BADU, ERYKAH Mama's Gun (Motown) cd 16.98

BADU, ERYKAH New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War (Universal / Motown) cd 16.98
Let's get this right out of the way, Erykah Badu is a genius! While we love and can't get enough of folks like Sharon Jones and Nicole Willis, there really is no one else like Erykah Badu, someone who is taking soul and funk into new and outer dimensions. She represents the best of hip-hop culture as well as carrying on a legacy of spiritual and cosmic soul. Badu has that something special that you can't really put your finger on but you sure can feel.
Her last record Worldwide Underground ranks as one of our favorite psychedelic soul/hip-hop records ever made! Five years later, she returns with another ambitious and crazy rewarding record that boasts Madlib as a producer, as well as the Sa-Ra crew, collaborations and guest spots by Georgia Ann Muldrew, Bilal, Omar Rodriguez (Mars Volta), and more. There's super tight and punchy live instrumentation, and samples that demonstrate a wide reaching and enlightened taste (The Yamasuki Singers, Eddie Kendricks, Curtis Mayfield, Nancy Wilson, etc). Badu is mindful and super knowledgeable about the past but she isn't a retro act, she is so about the here and now and could care less about trends and fads. She is one of the few high profile modern artists who truly has her own vision and such a special touch. Her live show a few years ago at the Paramount Theater in Oakland we reminisce about all the time, her band was so out there in the best of ways, and she owned the stage, even playing the Theremin and taking everyone in attendance to the outer limits of a super soul planet we wish we could always orbit.
Her new record starts off with an adaptation of the Roy Ayers produced Ramp classic "American Promise" and from there on out is filled with some of the best songs Badu has recorded to date, including a couple chilling tributes to her close friend J Dilla who passed away since her last album. New Amerykah has a couple moments where it trips up, but like all brave artists it takes the courage to slip up from time to time in order to create so much musical magic. Highly recommended, and for sure check out Worldwide Underground as well if you haven't!
MPEG Stream: "The Healer"
MPEG Stream: "Soldier"

BADU, ERYKAH New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return Of The Ankh (Universal Motown) cd 16.98
Erykah Badu is one of those singular artists who is able to create such a devotional and personal relationship with her listeners. Where New Amerykah Pt. 1 had a fiery political undertone, New Amerykah Pt. 2: Return Of The Ankh, is much more personal and relationship minded. But no matter what Erykah's songs are about, there is always a sense of authenticity and integrity that runs so strongly through them. In many ways this is the closest in sound and theme to her breathtaking debut Baduizm, as it shares a similar slow melting groove and such rich instrumentation that you just don't come by on many contemporary soul records. The amazing thing about Erykah Badu is how she is both so modern, futuristic yet an integral link to the history of powerful and spiritual soul. She doesn't rehash, or mimic, instead she's created a sound and style that is so totally her own.
New Amerykah Pt. 2 is as seductive as it is psychedelic. You can tell she has a deep love of pioneers like Ramp, The Rotary Connection, and Dorothy Ashby, but she has learned from her deep love of true hip-hop how to take from her influences yet create something totally new and unique out of it. There is no one like Erykah Badu around, she has proven she is a musical visionary, and her live shows only further prove that she is the real deal, capable of creating magic with her music that hits the soul in such deep and true ways. She also stands out in the way she is still very committed to the artform of the album. From start to finish this is a record that takes you on a journey that you want to revisit over and over again. The thing that makes Erykah Badu albums so remarkable is how they slowly seep into your subconscious. They are never about the latest trends or a quick fun ride, instead they are the kind of records you turn to at those crucial moments of your life and become a narrative that becomes as much a part of your journey as it is hers. These are songs that empower, comfort and challenge. Once again Erykah Badu has proven to be one of the strongest and most unique musical voices of our time!
MPEG Stream: "Window Seat"
MPEG Stream: "Love"
MPEG Stream: "20 Feet Tall"

BADU, ERYKAH New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return Of The Ankh (Universal Motown) lp 16.98
ALSO ON VINYL!!
Erykah Badu is one of those singular artists who is able to create such a devotional and personal relationship with her listeners. Where New Amerykah Pt. 1 had a fiery political undertone, New Amerykah Pt. 2: Return Of The Ankh, is much more personal and relationship minded. But no matter what Erykah's songs are about, there is always a sense of authenticity and integrity that runs so strongly through them. In many ways this is the closest in sound and theme to her breathtaking debut Baduizm, as it shares a similar slow melting groove and such rich instrumentation that you just don't come by on many contemporary soul records. The amazing thing about Erykah Badu is how she is both so modern, futuristic yet an integral link to the history of powerful and spiritual soul. She doesn't rehash, or mimic, instead she's created a sound and style that is so totally her own.
New Amerykah Pt. 2 is as seductive as it is psychedelic. You can tell she has a deep love of pioneers like Ramp, The Rotary Connection, and Dorothy Ashby, but she has learned from her deep love of true hip-hop how to take from her influences yet create something totally new and unique out of it. There is no one like Erykah Badu around, she has proven she is a musical visionary, and her live shows only further prove that she is the real deal, capable of creating magic with her music that hits the soul in such deep and true ways. She also stands out in the way she is still very committed to the artform of the album. From start to finish this is a record that takes you on a journey that you want to revisit over and over again. The thing that makes Erykah Badu albums so remarkable is how they slowly seep into your subconscious. They are never about the latest trends or a quick fun ride, instead they are the kind of records you turn to at those crucial moments of your life and become a narrative that becomes as much a part of your journey as it is hers. These are songs that empower, comfort and challenge. Once again Erykah Badu has proven to be one of the strongest and most unique musical voices of our time!
MPEG Stream: "Window Seat"
MPEG Stream: "Love"
MPEG Stream: "20 Feet Tall"

BADU, ERYKAH Worldwide Underground (Motown) cd 13.00

BAGS Survive (Artifix) 7" 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BAGS, THE All Bagged Up (Artifix) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BAGS, THE All Bagged Up (Artifix Records) lp 13.98
Killer compilation of pretty much everything ever recorded by these infamous LA punks, including a bunch of demos, alternate takes and rehearsals! The Bags were originally conceived after a failed audition for Venus And The Razorblades, Kim Fowley's next big thing after the Runaways. Named for the fact that the group would wear paper bags on their heads at early shows (Darby Crash of the Germs once infamously jumped on stage and tore off lead vocalist Alice Bag's bag!), the group would become infamous for wild shows, that would culminate in fights and damaged equipment, the group consequently getting banned from many of the popular clubs in Los Angeles. Sonically, while definitely punk, like lots of seventies punk rock their sound had a heavy Yellow Pills power pop vibe, the songs fuzzy and jangly, and crazy catchy, with cool, snarly, swaggery female vox, fuzzed out guitars, the songs laced with wild squiggly leads, and catchy like crazy. Listening to this now, it seems impossible that the Bags weren't more popular. Raw and emotional, passionate and rocking and hooky as hell, definitely another essential punk rock artifact, and one that anyone who's been digging that recent Avengers reissue should check out for sure!
Includes a massive insert with extensive liner notes by punk rock impresario Brendan Mullen and tons of photos!

