DEAD REPTILE SHRINE Sabbat (Skulls Of Heaven) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We talk quite a bit about our favorite weirdest black metal bands here: Furze, Necrofrost, Spektr, Striborg, Circle Of Ouroborus, Benighted Leams. Urfaust, Rehtaf Ruo, Wold, the weirder the better. But one of the weirdest, and most amazing, hails from Finland, the home to most of our favorite weird music, black metal or otherwise, and goes by the curious monicker Dead Reptile Shrine.
With only one full length (now sadly out of print, with no plans to repress) and one split (with fellow Finnish BM weirdoes Torturium), and a bunch of impossible to find cd-r's, this might just be the year of the Dead Reptile Shrine. A new cd coming on Skulls Of Heaven (the label run by the guys in Davenport) as well as a new DOUBLE cd coming out on our own Andee's tUMULt label, but until then, we've got this super limited tape to tide us over.
Sabbat is not so much a proper DRS album as it is some sort of black pagan ritual, a sonic incantation to the dark spirits, incorporating feedback, samples, bits of metal bowed and struck, percussion, as well as random bits of electronic interference and damaged tape manipulation.
On first listen, this could be lumped in with other noiserockers, Merzbow, Wolf Eyes and the like. But this is Dead Reptile Shrine, their approach to noise is unlike the others', this is black, but not black metal, this is some pagan ritual performed in a forest clearing, beneath a sky rife with falling stars, the moonlight painting the trees silver, the sound coming out of busted amps and rusted speakers, glowing like some portal to hell. Thick squalls of detuned guitar and amp buzz, blown out fuzz and murky low end rumble, twisted into strange and haunting shapes, beneath it all, a gentle stream of plinking plonking FX, whispery whirs and outer space warble, rhythms surface and drift apart, drones explode into jagged shards of white noise before settling back into a cavernous throb. Strange incantations, snippets of schoolyard song, intercepted radio broadcasts, all tangled up into super distorted riffing, and bursts of abstract guitar growl. Freaked out and FUCKING AWESOME!!!
LIMITED TO 166 COPIES. Not sure if we'll be able to get more once these are gone....

FURZE UTD: Beneath The Odd-Edge Sounds Of The Twilight Contract Of The Black Fascist / The Wealth Of The Penetration In The Abstract Paradigms Of Satan (Candlelight) cd 13.98
We talk a good game about different black metal bands being the weirdest or most fucked up, the most damaged, even the most retarded, and there are plenty of bands vying for that top spot, whether they know it or not. But the count is finally in. and Furze are the hands down winner. This latest blast of whatthefuck grimness proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Let us count the ways. This new record is in fact TWO new records, making the full title of the album UTD: Beneath The Odd-Edge Sounds Of The Twilight Contract Of The Black Fascist / The Wealth Of The Penetration In The Abstract Paradigms Of Satan. Phew. Then there's the song titles: "Demonic Order In The Eternal Fascist's Hall", "Beneath The Wings Of The Black Vomit Above", "Deep In The Pot Of Fresh Antipodal Weave"... and it only gets stranger. Besides the baffling lyrics inside there is also a warning: "Don't stop the Furzement! 'Furze' is the name of the blade on The Reaper's scythe. Furze is the one and only trademark of the one and only Reaper, made (that vibration in the whole wide world called) "music" !!! That fire which burns (Candlelight) and that which penetrates golden walls by organic thorns (Furze) supports to take heed approach the Reaper." Indeed. Then there is a completely confusing thanks list, some truly strange iconography, and finally the center panels of the booklet are simply an advertisement for Furze's other two albums (because apparently the original artwork, featuring a drawing of Jesus fucking Mohammed, was just too shocking). Alrightee then. All of that would be a bunch of pretentious crap, if the music didn't sound just as fucked up and demented. But it does, maybe even moreso.
It's hard to even explain what this sounds like, it is obviously black metal, lots of buzz, loads of distortion, blast beats, growled shrieked vocals, but every one of those elements is totally tweaked. The guitars first and foremost, tinny and razor sharp, slippery and all tangled up, impossibly convoluted riffs, produced in some weird way that allows the guitar to go from ear piercingly loud to murky and muddy, often in the same phrase. Then there are the drums, insane and splattery, blasting and octopoidal, sometimes a blast way down in the mix, sometimes a stumbling fill spilling out all over the next part. The vocals are similarly damaged, shrieking, growling, mumbling, howling, sometimes super distorted, sometimes sounding like they are being shrieked from a hundred yards away, sometimes it sounds like they are being spat right in your ear. And the production?! Holy fuck, drums explode swallowing the rest of the sound whole, before the song eventually blasts forth, the guitars duel with the vocals, a damaged dance to the death, it's almost like Faxed Head producing Benighted Leams, with occasional guitar contributions from Greg Ginn and a doped to the gills Yngvie, mix in some drunken fretless bass and some underwater yodeling vocal bits and some freaked out psychedelic guitar skree, all played through a tiny practice amp. The sounds, and the recording, and the concept, is it possible that this is all just accidental? No, it's TOO weird, too bafflingly obtuse, too perfectly skewed -- this guy is a genius. And the thing is that even within all this confusional sonic damage and demented blackness, these songs are catchy, really catchy, how can some convoluted buzzing slippery buzz saw riff get stuck permanently in your head? Or some shrieked line of obtuse black poetry? Only Woe J. Reaper, the man who is Furze, knows for sure.
So completely and utterly recommended. Black metal record of the year for sure...
MPEG Stream: "A Life About My Sabbath"
MPEG Stream: "Demonic Order In The Eternal Fascist's Hall"
MPEG Stream: "Mandragora Officinarum"

TUK Proud Princess Of A Brand New City ((K-RAA-K)3) cd 15.98
We were WAY over glitchy laptronica when Tuk's Shallow Water Blackout knocked us upside the head a few lists back and demonstrated that just cuz some sound was played to death, didn't mean that amazing things couldn't still be done with it.
That Diskont itch that seemingly only Oval could scratch, had been getting itchier without us even knowing it, who would have realized we had been secretly hankering for a gitched up stuttery underseascape of burble and skitter, of muted rhythm and haunted melody. Well we were and Shallow Water Blackout hit she spot, and good! So much so that we figured we oughta track down Tuk's previous record, Proud Princess Of A Brand New City, and dang if it ain't just as purty!
In fact, it might even actually be a little bit prettier, definitely more serene and subdued, a little bit more musical. The rapid fire chop and splice and reassemble of Shallow Water Blackout is still present but in smaller measures. There's a bit more of a minimal angle, it's much more melodic and dreamy, rife with low drones and mumbled melody, and more actual instrumentation. It's got a fuzzy sort of sheen that has us thinking even more of groups like Jasper TX and Machinefabriek than the new one did.
Our favorite track might just be "German Holidays", beginning with a simple sad, guitar line, it's quickly surrounded by bits of glitchy ambience, clouds of record crackle and weird disembodied buzz, but it's about halfway through where it gets really good, suddenly, in comes some distorted guitar, eighties cop show, made for TV movie music, looped into a super Circular rhythm with breathy background vocals and streaks of glistening feedback, it sort of krautrocks along before it begins to deteriorate, the riff getting more and more distorted, the melodies beginning to crumble, beautiful and haunting, and surprisingly super catchy.
Those sorts of unlikely musical moments continue to surface throughout the record, suspended in Tuk's wide open fields of blissy glitch and whirring warble, making us want to just curl up and drift off...
MPEG Stream: "Sensational Soft"
MPEG Stream: "John Carpenter"
MPEG Stream: "German Holidays"

