EXPANSION BAY Star Obsolescence (Spanish Magic) cd 14.98
Expansion Bay is the (more) spaced out ambient side project of Sandoz Lab Technician Nathan Thompson, who has also done time in Sleep, EYE and a handful of others like minded outfits.
Utilizing field recordings, laptop, an arsenal of heavily processed instruments as well as samples from his previous bands, Thompson has put together a gorgeously expansive ambient drone world that is rife with sonic action. None of that static drift, no pushing a button or pressing a pedal and letting things take their course, no, these three lengthy tracks are dense, and heavily layered, sounds atop sounds atop sounds, different sonic fragments bleeding into other bits and shards, melodies getting all tangled up with other melodies, droney and ambient certainly, but alive and constantly moving and expanding.
The opener is a nine minute stretch of glistening high end buzz and gleaming sonar shimmers, like a less soothing Oval, sort of underwater sounding, static on the surface, but just below, sounds are constantly shifting and vibrating and changing shape and texture. Bits of melody float by like strange microscopic creatures in a musical petri dish, beneath it all, various whirs and rumbles cause different parts and sounds to shift and birth other sounds.
The title track, is a 16+ minute drift through inner space, beginning with a high end whir, slowly shedding the upper registers, gradually slowing down to a dronelike crawl, the whole thing peppered with glistening glimmering sonic sparkles, like stars in some volatile solar system.
The final twenty minute is the most lush of the bunch, sounding at first like wheezing organs, but as the sounds separate and the fuzz clears away like clouds after a rainstorm, the sounds reveal themselves to be bells, or what certainly sounds like bells, a gorgeously dense cacophony of ringing and clanging, huge thick clouds of overtones, the timbre and tonal colors always changing, so gorgeous and nearly overwhelming, finally fading out in a muted minimal stretch of glitchy low end buzz...
MPEG Stream: "Lateral Drift 1"
MPEG Stream: "Star Obsolescence"

PREHISTORIC FUCKIN' MORON(S) Nothing Can Save Your Face (Spanish Magic) cassette 7.98
This amazing chunk of confusional acid fried what-the-fuck turntable damage back in stock!
We would be the last ones to deny the fact that we are easily swayed. Or at the very least, easily intrigued. Band names get us every time. A killer band name and we're halfway there. Album title, artwork, it all lures us in, has us already loving bands before we've ever heard them. Sure, once in a while we're disappointed, but for the most part, sometimes you can judge a band by their cover. Needless to say, we were pretty intrigued by a band called Prehistoric Fuckin' Moron(s), the optional plural added an extra bit of mystery to the whole thing as well, even more so when we realized it was indeed a single moron. And as if that weren't enough, all it took was a quick gander at the description of the music and we were well beyond sold: "Take one moron, feed him copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, throw him a bunch of old turntables with some effects and watch him smash the shit out of them. Totally weird, absolutely insane." Almost sounds like we wrote it. And heck, we would have, if they didn't already, cuz this is in fact totally weird and absolutely insane.
Imagine Christian Marclay and Philip Jeck, both dosed with LSD, having some sort of lo-fi DJ battle, the entire thing run through a bank of effects pedals and recorded on a busted 4-track. The weird thing is, this isn't as noisy as you might imagine, at least not all of it. The opener is dark and muddy, a super dubbed out spacey drift, reverb and delay wrapping everything in a thick coat of fuzzy blur, the sounds allowed to drift into oblivion. Very dreamlike and tranquil. But the second track is anything but. A cacophony of industrial clatter, and murky vocal snippets, huge ch-chunks from the needle skipping, but emerging from the cacophony are some strangely dreamy loops as well as some jagged shards of distorted noise. The rest of the tape is schizophrenic in that way, flitting from speaker shredding chaos, to strangely serene loopscapes, often times both simultaneously. It's all very chaotic and fucked up and freaked out and messy, but it's such a glorious mess. Fans of Jeck and Tetreault and Marclay and Strotter Inst and Bastien with an ultra lo-fi bent will be in skipping scratching scraping stuttering turntable heaven.

LUGUBRUM De Ware Hond (Old Grey Hair) cd 13.98
Maybe it's the name, but something about "Lugubrum" makes us think of a steaming witch's cauldron. A sinister sonic stew as it were. Nominally a black metal band, these mega AQ faves definitely blend in a lot of other things into their sound. Of course there's big orange carrots floating around in there (kinda like when cannibals are trying to entice Bugs Bunny into a stew-pot) 'cause we know that these Belgian weirdos just love carrots. But in terms of musical ingredients, the Lugubrum recipe calls for everything from troo grim black metal to avantgarde jazz, from dronological doom to hillbilly heehawin'. They're utterly mad master chefs, though, so when mixed properly and brought to a boil, Lugubrum's bubbling brown stew tastes like nothing else and is thick and heavy enough to eat with a forklift. Ok, enough with the culinary/cauldron metaphor, let's give you some specifics about De Ware Hond, Lugubrum's latest (9th) album. Following up last year's Live In Amsterdam, they bring four (long) new tracks of their "musick" on this one, all of it recorded live in the studio (no overdubs). That in part explains its organic, tranced-out vibe, these songs structured, we're assuming, with plenty of room for improvisation -- particularly sounding like it on the second half of the record, when the usual guitars and drums and organ are joined by "Funhouse" style saxophone and mellow, mesmeric tablas, for even more improv-jazz, out-there-fucked-up-Eastern-psych appeal. Not at all your usual black metal! Apparently "brown metal" as Lugubrum puts it. Loping and lurching and and lurking and blurting and rasping and wretching and roiling, this could be Abruptum jamming with Oxbow, Today Is The Day teamed up with Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Neurosis playing Pharoah Sanders, or Pan-Thy-Monium vs. Dead Raven Choir... yeah it's that weird and hard to describe. But definitely dark and, dare we say it, druggily dreamy?
This is probably their least "metal" album yet, however just as Lugubrum as ever. And we're absolutely sure they were still the most metal band to appear at the recently concluded 2007 (K-RAA-K)3 Festival in Belgium, alongside such artists as Daniel Higgs, Giuseppe Ielasi, Raccoo-oo-oon, Jozef Van Wissem, Major Stars, Sun City Girls, Phil Minton, Warmer Milks, and others! OK, Witchcraft played too, they're also sorta metal. (And we just heard that the Sun City Girls were at the last minute unable to play the festival, they had to cancel for some reason. Too bad, they definitely would have liked Lugubrum we think...a band maybe even weirder than they are...)
MPEG Stream: "Movement I - Opwaartse Hond"
MPEG Stream: "Movement I - Neerwaartse Hond"

KLEINBACH, WILHELM The Funerary Notebooks Of Herr Gratchenfleiss (The Guild Of Funerary Violinists) cd-r 12.98
What is more amazing than discovering a whole movement in music that had never been documented, let alone even heard of. EVER! No mention in any books, magazines, not a single trace. What if that music was in fact the music of Funerary violins. A music created and composed to be performed at funerals. The only evidence of these musics, some scratchy old wax cylinder recordings, some faded photos, and brittle sheafs of old sheet music. A music that flourished in the 1800's and disappeared almost completely by the 1900's after the Catholic church's Great Funerary Purges. Only recently discovered in a locked trunk was the music of Herr Gratchenfleiss, recorded to wax cylinder by Wilhelm Kleinbach. The sound a mournful miserable, gorgeously minor key dirge. So completely moving and emotional, the recordings thick with static and crackle, only adding to the power and timelessness of the music. What could be more amazing?
How about making the whole thing up? Constructing an elaborate history of a genre that never existed. Populating this history with lifelike characters, creating photos, sheet music, historical documents, but most amazingly, recording all the music, and treating it to sound as if it was some old wax cylinder recording.
Hard to say which would be more amazing, a wholly undiscovered hidden dark corner of musical history, quashed by the church and relegated to be lost forever, or an insanely detailed project, the ultimate conceptual art piece. Either way, we are in love with this stuff.
Simply from a musical standpoint, this is everything we could hope for. The recordings are fuzzy and staticky, bathed in layers of crackle and grit, and years of neglect and decay, but beneath the recording inconsistencies we love so much, are some truly moving and emotionally rich performances, the melodies are so intense and sad, minor key and mournful. truly funereal. It's impossible not to imagine some old funeral procession, a row of black clad mourners, trudging down a dirt road, with their deceased atop an old wooden cart, the sky grey, the music of the Funerary violinist winding around the procession like wreaths of black smoke. So goddamn lovely. We have been listening to this non-stop since we got it.
And then there's the story. The "history". Is it real? Is it possible that a musical movement could disappear so completely. So much so that not a single person anywhere EVER had heard of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists? Or is it all a huge put-on? A massive made up world? The ultimate outsider art project. Either way, we are completely blown away. If this is indeed real, HOLY SHIT! How utterly mysterious and romantic!! We do sort of want to believe it's real. It's so perfectly evocative of some other time, of death and sadness throughout the ages. But if it is in fact made up, it has to be one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed hoaxes of all time. There's even a book (you can probably find at you local bookstore), filled with photos and sheet music, and histories of all the players, the birth and death of the genre, it's so detailed and elaborate, so much so it almost seems impossible that someone could have created all of this from thin air, if it was made up, it must have been the creator's life's work. Years and years of methodical planning and writing and recording for sure. But either way, it's magical and fascinating, and 'real' or not, the music is truly gorgeous, and the story completely captivating, both intertwined into some sort of time machine, perfectly transporting us to that rain splattered dirt road, the soaring sad sounds of the Funerary violin drifting into the black sky...
MPEG Stream: "The Noble March Of Death"
MPEG Stream: "The Dizzy Flight Of Death"
MPEG Stream: "The Stately Tragedy Of Death"