BAGUNCA, PAULO E A TROPA MALDITA s/t (Discos Mariposa) cd 17.98
It's no surprise to learn that this album developed a strong underground following among Brazilian youth when it came out in 1973. With its forward thinking arrangements, perfectly played Moog and a merging of samba, afro-funk and American rock and folk, it was for sure a record that hinted at what smart weird pop music would sound like in the decades to come. Twenty years later in a different part of the globe groups like Olivia Tremor Control and the whole Elephant Six collective were playing this same brand of eclectic and oh-so-smart pop. But these guys were doing it way back in the seventies! You might remember Paulo Bagunca E A Tropa Maldita for their appearance on the Brazilian version of the Love Peace and Poetry series. Another nice reissue from Discos Mariposa. Good stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Grinfa Louca"
MPEG Stream: "Madalena"

BAHAMADIA Queen BB (Good Vibe) cd 9.98
Old school hip hop diva who's skills on the mic are still heavily in demand. She most recently appeared on Roni Size's records. Here's a budget priced seven tracks for your listening enjoyment, with new school guests Rasco, Planet Asia, Dwele, DJ Revolution, etc.

BAHIMIRON Southern Nihilizm (Moribund) cd 14.98
Sure, "You don't mess with Texas" is a cliche as old as the hills, one that has lost much of its import, but those are definitely words to live by if "messing with Texas" means messing with these guys. Houston's Bahimiron return with the aptly titled Southern Nihilizm, a furious slab of blasting grim blackness, that owes no small debt to the mighty Gorgoroth, giving that classic Norwegian sound through their own cracked Texan twist, the guitars are crunchy and buzzy, the drums are buried in the mix, but are wild and frenetic, and the vocals are seriously demented, going from processed guttural growls, to monstrous roar to almost Cradle Of Filth shriek, often in the same song.
The other weird thing about Bahimiron's sound is the production, tons of effects and what sounds like reverb, so everything is dense and noisy, and the riffs sort of blend into one another, turning a black buzz into a droned out buzzing blacknoize. There are some strange moments scattered throughout the record as well, the end of "The Cauldron Born" features a bizarre, awesomely out of place chromatic sort-of-guitar solo, "Agonist The Filth" has killer squiggly leads draped all over the place, "Chambers Empty" features deep bellowing clean vocals doused in effects that transform them into confusional speaking in tongues garbled mumbles then moments later into hysterical howls. The title track has a cool melancholy breakdown in the middle with a distorted guitar playing out a mournful minor key melody, before the band explodes into another blown out black frenzy. And "War Whiskey Sodomy" closes the record with a brief lumbering sludge soaked doom outro. But all that weirdness is deftly tangled up and tucked away in and within the band's furious noisy black metal buzz, making it just weird enough for us, but just grim and true enough for everyone else.
Cool cover art, the band's logo and evil goat image rendered in super subtle gloss black ink on a flat matte black booklet.
MPEG Stream: "The Cauldron Born"
MPEG Stream: "Shattered and Crowned in Deceit"

BAHLU, KALI ...Takes The Forest Children On A Journey Of Cosmic Remembrance (Kismet) cd 17.98
This week the Kismet label brings us two rare sitar infused flower power psychsploitation oddities: The 1971 sitar and electronics groove of Holland's Okko (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this far-out mindwarping "children's" record for the hippie acid kids: Kali Bahlu Takes The Forest Children On A Journey of Cosmic Remembrance from 1967.
Incredibly strange music indeed! This album is 4 long drugged out sitar, flute and gong meditations narrated by the child-like Kali Bahlu as she talks (a bit ditzily, we might add) to leprechauns, trolls, gnomes, witches, devils and moonchildren about comic consciousness or something to that effect. If anyone is familiar with Lucia Pamela, the eccentric bandleader and musician who made the hopped up Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela album about an imaginary trip to the moon, Kali Bahlu sounds like Lucia Pamela if she had discovered marijuana, opium and acid at the same time and then soon after found God. We can definitely appreciate the exotic novelty of such a record, and this would be excellent and fun to sample in a DJ set or mixtape, but it might be a stretch to appreciate it for anything deeper than that.
MPEG Stream: "A Game Called Who Am I"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Remembrance"

BAIER, SIBYLLE Colour Green (Orange Twin) cd 17.98
Some of us here whose proclivities gravitate towards rare psych and folk have been bemoaning the recent flurry of "buried treasures" and "lost classics". It seems a day does not go by without a new release or re-issue of a forgotten or recently discovered artist rescued from obscurity passing before our attentive eyes and drooling mouths. Sometimes the "lost classic" status is not always deserved (not everything made in the sixties and seventies that didn't receive any attention is noteworthy, somethings are better off staying buried or lost), but it's sure keeping the reissue labels and revisionist musicologists busy as they map out an ever-growing expanse of the spheres of influence on music today. It's hard to keep up and also pay equal attention to all the great music that is being made right now. This makes us very happy on the one hand that amazing music continues to be discovered but it also drives us crazy us to see our paychecks quickly dwindling every week. Why just in the past month, we've seen re-issues from Bridget St. John, Kay Hoffman, John Jacob Niles, Kaleidoscope and Fairfield Parlour (all pretty amazing!) among others. And now on our plate are these previously unreleased home recordings of German underground folk singer, Sibylle Baier. We must admit when we first heard this, we suspected fraud. These recordings sound almost too contemporary to have been made in the early seventies. But after doing a little research, we found out this is no fraud. These intimate recordings fully deserve their "buried treasure" status, for whatever that's worth at this point. Baier, only previously known for a song on an early Wim Wenders film soundtrack, recorded these songs in her home from 1970-73 after a "spirit-renewing" trip through the Swiss Alps. She has the warm Sunday jam and tea voice reminiscent of Vashti Bunyan, but with the more spare guitar compositions and melancholy vocal delivery of someone like Chan Marshall. In fact, we sort of wish the new Cat Power or Beth Orton records were this good! Like Bunyan, Baier shunned what could have been a successful career in order to raise a family and it's because of her son, Robby, that these recordings are being heard at all. But unlike Bunyan, these songs don't derive from a back to nature hippie-folk aesthetic, but rather they come from a more delicate fragility where life's beauty and despair are interwoven with the tiny details of daily life. Beautiful! Totally recommended for seventies folk enthusiasts as well as fans of contemporary singer/songwriters.
MPEG Stream: "Tonight"
MPEG Stream: "I Lost Something in the Hills "