VELVET CACOON Dextronaut (Full Moon Productions) 2cd 14.98
Very few bands have as convoluted and controversial a back story as Portland's black metal weirdos Velvet Cacoon. First the name, Velvet Cacoon. Spelled C A C O O N. According to the band "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music." It also happens to be the seed from some tropical vine. But let's continue. There was also the band's political alignment, supposedly they were some sort of super reclusive, "eco-fascist" collective. Okay, sure. Then there's the sound. And it's the sound that really matters. And oh what a sound, an impossibly lush orchestra of black buzz, thick and mesmerizing and blurry, the fuzziest buzz we had ever heard. But how does a band achieve that sort of impossibly glorious buzz? Well, by inventing and playing an instrument called a "dieselharp", a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. So okay, how could we not love them, the sound was black buzz nirvana, and they were some weird eco forest freaks. Supposedly.
A little time passes, and it comes to light that it was all a scam, not the music obviously, but everything else, the politics, the dieselharp, all designed to fuck with the black metal community. The band is revealed to be one guy and his girlfriend. He's got short hair, they listen to Nina Simone and drink tea, and black metalheads are pissed. We of course think it's hilarious, and while we were duped as well, so what, it's a great joke, and fuck, the music still totally destroys. At one point if you went to the VC website, all you got was a link to an Air MP3?!? And still the only photos are of a woman in candlelight (presumably the girlfriend). And there were various reports that some of the songs were stolen from another artist who was uncredited and not compensated.
Phew! It's the sort of story that would ALWAYS be on the cover of the black metal version of US magazine!! If there was such a thing (oh why oh why is there not?!?!)
So here we are a few years down the line, the band is working on a new record, sans dieselharp of course, and while we wait, we have this massive double disc document of the band's early years, the music that started it all.
The first disc begins with a dreamy bit of pastoral ambience, before bursting into some ultra fast, blown out black buzz drenched black metal. Melancholy and moody, but swathed in super thick swirls of BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. If anything, the stuff on Dextronaut sounds a bit more traditional than either of the other two releases, but a more traditional VC is still leagues weirder than most other BM outfits. Most of the tracks are blurry smeary buzzscapes, the melodies and drums and vocals, smothered under gloriously suffocating layers of, yep, still even more BUZZ!!! The best track, and also the weirdest, is the loping midtempo "Perched On A Neverending Peak". A blast of Burzum-worthy buzz, the guitars dense squalls of blown out fuzz, and all of this buzz and fuzz wrapped around an impossibly sad melody, but with a series of strange drop outs, where all the fuzz abates, only briefly, giving us a brief glimpse behind the veil of buzz, before it's quickly swallowed up again by the black wall of fuzz.
The second disc is three loooooong tracks, epic black ambience, gorgeous and darkly mysterious. The first a lazy looped low end gurgle, very Marclay or Strotter, an hypnotic muted underwater Oval sort of drift. The second is a cavernous drone, rife with distant buzz and some weird Trollmann like melodies. the final track is a slow burning expanse of soft focus shimmer, warbling and warm, soft and serene, and it wouldn't be VC if they didn't subtly interject some strange guttural demonic vocalizations right near the end...
Our only complaint is the ultra ghetto packaging. A single square of paper in lieu of a booklet, the tray card beneath the hinged double disc tray is blank, the artwork all over is pixelated and blurry, but knowing the band it could be part of the concept, either way, for a record as massive and weird and fucking amazing, the packaging is a bit of a let down. Regardless, once these discs are in your stereo, you'll be in a buzz drenched nacoticized black haze so deep and deadly, shoddy packaging will be the least of your concerns...
MPEG Stream: "Nest Of Hate"
MPEG Stream: "Perched On A Neverending Peak"
MPEG Stream: "Setting Off The Twilights"
MPEG Stream: "Velorum"

JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER America Mystica (Very Friendly) 2lp 33.00
Massive collection of four epic live performances from the ever shifting Jackie O Motherfucker collective. Recorded in various venues and conditions, live on stage, live in the studio, live on the radio, with various guests and collaborators present. All four tracks are epic in length, the shortest nearly 20 minutes, each one a long and winding road that meanders through pretty much ever sonic nook and cranny the band have ever explored. And all four tracks some of the prettiest and creepiest stuff we've heard from these guys.
Raw stripped down blues guitar, abstract free folk flutter, drones everywhere, buzzing strings, and simple scattered percussion, mysterious vocals, strange samples and lots and lots of turntable. In fact, more than any JOMF recording we can remember, the turntable is one of the main elements, mostly maintaining a rich textural backdrop, but just as easily spitting out some Paul Hardcastle style stuttered loops, or offering up all manner of slippery scratchy rhythms. All very subtle and smoothly integrated into the ever shifting whole. Epic and cinematic, dark and dramatic, it sounds a bit like a dream jam between the No Neck Blues Band and Godspeed You Black Emperor mixed by DJ Shadow. When the guitar enters the fray on the second track is sounds like some slowcore post rock band suddenly decided to sit in. But it fits perfectly. The third track recorded live in Minneapolis, is the heaviest and most 'rocking', a cacophonous blast that ends up sounding like some long lost Krautrock jam, revived and brought back to life right there on stage, while the final twenty minute piece, recorded in the UK, unfurls lazily, bringing the nearly two hours of America Mystica to a close, with an epic spaciousness, underpinned by murky synths, fuzzy psych guitar buzz, splattery disembodied drumming, and a strangely funky fade out.
MPEG Stream: "Hudson Dragonfly"
MPEG Stream: "Ah Sunflower"

DROMMER Channeling Natural Forces (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 8.98
More from the unblack camp!! E.E.E. Recordings, the Christian black metal label that brought us some of the best (un)black metal of the last few years, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, Agathothodion, strike again, but this time displaying a whole new side and sound.
This latest release is from a band called Drommer, who the label describe as "non-religious dark ambient", and their debut Channeling Natural Forces is a "soundtrack to nature", and indeed, there is plenty of rain, thunder and found sounds, all woven into thick, reverby soundscapes, slow burning, glimmering murky crawls, stretched out melodies, some huge grinding almost industrial drones, crumbling distortion, soaring keyboards, very dramatic and super epic, but fuzzy and buzzy and lo-fi at the same time. Makes it sound very intimate and organic.
The opening track sets the tone, a slowly growing ambience bathed in strange digital distortion and reverb, making what might otherwise be simply a dreamy drone, more a bizarre textured buzzy pulse, a haunting swell, that is constantly shifting and shimmering, the various overtones creating minimal murky rhythms amidst the static buzz. These effects surface throughout the record, giving those tracks a very alien vibe, but managing to remain true to their purpose, reflecting the sounds around us, and creating dramatic sounds to accompany natural events. Most of the tracks sound like the music we hear in our heads when the sun finally breaks through the clouds after weeks of rain and black skies. Not happy so much as glowing and subtly effulgent. Other tracks let nature do the talking offering a simple minimal counterpoint to the sound of the surf, or dripping water, deep dramatic rumbles, raga like buzz, way in the background, while nature performs her particular brand of music making over the top.
A few of the tracks get downright heavy, one when Drommers drones are all tangled up in the sounds of a torrential downpour, which ends up sounding like a natural Sunn 0))), the other, where the tones become sharp and intense, a buzzing high end skree wrapped in hiss and static that eventually crackles and flares wildly before blinking out.
Pretty amazing. Definitely a unique angle on ambient music and a cool way of incorporating field recordings, almost like a black metal Jewelled Antler!!!
As with everything E.E.E., way recommended.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Winds Of The Mountain Deep"
MPEG Stream: "Returning To Liquid Form"

DEATHPROD Box Set (Rune Grammofon) 4cd 49.00
Good news, lovers of weird drone electronic experimentation -- the Deathprod box set is back (again!)! At least, for a while. Rune Grammofon has done a SECOND, limited, one-time-only (hmm?) repressing of this popular item, that first came out in 2003, was repressed in 2004, and didn't stay in print quite as long as we'd have liked either time. So here's your third chance for as long as it lasts this time. Here's the review we wrote originally of what remains definitely a big AQ fave:
Deathprod is the solo experimental audio project from Supersilent and Motorpsycho member Helge Sten of Oslo, Norway. Previously the only work by Deathprod we stocked here at Aquarius was the split cd with Biosphere on Rune Grammofon in which the two artists reworked fellow Norwegian Arne Nordheim's electronic compositions. Having enjoyed that disc very much, we were pretty excited about the mysterious looking matte black four CD box by Deathprod that arrived at our laboratory recently. If the black box was evocative enough to pique our interest, the music the music contained within surely did not betray our hopes. Working with old magnetic tape recorders, hand made delay and sundry other electronic devices, Helge Sten manipulates fragments of sound -- such as a two note melodic interval or a final orchestral cadence -- into brooding dark soundscapes, rich with overtones from feedback and often overlaid with guest performances from fellow Supersilent members. Often it is the very limitations of the equipment that Sten uses that become the sources for the beautiful timbres he produces: an oversaturated tape input, a primitive sampler that never reproduces the same note the same way twice, or the uneven decay from primitive tape delays. The tracks on these four discs were recorded between 1991 and 2000, and while some of the material was released by Sten on cassette through his own label (also titled Deathprod), much of it is previously unreleased or was super limited in number. Two tracks in particular, a six minute narration from American born Oslo resident Matt Burt and a couple tracks of an organ, vibes and drum trio not unlike Sagor & Swing stick out in this four disc set. More typical are tracks which blossom out from a single cell of an idea: one chord, or one blast of noise. At times Deathprod sounds almost like an attempt at recreating Thomas Koner's soundscapes using the audio palette of Mauricio Bianchi. On Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha, Sten went so far as to record tracks on a Nagra deck, transfer them to wax cylinders and then transfer them once more to digital media. The result are authentically old and decaying tracks which are hauntingly beautiful as well. Other tracks feature deteriorating blasts of what sounds almost like a fog horn progressively decaying into grinding metal; throbbing drones and eerie female chorus -- a la Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna" from 2001 -- building with layers of feedbacky washes of sound. The four tracks that make up Sten's most recent album on the set -- Morals And Dogma -- are possibly his best works yet: icey, bleak soundscapes of drones. Any of the tracks here would make an excellent soundtrack. On "Dead People's Things", the most sorrowful of melodies is played on a Theremin over a foundation of delicate, scratchy bowing of violin and a deep bass throbbing drone. "Orgone Donor" consists of a slowly shifting chordal drone of whispy violins, harmonium and saw, with each instrument leading and then resolving the chord in turn.
MPEG Stream: "A Shortcut To the Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Reference Frequencies #8"
MPEG Stream: "Treetop Drive 3"
MPEG Stream: "Stony Beach"
MPEG Stream: "The Contraceptive Briefcase II"
MPEG Stream: "Orgone Donor"
MPEG Stream: "Cloudchamber"