DUBUISSON, PIERRE Sept Regards Sur L'Esprit De La Mort (The Guild Of Funerary Violinists) cd-r 12.98
Another strange and mysterious collection of lost and forgotten musicks, perhaps the last volume (of four) in this series of archival recordings, collecting the very few existing performances and recordings that fall under the umbrella of a mysterious movement of musicians and composers known as The Guild Of Funerary Violinists. 
Pierre Dubuisson was France's foremost Funerary Violinist, having made his name in the great funerary duels that became a bit of a fashion for a brief spell, where the deceased would leave a bit of melody to be performed after his death, two violinists would then improvise on the theme doing their best to wring more tragedy from the notes than their opponent, the winner of course was the one who drew the most tears from onlookers. Dubuisson eventually became president of the French branch of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists, and helped to integrate Funerary Violin into the Catholic ritual before disappearing under dubious circumstances during the infamous Funerary purges. 
These recordings were made by Pierre's grandson Jacques, who after running away from an abusive home and an overbearing father, was discovered playing some of his grandfather's pieces at a concert in 1913, by an archivist from the Biblioteque Nationale De France, who convinced Jacques to make wax cylinder recordings of some of his grandfather's recordings. Jacques is of course not the player his father was, or his grandfather before him, but the pieces carry their own powerful emotion which easily overcomes any sort of deficiencies in the performances. 
Oh, right, we always seem to forget the most important part, none of the above is true? Not a bit. Or is it? Hard to say. Or so a few of us think. Some here choose to believe (Mulder?) since the mythology is almost as fascinating and nuanced as the recordings, and imagining this lost art is so much more fun, while others are just happy to listen to this amazing music. And amazing it is. Perfectly and beautifully rendered to sound as old and antique as it most likely is not. Wailing, plaintive funereal laments on solo violin, sad and morose, lilting and so completely lovely, bathed in all manner of grit and hiss, fuzz and antique distortion, sounding like the old wax cylinders these recordings purport to be. Imagine some old timey violin music treated by Tim Hecker, and spun  in some ultra morose DJ set by Philip Jeck...
The music is so evocative, of dark clouds at dusk, rain swept fields, huge brooding stone houses, lush gardens beneath grey skies, and of course, funerals, and the slow stately trudge of the funeral procession to the grave site. We've gushed about pretty much every volume so far, and by now are probably just repeating ourselves, but we just love these discs, read the other Funerary Violinist reviews for more on the music and the mythology, and you'll realize just why it seems impossible to us to not fall totally in love with such a well executed piece of what ultimately amounts to performance art. The music, dark and delicate, creepy and so beautiful, even removed from the mythology is totally amazing, the story and the text is as well (there's even a book you can track down, detailing the entire recorded history of the Guild) but the two together, are simply magical....
MPEG Stream: "Marche Funebre - Lent Pose Et Majestueux"
MPEG Stream: "Vol - Magnanime Et Degage"
MPEG Stream: "Marche Funebre - Sombre, Pourtant Ouvert Sur L'Avenir"

LESCALLEET, JASON The Pilgrim (Glistening Examples) picture disc + cd 35.00
With an artist as prolific as Jason Lescalleet, we're a little ashamed that we've only ever managed to list two of his releases. And both of those were fantastic. One a super limited cd-r on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, the other a collaboration with fellow sound artist and long time AQ fave John Hudak. We'll try to remedy that, beginning with this most recent release, an epic and incredibly lovingly assembled sonic tribute to Lescalleet's father who passed away in 2005.
A lot of drone music, minimal experimental music, while sounding cool, often amazingly cool, doesn't always resonate emotionally. A lot of it is dark and mysterious, moody or melancholy, but without lyrics, and with minimal melody, it's hard to convey much emotion. A select few, those with a deft hand at sculpting sound, are able to infuse even the most minimal of musics with feeling and emotion, but lots of music is simply an assemblage of interesting sounds, which truth be told is often enough.
For The Pilgrim, Lescalleet has created an incredibly emotional and moving tribute in sound, to his father, who found a strange and surprising appreciation for his son's music. A combination of field recordings, old tape recordings and live performance, this set is both musically ambitious, and sweetly personal. A combination that in less capable hands could have turned into something maudlin and schmaltzy, instead, The Pilgrim is simply beautiful.
The picture disc features two recordings, both moving in their own way. The first is a live performance recorded shortly after the discovery that his Father's cancer was terminal. Lescalleet begins the set by reading an email from his father, where he explains how much he liked his son's music, and how it reminded him of being young and laying on the floor of the car and feeling the vibrations rumble through his body. And the sounds of bells. Both rich memories for his father. So Lescalleet performs a piece incorporating those elements, the parts of his music that so moved his father. And it is indeed lovely. Deep rumbles, subtle whirs, slowly drifting from barely there shimmer to cavernous roar, but usually hovering dreamily somewhere in between. Toward the end, the sound grows more corrosive, with subtle rhythms surfacing amidst the crackle and buzz, before winding down to silence.
The second recording is a little difficult to listen to, and is extremely intense and personal. While Lescalleet's father was in the hospital, he gave him a hand held recorder, thinking it might lift his spirits to be able to record messages and his thoughts. But his father was incapable of having long conversations, so the whole side is a recording of a hospital room, with bits of mumbled speech, footsteps, snatches of conversations in the hall, very stark and lonely sounding, the room giving the recording a strange natural reverb. Incredibly moving...
The cd is a new 70 minute piece based on those same sounds Lescalleet's father found so appealing: bells, chimes, rumbling vibrations. And it's a gorgeous piece of minimal dronemusic. Murky and bleary eyed, a slow almost funereal drift, the low end sometimes throbbing like the engine of a car, but just as often glistening in abstract smears. Part way through, more and more melody surfaces amidst the dreamy drones, before the track devolves into some serious, and very cathartic noise, crumbling, ultra distorted howls of white noise and blown out buzz, eventually fading out, leaving just the voice of Jason's daughter singing to her grandfather while he was in the hospital, an old Irish folk song. As her song ends, the record drifts off with a dark and barely audible coda of softly struck bells. So intense and poignant and absolutely gorgeous to listen to.
The packaging is divine as well, a deluxe gatefold sleeve, a rich blue on the outside, inside a painting by Lescalleet's brother of their Dad, as well as the printed out email. The lp is a picture disc, one side an old fashioned tape reel, the other a photo of Lescaleeet's Dad eating cake. Inside is a deluxe booklet, with the cd in a pouch on the inside of the cover, lots of liner notes, photos, notes on each track and the whole story of this record.
MPEG Stream: "The Pilgrim CD (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "The Pilgrim CD (excerpt 2)"

V/A Babcotte, Sudbury And Eaton: The English School Of Funerary Origin (The Guild Of Funerary Violinists) cd-r 12.98
Another glorious glimpse back at the long lost art of the Funerary Violin. A genre all but forgotten and lost, some say quashed by the Catholic Church, a gorgeous mournful body of work, solo violin pieces to be performed at funerals, sad and sorrowful, minor key and miserable, dense with dark emotions, perfectly transporting the listener back to an nineteenth century funeral, the procession, the mourners clad in black... Very beautiful and evocative. But it's not just the music, it's the tangled history of the players and the personalities, the musicians and the composers and the patrons responsible for much of the music. Oh, and the fact that it's all made up.
That's right, these amazing scratchy wax cylinder recordings of simple melancholy violin pieces, and the text accompanying them have all been fabricated. Although sometimes it's tough to tell when hearing the genuinely creepy, crackly and realistically old timey sounding music, and reading the extensive tales of the composers and their tragic lives. Maybe it is all real? Who are we to say? Just because there is only one person in the entire world who knows everything, anything actually, about the mysterious Guild Of Funerary Violinists. And the fact that none of the performers or composers are mentioned anywhere, recorded, written, anecdotal, except within the pages of the book, the liner notes and the website of the genre's discoverer (perhaps creator).
But like we mentioned in a past review of another Funerary disc, who cares? The music is dark and mysterious, emotional and creepy, and the text is fascinating, impossibly well researched considering none of it is real, and totally fun to read.
This disc (supposedly) collects the work of three of the most important figures in the English School Of Funerary Violin. Babcotte, Sudbury and Eaton. All of these recording recovered from the extensive collection of Funerary relics kept by Gunter II, Prince of Schwatzburg-Sonderhausen, who in addition to the wax cylinders heard here, also counted among his prized possessions, the coffins of Goethe and Heine, as well as the death mask of Beethoven. The first Babcotte track here is thought to be performed by Gunter, himself an accomplished violinist, however the rest, the legendary "Funerary Suite # 4", due to their sound and performance are considered to be the work of Wilhelm Kleinbach (whose disc we reviewed a list or two back). The Eaton piece, a slow mournful, sometimes atonal dirge, is performed by the composer himself, captured on wax cylinder in 1913. And the final piece, "The Erroneous Dirge Of George Babcotte is performed and recorded by Maria Rotaru in 1975, a young Romanian violinist who tried to pass the work off as her own composition. When the truth came out, Rotaru disappeared mysteriously, and it was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that this piece resurfaced. Or so we're told...
Even without the fantastical backstory, the music is worth the price of admission. Each piece is wonderfully crafted and beautifully performed, all solo violin, keening mournfully, minor key melodies drifting dreamily in some, the scrape and sawing of the bow constructing miserablist dirges in others, all except the more recent bathed in a thick cloak of crackle and static, giving it that Jeck / Hecker fuzzy-blurry-dreamy vibe we can never seem to get enough of. The fact that this music is set amidst such a dense and complex, passionate world of intrigue and mystery, love and death, only makes it that much more exciting. And the fact that every single bit of it is made up, well, as far as we're concerned that just seals the deal.
Recommended!
MPEG Stream: PRINCE GUNTER II "The Erroneous Dirge Of George Babcotte"
MPEG Stream: WILHELM KLEINBACH "Funerary Suite No. 4 - March"
MPEG Stream: WILHELM KLEINBACH "Funerary Suite No. 4 - Introduction And March"
MPEG Stream: WILHELM KLEINBACH "Funerary Suite No. 4 - Dream"

