NASH, GRAHAM Wild Tales (Atlantic) cd 12.98
We listed the Graham Nash record Songs For Beginners a few weeks back, having only just heard it for the first time recently. Not soon after we decided to check out this one as well and were just as blown away. Our introduction to Graham Nash came not via Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but by the soundtrack to Rob Zombie's Devil's Rejects movie. You can read all about it in our review of Nash's Songs For Beginners record elsewhere on the AQ site. But in a nutshell, no, Graham Nash wasn't on the soundtrack, but Terry Reid was, and the three Terry Reid tracks on the soundtrack were taken from his best record, Seed Of Memory. And while all the Terry Reid records rule, Seed Of Memory is the most beautiful, the most country, the most haunting, due in no small part to Graham Nash's arrangement and production work, which, along with a recommendation from AQ pal Shayde, was enough to get us to check out some Nash records. Those in the know, tell us that Songs For Beginners and this one, Wild Tales are his best, and are both essential, and we'd have to agree.
Don't be expecting any far out weirdness. Nope this is just gorgeous, dreamy, sunny, singer songwriter soft rock, but with a definite dark, minor key and melancholy dreaminess running through it.
If you're familiar with the Devil's Rejects soundtrack, and for chrissakes you should be, any of these songs would have fit on there perfectly alongside tracks by the Allman Brothers, Terry Reid, the James Gang, Elvin Bishop, Joe Walsh and Lynrd Skynyrd. Perfect seventies FM radio rock, you can just imagine sitting in the backseat, on the way to Death Valley or the Grand Canyon with your folks, watching the desert fly by outside, just sort of daydreaming and drifting off. Sun dappled and windblown and sweetly fuzzy and totally evocative of lost childhood. Each song somehow carries the listener off to a world of starry skies, grassy fields, dusty roads, broken down cars, slow moving trains, long highways, all conveyed through a deft arrangement of soft jangling riffs, slippery lap steel, tinkling piano, Dylan-esque harmonica, totally dreamy harmonies, plenty of twang, but some serious rocking mixed in there too. The Eagles obviously comes to mind (as Nash's voice is often a dead ringer for Joe Walsh), as does Elton John, but it IS weird and dark enough to make us think of more esoteric folk troubadours as well.
But the bottom line is this is just a perfect pop record. The songs are totally catchy, sweetly melancholy, they sort of lope and drift, occasionally rocking out, but for the most part, Wild Tales is hot summer day, back porch, radio playing through the open window music. Or music for driving aimlessly along rainslicked streets, the radio on low, the streetlights casting strange shadows, driving all night, no particular place to go. There is a definite sadness about all of these songs, even when they're wrapped in the sunniest of pop. And a lot of it has to do with the idea of this as 'radio' music. Reminiscent of a time where the radio was where we went to hear new music, to be emotionally moved, to rock out, to listen to while parked and making out, to feel sad about a breakup or get pumped for a rock show, and because most of us experienced most of our radio listening in a car, the music seems to have evolved into a sound that inherently evokes feelings of displacement, travel, wandering and being lost as much as it does a loose and free rock and roll world of hooks and drums and guitars. The perfect soundtrack to any sort of journey, physical or metaphorical. Which is what makes Wild Tales so appealing. A musical look back, that sounds as fresh coming out of this computer, or your stereo at home as it did blasting out of the radio with the blown speakers in that crappy old car you got when you turned sixteen, just you and your friends driving around, windows down without a care in the world, thinking that there is no place in the world you'd rather be than right there. Nothing you'd rather be listening to. Than this.
MPEG Stream: "Wild Tales"
MPEG Stream: "Hey You (Looking At The Moon)"
MPEG Stream: "Grave Concern"

SORIAH Chao Organica In A Minor (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 14.98
The processes of the mysterious composer / sound sculptor Soriah are almost as interesting as the strange and otherworldly music he creates. The live performance, the setting, is often a spiritual complement to the composition itself, taking place in haunted tunnels, in treetops, in the deserts, in churches, all adding to the mysterious ceremonial aspect of each piece, as do the extensive costumes, head-dresses, totems, tribal garments, all combined with Soriah's background in Butoh, Yoga and other ritualistic practices, lend his music a timeless and mysterious air. A dark pagan dance of drones and dark ambience.
After numerous, super limited, self published and hand made art editions, this is Soriah's first proper release, and it's totally breathtaking. Two lengthy pieces, for vocals, pipe organ and effects, Soriah conjures up a haunting sonic otherworld, drifting, dreamy, menacing and malefic, a rumbling, whirring
dark ambient dronescape, thick with the natural timbre of the wheezing pipe organ, and dense with subtle overtones from the various vocals. A deft mash up of ancient classical musicks and modern experimental drone based minimalism, a heady blend of Messiaen, Mirror, Coleclough, Dead Can Dance, Jacula, Niblock, and Eastern ragas. A dusty old pipe organ, built in 1881, lays the groundwork, a rich, thick, multilayered bed, subtle overtones, rich swirling drones, notes and melodies shimmer and beat against each other, creating strange movements, a thick wash of chordal whir that pulses and breathes like it was alive.
The organ is intertwined with various vocals, sometimes crooning, alien and operatic, but more often an impossibly low-end rumble, a dense and deep Tuvan style throat singing, buzzing and multilayered, more like some strange long stringed instrument than a human voice. Crumbling and corrosive, but at the same time soothing and ethereal. The vocals drifting through various effects, become smears and stretches that blend and blur into the overall droneworld.
Definitely one of the darkest and dreamiest drone records in recent memory, and all the more compelling in that this is not just a simple tone or set of tones, slowly shifting, know this is a rich and vibrant live ritual, you can feel the organ vibrate, the vocals curl around you like some ripe exotic smoke, this music is alive, soft and inviting, but dangerous and dreamlike. A bit like SUNNO))) armed only with church organs, and accompanied by Huun-Huur-Tu, a massive physical drone, a huge deliriously suffocating wall of rumble, like laying at the bottom of a pit, eyes closed, and being buried alive by soft sound. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Exordium"
MPEG Stream: "Soliloquy And Epilogue"

LONSAI MAIKOV VS DISSONAANT ELEPHANT Thee Darkening Ov Powers (Old Europa Cafe) cd 14.98

AESTHETIC MEAT FRONT Embalmer Tapes (Dissected) (Old Europa Cafe) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As you probably well know by now, we here at AQ have long been fans of manipulated found sounds and field recordings -- dogs barking, ice melting, whatever -- either on their own, captured just as they were heard, or better yet, twisted and smeared into drones and soundscapes, reimagined as completely alien worlds of sound. And while the source material may not be obvious, just knowing where the sounds come from, can make the listening just that much more thrilling. And the creepier and more unlikely the source sound the better. And it sure doesn't get any creepier than this. Sure Matmos used the sounds of rhinoplasty and various other procedures to concoct their abstract electronica, but Aesthetic Meat Front used only the sounds of a corpse being embalmed for Embalmer Tapes. Every single sound, whether it's the casual whistling of the embalmer, the slow rumble of processed suction sounds or the clang of metal instruments dropped in bloody metal trays, each and every sound was captured deep in the sublevels of a funeral home, while an embalmer removed all the fluids from a corpse. Euuuw. But sonically, WOW!
Sometimes the sounds are instantly recognizable, the above mentioned whistling and clatter of surgical instruments, snippets of conversation heavy with the reverb of a small tiled room, small motorized pumps, footsteps, but more often, the sounds of suction, and the sounds of the machines pumping, are stretched out into warm whirring rumbles, or chopped up and reassembled into hissing blasts of fuzz and grrr. But mostly this is a weird warped world of drones, from dreamy and shimmery, to harsh and jagged, all imbued with the specter of mortality, life most fleeting, the great abyss, the sounds already sonically ominous and foreboding enough, but even more so on a psychological level, knowing the source of every sound, engendering a creepy dark ambient atmosphere thick with the heavy hanging shroud of death. So awesome.
SUPER LIMITED!!! WE GOT THE LAST 20 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!
MPEG Stream: "Post Mortem Sludge"
MPEG Stream: "Sectional Injection (Is Necessary)"

LVNVS 1993-1996 (Old Europa Cafe) cd-r 12.98

DISSECTION Storm Of The Light's Bane (The End) 2cd 12.98
Long overdue, super deluxe double disc reissue of this long-time Aquarius favorite / black metal classic. After a not-so-great past few years for Dissection, including a lengthy jail sentence for frontman Jon Nodtveidt, and a recent disappointing 'comeback/reunion' record (not yet reviewed here), this black classic returns to remind us just how mindblowingly kick ass Dissection really were. And while of course this is a fave of all the metalheads around here, and our metal-lovin' customers, it's also loved by the less metal inclined -- for instance, former AQ staffer Byram, not normally a big metal consumer, ranks this as one of his favorites amongst the Nordic hordes. In fact, it's one of the few metal cds in his collection. It's that great. It came out originally in '94, reissued as a digipak a few years back, and now sees a super duper double disc re-release with a whole disc of bonus tracks (more on those later).
With Storm of the Light's Bane, Dissection perfected their melodic, blackened Swedish death metal approach -- that means TRUE, original metal, with elements of everything from Morbid Angel to Mayhem to Iron Maiden, suped-up and super-grim, with raspy vocals, wicked drumming (the guy is AMAZING), truly memorable, majestic melodies, and tons of cold winter atmosphere. They take long breaks to let their acoustic guitars gently weep, then tear back into the brutal, razor-edged rifferama. Serious stuff, seriously great. This was to be their last album, a mighty swan song, as Dissection called it quits soon after when their frontman ended up in jail as accessory to murder -- but their -very- tangential role in any of that over-sensationalized Scandinavian black metal true crime stuff has nothing to do with why you should be interested in this band. Like we said, the band reformed last year when Nodtveidt got out of jail, and just recently released a mediocre new record, but it couldn't hold a candle to Storm Of The Light's Bane, nor could most metal records actually. Dissection was a brilliant band, and Storm of the Light's Bane is an all time classic that belongs in every metal collection. If you haven't already gotten this album, here's your chance. And even if you already have one of the previous versions, the extra disc might make it a necessary repeat purchase.
The second disc is crammed with bonus tracks and unreleased material. First up, the Storm Of The Light's Bane unreleased alternative mix '95, which might have been for completist nerds only, but a closer look reveals an extra track not on the album proper. Then there's two tracks from an unreleased 1994 demo. And finally the Where Dead Angels Lie ep, also remastered. Lots of liner notes and packaged in a spiffy slipcover. SO RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Night's Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Where Dead Angels Lie"
MPEG Stream: "Soulreaper"

