O'REALLY, DANNY An Evening With Danny O'Really: Music For Unusual People (Solitude) cd 13.98
This disc is another big mystery, but one we're thoroughly enjoying as we try to work it out. A copy was sent to us ages ago, and on first glance it looked like some disc of classic Irish music. An old sepia toned photo on the front, an Irish looking font with the text "An Evening With Danny O'Really". Hmmm. So we sort of ignored it for a while, but the photo on the front was sort of haunting, and finally we realized the man's eyes were sort of fucked up, green and alien. Bug eyed. Staring out creepily. So we had another look, and noticed the legend "Music For Unusual People". The we flipped it over to find a huge flat topped swirly eyed green demon with a forked tongue, ripping the front cover in half. Interesting. Inside a worried looking woman holding the very record we're reviewing, and then a gatefold inside, a blurred photo of a man wielding a guitar, head to the sky, hands held high. Okay, definitely weird enough to merit further investigation, so we threw it on and were totally blown away. Not at all what we expected, but not sure what we were expecting at all.
At this point we're not sure if Danny O'Really is a man or a band, or if it's a made up name or what the fuck is going on at all!! What we do know, is that this is an awesome collection of manipulated sound, of transformed guitars. It's sort of a drone record, sort of a processed guitar record, a fucked up glitched out electronic record, sort of all three of those tangled up into one chaotic whole.
The opener, sounds a bit like some sort of SUNNO))) / Fear Falls Burning style guitar experiment, but instead of murky sludge, or blissed out hum, it's an ADD explosion of skipping textures, of blown out buzz, chopped and spliced into little snippets of sound, then sewn back together into a strange grinding industrial metallic drone patchwork. Lots of hiss and shimmer, bursts of damaged crumble, aggressive and tripped out, and pretty amazing.
The second track is a tangle of skittery drums and buzzing steel strings, ringing out in clouds of metallic shimmer, bits of percussion drifting in and out, very free and abstract, eventually locking into a propulsive but unhinged buzzing blowout.
The third track, the longest at 23 minutes, is a Niblockian drone, various high end tones, sine waves, processed chords, all drawn out and stretched into slowly decaying streaks, until eventually exploding into some sort of alien jam, the guitars snarling and heaving and twisting, the drums more little bursts of hiss, the whole thing gradually growing more and more muted and gnarled, almost like the tape is decaying, the tape player's batteries dying, the speed changing, the whole song crumbling.
The last three tracks are variations on a theme, bits of high end, fragments of atonal guitar, swirls of effects, graduations of buzz and whir, disjointed melodies buried beneath, billows of metallic grind and shimmer, all spread out into a drifting cloud of soft noise.
Might be a bit much for the dronedoomdirge crowd, but definitely heady listening for free noise addicts and lovers of abstract ambience and weird dronemusic.
MPEG Stream: "1-03.56"
MPEG Stream: "2-02.48"
MPEG Stream: "3-23.13"

AMORT Dschungel / Fieber (Orobas) cassette 4.00
Another two songs from one man slow motion doom merchant Amort. We keep hoping for a full length, maybe even an lp or a cd, but there's something about this slow seep of Amort's miserablist music that just seems appropriate, the sound of some massive black beast painfully excreting each and every sound, captured on tape, which does in fact enhance the sound, this one especially, as some of the notes were so blown out, the tape so saturated, that it actually sort of made us dizzy listening to it on headphones.
While past missives have focused on ambience, sounding more cinematic, riffs and stretched into long sprawling dirges, the sound here is much more primitive funereal doom, at least on the A side. The guitar massive and churning, the vocals as deep and demonic as possible, any more and it would just turn into a puddle of black sludge. The cinematic element is restrained to haunting little interludes, a creepy speech over a gurgling sea of hiss and electronic burble, the massive riff always poised just out of earshot, ready to crash down and swallow everything whole.
The flipside begins with gently picked downtuned guitar, the low end cranked, a thick pulsing rumble, another guitar unfurling a plodding chug, another loosing little trills of high end shimmer into the blackness, the vocals again, a gurgling black cloud. But with a little flutter of clean guitar surfacing here and there, drifting through the throbbing black expanse.
Transparent green cassettes in black and white covers, and with a black and white hand numbered insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

GNAW THEIR TONGUES Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh (Universal Tongue) 3"cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We almost missed out on this one completely. Limited to 100 copies or so, we tried to order 40 and were informed they only had a handful left. So we begged and pleaded, and the label agreed to press up 40 more copies just for us, and thus for you. Whew! Since we discovered this band we've become pretty obsessed. As have you all, judging from how quick we sell out of Gnaw records. They're heavy, they're super fucked up, it's not just black metal or sludge, it's some head spinning hybrid equal parts abstract industrial, ambient collageblasting blackness, hyperspeed grind, blackdrone, harsh and hellish, but strangely musical, their last record, the recently reviewed An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood (they have a knack for titles too) is pretty much a shoe in for record of the year. Have a look at that review for some serious gushing.
This 3 song ep, is GTT at their most black metal. The first two tracks, while laced with bits of orchestral grandeur, and blown out crumbling bliss, spend most of their time blasting away, but even then, there are bits of melodic flair here and there, the distortion is so thick and intense, the whole thing threatens to blur into some thick whirring drone, the opener has a killer breakdown groove, utterly majestic and epic, before flitting back to the black blast. The second track is another blackened monster, furiously thrashing and convulsing wildly, but it too is peppered with bits of glimmering effulgence, and a middle breakdown where distorted guitars are pitched up and allowed to shimmer ominously like some Bernard Hermann score, before the metal drops back in, transforming the track into a pummeling slow motion Godflesh style industrial dirge that eventually launches itself back into a furious burst of grim brutality.
The final track is the creepiest of the bunch, long drawn out synth drones, wavering ominously, wrapped in bis of whir and metallic buzz, samples distorted and effected drifting amidst the swirling black ambience, the moodiness eventually overtaken by a thick wave of white noise distortion and what sounds like voices screaming in terror, finally splintering into a hellish black frenzy.
Packaged in a mini 3" dvd-style case, with full color artwork, and pressed on a black cd-r. Limited to these 40 copies, once they're gone, might be tough to convince them to make us more again...
MPEG Stream: "Blood Drenched Altars"
MPEG Stream: "Knife... Martyr... Despair"

INDIAN JEWELRY We Are The Wild Beast (Tigerbeat 6) cd 13.98
While we have yet to review any Indian Jewelry records on the aQ list, most of us here are pretty big fans. Their Invasive Exotics record was an awesome chunk of tripped out droniness, that probably would have been a really good fit on the aQ list. We'll have to remedy that soon. But before they were Indian Jewelry, they were called NTX + Electric, and had a pretty dramatically different sound.
On We Are The Wild Beast, the soon to be Indian Jewelry sounded less like some wacked Texas free psych dronewave outfit, and more like some NYC no-wave skronk combo, complete with squawking saxophones, thick gristly synth, haunting new wave grooves, lots of electronic bleepery, but also some more modern sounds, some of the melodies sound like they could have been plucked from Interpol songs, there's definitely some garage-y stomp, some shoegazey droneouts, the core sound though is the simple clattery percussion, the huge thick slabs of buzzing synth, and the saxophone, which spends much of its time in the background, unfurling hypnotic snakecharmer grooves.
Buried amidst all this skronk and skree and buzz re some fantastic pop songs, and some killer hooks, but they're usually obscured by clouds of FX, or wrapped around spiky angular riffing. The opener is a killer, a modern sounding dancefloor killer, with it's sax refrain and the blown out synth buzz, a total new wave groove that would have the girljean set frugging madly. But then there's songs like "Looking At You", a dreamy krautpop jam, with that same sax refrain from the first song resurfacing, all under thick sheets of crumbling psych guitar. The nearly 14 minute "S-O-S-O-S" begins like some sort of Spacemen 3 bliss out, but soon transforms into some off kilter Unrest style jam, insistent guitar jangle, Beatles-y croon, and simple lo-fi pop hooks, all wrapped up in loads of distortion, and more amp frying FX.
It's really not that hard to hear a lot of later Indian Jewelry in the sound of NTX+Electric, but they have more of an old school electro / no-wave thing going on, which means fans of folks like Glass Candy and the like might also dig. Cool, weird, awesome stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Walk Through Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Empty Handed"
MPEG Stream: "Poison The Choir"

NADA SURF Lucky (Barsuk) cd 13.98
It's always the records we love the most, and listen to the most, that are the hardest to describe. Hmmm. As we were writing that, we realized it sounded familiar and what do you know? That's almost exactly how we started our review of the last Nada Surf record. We've joked before, that instead of rambling on and and on and gushing like we often do, we should just write what we usually tell people in the store: "Just buy it. It's AWESOME!!!" But because some folks now do base their idea of a record's importance on the length of the review, we'll go ahead and try to explain exactly why Lucky is so awesome and why you should absolutely buy it, and most importantly why it's almost for sure our:
POP RECORD OF THE YEAR. Sure it's only February. But it was a done deal two songs in. And sure, we're hoping some record will be able to knock Lucky out of its top spot, but it seems very very unlikely.
And while even after probably 100 listens, Lucky doesn't seem quite as genius as it's predecessor The Weight Is A Gift, it gets a little closer every listen.
For those who somehow missed out on the whole Nada Surf phenomenon, they had a HUGE hit back in the nineties, "Popular", you'd know it if you heard it. And it got played enough to become one of THOSE songs you never wanted to hear again. But as with most one hit wonders, they ended up dropped and broke, another victim of the unforgiving major label machinery. They sort of just disappeared after that, almost completely, until years later they resurfaced with a brand new record, on a cool little indie label, and an almost entirely new sound. Lush and introspective, but super rocking at the same time, gorgeous vocal harmonies, amazing melodies, incredible hooks, and really funny, bittersweet lyrics. The next one was even better, another record of the week in fact. The Weight Is A Gift instantly became one of our favorite records of not just that year, but ever. Played to death, every song practically perfect. Heavy, dark, pretty, poppy, and so so so catchy.
A week or so ago, totally unexpected, Lucky showed up in the mail, and from the first song, we knew we'd end up loving this one too. But like almost all of our favorite pop records, it wasn't immediate. It took some listens for the songs to blossom, for the hooks to sink in, for the subtleties to reveal themselves. But as they did, and continue to do, the record just became that much deeper, the sound that much more complex. Instantly catchy throwaway pop has a very limited lifespan, but complicated, grown up pop music, deftly composed and executed, infused with soul and passion, humor and emotion, well, those are the kind of songs that stick. And this record is chock full of those sorts of songs. "Whose Authority" could have come straight off The Weight Is A Gift, with its incredible hook and chorus, then there's the churning minor key groove of "Weightless", dark and heavy, but shot through with pop sunlight, the sweet jangle of "I Like What You Say" with yet another impossibly catchy chorus, "The Fox" is the darkest and brooding of the bunch, but it too manages to remain catchy and pretty. It's hard to pick out songs, since like most great albums, it is an album, the songs working together as much as they work on their own. Fucking brilliant. Again. As much as we love all that crazy weird shit, sometimes nothing does it for us like perfect perfect pop.
MPEG Stream: "See These Bones"
MPEG Stream: "Whose Authority"
MPEG Stream: "Weightless"