MONARCH Dead Men Tell No Tales (Crucial Blast) 2cd 14.98
For a band who supposedly broke up, Monarch sure have managed to put out a whole bunch of music, post mortem. And while this is funeral doom and everything, we're not talking some Biggie Smalls / Tupac Shakur music from beyond the grave thing (although you never know!), it seems the announced breakup was premature, and lucky for all the doomongers among you, the Monarch is alive and (un)well.
Avid readers of the AQ list should need no introduction to French downtuned slow motion sludge doom trio Monarch. A band truly worthy of many multiples of 'o's (dooooooooooooooooooooom), whose plod and crawl is so slow it often veers near static drone territory, and who also manage to deftly mix in a bit of subtle loveliness into their harsh metallic trudge, AND whose peculiar sense of humor, and album art, and unlikely front woman, definitely make them stand out in an increasingly crowded field...
For those new to Monarch let's recap shall we?
Quite possibly the world's only female fronted deathdoomdronedirge outfit. An unholy mix of Khanate, Corrupted, Bunkur and Moss, but with a petite young French woman on lead vocals, usually clad in Converse hightops, a skirt and a sweater, hair in a pony tail, no tattoos or spikes or leather, but when she opens her mouth, out comes the foulest demonic shrieks and hellish gurgles you have EVER heard. Certainly from a woman, maybe from ANY one, man, woman or beast.
Then there are the record covers, always covered in grade school like doodles of cute big eyed skulls, puffy ghosts, burning churches, and hearts all over the place. They're like a Sanrio doom band. And not surprisingly are obsessed with Hello Kitty (their email address is sanriosabbath!!). But eyes closed, and these guys and gal can most definitely hold their own amongst the slow motion elite. With the added bonus of a singer who can actually sing and does occasionally, adding a definite creepy melodic moodiness to the music.
So this double disc collects two ultra limited lps (the band seem to lean toward lps, AND double cds, with songs clocking in at 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes), one that we carried a while back and sold out in the blink of an eye, the massive and amazing Speak Of The Sea, and weirdly enough, another 2 song lp, that's not really out yet entitled appropriately enough Die Tonight.
So what has us so smitten with Monarch? Besides the above that is? Let's start with Speak Of The Sea, a massive pummeling wall of headsplitting ultra doom, an impossibly glacial plodding thud wrapped in ear shredding sheets of corrosive feedback that will tear your insides out and fill your ears with black tar. A gorgeously dense. ultra caustic and corrosive funereal doom that manages to be dreamy and darn near pretty while it's pummeling you to death. Easily one of the slowest heaviest dooooooooom records ever, three looooong tracks. Each so slow it's almost ambient. It's a bit like listening to SUNNO))) or Earth 2 when some caveman drummer decides to crash the party and start drumming slowly along. Riffs stretched out into huge droning smears of black rumble, ringing and reverberating, pulsing and wavering unsteadily before the next ten ton riff drops. Each track is a slow plodding ultradoomscape, like the ultimate doom metal intro stretched into actual songs, smeared across nearly an hour. The vocals don't even come in until the first song is almost over, a shrieking black coda, after twenty minutes of slow burning doom drone tension. The second track features some distant Ozzy-like crooning way off in the distance before the scowling growl kicks in. So slow and heavy. On the AQ doooooomscale, this ranks more O's than we could possibly include in this review!
And for the cd release, they've tacked on a whole 'nother song to the first disc (album), a creepy, pretty near ambient crawl, nothing but the sound of the surf crashing on the shore, a thick hissy staticky sound, slowly swelling and drifting, very meditative, with hushed urgently whispered vocals hovering above the crashing sea, very strange, but quite nice.
Then we get to Die Tonight, a record most of us (if not all of us) have not heard until now. And if anything it's everything Speak Of The Sea was and MORE. Heavier (as if that were even possible), slower (ditto) and more blurred out, buzzy and dronelike, with bits of the song so blissed out, the drum hits and chaotic crashes are so far apart, you can almost forget you're listening to a doom band, wallowing in the glorious shimmering drones of the drawn out chords, before a howled shriek and a massive crunch knocks you near out of your seat. There's also more singing, with gorgeous drifting vocals that hover alongside long stretches of buzzing guitar making for haunting harmonies, giving the proceedings brief moments of surprising tranquility. And the vocals continue to twist and turn, from hushed and whispery, to girlish and sing songy to inhuman demonic screech, all the while, the band trudging along dronelike, weaving impossibly pretty soundscapes from downtuned crunch and skull cracking thud.
This is absolutely essential doom. If you like Esoteric, Boris, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Earth, Esoteric, Skepticism, Eyehategod, Marzuraan, Atavist, Catacombs, Khanate, Pale Horse, Monument Of Urns and you NEED this! And the drifting drone element is in full effect, so those who have yet to dabble in the doom pool, might check this out, the long drawn out shimmers and Niblock like layers of guitar rumble might hit the spot and have you digging deeper for more and more dooooom.
Gorgeously packaged in a black gatefold, printed in silver ink, decorated with big eyed ghosts, a sailing ship with upside down crosses and a heart on the sail, lots of stars, some cute birdies, and an anchor with a heart on it. Inside are two silver on black printed inserts, with all the lyrics, the liner notes and a thanks list that says it all: Moss, Noothgrush, Otesanek, Corrupted, Bastard Noise, Rainbow Of Death, Nuit Noire and of course "our lucky stars"!
MPEG Stream: "Speak Of The Devil, Speak Of The Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Bride"

SOFTLIGHTES Say No ! To Being Cool. Say Yes To Being Happy (Modular) cd 14.98
Not sure what it is exactly about this band, but there's something special that has sort of captured our hearts. It might have been seeing their amazing video on YouTube for the track "Heart Made Of Sound", where every word in the song is written out visually, in yarn, or food, or piss on concrete or whatever. Even the parts of the song without singing are represented visually with strange colored shapes moving and rearranging themselves in time to the music. And somehow, that video does sort of explain what it is about this band. It's fun and colorful, catchy and playful, but sort of strange, and a little bit unexpected.
This is pure, wide eyes indie pop for sure, simple jangly guitars, shuffling drumming, keyboards wheezing and bouncing melodically atop the rest of the song, and of course a winsome sad boy singer, lots of acoustic strum, and swooshy ambience. The closest comparison would have to be Death Cab For Cutie or maybe the Postal Service, Modest Mouse too, and fans of those bands will absolutely LOVE Softlightes. But those of us who wouldn't normally give this the time of day, have been playing it like crazy. The sound is just so glistening and gossamer, lush and weirdly spacey, lots of reverb and ambient swirl, some strange bits of electronic buzz, some drum machine, some power pop guitar crunch, some vocoder, it's all mixed in there, but none of that stuff would mean anything if this record weren't chock full of perfect little pop songs, which it is. Later on, the record gets lighter and lighter, almost to the point of seventies soft rock, but even then it's strangely lilting and lovely, almost precious, but never so much that it bugs, just enough to sort of wrap your head and fill you ears with soft poppy goodness.
"Heart Made Of Sound" is definitely the star here though, the one that gets the most repeats, and is definitely a possible contender for pop song of the year, and well worth the price of admission, but the rest of the record is right there behind it, blissy and jangly and dreamy and sucking us right in and wrapping us up tight in a perfect crystalline dream pop cocoon.
MPEG Stream: "Heart Made Of Sound"
MPEG Stream: "The Ballad Of Theodore And June"
MPEG Stream: "Girl Kills Bear"

STARS OF THE LID And Their Refinement Of The Decline (Kranky) 2cd 16.98
We've been huge fans of the Stars Of The Lid ever since their first record, Music For Nitrous Oxide, way back in 1995. And their last record, Tired Sounds Of... is a beloved favorite and all time AQ best seller. It's been fascinating to observe their sonic development, from murky guitar based 4-track bedroom guitar drones, all foggy and fuggy and murky and dreamlike, to their current sound, a more modern, almost classical sound, of rich reverberant swells, and lots and lots of space.
The Stars' sound has obviously become much more clear and well defined, polished even, but everything we loved about Nitrous Oxide is still present, albeit in slightly altered form. The Stars' were always about swells, ebb and flow, melodies and compositions played out over expansive stretches of oceanic shimmer, and that at least hasn't changed on And Their Refinement Of The Decline. Notes aren't just played, they begin as tiny sparkles, little distant glimmers, and gradually grow into thick rich whirs, or massive rumbles, before just as quickly fading away again. Oceanic is definitely an apt descriptor, as the music here, as on the more recent records, does have that feel, like some epic dimly lit sonic sea swirling and churning, sometime tranquil and barely moving, other times heaving and tumultuous. It's the sound of a new dawn, an impending storm, or the birth of a galaxy, it's so completely epic while at the same time managing somehow to be pastoral and contemplative and breathtakingly beautiful.
In the early days it was just 2 guitars and a four track, and the sound reflected that, much more gritty and fuzzy, the mood a lot darker, evoking the desert, the starry sky, a druggy dreamy innerspace of muted minimal shimmer. As the band grew, and added instruments, more players, recorded in real studios, the sound changed dramatically, and suddenly, instead of some indie bedroom project, the Stars were crafting pieces that could stand alongside any modern classical piece, while remaining dreamy and drone-y enough to tickle the ears of indie dronesters worldwide. Which is probably the most fascinating part of the Stars' sound. They were making music equally as expansive and epic and gorgeous 10 years ago, but those sounds were limited by the technology, by the band's meager recording set up. And only now it seems that the band is able to fully realize the sound they have been hearing, and essentially creating, all along.
There are guitars here and there, it is after all still the root of their sound, but they seem to be overshadowed by the other instruments (although it is often difficult to pinpoint the instrument creating many of the sounds), heavy on the strings, three violincelles and a harp, as well as a surprising arsenal of horns, two trumpets, flugelhorn and clarinet, AND a children's choir!! But it's not just the players or the instruments, but how they interact and the music they create, and here the results are divine. Many of the tracks do sound like bits of modern classical stretched out into languorous stretches of muted drone and subtle shimmer, like watching the planets from outer space, observing the epic drifts of solar systems and an infinity of cosmic interactions, but others definitely reference more earthly sonic treasures, "Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)" has some serious Morricone going on, and "Don't Bother They're Here" references Scott Tuma's washed out guitar work in Souled American. But whatever subtle flavor is introduced into each track, the sound is definitely and distinctly Stars Of The Lid. Their shift to double disc releases also seems to suit them, allowing their slow burning soft swell compositions plenty of time to sprawl and spread and evolve into epic and soul stirring soundscapes. But even two discs is not nearly enough as far as we're concerned, so everyone buy this one, so next time, these guys can release a four disc set, or a ten disc set or a twenty disc set...
MPEG Stream: "Dungtitled (In A Minor)"
MPEG Stream: "Articulate Silences Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottages"

