some mysterious package in the mail, or stumbling upon some strange looking record in a dusty old bin and some tiny record store. And to be totally honest, almost all of the amazing discoveries that have ended up being big AQ faves, began life as a weird little package that just showed up in the mail one day.
None maybe weirder than the package we got from a band called, wait for it, Inh Halentropy. Yep. They had us at Inh Halentropy. It's a weird enough name, but it's two words?!? So inside the package was a cd with that classic image of Bigfoot, walking through the clearing, staring at the camera, and over the top, the band logo, very eighties metal looking, in the middle of a hand drawn spiderweb. Still we had no idea what to expect inside. But we did discover a note. Which read in part: "Dark Greetings. For your grimnatious becryptlementŠ" signed appropriately enough: "In ancient solemnity, none so grimmŠ"
OK. We were sold, now all that was left was to actually listen to the cd-r. And as with most things, certainly the most exciting and satisfying things, the music was nothing at all like what we expectedŠ
Inh Halentropy seem to be a metal band, black metal more specifically, yet most of the disc is distinctly not metal. Or at least not typically metal. Beginning with the sound of surf on the shore, the calls of sea birds, the band crawls into action, a huge rumbling bass tone, clouds of electronic FX, a simple drawn out melody, clean guitars unwinding in an expanse of dark shimmer, when suddenly, a massive speaker destroying low end growl surfaces, and as far as we can tell, maybe those are the vocals. Church bells toll, the ambience gets thicker and more grim, the closest comparison might be funereal doom, but it's sort of ethereal. And sort of pretty. But definitely ominous and creepy. Like Low crossed with Goblin crossed with Esoteric. Elsewhere, the black clouded skies are filled with the clatter of chimes, strange harmonics ringing out, all over thick lustrous black ambience, the sound of rain, at times it almost sounds like a blackened new age, which sounds weird but is most definitely a very good thing.
"Golden Beast Altered Axe" might be the most trippy, a simple drum plod, spread out over a slowly squirming synthscape, everything wreathed in ephemeral clouds of twinkling electronic effects, a mournful melody drifts over the top, while running through the entire a track, a creepy ominous low end melody of buzz and whir, all beneath a constant sheet of rain. Very cinematic and evocative.
Our favorite track might be "A Door Is A Tomb", thee most propulsive of the bunch, but we're still talking a glacial crawl, more ambient forest sounds, water and wind, insects in the background, but here, flutes flutter over a backdrop of downtuned riffage, but smeared into a warm moaning blur, over the top, bells chime, mysterious vocals croak and growl, the drums a simple machinelike rhythm, everything eventually breaking down into a plodding bass-ic doom, wrapped in a midnight storm, and suffused with thick ropy drones and grinding minimal low end whir.
Really pretty fantastic, and totally baffling. New age doom? Black ambient nature music? Not sure what to call it, but it's completely killing us. Add to that, the fact that the date on the back of the disc says 1980, and other than the song titles and an email address (oh and a few more pictures of giant hairy beasts) there's really not much else to go on. But the music is plenty. A perfectly freaky, haunting cinematic slowcore new age black doom sprawl that should for sure hit the spot for those of you who could barely make it through that descriptor without thinking that this might already be your new favorite record. We are suitably grimnatiously becryptled. As shall you be, wethinksŠ
MPEG Stream: "Candlemath At Mid Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Greater Than The Night Sky"
MPEG Stream: "A Door Is A Tomb"

PRURIENT Worm In The Apple (Hospital) 7" 5.98
As most of you well know by now, we're not that into straight up NOISE music. Thus we never really got into Prurient, until the Black Vase record. There was just something about that disc that spun our heads around, and had us yearning for more noise. Other than a few splits we haven't heard too much from Prurient (aka Dominick Fernow, who runs Hospital Productions as well as playing in Ash Pool and the Vegas Martyrs) since then, but this here brand new 7" ep just showed up and it's seriously damaged and brilliant, but maybe not in the way you might think.
The A side begins just how you'd expect, a caustic vitriolic wall of sound, mostly vocals, which immediately sounds like just another dense slab of speaker shredding ultranoise, that is until the vocals drop out, and reveal what is lurking underneath. The vocals are so in the red and blown out that they swallow everything within earshot, so when they pull back, they reveal a crumbling soundscape of smeared melodies and blurred ambience, still noisy for sure, but also haunting and abstract, with fucked samples a bits of dialogue, and the occasional brief blast of white noise fury.
The flipside is even weirder. Some sort of distorted synthpop, like Depeche Mode through a set of blown speakers, then some super creepy processed vocals come in, and the track devolves into another hazy and distorted stretch of obscured beauty, with a fucked up lopped low end outro. Maybe the 'nicest' thing we've heard from Prurient. Probably not noisy enough for the noise crowd, but definitely weird enough that it might just appeal to the Hecker / Fennesz blurred sound crowd, if they can handle a bit of brutality with their beauty...