BAIER, SIBYLLE Colour Green (American Dust) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
ONCE AGAIN AVAILABLE ON LP!
Some of us here whose proclivities gravitate towards rare psych and folk have been bemoaning the recent flurry of "buried treasures" and "lost classics". It seems a day does not go by without a new release or re-issue of a forgotten or recently discovered artist rescued from obscurity passing before our attentive eyes and drooling mouths. Sometimes the "lost classic" status is not always deserved (not everything made in the sixties and seventies that didn't receive any attention is noteworthy, somethings are better off staying buried or lost), but it's sure keeping the reissue labels and revisionist musicologists busy as they map out an ever-growing expanse of the spheres of influence on music today. It's hard to keep up and also pay equal attention to all the great music that is being made right now. This makes us very happy on the one hand that amazing music continues to be discovered but it also drives us crazy us to see our paychecks quickly dwindling every week. Why just in the past month, we've seen re-issues from Bridget St. John, Kay Hoffman, John Jacob Niles, Kaleidoscope and Fairfield Parlour (all pretty amazing!) among others. And now on our plate are these previously unreleased home recordings of German underground folk singer, Sibylle Baier. We must admit when we first heard this, we suspected fraud. These recordings sound almost too contemporary to have been made in the early seventies. But after doing a little research, we found out this is no fraud. These intimate recordings fully deserve their "buried treasure" status, for whatever that's worth at this point. Baier, only previously known for a song on an early Wim Wenders film soundtrack, recorded these songs in her home from 1970-73 after a "spirit-renewing" trip through the Swiss Alps. She has the warm Sunday jam and tea voice reminiscent of Vashti Bunyan, but with the more spare guitar compositions and melancholy vocal delivery of someone like Chan Marshall. In fact, we sort of wish the new Cat Power or Beth Orton records were this good! Like Bunyan, Baier shunned what could have been a successful career in order to raise a family and it's because of her son, Robby, that these recordings are being heard at all. But unlike Bunyan, these songs don't derive from a back to nature hippie-folk aesthetic, but rather they come from a more delicate fragility where life's beauty and despair are interwoven with the tiny details of daily life. Beautiful! Totally recommended for seventies folk enthusiasts as well as fans of contemporary singer/songwriters.
MPEG Stream: "Tonight"
MPEG Stream: "I Lost Something in the Hills "

BAILEY, BANKS Vibrations From The Holocene (Quiet World) cd-r 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Having contributed to a very nice collaborative drone record with Darren Tate and Ian Holloway about a year ago, Banks Bailey presents a solo offering of field recordings that mostly focus on the desert environs of his native Arizona. On this album, Bailey proves to be a very patient phonographer, as his recordings reveal a considered approach to choosing the sites to record and then waiting for those environments to erupt with sound. Anybody who has listened to Chris Watson's impeccable recordings and thought, "hmmm, I could do this too." has no doubt suffered from the frustration that such a task is far from easy. We'll be honest in saying that Bailey's aren't quite as good as Watson's (seriously, he's the best for a reason!), but don't take that as a swipe against Bailey's richly detailed sounds.
The first two tracks originate in Ohio, with the first investigating the delirious sounds of tree frogs and cicadas crosshatching their sustained buzzings into a wonderful humid ambience from a summertime bog. The second recording contains some of the only industrial and manmade sounds in the recording, as Bailey wanders through downtown Springfield, Ohio where the only sounds can be heard from incoming trains with bellowing steam whistles and rumbling motors. The remainder of the recordings were culled from various excursions into the Arizona wilderness, where the diversity of birdlife is plainly evident. Tweets, trills, and whistles emanate from one bird (which may be something as common as a sparrow, but we can't tell you what it is) whom Bailey has recorded while the bird was perched above a trickling stream. Later on, Bailey documents a very melodious and quite loud bird (again, no telling which one), whose song is reflected with a slight natural echo from the environment. A windstorm through a canyon seems to annoy a red-tailed hawk (now, we can get that one!), who screeches into the wind. Each of the tracks clock in about 8-10 minutes, and provide lots of details of the environment. Exactly what we want in our field recordings, in a micro-edition of 75 copies!
MPEG Stream: "Cedar Bog"
MPEG Stream: "Reservation Lake"
MPEG Stream: "Soldier Canyon"

BAILEY, BANKS / DARREN TATE / IAN HOLLOWAY Summerland (Fungal / Quiet World) cd-r 13.98
We sold out of this pretty quick when we first listed it, but we managed to get a handful of copies (maybe the last?) direct from Mr. Bailey. So here's what we had to say about it when we first listed it not too long ago...
We're not all that sure who Banks Bailey or Ian Holloway are, but Darren Tate has long proved to be a reliable source for long-form dronemusik thanks to his previous collaboration with Andrew Chalk as Ora and his ongoing work with Colin Potter in Monos. Not to mention the multitude of self-released cd-rs under his own name. Tate's aesthetic for sculpted drones through field recordings, pedal manipulation, and occluded processing is central to Summerland, as it has been noted that Tate proved the treated guitar drones with Bailey contributing some of the field recordings and Holloway reconfiguring everything at the end. Thick shadowy tones hover ominously alongside fluctuations of tactile crackle, sounding more like some of the earlier Ora recordings than anything that Tate has produced recently. Elsewhere, tin-strung guitars splutter with atonal resonance, which stretch, elongate, and blur into drifting dark ambience.
Summerland is a limited production. There are only 150 copies of these in existence, and Summerland is already out of print at the two labels who released this.
MPEG Stream: "Summerland 1"
MPEG Stream: "Summerland 3"
MPEG Stream: "Summerland 4"