TIMES NEW VIKING Rip It Off (Matador) cd 12.98
We only just reviewed the -last- Times New Viking on the most recent list, even though it had been out for a while. And now here we are two weeks later, with a brand new TNV, and it's more of the glorious blown-out in-the-red chaotic ultra catchy pop same.
As it says on the back of the record "Times New Viking play pop songs with guitar keyboards drums." Which is definitely simplifying it a bit. Since they also incorporate a huge amount of NOISE, and feedback, and buzz, and tape hiss, and all manner of distorted blur and skree and howl. That said, this new one is even poppier and catchier than Present The Paisley Reich, and even more buried under thick slabs of crumbling sonic chaos.
But even with all the noise, at it's heart, TNV is definitely a pop band through and through, the dueling boy/girl vocals, the warbly keyboard, the bouncy indie guitar jangle, sometimes it sounds like Superchunk, but if they were on Siltbreeze and recorded all their songs on a microcassette recorder and mastered it with a tin can and twine. They also sound a bit like Mates Of State, but way less polished, way more punishing, thick bolts of high end and dense clouds of hiss bombarding the lilting sweet pop, the bouncy keyboards and crooning earnest vocals. Here and there, the noise drops off a bit, revealing the pure sweet sunshine underneath, but it's quickly swallowed up again, by another wash of speaker shredding buzz and soaring hyperdistorted melodies.
We just can't get enough of this stuff. Pop record of the year contender? Absolutely, and it's still January. If there was ever a band who deserved the sobriquet of 'noise pop' it's definitely Times New Viking. And it certainly doesn't get any noisier or poppier than this. Certainly not at the same time!
MPEG Stream: "Teen Drama"
MPEG Stream: "(My Head)"
MPEG Stream: "Rip Allegory"
MPEG Stream: "The Wait"

V/A Victrola Favorites (Dust To Digital) book + 2cd 45.00
We're beginning to think, in addition to our biweekly Record(s) of the Week, we might just have to institute a Box Set of the Week. There's so many amazing reissues, so many collections of lost gems, we'd probably just make them Records of the Week proper if they weren't so expensive... this item is would be a good example. But you know what, screw it, for what you get, $45 bucks is not that much, a massive gorgeous book and two cds. So much amazing music, and fascinating graphics. Let's just do it. Record of the Week!!!
Alright. Feel better already. And it makes sense. If you're anything like us, and you sort of must be since you're reading the AQ list, this kind of HAD to be record of the week, everything we love, strange sounds from all over the world, dusty record crackle, tape hiss and vinyl warble, a beautiful music related objectŠ A total slam dunk. And there's the fact that EVERYONE who works here has one or wants one. Dust-To-Digital are like the new Smithsonian Folkways, constantly unearthing sonic treasures and then assembling them into beautifully curated collections. And we just can't get enough.
There was the Goodbye, Babylon box, collecting classic gospel music, housed in a huge wooden box with raw cotton and a huge book, the Fonotone Records box, 5 cds and a huge book in a cigar box with a bottle opener, The Art Of Field Recording set, that WAS just like a continuation of the Smithsonian Folkways series, and assorted other single disc reissues, all meticulously researched, fantastically laid out, and packed with some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear.
But this new one, Victrola Favorites: Artifacts From Bygone Days, just might be our favorite yet. Not only is it an amazing and head spinningly varied collection of musics, from African folk to country yodeling to Cantonese Opera, big band jazz to Hawaiian guitar to rhythm and blues, music from all over, Burma, Japan, Greece, Thailand, Portugal, China, Egypt, but the design is fantastic, a cloth bound hard cover book, with almost NO text, what text here is thoughtfully sequestered at the very end of the book. Where most boxes are packed with notes and recording info, the bulk of this handsome book is made up of gorgeous archival images, 78 labels, old record tins, posters, pamphlets, old greyed photographs, mailing labels, instruction booklets, all sort of Victrola ephemera. It would be well worth it just as an art book. Makes you dread the oncoming MP3 takeover, what will future generations discover of our music, old busted hard drives? None of these cool old sleeves, decaying from years of moisture and insects, gorgeous little visual artifacts offering clues as to the music contained inside.
But of course it's NOT just a book, included are two cds, a collection of various recordings drawn from the ongoing Victrola Favorites project, masterminded by AQ faves the Climax Golden Twins. Where old 78s are played on a vintage Victrola, and recorded with a microphone placed in front of the Victrola, none of that digitizing and cleaning up the sound, removing pops and clicks, this is all about the experience of listening to old 78's, sitting in a darkened parlor, in a big overstuffed chair, the air alive with dust motes, gorgeously crackly and timeworn sounds washing over you. And listening to these tracks, it does in fact feel just like that, or alternately, it's like hopping on a sonic time machine and traveling all over the world, different places, different times, a modern day Folkways, hopping in and out of times to capture brief snippets of sound and then moving on. So fantastic. If you love the Sublime Frequencies releases, and the Secret Museum Of Mankind series, this is essential listening. And the amazing thing is that even with all of these disparate sounds and styles, as a whole the collection flows if not seamlessly, in a way that is oh so pleasing to the ears.
Korean bamboo flute solos, amazing and amazingly insane yodeling, a bit of Arabian country dance music, super dramatic Greek folk music, super festive jug band music, Japanese kabuki, dark droning Indian ragas, recordings of Big Ben and traffic sounds in the UK and so much more. It's almost overwhelming. But not enough to keep us from wishing that there were ten more discs of this stuff!
So absolutely recommended.
And the packaging. WOW. Like we mentioned before, a clothbound hardcover book. In either red or white, with a Japanese style obi, packed with the above mentioned images, the liner notes and essay left for the final few pages, the cds, are uniquely held inside the front and back cover, in circular cut outs, beneath which lurk drawings of lac bugs, the insects whose secretions were used to make the resin used in the making of shellac records. Cool!!
MPEG Stream: GROUPO DE TOTOKO FRANCOIS "Bololo O Kolilo"
MPEG Stream: GUANGZHOU CANTONESE OPERA TROUPE "The Crow Flies Back To The Forest"
MPEG Stream: STELLA HASKIL "Mes Tis Polis Ta Stena (Alleyways Of Istanbul)"
MPEG Stream: MOZMAR CAIRE ORCHESTRA "Raks Baladi Hag Ibrahim (Country Dance)"
MPEG Stream: YIORGOS PAPASIDERIS/YIORGOS ANESTOPOULOS "Tora To Vrady Vrady (Now That Evening Has Come)"