DISSECTION The Somberlain (The End) 2cd 12.98
Long overdue, super deluxe double disc reissue of another long-time Aquarius favorite, the debut from Sweden's black/death metallers Dissection. While not as much of a stone cold classic as their Storm Of The Light's Bane album, this is still a totally kick ass, ultra essential slab of classic Swedish death metal. After a not-so-great past few years for Dissection, including a lengthy jail sentence for frontman Jon Nodtveidt, and a recent disappointing 'comeback/reunion' record, this black classic (along with the godlike Storm Of The Light's Bane) returns to remind us just how mindblowingly kick ass Dissection really were once upon a time. This came out originally in '93, was reissued as a digipak a few years back, and now sees a super duper double disc re-release with a whole disc of bonus tracks (more on those later).
This reissue of Dissection's debut long-player, recorded in 1993 at Dan Swano's studio definitely sets the template that the band would perfect with their second and arguably best record Storm Of The Light's Bane, but on its own is a gorgeously black, slightly rougher and rawer version of Dissection's soon to be classic sound. Epic and melodic, with majestic riffs and folky acoustic interludes, but also quite fast, heavy and brutal. Here Dissection established their "blackened" style of Swedish Melodic Death Metal, a sound that would be copied by many a band, but few would be able to come close to Dissection's black blazing fury. Storm Of The Light's Bane might be the one to get first, but both are essential for sure!
The bonus disc is jam packed with extra goodies: unreleased live recordings from 1995, the Into Infinite Obscurity 7", a 1992 demo, the Grief Prophecy demo from 1990, a rehearsal from 1990, and Satanized rehearsal also from 1990. All tracks remastered from the original mixes. Lots of liner notes and packaged in a spiffy slipcover.
MPEG Stream: "Black Horizons"
MPEG Stream: "The Somberlain"

STRIBORG Embittered Darkness / Isle De Morts (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Lovers of damaged demented bizarre baffling freaked out and fucked up black metal rejoice!! We couldn't be more excited if there was a brand new Benighted Leams record. FINALLY, we're able to review and list a record from one of our all time favorite outsider one man black metal bands, Striborg. Most folks have probably never actually heard Striborg, even though this will mark release #15 or thereabouts. But it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. We have been completely obsessed with Striborg since we first heard him a few years back and have been trying to get enough copies of ANY of his releases to list. Everytime we found someone who carried Striborg records, we would order 30 or 40 or 50, and would get 1 or 2. Or more likely none. We even resorted to writing letters to the band (he apparently lives in a shack in the woods with no phone and no computer!) And while most folks have never -heard- Striborg, you've probably at least heard OF him. Whether it was in an aQuarius review, we've referenced Striborg as the ultimate outsider black metal band in reviews of records by black metal weirdos Dead Reptile Shrine, Lugubrum, Draugar, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden and more, or on the recent black metallized SUNNO))) record Black One, which even had a track named for the dark mastermind behind Striborg Sin-Nanna.
But what is it exactly about Striborg that has everyone freaking out?
Five words for you: Tasmanian rain forest black metal! And it's just as grim and weird and as amazing as that might lead you to believe. We have Southern Lord to thank for this, the first readily available Striborg release, which continues his tradition of combining multiple releases on single cds, this one includes the brand new 2006 recording. Embittered Darkness, as well as the super rare Isle De Morts release recorded almost a decade ago, way back in 1997.
So what exactly does Tasmanian rain forest black metal sound like? Definitely grim, and lo-fi, ultra personal, demented and damaged, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Dead Reptile Shrine, Necrofrost, Emit, Furze, Urfaust and all the rest of the baffling black metal hierarchy should give you a rough idea, but Striborg, is even further out, way more fucked up, more strangely psychedelic and freaked out, a doomy drone drenched black buzz, a growling fuzzy missive from the depths of some dark netherworld.
Haunting washes of gauzy synthesizer, mournful minor key acoustic guitars, dreary overcast swaths of depressive melancholia, and you think other black metal bands are buzzy?! Striborg take that black buzz and whip it into a furious freaked out frenzy, a guitar buzz like a million bumble bees, but sped WAY up, a prickly, fuzzy swirl, even at it's most doomy and plodding, Striborg drenches everything in that overblown buzz, a thick sandpapery ambience, that is the metal equivalent of walking through the pouring rain, under a full moon, through a graveyard at the edge of the world. Sin-Nanna growls and gurgles his obtuse black ravings in an impossibly creepy animalistic voice, somewhere between a rabid dog, a tiny demon, and a wicked old witch, often everything will drop out and all that will be left is a buzzing tangle of hissing harsh vocal and fuzzed out black riffing. Buried in the murk and mire are weird, rehearsal space drums, really flat and dry sounding, erupting in spastic and chaotic burts, not just blast beats, but instead bizarre blasts of percussive tangle amidst stretches of almost punk rock drumming, although most of Embittered Darkness is spent at a crawl, a buzzing midtempo dirge, as doomy as it is black, if not more so. Imagine an ultra lo-fi doom metal Xasthur, slow motion misery dotted with occasional barrages of black metal buzz and once in a while surges of slithering black ambience.
So totally creepy and beautiful, fucked up and gorgeous, a massive soul crushing slab of doom drenched black metal brilliance.
Isle De Morts, from 1997, is a lot more traditional, and a lot faster, almost every track a frenetic and frenzied burst of blackened and buzzing brutality, lo-fi but completely blown out and in the red, channeling Transylvanian Hunger era Darkthrone, but filtered through Striborg's cracked sonic kaleidoscope, rendering what might have been just some classic Norwegian BM worship, as a creepy and cracked world of ultrabuzz and overblown acidfried blackness, blast beats so fast they sound like radio static, guitars so buzzy and blurry they turn into thick washes of crumbling prickly sound, and croaking toadlike vocals so high in the mix it sounds like the band is in a different room. So gloriously fucked up and freaked out. One listen is all it takes to see why Striborg towers above all his bizarre black metal contemporaries, ruling the doomed and damaged kingdom of ultrapersonal black metal dementia with an iron fist, a busted 4-track and a growing legion of buzz hungry minions!
MPEG Stream: "Wrapped In A Cacoon Out Of Harm's Way"
MPEG Stream: "Race Of Apathy"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Veils Of Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "Descending From A Black Sky"

PRIESTESS Hello Master (RCA) cd 13.98
I can tell you this about Priestess: they're one kick ass live rock n' roll band. I saw 'em on a bill not long ago with heavy metal revivalists The Sword -and- Early Man (both of those bands hotly tipped, and by us too!), and y'know what? Priestess simply DESTROYED both The Sword and Early Man, good as they were. Priestess were just the better live performers, working the crowd and wowing with musicianship and showmanship both. They had rock star swagger, and the skills to back it up -- guitar pyrotechnics, harmony vocals, and some darn catchy real riffy rock n' roll songs. Oh yeah, and a really frickin' good drummer, whose non-sucky *drum solo* definitely put Priestess over the top (in more ways than one) in competition with their tourmates that night.
I'd never heard of 'em before and was pretty darn impressed. Turns out they were from Montreal, and had an album out in Canada, not yet out in the States... well it's here now, this is it. I bought the Canadian version at the show, and didn't even listen to it for a long time 'cause I figured that they couldn't really live up to that live experience. And it's true to some extent, the album doesn't blow away Early Man's album, for instance, the way they did to the band in person. But it's definitely a good, honest-to-God hard rock album that you'd want to blare loudly from your (hypothetical, in all likelihood) Camaro as you put the pedal to the metal.
And having said that, get this: it's non-ironic too, near as we can tell, which also might explain why they had the advantage over those other two bands at that show (and by the way, it wasn't just that show, I saw 'em again opening for Dinosaur Jr. and Comets On Fire, and they were pretty good too, though suffering from the usual opener's lack of energetic crowd response, specifically due to the lack of a crowd at that early hour). Now how can a band like this be non-ironic, you ask? A band so partial to the cowbell, and clearly with visions of stadium-sized showmanship already hard-wired into their songwriting? Maybe 'cause they're Canadian? For whatever reason, their punchy and emotional three-minute pop hard rockin' songs are presented with more authentic feeling (to these ears) than, say, obvious comparison Wolfmother does it.
More about their sound: despite their name (which, unfortunately, conjures the image of an all-female Judas Priest cover band, doesn't it?) they're far from being an '80s retro metal band. More bluesy '70s, and less metal than that. The stoner/grunge thing is closer to the mark. Yeah, a bit White Stripesy at times like Wolfmother, also all AC/DC and QOTSA at others. Can't wait to see 'em again! In the meantime, we'll be spinning this...
MPEG Stream: "Lay Down"
MPEG Stream: "Time Will Cut You Down"
MPEG Stream: "Everything That You Are"