BAILEY, DEREK Ballads (Tzadik) cd 15.98
John Zorn's Tzadik label presents legendary (notorious?) British guitar improviser Derek Bailey playing, like the title says, a set of classic ballads (recorded at the behest of Zorn himself). No, he's not taking the piss: these really are jazz standards from Bailey's youth, done in his certainly un-standard (but respectful) style, melding free improv with these sentimental melodies. He's applied his chaotic, spidery string manipulation to drum and bass, so why not Hoagy Carmichael? And if you think, like our Andee does, that Derek Bailey doesn't really know how to play the guitar, this might (might) change your mind. Bailey's stark, atonal takes on stuff like "My Melancholy Baby", "Georgia On My Mind" and "Body and Soul" creates a unique mood for sure. With liner notes by Marc Ribot.
RealAudio clip: "Laura"

BAILEY, DEREK Carpal Tunnel (Tzadik) cd 15.98
Here's the third solo Derek Bailey album released by big Bailey fan John Zorn's Tzadik label, and as the title sadly suggests, this disc is in part a document of the legendary (and now rather elderly) British free improv guitarist's bout with the painful condition that's the bane of office workers everywhere. Bailey didn't get it from too much mousing and keyboarding of course, it's the fretboard that did it to him. And that's no laughing matter, a guitarist suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome -- yet somehow you can imagine that if any guitarist could persevere through a crippling hand/wrist ailment, Bailey could. In fact, due to his usually rather abstract and atonal sound, some might (unfairly) say that we'd never notice... Certainly, despite the carpal tunnel, these tracks are full of all the stark, scrabbling, skeletal beauty that Bailey fans appreciate in his work. Ringing, scraping sounds with occasional alarming jumps in volume that threaten to feed back. Should we imagine gentle cries of pain?
The first track, "Explanation & Thanks", features Bailey's voice as well as his precariously plucked guitar. He's not singing, but rather speaking, in a very personal tone as if to some friends (who may have been present?). It's kinda nice, really, the feeling of his warm and halting talking perhaps influencing how you'll hear his guitar playing on this and subsequent tracks, full of human personality rather than being the alienating skronk for which some might mistake it.
MPEG Stream: "Explanation & Thanks"
MPEG Stream: "After 7 Weeks"

BAILEY, DEREK Guitar, Drums 'n' Bass (Avant) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Back in stock and at a much more reasonable price thanks to the new domestic distribution of Zorn's Japanese Avant label... Again, this is the critically-disputed love-it-or-hate-it record featuring British guitar improv legend Bailey "dueting" with DJ Ninj (who some might recall contributed the beats to Buckethead's jungle disc). Probably -- heck, definitely -- a record that will appeal much more to Bailey fans than jungle buffs.

BAILEY, DEREK Improvisation (Ampersand) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Recording from 1975 originally issued in Italy of 14 short (each under five minutes) solo improvisations by Bailey. At the request of the artist, no historical liner notes have been included - instead there are four nice photos of Derek eating an apple. Ooh, now there's a selling point!

BAILEY, DEREK Pieces For Guitar (Tzadik) cd 16.98
Earliest ever recordings of legendary British free improv guitar dude Derek Bailey playing solo, circa '66/'67. Those who only know (and love or hate) Bailey for his later, freely improvised, spidery abstractions will find that these unreleased (until now) private practice tapes reveal more melodic, composed moods to Bailey's playing than you might expect, although "sparse" and "difficult" are still terms that would apply here. Really this is primarily of historical interest to Bailey fans, giving a window thru which knowledgeable, interested observers can perhaps see how his musical development at the time incorporated his disciplined jazz-based background, the new, free music of the day, and his obssession with the not-so-free music of Webern (as detailed in Bailey's liner notes). Others may find this interesting as well, as sorta pretty, kinda spooky, lo-fi guitar noodling.
RealAudio clip: "G.E.B."
RealAudio clip: "Improvisation On Guitar Piece No. 2"

BAILEY, DEREK Playbacks (Bingo) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Wherein Derek Bailey, the measure by which other improv guitarists strive to equal, plays along to rhythm tracks created by: Henry Kaiser, John Oswald, Casey Rice, Tied and Tickled Trio, Jim O'Rourke, Bundy Brown, John French, Loren Mazzacane Connors, and more. There's been a bit of controversy involving Henry Kaiser, who has sent out a public statement complaining about the music being out of phase or something (he's really unhappy with the way the recording sounds), but Bailey puts the issue to rest with his own statement:
"Although you wouldn't know this, occasionally I play 'live' with DJs or tracks by DJs. I never go direct to the desk or anything else. Nor do I wear earphones. This kind of 'live' situation is what I wanted to replicate in the studio. No direct line, no earphones, a mike on the amp and one on the guitar; one take only on each track. Which is exactly what Toby did for me, to my complete satisfaction. In essence, Playbacks is a live recording, not a studio recording. There are a number of reasons why I do this but the main one is musical. I want a mix of ambient and non-ambient sound. Integration has to be musical NOT technological and obviously so. THE WAY THE RECORD SOUNDS IS THE WAY I WANT IT TO SOUND.
"Let me try and remove any possible ambiguity: The success or otherwise of this record depends almost entirely on the success of the playing. If I thought at the time that this end would have been better served by recording it in the street, I would have done so. These are what is known, in some circles, as artistic decisions. If I made a similar record again, I would do it in exactly the same way."

BAILEY, DEREK String Theory (Paratactile) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Solo guitar album from maverick British improv legend Derek Bailey. The "electric" portion of the album features sustained feedback tones that vary from ever-so-slightly painful to actually quite beautiful. Indeed, for the most part, his more usual abstract spidery scribble of notes is absent from this recording, even on the three "acoustic" tracks, which are rather restrained and almost pretty. Towards the end of the album Bailey is joined by a female vocalist, and her singing doesn't sound much different from his electric guitar, making for some interesting duets! High-pitched bliss. Infinitely more appealing that most other Derek B. stuff, say Bailey doubters Allan and Andee...