V/A Victrola Favorites (Dust To Digital) book + 2cd 45.00
AT LAST, REPRESSED and REPRINTED and back in stock, this Record (Book) Of The Week honoree finally available again... Here's what we said when we made it ROTW, on list 284 earlier this year:
We're beginning to think, in addition to our biweekly Record(s) of the Week, we might just have to institute a Box Set of the Week. There's so many amazing reissues, so many collections of lost gems, we'd probably just make them Records of the Week proper if they weren't so expensive... this item is would be a good example. But you know what, screw it, for what you get, $45 bucks is not that much, a massive gorgeous book and two cds. So much amazing music, and fascinating graphics. Let's just do it. Record of the Week!!!
Alright. Feel better already. And it makes sense. If you're anything like us, and you sort of must be since you're reading the AQ list, this kind of HAD to be record of the week, everything we love, strange sounds from all over the world, dusty record crackle, tape hiss and vinyl warble, a beautiful music related objectŠ A total slam dunk. And there's the fact that EVERYONE who works here has one or wants one. Dust-To-Digital are like the new Smithsonian Folkways, constantly unearthing sonic treasures and then assembling them into beautifully curated collections. And we just can't get enough.
There was the Goodbye, Babylon box, collecting classic gospel music, housed in a huge wooden box with raw cotton and a huge book, the Fonotone Records box, 5 cds and a huge book in a cigar box with a bottle opener, The Art Of Field Recording set, that WAS just like a continuation of the Smithsonian Folkways series, and assorted other single disc reissues, all meticulously researched, fantastically laid out, and packed with some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear.
But this new one, Victrola Favorites: Artifacts From Bygone Days, just might be our favorite yet. Not only is it an amazing and head spinningly varied collection of musics, from African folk to country yodeling to Cantonese Opera, big band jazz to Hawaiian guitar to rhythm and blues, music from all over, Burma, Japan, Greece, Thailand, Portugal, China, Egypt, but the design is fantastic, a cloth bound hard cover book, with almost NO text, what text here is thoughtfully sequestered at the very end of the book. Where most boxes are packed with notes and recording info, the bulk of this handsome book is made up of gorgeous archival images, 78 labels, old record tins, posters, pamphlets, old greyed photographs, mailing labels, instruction booklets, all sort of Victrola ephemera. It would be well worth it just as an art book. Makes you dread the oncoming MP3 takeover, what will future generations discover of our music, old busted hard drives? None of these cool old sleeves, decaying from years of moisture and insects, gorgeous little visual artifacts offering clues as to the music contained inside.
But of course it's NOT just a book, included are two cds, a collection of various recordings drawn from the ongoing Victrola Favorites project, masterminded by AQ faves the Climax Golden Twins. Where old 78s are played on a vintage Victrola, and recorded with a microphone placed in front of the Victrola, none of that digitizing and cleaning up the sound, removing pops and clicks, this is all about the experience of listening to old 78's, sitting in a darkened parlor, in a big overstuffed chair, the air alive with dust motes, gorgeously crackly and timeworn sounds washing over you. And listening to these tracks, it does in fact feel just like that, or alternately, it's like hopping on a sonic time machine and traveling all over the world, different places, different times, a modern day Folkways, hopping in and out of times to capture brief snippets of sound and then moving on. So fantastic. If you love the Sublime Frequencies releases, and the Secret Museum Of Mankind series, this is essential listening. And the amazing thing is that even with all of these disparate sounds and styles, as a whole the collection flows if not seamlessly, in a way that is oh so pleasing to the ears.
Korean bamboo flute solos, amazing and amazingly insane yodeling, a bit of Arabian country dance music, super dramatic Greek folk music, super festive jug band music, Japanese kabuki, dark droning Indian ragas, recordings of Big Ben and traffic sounds in the UK and so much more. It's almost overwhelming. But not enough to keep us from wishing that there were ten more discs of this stuff!
So absolutely recommended.
And the packaging. WOW. Like we mentioned before, a clothbound hardcover book. In either red or white, with a Japanese style obi, packed with the above mentioned images, the liner notes and essay left for the final few pages, the cds, are uniquely held inside the front and back cover, in circular cut outs, beneath which lurk drawings of lac bugs, the insects whose secretions were used to make the resin used in the making of shellac records. Cool!!
MPEG Stream: GROUPO DE TOTOKO FRANCOIS "Bololo O Kolilo"
MPEG Stream: GUANGZHOU CANTONESE OPERA TROUPE "The Crow Flies Back To The Forest"
MPEG Stream: STELLA HASKIL "Mes Tis Polis Ta Stena (Alleyways Of Istanbul)"
MPEG Stream: MOZMAR CAIRE ORCHESTRA "Raks Baladi Hag Ibrahim (Country Dance)"
MPEG Stream: YIORGOS PAPASIDERIS/YIORGOS ANESTOPOULOS "Tora To Vrady Vrady (Now That Evening Has Come)"

BLACK MOUNTAIN In The Future (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98
Black Mountain have to be just about the best burn out seventies retro hard rock and stoned soul combo going. A druggy blend of chugging Sabbath riffs, Zeppelin bombast, smoldering slow burning after dark jams, late night FM radio ambience and wasted hypnotic Velvet Underground style junkie groove.
This record has been hyped beyond all belief, so you probably already read about it, or maybe even own it, but if not, it's definitely worth checking out.
There's nothing here quite as potent as "Druganaut", the monster metallic jam from their self titled debut, serious contender for one of THE heavy rock jams of all time. A killer riff, awesome dynamics, sexy and intense boy / girl vocals. The opening track on In The Future, "Stormy High" comes pretty darn close, partly by blatantly ripping off "Druganaut" actually, the opening riff is a killer, laid over warbling organs, but the minute it modulates, it begins to sound EXACTLY like "Druganaut", right down to the stop start verses, and the wailing Robert Plant like vocals, but this one does change it up a bit, with weird call and response vocals, and a bunch of fuzzy crunchy Deep Purple-y organ.
Their self titled record was pretty frontloaded, mellowing out quite a bit over the course of the rest of the disc, but hearing "Stormy High" we thought this might be the one where the band kept it heavy and rocking all the way through, but nope, this is a band that definitely and obviously doesn't want to just rock, which, the more we listen, we don't mind one bit. The rest of the record is all stoned and laid back, with killer hooks, and warm carnivalesque organs, soaring strings, and awesome falsetto vocals, it's easy to imagine listening to this stuff in your old beat up El Camino, parked at some make out spot, where all the kids hang out and drink and smoke, hoping to get laid or at the very least forget all about your crappy job and your shitty life. In The Future is all black lights and bongs, late night and leather vests, big amps and bellbottoms, even when it's heavy, it's not so much metal or rocking as it is soulful and grooving. There are some more heavy moments scattered throughout, the opening minute or so of "Tyrants", a swirling super dynamic guitar / organ duel, or the tribal psych jam of "Evil Ways" with some serious ELP worthy keyboards and wailing vox. But for the most part, In The Future is a groovy slab of heavy seventies stoner mood rock, tripped out, dark and dreamy, druggy and just a little bit witchy.
MPEG Stream: "Stormy High"
MPEG Stream: "Angels"
MPEG Stream: "Tyrants"

ELDRIG Everlasting War Divinity (Eastside) cd 13.98
Second of two new releases from this Portland black metal horde, the first, Kali, reviewed a few weeks back, was a glorious chunk of epic and majestic, nearly symphonic buzz, three looooong track separated by gorgeous little ambient drone interludes. We still have a few of those left, but in the meantime we just got release number two, and while structured differently, if anything, it's even more massive and grandiose, triumphant and fucking EPIC.
As we mentioned in the review of the other disc, there does seem to be some questionable politics lurking below the surface. Nothing obvious, not in the song titles, the lyrics or the artwork, like most black metal it seems to be more concerned with nature and misery, war and death, but folks who are sensitive to the problematic politics that underscore a lot of black metal, might do well to read the other Eldrig review. But if you can look past that stuff, and as we mentioned it's not really that difficult here, as the band seem more concerned with crafting soaring blackened buzzscapes, and the cryptic lyrics (if you could make them out at all) are cries of war and wails of anguish.
But the music, holy shit. The sound of Eldrig manages to be buzzing and grim and brutal, but at the same time, the riffing is totally majestic, almost chiming, the melodies soaring skyward, the drums a furious thrashing framework, the vocals a barely audible howl, all woven into what sounds like a black metal Explosions In The Sky or a Satanic Godspeed. Spiraling riffage that just builds and builds, the melodies so intense and emotional, everything peppered with swaths of swirling keyboards, but unlike the other Eldrig, here the riffs sound almost like classic eighties metal, little bursts of NWOBHM tangled into much blacker shapes. But the sound is somehow impossible poppy, like if you stripped all the snarling guitars and the demonic rasps, the blasting beats, you'd be left with some sort of simple catchy lullaby, or some perfect pop song, but here it's buzzed and blackened into some impossible black metal hybrid. So fast and furious and black, but so goddamn catchy and moody and melodic, culminating in the near power metal sounding outro to the final track "Death To The Unwilling", with classical sounding keyboard runs, chiming keyboards, and super poppy riffage, all whipped into a glorious frenzy, before it fades out with a strange skipping cd sound, and then returns with a programmed drum fill, only to explode into an even more over the top power/back metal frenzy with epic keyboards, those majestic riffs, all wrapped in wild squiggly leads, only to eventually fade out into some churning, mournful, abstract riffage.
Super limited! We may have gotten all we can get of these, so when we run out, prepare to either be disappointed, or to wait a while for us to track down more.
MPEG Stream: "Power Ascension"
MPEG Stream: "Death To The Unwilling"

IRON LUNG Sexless / No Sex (Prank) cd 11.98
We've long been fans of Seattle's Iron Lung, but this is the first time they've made it on the aQ list, it's about time too, after about a million splits and a couple proper full lengths. A drums and guitar duo, not that you'd ever know it from their sound, Iron Lung are dense and thrashing, lurching and pounding, thrashing and grinding modern power violence.
And yeah, we know that all the real power violence bands are dead and gone (Man Is The Bastard, Infest, No Comment, Spazz, Crossed Out) and that most bands these days who call themselves power violence, are typically NOT, and are just trying to garner cool cred by aligning themselves with the above mentioned bands. As far as we know, Iron Lung don't consider themselves power violence, probably more like thrashcore, or just hardcore, but their sound is way too varied and fucked up and metal to be so simple to describe. Sure there's plenty of thrashing and blasting, but the band spend just as much time plodding along doomily, with some serious metallic riffing, and plenty of lurching stop/start arrangements, huge slabs of churning downtuned groove and caveman like pummel, but even at their doomiest, the tracks still occasionally splinter into atonal angular melodies, mathy off kilter rhythms and freaked out squalls of tangled grind. Brief bursts of complex fury, stretched into churning, sprawling mini power violence epics.
Awesome cover art by Rudimentary Peni's Nick Blinko!!
MPEG Stream: "Pig Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Stone Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Future Corpses"
MPEG Stream: "Sexless // No Sex"