ABIGOR Fractal Possession (End All Life Productions) 2lp 18.98
Now available on lp, super heavy vinyl, deluxe gatefold jacket, with printed black and gold metallic inner sleeves, really really nice.
The return of infamous Austrian black metal horde Abigor, after six years of near silence. The band broke up briefly in 2003, but reformed last year, with an almost entirely new lineup, but their sound continues pretty much right where their last full length Satanized left off. Abigor began life as grim epic buzz merchants, channeling the sound of classic Norwegian BM, but mixing it with raw primitivism and forest folkiness, all woven into a sound distinctly their own. Furious and chaotic, most songs blasting blurs of swirling blackness, peppered with confusional arrangements and epic flourishes. But on 2001's Satanized, the band changed direction, their sound becoming  more cold and clinical, more ultra technical and sci-fi, the same old buzz and blast but with a futuristic sheen...
Right out of the gate, Fractal Possession (even the title!) ups the future tech sci-fi blackness ante big time, after a brief industrial soundscape of space FX, and angular guitar, bits of metallic clatter and clang, electronic beats and weird snippets of dialogue, the band lurches into a crazy squiggly blast of super dynamic, tangled guitar squiggles and furious blast beats, like some strange Mick Barr / Orthrelm style guitarist got dropped into a stretch of futuristic black metal buzz. The band soon settles back into a more recognizable pattern of blasting fury and relentless hellish pound, but those angular shred guitars are still everywhere, soaring and slippery, serpentine squiggles in, around, over and under the various riffs and drum blasts. There are also all kinds of ultra brief interludes, short stretches of creepy ambience or some subtle folky strum, that barely have time to leave your speakers before the band buzz back into action, giving the whole sound a super seasick, start/stop ultra dynamic feel. The rest of the record follows a similar pattern, with some songs offering up gothy minor key melodies, Borknagar-like clean vocals, stretches of mathy blackened post rock, damaged chunks of bizarre effects drenched buzz, even some classic old school metal riffing here and there. It's a confusional combination for sure, but it works, it really sounds like it could be the black metal soundtrack to an Alfred Bester novel. Dramatic, mysterious, original, heavy, weird, plenty of awesome what-the-fuck moments, but some unbelievably kick ass riffing as well. Everything just oozing creepy alien otherworldly ambience...
If you can imagine some impossible (and improbable) crossbreeding experiment, where genes were taken from Emperor, Blut Aus Nord, Gorguts, Necrophagist, Orthrelm and Ved Buens Ende, then said genes were launched into space, where they were left to orbit some blackcloud shrouded planet, the genes gestating and mutating in the rays of an alien sun, returning to earth a hulking buzzing blasting blackened alien sonic space creature, only to find the humans gone, the landscape a burning post apocalyptic wasteland of destruction and death, fire and fury, and of course, gloriously dense and complex black metal buzz.
MPEG Stream: "Project Shadow"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Void Choir"
MPEG Stream: "Lair Of Infinite Desperation"

GLOMP 9 #9 (Boing Being) book 35.00
We're so immersed in Finnish underground music all the time, that we sometimes forget there's probably a whole lot of other amazing underground stuff going on over there as well. Like say, ART ferinstance. Well last year we got a crash course in Finnish underground art with a hefty eye popping tome called Glomp. And it happened to be the eighth Glomp, but the first one we had ever set eyes on and we were smitten, BIG TIME. So were all of you as we couldn't keep it in stock, and it ended up going out of print pretty dang fast.
Thankfully, it's time for another hair raising, eye popping, head spinning, other-body-part-doing-something-else-that-body-part-doesn't-normally-do installment of crazy, gorgeous, funny, sad, poignant, confusing, fantastical and fucked up Finnish underground art in the form of Glomp #9! And just like the first one it's amazing. And even though much of the text is in Finnish, it doesn't detract from the loveliness or far-out-ness or just plain old simple beauty of this amazing artwork. And for all you Finnish music freaks (like us), tons of the artwork here is by folks who do time in bands like Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and loads more. Just like #8, the stuff inside is all over the map, from gorgeous and bizarre photographs, to gorgeous super detailed Renee French like pencil drawings, to super abstract paintings, to garish sculptures, confusing collages, tons of comic strips, most you don't even have to understand Finnish to get (although most of the text is subtitled with English footnotes!). Our favorite is probably the recurring strip by Tommi Musturi, the trials and tribulations of a strange doughy white pill shaped being with pink lips and a tubular nose, who wanders Frank-like through strange and dangerous worlds. But all of it is just so amazing. Finnish freaks will definitely want this, but anyone into cool weird hard to find art books will definitely go crazy for this too. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES WORLDWIDE. Of that thousand we have a super limited amount, and if people go as crazy for this one as they did for the last one, they won't be around for long...

