V/A Grime 2 (Rephlex) cd 15.98
Ahhh, grime. The next big thing. The new sound that was supposedly gonna sweep the nation. But ummm, what happened? I mean, the UK grime scene did give us Dizzee Rascal and Wiley, but then nothing seemed to happen. Well, Rephlex haven't given up on grime, and neither have we. Grime 2 demonstrates yet again, that his grime stuff is pretty darn cool. Ostensibly some sort of variant of two step garage (pronounced gare-ij), itself a minimal variant of jungle, grime is about as simple as it gets. a bouncy, almost ragga rhythm, that lopps and loops endlessly, with fuzzy bass swells supplying a bit of melody, and random bits of sonic filligree, little bells, a clip from an old kung fu movie, a few extra rhythmic shuffles here and there. Good stuff, but very repetitive and relentless. So unless you're dancing, or chilling out, or are in the mood for some tranced out hypnotic rhythms, grime might be a little, um, uneventful for you. But for us, well, we're always in the mood for some tranced out rhythms and always on the lookout for some good chillout music. The cuts on Grime 2 are simple and mesmerizing, head nodding and hypnotic, and fall somewhere between the extended rhythmic workouts of Muslimgauze, the simple, spartan techno of Kompakt, and the minimal house of Chain Reaction, all with a bit of a ragga vibe. Sounds good to us.
MPEG Stream: KODE 9 "Swarm"
MPEG Stream: DIGITAL MYSTIKZ "Awake"

V/A Grime 2 (Rephlex) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ahhh, grime. The next big thing. The new sound that was supposedly gonna sweep the nation. But ummm, what happened? I mean, the UK grime scene did give us Dizzee Rascal and Wiley, but then nothing seemed to happen. Well, Rephlex haven't given up on grime, and neither have we. Grime 2 demonstrates yet again, that his grime stuff is pretty darn cool. Ostensibly some sort of variant of two step garage (pronounced gare-ij), itself a minimal variant of jungle, grime is about as simple as it gets. a bouncy, almost ragga rhythm, that lopps and loops endlessly, with fuzzy bass swells supplying a bit of melody, and random bits of sonic filligree, little bells, a clip from an old kung fu movie, a few extra rhythmic shuffles here and there. Good stuff, but very repetitive and relentless. So unless you're dancing, or chilling out, or are in the mood for some tranced out hypnotic rhythms, grime might be a little, um, uneventful for you. But for us, well, we're always in the mood for some tranced out rhythms and always on the lookout for some good chillout music. The cuts on Grime 2 are simple and mesmerizing, head nodding and hypnotic, and fall somewhere between the extended rhythmic workouts of Muslimgauze, the simple, spartan techno of Kompakt, and the minimal house of Chain Reaction, all with a bit of a ragga vibe. Sounds good to us.
MPEG Stream: KODE 9 "Swarm"
MPEG Stream: DIGITAL MYSTIKZ "Awake"

V/A Grind Bastards 2 - For The Grind Freaks (Grave / Grindfreaks) cd 14.98
Worth it for the first 51 seconds alone, a mind blowing blast of furious pop flecked grind, but heck, there's also a shit ton of blasting grinding heaviness to follow after that first minute of grindpop bliss...
What more do you need to know!?! It's a compilation called GRIND BASTARDS. Subtitled "For The Grind Freaks". Released on the label run by legendary Japanese grinders Unholy Grave. And check out the band list. Tons of killer groups, and a whole bunch new to us, almost all heavy and brutal and kick ass: Mortalized, Insect Warfare, Butcher ABC, Unholy Grave (of course), Exgreed, Disgust, Top Breeder, Motiveless, Gods Of Grind, Little Bastard, Red, 48, Gate, Spiral and more.
Plenty of downtuned chug, furious blasts, growled cookie monster grunts, wild hysterical shrieks, insane chaotic riffing, most songs clocking in at under two minutes, many of those under one, short sharp jagged blasts of grinding fury, with some songs super well produced and heavy as fuck, others blown out almost Japanoise sounding boombox blur, a handful of crusty D-beat pounding, super varied, but super cohesive, heavy as hell, should totally hit the spot for punk rockers and metalheads alike, as long as you like it ultra heavy, ultra sick and blazing fast. The biggest surprise for us, is probably the 51 second long Mortalized track, "Nailing Descartes To The Wall", which just might be the catchiest minute of grind we've ever heard. Similar to how Jon Chang's new bands incorporate eighties metal and crazy power metal hooks into impossible complex grind, Mortalized sound a little like Iron Maiden on 78, or maybe some super catchy 3 minute pop single spun as fast as it will go, the guitars raging and soaring, the hooks undeniable, even some leads, but that main melody has been stuck in our head nonstop. The only solution seems to be listening to that track over and over again. Which we're still doing. And it does seem to be working. We just. Can't. Ever. Stop.
Packaged in cool fold out punk rock sleeve style with each band getting their own little square for artwork and liner notes.
MPEG Stream: MORTALIZED "Nailing Descartes To The Wall"
MPEG Stream: BUTCHER ABC "Crime Against Humanity"
MPEG Stream: INSECT WARFARE "Death Gate"
MPEG Stream: UNHOLY GRAVE "Marionette"