PERICH, TRISTAN 1-Bit Music (Cantaloupe Music) jewel case 1-bit electronic music generator 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Attention music geeks, music-tech nerds, cool gadget obsessives and espeically anyone who freaked out over the amazing Buddha Machine! We've got another far out musical gadget that will have you all in a tizzy.
Tristan Perich is a name we had never heard before. Turns out he's a musician and inventor, who has released this record, his debut we think, of 1-bit music (more on that in a moment) in its own self contained jewel case player. What's that? A gorgeous little electronic sculpture, made up of a plain old plastic jewel case, and a handful of colored wires and chips and tiny dials, completely self contained, a headphone jack in the jewel case offering you entry into Perich's crunchy minimal electronic sound world.
As many of you know, 8-bit music is the sound of '80s video game music, all your arcade favorites, super simple electronic sounds crafted into equally simple harmonies and melodies, so get rid of seven of those bits, and you're left with just ONE bit, the smallest increment of memory and sound. So Perich has taken these super minimal tones, and constructed some amazing electronic music, that is crunchy and raw, the sound all buzzy tones and staticky clicks, ranging from playful lullabies to grinding dense tangles of squelch and squiggle. Some of the tracks definitely sound like they could be some lost video game music, but others are drone-y and weirdly layered and textured smears of crumbling lo-fi bleep and buzz, through headphones it sounds amazing, but through your speakers, it sounds like someone is in there pulling your speakers apart with rusty blunted shears. This would destroy a dancefloor, add some booming beats and you'd have some Daft Punk jam of the year, all grinding minimalism, in fact one track sounds like Fischerspooner via your Atari 2600, while some of the others sound like a much more playful and lo-fi Ryoji Ikeda, the sound of someone playing Pac Man turned into a 1-bit techno jam, and like the ultra minimal little brother of Skweee (that Scandinavian electro we've been so obsessed with lately)!
But the music really only is half of it. The player is so striking, the whole record contained on a tiny chip, soldered to the jewel case, a battery in its little holder, two tiny volume controls, a mini on/off switch, a button to skip tracks, wires leading to a tiny headphone jack, the only liner notes a printed piece of paper that comes off with the plastic shrinkwrap, and a transparency with Perich's name and the name of the record. Before any of us had even heard the music, we all new we had to have one. It's a tiny musical sculpture, a piece of art that functions as a piece of sound art as well. Anyone who bought a Buddha Machine will want one of these. And if you were wondering what to get that weirdo music freek friend of yours, we'd be hard pressed to think of something cooler than this!
Be warned. We got ONLY 50 COPIES!!! They are super labor intensive and hand made. Perich is currently trying to sort out a way to make more, so when we run out, it may be a while before we can get more, so if you want one, and we can't imagine how you wouldn't, then act fast!!!
Cool music gadget (and minimal lo-fi 1-bit videogame glitch crunch record) of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Certain Movement"

SHIT & SHINE Cigarette Sequence (Skulltone) 7" 5.50
We thought UK noiseniks Shit & Shine couldn't get any more brutal or abrasive or, well, noisy, but of course we were dead wrongŠ
This two track monstrosity lets us hear us two very different sides of the multi headed S+S beast. The A side finds the band kicking up an absolutely ear shredding din, so noisy and blown out that it's almost impossible to hear the actual band. There are multiple drummers, and multiple bass players, but here it sounds like they're all armed with white noise machines and sine wave generators. Layers of in-the-red buzz and high end hiss, super distorted vocals and a murky rhythmic throb. It almost sounds like what we wished Merzbow sounded like, a fierce super dynamic heavy as fuck white noise juggernaut.
But then there's the unexpected B side, which is downright tranquil, a carnivalesque loop warbling beneath children's voices, tons of delay and reverb, a dizzying blur of funhouse ambience. Weird as fuck, but somehow a good balance for the chaotic skree on the flipside.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.

STARVING WEIRDOS Summon With Electronic Sorcery (Bottrop-Boy) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A brand new full length from Humboldt County's masters of dark droning cinematic ambience, and another gorgeous chunk of masterful dark mystery. In the beginning, their sound, while still quite beautiful, seemed much more haphazard, much more improvised, the vibe decidedly NNCK or SHOTM, a bit chaotic and druggy, the sound of guys just sort of jamming and seeing what happened. Obviously we dug that stuff, a LOT, but the band have continued to hone their craft, their music becoming much more assured, much more dense and varied, more expressive and emotional, and weirdly enough much darker and scarier.
Their last disc was a new score for their chopped up version of the classic film Sudden Fear, but Summon With Electronic Sorcery, sounds just like the title would lead you to believe, some ancient ritual performed in a cave below the Earth's surface, surrounded by demons and shadows dancing in the firelight, like it could be the soundtrack to some lost Argento film, a truly creepy and intense sonic sprawlŠ
Four long tracks, each one a self contained soundscape of billowing blackness, layers of muted buzz swirl and shift, various steel strings reverberate and shimmer, melodic fragments drift through the ether, doomful melodies chime and ring out and are then sucked under, strange creaks and moans are blurred into a constantly evolving backdrop. Eventually, the sounds coalesce into huge black sonic swells, an ultra slow motion ambient doom, lurching glacially through flurries of percussive clatter, like some huge demon rolling hollowed out skulls like dice. Later, we wander through some old boiler room in an abandoned building. The clank of old pipes, the hiss of escaping steam, all woven into a hissy whirring drone, underlaid with droning guitars and streaks of shimmering melody, barely discernible. Chant-like vocals drift up from the abyss, haunting loops overlap and blur into each other, a murk that seems to glow from within, building to an intense staring-into-the-sun buzz. Finally, a field of high end sound, thick streaks of feedback, simple clattery percussion, distorted melodies, moaning horns, all doused in reverb and allowed to drift and intermingle in gloriously washed out slow motion. Like watching a decaying filmstrip of and old noise rock band frame by frame, the sound flickering in the dim light, the heat of the bulb causing the film to bubble and melt.
So gorgeous. As always.
Packaged in a crazy, glue sealed multiple folded envelope style silk screened package. You have to unseal it, unfold it, and then the cd is revealed inside held in place by a diecut slot. And of course, it's super limited. A ONE TIME pressing of only 250 copies. We got 40, but judging from past SW releases these will go pretty quick.
MPEG Stream: "Summon"
MPEG Stream: "Orchestra At Twilight"

WRATHFUL PLAGUE Bitter Forest Winds (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 9.98
Back in stock, this blackened unblack (confused? read on!) slab of fucked up freaked out buzz!
Latest release from the crazy prolific E.E.E. Recordings label, home to all things unblack, as in Christian black metal. We've gone into the whole unblack thing at great length in the past. While it may seem antithetical to most, a music that was founded and is defined by its very anti-Christian bent, being subverted and appropriated to glorify the Lord, but we'll leave all that stuff to the chatrooms and message boards, all we know is this unblack stuff sounds amazing! In the past we've raved about Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Elgibbor, Flaskavsae, Offerblod and Njiqahdda, check any of those reviews for more on the whole unblack phenomenon, in the meantime, we'll investigate the grim buzzing soundworld of Wrathful Plague.
With a name like Wrathful Plague, and the fact that these guys are on E.E.E., you might assume that this is more unblack metal, but in fact, according to the label, the band is non-religious, not the first E.E.E. band to keep their convictions on the DL (Drommer is another), thankfully, they SOUND unblack, which by now has a definite sonic connotation. Unblack artists are definitely on the fucked and freaked out end of the BM spectrum, the sounds as much a part of their music as the songs, sure there's plenty of grim buzz, and furious blast beats and harsh hellish vocals, but all performed and recorded in such a way, that they end up smeared and blurred, murky and damaged, tape hiss offering up as much buzz as the guitars, the tone changing from muddy and muffled, to tinny and brittle, but it a way that only adds to the mood and atmosphere of the music.
Wrathful Plague, for all its claims of eschewing religion, at least in the context of their music, DOES in fact feature folks from all of the above mentioned bands, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, etc. so we imagine there is some pro-God action going on somewhere in there, but the more important thing is, that it -sounds- as awesomely fucked up as records by those other bands.
WP are not as mathy or complex and convoluted as a lot of E.E.E. bands, instead, they traffic in raw blasting fury, and in this case, the lo-fi recording enhances the bands washed out buzz in a big way. The guitars grind and swirl, but sound looped, often blurring into near static streaks of minor key sound, the drums, programmed it sounds like, are a chaotic framework, buried miles down in the mix, offering up another crackling layer of hiss, the vocals a distorted croak, the distortion alien sounding, and blown out, so at it's most furious, various overtones begin to surface and beat wildly against each other, creating strange subtle rhythmic variations and subtle distortions and causing the sound to become even more hazy and indistinct. A blurry blast that manages to be fierce and black and grim but also warm and dizzyingly droning and intensely hypnotic. Minus the few acoustic interludes, it's a mesmerizing chunk of relentless black drone hypno-metal. And if you can read the words "black drone hypno-metal" and not buy this record, that you are made of stronger stuff than us...
MPEG Stream: "Steersman Of The Gate"
MPEG Stream: "Castrate The Sodomites"

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS s/t (Important) lp 14.98
Now on vinyl!
We'd been hearing about this band quite a bit, often touted by reviewers as being "the loudest band in New York", which is all well and good, but that sort of thing generally doesn't translate very well on record. What we can tell you, is that more than any band we've heard in ages, these guys have their My Bloody Valentine, Loop, Spacemen 3, Jesus And Mary Chain chops down pat. But before you get all exasperated as we would be likely to do, we do realize that the bands who actively rip off some or all of those bands couldn't be counted on your fingers even if you had a thousand hands. And most of those bands steal the sound, but then have no idea what to do with it anyway. And most of them don't even get the sound right.
So it's definitely saying a lot, when we can say that, yes, these guys owe EVERYTHING they have to MBV and Jesus And Mary Chain and Loop and Spacemen 3 but still manage to totally rule. And somehow, they manage to make all of this borrowing sound totally fresh and original and exciting, and loud and heavy and like they just might have made our new favorite record.
From the first track these guys have it nailed. Murky, fuzzy, lo-fi, super blown out, with a weird buzzy guitar sound, wrapped around an almost gothy Interpol-ish bassline and keyboard melody, but when the vocals came in we were immediately transported to Psychocandy era Jesus And Mary Chain, the vocals and melodies and even the drums buried beneath clouds of billowing crumbling distortion. The second track is even more in-the-red and distorted, a crashing wave of dissonant guitars, that gives way to some almost Stereolab like Neu!-worship, and some sing songy indie boy vocals, which of course are summarily crushed by the moaning massive bursts of guitar fury and what sounds like bleating horns in the chorus.
"To Fix The Gash In Your Head" begins with sputtering drum machine and is quickly ensconced in thick minor key swells all dramatic and gothy, and the other distinct side of the band is revealed, a sort of super charged extra heavy Depeche Mode, which is in no way a bad thing. But on this track especially, the vocals are super Dave Gahan, with some industrial Skinny Puppy-isms thrown in for good measure, but still the heart of the song is a throbbing synthy new wave. And it sounds amazing!
Later tracks veer from swirling washed out wall of sound dronerock, to murky doom pop, to super eighties John Hughes soundtrack electro-pop, to grungy distorted Grebo, to throbbing Joy Division miserablism, to rocking Swervedrivery shoegaze, to shimmering glimmering M83 blisspop, but always liberally doused with waterfalls of coruscating white light guitars, sheets of roiling feedback, massive walls of buzz and hiss. Noisy and chaotic and furious and epic but always with a heart of pure pop and a halo of washed out guitar shimmer. So great.
MPEG Stream: "Missing You"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Think Lover"
MPEG Stream: "To Fix The Gash In Your Head"
MPEG Stream: "The Falling Sun"