GOG Noriah Mills (Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting) cd-r 7.98
Every once in a while we'll get a disc in the mail, that has us intrigued before we've even heard it. Take Gog for instance. Well, to begin with, they're called Gog. Or so we believed. The cover wasn't entirely clear. They could have been called Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting, which is just as intriguing. The cover art is kind of trippy, a little bit spacey, still no sure sign of what was in store musically. So we tossed it on, and wow, nice, some sort of soft drifting shimmer, like signing bowls, bowed metal, deep resonant chiming over a thick soft backdrop of deep dark ambience. Another perfect late night drift record we're thinking, when all of a sudden the 21 minute long second track kicks in and holy shit, suddenly we're in a whole 'nother place, and it's not nearly so pretty and tranquil. A huge Earth 2 like riff, sprawled out and massive, a glacial low end crush, churning, downtuned and buzzing, each chord pulsing and throbbing, just as suddenly, some strangely beautiful melodies surface, and start drifting right along side the main slow motion riff, and suddenly it's both epic AND lovely, pretty, but ominously heavy, underneath, all manner of murky sounds swirl and whirl, a constantly shifting sea of drones and muted underwater FX, then again Gog knock us on our asses when the drums finally kick in at about the 10 minute mark, and the song transforms into some sort of lumbering sludge doom behemoth, the cymbals sizzling way up in the mix, the drums pounding, the riff more corrosive and harsh, monstrous and massive doom metal that unfurls even as it launches into action, subtly blissing out, until Gog's doom is heavily laced with My Bloody Valentine fuzziness and the sunburst blown out beauty of bands like the Angelic Process and Nadja. An gorgeously blinding blast of sludgy brilliance.
MPEG Stream: "Hovering Lake"
MPEG Stream: "Noriah Mills (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Noriah Mills (excerpt 2)"

OSANNA Milano Calibro 9 (Vinyl Magic / Warner Fonit) cd 26.00
A few years ago, we were all excited to review the first and best three albums (reissued on cd) by "possibly Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band" Osanna. As we said then, even limiting our discussion to the realm of Italian prog, it would be difficult to claim that Osanna are objectively better than the also amazing likes of Il Balleto, Le Orme, Area, New Trolls, Franco Battiato, Goblin, I Teoremi, RDM, Museo Rosenbach, etc. But, Osanna do somehow combine the key elements of what we like about those bands and prog in general into their first three crazy, colorful records, and thus deserve our hype. Ripping flute and sax solos, heavy psych guitar, powerful vocal choruses, hard rockin' prog drumming, weird musical changes and juxtapositions, electronic synth experimentation... Catchy, fun, fucked up prog from five nutty Italians, who want to rock out as much as be arty and display their adept musicianship. We went on to say that self-proclaimed "prog" dedication is not necessary for enjoyment of Osanna, as we think that these discs are good and weird and silly enough for AQ-customers into whatever sort of musical extremity (experimental, krautrock, psych, metal, classic rock) to dig.
Anyway, those cd reissues eventually went out of print, sadly enough, and we haven't had any Osanna for a while... until now, when one of our distributors happened to track down some copies of this different cd edition of Osanna's second album from 1972, which comes packaged not in a jewel case like the ones we had previously, but in a slightly oversized, miniature gatefold LP styled sleeve, complete with a Japanese obi. Very nice. So of course we want to list it again for those who missed out... and hopefully someday we'll also be able to relist the other two Osanna albums we recommend as well!
This record was a soundtrack to a film called "Milano Calibro 9". Working in collaboration with arranger Luis Bacalov, who is also known for his work with the New Trolls' symphonic efforts, on this album Osanna incorporates strings, piano, and classical motifs. And, as befits a film soundtrack, many moods are touched upon... We don't know what the movie was all about, but it must have featured a fair amount of action, and trippy scenes. Osanna come up with super bombastic themes, high-energy instrumental freak-outs, suspenseful bits of jazziness, pretty vocal interludes, bleepy-bloopy synth fx, heavy electronic organ riff-drone, and the most heavy metal flute soloing you've ever heard. Totally kick ass. Osanna, you rock. Goblin was never this heavy.
MPEG Stream: "Preludio"
MPEG Stream: "Tema"

ISUNGSET, TERJE Two Moons (All Ice) cd 19.98
We first discovered Isungset, via Andee's obsession with Sweden's Ice Hotel. Each year, artists, build an entire hotel, complete with bar and wedding chapel, entirely out of ice. The walls, the floors, the ceiling, even the beds are all made out of ice. The whole thing is lit by candles and firelight, or by the moon shining through the transparent walls.
Coinciding with said ice hotel is an annual festival, of food and music, art and celebration. One of the activities is creating actual playable instruments out of ice, various bits of percussion and frozen horns, that can be struck or blown, creating some truly haunting an beautiful sounds. The ice percussion sounds like a more muted vibraphone, deep and resonant, rich with subtle overtones, the low end is dark and expansive, the high end tinkles like chimes. The ice horns sound like blowing on jugs, as much breath as there is tone, sometimes the players sputter and buzz making strange and alien sounds.
The vocals play a much bigger part on Two Moons as they did on Isungset's earlier album Igloo, although the sounds is still predominantly the sound of ice being blown or struck or scraped. The foundation of each track is the ice percussion, weaving dense tangles of muted melody, that occasionally spread out into abstract fields of drifting low end notes, very dark and dreamy, moody and atmospheric, the horns surface here and there, sputtering sometimes, moaning loudly at other times, some tracks are peppered with little bursts of high end clatter, rattling like a handful of icicles, the vocals vary on each track, drifting from world music croon, to guttural grunts and growls, to strange haunting animal calls, to full on primitive war cry. Two Moons almost plays like a lost field recording of some long extinct Northern tribe, very ritualistic and primitive. The whole thing is recorded in some huge, all ice igloo like ice-recording studio, which lends the recording a massive amount of natural reverb, thick with shimmer and expansive room sound, the various tones drifting briefly weightless before settling back to the ground. So gorgeous.
And like Igloo before it, Two Moons also boasts some of the most amazing packaging EVER. The booklet and tray card are semi-transparent vellum, printed images of the moon and skeletal branches in gorgeous deep blues, the whole thing wrapped in a thick slip cover made from a thick foggy semi transparent textured plastic, the front with a hole cut out allowing the moon in the booklet to show through, the edge cut away to reveal the cd's spine, which is filled with water, with tiny bubbles drifting back and forth in a little custom made vial, so perfect it does indeed look like the cd tray is full of water, just waiting to be frozen and turned into ice instruments!
MPEG Stream: "Mountain"
MPEG Stream: "Black Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Silent Blue"

LIGHT SHALL PREVAIL Defeat The Reign Of The Horned One Through The Light Of Christ (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 8.98
BACK IN STOCK!! Who would have thought that there was a world of black metallers out there bowing before the Lord, and no, not the Dark Lord, the, um LORD Lord. You know... Jesus Christ. God. It's true, there's a whole world of UN-black metal out there, white metal, with all the buzz and blast and then some, but none of the evil. Up until now, the spirit of these bands while not a secret, tended to be more subtle. With titles like "Goatcrush", "To The Unholy", "Unblackened", still sounded pretty evil, and band names like Agathothodion, Glaciial, Flaskavsae, if one weren't paying attention, one might be forgiven for thinking these bands were indeed true grim black metal.
But now we have the latest from Light Shall Prevail (get it?), whose new cd-r pulls no punches, especially with the title: "Defeat The Reign Of The Horned One Through The Light Of Christ." Okay. This is some seriously, spiritual, totally positive, but still extremely harsh and buzzing and ultra fucked up Un-black metal. Those of you who remember our review of Light Shall Prevail's last ep, might just remember us hailing the song "Goatcrush" as maybe the best black metal song EVER!!! And this disc has about ten contenders for the very same honor.
When you actually think about it, these bands are indeed true, and not even just in a religious sense, they are true to their vision, and their ideals. Although we're not exactly sure what it is exactly that makes white metal so completely and amazingly twisted and tweaked. But we like it! As grim as any black metal band you can name, in fact, if anything the sound of these bands, Light Shall Prevail especially, is more grim and true, unique and fucked up, way more individual and out there than the majority of the cookie cutter black metal bands we hear every day. Light Shall Prevail is the work of E.H. who also runs the mighty E.E.E. label and who has been releasing amazing and totally brilliant unblack metal for a decade now. We've reviewed records by Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, but there's tons of other amazing white metal bands, Bedeiah, Whispers From A Dead World, Drommer, Offerblod, Dark Procession, Wrathful Plague, Aristaeus, Nahum, Flaskavsae, With Fire, Elgibbor, Moiriah, we can't keep up. We've discovered this whole new trove of mind blowing (un)black metal and we can not get enough!
Light Shall Prevail might be the closest to sounding like a classic Norwegian style black metal band, however, there are plenty of elements that will have you alternating between scratching your head, banging it wildly and bowing it in reverence. The drums are a machine, and thus do some fucked up things no human drummer could (or would) do, whether its' stuttering impossible fast and machinelike, or sounding processed and overblown way down in the murky buzz, then there's the recording, super lo-fi, so much so that the blown out in the red distortion and tape hiss and all the various recording inconsistencies are as much a part of the sound as the riffs or the vocals, and holy shit, the vocals, from alien sleestak garble to weird anguished howl to demonic shriek. And the songs just rule. killer riffs, convoluted arrangements, trippy psychedelic breakdowns, fucked up dubbed out drum parts, guitars that go from weird processed stutter, to insectoid buzz to reverb drenched twang, usually within the same song.
A couple of our customers absolutely refused to pick up any of these unblack records, they were seemingly offended by the idea of unblack black metal, but ultimately it's their loss. We'd venture to guess that 99% of black metal fans (and probably bands for that matter), aren't actually Satanists anyway and very probably like the music FOR the music, not for the corpse paint or the spikes or the faux scary grimness, and as cool and fun as it is to get into the whole theater of it, the mysterious forest born black metal, the corpse-painted wraiths spewing hateful sounds direct from the depths of hell... ultimately, this is MUSIC, pure and simple, dark, mysterious, fucked up, passionate, buzzing, brutal, grim, blackened, brilliant music, and Light Shall Prevail are most definitely all of those things and more....
MPEG Stream: "The Lament Of The Prophet"
MPEG Stream: "Wicked Deeds Of The Rich"
MPEG Stream: "The Remnant Regathered"