BAILEY, DEREK & MIN XIAO-FEN Viper (Avant) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BAILEY, DEREK & ALEX WARD LOCationAL (Incus/Compatible Recording) cd 19.98
Six new tracks from guitar improv guru Bailey with clarinetist Alex Ward. Five of the tracks here were recorded in the studio in 1988-99 and one was captured live in October of 1998.

BAILEY, DEREK & EDDIE PREVOST Ore (Arrival Records) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The year 2000 saw this historic (what, you didn't see it in the paper?) first-ever duo meeting between maverick improv guitarist old man Derek Bailey and AMM's percussion master Eddie Prevost. Two of the UKs most legendary, then, doing the in-the-studio-improv thing, now available on cd for you to see how it went...

BAILEY, DEREK & THE RUINS Tohjinbo (Paratactile) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
East-meets-west in unusual fashion as legendary free guitar improviser Bailey teams up with Min Xiao-Fen and her pipa on the relatively-delicate Viper, then really rips it up in his second meeting with Japanese progcore bass/drums duo Ruins on Tohjinbo, a worthy follow-up to their prior, equally out-there collaboration on Tzadik.

BAILEY, DEREK / JAMAALADEEN TACUMA / CALVIN WESTON Mirakle (Tzadik) cd 16.98
Britsh free-improv guitar legend
Derek Bailey (curmudgeonly, but adventurous in his collaborations) teams up with a rhythm section known for work with Ornette Coleman and James "Blood" Ulmer. So: a collision of skittering, abstract guitar skree and semi-abstract jazz funk of the "harmolodic" variety. Random, noisy, damaged grooviness. Pretty cool.

BAILEY, DEREK AND RUINS Saisoro (Tzadik) cd 16.98
Derek Bailey, one of the world's most innovative improvisers, with the Japanese bass-heavy Ruins.

BAILEY, DEREK WITH MIN TANAKA Music and Dance (Revenant) cd 14.98
Improv legend Bailey's live 1980 guitar accompaniment to a "percussive" dance performance. Sparse (with the sound of falling rain figuring prominently on one track) and beautiful. Brought to you by John Fahey's new Revenant label.

BAILIFF, JESSICA Feels Like Home (Kranky) cd 14.98

BAILIFF, JESSICA Hour of the Trace (Kranky) cd 13.98
Album number two finds Jessica again working with Alan from Low. This time around the songwriting has drastically improved, and the delicate yet dense washes of velvety guitar bear a remarkable resemblance to, yep, you guessed it, Low. Another beautiful release from Kranky. Recommended!

BAILIFF, JESSICA s/t (Kranky) cd 14.98
Whenever this album has been played in the store (which is plenty of times already!), folks have clambered to find out what the loveliness is. Well, it's the new Jessica Bailiff! She's singing a lot more this time around, and it's a welcome development. Her third full length is absolutely dreamy, quietly weaving together elements of spartan folk and spacious chamber music, with plenty of nods to fellow Kranksters Low (whose Alan Sparhawk produced her first album). Listening to this eponymous album almost feels like an intrusion, but each of her songs only draws you in further. These are the songs sung to the stars on a sleepless night. Quite often her softly murmured vocals are only accompanied by some hushed strings, piano or a barely strummed acoustic guitar - both hovering in the air like a frosty breath. And even when more sounds enter the stage - a sitar, a violin-uke, some digital effects - they're the sheerest of shimmering veils. Mesmerizing.
RealAudio clip: "Hour Of The Traces"
RealAudio clip: "Time Is An Echo"

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"

BAILTERSPACE Strobosphere (Fire) cd 21.00
There are very few bands from the past, whose reemergence has the potential to get pretty much everybody at aQ freaked out, but legendary NZ shoegaze noise rockers Bailterspace are definitely one of 'em. Their record Robot World still ranks among our all time faves, and over their decade plus lifespan, they pretty much never made a bad record. Featuring members of the Gordons, the Clean, the Terminals and the Pin Group, Bailterspace took the noisy experimental rock of Sonic Youth, and molded it into something unique to themselves, creating a sort of woozy, washed out heaviness, a heaviness that had people describing them as one of the loudest bands ever. But it definitely wasn't just about volume, BS were masters of texture and tone, taking super catchy melodies and stretching them way out into tranced out expanses of mesmerizing hypnorock blissout. Moody and melodic, minimal arrangements wedded to maximal volume, yielded a sound that was visceral and intense, yet somehow weirdly dreamlike. Super catchy stripped down minimal indie rock jangle pop, but cranked up, stretched way out, and doused in distortion and a My Bloody Valentine like sonic haze.
While there was a greatest hits released in 2004, the band remained on hiatus until a surprise show in 2008 in NYC, which in the days of old bands reuniting, wasn't a huge surprise, but a new record most definitely was. And while it's been close to 15 years since the band's last proper record, Stroboscope definitely finds the band in excellent form, the record sounding like it could have easily come out a decade ago, the music gorgeously woozy, the guitars angular and atonal, but sculpted into lush blown out swells, the vocals deep and dramatic, the drumming buried in the mix, a sort of noiserock slowcore, at least on the opener "Things That We Found", woozy and druggy, droney and dirgey, the sort of thing that should have Wooden Shjips fans who have yet to discover the joys of Bailterspace, flipping their shit big time.
The title track shrugs off some of the murk, the guitars sharper and more crunchy, but otherwise, the sound laid back and washed out, thick seasick basslines wrapped around acoustic guitar strum, and big crashing electric guitar chords, the vocals all but lost in the swirl and shimmer. "Blue Star" sounds like Dinosaur Jr after a heaping dose of thorazine, similarly whiny vocals the guitars blown out and psychedelic, and then "Polarize" lets the drum drive things, the muted guitar strum draped over wheezing organs, the whole thing blurry and bleary, the vox a weary drawl, the whole thing laced with jagged streaks of feedback, and then there's "No Sense" which is hugely dramatic, the vocals howled and crooned, over a super stripped down jangly noise pop, before "Meeting Place" gets all modern noisy new wavey, reminding us that whether they realize it or not, a ton of new bands owe these guys royalties big time.
And so it goes. The whole record oozing that classic nineties sound, equal parts NZ and the US indie underground, but distinctly Bailterspace, and another record to add to their perfect streak. And while Robot World remains our favorite, this is definitely a good starting point, and odds are it will lead to an obsessive quest to track down the rest of the catalog!
MPEG Stream: "Things That We Found"
MPEG Stream: "Strobosphere"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Star"