BRANDSTIFTER Rauschgiftengelloops (Gruenrekorder) cd-r 16.98
We recently discovered this little label in Germany called Gruenrekorder, who specialize in "Phonography and Audio Art" which translates to field recordings, turntablism and audio installations, which definitely sounded right up our alley. We then discovered that they had 60 or 70 releases, probably more by the time of this review, most cd-r's and all incredibly limited, usually to 50 or less. Yikes. Had to do some quick thinking, so we picked two of the most promising sounding and got a bunch of those (a bunch meaning 25 copies, which is half of the pressing). So elsewhere on this list you'll find the other Gruenrekorder release, a field recording of bats (and you know our love of bats is second only to our love of frogs!), which somehow seems to perfectly balance this one right here, a live recording of a sound installation for turntables, records and... plastic angels.
The set up goes like this, a bunch of turntables, all set up on a small dais, each with a plastic angel spinning in the middle of the lp, and each angel with a weight hung between its wings, which shifts with each rotation, and causes various loops to alter, drift, shift, change duration, overlap, all the while, Brandstifter, the man responsible, crawls around moving the angels, replacing the records, changing speeds, the result is pretty magnificent, a looped hypnotic soundscape of operatic voices, fluttering flutes and fiddles, droning whirs, hiccupping song snippets, skipping stuttering rhythms, the vibe very festive, as most of the discs are choral, the voices locked into hypnotic mantras, the various cracks and skips adding percussive filigree. Some passages are epic and triumphant, voices soaring, while others are murky and mumbled, sounding like they could have been yanked from some mysterious Finnish free folk record or from some blurred Philip Jeck turntable landscape.
Haunting and eerie, like some damaged funhouse mirror holiday soundscape, Christmas carols twisted and gnarled, holiday favorites scratched up and looped, bits of opera looped into fuzzy repetitive seasick mantras, you can almost imagine some Tim Burton-ish mad scientist armed with a bunch of dusty scratched up records and weird old fashioned turntables and all those painted angels, hovering in a dark cobwebby corner of some old seventies mall, families and children steering clear of the crazy man in the corner and his murky muddy choral din. SO AWESOME!!!
Beautifully packaged, printed cd-r, full color sleeve, but again, LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! So once these are gone, that's it...
MPEG Stream: "Rauschgiftengelloops (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Rauschgiftengelloops (excerpt 2)"

ELECTRIC WIZARD Witchcult Today (Rise Above) 2lp 36.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
HOLY CRAP! This is one of the nicest looking lps we've ever seen. And it's priced like it, but c'mon! Wait 'til you see it. It looks like the cd art but all the grey parts are reflective silver, just silver and black, shiny and eye popping, all wrapped around a super deluxe gatefold, wow. Even if it wasn't an amazing record, it would be almost worth it just for the packaging, but the thing is, it IS an amazing record, a few lists back, we raved about it quite a bit:
Ok, someone needs to give these guys a medal. First off, there's a song here called "Satanic Rites Of Drugula". Drugula?? That's brilliant. Dave Wyndorf is kicking himself for not having thought of that first!
England's Electric Wizard, the reigning kings (and queen, with Liz Buckingham of 13 and Sourvein on guitar) of utter spaced-out heaviosity (think Black Sabbath + Hawkwind + Eyehategod) also deserve a medal 'cause they are still caning harder and making great albums worthy of their legacy (2000's Dopethrone is an all-time AQ fave of psychedelic sludge stoner genius). It's like they themselves have morphed into the ancient ones from whence all these drugged-out, doooooom metal vibes come.
On their sixth album Witchcult Today, which opens with the sluggish title track, they keep doin' what they do best. Guitarist/vocalist Jus Oborn's wasted wail drifts up from beneath the band's monolithic, mesmeric riffage, as they enact such "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions" as, well, that one, and the other seven tracks here. As blown out and sludgey as it gets (which is VERY) they have an uncanny knack for keeping it catchy and poppy too when they desire. Songs like "Torquemada 71" and the one about Drugula will get stuck in your head, only to slowly drip out like the viscous black tar they are... while "Dunwich" has got to be the grooviest -and- heaviest H.P. Lovecraft-inspired song of the year. As usual, the whole album is getting heavy airplay here in Aquarius, where we're ALL fans even those of us who don't smoke pot, do drugs, or usually listen to stoner metal... we've just been bitten by Drugula is all.
MPEG Stream: "Witchcult Today"
MPEG Stream: "Satanic Rites Of Drugula"
MPEG Stream: "Saturnine"

GOTTSCHE, MATHIAS Fledermausrufe Im Modulationsverfahren (Gruenrekorder) cd-r 16.98
We recently discovered this little German label called Gruenrekorder, who specialize in "Phonography and Audio Art" which translates to field recordings, turntablism and audio installations, which definitely sounded right up our alley. We then discovered that they had 60 or 70 releases, probably more by the time of this review, most cd-r's and all incredibly limited, usually to 50 or less. Yikes. Had to do some quick thinking, so we picked two of the most promising sounding and got a bunch of those (a bunch meaning 25 copies, which is half of the pressing). So elsewhere on this list you'll find the other Gruenrekorder release, a sound installation for turntables and plastic angels, which somehow seems to perfectly balance this one right here, a field recordings of bats, collected via ultrasound, much like the The Inaudible World cd / book we listed a while back, but while similar, the sounds here are different enough, that if you dug The Inaudible World, Fledermausrufe Im Modulationsverfahren makes a good addendum.
Collected by Matthias Gottsche, head of the NABU department for protection of the bats in Schleswig-Holstein, the sounds here were a part of an infrared film project, assembled for species analysis, but due to the overlap and chaos of the various animals recorded, it ended up useless as research material, leaving it to exist simply as sound art.
The best part is the description of this disc on Gruenrekorder's website, explaining why it is all one track "Because of the reduction to only one track the listener has to go through it all at once and with it is confronted with his one staying power." Yes! And this will definitely test your staying power. As the sounds of bats, their sonar rendered audible to human ears, sounds a bit like several people playing Yahtzee!, shaking dice in those little plastic cups, but never actually rolling them, just shaking and shaking. The percussive rattle fluctuates from baseball card in the spokes flutter to a dense clattery cacophony, a tangled rhythmic web that is constantly shifting and undulating, and is in its own weird way quite soothing and hypnotic. Still hard to believe these sounds come out of bats...
Beautifully packaged, printed cd-r, striking black and white sleeve, cool infrared photos, but again, LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! So once these are gone, we won't be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Fledermausrufe Im Modulationsverfahren (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Fledermausrufe Im Modulationsverfahren (excerpt 2)"

PART TIMER Blue (Flau) cd 14.98
Back in 2006, we reviewed a record by a mysterious band (or person) called Part Timer. Whose sound was a gorgeous lush dreamfolk, overlaid with bits of glitch and electronic skitter. At the time, that sort of thing was all the rage, for a band to take their pedestrian folk or indie pop, and then cover it with electronic bits, to make it edgy or hip or whatever. But Part Timer seemed to effortlessly transcend that. Their sound organic, but with the various electronic elements an integral part of not just the sound, but the composition as well.
On a trip to Japan about a year ago, we took a long train ride through the countryside, up a mountain, to a monastery tucked way on top of a forest covered mountain. That record was the soundtrack, and it was perfect, the sound of green trees rushing past, little villages tucked into the mountain side, the movement of the train, the blue skies, the world rushing by, clouds, birds, the sound is just s soft and lovely and tranquil and beautiful.
We were super excited to discover that there was in fact another Part Timer record, which we finally managed to get from a tiny Japanese label, and we're happy to report, it's just as gorgeous as the other one.
Acoustic guitars weave tranquil little melodies, super spare rhythms are constructed from bits of glitch and record crackle, the sound of birds and children playing constantly in the background, like this is the soundtrack to some warm afternoon stroll though a tiny village, cobblestone streets, the world lush and verdant, bits of vocals surface here and there, offering the tiniest hint of melody, muted chiming bells ring out, simple melodies plucked out on old pianos, the sound of creaking machinery, moaning violins, sweeping strings, it sounds like a lot of sound, but the sound is never dense or cluttered, instead it's spacious and airy, nearly weightless at times, the sound of floating on a puffy white cloud through a crystal clear summer sky.
At its heart Blau is a simple soft folk record, but the folk drifts through strange landscapes of subtle sonic variation, the electronic bits never intrusive, gently complimenting the lilting guitars, the voices and textures and field recordings wrapped around the melodies like some soft down comforter, everything about Blau is tranquil and dreamlike, warm and so utterly soothing. Some of the prettiest pop folk we've ever heard.
MPEG Stream: "Theme From Part Timer"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown"
MPEG Stream: "Four Timer (Mix One)"
MPEG Stream: "Hide All You Like"