M.B. (BIANCHI, MAURIZIO) + NIMH Together's Symphony (Silentes) 4cd 73.00
There's not much reason to belabor the point on this one. Simply put, it's limited to 300 copies and we only have two of these boxsets kicking around. Needless to say, it's a fine example of Maurizio Bianchi's return to the glacial power electronics and sustained drone concussions that dominated his earliest experiments in the '70s and '80s. As for NIMH, that project is the work of Italian avant-guitarist Giuseppe Verticchio whose work in softened ambience has drawn comparisons to Steve Roach and Aidan Baker; and in working with Bianchi, he does offer some elegiac guitar and piano works to accompany Bianchi's hypnotic gray / black drones. If it's not out of print, it will be soon. We might be able to get a few more but it sems unlikely...
MPEG Stream: "Niddah"
MPEG Stream: "Recovered Memories"
MPEG Stream: "Back To Laudomia"

SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
The first 5000 of these (long gone now, sorry) included a bonus disc, featuring, guess who, Dylan Carlson of Earth (making our April Fools joke come true!!). But even without Dylan's presence on the album proper, there are lots of guest performers including Jesse Sykes, Joe Preston from Thrones (also ex-Melvins, ex-Earth), Kim Thayil from Soundgarden (aha) and Rex Ritter from Jessamine.
Packaged beautifully in a mini cd style gatefold, with AMAZING cover art, black on black with weird muted color and text printed in glossy varnish and metallic gold, both bands be-robed and standing in a cornfield, a full color booklet attached to the inside.
MPEG Stream: "Etna"
MPEG Stream: "N.L.T."
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)"

VIOLENT STUDENTS Street Banger EP (Testostertunes) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
These Philly based sonic screw ups are back with a live record (unless that's a lie and they're just fucking with us, which is very likely) that somehow manages to make all of their other releases sound tame in comparison. In the past we've described these guys as Dirty, filthy, scummy, sludgy, noisy, fractured, fucked up, damaged, demented, crusty, sloppy, shitty, sweaty, punk as fuck, fuzzy, freaked out, warped, doomy, downtuned, plodding and repetitive, and we mean all of that in the best way. Gloriously scuzzy garage rock sludge stomp, like the Buttholes crossed with the Brainbombs dosed with acid and PCP. According to the liner notes, Street Banger was recorded "Live in front of horny girls who also shriek" and it definitely sounds live. But live like recorded in an airplane hangar onto a microcassette and mastered by Merzbow. This is some sort of whitenoise freerock buzz. As blown out and in the red as any recording we have ever heard. So much so that some parts literally made our eyes water when we were listening to this on headphones. When the guitar explodes the drums DISAPPEAR completely, the vocals make everything else drop out. The bass does nothing but make a huge endless rumble that gets sucked under every drum hit and hyperdistorted riff. It's like Faxed Head but somehow even more fucked up and noisy, damaged and demented. And obviously, AWESOME!
MPEG Stream: "Flying Priest"
MPEG Stream: "The Language Of The Hippies"

BRINKMANN, THOMAS Klick (Max Ernst) cd 16.98
We recently made Thomas Brinkman's Klick Revolution an AQ Record of the Week, and have been listening to it pretty much non stop. So much so that we almost forgot that we had previously reviewed his first "Klick" record from 2000, which while maybe not some strange tribute to pinball, still manages to be a glorious collection of clicks and pop and whir and hiss. Anyone who has been digging Klick Revolution will definitely want to pick its precursor up as well. Here's what we had to say about it when we first listed a while back:
On Klick, Thomas Brinkmann borrows Christian Marclay's technique of literally slicing the grooves of his records with a razorblade to add some new elements to his sterile techno minimalism. While this may be Brinkmann's most sonically unsettling record, it manages to retain his trademark techno structuralism, albeit sounding as if the needle is struggling through a thick layer of grime. The erratic glitches of surface noise and the lulling stutter of run out grooves stand much more in the forefront of Brinkmann's Klick than on previous works. His sterile dub techniques dissolve fragments of surface noise into ghostly decay and generate a delicate flutter much like distant helicopter blades or the choral chatter of locusts. All in all, this is a successful departure for Brinkmann, one that takes him outside of the cold rigidity of most techno minimalism and into the sloppiness of the natural world. Fans of Philip Jeck will definitely appreciate.
MPEG Stream: "0001"
MPEG Stream: "0010"
MPEG Stream: "0011"

IGNATZ II ((K-RAA-K)3) cd 15.98
Ignatz II (or III if you count the recently reviewed I Will Soothe My Eye To Feast It With A Sight Of Beauty cd-r) heralds the return of our favorite alien Appalachian troubadour and another transmission of fuzzed out, obfuscated, FX laden, bedroom free folk outer space buzz and shimmer. Not too much has changed since I (a past AQ Record of the Week), but if anything, the sound of Ignatz has become even darker and more expansive, and somehow, impossibly more beautiful and mysterious. Another haunting and dreamily disorienting stopover in a musical journey to points unknown. While some of what you see or hear on II might sound familiar, it doesn't take too long before you realize that the sounds here are... well, different, off kilter, damaged, prettiness is present but summarily obfuscated. Bits of folks and blues surface here and there, but are slowly and methodically transformed into a whole new shapes and sounds. Every melody, at first warm and inviting, begins to twist and change, becoming some bastardized blues, sometimes broken down into jagged shards and stumbling cadences, other times splattered into glimmering glistening sonic sparkles.
The root of Ignatz's sound is still a wonderfully gnarled Appalachia, guitars and vocals mostly, drenched in filthy spacey FX most of the time, but even when delivered sans effects, they manage to sound alien and otherworldly. Ghostly abstract dirges, lengthy meanders through epic and ominous landscapes of blown out slow burn riffs and bits of delicate fingerpicking. Hovering above are wistful, abstract vocals, distorted and indistinct, wrapped around mournful melodies, the whole thing stumbling and slightly off kilter. Occasionally the guitars build into huge thick torrents of fuzzy riffing, dense and chaotic, before the riffs crumble and threaten to fall apart completely, until the vocals and guitars tangle up and become more and more indistinct, a slow shifting cloud of blues shimmer and folk swirl.
It almost sounds as if someone pulled apart some old blues 78's, piece by piece, note by note, and then, hundreds of years later, reassembled them without any instructions, utilizing some as yet undiscovered alien technology, only to discover that THIS is what music sounded like in 2007. What a strange world it must have been....
This warm and warbly, futuristic ancient folk is a masterfully mangled Delta blues transmitted from planet to planet, and with each million light year stretch, the sound becomes more tangled and less obviously blueslike. Alien musical transmissions intercepted using an old victrola and played back by some crazy old man, sitting on his porch, armed with just an acoustic guitar, a pile of busted old wax cylinders, and a huge bank of broken and rusty effects pedals...
So goddamn great!
MPEG Stream: "He Deals With Love & Her Eyes Glaze"
MPEG Stream: "The Dreams"

IGNATZ II ((K-RAA-K)3) lp 15.98
Ignatz II (or III if you count the recently reviewed I Will Soothe My Eye To Feast It With A Sight Of Beauty cd-r) heralds the return of our favorite alien Appalachian troubadour and another transmission of fuzzed out, obfuscated, FX laden, bedroom free folk outer space buzz and shimmer. Not too much has changed since I (a past AQ Record of the Week), but if anything, the sound of Ignatz has become even darker and more expansive, and somehow, impossibly more beautiful and mysterious. Another haunting and dreamily disorienting stopover in a musical journey to points unknown. While some of what you see or hear on II might sound familiar, it doesn't take too long before you realize that the sounds here are... well, different, off kilter, damaged, prettiness is present but summarily obfuscated. Bits of folks and blues surface here and there, but are slowly and methodically transformed into a whole new shapes and sounds. Every melody, at first warm and inviting, begins to twist and change, becoming some bastardized blues, sometimes broken down into jagged shards and stumbling cadences, other times splattered into glimmering glistening sonic sparkles.
The root of Ignatz's sound is still a wonderfully gnarled Appalachia, guitars and vocals mostly, drenched in filthy spacey FX most of the time, but even when delivered sans effects, they manage to sound alien and otherworldly. Ghostly abstract dirges, lengthy meanders through epic and ominous landscapes of blown out slow burn riffs and bits of delicate fingerpicking. Hovering above are wistful, abstract vocals, distorted and indistinct, wrapped around mournful melodies, the whole thing stumbling and slightly off kilter. Occasionally the guitars build into huge thick torrents of fuzzy riffing, dense and chaotic, before the riffs crumble and threaten to fall apart completely, until the vocals and guitars tangle up and become more and more indistinct, a slow shifting cloud of blues shimmer and folk swirl.
It almost sounds as if someone pulled apart some old blues 78's, piece by piece, note by note, and then, hundreds of years later, reassembled them without any instructions, utilizing some as yet undiscovered alien technology, only to discover that THIS is what music sounded like in 2007. What a strange world it must have been....
This warm and warbly, futuristic ancient folk is a masterfully mangled Delta blues transmitted from planet to planet, and with each million light year stretch, the sound becomes more tangled and less obviously blueslike. Alien musical transmissions intercepted using an old victrola and played back by some crazy old man, sitting on his porch, armed with just an acoustic guitar, a pile of busted old wax cylinders, and a huge bank of broken and rusty effects pedals...
So goddamn great!
MPEG Stream: "He Deals With Love & Her Eyes Glaze"
MPEG Stream: "The Dreams"