BAILTERSPACE Strobosphere (Fire) lp 33.00
There are very few bands from the past, whose reemergence has the potential to get pretty much everybody at aQ freaked out, but legendary NZ shoegaze noise rockers Bailterspace are definitely one of 'em. Their record Robot World still ranks among our all time faves, and over their decade plus lifespan, they pretty much never made a bad record. Featuring members of the Gordons, the Clean, the Terminals and the Pin Group, Bailterspace took the noisy experimental rock of Sonic Youth, and molded it into something unique to themselves, creating a sort of woozy, washed out heaviness, a heaviness that had people describing them as one of the loudest bands ever. But it definitely wasn't just about volume, BS were masters of texture and tone, taking super catchy melodies and stretching them way out into tranced out expanses of mesmerizing hypnorock blissout. Moody and melodic, minimal arrangements wedded to maximal volume, yielded a sound that was visceral and intense, yet somehow weirdly dreamlike. Super catchy stripped down minimal indie rock jangle pop, but cranked up, stretched way out, and doused in distortion and a My Bloody Valentine like sonic haze.
While there was a greatest hits released in 2004, the band remained on hiatus until a surprise show in 2008 in NYC, which in the days of old bands reuniting, wasn't a huge surprise, but a new record most definitely was. And while it's been close to 15 years since the band's last proper record, Stroboscope definitely finds the band in excellent form, the record sounding like it could have easily come out a decade ago, the music gorgeously woozy, the guitars angular and atonal, but sculpted into lush blown out swells, the vocals deep and dramatic, the drumming buried in the mix, a sort of noiserock slowcore, at least on the opener "Things That We Found", woozy and druggy, droney and dirgey, the sort of thing that should have Wooden Shjips fans who have yet to discover the joys of Bailterspace, flipping their shit big time.
The title track shrugs off some of the murk, the guitars sharper and more crunchy, but otherwise, the sound laid back and washed out, thick seasick basslines wrapped around acoustic guitar strum, and big crashing electric guitar chords, the vocals all but lost in the swirl and shimmer. "Blue Star" sounds like Dinosaur Jr after a heaping dose of thorazine, similarly whiny vocals the guitars blown out and psychedelic, and then "Polarize" lets the drum drive things, the muted guitar strum draped over wheezing organs, the whole thing blurry and bleary, the vox a weary drawl, the whole thing laced with jagged streaks of feedback, and then there's "No Sense" which is hugely dramatic, the vocals howled and crooned, over a super stripped down jangly noise pop, before "Meeting Place" gets all modern noisy new wavey, reminding us that whether they realize it or not, a ton of new bands owe these guys royalties big time.
And so it goes. The whole record oozing that classic nineties sound, equal parts NZ and the US indie underground, but distinctly Bailterspace, and another record to add to their perfect streak. And while Robot World remains our favorite, this is definitely a good starting point, and odds are it will lead to an obsessive quest to track down the rest of the catalog!

BAIM, MATTEAH Death Of The Sun (DiCristina) cd 13.98
We weren't all that familiar with Matteah Baim really, other than the fact that she was one half of the Metallic Falcons, with Cocorosie's Sierra Cassidy. Death Of The Sun is actually not that sonically distant from the Metallic Falcons, however where that group was a sort of prog metallic folk, a patchwork of moody free folk, druggy rock, and lush choral arrangements, Baim's solo record is self described 'new age grunge', and thus much more subdued, intimate and personal. Her voice husky and raspy, sexy and sort of torch-singery, drifting over sparse and dark soundscapes, muted and murky, swirling and gently throbbing, the main melodies pecked out on a reverbed piano, simple but quite stirring. It's hard not to hear Cat Power in the vocals, but the arrangements are not that polished at all, instead, they're hushed and lo-fi, lush in their own homespun way. Imagine a countrified Grouper with Chan Marshall on vocals and you might be getting close. Abstract and dark, minor key and so so lovely.
Plus have a gander at the guests: Devendra Banhart, Jana Hunter, Rob Lowe (Lichens) and a bunch more...
MPEG Stream: "River"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Ship"
MPEG Stream: "Wounded Whale"

BAIRD, MEG Dear Companion (Drag City) cd 14.98
If Josephine Foster is the modern day equivalent of Shirley Collins, then Meg Baird would be the contemporary Anne Briggs. Here on her long-awaited yet sweetly low-key Drag City solo debut, Baird, who also fronts Philadelphia's Espers, has been channeling the old ghosts of British Folk (we got a glimpse on the disc of traditional numbers she recorded with Helena Espvall and Sharon Krause, a few lists back) through new and traditional numbers that feel contemporary and timeless without being too folksy or quaint. Sure the influence of folk music's past is anything but new these days, but Baird has been at it for a real long time, and while she has had some killer tracks on compilations now and again, including the ground-breaking "Golden Apples Of the Sun", it's nice to finally see a proper full length from this fair-headed lass who can strum a wistfully folky tune with the best of them. Lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Sweet William And Fair Ellen"
MPEG Stream: "All I Ever Wanted"

BAIRD, MEG Dear Companion (Drag City) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
If Josephine Foster is the modern day equivalent of Shirley Collins, then Meg Baird would be the contemporary Anne Briggs. Here on her long-awaited yet sweetly low-key Drag City solo debut, Baird, who also fronts Philadelphia's Espers, has been channeling the old ghosts of British Folk (we got a glimpse on the disc of traditional numbers she recorded with Helena Espvall and Sharon Krause, a few lists back) through new and traditional numbers that feel contemporary and timeless without being too folksy or quaint. Sure the influence of folk music's past is anything but new these days, but Baird has been at it for a real long time, and while she has had some killer tracks on compilations now and again, including the ground-breaking "Golden Apples Of the Sun", it's nice to finally see a proper full length from this fair-headed lass who can strum a wistfully folky tune with the best of them. Lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Sweet William And Fair Ellen"
MPEG Stream: "All I Ever Wanted"

BAIRD, MEG Seasons On Earth (Drag City) cd 14.98

BAIRD, MEG Seasons On Earth (Drag City) lp 15.98

BAIRD, MEG Waltze Of The Tennis Players (Tequilla Sunrise) 7" 8.98
The female vocalist from Espers gives us a sweet taste of her solo work in anticipation of her upcoming debut. Covering "Waltze of The Tennis Players" by sixties folk obscurities, Fraser and Debolt on one side, and on the other, an acapella version of "Dear Companion", an ancient hymn like tune which will be featured on the full length record. Alas, such a little taste leaves us begging for more. Beautiful.