ELDRIG Kali (Supernal) cd 15.98
One of two new releases from this Portland based one man black metal project. And it's a doozy. Been playing this nonstop since we first got it. But as with a lot of black metal records, some questionable right wing politics come into play, so fair warning to those put off by those things. On Kali, that influence is subtle, especially considering the fact that the record is totally instrumental. The song titles give nothing away either, but there's a quote on the inside of the cd booklet, "Creation and destruction are one, in the eyes who can see beauty." Which also doesn't seem any more oblique and grim than text found on other black metal records. But the quote is attributed to Savitri Devi, a French writer who wrote much of trying to synthesize Hinduism and Nazism, believing Hitler was an avatar for the Hindu god Vishnu, among other problematic and bizarre beliefs. Woah. She does seem pretty fascinating, what little we've read about her, at least in a seriously fucked up way, but she was definitely a total loony, and because of her strange beliefs has become a bit of a favorite amongst neo-Nazi's, hence the quote and hence the warning.
But if you can overlook the politics, as subtle as they may be here, this record is intense and beautiful and completely epic. Three loooooooong tracks, blazing buzzing, majestic, almost orchestral black buzz, furious and frenetic, relentless and weirdly gorgeous, separated by brief droning ambient interludes, moaning cellos, deep cavernous rumbles, epic minor key swells, soaring majestic synths, crumbling distortion, a dark industrial ambience with haunting music box melodies drifting over stretches of mournful murk.
But it's the three long tracks, which make up the bulk of this disc, that really make this such essential blackness. And even referring to this as blackness is not entirely accurate, as those tracks soar, the chugging guitars and tangled melodies, the furious drumming and the super emotional melodies all whirled into an epic slab of blissed out metallic beauty. In fact, the first long track, "The Great Destroyer", sounds to us what that Alcest record would have sounded like if it was actually metal. Shoegaze-y and dreamy and blissy, but still fierce and heavy, multiple guitar lines unfurling melodic tangles that stretch heavenward, all sustained and super dramatic, the drums a non stop barrage, perfectly complimenting the dense whirl of dreamy high end buzz.
The second long track, "The Intoxication", begins all slow and meandering, a crumbling distorted guitar picking out a minor key melody, before the song launches into a furious melancholy blast, the guitars continuing to soar and wail, with brief bits of midtempo drift separating the blissy blasts. The final long track, "The Dance Of Creation", is more of the same, but with two awesome interludes, the first, a gnarled breakdown with grinding high end guitars, and convoluted melodies over seasick riffing, the other a haunting expanse of synthesized strings, wavering and whirring before being swallowed up by the drums and guitar crashing back in. Very weird and strangely beautiful, epic grim not-so-blackness. The disc ends with a two minute stretch of ghostly buzz and reverb drenched swells of hiss and whir, creepy and abstract...
And again, while we of course find all that aforementioned political / racial stuff reprehensible, it's hard not to love a record this fucked up and gorgeous.
The packaging is pretty amazing too. Super thick textured paper, the images all washed out like some old parchment, the cd itself, red on the playing side, matching the artwork on the cd face. Cool.
MPEG Stream: "The Great Destroyer"
MPEG Stream: "The Intoxication"

RADIOHEAD In Rainbows (TBD) cd 14.98
Never before has a record been so completely overshadowed by it's delivery method. Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year, you no doubt have read or heard about Radiohead, offering their album for download, at any price the customer deemed appropriate, whether it be $20 or nothing at all. Needless to say, this sort of thing can't really be pulled off unless you're one of the biggest bands in the world, but since Radiohead ARE, it seemed to be an unmitigated success. They haven't revealed how many copies they sold, or what the average price paid was, but it's probably safe to assume, they made out okay.
And then there are the Radiohead fans who don't like downloads, and who want every bit of music that they can get, and thus shelled out $80 for the deluxe double lp, double cd set, with a whole extra cd of outtakes and unreleased tracks (at least one aQ-er did! As did lots of aQ customers). We personally thought, for a band like that, it almost would have been cooler to NOT release an MP3 version, have it ONLY available in stores. After all, without indie stores they wouldn't have been where they are today. People are so worried about record sales, imagine if a handful of bands skipped the online release entirely, and you HAD to buy it in an actual store. Sure, we're sort of biased, but hell, we love records and cds and tapes, and even if we didn't have a store, we'd feel exactly the same way.
Well, look at that, we were just talking about how everything BUT the music on the new Radiohead has been discussed to death, and we go and spend the first half of our review doing the very same thing...
Anyway, now available on cd, and as a regular lp, Radiohead's latest, in case you haven't heard it in one way or another, is actually really quite good. Not immediately experimental, and a bit more rocking, with lots of fan favorites that have been in the works for years, the sound reminds us a lot of Hail To The Thief, but with definite nods to Kid A and Kid B (Amnesiac), it's hard to imagine these guys making a BAD record. They have such a distinct sound, and such a way with sonics, and melody, whether rocking furiously, or drifting dreamily. And In Rainbows covers pretty much all the bases, the opener, "15 Step", begins with an Autchre-ish electronic skitter, but then in comes Thom Yorke's falsetto croon, and soon the band is shuffling through swirling guitar melodies and children's voices, strange FX and dubbed out drums. "Bodysnatchers" is a serious rocker, and is one of the oldest songs here (we think), with a killer crunchy riff, distorted bass, a very motorik Neu!-like rhythm, and big chiming U2 like guitars. "Nude" is a hushed whispery ballad, but just weird enough to stay interesting, a haunting high end drift, with a super gorgeous vocal line. The rest of the record seems to slip back and forth, from rock to ballad, from swoonsome epic crashing bombast, to hushed intimate whisper. Finishing off with the amazing "Videotape", a slow soft piano dirge, with another delicate and haunting vocal melody, but underpinned with some weird muted electronic drum loop, the whole thing so hypnotic and repetitive and dreamlike.
But who the heck needs to review a Radiohead record anyway? Especially this one. If you didn't download it, you're probably already gonna buy the cd or lp. And in fact, we bet half the people who downloaded it are also gonna buy the physical version. Radiohead are one of the few bands with such a crazy universal appeal, regular folks dig 'em, indie rockers of course, lots of metalheads do too, and loads of 'experimental' and 'avant' music lovers like them as well. Which makes sense, cuz, hell, they're a great band, they write great songs, they're not afraid to experiment and take regular songs and twist them all up, and this is just another great Radiohead record.
Comes in cool 'green' packaging, designed so you can take the various parts and stickers and stick them in a RECYCLED jewel case and voila!
MPEG Stream: "15 Steps"
MPEG Stream: "Bodysnatchers"

MORDRAANETH The Taverns In The Land Of Ashes (Skulls Of Heaven) 2cd-r 19.98
ATTENTION TROLLMANN AV ILDTOPPBERG faithful. Trollmann maybe e dead and gone but fear not...
Avid AQ list readers and doomlords worldwide should be well aware of our love of mysterious doom duo Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. Four full lengths, a live record and a live dvd-r, each a sprawling lugubrious brew of fuzzy spacey keyboards, Skepticism-like slow-crawl riffs, rumbling demon vocal gurgles, as blessed out and darkly ambient, as they are heavy and crushingly ominous. For those new to Trollmann, it's not just the amazing and mysterious music, it's the whole world Trollmann have created, or the world they call home. The records are called Forest Of Doom, Arcane Runes Adorn The Ice-Veiled Monoliths Of The Ancient Cavern Of The Stars, Dark Clouds Blacken The Sky On The Eve Of The Thousandth Sacrifice, Tolling Beyond The Tombs Of Ancient Grimnity, the band members are depicted on their record covers, drawn, never photographed, one a little hairy elf on a toadstool, the other a huge bruiser of an ancient caveman, armed with a massive axe, the instruments used to make this music: "Cosmic keys to gates unknown," and "Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come." Hell yeah!
Just bass and keyboards, the duo managed to weave lush and truly haunting soundscapes, doomy drones and slow motion heaviness, like a black metal Tangerine Dream crossed with a much more ambient Thergothon. So we were pretty heartbroken when we discovered earlier this year that the band had called it quits. Their mysterious partnership dissolved, and our portal to that alien sonic dimension sealed forever. Or maybe not!
We arrived to work to discover a huge fissure in the floor of the store, some sort of fog or smoke drifting from below, an unearthly glow emanating from the murky abyss, the bravest among us braved the unknown and reached into the crevice, feeling around, it was warm, and moist, and gritty, the air a completely different quality, until they grasped something, a cloth sack, tied with rough twine, when pulled from the dark, spilled open just as the fissure miraculously closed up. What was in this sack? Some bits of ancient treasure, a handful of bones, some dirty cloth stained with something resembling blood, and THIS! The debut disc from Mordraaneth, aka Belegur from Trollmann, who over the course of these two discs, has thankfully taken up his cosmic keys to gates unknown, and opened up a new gateway, allowing us to return, at least aurally, to the glorious sonic landscapes of Trollmann, drones and dirges, smears of murk and shimmer, dark ambience and black doom. The sound familiar enough that anyone into Trollmann will find this essential, but different enough to remain mysterious and magical.
The opening track is a long meditative keyboard suite, layers of throbbing whir and pulsing chordal washes, the notes and overtones beating against one another, subtle rhythms and textures beneath the tranquil dreamlike drift. Definitely reminiscent of Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, but with a vibe at atmosphere much more ancient, and timeless, the music of crumbling castles, of blackened underground passages...
The second track introduces vocals, a buried in the mix demonic rasp, and a thick layer of buzz, some subtle percussion, a strange slow motion martial fantasy fanfare, wreathed in hiss and static, the distortion crumbling, the track peppered with bits of grinding growl and blown out fuzz, but somehow still hypnotic and dream like, the keyboard running through it, it's melody entrancing and so pretty. The rest of disc one drifts along lazily, like floating down some black river that runs beneath the Earth's crust, winding through lost civilizations and abandoned villages, eye glimmering in the darkness here and there, a permanent midnight. Haunting and ominous and soporific.
The second disc is two looooong tracks, beginning with what sounds like harpsichord, once again transporting us back to some ancient court, you can almost imagine Lords and Ladies, doing some strange dance, beneath a huge stone edifice, lit by firelight and the stars above, the whole disc, all 58 minutes of it, is a weirdly festive medieval folk, like a much more haunting and fucked up Renaissance Faire music, or some sort of ancient new age, imagine Kitaro and Brian Eno in full corpse paint, scoring a film about knights and dragons. Medieval fantasy ambience. Playful and lilting, glimmering and glittering, a gauzy sun dappled cloud of music box melodies, slightly smeared and blurred into a dreamy drift.
Can't wait for Thundarr, the other half of Trollmann, to return with his Rumblings Of Doom and Prophecies Of Times To Come, but for now, we're perfectly happy to revel in the blissy ambient dreamusic of Mordraaneth!
MPEG Stream: "Entombed In The Ancient Halls Where No Light Reaches"
MPEG Stream: "The Horn Howls As The End Draws Near"
MPEG Stream: "The World Of Ashes"