BLACK TO COMM Ruckwarts Backwards (Dekorder) cd 17.98
Yeah, it's a legendary MC5 track, and sure, it's also a cool music 'zine, but now it's also a mysterious drone outfit from Germany. We were kind of intrigued when we read a description that described Black To Comm as sounding a bit like Fennesz, Pimmon, and Earth jamming with Merzbow. That's a lot to live up to, and while maybe that's not how we'd describe it, this disc is still pretty dang amazing. Dense collages of manipulated sound, processed samples and digital electronic improvisations, all woven into gorgeous dreamy drones and subtlely melodic sonic drifts.
The first thing that came to mind was Oval, but where Oval created lush underwater symphonies out of skipping cds, Black To Comm are starting out with source sounds that are more organic, so the resulting sounds and songs are that much richer and more sonically detailed. Dense soundscapes of looped samples are stretched and smeared, twisted and tangled until the constituent parts became something totally new, and are reborn into new sonic shapes, some warm and sun dappled, others cool and moonlit, all of them dreamlike and otherworldly.
And that's exactly why this record is so magical. The process may be fascinating, but it is quickly forgotten, once you're submerged in some murky mysterious new world of sound. There's nothing to do but look, and listen, to let the sounds and sights slowly sink in, like wandering through some alien world, where everything is fresh and new, every sound is a mystery. Each track is massive in microscopic scope. Look close and you can see forever in each of these songs, climb into your stereo and carefully work your way down, layer by layer, each layer a magical new world, until you arrive at the heart of the song, a warm, soft, dreamlike place, where you can lay down and curl up, and let the layers and sonic worlds wrap tight around you, drinking you in until you become part of the music.
MPEG Stream: "Laciffer Lacca"
MPEG Stream: "Bees"
MPEG Stream: "Levitation"

V/A In, Demons In (Rocket / Invada) 10" 14.98
We thought these were gone forever, but we somehow managed to track down another batch of these psych rock beauties, but who knows if we'll get that lucky again, so don't blow it again...
HOLEEEEEE SHIT! You better tie down your speakers, strap on a helmet, put on some safety goggles and stand WAY back before you drop the needle on this. Three bands, doing super blown out fuzzed out needle in the red psychedelic space rock interpretations of, well, some psychedelic space rock.
The Heads take up a whole side with their rendition of Hawkwind's "Born To Go", and if you need anything more than the words "The Heads play Hawkwind" then there is something seriously wrong with you. It's almost exponential, like instead of Hawkwind filtered through the Heads, it becomes Hawkwind TIMES the Heads TIMES lots of drugs and TIMES about a million amplifiers. Super blown out acid fired drug drenched space rock nirvana!!!
And if you survive side one, side two will certainly do you in, Plastic Crimewave Sound starts it up with a smoking version of the Edgar Broughton Band's "Why Can't Somebody Love Me?" which is damn near as fierce as the Heads' track, needle pegged to the red, guitars set to stun, controls set for the heart of the sun, a furiously face-melting blast of outer space rock and roll. Finally, Lillydamwhite, who we had never heard before, cover the Pink Fairies' "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout" and while not as fierce as either of the two other tracks, is still pretty rocking with a super propulsive groove and killer riffs wrapped in spacey FX.
Total space rock overload and WE LOVE IT!!!
Comes in a cool Crimewave designed sleeve (designed to look like an old psychedelic flyer) with a bunch of printed inserts.
SUPER LIMITED. we only got a handful and we may not be able to get more...

LEVIATHAN The Blind Wound (Southern Lord) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Before everybody has a big ol' black metal meltdown, this is NOT a brand new Leviathan record (although there is a new one coming soon). This is in fact the Leviathan half of the recent split with Sapthuran released on Battle Kommand Records a little while back. However, it is the first (and only) time these songs will be available all by themselves, and on vinyl! And what a gorgeous slab of vinyl it is. A brand new painting by Wrest, the man behind Leviathan, adorns the cover, and it is truly gorgeous and horrifying, some sort of shadowy horned thing, a nice thick sleeve with the text printed in reflective gloss over the image. Very striking. The vinyl is either half red / half green, or half green / half black, and no you can't specify which color you want. It's random. Which means DO NOT ASK for a specific color, you will get whichever one gets grabbed at random, and of course, it's super limited, so only one per customer. So now that that's all out of the way we can explain just why you absolutely NEED this record:
The mighty Wrest and his black metal behemoth Leviathan resurfaces once again, and once again Wrest does not disappoint. In fact if anything (and if it's even possible at this point) the Leviathan material on The Blind Wound is even more fucked up and out there than ever. That Leviathan sound is present and in full effect, a blurry swirling buzz of crazy riffs, impossible drumming, those insane vocals, and completely bizarre song structures, almost proggy at points, never hesitating to stop and start, stutter through some improbably complex series of time signatures or bliss out into some strange ambient soundscape. And as if Wrest's compositional style and playing weren't unique enough, every track is rife with all manner of weird parts, bizarre sounds and fucked up sonic detritus. From strange tripped out drone-ambience, angular almost Greg Ginnish guitar freakouts, impossibly tortured and affected vocals that go from guttural rumble to hellish howl, to creepy otherworldly keyboard like backgrounds, to sludgy almost doomlike breakdowns to full on krautrock / mathrock workouts, albeit slathered in plenty of buzz and fuzz. The final track finishes things off in a completely unexpected way, with a warm and fuzzy slow motion smear of gauzy muted My Bloody Valentine / M83 guitars and simple blown out drumming. As always, amazing!
MPEG Stream: "Odious Convulsions (They Are Not Worthy Of His Name)"
MPEG Stream: "Crushing The Proliapsed Oviducts Of Virtue"

PLANTS Double Infinity (Paradigms) cd 12.98
The final release in a seriously amazing first year for the UK's Paradigms label. Some labels manage to be just so perfectly all over the map and so goddamn eclectic without losing their focus, swinging wildly from genre to genre, but with each disparate release and artist possessing some ineffable something that links them all together. Paradigms is the perfect example. Black metal (Throne Of Katarsis, Utlagr), math rock (Woburn House), dream dirge sludge (Hjarnidaudi, The Angelic Process), psychedelic spacerock (Titan), drone (the Walking With Ghosts compilation), prog (Blueprint Human Being), chamber (Amber Asylum), modern classical doom (Hallvardur Asgeirsson), whatever it is that Jarboe does, and now folk. Well, sort of folk. Just like the above mentioned bands, Portland, Oregon's Plants transcend any genre tag you'd care to attach to them. While they may be a self described "psych folk duo", their sound only begins at folk, taking various folk like elements and spinning them into grand expanses of starry skied drone and fuzzed out otherworldly psychedelia.
The opener "The Sky Above You Seeks The Below", is a nearly 14 minute epic, lush, thick organ drones, twist and shimmer and shift, peppered with piano plinks, and a gorgeous velvety torch song croon. Deep male vocals intertwine with angelic female voices, drifting ghostlike above the thick gritty drones beneath. Like a super lo-fi Charlemagne Palestine, a handful of keys held down, the overtones drifting into dense melodic clusters, while the voices weave dreamy minor key melodies over the top. Thick and fuzzy and ethereal. Like using your finger to manually spin an M83 single as slow as possible. Absolutely gorgeous late night drift...
The second track emerges from the first, thick fuzzed out drones intact, slithering and shimmering, before the band breaks into a dark and minimal percussive krautjam, simple rhythms, a looping repetitive riff, plodding along relentlessly through a swirling cloud of guitar buzz, sixties psychrock jangle, warm warbly organ, an utterly mesmerizing kaleidoscopic psychedelic jam that practically goes on forever.
The final track is all acoustic, steel string tangle, slippery slide, shimmering buzz, deep dramatic vocals, sort of Fahey via Comus via Incredible String Band, but with a murky moodiness, a slow moving, otherworldly Appalachia, menacing and beautifully creepy.
Double Infinity definitely puts most of the other free folk and psych folk we've heard lately to shame. Absolutely epic and amazing!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. And unlike most of the Paradigms releases, which come in cardboard sleeves wrapped in hand stamped, brown paper, this disc is in a white DVD case, with black and white printed insert (much like the recently reviewed Hallvardur Asgeirsson...)
MPEG Stream: "The Sky Above You Seeks The Below"
MPEG Stream: "Double Infinity"