HIS NAME IS ALIVE Sweet Earth Flower - A Tribute To Marion Brown (High Two Recording Co.) cd 16.98
Without knowing why or how, the idea of the recently more soulful, perpetually Beach Boys obsessed pop group His Name Is Alive tackling a record of tracks by legendary jazz saxophonist Marion Brown, seems not just unlikely but maybe even ill advised.
So we were pretty surprised and thrilled when we finally wrapped our ears around this disc. A dark smoldering expansive ambient jazz sprawl, His Name Is Alive, seriously channeling the spirit of Marion Brown, in such a way that is at once totally faithful but also, quite modern and radical.
Most of the tracks are languorous and laid back, and sometimes sound like a jazzier No Neck Blues Band, a sort of fluttering free folk, the sounds drifting like smoke, the percussion sizzling and shuffling, the horns moaning softly, lots of tinkling chimes and little flurries of piano, gorgeously soft focus and hypnotic.
There are a few live tracks, which is where the band really cut loose, and embrace the noisier side of Brown's oeuvre, "Capricorn Moon" the first live track, is much boppier, the drums and bass locked into a sort of muted exotica, while the horns bleat wildly over the top, the sound very African, and dipping into some serious Ethiopiques territory here and there. The next few songs return to the blissy jazzy tranquility of the first few, until "Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim", which starts off all dreamlike, but by the end, is a squall of thick distorted guitars and skronky saxes, a serious free jazz duel.
The two part "Geechee Recollections" is another slow burning jam, all exotic percussion and thick rubbery basslines, wailing sax, shuffling skittery drum lines, moody meandering piano, the second half a super minimal late night jazzy sprawl, like a less repetitive Necks, but the same sort of mysterious murky swirl.
The record finishes off with a live version of the opening track, sticking close to that same smoky late night shimmer, but with the horns more active and up in the mix, the drums a bit more propulsive, some wah guitar, managing to sound just a bit more fierce, but without losing that blurry blissy sultriness...
This is so good. We used to love love love His Name Is Alive. They even played an instore here, which was a blast. They sort of lost us though lately with their ever intensifying soul leanings, but this record is absolutely gorgeous, and has definitely restored our faith in Warn Defever and company, plus anyone so into Marion Brown is aces in our book.
A portion of the proceeds of the sale of this cd goes to the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, which is also quite cool...
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Earth Flying"
MPEG Stream: "Juba Lee Brown"
MPEG Stream: "Geechee Recollections I"

WINTERBLUT Das Aas Aller Dinge (End All Life) 2lp 18.98
It's been four long year since we last heard from Winterblut, and at the time, the album Grund Gelenkkunst had just been released and found Winterblut totally transformed from a grim buzzing Nordic style black metal beast, into a twisted, convoluted SST meets Voivod sort of black prog combo, having more in common with Ved Buens Ende than Darkthrone, with a punk rock production, gnarled Greg Ginn riffage, super strange arrangements and some very un-black metal elements. Which of course meant we dug it like crazy. And played it to death, always expecting to hear more from Winterblut sooner or later.
So it ended up being later, but finally here it is, Das Aas aller Dinge, and while a lot has changed in the last 4 years, much of the prog has been purged, and not all the riffing is angular and obtuse, Winterblut hasn't merely reverted to classic Norwegian style black buzz, although much of Das Aas aller Dinge is more blasting and buzzing than anything on Grund Gelenkkunst, instead it's apparent from the very first riff, that L. Hiver, the man who is Winterblut, still has a distinctly skewed take on black metal, with the tempo firmly set at mid, and plenty of Voivodisms still in place, right down to the vocals, in fact one can almost imagine this is what Dimension Hatross would have sounded like had it been a black metal record, lurching and mathy, woozy and sort of seasick, everything shrouded in reverb and black black distortion a killer groove, complex drumming, the guitars skeletal and spidery as much as buzzy and black. Even the second track sounds like a blackened Voivod, and part way through when it kicks it up into full on blast, the melody and riffing is still haunting and minor key, with a subtle sci-fi edge. The next few tracks are definitely heavier on the buzzing and the blackness, and more old school classic Norwegian style, but still the riffs are completely atypical, gnarled and just a little bit off. In a good way.
It's on "Das Aas (Erloschen)" where the band get all weird again, a super slithery, slippery stop start groove with a main riff that warbles drunkenly up and down the fretboard, with big wide open spaces between chords, the drums a simple framework for the guitars to tangle themselves up in. A track or two later, there's the 15 minute epic "Das Aas (Sehnsuchtig)" a loping waltzy Burzumic dirge, that partway through transforms into a furious blast, and then unwinds into a killer serpentine progscape with impossibly off-kilter drumming, and strange tempos, everything still bathed in black, the vocals a raspy growl, but all strung along a lurching mathrock rhythm, the riffs following suit, a whirling relentless black space prog jam. The record finishes off with "Das Aas (Egnid Rella)" another track that meshes classic black with the twisted riffage and octopoidal rhythms that made us dig Winterblut so much in the first place.