PRIESTESS Hello Master (Ace Fu) lp 14.98
NOW ON VINYL!
I can tell you this about Priestess: they're one kick ass live rock n' roll band. I saw 'em on a bill not long ago with heavy metal revivalists The Sword -and- Early Man (both of those bands hotly tipped, and by us too!), and y'know what? Priestess simply DESTROYED both The Sword and Early Man, good as they were. Priestess were just the better live performers, working the crowd and wowing with musicianship and showmanship both. They had rock star swagger, and the skills to back it up -- guitar pyrotechnics, harmony vocals, and some darn catchy real riffy rock n' roll songs. Oh yeah, and a really frickin' good drummer, whose non-sucky *drum solo* definitely put Priestess over the top (in more ways than one) in competition with their tourmates that night.
I'd never heard of 'em before and was pretty darn impressed. Turns out they were from Montreal, and had an album out in Canada, not yet out in the States... well it's here now, this is it. I bought the Canadian version at the show, and didn't even listen to it for a long time 'cause I figured that they couldn't really live up to that live experience. And it's true to some extent, the album doesn't blow away Early Man's album, for instance, the way they did to the band in person. But it's definitely a good, honest-to-God hard rock album that you'd want to blare loudly from your (hypothetical, in all likelihood) Camaro as you put the pedal to the metal.
And having said that, get this: it's non-ironic too, near as we can tell, which also might explain why they had the advantage over those other two bands at that show (and by the way, it wasn't just that show, I saw 'em again opening for Dinosaur Jr. and Comets On Fire, and they were pretty good too, though suffering from the usual opener's lack of energetic crowd response, specifically due to the lack of a crowd at that early hour). Now how can a band like this be non-ironic, you ask? A band so partial to the cowbell, and clearly with visions of stadium-sized showmanship already hard-wired into their songwriting? Maybe 'cause they're Canadian? For whatever reason, their punchy and emotional three-minute pop hard rockin' songs are presented with more authentic feeling (to these ears) than, say, obvious comparison Wolfmother does it.
More about their sound: despite their name (which, unfortunately, conjures the image of an all-female Judas Priest cover band, doesn't it?) they're far from being an '80s retro metal band. More bluesy '70s, and less metal than that. The stoner/grunge thing is closer to the mark. Yeah, a bit White Stripesy at times like Wolfmother, also all AC/DC and QOTSA at others. Can't wait to see 'em again! In the meantime, we'll be spinning this...
MPEG Stream: "Lay Down"
MPEG Stream: "Time Will Cut You Down"
MPEG Stream: "Everything That You Are"

ELECTRIC WIZARD Come My Fanatics (Rise Above) cd 13.98
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1995's self titled debut, Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics, originally released in 1997, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "Demon Lung" and "Return To The Son Of Nothingness"!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
MPEG Stream: "Return Trip"
MPEG Stream: "Wizard In Black"

ELECTRIC WIZARD Dopethrone (Rise Above) cd 13.98
Originally released way back in 2000, now re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly a 15 minute bonus track!!! Here's what we were smoking when we first got this in way back when:
These British lads have the distinction of being, as far as we know, the first *metal* band ever reviewed in the hallowed pages of popular cutting-edge new music magazine The Wire. But if that makes you expect that the album in question, "Dopethrone" is some sort of pretentious electronica-leaning, intellectual-metallic curiosity worthy of much beard-stroking, you'd better think again! Take a look at the album title, dude! Electric Wizard play super-heavy sludge metal, taking the appellation "stoner rock" very seriously indeed. Satan's even seen smoking a bong on the album cover. Doomy sub-Sabbath riffs, toked-up vocals, spacey fx -- this is primal stuff. This band seems to just keep getting better and better (meaning, they don't change much!). The lyrics celebrate their interests in pulp fantasy fiction (HP Lovecraft and RE Howard both get referenced) and of course the Sweet Leaf: "Dopethrone in this land of sorcery/Dopethrone vision through T.H.C./Dopethrone feedback will free/Dopethrone three wizards crowned with weed." No, not brilliant literature, (and the music's not avant-garde composition for that matter, not intentionally anyway) but "Dopethrone" is still thoroughly enjoyable even by those of us (Andee and Allan for example) who aren't potsmokers (in fact, Andee and Allan are definitely the biggest fans of this record and other "stoner rock" at Aquarius anyways -- I wonder what that means?!). No, you just have to like the sheer heaviness and killer-hippie aura ("Legalize Drugs and Murder" is their slogan, and they're at least half serious)... But if we *were* ever to decide to take up pot-smoking as a casual hobby, we have promised several friends (& Electric Wizard fans) that this album will definitely be the soundtrack to our first "experience". We're tempted...
MPEG Stream: "Funeralopolis"
MPEG Stream: "Barbarian"

ELECTRIC WIZARD Let Us Prey (Rise Above) cd 16.98
Originally released way back in 2002, now re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly a 6 minute bonus track, "Mother Of Serpents"!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out:
AQ-faves Electric Wizard return with the eagerly anticipated "Let Us Prey". After their totally wrecked, wretched performance here in San Francisco last year (which we still enjoyed, but as comedy), this excellent, totally competent new album can only beg the question: did they bring session musicians in to do this stuff, or what? I mean, the drummer is able to find his drumkit, the guitar solos include the correct notes, someone's even playing piano, how can this be the same band we saw? They must have recorded it during during a rare binge of not taking drugs and alcohol! (Horrors!) Of course, we already knew they had it in 'em, since their previous studio effort "Dopethrone" was so perfect. This doesn't surpass that album, but how could it? But it does explore some new directions while mainly providing more of what you want, and thus is certainly a worthy follow-up, recommended to all fans of stoner/doom metal. Doom metal doesn't have to be stoner rock, and stoner rock isn't always (or even often) doom metal, but the combination is natural -- and for that nobody beats the Wiz. Electric Wizard's spacey, metallic drug-punk (a mixture of Sabbath, Hawkwind, and Melvins) features lost, buried, hopeless vocals singing dirgey hymns to the God-Bong amidst bowel-rumbling, super-heavy, super-sludgey guitar and bass psychedelia. What's not to like?
This is the kind of album that lends itself to a track-by-track rundown (why? 'cause there's only six songs):
The disc starts with a classically slow n' massive Wizard song entitled "A Chosen Few", designed to bludgeon the listener into stuporific submission from riff one.
"We, The Undead" changes tactics, being fast and kinda punky (in an Eyehategod/Black Flag way), with a riff that's *very* Saint Vitus.
"Master Of Alchemy" is another slow crusher a la the first track, with a truly EVIL sounding main riff. This song is a relentless juggernaut that eventually morphs (it's a two-part suite nearly ten minutes long) into a mellower, but still quite EVIL, psychedelic drone jam.
"The Outsider" is, if possible, even lower, slower, and more drugged-out sounding, building into a wah wah propelled epic before its nine minutes are out.
Then, out of nowhere, the beautiful, melancholy "Night Of The Shape" (great title) kicks in -- noirish piano figures over busy, shuffling drumbeats that sound almost drum 'n' bass inspired. This could be on a Radiohead record, yet somehow it's totally doomy.
After that lovey interlude, the Wizard get back to their usual business on the epic album closer "Priestess Of Mars". More sludge, more wah, more pot smoke.
And then, three quarters of an hour after you put it on, "Let Us Prey" is over and you'll need another fix!
MPEG Stream: "...A Chosen Few"
MPEG Stream: "We The Undead"

ELECTRIC WIZARD Pre-Electric Wizard 1989-1994 (Eternal, Thy Grief Eternal, Lord Of Putrefaction) (Rise Above) cd 13.98
When we first heard Electric Wizard way back when, we were completely and totally blown away, but we were so filled with glorious doom and gloom, and druggy spaced out stoner rock, that it never occurred to us that anything might have come before. When in fact in one form or another, Electric Wizard had been developing their sound since 1989! This disc collects the two pre-Electric Wizard lps released a while back (and now out of print) as well as super rare recordings from the band that was the original seed for what would eventually become Electric Wizard.
Starting way back in 1989, there was a group of young metalheads fronted by future EW mainman Jus Oborn, who were totally obsessed with Carcass, Bolt Thrower and the like, and thus were appropriately named Lord Of Putrefaction. And their sound suited the name perfectly, a murky grind thrash doom, grunted death metal style vocals, psychedelic freakout guitar over pounding drums and sludgy riffing. Slow and heavy with bursts of not quite blasts and wild squalls of chaotic noise, but all rooted in dense, druggy, doomy sludge. They only ever released a split lp with Mortal Remains, and this here is it. Remastered and heavy as ever. Fans of Winter, diSEMBOWELMENT, Mordor and all that early Earache stuff will be so into this!
Not soon after the end of Lord Of Putrefaction, three of the four lords reconvened as Thy Grief Eternal, who recorded 2 lengthy tracks for a 12" in 1991 which was never actually released. By '91, Jus Oborn and his merry band of metalheads continued to get slower and heavier, hinting at what would come, but still sounding like they'd be right at home on Earache, alongside Carcass, Napalm Death, Godflesh and the like. Pounding industrial sludge doom, with grunted gutteral cookie monster vocals, pounding relentless drumming and BIG RIFFS, very sludgy and crusty, much more akin to the ultra slow, monochromatic dirge of funeral doom, as they had yet to discover the groove that would play such a crucial part in their later sound.
The same 3 members who started out together in Lords Of Putrefaction decided on another name change to represent their continued musical growth and thus was born the simpler Eternal. While Thy Grief Eternal were a crusty bunch of metalheads spitting out blurry blasts of Earache style industrial sludge, a couple years later, with a new name, a new love of mind altering chemicals, and the discovery of the all important GROOVE, Eternal was born, and the sound on their never released EP was only a hop skip and a drunken stumble from the sound of Electric Wizard. The doom and sludge is tempered on the Eternal tracks with a huge heaping pile of Hawkwindish swirling psychedelia and that oft purloined Sabbathy groove that pretty much defined Electric Wizard and the stoner rock movement that followed. Four tracks (one's a Sabbath cover!) including a 16 minute epic that would later become an Electric Wizard track.
Fucking awesome! Comes in a spiffy digipak, with a booklet packed with liner notes, photos, as well as old flyers and demo cover artwork.
MPEG Stream: ETERNAL "Lucifer's Children"
MPEG Stream: THY GRIEF ETERNAL "Swathed In Black"
MPEG Stream: LORD OF PUTREFACTION "Wings Over A Black Funeral"