AXOLOTL Memory Theatre (Important) cd 14.98
Long overdue collection of out of print material from SF based free noise sound sculptor Axolotl. Collecting tracks from the Jyrk cd-r Oranur, the Spirit Of Orr cd-r Object Phantom and the more recent Gypsy Sphinx 12" Chemical Theater.
As much as we pretty much love everything Axolotl has done, and as much as we're psyched to have some of the older stuff on a real cd, this disc is worth it alone for the two tracks from the Chemical Theater 12", the first record where we noticed a distinct stylistic shift in Axolotl's sound. Here's what we had to say about those tracks:
"We had to keep checking to see what we were listening to. Some of the elements are certainly similar, but it's way dreamier and laid back, muted and murky, subtly propulsive, it actually sounds quite a bit like Oval or Gas! Which is a VERY good thing. Slow shifting underwater drift, a looped hypnotic dream world, rich waves of warm sound, a totally gorgeous abstract minimal ambience."
Sounds pretty great huh? Well, it is. And the two tracks from Chemical Theater are nearly twenty minutes long! Basically half of the 12". Including the 11+ minute glorious dreamy drone "Illiaster".
But the funny thing is, revisiting the older tracks, they are just as good somehow, sounding way more fuzzy and blown out and beautiful than we remember. And we definitely remember digging them, a lot, but they sound SO great... Thick washes of murky gritty grime, drones that twist and rumble and give way to fragmented bits of melody. Soft focus stretches of pixelated ambience, guitar strums that come apart, the notes drifting in all different directions, each note enveloped in its own little swath of buzz or fuzz, simple percussion, damaged rhythms, all wrapped in a dense fog of glowing guitar growl and fuzzed out feedback...
So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Chemical Theater"
MPEG Stream: "Oranur"
MPEG Stream: "Lake Garden"

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY All Of The Sudden I Miss Everyone (Temporary Residence) 2lp+cd 17.98
Now available on vinyl! And the lp version also includes the bonus remix cd...
We've always been fans of Explosions In The Sky. One of the post Mogwai, post Godspeed outfits so adept at crafting super epic and emotional instrumental soundscapes -- post rock, math rock, jangly pop, chamber music, all sort of whipped into grandiose cinematic swells. But past records, while sounding amazing, with the right balance of mood and metal, hush and heaviness, still stuck a little too close to the template of their forbears. EITS were like the perfect mix of Godspeed and old more bombastic Mogwai. And not much more. Nothing wrong with that really, it just never totally blew us away.
But All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is different. And it does blow us away. In a big way. It still sounds like EITS, and thus still sounds a bit like Godspeed and Mogwai, but like any great band in the last 20 years, it's not who you steal from, or what you steal, it's how you make what you steal your own. And EITS have made epic instrumental post rock all their own. The opener is everything this sort of music could and should be. Super dense and dramatic, spacious and emotional, opening with keening high end melodies over big jangly guitar strum and huge percussive For Those About To Rock blasts, the guitars slowly intertwining and drifting off, fading to a moody minor key post rock drift, underpinned by layer after layer of fuzzy blissy guitar and a motorik rhythmic shuffle before the completely perfect bridge, a spaced out melody, all dynamic and epic, that will definitely give you goosebumps, before launching into a full on heavy math rock groove, incorporating that same hair raising melody, with some killer drumming and a veritable orchestra of guitars.
The rest of the record plays out in similar, albeit slightly less bombastic fashion. Each track perfectly leading into the next, an expansive post rock epic, separated into movements, chiming guitars, thick riffs, each track gloriously tangled and emotional, with long stretches of cinematic ambience, some shimmering strings, glistening melodies, lush harmonies, bits of piano, and some amazingly expressive drumming.
The All Of A Sudden lp also includes a cd, which contains an entire remix of the album, each track reworked by a different artist. Jesu turns the epic opener into a fuzzier, blissier, and toward the end a MUCH heavier beast. Adem's remix is all low key and abstract, acoustic guitars, simple percussion and glistening chimes, a whispery shadow of the original. The Paper Chase wraps the original track in a glorious swirl of murky ambience, adding a stuttery drum machine rhythm and all sorts of strange sonic filigree. Mountains gives their track a serious Pop Ambient makeover, stretched out and languorous, swirling and shimmery, ending with a long expanse of solo piano. Four Tet's reimagination is the most dramatic, a blissed out shuffling electronic workout, all processed drums, shuffling and skittering, with the original track nestled beneath layers of synth fuzz and strange subtle FX. Finally, labelmates Eluvium transform the album closer into a fuzzy smear of pixelated ambience, that builds and builds, much like the original, but in this version, into a blown out, super distorted fuzzy dreamscape.
Two versions of the same record, both stunning! So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Birth And Death Of The Day"
MPEG Stream: "Welcome, Ghosts"
MPEG Stream: "The Birth And Death Of A Day (Jesu Mix)"

HAMILTON, SAM + CHRIS O'CONNOR Tidal Dee's And Harboured Dum's (PseudoArcana) cd-r 14.98
Found a few more of these, the last copies we'll ever have...
We've had these for a while now, but are only getting around to listing it now. And unfortunately it's been so long we can't remember any of the details about who these guys are. Web searches have revealed very little as well, but as usual, it hardly matters once we get down to the sounds, which are awesome. A stumbling noiserock, light on the noise, a sort of loping, meandering postrock, the drums simple and spare, while all over the place electronics swoop and buzz, guitars clang and chime, a sort of slowcore crossed with some abstract electronic noise... Imagine a more post rock less machinelike Geronimo, or a prettier, WAY less chaotic Dead C, woozy and weary, and washed out, slow motion math rock dipped in glitch and skree and left to wander aimlessly. Really weird and atonal but pretty and subtly tripped out. There's definitely some Godspeed moments, and some distinctly Dead C sounds (or at least NZ noise rock sounds), but the way that they're arranged, it almost sounds like a normal everyday post rock band gradually and gloriously going haywire. Hard to explain, but this dusty little back room find is suddenly a new fave!
SUPER LIMITED!!!
MPEG Stream: "Punky Rice Spirit"
MPEG Stream: "Swampy Animal People"

TROLLMANN AV ILDTOPPBERG Live At The Tyne (Monolith) dvd-r 10.98
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK, the only existing visual document of our favorite caveman doom duo...
The time has come. Hard to believe. Trollman in the flesh. Live. Their mortal forms revealed to all. Thundarr and Mordraaneth. Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come, Cosmic Keys To Gates Unknown. All before our very eyes.
Not sure what we were expecting, so much of Trollmann was mystery, those strange drawings on the cds, the bizarre monickers, the lengthy song titles. And hell, the sound. Huge expanses of slow motion doom. Hellish drones spread out like a black fog. We were sort of expecting some sort of SUNNO))) thing. Dry ice, hoods, robes, back lit shadows. But nah, that's a little too contrived. Maybe they would be hidden behind some stones, or huge curtains. Or maybe they would be monsters, creatures of the night, exposed for the very first time, a horrific but impossibly compelling sight.
No matter how you slice it, with a mysterious band, it's hard not to be disappointed, and to be totally honest we were a little at first, but then, the whole thing became more and more surreal, and it was hard not to love these guys even more.
It starts with skeletal, taciturn looking long hair man in a long sleeve Burzum t-shirt, seated at a keyboard in front of a huge black tapestry of a long haired, mustachioed skull wearing an Indian headress above crossed swords. Beside him, stands another long haired fellow, in jeans and a black t-shirt, holding a black bass. All to the strains of a skull rattling low end doomdrone. But then the camera pulls back to reveal the fact that they seem to be outside, DURING THE DAY! They also seem to be under a bridge. Beneath a brick arch, with a muddy hillside in the background, trees and bushes. On the wall behind the band in the background a strange brass plaque, and what appears to be a pig's head on a stick. The whole thing is filmed with a super jittery camcorder, sudden unexpected zooms, face, fingers on strings, the dirt hillside in the background, the skull on the tapestry, and while the band plays, you can hear people talking, obviously not that into the band, one guy even comes to the front of the stage, beer in hand, and begins to taunt the band, making hand gestures and mugging fro the crowd. Someone in the audience yells "You're fucking SHITE!!!". People laugh, but the band remain expressionless, intent on the harsh soundworld they're weaving beneath this bridge.
The second track begins the same way, the taciturn man seated at his keyboard, beneath the Indian skull, but at this point, either the cameraman is getting bored, or has gotten too drunk to really keep the camera still or keep his attention on the band. Lots of jittery shots of the floor, the wall beside the band, the band members' feet, the crowd, drunk dudes and cute metal girls, amps, the trees behind the stage, the houses on the other side of the bridge, and most bizarrely of all, a couple of little dogs, one of whom proceeds to run back and forth in front of the stage, seemingly unperturbed by the roaring doomic dirge emanating from the speakers. And the cameraman seems unduly interested in the dog, considering he is meant to be capturing the slow motion might of Trollmann. Much more crowd chatter this time around, but somehow it just adds to the sound. Laughing and inane drunken conversations are inadvertently woven into the black fabric of Trollmann's sound. A bespectacled man mouths "Awesome. Fucking awesome... " Someone holds a cigarette beneath the camera letting the smoke whip by the lens like the world's most inexpensive special effect. All the while, Trollmann remain impassive, statue like, emitting an impossibly gorgeous ambient dirge, chanted vocals, over a pulsing bass drone and shimmery keyboards. Almost like Moss crossed with SUNNO))) only with Gregorian chant-like vocals. The whole thing is incredibly surreal, the camera bobbing from the ground to the sky to the band to the crowd and back again, the sky darkening behind the band, the crowd growing less and less distinct, and more like featureless shadows, wraiths... it's somehow sort of perfect.
Outside of the camera panning back to reveal a troll atop a toadstool clutching his keyboard, and a huge furry caveman with a club in one hand and a bass guitar in the other, performing on the edge of a fiery abyss, wreathed in clouds of vampire bats and thick curls of black smoke, we really couldn't have wished for more...