Obviously amazing, and essential, but even considering everything we just wrote, if you're anything like us, it could have been summed up perfectly in 4 simple words: "black metal Dimension Hatross."
The vinyl is super deluxe, one of the nicest packages we've ever seen. Gone is the all black covering of the cd, and it it's place Wrest's (Leviathan, Lurker Of Chalice) garish painting of shapes grappling, a nude woman, a demon, way too many clawed hands... Over the painting, the Winterblut logo and the album title are printed in reflective clear varnish, the super thick lps are housed in printed inner sleeves, and includes a really big, full color poster of the cover art. So fancy.
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Aller Dinge)"
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Erschjenen)"
MPEG Stream: "Das Aas (Schauderhalt)"

MAMMAL Lonesome Drifter (Animal Disguise Recordings) cd 12.98
We never really ever dug Mammal that much. We wanted to, but it just never hit us. A sort of sub Wolf Eyes abject electronic brutality, not noise so much as noisy, very Midwestern, filthy, homebrewed... just typing that has us thinking, well why the fuck didn't we? That's the sort of stuff we'd write about a record we love. Well, now we are, writing that, about a record we love, and it's kind of weird that it's a Mammal record, but it definitely has us reconsidering our verdict on past Mammal releases because this one is an absolute killer. Some sort of electronic flecked nihilist loner doom. Or something. This is most definitely filthy, noisy, and homebrewed, a doomed abject outsider electronic folk record, but with crushing guitars and drum machine. If you're not sold already, there must be something very wrong with you, but what the heck, let's just keep going.
The opener "Repulsion" is utter minimal metallic brilliance. A simple, super processed rhythm, relentless and repetitive, beneath a similarly monochromatic downtuned guitar riff, that occasionally is joined by another even heavier, crumblingly distorted guitar. And that's it. It just loops endlessly, the riffs cycling through some barely there melody, it's more about texture and timbre and groove, it sounds like a super slow motion robotic instrumental My Dad Is Dead, or even a little like Big Black at 16 rpm. It's totally gorgeous in its spare simplicity, and it somehow manages to convey all sorts of emotion through a single riff and a single rhythm. And as we've said about other tracks in the past, as far as we're concerned, that track could have been an hour long and been the only track on the record.
But the record's not instrumental, in fact most of the songs have vocals, a sort of mumbled deadpan drawl, the lyrics, super personal and intimate, a sort of abstract downer folk, the guitar wrapped delicately around the vocals, except for the inevitable crumbling doom guitar that comes in to drape a little filth and misery on the proceedings.
The rest of the record is a slow sick crawl, the drum machine spitting out a simple somehow stumbling beat, over slow corrosive swells of guitar, the vocals more like shadows, some of the songs are so skeletal they almost seem like sketches, which only serves to make them seem that much more fragile and intimate. The misleadingly named "Incinerator Ballad" is a 4 minute burst of white noise wrapped around a churning industrial pulse, a wall of hiss and static and blown out distortion, followed by the whispered buzz of "Lower Depths", a stretched out soundscape of tinny distorted guitar, detuned chords, whooshing ambience, and more stoned crooning. The record closes with the 15+ minute "Cremation", a gorgeous and super intense, super creepy synthscape, the synth buzzing and warbling, minor key melodies spread out into slabs of murky buzz, while way off in the distance, bits of guitar streak and soar, a psychedelic light show, barely visible against the grey sky of dusk, the synth eventually locking into a loop, and suddenly the sound is some fucked up lo-fi Tangerine Dream, but performed on thrift store keyboards and recorded on a microcassette recorder, eventually fading out, leaving just the sounds of night, crickets, other insects, wind, distant trains, mysterious voices, and single guitar, still moaning way off in the distance...
Absolutely unexpected and totally gorgeous. Features amazing and super intense black and white pencilled artwork by the Mammal himself.
So so so utterly recommended. Definite contender for record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Repulsion"
MPEG Stream: "Fatherlands"
MPEG Stream: "Cremation"

MAMMAL Lonesome Drifter (Animal Disguise Recordings) lp 23.00
We never really ever dug Mammal that much. We wanted to, but it just never hit us. A sort of sub Wolf Eyes abject electronic brutality, not noise so much as noisy, very Midwestern, filthy, homebrewed... just typing that has us thinking, well why the fuck didn't we? That's the sort of stuff we'd write about a record we love. Well, now we are, writing that, about a record we love, and it's kind of weird that it's a Mammal record, but it definitely has us reconsidering our verdict on past Mammal releases because this one is an absolute killer. Some sort of electronic flecked nihilist loner doom. Or something. This is most definitely filthy, noisy, and homebrewed, a doomed abject outsider electronic folk record, but with crushing guitars and drum machine. If you're not sold already, there must be something very wrong with you, but what the heck, let's just keep going.