ELECTRIC WIZARD s/t (Rise Above) cd 13.98
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1997's Come My Fanatics, Electric Wizard's debut, originally released in 1995, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "IIIimitable Nebulie" and Mourning Prayer Part 1" from the unreleased Doom Chapter Demo!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
MPEG Stream: "Stone Magnet"
MPEG Stream: "Mourning Prayer"

SPEKTR The Near Death Experience (Candlelight) cd 10.98
There's a certain strain of black metal, that concerns itself more with black than metal, more with texture than heaviness, more with mood than any sort of musical rules. Those are precisely the sorts of black metal bands that send us spinning. Bands that transcend their genre, or are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they might belong to any genre at all. Such is the case with mysterious black metal outift Spektr. We discovered their debut a couple years back and proudly proclaimed it THE WEIRDEST BLACK METAL RECORD EVER. Since then it's been practically raining bizarre black metal, Furze, Rehtaf Ruo, Dead Reptile Shrine, Hidden, Urfaust, Circle Of Ouroborus, all most definitely black, but each with their own take on what black metal means. And sounds like.
This new Spektr record, however, takes up right where the last one left off, and effortlessly outweirds them all. But their mission is not to be weird. This is not calculated, purposeful, ironic, or in any way untrue to their vision. And it's not that sort of damaged inept weirdness. The music is too dense, and complex and varied and lush and just too impossibly and truly weird to be anything but the musical expression of someone's twisted vision. It's like how truly insane people are the ones who don't realize they're insane. And Spektr are most definitely insane.
The cool thing about Spektr, is that they seem to be some sort of experimental ambient project, with occasional bursts of black metal, as opposed to the other way around. More than half the record seems to be made up of drones, and static and white noise and intercepted transmissions, short wave radio, found sounds, soft subtle rumbles and strange rhythmic interference. When the metal does kick in, it tends towards a seasick lurching midtempo buzz, a lumbering blackened beast, that sort of stumbles and careens wildly out of control, occasionally slipping into a galloping blast, but quickly settling back into a slow sort of lope. Their metal is just off kilter enough to balance their experimental tendencies, and Spektr don't shy away from busting out with a black blast for only a few second before getting back to the drone at hand. And oh the drones! The gloriously twisted ambience. So dense and multilayered. Creaking and crackling, swelling and slithering, often punctuated by industrial pounding, strange rhythms, glitchy hiccups and stutters, but just as often a smoldering warble, a low end dirge of glacial hum and creepy crawly gurgle and whir, voices drift up from the murk, as do strange song fragments and bits of malfunctioning electronics, it's like walking through some black skied wasteland, the ground strewn with all manner of debris, the air thick with smoke and ash, The view fuzzy and indistinct, distant tolling bells, cymbal sizzle that sounds like sprinklers in a moonlit field, all these bits of sound, these ambient fragments, woven together into a truly ominous world of dark sound, the background to a truly bleak and buzzy black metal framework. The more we listen to this, the less -weird- it seems, scary maybe, haunting, harrowing, dark, dreary, creepy, ominous, ghostly, unnerving, and mysterious most certainly, oh okay, and quite a little bit weird too.
A definite contender for our favorite new black metal record!
The disc also includes a video, playable on your computer, for a track not on the cd. And it's a strange one as you might expect. The music is all dark drones, with weirdly jazzy drums way up in the mix, shuffling over a fuzzed out Burzumic riff that sort of ebbs and flows, a fuzzy distorted wave. It never fully kicks in, but it never completely blisses out. It sort of teeters back and forth between dark jazz and glacial black fuzz. It's a little like a black metal post-bop Bohren, sort of. The track shifts partway through and becomes a strange sonic kaleidoscope of creepy orchestra music, garbled ambience and a haunting martial rhythm played on tympani's. The accompanying video is gorgeously grainy, all darkness and shadows, like some rare damaged print of a lost silent horror film, the film stock so degraded that various chunks of light and dark take on ominous shapes, the end result, the visual equivalent of an old crackly record. Totally mesmerizing.
MPEG Stream: "The Violent Stink Of Twitching Terror"
MPEG Stream: "His Mind Ravaged, His Memory Shattered"
MPEG Stream: "Whatever The Case May Be"

SPEKTR The Near Death Experience (Debemur Morti Productions) lp 19.98
Finally on vinyl, 2006's The Near Death Experience from French industrial black metal weirdos Spektr. Outrageously deluxe packaging, super thick gatefold sleeve, printed inner sleeve, a huge 12"x12" booklet of art and photos, pressed on incredibly heavy white vinyl and of course VERY VERY LIMITED!!!!
Here's our review of TNDE when it first came out:
There's a certain strain of black metal, that concerns itself more with black than metal, more with texture than heaviness, more with mood than any sort of musical rules. Those are precisely the sorts of black metal bands that send us spinning. Bands that transcend their genre, or are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they might belong to any genre at all. Such is the case with mysterious black metal outfit Spektr. We discovered their debut a couple years back and proudly proclaimed it THE WEIRDEST BLACK METAL RECORD EVER. Since then it's been practically raining bizarre black metal, Furze, Rehtaf Ruo, Dead Reptile Shrine, Hidden, Urfaust, Circle Of Ouroborus, all most definitely black, but each with their own take on what black metal means. And sounds like.
This new Spektr record, however, takes up right where the last one left off, and effortlessly out-weirds them all. But their mission is not to be weird. This is not calculated, purposeful, ironic, or in any way untrue to their vision. And it's not that sort of damaged inept weirdness. The music is too dense, and complex and varied and lush and just too impossibly and truly weird to be anything but the musical expression of someone's twisted vision. It's like how truly insane people are the ones who don't realize they're insane. And Spektr are most definitely insane.
The cool thing about Spektr, is that they seem to be some sort of experimental ambient project, with occasional bursts of black metal, as opposed to the other way around. More than half the record seems to be made up of drones, and static and white noise and intercepted transmissions, short wave radio, found sounds, soft subtle rumbles and strange rhythmic interference. When the metal does kick in, it tends towards a seasick lurching midtempo buzz, a lumbering blackened beast, that sort of stumbles and careens wildly out of control, occasionally slipping into a galloping blast, but quickly settling back into a slow sort of lope. Their metal is just off kilter enough to balance their experimental tendencies, and Spektr don't shy away from busting out with a black blast for only a few second before getting back to the drone at hand. And oh the drones! The gloriously twisted ambience. So dense and multilayered. Creaking and crackling, swelling and slithering, often punctuated by industrial pounding, strange rhythms, glitchy hiccups and stutters, but just as often a smoldering warble, a low end dirge of glacial hum and creepy crawly gurgle and whir, voices drift up from the murk, as do strange song fragments and bits of malfunctioning electronics, it's like walking through some black skied wasteland, the ground strewn with all manner of debris, the air thick with smoke and ash, The view fuzzy and indistinct, distant tolling bells, cymbal sizzle that sounds like sprinklers in a moonlit field, all these bits of sound, these ambient fragments, woven together into a truly ominous world of dark sound, the background to a truly bleak and buzzy black metal framework. The more we listen to this, the less -weird- it seems, scary maybe, haunting, harrowing, dark, dreary, creepy, ominous, ghostly, unnerving, and mysterious most certainly, oh okay, and quite a little bit weird too.
A definite contender for our favorite new black metal record!
MPEG Stream: "The Violent Stink Of Twitching Terror"
MPEG Stream: "His Mind Ravaged, His Memory Shattered"
MPEG Stream: "Whatever The Case May Be"