GLACIIAL s/t (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 8.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
Another frosty blast of mighty white metal. Or unblack metal. Whatever you want to call it, this stuff is blacker in sound, if not in spirit, than much of the so called black metal that comes our way. And as if to prove just how un-evil they are, Glaciial have reclaimed the extra 'i' (like in Celestiial, Mutiilation, etc.) as if to spit in the face of the dark lord. No longer is buzzing black metal strictly the purview of Satan, a new movement of positive, Christian black metal has slowly been making waves, creating a totally mindblowing catalog of bizarre and super original black metal. Buzzing and brutal enough to appeal to the true grim warriors, but weird enough to have -us- all in a lather, and with a positive message that goes down a lot smoother delivered via a face full of corpse painted spike encrusted unblack buzz!
Glaciial is a trio made up of three of the most active members in the Midwestern unblack metal scene, one part Light Shall Prevail (reviewed here a few lists back), one part Flaskavsae and one part Wrathful Plague and the result is again, fucking NUTS!!! The sticker on the cd describes this as fast and atmospheric black metal, but boy does that not nearly do this record justice. It is definitely atmospheric in that the buzz is so pervasive and blown out and thick that it smears into a massive slow shifting whirl of swirling buzz, even though the music it's wrapped around is blazing fast. And there are melodies, these songs have hooks like crazy, but they are buried under a million pounds of black buzz. But it's the vocals. What is it with all these unblack metal bands?! It's like they are all capable of singing in tongues. The Agathothodion we reviewed had some of the weirdest vocals we had ever heard, a moaning drifting croon, like a smeared falsetto. But the vocals here take the cake. We might go so far as to say most fucked and most amazing vocals EVER. A hissing rasp that alternately sounds like a Tuvan throat singer with a tracheotomy or a Sleestak. A swirling reverbed distorted raspy whisper that whips over the icy backdrop like some frozen arctic wind. HHHHHHHZZZZZZHHHZZZZZZZ. Awesome. And when the band slows down and dooms out it's seriously fucking frightening.
Get down on your knees and bask in the divine unblack glory that is Glaciial!!
MPEG Stream: "Frozen Epitaph"
MPEG Stream: "Atheistic Death"
MPEG Stream: "Digging My Own Grave"

NECROFROST In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor (Total Holocaust) cd 14.98
We love Necrofrost. The ultimate in damaged weirdo outsider black metal. Managing to be completely bafflingly bizarre but still grim and cult and black and heavy as fuck. This is one of two long overdue reissues, this one from 1999, and still sounding as amazing and as fucked as ever. It's called In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor after all, and features some of the best black metal song titles EVER: "Slaughtered With Misanthropic Intent", "Rapacious Forests In Ultimate Sleep", "The Return Of Animalian Bloodlust", "Bloodthrones And Legionwoods"...
And while the sound is appropriately black and buzzy, it's ultimately filtered through Necrofrost's cracked and distorted metal sensibility and ends up being some of the coolest weirdest black metal you will ever hear. At its core, this is a loping midtempo, slightly doomy, buzz drenched black metal. But Necrofrost take that sound and drag it kicking and screaming, bloody and battered through some haunted forest, into a cave and down into the pits of hell. While not as completely wacked as their other record Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner, In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor is more subtly fucked, its dementedness demonstrated less by bursts of renaissance faire folly or country banjos and more by some inherent, intangible what the fuck vibe that seems ooze from every recorded second.
After a weird, horror movie piano intro, with minor key strings, sounding like some Morricone spy thriller, the band lurch into black action. Sheets of blasting buzz, howled demonic shrieks, over a stumbling chaotic blast beat, the tempos ever shifting, bizarre atonal Greg Ginn guitars playing tangled angular leads, strange doom breakdowns, almost jaunty polka style rhythms, twisted and tweaked circusy guitar melodies, albeit all doused in grim blackness, thick washes of medieval keyboards, haunting minor key arpeggiated guitars, these are all part of Necrofrost's sinister sonic world, but ultimately, their grim black blasts are fucked enough, the perfect black metal gateway, luring you with blast and buzz, grimly sucking you into their strange sonic underworld, and maybe once you have successfully traversed Necrofrost's Misty Soar and Swampy Floor, you'll be ready to brave their Bloodstorms...
Essential for all fans of Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, Benighted Leams, Furze, Urfaust, The One and other practitioners of the dark and damaged black arts...
MPEG Stream: "Slaughtered In A Misanthropic Intent"
MPEG Stream: "Grimm Of Decembers Mailune"
MPEG Stream: "Wonders That On My Rotten Cabin Pounders"

NECROFROST In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor (Northern Silence) lp 14.98
Now available on ultra necro and frosty vinyl!! Limited to 500 copies, each one hand numbered, and with slightly different artwork. Got a handful and will most likely not be able to get more (unfortunately, due to the ongoing lps vs the postal service battle, the covers are all slightly less than perfect, with most having some sort of slight imperfection or slightly bent corners). Here's what we had to say about In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor, one of our favorite weirdo black metal records ever, back when we reviewed the cd:
We love Necrofrost. The ultimate in damaged weirdo outsider black metal. Managing to be completely bafflingly bizarre but still grim and cult and black and heavy as fuck. This is one of two long overdue reissues, this one from 1999, and still sounding as amazing and as fucked as ever. It's called In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor after all, and features some of the best black metal song titles EVER: "Slaughtered With Misanthropic Intent", "Rapacious Forests In Ultimate Sleep", "The Return Of Animalian Bloodlust", "Bloodthrones And Legionwoods"...
And while the sound is appropriately black and buzzy, it's ultimately filtered through Necrofrost's cracked and distorted metal sensibility and ends up being some of the coolest weirdest black metal you will ever hear. At its core, this is a loping midtempo, slightly doomy, buzz drenched black metal. But Necrofrost take that sound and drag it kicking and screaming, bloody and battered through some haunted forest, into a cave and down into the pits of hell. While not as completely wacked as their other record Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner, In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor is more subtly fucked, its dementedness demonstrated less by bursts of renaissance faire folly or country banjos and more by some inherent, intangible what the fuck vibe that seems ooze from every recorded second.
After a weird, horror movie piano intro, with minor key strings, sounding like some Morricone spy thriller, the band lurch into black action. Sheets of blasting buzz, howled demonic shrieks, over a stumbling chaotic blast beat, the tempos ever shifting, bizarre atonal Greg Ginn guitars playing tangled angular leads, strange doom breakdowns, almost jaunty polka style rhythms, twisted and tweaked circusy guitar melodies, albeit all doused in grim blackness, thick washes of medieval keyboards, haunting minor key arpeggiated guitars, these are all part of Necrofrost's sinister sonic world, but ultimately, their grim black blasts are fucked enough, the perfect black metal gateway, luring you with blast and buzz, grimly sucking you into their strange sonic underworld, and maybe once you have successfully traversed Necrofrost's Misty Soar and Swampy Floor, you'll be ready to brave their Bloodstorms...
Essential for all fans of Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, Benighted Leams, Furze, Urfaust, The One and other practitioners of the dark and damaged black arts...
MPEG Stream: "Slaughtered In A Misanthropic Intent"
MPEG Stream: "Grimm Of Decembers Mailune"
MPEG Stream: "Wonders That On My Rotten Cabin Pounders"

EXPO '70 July 18, 2004 Live At Infrasonic Sound Studio (Kill Shaman) cd-r 5.98
Another gorgeous slab of spaced out krautrocky ambience from Expo' 70, this one a live, completely improvised performance back in 2004, with the band expanded to a trio. And if folks' reaction to the first three Expo 70's releases is anything to go by, then these will be flying out of here in no time as well.
For those yet to discover the sublime joys of Expo '70, these guys (usually just one guy, Justin Wright) traffic in glistening dreamlike kosmiche drift. A krautrock that is less about propulsion and rhythm and more about texture and ambience, think Ash Ra Tempel, AR & The Machines, Tangerine Dream, Eno, Popol Vuh. Guitars aren't strummed and picked, they are sort of allowed to unwind, long glistening strands of reverberating buzz unfurl and float into the hazy ether. Synthesizers unleash a similarly disembodied sonic vibe, soft clouds of fuzzy whir and distant chordal warmth. Very much the sonic equivalent to drifting down a warm summer stream, on your back, watching the clouds drift by, the trees on the shore shimmer and sway. Or maybe more accurately, floating in the vacuum of space, everything weightless, untethered and drifting lazily through the inky blackness. The light of stars and suns bends and twists, slowly cycling through the visible spectrum, disobeying all laws of physics, wrapping you in a thick swirl of sonic brilliance. This music has to be the work of some immortal group of dronelords, sitting in their multidimensional fortress, atop some mysterious lost mountain, who in their infinite wisdom, allow their dreamlike drones and angelic ambience to fall from the sky and settle over us like a light dusting of snow...
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