The opener "Repulsion" is utter minimal metallic brilliance. A simple, super processed rhythm, relentless and repetitive, beneath a similarly monochromatic downtuned guitar riff, that occasionally is joined by another even heavier, crumblingly distorted guitar. And that's it. It just loops endlessly, the riffs cycling through some barely there melody, it's more about texture and timbre and groove, it sounds like a super slow motion robotic instrumental My Dad Is Dead, or even a little like Big Black at 16 rpm. It's totally gorgeous in its spare simplicity, and it somehow manages to convey all sorts of emotion through a single riff and a single rhythm. And as we've said about other tracks in the past, as far as we're concerned, that track could have been an hour long and been the only track on the record.
But the record's not instrumental, in fact most of the songs have vocals, a sort of mumbled deadpan drawl, the lyrics, super personal and intimate, a sort of abstract downer folk, the guitar wrapped delicately around the vocals, except for the inevitable crumbling doom guitar that comes in to drape a little filth and misery on the proceedings.
The rest of the record is a slow sick crawl, the drum machine spitting out a simple somehow stumbling beat, over slow corrosive swells of guitar, the vocals more like shadows, some of the songs are so skeletal they almost seem like sketches, which only serves to make them seem that much more fragile and intimate. The misleadingly named "Incinerator Ballad" is a 4 minute burst of white noise wrapped around a churning industrial pulse, a wall of hiss and static and blown out distortion, followed by the whispered buzz of "Lower Depths", a stretched out soundscape of tinny distorted guitar, detuned chords, whooshing ambience, and more stoned crooning. The record closes with the 15+ minute "Cremation", a gorgeous and super intense, super creepy synthscape, the synth buzzing and warbling, minor key melodies spread out into slabs of murky buzz, while way off in the distance, bits of guitar streak and soar, a psychedelic light show, barely visible against the grey sky of dusk, the synth eventually locking into a loop, and suddenly the sound is some fucked up lo-fi Tangerine Dream, but performed on thrift store keyboards and recorded on a microcassette recorder, eventually fading out, leaving just the sounds of night, crickets, other insects, wind, distant trains, mysterious voices, and single guitar, still moaning way off in the distance...
Absolutely unexpected and totally gorgeous. Features amazing and super intense black and white pencilled artwork by the Mammal himself.
So so so utterly recommended. Definite contender for record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Repulsion"
MPEG Stream: "Fatherlands"
MPEG Stream: "Cremation"

APOPTOSE Blutopfer (Tesco) cd 17.98
This disc by the one man dark ambient drum ensemble Apoptose has long been a favorite around these parts, but as it was a few years old, we were never able to get enough to list. And eventually it just went out of print completely. We were thrilled recently to discover however, that it had just been reissued, and thus, now all can share in our mass musical obsession with this amazing slab of percussive overload.
In a small village in Spain called Calanda, the villages gather each year during the holy week of the Christian Easter festival. The villages, clad in purple robes, are all carrying drums, of various shapes and sizes and sounds. The villages all stand completely still, in near silence, until all at once, the whole lot erupt in a frenzy of wild drumming, which continues practically nonstop for 36 hours, the rhythms of the thousands of drums finding their way into every corner of daily life, mundane activities are suddenly performed to some hypnotic rhythm, many of the players enter some sort of fugue state, a trancelike stupor, many passing out, some oblivious to their hands being rubbed raw and beginning to bleed.
The festival is nearly 100 years old, and predates its current Christian orientation, with heathen roots in a tradition of warning of danger outside the cities walls. Sounds almost like A Hermann Nitcsh action. And it must sound like it as well.
Blutopfer is a tribute, a musical homage, an impression of what that festival might sound like. Filtered through a distinctly dark ambient lens, but still dense and complex and hyper rhythmic.
The opening track begins with a low droning hum, as if to imitate the opening hush of the actual ceremony, a dark smoky swirl, which hardly prepares you for the massive crush of a million snare drums, all tangled and intertwined, various distinct rhythms surfacing amongst the dense drum line cacophony. It's so dense in fact, that the drums almost begin to resemble radio static. But unlike the actual festival, there are all sorts of other sounds, huge throbbing bass melodies, rumbling pulses, the drums locked into a super hypnotic martial rhythm, while the buzzing bass propels it forward. So epic and heavy and majestic and dense with drums!
The sound is almost like LUSTMORD JAMMING WITH A MARCHING BAND DRUM LINE, which we shouldn't have to tell you sounds AMAZING.
While that first track is ultra heavy, and rhythmically fucking fierce, much of the rest of the record is more skeletal, more spare, with long stretched out black ambience, slowly unfurling barely there melodies, all beneath totally intense, completely mesmerizing drumming. A relentless militaristic drum corps, weaving killer complex snare rolls. At it's darkest and most intense, it sounds like some drum heavy Toroidh or Folkstorm track, a teutonic industrial throb, the snares just adding to the intensity, but most of the record, it really does sound like a drum line transported to some wasted bleak doomscape, their insistent rhythms just barely keeping the blackness at bay. SO GODDAMN GOOD.