MAGYAR POSSE Random Avenger (Verdura) cd 14.98
FINNISH INSTRUMENTAL CINEMATIC EPIC PROGROCK ALERT!!!
Okay, now that we've got your attention. When Andee was in Finland a few years back, Jussi from Circle took him to a tiny club to see a friend's band play, and the band totally destroyed, they were so epic, so massive, it was like seeing Godspeed! You Black Emperor play in a broom closet. Huge glowing swells of sound, totally memorable melodies, gorgeous arrangements, all swirled into majestic sweeping soaring emotional epics. Even back then, before the band even had a record out. Not soon after, they did in fact release a record, and we were immediately in love. The band was Magyar Posse, and that first record totally captured the majestic might of the band, while at the same time adding all sorts of sonic subtleties and even more dense layers of sound. A second record followed and somehow the band managed to sound even bigger and better. We had been hearing about a brand new record for a while, and were thrilled when a big box showed up a few days ago from Finland and inside was Random Avenger, the newest release from Magyar Posse. We were almost ready to be disappointed considering how much we dug those other records, or at least preparing ourselves to just be happy for more of the same, but if anything, the band have expanded their sound even further, coming up with epic soundscapes even more intense and epic and emotional than before.
This record, even more than the others, sounds like it just has to be a real soundtrack. Pop music is not meant to be so dense and rife with emotion, painting pictures with wordless music as vibrant as if there were in fact lyrics telling a story. The sound is very prog, intensely cinematic and while it is dark and dreamy it can also be strangely playful. Some moments, we're transported to some lost Bond film, others we find ourselves in some dusty Leone Western, while still others we're lost on some moonlit street running for our lives in a mysterious Italian giallo. The first track, "Whirlpool Of Terror And Tension" is a lush and dense, multilayered world of sound, with a strange sort of Bolero staccato rhythm, with strange scrabbly guitars, abstract sixties style female vocals, minor key guitar twangs, chimes and bells, keening guitars feedback, and simple propulsive drumming. The main riff is very Morricone, but is backed up by a thick wash of soaring strings and gorgeous glockenspiel, it's almost impossible not to close your eyes and see a cool sixties Mondrian style credit sequence for some Danger Diabolik style caper movie. That vibe definitely permeates the whole record, but each track definitely has it's own feel and distinct emotion. A handful of the tracks take Magyar's progressive post-rock into definite Goblin / Zombi territory with minor key strings, relentless rhythms, pulsing drums and new wave synths locked into angular krautrock grooves, while spacey sound effects swoop and swirl, strings soar and sing, and again we're just transported to whole new worlds, but worlds with totally kick ass soundtracks!
This is definitely still post-rock, and thus will appeal to fans of Tortoise and Godspeed and Cerberus Shoal and Cyann & Ben and Explosions In The Sky and the like but Magyar Posse have something totally their own going on. A unique sonic vision, an alternate musical universe, where a pair of headphones and a walkman transform you into a super spy or a wily seductress or a hired killer, and turns your boring neighborhood into 1960's Paris, or a dusty ghost town or a secret base in the Arctic. This is music as dense and as rich and as much of an escape as any book or any film could ever be, and music that can have such an incredible effect on the listener, is way too rare. And so very precious.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
MPEG Stream: "Whirlpool Of Terror And Tension"
MPEG Stream: "Sudden Death"
MPEG Stream: "Popzag"

MISERY INDEX / BATHTUB SHITTER split (Emetic) 7" 4.98
What the world needs now is... more BATHTUB SHITTER!!! And what the world needs, our shit obsessed grindmetal pals from the East are here to provide. Two brand new blasts of grinding freaked out, spazzy and shrieking grind metal, occupying some impossible musical space between Brutal Truth, the Boredoms, Cannibal Corpse, skate thrash and eighties hardcore. So weird and so fucking awesome!!! We kind of want to figure out a way to fly the guys in Bathtub Shitter to the US so they could be the AQ house band, blasting and bleating dissonant serenades to our customers 24 hours a day. Okay, maybe not, but we still love 'em!
The 'Shitter are teamed up here with Maryland's own grindmetal destruction crew Misery Index, who unleash one track of downtuned grinding nirvana as well as a blown out blast that is a Napalm Death cover.
Comes packaged in a super swank gatefold 7" sleeve, with BS's side a haunting airbrushed watercolor batwinged, horn headed child demon flipping us the ubiquitous peace sign hand gesture (although his hands sport huge demonic talons!). Cool!

DEAD REPTILE SHRINE / TORTURIUM split (Bestial Burst) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Apolgies to all who fell under the spell of the beautiful and bizarre Dead Reptile Shrine. As we mentioned in our review of their cd a few lists back, we were only able to get 30 copies, and judging from the universal freakout we probably should have had 100 or so. We're still trying to track more of those down, thanks to the folks who have been waiting patiently. But to tide you over, we got a whole bunch of this brand new release, a super limited (of course, only 500 copies) split lp with their Finnish black metal brethren in Torturium.
Hard to describe Dead Reptile Shrine. Weird. Wonderfully weird, check the review of the DRS cd elsewhere on the AQ site for the full skinny, needless to say, fans of the demented damaged side of black metal a la Benighted Leams, Striborg, Furze, Urfaust and the like will fall hard for Dead Reptile Shrine.
On this 12", DRS fill their side to overflowing with what might be described as Jandekian black metal, super lo-fi, tortured riffing, howling anguished wails over mumbled sing songy vocals, the whole thing produced in this really strange way that makes it sound almost like Darkthrone recording in a submarine fronted by dueling vocalists Mark E. Smith and Blixa Bargeld. Woah. There's a brief interlude of creepy ambience, like the muffled sound from some forties news reel filmstrip, all crackly and antiquated, sounding a bit like Jeck or Basinski, but surrounded on every side by deep ravines of ultra personal black metal stumble and rrrroooaaar.
Fellow Finns Torturium are a bit more traditional, with a blown out super distorted Viking tinged old school thrash sound, with creepy stretches of reverb drenched ambience and completely INSANE shrieking vocals, somewhere between, Urfaust, Weakling and Bathtub Shitter (!). Occasionally proceedings stumble and slow to a drowsy druggy sludge, there's even a bit that sounds quite Eastern with weird modal guitar figures over warped and warbling riffs. Killer stuff.
Packaged in a cool black and white sleeve, with a full size insert / lyric sheet.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. WE GOT 30, AND WON'T BE ABLE TO GET MORE.

L/R When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing (Paha Porvari) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We're so excited to finally be holding this long in the works release in our grubby little paws. A long term collaboration between Loren Chasse and Ray Guillette, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing was originally intended to be released as a picture disc on tUMULt, but through a series of strange circumstances, the picture disc series was put on hold indefinitely, and the L/R record just sort of languished on a dusty shelf somewhere, which was an absolute shame as this is a beautiful piece of work. Thankfully, the folks at Paha Porvari tracked this record down and decided to give it a proper release. While we sort of wish they had pressed this as a real cd, the cd-r format's transitive nature is perfectly suited to the record's sound and theme.
Culled from a series of field recordings collected at the site of a ruined factory in South San Francisco way back in 1996, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing is the document of several live performances in 1997 and 1998 assembled from those sounds.
L/R explore a world of thick washed out drones, swirling seas of whir, gorgeously shimmery expanses of sun dappled sound, all peppered with crackle and glitch, cavernous windblown soundscapes, haunting metallic chimes and muted percussive events, jagged shards of sound, recontextualized into haunting rhythmic grooves, a constantly shifting soundworld of mystery and magic, alternately jagged and caustic, soothing and dreamlike. Incredible stuff!
Gorgeously packaged in an oversized black on black cardstock sleeve, inside lots of beautiful full color inserts, drawings and etchings and paintings reproduced on super nice paper, as well as two delicate vellum inserts with liner notes and credits.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