OLD WAINDS / NAV We Are The North (Miriquidi) cd 14.98
We've long been shrieking and demonically howling the praises of Russian black metal horde Old Wainds, but until recently, we had been unable to track down any of their releases. One of their old demos was re-released (Withers Of The Wainds) which was much easier to get, and then slowly but surely we managed to track down the rest of their releases. We reviewed the godlike Scalding Coldness a few lists back (we're still waiting for our restock, thanks for being patient) and this time we've got a killer split, between Old Wainds and their fellow countrymen (and Old Wainds offshoot) Nav. We reviewed the full length lp from Nav a while back but were unable to get their cd (we're still trying) so for lots of folks this may be your first chance to hear Nav.
Anyway, like we've said in the past, a true measure of a band, is who is listening to them, especially when it's other bands, so when we say Old Wainds is EVERYBODY'S favorite (and we're talking Crebain, Leviathan, Xasthur, Nachtmystium, Andee!!) that's pretty high praise indeed.
And not at all unwarranted. Old Wainds are the Blizzard Beasts of the East. A howling buzzing blast of frosty fury, so intense and relentless, a completely epic black buzz, but with incredible riffs, amazing arrangements and some seriously intense vocals. Not as bizarre as they were on the Withers Of The Wainds demo, but much harsher and hellish than on Scalding Coldness. Through The Chaos To Eternal Winter (Old Wainds' half of the split) is 18 minutes of unbridled brutality, black beauty, so gloriously heavy, recorded way back in 1999, this sounds as heavy and intense as most of the bands peddling their black metal wares today. Three blasts of buzzing black brilliance, the fourth a haunting ambient folk drift, complete with dirgey downtuned guitar and disembodied minor key piano, and harsh reverb drenched vocals.
Perfectly matched, and in some ways maybe even better than the Wainds (gasp!), are Nav, the project of Old Wainds drummer Izbor and featuring at least one other Old Waind in its ranks. The sound is similar, grim and frosty, but somehow the buzz is bigger, thicker, with even less melody than Old Wainds, and more blast, the vocals are distorted and buried in the mix, the songs are peppered with bursts of lurching midtempo Burzumic buzz, but Nav spend most of their time buzzing along at hyperspeed, the blackened buzz so thick and relentless, it becomes a fuzzy drone, mesmerizingly blurry and blown out. the drums so fast they are like another layer of sonic fuzz. But it's not just buzz, the riffs are killer, the melodies are there, and are catchy as hell, just completely suffocated by the icy black buzzing of the relentless guitars and nonstop blasting beats. The final track begins with some reverb drenched acoustic guitar, quite lovely and dreamlike, before being engulfed by a strangely melodic and dramatic minor key black blast, almost like a black metal Godspeed, epic and keening and oddly enough, really really pretty.
Absolutely essential, as with all things Old Wainds (and Nav for that matter)...
MPEG Stream: OLD WAINDS "Face Of Madness"
MPEG Stream: OLD WAINDS "Dead Eyes Of The Dark"
MPEG Stream: NAV "Hymn To The Cold Silence (Part 1)"
MPEG Stream: NAV "Warriors Of Glacial Desert"

SCOTCH EGG, DJ Scotch Hausen (Very Friendly) cd 14.98
Like a modern Switched On Bach, DJ Scotch Egg, armed with modified game boys, and a serious arsenal of 8 bit noisemakers, takes all your favorite Bach tunes and turns them inside out, tangles them all up, slathers them in overloaded electronic buzz and glitch and all sorts of squiggly video game music, and creates some glorious bastard classical gabber electronic classical knee-to-the-nuts techno. And it's a blast. Wild and goofy, funny and sort of funky, but completely brilliantly baffling.
Lots of the pieces are ones you'd recognize, but they are quickly transformed into blown out lo-fi blasts of damaged dance music. Some tracks feature garbled super distorted vocals, and end up sounding like some toy version of Atari Teenage Riot. Allan thinks a lot of this sounds like the video game version of the theme from Bad News Bears or maybe an 8-bit Virgil Fox trapped in a haunted video arcade. However it strikes you, odds are you won't hear a record this weird and this much fun anytime soon. Imagine playing some insane futuristic version of Dance Dance Revolution on a crappy old Atari 2600, but with the sound patched through 1,000 Marshall stacks. Fucking awesome!
If you're anything like us (at least two of us have the sounds of Rastan on our iPods and we have a full size Tron machine in the back room of AQ!) this is so deliriously damaged and absolutely essential!!
MPEG Stream: "Scotch Bach II"
MPEG Stream: "Scotch Ruins"
MPEG Stream: "Scotch Bach"
MPEG Stream: "No Beats"

HALF MAKESHIFT Aphotic Leech (Utech) cd 14.98
As much as we love downtuned sludge and the whole dronedoomdirge static guitar buzz thing, and we do, believe us, we do, we love it even more when bands take that sound and warp it into something completely new. Such is the case with Aphotic Leech, a 35 minute single track from the duo known as Half Makeshift. Well, not sure if it's a duo as one guy is credited with piano, guitar, organ, glitch work and manipulation, while the other guy apparently "unknowningly provided all [the] percussion". Strange...
As is this disc. It begins with a sudden flurry of glitchy static that quickly gives way to dark dolorous piano, picking out a mournful, funereal melody, the notes drifting over simple chiming percussion, while beneath hover stretched out marimba melodies and a low distant thunderous rumbling. This dour march is occasionally enveloped in dense clouds of crumbling distortion and thick swaths of damaged electronics, always returning to it's spacious dark lilt. It's all very dynamic as well, with dark clusters of notes punching through the shimmery moodiness every once in a while, always retreating to a glacial drift. The notes on the piano gradually change form, wreathed in glitch, turned inside out, flipped backwards, often just subtly altered to flicker like some old projector, eventually erupting in a thick, grinding low end drone, the notes completely obscured, wrapped in thick swaths of crackle and glitch, the whole thing threatening to split apart, like watching the sky blacken and crumble above you, not long after the piano is swallowed up by a thick molten flow of black downtuned guitar drone, and you may think SUNNO))) is heavy? But this is more than heavy, caustic and black, a dense sludge so thick it barely makes it out of the speakers, but this low-end assault is peppered with strange production glitches, malfunctioning electronics, the notes, the sounds, all damaged and decaying, as if they might fall to the ground and break into a million pieces, but as long as they retain their shape, they are capable of crushing everything in their path.
Eventually the piano returns, but the notes are chopped into strange skipping rhythms, the rumbling, guitar crumble relegated to a swirling black backdrop, and finally, after one brief blast of black hole guitar grime, the track reverts to it's blissed out black ramble, culminating in a dark stuttering piano fade out....
Absolutely essential for the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined, fans of all things SUNNO))), Nadja, Fear Falls Burning, Trollmann, Boris, Marzuraan... Packaged in a super striking fold over sleeve, with a black on gold jellyfish on one side, and a truly revolting, but gorgeous penis-head-mask thing on the other, an amazing photograph by Max Aguilera-Hellweg, who was also responsible for the amazing photos on the sleeve of Fantomas' Delerium Cordia.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Aphotic Leech (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Aphotic Leech (excerpt 2)"