All new packaging, a dark purple, six panel, thick card stock folded sleeve, with liner notes detailing the Spanish festival that inspired this record.
MPEG Stream: "Apotropaion"
MPEG Stream: "Blutopfer"
MPEG Stream: "Calanda"

BLUT AUS NORD / BLOODOLINE / REVERENCE / KARRAS Dissociated Human Junction (Panik Terror Musik) cd 16.98
It's only been a year, but it feels like forever since we've heard from beloved French black metal weirdos Blut Aus Nord, so we were super psyched to discover this 4 way split with 3 unreleased BaN tracks, and even though the tracks aren't brand new (they're from a super limited 2004 10"), they definitely hit the spot. In a big way.
But besides the BaN tracks, this comp also features a new Blut Aus Nord side project called Karras that totally destroys as well. And as if that all weren't enough the other two bands are just as amazing and fucked up if not more so.
Let's start with the Blut Aus Nord tracks, what else do you need to know, three tracks, you've never heard em, they are gorgeously twisted and blackened, the guitars slithery and spidery, everything wrapped in a warm cocoon of prickly buzz, long stretches of bleak black ambience, haunted rumblings, mysterious warbles, epic blasts of buzzing blackness, swaths of seasick synths, creepy minor key melodies, very dark and depressive, mournful and almost cinematic, definitely ranks up there with some of our favorite Blut Aus Nord stuff ever.
The Karras track, an massive 11 minute blast of confusional chaos, takes the already damaged and demented sound of Blut Aus Nord eve further, everything more twisted and convoluted, the drums a blasting splatter, guitars swirling everywhere, thick sheets of buzz, creepy processed vocals gurgling and growling, twisted squiggly melodies all over the place, the guitars buzzy, but also murky and muddy and thick like tar, this roiling black madhouse, peppered with long stretches of totally tranquil near static ambient shimmer. But that's not all, huge chunks of industrial pummel, more vocals croaking and mewling, the drums a never ending torrent of spastic beats, blasting and pounding, finally breaking into a funeral doom dirge right near the end before spinning off into a cloud of black hiss. Holy shit. We NEED to hear more Karras. A totally mindblowing and physically exhausting schizophrenic doomed and damaged black metal assault.
Like we said before, that would most definitely be enough, but there are two other bands to dig into. First, blackened Spaniards Bloodoline, whose blasting blackness is peppered with awesome moaning string bends and slippery riffage, that makes their tracks sound all funhouse mirrored and weirdly warped, especially the first track "Voyage Till Death". The beginning of their second song even sounds a bit like Chavez, with dual tangled highend guitar melodies, eventually exploding into a relentless keening crush. The third just seals the deal with another black hole slab of black mayhem, but with a strangely melancholy and poppy undercurrent.
Finally, there's another French outfit, who appropriately shared that abovementioned 2004 10" with Blut Aus Nord. Their sound is more in line with BaN's modern metallic melancholic murk. Slightly industrial tinged, mournful with lots of blurred buzz. Plenty of black metal riffing, but the sound is washed out and near ambient, huge expanses of doomic misery, bookended by gnarled black riffs, much of the two tracks spent drifting through a black haze, or plodding machinelike through some abject blackened sonic wasteland. Creepy growled and chanted vocals, thick swaths of chordal fuzzŠ
Way recommended obviously, as we think would be anything else that can be tracked down by all four of these bands (and fear not, you know we're already working on itŠ)
MPEG Stream: BLOODOLINE "Voyage Till Death"
MPEG Stream: BLUT AUS NORD "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: KARRAS "Xenoglossy"

GNAW THEIR TONGUES Reeking Pained And Shuddering (Paradigms) cd 12.98
If for some reason you missed out on the last Gnaw Their Tongues release, a super limited cd-r now unfortunately out of print, and aren't yet as ridiculously obsessed with these guys as we are, we can get you up to speed pretty easily. Beyond the evocative name, there's the record title: Reeking Pained and Shuddering, and how about the song titles: "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Destroying Is Creating" or "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning". And if you still don't have even a rough idea of what you're in for, there's always the music itself, a roiling sonic cesspool of unfettered abject brutality and buzzing murky malevolence. A sort of black metal doom noise hybrid, like Abruptum jamming with Wolf Eyes but slowed way dooooooown, dipped in tar, rolled in dirt and shoved staggering and bloody out of your speakers.
But this isn't just noisy, or heavy or brutal, each song is strangely nuanced, and manages to veer wildly all over the sonic map without losing cohesiveness, each track is like a mini epic, with movements, moods, a convoluted song structure that is tangled and serpentine but that has some alien logic.