BAIRD, MEG / HELENA ESPVALL / SHARRON KRAUS Leaves From Off The Tree (Bo'Weavil) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Meg Baird and Helena Espvall, the string players and female vocalists of Espers, team up with British folkie, Sharron Kraus for a hazy afternoon's recording of traditional English and Appalachian folk songs. Sung simply and played sweetly on guitar, cello, and dulcimer by a trio well versed in the dulcet timelessness of the folk cannon, these nine songs recall the best work of Shirley Collins, Sandy Denny and Shelagh McDonald. Lovely!
MPEG Stream: "Now Westlin' Winds"
MPEG Stream: "False Sir John"

BAJA Maps / Systemalheur (Still) cd 16.98
Baja is a German collective revolving around a composer by the name of Daniel Vujanic. By the sound of things, Baja see themselves in neither Germany nor Mexico, but in Chicago circa 1995 when Gastr Del Sol was deconstructing any number of musical tropes into their own rigid signature sound. Both of the two long-form Baja tracks are decentered compositions of angular guitar plucking, ECM jazz motifs, elliptical bass riffs, painterly splatters of multiple horns, and stumbled percussive rhythms.
MPEG Stream: "Maps"
MPEG Stream: "Systemalheur"

BAKAMONO Long Time Cain (Super8) cd 12.98
Local favorites, loud, raw, and crunchy, packaged in a pretty cardboard'n'gold digipak.

BAKER, AIDAN Book of Nods (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 17.98
Another new Aidan Baker release, another sublime gem. And again, we find ourselves wanting to just review it with a single sentence. "New Aidan Baker. If you are a fan, you will love this. So buy it." But look at the rest of this list. If we had that sort of self control, and if we weren't so inclined to gush, this list would be a whole different beast.
But before we get into it, you might as well take our aborted abbreviated review to heart. If you are a fan, you WILL love this and should probably buy it. So fans can push the buy button and move on. Except for those fans who aren't so sure they need another Baker disc to add to the already-threatening-to-collapse Baker/Nadja cd shelf at home. You all can stick around, along with the folks who might somehow be asking "who the heck is this Aidan Baker guy and what's he all about?" The simple answer just requires a visit to the aQ website, and a quick search on either Aidan Baker or Nadja. There you can read all about it, and listen to almost everything we've carried by him/them. But as with all Baker releases, this one is a bit different, and bears a bit more of a description.
Book Of Nods begins with a 8 minute drift that sounds remarkable like a more subdued Necks jam. Simple piano figure repeated over and over, slowly shifting and changing, but looped and hypnotic and dreamily repetitive. Almost like a much more mellow and muted Lubomyr Melnyk, soft flurries of piano blurred into indistinct streaks, quite lovely. The 18 minute follow up is another sort-of-jazz sprawl, slow smoldering drones, super spare abstract percussion, warm and languid and laid waaaaay back, before the original slow motion drift is subsumed by some Pop Ambient washed out whir, giving the track a strange alien ethereal sheen. Track 3, "Obsession", is like a dubbed out hybrid of Low and Bohren, jazzy slowcore, allowed to slither and crawl, the drums a bit more skittery, some of the melodies effected, and flipped backwards, allowed to swoop and thhhhwp, there are even some fluttering flutes, again, bringing to mind a Necks style jazz jam, but give a bit of an electronic tweaking. The 15 minute closer, is yet another slow burning jazzy slowcore crawl, but here the drums are a bit harder, the mood is much more ominous and foreboding, everything wreathed in deep shimmering drones and distant rumbles, peppered with still more swooping backward beats, steaks of feedback, building to an intense, skittery, skipping coda, sounding a bit like Oval remixing the Necks. Nice.
And thus somehow, yet another Baker disc well worth owning! And not a bad place to start for the newbie, although the sounds here are unlike most of Baker's output.
Beautifully packaged in an oversized fold over textured paper digisleeve, with a dearth of information, just various Asian calligraphic characters. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Love"

BAKER, AIDAN Broken & Remade (Volubilis) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Aidan Baker / Nadja musical onslaught shows no signs of letting up any time soon, but we're sure as heck not complaining. This week's Record of the Week is the blissy doom of Nadja's Touched, we also have the vinyl reissue of Bodycage, and then we've got this, Broken & Remade, a definite new direction for Baker, who for this disc, used 4 to 8 second samples of live recordings of analog instruments -- guitar, bass, flute, drums, violin, trumpet, and voice -- to construct these moody, almost jazzy soundscapes.
If you're not listening to close it does just sound like some modern jazz band, crawling through a particularly blissy and smokey jam, the Necks for sure come to mind, as does Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore. The drums shuffle, the guitars buzz, the melodies are serpentine and dreamy, the obvious looping is kept to a minimum, at least in the beginning. Imagine the Bad Plus covering Oval or some Fennesz / Necks remix and you might get a rough idea. The second track, is a bit more glitchy and obviously sampled, but it doesn't take Baker long to build a killer groove, turning all of those little sonic fragments into some sort of Spring Heel Jack, Boards Of Canada dreamy almost IDM shuffle. Even at its smoothest and most straight ahead, Baker laces the proceedings with little bits of digital filigree, a kick drum sputtering repeatedly, a simple lick chopped and reassembled into a little burst of stuttery fuzz, a note here or a drum beat there flipped backwards, it all adds subtle bits of weirdness to the proceedings.
Later in the record things get decidedly more aggressive and freaked out, with thick slabs of distorted sound turned into stuttering fuzz drenched drones, chopped into staggered sonic pulses over drifting mariachi trumpet. Intense post rock workouts gradually become more and more dense until they are dizzying squalls of skittering drums and tangled guitar melodies. Pretty far out, but the songs never become unhinged, this is not any kind of Shitmat style mashup, this is a lot more subtle than that, some seriously deft composition, creating an immensely appealing alien post rock jazz, unlike anything we've heard before.
While Baker fans and Nadja obsessives will NEED this, folks into Boards Of Canada, Spring Heel Jack, Bohren, the Necks, the Bad Plus, and even stuff like Portishead and other late night groove merchants might really dig this as well.
MPEG Stream: "Debra Modern Ken"
MPEG Stream: "Ab Mad Kern One Te"