THIS HEAT Out Of Cold Storage (This Is / ReR) 6cd box 98.00
Trying to explain why this band is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious. Or why Bush is such a terrible president.
Or maybe it's kind of like writing an introduction for the new Pynchon novel. Or telling a few jokes before Richard Pryor comes on stage. Or throwing a couple quick passes before Joe Montana comes on the field. It's that daunting, that overwhelming, that impossible.
The trio of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams known collectively as This Heat were one of the few bands that literally changed people's lives. Changed the way folks thought about music. I (Andee) couldn't believe music like this actually existed. It was everything I wanted to listen to before I knew that THIS was exactly what I wanted to listen to. Hit It Or Quit It publisher / rock critic / indie scenestress Jessica Hopper once wrote that she literally pee'd her pants the first time she heard This Heat. And it's not hard to see why. Without This Heat, modern, alternative, avant-garde music as we know it would be a whole different beast. Post-rock, math-rock, avant rock are hugely indebted to the genre shattering experimentalism of This Heat. Tortoise, You Fantastic, Yona Kit, Brise Glace, Psychic Paramount, Laddio Bollocko, Radian, Village Of Savoonga, Larsen, Starfuckers, Circle, Salvatore, I Am Spoonbender -- none of those bands would even exist if it weren't for This Heat, or if they still did you can bet they would sound a whole lot different. And that's just off the top of our heads, AND that's -just- bands whose sound directly reflects the influence of This Heat. Imagine how many performers and artists were influenced by This Heat but who let that influence manifest itself in not so obvious ways.
We once described This Heat as "Krautrock-ish hyper rhythmic tape-looped prog." Which comes close to succinctly describing the magical musical alchemy of This Heat, but still only scratches the surface. The sound of This Heat is rhythm and texture and dynamics. The recording studio as instrument. Every sound and every song is based on rhythm and texture. There are hooks, and melodies, but they exist to serve the rhythm and are often born from the deft manipulation of sound and tempo. Even the most static and repetitive parts manage to sound -musical-. There are vocals, but they are minimal and otherworldly, weary and sing songy and completely mesmerizing. A droning musical accompaniment to the haunting whirs and clanging percussion in the background.
Their entire catalog has gone in and out of print over the years, mostly out, with all of these records pretty much completely unavailable for the last 7 or 8 years. Rumors of a complete box set began to circulate a few years back and it has finally surfaced and it's everything we could have hoped for and more. Every single release, remastered, repackaged in swank digipaks, including a bonus live disc, a huge booklet, amazing archival photos, extensive liner notes, all packed in a gorgeous box. It's a testament to the power this band holds over their fans that pretty much everyone who owns all of these records already will buy the box without a second thought. We're almost jealous of folks who have never even heard This Heat. The thought of entering into this box set completely blind, is almost frightening, as the world of This Heat is so singular, so powerful, it will be difficult to ever listen to music the same way again.
This Heat's self titled debut, originally released in 1978 (which is almost impossible to believe, that people were making music this progressive, this intense, this fucked up and forward thinking) is such a totally immersive and strangely lovely musical environment. From the machinelike krautrock of "Horizontal Hold" to the dreamy contemplative "Twilight Furniture" with its simple chiming guitars, muted tribal percussion and keening vocals, to the bizarre affected drum workout of "24 Track Loop", it's like wandering through some alien musical world. A sky full of greys and blues, smeary drones floating gently by, haunting quavering vocals drifting below, like tendrils of smoke, the barren landscape littered with all manner of rhythmic outcroppings, harsh jagged crashes and booms, as well as low rolling thumps and stutters, off in the distance simple spare melodies float and hover, each note a glowing spot on the horizon. Absolutely and utterly overwhelmingly brilliant.
The Health And Efficiency ep followed in early 1981 and took their sound in a strangely pop (for them at least) direction, sounding like some tweaked and twisted version of Wire, the title track all angular new wave guitars, monotone vocals, driving drums, strange convoluted arrangements and creepy background sound effects before the whole thing splinters into super abstract rhythmic experimentalism, looped grooves, played over and over, while sounds float and careen in the background, so incredibly hypnotic and repetitive. The second track on Health And Efficiency (which runs a brief twenty minutes) is "Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm)", a lengthy drone, a warm synth whir that surfaces within other This Heat tracks, recontextualized and often chopped up and reassembled, but here, it's a slow shifting slow motion single tone soundscape, with the tone occasionally being pitched up or down, very simple but quite haunting, and a cool glimpse at how This Heat managed to mix and match, use and reuse, without ever treading water.
Later that same year came Deceit, with the band continuing to expand and explore. Deceit consisted of shorter songs, but that didn't mean their process, or disdain for convention was altered. If anything, they managed to subvert pop music in a way never thought possible. Imagine Brian Eno circa Taking Tiger Mountain, but filter that through some avant industrialism, angular new wave and hyper rhythmic krautrock and you'll begin to get the picture. The songs on Deceit are impossibly catchy, especially when examined closely. Abstract, obtuse, angular, convoluted, tangled up but without ever losing that thread, that melodic sensibility that grounded the songs, kept them from falling apart completely, instead, the perilous arrangements only added tension and emotion. An incredibly explosive sound that somehow hybridized all of the countercultural fury of punk and situationism, within a sonic context informed by the technological advances of musique concrete and electro-acoustic experimentation. The sound was definitely punk in its own way, but certainly wasn't expressed through three chord song structures or snarling postures, instead This Heat injected their own complex pop agendas with a jittery nervous tension always building to a dramatic and cathartic release. Deceit was sadly the band's final release disbanding soon after.
In 1993, a disc of unearthed This Heat recordings was released and consisted of three lengthy tracks of tape loop experiments and random rhythmic explorations. Repeat has come to be This Heat's defining work even though it is essentially a record of outtakes and pieces meant to be incorporated into other songs. But it's hard to argue with the 20 minute title track, and endless, almost funky groove, punctuated by weird electronic swells, sprinkles of woodblock percussion and occasional handclaps but held together by one of the most amazing drum parts ever. A relentless pound and shuffle, drenched in effects, sound very dubby, but also very krautrock, a tripped out blissed out drone drenched rhythmic space jam never matched to this day. Every time this is played for a friend, musician or not, the listener is inevitably confused, perplexed and then quickly obsessed with hearing more. The second track, appropriately titled "Metal" is an abstract soundscape of, well, metal, clanging, clinking, like some ancient junkyard gamelan, almost like the previous piece transcribed for sheet metal, garbage can, metal pipe and dumpster. The metallic symphony shifts and sways, melodies surface, rhythms twist and turn, all very hypnotic and quite lovely. The final track revisits a song on Health and Efficiency, but slows it down a bit to become "Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm)", the same sort of slow, murky drone, just made even slower, so more tonal colors surface, and the subtle shit is much more noticeable, a gloriously dreamlike warm warbly whir.
In 1996, This Heat's 1977 Peel Sessions were finally released and demonstrated once again that This Heat were untouchable, effortlessly unfurling a sound equal parts avant pop, krautrock, progrock, musique concrete and a handful of parts that defied easy classification. Every track here a jaw dropping, mind blowing performance. Especially the new version of "Horizontal Hold", one of This Heat's finest moments already, played here with much more verve and vigor and with a sound quality so much clearer, a recording so incredibly hot, that the song is reborn and completely confounds and amazes. The whole session is rhythmically dense, rife with bastardized pop, incredibly complex arrangements all rendered again in such a way that they are emotional and moving, instead of just intellectual musical exercises. And the sound is so crystal clear, that you can hear a band at the top of their game, taking over the BBC studio and using it like they would a second guitar or another drummer. The Peel Sessions also include a handful of songs that never made it onto records proper. All as good as anything on their official releases.
The bonus disc included in the box is a compilation of live tracks recorded between 1980 and 1981 all over Europe and sequenced to resemble the set list the band used on tour in the eighties. Recorded using a single stereo mic, the sound is less that crystal clear, but captures the band in their element at the top of their game. The songs are amazing, it's awesome to hear the band recreate pieces that on record relied so heavily on the studio, more evidence as to the genius of This Heat.
Our only complaint about this box was that there is definitely more This Heat material out there, and anyone picking up this box, would have gladly paid a few bucks more for one or two more discs of lost rare material. But then we spied this in the liner notes of the live cd: "Further CD's from other stages in This Heat's music to follow, including collaborations, improvisations and site-specific work as well as other live cds."
We can hardly wait!
There are plenty of places on the web and in magazines to read more about the history of the band, the band members, various versions, releases and re-releases and past reissues, but none of that ultimately matters as much as the sound. And oh the glorious sound. Just take a listen to the sound samples and no words will be necessary.
MPEG Stream: "Horizontal Hold (Peel Session)"
MPEG Stream: "Repeat"
MPEG Stream: "Paper Hats"
MPEG Stream: "Health And Efficiency"

BURIAL s/t (Hyperdub / Cargo) cd 16.98
This record has totally knocked us for a loop. An impossible mix of grimy dubstep, murky triphop, and minimal spaced out dub. When we first threw this on we were immediately transported back to when we first heard Massive Attack, or Portishead, and a whole new world suddenly opened up to us. A creepy, muted world of barebones beats and haunting atmospheres that would go on to inform our musical tastes forever.
This is the first release on Hyperdub, a label run by grime/dubstep DJ Kode9, and we expected a blasting barrage of grimy beats, but instead, were sucked into a swirling vortex of late night groove and midnight stutter. Think those Rhythm And Sound Burial Mix eps, mixed with some Pole-like glitched out dub, and some slow burning Portishead smolder. Creepy and crawly, mysterious and moody. Beats suspended in a black shimmering fog, snippets of vocals, crooning, toasting, drenched in reverb, chopped up and let loose to drift over super dark, muffled dubscapes. Huge rumbling bass lines, like distant foghorns, dreamy ambience sort of drifting and ethereal but so so ominous. Tiny sonic sparkles glimmer like some alien sonar, drifting dreamily through fuzzy darkness. Drowned and submerged grooves, all muffled muted melody and shuffling minimal beats. Suffocating atmospheres of low end thrum, record crackle and shortwave interference. Some sort of slithering slinky dubstep shuffle slowed waaaaaaaaay down, into a blackened glacial dub jam. So fucking awesome. Our newest every night late night listen. A record of perfect dark and damaged dubbed out lullabies.
MPEG Stream: "Distant Lights"
MPEG Stream: "Spaceape"
MPEG Stream: "Wounder"

MARBLEBOG Csendhajnal (Turanian Honor) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
MARBLEBOG!! BACK IN STOCK!!
What's in a name? Well, when the name of your band is Marblebog, and the name of your record is Csendhajnal, pretty much everything is in the name. We were sold before we'd even laid ears on it. But we're happy to report, the dark sorrowful sounds within more than live up to the bizarre monicker.
Marblebog specialize in that super fuzzy mournful black metal, midtempos and blurry hypnotic guitars, every track a slowly swinging seasick waltz, so completely droning and mesmerizing. The metal buried within churning clouds of thick murky ambience. The guitars not always sharp and jagged and buzzing, but sometimes just distant grumbles and whirs, buried beneath dense swirls of swooshing Tangerine Dream synths, while the drums sort of plod along waaaaaaaay back in the murk. And the vocals, woah, some of the most anguished, tortured, howling, damned-soul sort of howls we've ever heard, think Weakling, Silencer, Bethlehem, Sterbend, a near hysterical shrieking. But in Marblebog the vocals sound almost out of place, making them that much more harrowing and depressive. Imagine a lonely overgrown graveyard, weeds, flowers, ivy tangled in the bars of the wrought iron gates, the sky a dim grey, overcast, pregnant with the possibility of storm, the sound is not wind or birds or passing cars, instead it's a depressive dirge, not harsh or super aggressive, not even really buzzing, more a thick blanket of grey fuzz smothering everything in gorgeously miserable murkiness, then right in the middle of the graveyard, a mysterious figure is pushing his way through the dirt, a rotting creature of the night, crawling up from the grave, emitting a fowl hellish shriek of utter and absolute terror, while thick tendrils of graveyard mist swirl up around him, the vocals a glaring and harrowing blight on the otherwise peaceful (yet still dark and depressing) world of the dead.
The vocal-less tracks on Csendhajnal are downright lovely, slow, meandering synthscapes, of low end melodic miserablism, and slow drifting dark shimmer, like a more ambient Skepticism or Burzum, some haunting, otherworldly new age dooooom. But even the more properly metal tracks here are imbued with the same sort of new age dreaminess and slow motion, end of the world doominess. So awesome.
This disc collects the debut cd (from back in 2003) from this Hungarian horde and tacks on a whole bunch of killer extra tracks including the Nostalgic Moods In Grimwoods demo from 2002, the Arhat promo from 2002, and the rehearsal track "Hatefullmoon" from 2003, most of which were released as super limited tapes and/or splits. Killer cover art too!!!
SUPER LIMITED! 555 copies, each disc hand numbered!
MPEG Stream: "The Breath Of Emptiness"
MPEG Stream: "A Broken Circle"
MPEG Stream: "Eternal Silence Within"