Take the 8+ minute opening track "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", which begins with a lurching industrial plod, all lo-fi Godflesh pound and pummel, in a swirling cloud of grey fog FX, but then, the riffs take on some horror movie like cinematic ambience, somehow sounding orchestral and majestic, before falling apart into some strange shuffling skittering krautdoom, peppered with what sounds like horns, snippets of dialogue, and huge booming downtuned crashes, until everything peels back, just leaving a weird smear of rumbling drones and smeared carnival music, beneath a super creepy monologue from some film, appropriately gruesome, the music in the background looping and more and more ominous, eventually building to a near static symphony of vacuum cleaner whir, above a skeletal framework of skittery percussion, and moaning creaking collapsing-building downtuned riffage. And that's just one song.
"Utter Futility Of Creation" begins with super sinister soundtracky strings, before the hammer falls and the record resumes its monstrous lurch, but the strings never go away, they trill and soar and scrape in the background, adding super dramatic tension and furthering the idea that this record might be the soundtrack to the scariest movie ever made. Here and there the band bow out, leaving the strings to weave an ominous swirl of sonic terror and panic, the band pulsing in the background, as if waiting to pounce, again what sound like horns join the fray. It's like what Goblin might have sounded like had they grown up on a steady diet of grindcore and black metal. "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning" begins as another chunk of lost cinematic black ambience with female operatic vocals over a dark black whirl of thrum and throb, before a grinding looped riff surfaces and the band launch into a blasting slab of black metal, but all tangled up with those haunting vocals, and bathed in a fuzz so thick it sounds like it was recorded by Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz, but so much more harsh and harrowing. Much of the rest of the record leans toward the ambient, with the buzzing guitars washed out into dense drones, more fucked up field recordings and samples, processed vocals, whirring alien loops, howled moaned voices, but still with the occasional stretch of pounding percussion, or wall of impossibly detuned guitar, everything crumbling and filthy, frightening and seriously fucked up. Definitely one of our new favorite bands.
Some of this stuff is previously released, mostly on outrageously limited cd-r's and cassette releases, so while some of you collector fiends might have one or two of these tracks, as far as the rest of us are concerned, this fresh musical meat!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Housed in a white dvd case, with full color artwork and printed heavy paper insert.
MPEG Stream: "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch"
MPEG Stream: "Utter Futility Of Creation"
MPEG Stream: "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning"

VARGHKOGHARGASMAL Carved In Trees / Tanz Der Waldteufel (self released) 7" 8.98
While we patiently await the forthcoming full length on tUMULt, here's a little super limited two song teaser from our favorite (and only) practitioners of Wooden Metal. Which is in fact, not really metal at all, instead it's a sort of folky surfy krautrock, that's maybe a bit blackened around the edges, but for the most part is more loping and stumbling than it is blasting and buzzing. And we love it.
So the A side begins like a classic Varghkoghargasmal track, a clean guitar, some strange off kilter drumming, not distorted or heavy, more sort of hypnotic, the surprise here is the band introduces a weirdly math rock element to their sound, with an arpeggiated main riff and some more complex than usual drumming. There's also some slow creep interludes and some awesomely fucked up rhythms. It's almost like blackened surf rock or a drunken Scenic performing an alternate score for Endless Summer. Only here it's Endless Winter.
If the A side was only -sort of- surf rock, the B side quickly takes care of that sort of business, with a blast of full on grin and frosty surf rock, a relentless Dick Dale style riff, some Wipeout drumming, even a weirdly playful super melodic lead over the top. Still all fuzzy and lo-fi with still more strange struggling drumming, but a total surf vibe that is impossible to deny. So what-the-fuck, but so goddamn awesome, this just might be seven inch of the year!
SUPER LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES. Packaged in super swank hand screened two colored sleeves, each hand numbered.

LABRADFORD Prazision LP (Kranky) cd 14.98
The one frustrating thing about the list, and the AQ website in general, that sometimes drives us crazy, is that it only really began in earnest in the mid nineties, thus there are SO many records that we love, and that we reference all the time, that we just always assume MUST be on the list, but aren't, so we try to review those records anyway once in a while, if they're still available, but even better is when one of those discs gets reissued, giving us the opportunity to shower it with the praise we would have back in the day. Which brings us to the gorgeous debut from Labradford (which was also the very first release on Kranky!).
Originally released in 1993, the sound of Prazision LP was so prescient, the current crop of cd-r noisemakers have nothing on these guys, in fact, almost anything you hear now on some super limited cd-r, you could hear on Prazision LP more than a decade earlier. A gorgeous blend of shimmering ambience, fractured folk, minimal pop, sculpted noise and experimental soundscapes that seems to be constantly in flux, a fluid, organic collection of sounds and songs, a murky melancholy mood music rendered in soft strummed shimmer and haunting abstract ambience.
The opening track is the perfect send off, as we depart on our journey, dark billowy drones, keening distant high end streaks, a strange almost mechanical non-rhythm hovering in the foreground, beneath it all deep dark sonic swells, a muted mysterious melody, everything seemingly drifting weightless in a hazy expanse of underwater sunlight. But before we can settle in and float weightlessly into the ether, the second track introduces an actual song, simple strummed steel string guitar, melancholy Jandekian sadboy vocals, over a haunting multilayered drone. The next track is more pop, but even more druggy and unhinged, vocals buried in a murky muddy swirl of effected guitars and sprawling minor key melodies, reminding us of an even less propulsive Spacemen 3 or a way druggier Galaxie 500, no beats, just the voice and the various smeared sounds floating heavenward. In fact the whole record has that vibe, sort of wasted, bleary eyed, druggy, dreamy, drifting, on the verge of simply fading away, or floating into the sun to be consumed and turned to ash.