LA DRIVERS UNION POR POR GROUP, THE Por Por: Honk Horn Music Of Ghana (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 16.98
Ghana must be a really loud place. Even just based on the amount of honking that that goes on there. Vehicles honk often and repeatedly, to shoo pedestrians or cyclists out of the way, to signify annoyance with slow traffic or blocked roadways, to signify a desire to change lanes or pass, to get the attention of other drivers or just because they're so thrilled to be driving. Taxis honk rhythmically to attract fares, buses also honk rhythmically while their drivers sing out the various destinations. But there's more than just honking, sound systems blast music, stalls selling their wares broadcast songs and sounds, prayers are broadcast through large speakers affixed to the outsides of mosques...
Sonic chaos certainly. But at the same time, all of these sounds merge into a strange sort of music, the sounds of a city going through the motions of daily life. Chaotic certainly, but also vibrant. Unique. And so alive. A joyful celebration of everyday activities.
At the root of all of this sound is Por Por, the honk horn music of Ghana. Por Por, pronounced 'paaw paaw', an onomatopoeic description of the local drivers' honking squeeze-bulb horn music, was initially just that, the sounds of a city in motion, but eventually, the drivers who helped keep the city moving, took the sounds of their work day and turned it into music. Horns honking, found percussion, wrenches on tires, pipes on concrete, drums, pumping up tires, singing and shouting, those sounds became ritualized, and became their own music, with particular sounds and rhythms and arrangements, and a specific purpose. This music while a reflection of the city around it, was rarely performed in public, but instead, was almost exclusively performed at union drivers' funerals, those funerals very reminiscent of the New Orleans jazz funeral, replete with processions, music obviously, and coffins modeled on the various buses and trucks carrying the dead to the afterlife. The story of por por, of Ghana and its independence is a long one, far to intricate and complex to get into here, but La, the province from which these drivers and horn honkers hail, was critical to the resistance to colonial rule, refusing to pay taxes, fighting a proposed ban on por por horns, a strong sense of community, were all critical to the region's struggle for independence.
So in honor of this year's golden anniversary of Ghana's independence, for the first time, the La Drivers Union Por Por Group gathered to record the music that had been such a part of their culture and their life. Recorded outdoors, in backyards, the sound of the city, the traffic, all around, the music of por por spills forth, effusive and celebratory, joyous and spiritual, complex and strange and like nothing we have ever heard before.
A gorgeously ramshackle rhythmic workout, metallic percussion dense and spidery, a lush framework of intricate rhythms, beneath amazing vocal arrangements, but it's the por por that make this music so unique, honking rhythmically, strange melodies, sounding a bit like geese, an orchestra of squeeze-bulb horns, locking into looped rhythmic structures, hypnotic and mesmerizing. Like traditional African music being performed during rush hour in the middle of a busy intersection. Like Konono No1 but with horns instead of amplified thumb pianos. Most of the tracks seem to be more focused on the vocals, or the hypnotic rhythms, with the horns acting more as a melodic counterpoint. But some tracks, like the opening track "Por Por Akwaaba / Welcome" are entirely about the honking horns, sounding a bit like Philip Glass or Steve Reich composing for automobile horns, rhythmic and strangely catchy, and that is when Pop Por completely captivates, when the horns lock into strange cyclical melodies, all tangled up with the vocals, complete transporting us to the dusty streets of Ghana, horns in hand, honking joyously, letting the sound and the rhythms carry us away.
The final track is especially stirring, with the Por Por group heading into the city, and setting up outside the union office, enlisting all of the drivers present, as well as enlisting the help of various passing vehicles, for a call and response salute to their Independence, the por por horns honking rhythmically, regular car horns held down, underpinning the proceedings with long keening drones, folks singing long drawn out tones, almost wailing, a dense swirl of droning honking mesmer. So intense. And moving.
As with all Smithsonian Folkways releases, there is a huge booklet, with tons of amazing photos, extensive liner notes, as well as notes on each track.
MPEG Stream: "Otsokobila"
MPEG Stream: "Trotro Tour Of Ghana"
MPEG Stream: ""Trotro Drivers, We Love You So""

QUETZOLCOATL / CHANGELING Split (Arbor) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another way too limited missive from mysterious Irish drone outfit Quetzolcoatl, this time in the form of a split cassette, with the until now unknown to us outfit Changeling. This ridiculously limited hand painted tape begins with AQ faves Quetzolcoatl, featuring member(s) of another AQ fave Bonecloud, who explore a gorgeously muddy and murky soundworld, long drawn out drifts of grimy gritty sound. Warm and muted, dark sonic swirls, plenty of hiss and fuzz and delay and reverb, with bits of percussion, vocals, keening feedback, all drifting and swirling way below the surface, a roiling miasma of thick sound. Dark and ominous and tribal, dense squalls of distorted guitar drift overhead like storm clouds. It almost sounds like that weird ambient opening to Kiss' "God Of Thunder" but slowed way down and dubbed on to some old thrift store tape. Taj Mahal Travellers is a name that always comes up when we're talking about these guys, and with good reason, while that legendary Japanese ensemble employed a wildly different approach to sound making, the actual sounds themselves are quite similar. The expansiveness, the epic quality, but Quetzolcoatl get a bit more aggressive, the guitars and drums buried beneath thick layers of buzz and grit. The flipside features Changeling, and if anything, they sound like they could well feature some of the same members, cuz the sound is slightly similar, but where Quetzolcoatl are dark and aggressive, intense and murky, Changeling are blisssful and dreamy, dark layers of sound, hiss and fuzz, rumble and whir, but here sculpted into delicate waves, and subtle swells, a little bit dark, but glowing with some sort of mysterious warmth, glistening sounds rich and resplendent woven into soft focus drifts of moody murk. Like rays of the sun through a dirty window. So nice.
Dronemusic is always tough to describe, especially trying to explain or even understand what exactly it is that makes one group so much more compelling than another. Maybe that something isn't meant to be described, some ineffable quality that is in the music, and can't be pulled out and examined, or understood. That's sort of the vibe we get from both these groups. There is a magical mystical quality to the music they make, a sound, or even something outside of the sound (or inside) that connects on some primal level. Something to let wash over you, to fill up your ears, to carry you off, something almost physical, something organic and pure, not something that can be understood or explained. So good.
Hand painted cassette tape housed in a hand painted cloth bag, with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we got a bunch, but they'll be gone in no time...

NADJA Thaumogenesis (aRCHIVE) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of two new releases from Mr. Aidan Baker. One under his own name, a gorgeously druggy twangy slab of slowcore, and this the latest from his slow motion sludge metal doom duo Nadja.
And it's a killer. One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel.
The disc begins with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 2)"

AMESOEURS Ruines Humaines (Northern Silence) cd ep 11.98
We had sort of given up on ever getting this in stock, which was killing us. One of our favorite records of last year (one of Andee's top 10), a record some of us listened to EVERY DAY, over and over. Heavy and buzzy, but so beautiful and relentlessly catchy. Sure we've had black metal records in the past that were 'pretty'. Catchy too. But those records took their hooks and their soaring melodies and wrapped them all up in spiky blackness, subtly catching our ear beneath all the buzz, the prettiness more a byproduct than a reason for being. But Amesoeurs are completely different. It's almost like some shoegazey, indie druggy drone rock band decided their blissed out indie jangle needed more, well, BLACKNESS, and thus enlisted a corpsepainted frontman, with a demonic banshee shriek, to wail and gnash his teeth over the band's nearly perfect buzzing pop.
From the first notes of the opener "Bonheur Ampute" you're hooked. If you didn't know what was playing, you'd probably be thinking it was some lost Swervedriver track, or some modern band channeling My Bloody Valentine and Ride. The music is that gorgeous. The guitars are thick and heavy, a little buzzy, but they glisten and sparkle, and well, jangle. The opening riff is so impossibly catchy, sort of minor key, but only barely, this is simply perfect pop music wrapped in a thin layer of buzzing blackness. There's no denying it. A loping riff, underpinned by strummed acoustic guitar, while over the top guitars keen and soar, melodies intertwine, harmonies drift and shimmer, even the black metal shriek starts to transform into something less evil becoming more just another element of the blissy poppy buzz. Near the end of the first track, all the other instruments drop out leaving just the acoustic guitar, and when the band kicks back in, they go for it, transforming the track into some otherworldy buzzpop, that original riff ringing out, but over the top some gorgeously melodic underwater, blooping Pinback like bass lines and soaring angular guitar melodies.
The second track begins with a haunting spidery Slinty guitar line, minor key and skeletal, hovering in a wide open expanse of dark shimmer, when the band lurches into action, the main riff sounds like some classic Maiden hook, transformed into a loping pop song, the band eventually ramp it up, the drums becoming a double kicking blast, the vocals shrieking, but the main melody remains and the song becomes a haunting emotional minor key buzz drenched slab of shoegazer black metal, complete with acoustic breakdowns and a mysterious percussive coda.
The final track opens up with another gorgeous tangled bit of clean guitar, that turns into straight up clean ringing indie jangle, but surprises us with ethereal female vocals, which transform it into some nineties sounding dark pop like Velocity Girl or something. Eventually, a buzzing guitar joins the fray, and by the end, it's another swirling blackened slab of blissed out buzz. So fucking awesome.
Black metal record of the year! Of forever! And that's assuming that this even counts as black metal... Either way, this is absolutely essential. Black metalheads don't be put off by the prettiness, we love us some Antaeus and Katharsis and Darkthrone and all that, but this is just so goddamn good. And all you indie rock mix tape makers, try blowing somebody's mind by slipping one of these tracks into your next mix, right there between Spoon and Pavement. The perfect black metal gateway drug...
And be sure to check out Amesoeurs mainman Neige's other bands, Alcest, who take the blissed out pop thing even further, and Peste Noire, a more black, but equally strange and pretty outfit.
MPEG Stream: "Bonheur Ampute"
MPEG Stream: "Ruines Humaines"