DRUDKH Songs Of Grief And Solitude (Supernal) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The long awaited folk record from Ukrainian black metal gods Drudkh. And it's amazing! But before we get into it, we have always wondered, what it is exactly with black metal and folk? Why does a record, that to the untrained ear, sounds like Renaissance Faire music, get lauded as still being 'grim'? And why do black metallers, one of the seemingly most close minded group of music fans in the world, deem certain sorts of folk music worthy of their adoration, when they have utter disdain for all other musicks that are not grim or true? And what makes a certain folk music grim or true?
Who really know, and who really cares. What we do know is that Songs Of Grief And Solitude is gorgeous and mournful, melodic and mysterious, and you would never know this was the work of one of our favorite buzzing black hordes!
Based on Ukrainian legends, traditional songs and fairy tales, Songs Of Grief And Solitude is a gorgeous folk record. Acoustic guitars and flutes, woven deftly into super moving emotional arrangements. VERY reminiscent of Comus, the Incredible String Band, and similar minded seventies folkies, haunting and minor key, dark and dreamy, unlikely melodies and unusual arrangements help avoid the usual Renn Faire vibe, although when the flutes join in, it's a bit difficult to deny. But the majority of the record is quite dark, very cinematic, moody and haunting, sounding like it could very well be the work of any number of modern day freak folk outfits, but with the added weight of the band's black background giving the music more musical heft. Each song begins with the sound of a crackling campfire or chirping crickets or tolling bells or the whir of night time nature, as if each of these songs was a tale being related around a campfire, or told to friends in the field. Normally we would suggest that maybe Drudkh fans would not necessarily dig this, but pursuant to the above black metal/folk discussion, and the fact that all the Drudkh fans we know LOVE this record, we'd have to say it's pretty damn essential. But it should also be essential listening for all the modern free folk freaks as well. Might be their black metal gateway record (even though there is NO black metal here). Songs Of Grief And Solitude would fit perfectly between your Comus record and your Vetiver record, next to your Brightblack Morning Light and Feathers records. Check it out. All hail Drudkh!
MPEG Stream: "Sunset In Carpathians"
MPEG Stream: "Tears Of Gods"
MPEG Stream: "Archaic Dance"

DRUDKH Songs Of Grief And Solitude (Northern Heritage) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The most recent Drudkh available on vinyl for a very short time. Super cool, new artwork, limited to 500 copies, and thus, these will probably disappear in a flash...
The long awaited folk record from Ukrainian black metal gods Drudkh. And it's amazing! But before we get into it, we have always wondered, what it is exactly with black metal and folk? Why does a record, that to the untrained ear, sounds like Renaissance Faire music, get lauded as still being 'grim'? And why do black metallers, one of the seemingly most close minded group of music fans in the world, deem certain sorts of folk music worthy of their adoration, when they have utter disdain for all other musicks that are not grim or true? And what makes a certain folk music grim or true?
Who really know, and who really cares. What we do know is that Songs Of Grief And Solitude is gorgeous and mournful, melodic and mysterious, and you would never know this was the work of one of our favorite buzzing black hordes!
Based on Ukrainian legends, traditional songs and fairy tales, Songs Of Grief And Solitude is a gorgeous folk record. Acoustic guitars and flutes, woven deftly into super moving emotional arrangements. VERY reminiscent of Comus, the Incredible String Band, and similar minded seventies folkies, haunting and minor key, dark and dreamy, unlikely melodies and unusual arrangements help avoid the usual Renn Faire vibe, although when the flutes join in, it's a bit difficult to deny. But the majority of the record is quite dark, very cinematic, moody and haunting, sounding like it could very well be the work of any number of modern day freak folk outfits, but with the added weight of the band's black background giving the music more musical heft. Each song begins with the sound of a crackling campfire or chirping crickets or tolling bells or the whir of night time nature, as if each of these songs was a tale being related around a campfire, or told to friends in the field. Normally we would suggest that maybe Drudkh fans would not necessarily dig this, but pursuant to the above black metal/folk discussion, and the fact that all the Drudkh fans we know LOVE this record, we'd have to say it's pretty damn essential. But it should also be essential listening for all the modern free folk freaks as well. Might be their black metal gateway record (even though there is NO black metal here). Songs Of Grief And Solitude would fit perfectly between your Comus record and your Vetiver record, next to your Brightblack Morning Light and Feathers records. Check it out. All hail Drudkh!
MPEG Stream: "Sunset In Carpathians"
MPEG Stream: "Tears Of Gods"
MPEG Stream: "Archaic Dance"

BUILT TO SPILL Ultimate Alternative Wavers (C/Z) cd 15.98
Listening to this reissue of that old aQ fond favorite Built To Spill's debut album from back in '93 just gives us the warm fuzzies. Aaaah, Martsch's unmistakable awesome vocals and guitar playing... it's nothing but the goodest of indie rock times while this record spins! How'd they keep everything so loose and casual, but nail us with such irresistible hooks?! This band raised the bar for all indie rockers who followed. This rocked then, and still rocks now! Where as Nothing Wrong With Love was jam packed with super concise, practically perfect pop songs, UAW sort of sprawls, the songs are looooooong, with extended instrumental passages and some seriously freaked out jams. Definitely reminiscent of Martsch's former band the Treepeople, with its warbly intertwined Neil Young meets J Mascis guitars. But even with all the jamming and freaking out, the perfect pop center of each song is never lost, obscured maybe, but they always swing back to the hook, and it's Built To Spill so you know those hooks can kill! Maybe our second (or third) favorite BTS record, but probably the weirdest and most rocking. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Three Years Ago Today"
MPEG Stream: "Get A Life"

V/A Mary Anne Hobbs - Warrior Dubs (Planet Mu) 3lp 17.98
What the hell more can we say about grime?! Other than we love it. We're obsessed with it. Grime and dubstep are everything we wish hip hop still was (and some still is, the new Clipse absolutely destroys!). Fresh and funky, wild and weird. Fucked up beats and even more fucked up flows. Stuttering hiccupping what the fuck rhythms. It's maddeningly mind bending. And we just can't get enough. And the thing is, we're forced to subsist on a new grime/dubstep release every few weeks or every couple of months, when we could easily be eating up ten times that. This is the only music that stands any chance of getting our non-dancing asses out of our chairs and out onto the dancefloor. And even if dancing is even lower on your list of priorities that it is on ours, this shit is the perfect kicking back music, drifting off, mellowing out, late night dubbed out chill music, it also sounds absolutely amazing blasting in your car. Like we said, we just can't get enough. So here we have a collection of some of the best dubstep (and grime) jams of the last little while compiled by legendary DJ Mary Anne Hobbs. About half of these tracks were recorded or at least remixed specifically for this comp, the rest being all time grime/dubstep classics.
The disc starts off with a track from recent AQ Record of the Weeker Milanese, a furious muted blast of grime-y groove and some killer dancehall style toasting over the top. The grime element is sort of pushed aside in favor of the more blissed out dubstep sound for the rest of the disc, featuring a track from another AQ record of the week Burial, as well as a track from Kode9 & Space Ape whose full length we raved about not too long ago. And of course a track from Kevin Martin's Bug... This whole record is just so dark and deliriously groovy. Beats are all over the place, alternating between shuffling and pounding, slithering and stuttering, huge basslines fuzz and buzz, thick swaths of low end synth threaten your woofers, vocals are minimal, sometimes wild tongue twisting flows, other times growled dancehall toasting, bits of jungle surface here and there, thick swirls of ominous ambience EVERYWHERE. So goddamn good. We've been listening to this non stop!! And every time we play this in the store somebody comes up to find out what it is, and usually ends up buying it. So what else do you need to know. Buy this now!
MPEG Stream: BENGA "Music Box"
MPEG Stream: ANDY STOTT "Black"
MPEG Stream: PLASTICIAN "Cha Vocal"
MPEG Stream: THE BUG "Jah War"

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE s/t (Columbia) lp 21.00
Now available on lp! 180 gram vinyl!
United States Of America is quite a politically charged monicker these days, what with the whole country / world divided over the war in Iraq and our President and gay marriage and everything else under the sun. Probably wasn't a whole lot less volatile 36 years ago, in the midst of the Vietnam War, when this record was first released. Which was precisely the point.
USoA mastermind Joseph Byrd was a long time devotee of twentieth century composition and minimalism, studying and/or studying with LaMonte Young, John Cage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Charles Ives and the rest. While at UCLA, Byrd helped organise the New Music Workshop and eventually arranged an elaborate set of concerts which culminated in a Lamonte Young piece that involved the inflation of a giant hot air balloon. Fearful that the less sophisticated members of the audience would get bored and leave, Byrd formed a blues band to play during that part of the performance and convinced his pal Linda Rondstadt to sing. Thus came the realisation that a rock band would give Byrd access to a much bigger audience, and so began his quest to start a psychedelic rock band, which would eventually be realized as United States Of America. Made up of Byrd's friends from academia and ethnomusicology and his ex-girlfriend, and born from his frustration with the war and his leaving UCLA, USoA became a politically charged experimental psychedelic rock combo unlike any that had come before. Utilising a not exactly standard bass /drums /guitar /violin lineup, their sound was further augmented by ring modulators, organ, harpsichord, and calliope. The end result was a sixties rock band, drenched in psychedelic filigree, swooping electronic trippiness, all sorts of circus-y weirdness, bizarre editing and song structures, but never losing sight of great songs.
And a lot of these songs are indeed great. Probably the best track on the record is "The Garden Of Earthly Delights", a super rocking Stereolab meets Jefferson Airplane number, that would not sound at all out of place on Emperor Tomato Ketchup, if it weren't for the gritty sixties rock chorus (with a hook to die for) and the storm of buzzing and bleeping, overloaded affects and tripped out swooping and soaring bleeps and bloops. And then there's the final track, a three part experimental montage / coda, all ambient jangle and ethereal ambience, with snippets and samples from the rest of the tracks on the record, resulting in a super damaged art-rock musical acid trip. And the rest of the record veers from countryish campfire stomps, to smoke-y sultry ballads, to freaked out psych jams and everything in between. All blessed by the absolutely gorgeous vocals of Dorothy Moskowitz. This record may be a psychedelic country pop rock record, but boy is it more than that. Reminds us quite a bit of recent AQ record of the week Euphoria, with it's complicated and bizarre arrangements and its unlikely melding of country rock, lush baroque pop and acid fried guitar leads. Imagine a Frankensteinian sonic monster constructed from Euphoria, Stereolab, Fifty Foot Hose, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds...then make said monster do some coursework in twentieth century composition and experimental minimalism, and let it experiment with a suitcase full of homemade sound generators and you'd still have trouble imagining how great this record is.
MPEG Stream: "The Garden Of Earthly Delights"
MPEG Stream: "Hard Coming Love"
MPEG Stream: "The American Metaphysical Circus"
MPEG Stream: "Cloud Song"