LONGMONT POTION CASTLE 6 (D.U.) cd-r 12.98
The return of the always hilarious Longmont Potion Castle!!! If you're like me (Matt), you missed LPC the first time around, and are super stoked to have a disc from this side splitting and incredibly aggravating (to his victims) prank call mastermind! The most amazing thing about these calls is how long these people on the other end stay on the phone! Most of the calls consist of LPC picking fights with mall employees and local business owners, trying to sell dog bowels to a pawn shop, and requesting Orange Julius employees to feed him grapes while he's interviewed for a job. There's also a lot of fucked up editing and sample based pranks on this disc that are sometimes more creepy than they are funny, like the fucked up effected speech impediment of "Can O' B.S.". The receivers of these pranks range from confused elderly folks to aggro townie redneck dudes, all of whom get super pissed and usually end up threatening some sort of beatdown. It's interesting and hilarious to realize how many people love a good verbal tussle, and out of frustration how many people are willing to actually fight assuming the prankster "comes on down there...". LPC's delivery is totally dry and deadpan, almost stoned sounding, but the things coming out of his mouth are so completely absurd and absolutely hysterical! The best is when the delay pedal is implemented over the phone for extra confusional hilarity. LPC records are by far the most consistently funny, clever, bugged out, annoying, and ultimately excellent pranks on disc EVER!!! If you have 1-5 (compiled in a now out of print boxset), 6 certainly stands up, and for those of you have never checked LPC out, this is a great place to start! It's a bit hard to describe how great this stuff is, but it's one of a kind, So funny and super recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Dog Gnash"
MPEG Stream: "Citation"
MPEG Stream: "Sandyman"

RADIOHEAD In Rainbows (TBD) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Never before has a record been so completely overshadowed by it's delivery method. Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year, you no doubt have read or heard about Radiohead, offering their album for download, at any price the customer deemed appropriate, whether it be $20 or nothing at all. Needless to say, this sort of thing can't really be pulled off unless you're one of the biggest bands in the world, but since Radiohead ARE, it seemed to be an unmitigated success. They haven't revealed how many copies they sold, or what the average price paid was, but it's probably safe to assume, they made out okay.
And then there are the Radiohead fans who don't like downloads, and who want every bit of music that they can get, and thus shelled out $80 for the deluxe double lp, double cd set, with a whole extra cd of outtakes and unreleased tracks (at least one aQ-er did! As did lots of aQ customers). We personally thought, for a band like that, it almost would have been cooler to NOT release an MP3 version, have it ONLY available in stores. After all, without indie stores they wouldn't have been where they are today. People are so worried about record sales, imagine if a handful of bands skipped the online release entirely, and you HAD to buy it in an actual store. Sure, we're sort of biased, but hell, we love records and cds and tapes, and even if we didn't have a store, we'd feel exactly the same way.
Well, look at that, we were just talking about how everything BUT the music on the new Radiohead has been discussed to death, and we go and spend the first half of our review doing the very same thing...
Anyway, now available on cd, and as a regular lp, Radiohead's latest, in case you haven't heard it in one way or another, is actually really quite good. Not immediately experimental, and a bit more rocking, with lots of fan favorites that have been in the works for years, the sound reminds us a lot of Hail To The Thief, but with definite nods to Kid A and Kid B (Amnesiac), it's hard to imagine these guys making a BAD record. They have such a distinct sound, and such a way with sonics, and melody, whether rocking furiously, or drifting dreamily. And In Rainbows covers pretty much all the bases, the opener, "15 Step", begins with an Autchre-ish electronic skitter, but then in comes Thom Yorke's falsetto croon, and soon the band is shuffling through swirling guitar melodies and children's voices, strange FX and dubbed out drums. "Bodysnatchers" is a serious rocker, and is one of the oldest songs here (we think), with a killer crunchy riff, distorted bass, a very motorik Neu!-like rhythm, and big chiming U2 like guitars. "Nude" is a hushed whispery ballad, but just weird enough to stay interesting, a haunting high end drift, with a super gorgeous vocal line. The rest of the record seems to slip back and forth, from rock to ballad, from swoonsome epic crashing bombast, to hushed intimate whisper. Finishing off with the amazing "Videotape", a slow soft piano dirge, with another delicate and haunting vocal melody, but underpinned with some weird muted electronic drum loop, the whole thing so hypnotic and repetitive and dreamlike.
But who the heck needs to review a Radiohead record anyway? Especially this one. If you didn't download it, you're probably already gonna buy the cd or lp. And in fact, we bet half the people who downloaded it are also gonna buy the physical version. Radiohead are one of the few bands with such a crazy universal appeal, regular folks dig 'em, indie rockers of course, lots of metalheads do too, and loads of 'experimental' and 'avant' music lovers like them as well. Which makes sense, cuz, hell, they're a great band, they write great songs, they're not afraid to experiment and take regular songs and twist them all up, and this is just another great Radiohead record.
Comes in cool 'green' packaging, designed so you can take the various parts and stickers and stick them in a RECYCLED jewel case and voila!
MPEG Stream: "15 Steps"
MPEG Stream: "Bodysnatchers"

COVER STORY (Wax Poetics) book 19.95
OK, album cover aficionados, record jacket freeks, and all lovers of the esoteric and rapidly dying artform known as the lp sleeve. This is the book for you.
A massively thick, 7" by 7", 288 page tome, jam packed with some of the most far out, the most beautiful, the most striking, the sexiest, the most baffling and the most what-the-fuck record covers of the last however many years. Brought to us by the fine folks at Wax Poetics, whose magazines are always packed with some of the best photos around, this is book number two (after the recent Wax Poetics compendium) and it's a doozy.
You don't even have to like records, hell you don't even have to like music to freak out over some of these amazing images. Lots of mustaches, T+A, cartoons, kung fu, awesome clothing, wild live shots, plenty of bare bottoms, some amazing old school collages, some super tripped out druggy doodlings, a bunch of all time classic covers, plenty of embarrassing photos, a handful of lps that have been reissued on cd and become big time AQ faves, it's endless. Lots of the covers are all worn too, the visual version of record crackle that we all love so much.
Such an amazing book, and sadly, the more we move into the digital age, the more this stuff feels like a glimpse into some fantastic lost world. Includes an introduction and an essay by Dave Tompkins, the covers separated into sections, organized by the collectors who supplied the lps.

ALTER EGO Why Not?! (Klang Elektronik) cd 16.98
Not to be confused with the Italian Alter Ego who collaborated with Philip Jeck and Gavin Bryars on the recent reinterpretation of Bryars' classic The Sinking Of The Titanic, although come to think of it, it might be pretty amazing to hear THESE guys interpret Bryars' super somber epic.
This Alter Ego is from Germany, and they tend to mine similar ground as folks like Justice and Daft Punk, that sort of high energy, dance floor destroying good time techno, lots of heavy buzzy synths, swooping squiggly melodies, bouncing infectious rhythms, fun and funny, goofy and a bit wild. Super playful and funky, but also pretty weird.
The opener sounds like a Basement Jaxx instrumental, super fuzzy and groovy, synths snarling all over the place, some awesome fuzzy melodies, but then out of nowhere the track breaks down into this weird stumbling percussive sounding rhythmic stutter, all strange pizzicato strings and arpeggiated beats, hard to explain, completely interrupts the flow, but sounds so perfect anyway, the band effortlessly slip back into, it, only to drop out and do that weird confusional breakdown a few more times. Which is precisely what makes this disc, and these guys so appealing.
All of the tracks begin with a similar template. Block rockin beats, fuzzy throbbing synths, woozy melodies, bits of dubstep, dancehall and techno, all wound up weirdly tangled electro / techno hybrids, but then things get all wonky, in a very good way, some tracks get all epic and majestic, the synths swelling into huge grandiose melodies, others fall apart into angular new wave freakouts, some sound like experimental synth jams, others end up super minimal, like some squiggly slightly tweaked take on the Kompakt sound.
On the surface, this stuff will totally hit the spot for anyone into any of the abovementioned bands, folks who want to just hit the dancefloor and get totally lost. But for those of us with an aversion to the dancefloor, but who still dig dance music, this shit is thick and heavy, layered and off kilter, weird and cool and just a bit fucked, without ever losing its groove.
MPEG Stream: "Why Not?!"
MPEG Stream: "Gary"
MPEG Stream: "Fuckingham Palace"