AMESOEURS Ruines Humaines (Northern Silence) 10" 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of our favorite blasts of black buzzing beauty available on vinyl for a super limited time, with new artwork and a printed insert.
Here's what we had to say about Ruines Humaines when we highlighted the cd on the list a short while back:
We had sort of given up on ever getting this in stock, which was killing us. One of our favorite records of last year (one of Andee's top 10), a record some of us listened to EVERY DAY, over and over. Heavy and buzzy, but so beautiful and relentlessly catchy. Sure we've had black metal records in the past that were 'pretty'. Catchy too. But those records took their hooks and their soaring melodies and wrapped them all up in spiky blackness, subtly catching our ear beneath all the buzz, the prettiness more a byproduct than a reason for being. But Amesoeurs are completely different. It's almost like some shoegazey, indie druggy drone rock band decided their blissed out indie jangle needed more, well, BLACKNESS, and thus enlisted a corpsepainted frontman, with a demonic banshee shriek, to wail and gnash his teeth over the band's nearly perfect buzzing pop.
From the first notes of the opener "Bonheur Ampute" you're hooked. If you didn't know what was playing, you'd probably be thinking it was some lost Swervedriver track, or some modern band channeling My Bloody Valentine and Ride. The music is that gorgeous. The guitars are thick and heavy, a little buzzy, but they glisten and sparkle, and well, jangle. The opening riff is so impossibly catchy, sort of minor key, but only barely, this is simply perfect pop music wrapped in a thin layer of buzzing blackness. There's no denying it. A loping riff, underpinned by strummed acoustic guitar, while over the top guitars keen and soar, melodies intertwine, harmonies drift and shimmer, even the black metal shriek starts to transform into something less evil becoming more just another element of the blissy poppy buzz. Near the end of the first track, all the other instruments drop out leaving just the acoustic guitar, and when the band kicks back in, they go for it, transforming the track into some otherworldy buzzpop, that original riff ringing out, but over the top some gorgeously melodic underwater, blooping Pinback like bass lines and soaring angular guitar melodies.
The second track begins with a haunting spidery Slinty guitar line, minor key and skeletal, hovering in a wide open expanse of dark shimmer, when the band lurches into action, the main riff sounds like some classic Maiden hook, transformed into a loping pop song, the band eventually ramp it up, the drums becoming a double kicking blast, the vocals shrieking, but the main melody remains and the song becomes a haunting emotional minor key buzz drenched slab of shoegazer black metal, complete with acoustic breakdowns and a mysterious percussive coda.
The final track opens up with another gorgeous tangled bit of clean guitar, that turns into straight up clean ringing indie jangle, but surprises us with ethereal female vocals, which transform it into some nineties sounding dark pop like Velocity Girl or something. Eventually, a buzzing guitar joins the fray, and by the end, it's another swirling blackened slab of blissed out buzz. So fucking awesome.
Black metal record of the year! Of forever! And that's assuming that this even counts as black metal... Either way, this is absolutely essential. Black metalheads don't be put off by the prettiness, we love us some Antaeus and Katharsis and Darkthrone and all that, but this is just so goddamn good. And all you indie rock mix tape makers, try blowing somebody's mind by slipping one of these tracks into your next mix, right there between Spoon and Pavement. The perfect black metal gateway drug...
And be sure to check out Amesoeurs mainman Neige's other bands, Alcest, who take the blissed out pop thing even further, and Peste Noire, a more black, but equally strange and pretty outfit.
MPEG Stream: "Bonheur Ampute"
MPEG Stream: "Ruines Humaines"

TARENTEL Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun Vol. 4 (The Music Fellowship) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When we first heard the title of this new Tarentel FOUR LP series, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, the first two of which we raved about a little while back (both of which we still have in stock, although there are only a handful of copies left!) we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, these lps ARE all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrock pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of most of the tracks is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
The final volume in the series, offers up Ghetto Beats' heaviest moment in the form of "Somebody Fucks With Everybody", a sidelong doom dirge blow out, referencing everyone from SUNNO))) to Growing to Nadja, a thick glacial swirl of downtuned guitars, wreathed in effulgent streaks of damaged outerspace FX and psychrock solar flares, all underpinned by Neurosis style tribal rhythms, constantly sounding as if any second the song will kick into the heaviest riff of all time, but instead, it stretches on and on, building and building, some sort of cosmic lo-fi krautrock ambience, massive and heavy, but strangely dreamy and blissful.
The second side pretty much eschews the titular beats entirely, instead offering up several brief ambient drifts, the far away foresty folk hovering above slow moving slabs of glacial low end of "Where Time Forgot", the ultra brief scrape and shuffle of "Isalais Delay", the murky disembodied post rock of "You Do This. I'll Do That", a strange landscape of fuzzy melodies and indistinct song fragments, all woven into some sort of soft focus fever dream, and finally, "Lake Light", a two minute outro, the glorious final flurry of sound in this epic sonic travelogue spread out over 4 lps, a gorgeously hopeful, sparkling glistening drift of shimmery harmonics, and misty minor key flutter. So lovely.
We've loved everything Tarentel has done in the past, but this is by far our favorite, and how could it not be after drifting dreamily through all 8 sides of Ghetto Beats, immersing ourselves in a gloriously murky world of drifting space drones and propulsive beats, of fuzzed out shimmer and barely there ambience... So amazing!

GALLHAMMER The Dawn Of Gallhammer (Peaceville) cd + dvd 16.98
In the voice of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons: "Best band EVER."
No, we're not actually implying an endorsement of Gallhammer by Comic Book Guy. But, IF Comic Book Guy was into old school death/black/doom metal and crusty punk (which, we'd imagine he probably isn't) -and- was really into cute Japanese girls (which, chances are, he is), then, well, Gallhammer would be one of his favorite bands. We can't help but like 'em lot ourselves. We reviewed their debut cd Gloomy Lights back on list 235, and pointed out then that while a trio of cute, Japanese girls with raccoon eyes playing in the style of '80s doom pioneers Hellhammer was an obvious high-concept selling point, from -listening- to it you sure couldn't tell they were cute or even female. But you could tell that their music was utterly grim and wretched and heavy as hell, which for us was enough to recommend it. Glacial riffs, pounding drums, atmospheric breaks, deathly croaks... raw and primitive and very effective!
We also reported that they'd gotten signed to Peaceville, who have cleverly determined that the best way to introduce Gallhammer to the masses isn't with a new album (still upcoming) but with this, a collection of demos and rehearsal tracks. Oh, and with a DVD disc of live performances. That's the clever part. Once you see vocalist/bassist Vivian Slaughter in her Celtic Frost t-shirt, staring blankly into space and grunting inhumanly into the microphone, you'll be smitten. Or watch drummer Risa Reaper thrash her kit, providing back-up screams too. Or witness guitarist Mika Penetrator (Amebix t-shirt for her) crank out the riffage whilst contributing blood-curdling vokills as well... it's all over. Is there a fan club? Where do we sign up? Seriously, though, the live footage is convincing. They're a killer band. And have a great sense of theatrics, looking so much like those spooky girls you always see in Japanese horror films with their long black hair and hollow eyes.
The DVD features 24 songs from six shows filmed at various venues in Japan between 2005 and 2006. Some are pro shot (the show at Okayama Pepper Land which is presented in its entirety) and others are more bootleggy lookin' but still perfectly acceptable. And there's also a photo gallery of stills to stimulate more fanboy drool.
Meanwhile, on the audio disc, you get twelve tracks including two exclusive demos of (brutal) brand new songs, along with rarities going back to before the Gloomy Lights album. If you've heard Gallhammer before, you know this is gonna be crushing. Far from cartoonish. If you haven't heard 'em, this a good place to enter their haunted world of misanthropic moody metal. Imagine if Unsane, Corrupted and Zeni Geva got together in a cave to make the soundtrack to some freaky J-horror flick, after listening to nothing but Tom G. Warrior's earliest output and the occasional Velvet Underground album for inspiration. Cool, eh?
MPEG Stream: "At The Onset Of The Age Of Despair"
MPEG Stream: "Beyond The Hate Red"

WUTHERING HEIGHTS The Shadow Cabinet (Sensory) 2cd 15.98
Some time ago (in the fall of 2006) our Andee took a trip to Japan. When he was there, he happened to visit a few (ok, many) record stores. In one of 'em, there was some amazingly epic power metal music playing. Andee and his travel buddy Josh both were instantly intrigued. It was like, the best thing they'd ever heard. Turned out it was a Danish prog-metal band called, believe it or not, Wuthering Heights. Andee bought a copy immediately. Josh too. When Andee got back to the States, Wuthering Heights was one of the "finds" that he gloated about, though his pleasure in doing so was tempered by the fact that mere weeks later, a (much cheaper) domestic USA version was released, with an entire bonus DVD disc added on! (The dvd featuring a live performance at the ProgPower USA fest in '04.)
This is that cd, and dvd. Andee can chalk up the extra expense of the Japanese version he got as going towards the greater good of finding out about this so we can share it with all of you... Stirring, sweeping, truly powerful power metal played with virtuoso precision, blazing away at 100mph, the speed taking nothing away from their grandiose, folky melodies. And best of all, the vocals. Nils Patrik Johansson has a commanding voice, his soaring singing with a rough edge that reminds us a lot of Ronnie James Dio himself!
So, technically superb. And Wuthering Heights are also eccentric and individual enough (with their proggy/folky parts), conjuring their own fantastic world, to stand apart from the generic Euro power metal hordes. And plus, they kick ass. Heck they're even unafraid of some harsh guitar skree now and then. Definitely worthy, on the strength of this album at any rate, to join the manly vanguard of the non-cheesy (ok, slightly cheesy) and less-generic Euro power metal hordes alongside the likes of AQ faves Blind Guardian, Falconer, and Lost Horizon (RIP).
MPEG Stream: "Demon Desire"
MPEG Stream: "Beautifool"
MPEG Stream: "The Raven"
MPEG Stream: "Faith (Apathy Divine Part I)"