V/A Pop Ambient 2007 (Kompact) cd 15.98
What more can we say about this Pop Ambient series. Or the 'genre' in general. Its quickly become one of our favorite sounds, a blissy fuzzy ambience that is soothing and serene. Droney and drifty and dreamy and otherworldly. For those of you who have never heard of Pop Ambient, it's a term coined for a specific strain of techno, where most of the beats are removed, leaving just sjimmer and swirl of the music behind the beats. Lush looped soundscapes of warm synthesizer swells, deep drifts of slow moving sound, all washed out and blurry, the 'dance music' version of all that drone music we love, Basinski, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Aidan Baker and the like. In fact none of them would seem at all out of place on a Pop Ambient compilation. Think Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, but updated for the 21st century, chill out music that is not vapid or light, but is dense and deep and lush.
2007's volume is just as good or maybe even better than the preceding six volumes. Some familiar names, Markus Guentner, Thomas Felmann (of the Orb), Klimek, Andrew Thomas, most who we have raved about in the past. But some new names as well. Probably the most exciting track is a seldom heard rarity from Wolfgang Voigt's Gas! Gas is most definitely one of out favorite practitioners of the pulsing blissy pop ambient, and it's been years! We've been dying for some new music from Gas, so while this is technically not new, it sure does hit the spot. A relentless pulse beneath thick swirls of minor key sound, house music buried beneath layer after layer of glistening shimmering sound.
The rest of this disc is just as good. Numerous variations on the Pop Ambience, looped vocals stretched into stuttering M83 style fuzz drone soundscapes, acoustic guitar loops arranged into stuttering rhythms, skipping cds smeared Oval style into lush orchestration, all of it so devastatingly dreamy. Every time a new Pop Ambient record comes out, it just replaces the one before it as the perfect late night dream drift record... Until next year!
MPEG Stream: MARKUS GUENTNER "Altocomulus Opacus"
MPEG Stream: GAS "Nach 1912"
MPEG Stream: KLIMEK "Ruined In A Day (Buenos Aires)"

XEXYZ Primeval Mountain (Suffering Jesus) cd 13.98
One of our favorite fucked up weirdo black metal records, originally released as a cd-r, and out of print for a while now, gets reissued as an actual cd. With new artwork and extra tracks!!! You know you need to buy it again. And if you missed out on it the first time, do NOT blow it again. And if you saw the XLR8RTV episode featuring techno legend Carl Craig shopping at aQ, you saw him gushing about this record too! The masters of NES-BM (get it? NES like Nintendo!, XEXYZ!!! Read on to share in the utter and complete joy we get from the insane genius that is Xexyz:
Realistically, if you all are anything like us, a one line review is all it will take for you to know in your heart of hearts, that not only do you HAVE to own this, but that it will rapidly and immediately become your favorite record. OF ALL TIME!!
So here we go: Xexyz are a black metal band who use a Nintendo Entertainment System as their "keyboard" and who essentially have composed black metal songs around the 8-bit themes to Nintendo classics like Metroid and Rygar's Quest. Yes!! We were right, weren't we?
Anyway, Xexyz are a grim buzzing lo-fi horde of black warriors who just so happen to be video game nerds and who have decided that there is nothing more grim or more cult than the instantly recognizable buzz and beep of their favorite Nintendo themes. And you know what, it's sort of true. And it definitely works. Some folks here thought this sounded like the Muppets and Stereolab playing black metal, but it's so much more grim than that. A haunting 8-bit refrain bleeps maniacally under moaning black guitar buzz, while hateful hellish vocals rasp and growl over the top. The theme from Metroid rings out, one of the coolest, and weirdest video game themes ever (second only to Rastan maybe), the weird electronic pulse underpins a thick slab of distorted guitar, when the song finally kicks in, it almost sounds like a lo-fi version of THAT Burzum track, the black fuzz with the haunting keyboard figure in the background. But you know... with Metroid instead. And "Nightmare On Elm Street", is so awesome, the Nintendo theme is super fuzzy and haunting, and perfectly lends itself to some Burzumic buzz, creepy crawly and pretty damn black.
So totally amazing and weird and thus of course absolutely fucking recommended...
MPEG Stream: "What Lies Atop Gran Mountain"
MPEG Stream: "Metroid"

XEXYZ Primeval Mountain (Dipsomaniac) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Realistically, if you all are anything like us, a one line review is all it will take for you to know in your heart of hearts, that not only do you HAVE to own this, but that it will rapidly and immediately become your favorite record. OF ALL TIME!!
So here we go: Xexyz are a black metal band who use a Nintendo Entertainment System as their "keyboard" and who essentially have composed black metal songs around the 8-bit themes to Nintendo classics like Metroid and Rygar's Quest. Yes!! We were right, weren't we?
Anyway, Xexyz are a grim buzzing lo-fi horde of black warriors who just so happen to be video game nerds and who have decided that there is nothing more grim or more cult than the instantly recognizable buzz and beep of their favorite Nintendo themes. And you know what, it's sort of true. And it definitely works. Some folks here thought this sounded like the Muppets and Stereolab playing black metal, but it's so much more grim than that. A haunting 8-bit refrain bleeps maniacally under moaning black guitar buzz, while hateful hellish vocals rasp and growl over the top. The theme from Metroid rings out, one of the coolest, and weirdest video game themes ever (second only to Rastan maybe), the weird electronic pulse underpins a thick slab of distorted guitar, when the song finally kicks in, it almost sounds like a lo-fi version of THAT Burzum track, the black fuzz with the haunting keyboard figure in the background. But you know... with Metroid instead. And "Nightmare On Elm Street", is so awesome, the Nintendo theme is super fuzzy and haunting, and perfectly lends itself to some Burzumic buzz, creepy crawly and pretty damn black.
So totally amazing and weird and thus of course absolutely fucking recommended...
MPEG Stream: "What Lies Atop Gran Mountain"
MPEG Stream: "Metroid"

BRINKMANN, THOMAS Klick Revolution (Max Ernst) cd 16.98
Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. We are suckers for all the sounds that most other folks hate. So much care is spent mastering records perfectly, desperately trying to keep lps from getting dusty or scratched. When most of the time we hear a record and think how much better it would sound with some record crackle, or pops and clicks. We could literally hear the same record, recorded in a state of the art studio, and then on a handheld tape recorder in the forest during a thunderstorm, and we're pretty sure you can guess which one would have us flipping out.
In the past we've discovered dreamy drone records just drenched in fuzz and record static, L. Chasse even recorded a record dedicated to our very own Allan, that emulated the sound or record crackle. You could say we're obsessed. There's something about that sound, it's so raw and pure and beautiful sounding. It may be an unwanted byproduct to most, but to us it's one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
This new record from Thomas Brinkmann, Klick Revolution, is an entire record of super minimal, skeletal techno, constructed completely from the static and buzz of needle on vinyl. At least it sounds like it. And the sleeve is adorned with the garage sale center labels of all the lps ostensibly used in the making of this record. The strange thing is, Brinkmann has always seemed very clinical, his sounds dry and clipped, as if his records were made in a lab, so it's exciting to hear, a very crisp, clipped sounding record made out of the very opposite sort of elements. Organic analog distortion and inconsistencies transformed into cool digital clickery. The other strange thing is that Klick Revolution seems to be Brinkmann's tribute, or homage to the pinball machine, a very convoluted concept concerning the inclined plane in a locked box and Sisyphus playing pinball with a rolling stone... Not sure we get it, but we do LOVE pinball, and by now it should be obvious how much we love record crackle, so needless to say THIS RECORD RULES.
Based on live performances utilizing turntables and locked groove records, these pieces are definitely reminiscent of Pierre Bastien, Strotter Inst. and other modern avant turntablists, but the sound is definitely all Brinkmann. Hypnotic rhythms, a super skeletal techno, a symphony of Geiger counters, the kick drum is a pop, the shuffling snare is a tiny clipped burst of static. So completely hypnotic. He incorporates longer snippets from the records too but only briefly, introducing bits of melody, weird textured sounds, creepy cinematic elements, each surfacing for a moment before fading out.
Strangely impossibly gorgeous and lush considering how barebones and skeletal this is. Somewhere between heroin house, Pop Ambient and maybe even haunted house, a strange and wonderful world where sound is measured in clicks and skips, buzz and fuzz, snap, crackle, pop and very little else. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir...
MPEG Stream: "Geschlossene Kiste/Initiation_locked Box"
MPEG Stream: "Die Schiefe Ebene_Inclined Plane"

TOMB OF... ...The Rotting Break (Tour De Garde) cassette 5.98
Finally back in stock!!
Of all the weird black metal tapes we've gotten recently, this just may be our absolute favorite. So much so, that