BRAINBOMBS Obey (Releasing Eskimo & Slow Dance) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Don't let the jaunty little Lawrence Welk ditty that opens Obey lull you into any sort of peaceful state, you'd best be prepared for the hateful murderous mayhem that Obey has in store for you. Then again, that's probably precisely what the Brainbombs had in mind. A gentle voice luring you into a dark alley, a shiny trinket distracting you while the burlap sack goes over your head and you're dragged kicking and screaming into the woods, a sweet piece of candy draws you just close enough so you can be knocked unconscious, tied up, and stuffed in the trunk. Those of you familiar with the brutal musical world of Brainbombs will know exactly what we're going on about. The rest of you, be very very careful. They traffic in a sludgey, jazzy garage rock scuzz stomp, repeated riffs, simple pounding drums, a lurching leering fuzzed out psychedelic dirge underpinning tales of murder and mayhem, murder and rape, death and dismemberment. This is probably their most overtly harsh record. Mostly because unlike the rest of their releases you can actually hear what these Swedes are singing about. All delivered in a sort of fey, heavily accented English. As if the song titles weren't enough,"Kill Them All", "Die You Fuck", "Anal Desire", "Lipstick On My Dick", "Fuckmeat", the lyrics are misogynistic, misanthropic and just plain messed up. The sound is like Melvins meets Whitehouse filtered through the fuzzy garage stomp of the Stooges but with a maniacally repetitive looped quality, that cranks up the tension, while the vocalist slowly unravels and gets meaner and meaner, more and more insane. And let's not forget the occasional warbly warped trumpet (!). What can we say? We love Brainbombs.
We've never listed this one before, as it has been seemingly out of print for ages. Thankfully a distributor managed to scrape up a bunch, but we can't be sure how long we'll have these.
MPEG Stream: "Die You Fuck"
MPEG Stream: "Anal Desire"
MPEG Stream: "Lipstick On My Dick"

F/I Space Mantra (Lexicon Devil) cd 15.98

F/I Paradise Out Here (Lexicon Devil) cd 16.98
Maybe the most anxiously awaited release in Lexicon Devil's comprehensive series of F/i reissues. Paradise Out Here, originally released in 1989, might just be the heaviest, most freaked out, most spaced out of all the F/i records. All it takes is about one minute of opener "From Poppy With Love", an acid fried, ultra freaked out, swirling psychrock blowout to understand why. A chugging scuzzy garage rock riff scratches out a relentless spacey stomp beneath a massive roiling cloud of FX that make Acid Mothers Temple's arsenal look like a broken down collection of Casio distortion boxes and Fisher-Price keyboards. So heavy and so spacey. Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, AMT, Colour Haze, UFOmammut, White Hills, Comets On Fire, the Heads, the Telescopes, Atomic Bitchwax, Loop. If those are the kind of bands that get your blood boiling and your bong bubbling then this record is definitely for you. Extended excursions into the outer reaches of deep deep deep space, where the stars blink and twinkle in dizzyingly psychedelic colors, everywhere you look guitars are all twisted and distorted, thick slabs of rumbling bass plow through reverbed swirls of shimmer, melodies explode and splinter into jagged bits in gloriously incendiary bursts, everything is blurry and swathed in a thick drug rock haze, and everywhere you look huge slabs of blown out wah guitar drift past, like fluffy prismatic clouds, underneath it all, drums pound a never ending rhythm, while being endlessly pelted with synth squiggles and a veritable hail storm of bleeps and bloops and beeps. Woah. This record is so relentless and about as tripped out and psychedelic as a record can get without completely collapsing in on itself.
If there was ever a record that made us want to get super high, turn off all the lights, rock the fuck out and drift WAY WAY WAY OUT.... it's this one.
MPEG Stream: "From Poppy With Love"
MPEG Stream: "The House Of The Pharoah's Daughter"

FURZE Necromanzee Cogent (Apocalyptic Empire) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We haven't had these in ages, but since Furze is some of our favorite far-out black metal EVER, we figured we oughta relist it since we just now managed to get some more copies (and we might not be able to get any more after this as the label is pretty much sold out!). Here's how much we love this stuff (from when we listed it the first time a few years back):
We've been trying to track down music from this mysterious Norwegian black metal one man band for ages now and finally managed to get enough to list. We're constantly extolling the virtues of retarded / damaged / fucked / outsider black metal (see the Benighted Leams review elsewhere on this site) and we're always on the lookout for more. And Furze definitely fits the bill. In fact, we've been touting Benighted Leams as "perhaps the most retarded black metal band ever" for years now, but it seems like Furze might be just sneak in and steal that 'honor' for themselves. Let's talk about the packaging first. The cover is all black except for some weeds laid out next to each other. The back is all white (!) with a photo of what appears to be two young trick or treaters, one dressed like a witch, the other like a ghost. The Furze logo on the back is printed over three witches brooms. the back of the booklet has a very South Park-like painting of a white sign under a blood dripping sky, The sign reads: "Come, come sit listen to our cogent black metal necrosis". Inside the booklet, Mr Furze is carrying a lantern through a snowy forest.
While Necromanzee Cogent is black metal, sonically it sounds way more like a doom record, slow doomy riffs, one track even sounds exactly Black Sabbath, but played by a grade school music class. The whole record starts off with haunting Jandekian mumbling before erupting into clumsy, mid tempo doooooom. Totally random drumming, fuzzed out atonal organ melodies and anguished heavily reverbed moaning, not really metal so much as some strange Scott Walker / Jandek / Nick Cave caterwaul occasionally whispering ominously but more often gurgling and squealing and yelping. There are occasional blasts of -actual- black metal, but it's almost as if he can't manage to play that fast for that long and is forced to slow down and often abandon song structure all together, resulting in lots of creepy ambient bits, with scraping reverbed guitar strings and all sort of weird sounds. Most of the record is a sludgy doomy, plodding thud rock, almost like some long lost Amrep band, but filtered through the frosty blackened mind of some Norwegian black metal troll. Also, somewhat surprisingly there are some really gorgeous blissed out post-rocky guitar ambience, keening guitar melodies suspended in a massive blackened emptiness. Everything up until this point has only served to get you ready for the massive 20+ minute final track "Sathanas' Megalomania". From high end chiming shimmer, to slow building droning creepiness, to church-like organ and plodding drum with deep chanting and scary demonic screeches, to full on epic black metal with REALLY loud monster vocals, to haunting funereal doom until the end of the song where levels and song structure and vocals all seem to go haywire. As the metal maelstrom dissipates, the song becomes a chaotic swirl of weird sped up disembodied voices, snippets of crappy AM radio, snatches of distorted orchestra, squealing feedback and groaning downtuned guitars. Phew. Yikes. After listening to this record we feel like we've been dragged naked over rocks and thistles, through a snowy forest, into a fiery pit where we were quickly eaten by a huge demon, and promptly shat out. You know what we're talking about: tired, filthy, demoralized, violated, bruised and battered. But surprisingly really really good.
MPEG Stream: "Seance"
MPEG Stream: "Necrosaint Black Metal"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Starlight"

FURZE Trident Autocrat (Apocalyptic Empire) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We haven't had these in ages, but since Furze is some of our favorite far out black metal EVER, we figured we oughta relist it since we just now managed to get some more copies (and we might not be able to get any more after this as the label is pretty much sold out!). Here's how much we love this stuff (from when we listed it the first time a few years back):
Everybody went so nuts for the newest Furze record we listed recently we figured we oughta track down the first one as well. And it's just as freaked out and damaged and totally brilliant. Unlike the weird droning doom of Necromanzee Cogent, Trident Autocrat is all black metal. But that doesn't mean it's not as bizarre, because it most definitely is. The song titles again are totally perplexing: "Zaredoo Knives Endows Thy Sight", "Devacamo Possessed Black", "Witchboundator", "Scolopendraarise" and the lyrics and imagery are quite ridiculous as well. The logo, which features three witches brooms and the slogan: "Trident Black Metal Feast", the back of the record that features a long exposure swirl of light in a spooky hallway, and lines like "The overall vibration of the preacher, The way of sneaking teeth and hypocrisy, It's the destruction ritual of the holy trinity" all combine to form the perfect framework for one of the coolest weirdest black metal records ever. All the BM hallmarks are present, buzzing riffs, growled vocals, chaotic lightning speed bast beats, but the black metal of Furze turns these seemingly typical elements into completely insane musical madness. The growling vocals squirm and morph from demonic growl, to howled distant anguish, heavily reverbed as if they were being recorded at the bottom of a well, to maniacal gremlin like chatter, and creepy cartoony chanting. The riffs, are super affected and sometimes sound totally heavy, sometimes completely brittle, lo-fi and tinny one minute, buzzing and snarling the next. The most surprising thing is how damn catchy some of these riffs are. The first song has been stuck in my head like crazy, and unlike most black metal, you'll no doubt find yourself humming along. Only a half hour long, but so much wonderful weirdness is crammed into those 30 minutes you definitely won't be left wanting.
MPEG Stream: "Zaredoo Knives Endows Thy Sight"
MPEG Stream: "Devacamo Possessed Black"