CIRCLE X s/t (Dexter's Cigar) cd 13.98
Circle X were a mysterious and mythical aggro angular artrock band formed in Louisville in the late seventies, eventually relocating to NYC and falling in with the No Wave crowd, stumbling on the noise rock periphery for years, even recording a record in 1994, before disappearing completely not long after. We have been huge fans since we first heard these guys way back when, all of their records are amazing, and amazingly difficult, all unfortunately out of print, including this one apparently, but a distributor found a stash so we grabbed all we could so you all could get a gander at the filthy, sweaty, fucked up sound of Kentucky art rock circa 1979.
Of all their recordings, this short sharp blast (4 songs, 11:33) of growling vitriolic fury is probably our favorite. It's the meanest and leanest, essentially a punk rock record, with lots of swagger and snarl, a sort of damaged art rock version of the Stooges: fuzzed out jagged guitars, often soaring into squealing angular harmonies, pounding drums, that often explode into convoluted splattery fills or stumble into bizarre almost tribal anti-rhythms, and the vocals, woah! A raspy howl, that always sounds on the verge of cracking completely, wild and untamed, half shout, half spoken, but so emotive and intense. A breathless furious delivery that perfectly suits the band's primal pound. On their dirge-y version of "Onward Christian Soldiers" you can definitely hear bits of early Swans, Copshootcop, and other NYC junkyard thugs, with its relentless pound and tangled atonal washes of super distorted guitar. This shit is raw and intense and primal and so goddamn good.
Fans of down and dirty, scuzzy garage rock stomp will be way into this (think Brainbombs, Stooges, etc.) as will art rockers not afraid to get a little dirty.
WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT 15 COPIES!!! And since this is way out of print, when these are gone they are gone for good!
MPEG Stream: "Tender"
MPEG Stream: "Albeit Living"

NORDVARGR / DRAKH The Betrayal Of Light (tUMULt) cd 13.98
By now we shouldn't have to go into too much detail regarding or massive love of all things Nordvargr, from the militaristic folk of Folkstorm, the martial industrial sounds of Toroidh, the bleak black ambience of BM legends MZ412, to the various recordings and sounds perpetrated under his own name, pretty much everything he's touched as turned to black gold. 
But no matter how much we love everything Nordvargr, our hearts will always belong to MZ412. When we first discovered that band we were totally thrown for a loop, we were loving the sounds of black metal by then, and here was a band with a cryptic monicker, amazing album design, burning churches on their record covers and the band members in full corpse paint. We were ready to be totally blown away, and we were, just not in the way we expected. Their sound was not metal, no buzzing guitars, no shrieking vocals, no blast beats, instead, theirs was a dark world of mysterious blackness, bleak and barren, frosty and and grim, and impossible JUST AS HEAVY as any of the other black metal we had been listening to. This was ambient music, but it was intense, and brutal, and scary.
The band ceased to exist and Nordvargr moved on to the above mentioned projects as well as numerous collaborations and projects under his own name. Then a few years back, a strange thing happened, a record surfaced credited to Nordvargr and Drakh, who just so happened to be Nordvargr's partner in MZ412, and as far as we were concerned, it was the rebirth of MZ412 in everything but name. Several more releases followed, all delicately balanced between dark ambience and buzzing blackness, culminating in this, the brand new record from the duo that once was MZ412. 
The two have some dark chemistry together, weaving elaborate worlds of black sound, not just ambience, not just drone music, but songs, with parts, and riffs and melodies, lots of guitars, occasionally trudging glacially like some slow motion doom behemoth, other times buzzing like some disembodied ghost  of black metal, and at others, glistening and drifting in vast expanses of shimmer and whir. 
The Betrayal Of Light was originally meant to be releases on several well known dark ambient labels, who all rejected the record for being too heavy, and that's all we needed to hear. Nordvargr, Drakh, too heavy, too much guitar....
Thus it ended up on tUMULt (run by our very own Andee), quite possibly where it belonged all along, fitting quite comfortably amidst a roster of black metal and drone music, embodying at least a handful of descriptors that seem to apply to most tUMULt releases, dark, droney, and fucked...
The Betrayal Of Light is one massive sonic event, a black cloud of sound, separated into movements, the first, begins as a slow beautiful crawl, a murky soundfield supporting a delicate web of softly plucked guitar strings, until a wall of downtuned buzz swallows it whole, a massive mournful dirge, stately and majestic, classic old school funereal doom, but super dramatic, and strangely melodic, sounding a bit like Earth or SUNNO))) playing the procession at a funeral or the royal march for some ancient court. Minor key and so gorgeous, a lonely lament rendered in amp buzz and smeared riffage, but completely nestled amidst a sea of churning low end, and that ever present minor key guitar line...
Not long after, the duo explode in a frenzy of buzzguitar, moving as close to black metal as they've ever gotten, after a slow building  shimmer, the track coalesces into a furious buzzing riff, with what sounds like some buried demonic vocals, no drums, so it's a sort of unmoored black metal drift, the riff cycling hypnotically while all around low end roils and whirls and in the distance the landscape is peppered with reverberant subsonic booms, and low level rumbles...
The album's centerpiece is the nearly eleven minute long "Vessel", a lengthy, meditative guitarscape, delicate minor key melodies unfurled over a web of strange whirs and buzzes, the melodies occasionally being overwhelmed by waves of oscillating industrial detritus, before drifting back to the surface where they are joined by rumbling guttural throat singing, or heavily reverbed monklike chants, all the while, a constant ominous drone, grinds and crumbles just below the surface, culminating in a bizarre symphony of processed guitars and grinding insectoid vocals, simultaneously epic and intense, and weird and disturbing.
The rest of the record is a harrowing journey through the dark woods, through a warren of underground passages, through a vast wasteland of barren frost and black sun, thick coruscating guitars buzz and howl, sheets of thick riffs one after another, create an ever shifting wall of crumbling distorted sound, voices drift ghostlike beneath a murky swirl of distant feedback and warbling whir, tones and notes and bits of muted melody are stretched out and blurred into gorgeous hazy smears, pulses and barely audible throbs shift and shimmer just below the surface... everything creeping and slithering through a constant cloud of drifting damaged drones. 
Finally, the journey comes to an end, a gorgeous low end lurch, a thick serpentine shamble with gorgeous bits of backwards guitar, and shards of minor key melody. The low end is lopped and pulses like some mysterious machine, the low end growing in intensity, like some black star about to implode, dreamy backwards vocals drift in, like some reverse angelic chorus, until a deep voice, drenched in reverb and distortion, intones a mysterious apocalyptic warning, and then suddenly... it's done. 
An intense and overwhelming sonic journey, as heavy and brutal as it is delicate and beautiful. Doomy and blackened, drifty and drone-y, soft focus and hazy, dense and devastating... and of course, so so recommended. 
MPEG Stream: "The Betrayal Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "Enclosed Inclusion"
MPEG Stream: "Vessel"

FUTURIANS, THE Spock Ritual (Invisible Generation) cd 11.98
The last we heard from NZ sludgy noise rock outfit the Futurians was a long out of print cd-r released on Jewelled Antler offshoot label Pink Skulls waaaay back in 2003. We were pretty into it, a sort of monotone garage rock trudge, simple plodding drums, blown out fuzz guitar, vocals way way way down in the mix, bits of synth squiggle, a sort of Stooges, Chrome, Fall, Brainbombs chunk of lo-fi noise rock dirge.
Well, here we are almost 4 years later, and the Futurians' primitive stomp sounds as good as ever. In fact, it sounds way better than we remember it.
Simple and stripped down, each track is an endless looping riff, swathed in grungy guitar grrrr and tons of reverb, synths in there too it sounds like. but if anything, their sound got more blown out, more primitive, more skeletal, and somehow more filthy and fuzzy. And who can argue with that?
Like a caveman Dead C, these noiseniks, pound out a relentless slow motion krautrock groove, a simple riff ground forcibly into your skull, drums that don't so much swing as thud, over the top drift shards of damaged electronics, swooping alien synths, extra guitar noise. The vocals are usually lost in the skree and buzz, but occasionally, the vocals take center stage with frontwoman Beth Duckling howling and crooning, her voice drenched in effects, the vocals another layer in the Futurians dense barrage.
In addition to Beth, the Futurians also features a who's who of NZ underground rockers, Clayton Noone (Armpit, CJA), Stefan Neville (Pumice) and Antony Milton (PseudoArcana head honcho)
Limited to 300 copies, each hand numbered, packaged in a cool black and silver screened cardstock sleeve, with a color photo affixed to the inside...
MPEG Stream: "Battles"
MPEG Stream: "Own Your Science"
MPEG Stream: "Pure Green Blood"

DARKESTRAH Epos (No Colours) cd 16.98
Being one of only three black metal bands hailing from Kyrgyzstan according to the online authority Encyclopaedia Metallum, and featuring a female vocalist, must make Darkestrah one of the most unique BM outfits going, but on first listen, neither of those attributes are all that readily apparent. Certainly, the harsh strangled demonic howling vocals did not immediately strike us as particularly feminine, and the glorious hypnotic buzz didn't seem all that region specific, but the more, and closer you listen, the more those elements do seem important, keeping Darkestrah from sounding like just another bunch of boring buzzing blackness...
One half hour plus epic, separated into movements, beginning with the gentle sound of a burbling brook, the fuzzy white noise like ebb and flow of waves crashing on the sea shore, until those tranquil sounds are joined by distant keening guitars, a long drawn out buzz, that eventually solidifies into a gorgeous melancholic riff, draped over simple midtempo drumming, intense and epic and blown out, eventually exploding into a black burst of raw grimness, but never losing that melancholic vibe. Repetitive and hypnotic, with killer drumming and furious guitar buzz, until all of a sudden in come cellos, and th