The rest of the record is balanced pretty evenly between Velvets style lo-fi downer pop, lazy and languorous and laid waaaay back, guitars glistening and glimmering, and thick mesmerizing slabs of slow shifting glacial whir, often a breathtaking combination of the two. Absolutely gorgeous and so forward thinking. One of our favorite records ever, a dark and doleful experimental abstract ambient pop masterpiece.
For the reissue, both tracks from Labradford's first 7" are included, and both tracks are just more of that haunting mysterious beauty. Totally recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Listening In Depth"
MPEG Stream: "Accelerating On A Smoother Road"
MPEG Stream: "Splash Down"

MUTIILATION Sorrow Galaxies (End All Life) cd 14.98
The unexpected return of one of the most infamous black metal bands of the nineties, French horde Mutiilation (yep, two 'i's), one of the best known of the Black Legions bands (along with Vlad Tepes and Bleketre) even though technically Mutiilation was kicked out of the group early on for abusing drugs (who knew a black metal 'collective' would have such a tough stance on drugs?) although another report replaces drugs with an argument about Meyhna'ch from Mutiilation's childhood molestation by his father, which seems even stranger...
Lots of folks were bummed out on the last two Mutiilation discs, Majestas Leprosus and Rattenkonig, although if you ask us, it might have been more a case, of that cooler than though "oh I only like the old stuff" sort of thing, cuz both those records were pretty fierce and furious, grim and black. But Sorrow Galaxies is definitely an improvement on both of those, being that there's now live drums, and the songs are much more fleshed out, more melodic, longer and more varied, lots of doomy slow parts and half time breakdowns scattered amidst the blasting buzz. It definitely doesn't compare to the first two, since for one, it doesn't sound shitty, er, we mean cvlt, it actually sounds lush and heavy, a seriously great production, and because it's been 12 years since Vampires of Black Imperial Blood, the world has changed and one would assume that so has Mutiilation mainman Meyhna'ch (who also fronts Malicious Secrets, Hell Militia and Gestapo 666).
It seems like most of us were sort of assuming Mutiilation were dead and gone, it had only been 2 years since the last record, but there has been barely a peep about Sorrow Galaxies until it was suddenly out. But the fact that there was a new record was the first surprise, the second was how cool and weird the new record is. Four long tracks, the shortest 9+ minutes, the longest 12+, each one epic and expansive, and as mentioned above, super lush and complex, with the addition of haunting samples, gorgeous melancholy melodies over slow buzz, garbled super effected vocals, creepy ambience, all woven into and around some thick relentless riffing, the guitars buzzy, but not brittle, instead thick and warm, a swirled washed out vibe, that makes the whole record sound even darker and more melancholy, a bit like Xasthur in that respect, but these songs are dense and serpentine, with blurred blasts separated by strange, almost proggy breakdowns, the guitars angular and obtuse, a sort of stumbling mournful doom, but the tracks never veer far from another burst of dense black blur and anguished buzz.
The best track is definitely "The Coffin Of Lost Innocence" with its killer super melodic main riff, and it's almost Black Flag sounding verse, the guitar doing some sort of muffled chug, before slipping back into the haunting fluid minor key melodic refrain, so so pretty and sad sounding, even the fastest and heaviest bits are rife with melancholy, the drums a strange convoluted rhythm beneath, not a blast, a weird shuffle, with some truly intense and moving ambient interludes. Who would have thought a Mutiilation song could be so pretty, and emotional, and still be black and grim. But it really suits them. All four tracks definitely have that vibe, although maybe not to that extent.
"Cesium Syndrome 86" has some strange breakdowns in the middle, and a strangely groovy bridge, peppered with all sorts of strange effects, atonal chords and lots of random bits of dialogue, while the epic closer, "Acceptance Of My Decay" begins with some awesome and unlikely high end guitar lick, that continues on beneath the warm buzzing blast that takes us into the rest of the song. There's also an almost cabaret sounding middle portion, and the end just loops the same minor key riff over and over, before dissolving into a confusional, partially ambient coda, with that strange lick resurfacing, more voices and dialogue, soft synth swells, and what sounds like a distant heartbeat.
Pretty fucking awesome. Not at all what we were expecting, but way better than just a Vampires Of Black Blood part two, although we're sure the grim black hordes might think otherwise...
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Seeds Of Anger And Dimentia"
MPEG Stream: "The Coffin Of Lost Innocence"

HIGGS, DANIEL "BELTESHAZZAR" Metempsychotic Memories<