WARHAMMER 48K Uber Om (Rodenburg / Apop) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The vinyl version of this AQ fave back in stock!
A few months ago, Andee received a cd-r in the mail. In a spray painted DVD case, with a photo of Patrick Swayze inside. Hmmm. The band was called Warhammer 48K (the name of a sci-fi miniatures wargame as Allan would later inform us) and the record was KILLER. So killer in fact that Andee had already begun trying to figure out a way to put it out, and Jason (having heard it from Andee) was even considering starting his own label to put it out. Well, before either of those things could happen, the band already had gotten a friend's label to press them up and suddenly showed up in our store with a box of cds. Well, for a record to have that much of an effect on Andee and Jason, you can just imagine what a serious slab of kick ass rock this must be. Falling somewhere between the indie mathy metallic crush of bands like Unwound, Lync, the Narrows, and Karp and the post rock sludge metal of bands like Conifer, Baroness, and Tides, but with their own unique sense of dynamics and some strange and strangely original riffs. From loping minor key slowcore, to super dense complex dual guitar riffing, to pounding full on metal, to lurching sludge rock, to noisy indie mathrock, to massive squalls of downtuned riffing and squealing feedback, this is heavy and epic, catchy and weird, noisy and freaked out, super dynamic and totally original.
MPEG Stream: "Get Bodacious"
MPEG Stream: "Citizen Pain"

FEAR FALLS BURNING The Amplifier Drone (Ikon / Tonefloat) lp 21.00
We've had some Fear Falls Burning cds in the past, but this is the first release we've been able to get enough of to list, and it is quite simply amazing. Utilizing several guitars as well as an ensemble of Crate, Bahringer, Peavey, Laney and of course Marshall amplifiers, FFB have captured their own take on the glacial dirge. And it's quite unlike the majority of practitioners, in that it is strangely melodic and dreamlike. Very reminiscent of past record of the week Hjarnidaudi, in its ability to drip sunlight and warmth on a sound both dark and dreary. But unlike the band arrangements of Hjarnidaudi, FFB is nothing but guitars, amps, and effects, all deftly woven into a washed out deep ambient whole. Imagine Earth 2 or Sunn 0))) but lighter, and dreamier, less caustic and more soft and billowy. A soft bed of crumbling distortion, a swirl of grit and grrrr, but over the top lie sweet swoons of glistening feedback and thick swells of melody. It sounds almost like one guitarist playing soft and sweet through the biggest loudest most distorted amp ever, while another guitarist plays harsh buzzing drone, but through the tiniest, lowest wattage amp ever. the two mixed together create the perfect dreamlike heaviness. From huge walls of sound to soft humming shimmery buzz, My Bloody Valentine-ish blown out bliss to raga like buzz, this is absolutely gorgeous. A truly unique and surprisingly melodic take on doom and drone.
Amazingly packaged on gorgeous thick sparkly blue sleeve, with an actual photo of one of the amps used to make the record affixed to the front. Pressed on 180 gram white vinyl.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOREVER!

WRIGHT, PETER Desolation Beauty Violence (Ikuisuus) cd 15.98
We've said it before, over and over and over, but we don't mind saying it again, in fact we'll shout it from the rooftops, and print up t-shirts or even write it in review after review until everyone listens and understands. Peter Wright is one of the most compelling soundmakers we have ever heard. And his lustrous soundscapes and dark dreamlike drones are every bit as lovely and mysterious, and as carefully crafted and breathtaking as any of the work from bigger names like Chalk, Colelcough, Mirror, Maeror Tri, Organum, Basinski or any of the flavor of the month limited cd-r drone rockers.
Record after record of completely mesmerizing sound. Gorgeous gauzy smears of fuzzy guitar, lilting ghostlike melodies, soft focus ethereal drifts and dense swirls of abstract melancholia.
This cd, originally released as a super limited cd-r on Foxglove, is no different. The title Desolation Beauty Violence describes the music more succinctly than we ever could.
A gauzy glimpse into a microscopic alternate universe, where everything is broken into their base elements, the sky is a woven tapestry of smoky languid guitar lines, tiny glistening sonic molecules drift like snowflakes against a fuzzy slate grey sky, while in the distance, shimmering molecules reverberate, sending deep cavernous whirs drifting skyward. Melodies are tiny bits of sound, stretched out into minute long smears. Bits of percussion offer up some muted underwater click and clack like stones in a mountain stream, everything spread out into dreamy slabs of trembling sonic gauze.
So goddamn lovely. If asked, we'd probably insist that you buy EVERY SINGLE PETER WRIGHT RECORD you can get your hands on, but for now, start with Desolation Beauty Violence, and be prepared to fall hopelessly under his dreamdrone spell...
MPEG Stream: "Above Lewis Pass"
MPEG Stream: "Adrift At 30,000 Ft."

NASH, GRAHAM Songs For Beginners (Atlantic) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is not new, wasn't just reissued, but was just discovered. And sometimes the process of discovery with music, or movies or whatever, can be just as interesting and strange as the music itself. And sometimes that process enables you to discover music you might not give a second listen to otherwise, and lets you be more objective, lets you disregard your normal musical biases. Thus... we've never been that big into Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young. And yeah, before you email all in a tizzy, we've already gotten plenty of suggestions for CSN+Y records we NEED to hear, but for the most part we were just never really big fans. Consequently, we tended to ignore the various members' solo records (not counting Mr, Young of course) as well. 
We recently (re)discovered Terry Reid via the soundtrack to Rob Zombie's killer 'killer' flick The Devil's Rejects, which is already sort of a random way of getting turned on to an artist we had at least known about for ages. But there was something special about those specific tracks Zombie chose for the soundtrack. Further exploration of Terry Reid's various releases, revealed that those three tracks were all from the same album, Seed Of Memory, and while we love pretty much all the Terry Reid records, Seed Of Memory is by far our favorite. The dreamiest, the catchiest, the most country (and somewhat frustratingly, the most difficult to get). So what was it exactly that made that record so special? Well, and here's where it connects, it was produced by Graham Nash, who also played and contributed various parts and pieces. So, recently an aQ customer suggested we check out Songs For Beginners, which they told us was Nash's best solo record, and while we haven't heard enough of Nash's releases to say for sure, we can at least say we really really like it! A LOT!
To begin with Songs For Beginners was originally released in the mystical magical year of 1971, a year when pretty much every great record was released (at least according to Allan) from Black Sabbath to Flower Travellin Band to Van Der Graaf Generator to Comus and on and on. While Nash's record is obviously not as weird or heavy or psychedelic as any of those, it's still pretty fucking awesome. Sunny, sweet, singer songwriter soft rock dream pop. With a streak of dark melancholy moodiness. Think Billy Joel, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Bread, America, Donovan and even more esoteric folk folks like Bill Fay, Terry Reid, Fred Neil and the like.
Each track is a gorgeously simple folky pop gem, with harmony vocals, lilting melodies, gentle piano, lush strings, soaring lap steel, a little bit of twang, a little bit of swoonsome sweetness, all dreamily draped over minor key Beatlesque pop or soft shimmery folkpop ballads, While the sound is immediately recognizable, that ubiquitous seventies FM radio soft rock from our childhoods, it's just weird enough, and the songs are just so goddamn good, that it totally transcends the seventies schlock that surrounded it. And by now we've all been blessed with a healthy diet of modern psychedelic folk, bizarre Finnish forest folk, neo-Appalachia, folky droney pop weirdness, plenty of Six Organs and Current 93's and Vetivers and Banharts and Newsoms and Feathers and Wooden Wands that we can look back with wide eyes at the sort of folky pop that was the seed for the dense folky foliage we love rolling around in these days...
MPEG Stream: "I Used To Be King"
MPEG Stream: "Wounded Bird"
MPEG Stream: "Military Madness"

EARTH Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons (Sub Pop) lp 10.98
Finally, all of the legendary and long out of print Earth records are available again on vinyl (including the classic Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions also just reissued on cd)!!! It was only a matter of time really with the recent explosion of deathdoomdronesludge mania, SUNNO))), Corrupted, Boris and of course Earth, the forefathers and undisputed masters of all things slow and sludgey.
Y'know, we had never ever listed this Earth album until it was re-issued on cd a little while back, and now it's here on vinyl for the first time in ages. It's the last one they recorded for Sub Pop, way back in 1996, and until pretty recently seemed likely to be this seminal sludge-drone band's swansong. One that wasn't even all that well-regarded at the time when it came out, either. (Not that any of Earth's albums were all that popular back in the day -- they're definitely much more appreciated now!) And so perhaps it's time to re-evaluate Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Especially since we've been selling a ton of the recent Earth remixes album on both cd and vinyl, and chances are a few of you'll also want/need this, seeing as how one of those remixes (Autechre's) was of a song from this here record. Silly to have the remix but not the original, eh? Plus we figure a lot of you Earth fans might have overlooked thi