NUIT NOIRE Fantomatic Plentitude (Armageddon) cd 9.98
Faerical blasting punk rocker!!! France's new wave black crust dynamic duo Nuit Noire. We went nuts for this band the first time we heard them, expecting some sort of grim black buzz, seeing as they were signed to a black metal label, were distributed by black metal distros, etc., but instead we had our blocks knocked totally off, by their furious short sharp bursts of super tweaked angular riffing, flurries of chaotic drumming, and some of the most tweaked damaged whiny yelpingly brilliant vocals ever! All tangled up into a confusional blackened aggro metallic pop, part punk rock, part grim buzz, part no wave, part new wave.
In the past we described Nuit Noire as sounding like a black metal Rudimentary Peni, but we're also hearing plenty of Christian Death, Joy Division, Crass and weirdly enough, on this new one more than ever, the Toy Dolls, mostly due to vocalist Tenebras' voice which is a dead ringer for the Toy Dolls' Olga.
This new disc is half new tracks, half older classics recorded live. All of em fantastic of course. The new tracks are even shorter and poppier and more fucked up than before. Take the second track "I Am A Fairy", a crusty gloomy jam, with a killer main riff, streaks of high end new wave squiggle, and the vocals, just repeating the title over and over and over, super fast, then drawn out and crooned, while the music beneath shifts from hooky and poppy to blasting and buzzing. Or how about "I Love You", another furious eighties crust punk jam, but with some black buzz spread over the top, and a totally strange, but incredibly catchy vocal line, sung sort of like "I love yooooooooooooo, I love yooooooooooooou". The rest of the tracks range from loping eighties grooves to washed out dreamy murk to chaotic old school punk rock to full on lo-fi grim black metal, usually all in the same song.
It's really hard to describe the sound, we're pretty surprised this stuff appeals to black metallers at all, there is some buzz and some serious riffing, but it's way more punk, and way more new wave, and the vocals are so strange and high and hysterical and freaked out and over the top, they sort of define Nuit Noire's sound, and are definitely the element that will make it or break it for you.
The live tracks are awesome. And if we didn't know it would have been hard pressed to even realize they were live. Almost the exact sound quality (maybe they're just live in the studio, but then why re-record old songs?) heavy and buzzy and furious and catchy as fuck. Even a wicked version of their "Faeries Of Paper" a song we proclaimed to be one of "the best songs EVER" with one of the greatest catchiest weirdest riffs we've ever heard. A few of the other live tracks we hadn't heard before and are just as good, if not even better than the songs we already loved.
Need more reasons to love these guys? Howabout the cool pencil drawings of the band members, one depicted as a huge monster-armed drumming demon, head cloaked in shadow, the other a faerie, in tunic and cape, big eyes and pointed ears, mic cable wrapped around a broadsword stuck in the ground. Or howabout the photo on the back of the cd, a very skinny, nearly naked band member, clad in a loin cloth and a cape, holding a guitar aloft in one hand, a sword in the other, cape spread out like the wings of a bat.
C'mon!!! How much more perfect can a band be? So goddamn recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Les Fees Volent Dans La Nuit"
MPEG Stream: "I Am A Fairy"
MPEG Stream: "Fantomatic Plentitude"
MPEG Stream: "Nuit Blanche"

BAILTER SPACE s/t (Flying Nun) cd 23.00
Bailter Space by now is all but defunct, with most of their records released through Matador in the US now deleted and unavailable. That's unfortunate, as the short lived career of this late '80s and early '90s New Zealand droned out, art-rock band offered a brilliantly unique parallel to the English shoegazing scene (dead ringers sometimes for Swervedriver) and Seattle's nascent grunge community.
Bailter Space was a trio, whose members performed as NZ legends The Gordons in the early '80s, developing a cantankerous post-punk sound whose short-fused riffs, off-kilter bursts of noise, and rhythmic teeth-gnashing had been one of the many influences on Sonic Youth. After their dissolution in the mid 80s and subsequent resolution as Bailter Space in 1987, the trio had softened some of the rough edges creating a signature sound that perfectly brought together Joy Division and the Velvet Underground within the bleary-eyed charm that seemed almost natural to every one else on Flying Nun (e.g. The Chills, Pin Group, This Kind Of Punishment, etc.).
It's a bit hard to figure out what's going on with this record, a compilation actually of tracks from other releases, a greatest hits sort of, there's no real info, and the album doesn't even say which track came from which album -- just a track listing and the legal stuff, that's it. Needless to say, they all rule, and it makes us want to listen ot ALL those records again. As we mentioned, all of their US albums are out of print (and it's unclear if the NZ releases are still available); so this anthology is certainly a welcome return for a band that had long been a favorite of Aquarius all the way back to our days on 24th Street. Here you'll find the spry rhythms of "Tanker" (which was the title track from their 1988 album) darkly forecasting the shimmer and drone of Ride and Slowdive; there's also the narcotic tunes of sci-fi shadow and murk from their last great album Vortura (e.g. "X" and "DarkBlue"); and plenty of distorted-then-blurred extended passages of drone guitar which really sound like they must have been the template for Justin Broadrick's Jesu. We love this band, we have for years, their Robot World record is one of Andee's ALL TIME favorites. If you don't know this band, you need to. And this is a pretty great way to discover them for the first time, and even if you're already a fan, it's a pretty bad ass Bailter Space mixtape.
MPEG Stream: "Robot World"
MPEG Stream: "SoLa"
MPEG Stream: "Tanker"

GERONIMO s/t (Three.One.G) cd 14.98
It was sort of inevitable that this disc would end up being an aQ record of the week. But before we tell you the strange tale of how we got to this point, how we discovered this band and this disc, let's offer up a quick, succinct, three word description that might render the rest of this rambling review moot:
CAVEMAN THIS HEAT.
Sold? We would be. Imagine Man Is The Bastard transported back to the early seventies and let loose in This Heat's Cold Storage recording studio, or take the black hypno kraut noise of former aQ record of the week, Aluk Todolo and strip it down to its bare essence, a sound based almost entirely on rhythm. A pounding, Neanderthal groove, pelted with squelches, and laced with a strangled inhuman mewling, huge chunks of grinding minimalism and long swaths of dreamy shimmering bliss, an ultra intense slab of kraut-doom power violence for sure.
The weird thing is, the first time we hear Geronimo was several years ago, when Circle came to play some shows on the West Coast, and so I (Andee) was happily drafted to drive them around, roadie for them, all that stuff. So one of the shows was at Arthurfest in LA Circle were playing with SUNNO))), in a way-too-small seated theater, based on how many angry folks were turned away (as in HUNDREDS!). I spent the whole time, running back and forth, up and down the stairs, trying to sneak as many people into the show as possible, through the emergency exit, the backstage door, every time I went back out I would run into someone who wanted me to get them inside. While this was all going on, a band started playing, and they were AMAZING. A bunch of cholo looking dudes, handkerchief headbands, all sort of just standing there, behind huge racks of busted looking equipment, making the most unholy racket, a gorgeously destructive rib cage rattling pummel, eventually I had to stop running back and forth, cuz this band was totally sucking me in, and so I just sat down on the floor and let the band's vibrations wash over me, the floor literally shaking violently with every note.
Well, we later discovered they were called Geronimo, but no one knew anything about them, and the folks waiting for Circle and SUNNO))) didn't seem to get it or be that into it at all. We never got to talk to them in the chaos of getting Circle sorted. And eventually it sort of just slipped my mind.
So flash forward two years to the end of 2007, when we highlighted that No Skull Left Unturned comp a list or two back, collecting the various offshoots of Power Violence pioneers Man Is The Bastard. And we were particularly taken with the band Sleestak, a doomy math rock variant on MITB's bassy grind, and their sound reminded us of THAT band, the one that opened for Circle back in 2005. Then we sort of randomly stumbled across this here disc, and suddenly everything clicked, THIS was the band we saw and loved so much, and whaddayaknow, Geronimo just so happens to feature folks from both Man Is The Bastard and Sleestak. And it sounds even better than I remember, heavier, groovier, way more fucked up and WAY more freaked out. So here's a song by song breakdown of this devastating chunk of brutal beauty and monstrous minimalism:
The opener, the 18 minute "Firewater", is perfectly placed to test the listener's mettle, an endless epic stretch of looped high end klaxons and choked cymbal crashes, like a metal intro stretched into an entire song. All around this constant crunch and whine, whip flurries of electronic glitch and crunch, swaths of grinding crumbling analog buzz, while beneath it all a rumbling minimal bass line lopes lazily, until about half way through, when the track suddenly switches gears, and turns super abstract, minimal smears of drone and muted feedback, LOTS of space, and huge percussive crashes spread WAY out. It's like a super minimal abstract doom. But with bits of atonal keyboard and strangled vocals. Like the rhythm section of Khanate scoring a Dario Argento movie. That soaring high end from the beginning of the track returns, along with some speaker destroying analog buzz, still spaced out around long stretches of silence, finishing off with a brief burst of intense fury, distorted vocals, thick wall of crumbling distortion, If you survive the first track, then track two, "Headdress", is your reward, a short sharp shock of rhythmic groove, it's all about the drums, a simple, killer rhythm, the drums slightly distorted, locked into a relentless loop, while all around it, malfunctioning synths and skittering shards of glitch and skree soar and swoop, until it too shifts suddenly, into a mathy breakdown, another mesmerizingly minimal and hypnotic looped drum fill, pounding its way through a sky filled with creaks and groans and whirs and garbled grinding lo-fi squelch, finishing off with another furious blast, this time a spray of super distorted bass riffing, howled ultra effected vocals, and total drum destruction.
"Spiritwalker" offers up another side of Geronimo, the strange homemade electronics muted and smeared into much softer shapes, allowed to drift and shimmer, the drums a muffled pulse, lots of low end rumble and whir, darkly droning and cinematic, thick swells of minor key melodies, over a wasteland of glitch and buzz, slow motion tribal percussion, everything wrapped in a gauze-y haze of psychedelic textures, low end murk, and abstract FX, a gorgeous soundscape, of slow black krautrock ambience. "Medicine Man" is another brief chunk of abstract doom. A simple plodding rhythm, a thick grinding rumbling low end synth, huge blasts of effects-drenched crunch, and ominous spoken vocals and shrieked demonic howls,
And then there's "Facepeeler", which begins with a propulsive drum part, a serious metallic jam, huge bass riffs, shrieked m