BAKER, AIDAN Broken & Remade (Revolvermann Records) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL!!! Here's our review from when we first listed this WAY back in 2007...
The Aidan Baker / Nadja musical onslaught shows no signs of letting up any time soon, but we're sure as heck not complaining. Broken & Remade is a definite new direction for Baker, who for this disc, used 4 to 8 second samples of live recordings of analog instruments - guitar, bass, flute, drums, violin, trumpet, and voice - to construct these moody, almost jazzy soundscapes.
If you're not listening to close it does just sound like some modern jazz band, crawling through a particularly blissy and smokey jam, the Necks for sure come to mind, as does Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore. The drums shuffle, the guitars buzz, the melodies are serpentine and dreamy, the obvious looping is kept to a minimum, at least in the beginning. Imagine the Bad Plus covering Oval or some Fennesz / Necks remix and you might get a rough idea. The second track, is a bit more glitchy and obviously sampled, but it doesn't take Baker long to build a killer groove, turning all of those little sonic fragments into some sort of Spring Heel Jack, Boards Of Canada dreamy almost IDM shuffle. Even at its smoothest and most straight ahead, Baker laces the proceedings with little bits of digital filigree, a kick drum sputtering repeatedly, a simple lick chopped and reassembled into a little burst of stuttery fuzz, a note here or a drum beat there flipped backwards, it all adds subtle bits of weirdness to the proceedings.
Later in the record things get decidedly more aggressive and freaked out, with thick slabs of distorted sound turned into stuttering fuzz drenched drones, chopped into staggered sonic pulses over drifting mariachi trumpet. Intense post rock workouts gradually become more and more dense until they are dizzying squalls of skittering drums and tangled guitar melodies. Pretty far out, but the songs never become unhinged, this is not any kind of Shitmat style mashup, this is a lot more subtle than that, some seriously deft composition, creating an immensely appealing alien post rock jazz, unlike anything we've heard before.
While Baker fans and Nadja obsessives will NEED this, folks into Boards Of Canada, Spring Heel Jack, Bohren, the Necks, the Bad Plus, and even stuff like Portishead and other late night groove merchants might really dig this as well.
MPEG Stream: "Debra Modern Ken"
MPEG Stream: "Ab Mad Kern One Te"

BAKER, AIDAN Closure Axioms (Miskatonic Soundlab) cd 13.98
There was a while, where every New Arrivals list had at least one release from Aidan Baker on it, whether solo or with Nadja, and heck, there were plenty of lists with two, three, sometimes even four AB releases. And even though they were all pretty great, it was hard to not get overwhelmed. Even beyond being able to AFFORD that many records, that's a lot of music to take it. So after a stretch of hearing very little from Mr. Baker, this new record of processed solo guitar comes as a nice surprise, and not just because we were actually hankering for more, which we of course were, but also because it's actually quite lovely, a dark and delicate collection of hushed, blurred ambience, that right off the bat reminded us a bit of Oval's Diskont 94, but where that record created a lush landscape of liquid shimmer from skipping cds and digital errata, Baker accomplishes something similar with just a guitar and some effects, transforming his guitar into a softnoise generator, in fact, this is the perfect music to lull you into a deep trance, it's not hard to imagine this as the perfect white noise machine for weirdo underground music nerds, the sounds a series of smeared swirls, at times sounding like some super minimal modern classical music slowed way down, and at others, an expanse of layered lush dronemusic, the first half of the record tends toward a super hushed soporific drift, but the guitar seems to become less obfuscated toward the end of the record, the songs becoming more like abstract Appalachia, but still looped and blurred into hypnotic stretches of woozy mesmer, culminating in the record closer, which pairs a warbly bit of guitar loopage with lush lustrous chordal swells, and some more distinct melodies, mournful and melancholy, all of which seem to bleed into each other, transforming the song into something impossibly lovely, yet still utterly hypnotic.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "Preclosure Operator I"
MPEG Stream: "Interior Operator"
MPEG Stream: "Closure Operator II"

BAKER, AIDAN Exoskeleton Heart (Crucial Bliss) cd-r 8.98
Another in the recent trilogy of new releases (along with Light Of Shipwreck and Luasa Raelon reviewed elsewhere on this list) from one of our favorite labels, Crucial Bliss, a dronier driftier offshoot of the Crucial Blast label. And as the names should make obvious, the stuff on Crucial Blast -blasts-, and the stuff on Crucial Bliss, is, wellÉ blissed out.
So here we have yet another release from the man who does not sleep. Ever. He couldn't possibly, he must spend every minute of every day and night doing nothing but recording gorgeous spaced out driftscapes (under his own name) and crushing slow motion pummel (as Nadja). This is release number ten in just about a year, and that's not even counting all the microreleases and limited editions that slipped by us completely. But as we've mentioned time and time again, it's all good. Really good. Great in fact. So as folks trying to review all this stuff, we definitely get overwhelmed, but for the listener, who in their right mind would complain about more amazing and mysterious soundsÉ
This new one, is all electric guitar, recorded live, and manages to merge Baker's two sonic sides. The dense and the airy, the heavy and the pretty, the delicate and the intense. Two half hour epics, the first track is a roiling swirl of deep reverberant whirring and soft buzzing, sometimes thickening into an almost SUNNO)))-y wall of sound, but just as often shimmering dreamily, peppered with some super chaotic stretches, where things get really intense, bordering on straight up noise, sounding almost like Total, massive ur-drone, speaker melting white noise, but somehow twisted into something pretty.
The second track is much grittier, the sound more raw and lo-fi, very industrial at the outset, but as the track progresses, strange melodies drift up from below, the sound gets smoother and more washed out, and then somehow, even as it gets prettier and prettier, it also gets heavier, the sound getting louder and more blown out, culminating in a gloriously blurred blast of in-the-red, white hot, blissed out buzz, the aural equivalent of staring into the sun. So nice.
As with all Crucial Bliss releases, the packaging is super swank, an oversized fold over thick cardstock sleeve, full color inside and out, the cd attached to a plastic hub affixed to the sleeve.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Interior"
MPEG Stream: "Anterior"