V/A Grind Bastards 3 (Grind Freaks) cd 14.98
With a title like Grind Bastards, you can safely assume that this comp is indeed directly targeted at you, the grind bastards. And we know there are some serious grind bastards among the aQ faithful. Anyone who has gone nuts in the past for Agoraphobic Nosebleed, or Pig Destroyer, or Discordance Axis, or Last Days Of Humanity, we could go on and on and on, so yeah, dig a little deeper and discover a whole world of grind going on UNDER the underground. Grind Bastards collects some of the best Japanese grind from mostly bands you've never heard of, but NEED to.
Heavy, buzzing, blasting, frenzied, frenetic, pummeling, crushing, a dizzying swirl of metal riffage, furious blast beats, grunted cookie monster vocals, inhuman blackened shrieks, hooks all over the place, and some of the heaviest catchiest under a minute shit you'll ever hear.
Little Bastards, Magnicide, Mortalized, Butcher ABC, Cortecuellos, Brob, Mangirl, Fortitude, Bleeding Humanity, D.I.E., Kutsujoku, Deadly Spawn, Zagio Evha Dilegj and of course Unholy Grave, whose label Grind Freaks released this (and who also run the amazing all black metal and grind and doom record store Grave in Japan). Dense and dizzyingly complex, next level heaviness for sure, fast and crusty enough for punk rockers, riffy and brutal enough for metalheads, and definitely a rad grind primer for the newbies.
BTW: We also have a few copies of Grind Bastards 2, which besides totally ruling as well, just so happens to feature one of our favorite grind jams ever, a 51 second grindpop gem by Mortalized (who have 2 songs here) covering pop punkers Propaghandi.
MPEG Stream: LITTLE BASTARDS "Lie, Deceive, Steal"
MPEG Stream: MAGNICIDE "Misery Of An Existence"
MPEG Stream: MORTALIZED "Funeral Grind"
MPEG Stream: CORTECUELLOS "Don't Call Japanese Hardcore Japcore"
MPEG Stream: MANGIRL "Ghoul Gurumand"
MPEG Stream: UNHOLY GRAVE "Cruel Terror"

V/A Grind Bastards 4 (Grind Freaks) cd 14.98
Okay grind bastards, time for round 4, another awesome collection of some of the best grind that Japan, and the rest of the world, has to offer. But like on past installments, this is not the grind you know and love, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Last Days Of Humanity, Discordance Axis, Hayaino Daisuki, Brutal Truth, Pig Destroyer, Nasum, that's all mainstream by comparison, this is the grind underground, some names you might know, you might even have records by Unholy Grave, whose label Grind Freaks is responsible for this mayhem, or Total Fucking Destruction, and then there's a bunch of bands you probably only know from past installments of Grind Bastards like Mortalized, Fortitude, Little Bastards, and in addition this time around a there's whole new crop of bands we'd never heard 'til now: Vulgaroyal Bloodhill, Zomba Green, Disgunder, Diborce, Ada Max, Black Ganion, and more more more.
This isn't really for dabblers though, this is sort of the grind version of grim, kvlt, true, the sounds here insane and ultra aggressive, over the top, a relentless assault on the senses, a crushing barrage of grinding buzzsaw riffage, blasting hyperspeed drumming, crazed vocals that yelp, howl, grunt, screech, the songs ultra proggy, a million parts and tempos crammed into the space of a minute or two, the sounds vary from blasts of blacknoise, to groovy almost classic metal, to white hot blasts of old school grind, to twisted effects drenched grinding avant metal freakouts, to galloping fastcore, to helping almost Melt-Banana sounding hypergrind, to epic war grind, to some almost poppy grind, some seriously gurgling goregrind, a few tracks get into 3 and 4 even 5 minutes, while others blow by in seconds, furious and frenzied and frantic and fantastically fucked up, this is some of the raddest, heaviest, most brutal and inventive grind you'll hear, anyone into fast and heavy, blasting brutality, this will kick your ass big time, and like past volumes, this would be a pretty epic grind primer, and like those volumes, this couldn't be more recommended.
Killer packaging too, a massive fold out punk rock poster, with each band getting their own little panel of liner notes...
MPEG Stream: MORTALIZED "Hate Your World"
MPEG Stream: DISGUNDER "Ruminate / Incise"
MPEG Stream: ADA MAX "Electric Shock"
MPEG Stream: TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION "Battle Command In Future"
MPEG Stream: VULGAROYAL BLOODHILL "Quitar Las Tripas A Un Dios"
MPEG Stream: FORTITUDE "Cadaverous Faces"

V/A Grind Bastards 5 (Grind Freaks) cd 14.98
Once again, this one is for all the Grind Bastards out there, the fifth in this long running series of Japanese comps, collecting the best of (mostly) Japanese grind, released on the Grind Freaks label, run by legendary Japanese grinders Unholy Grave, who are present here, along with some other longtime faves: Mortalized, Agothocles and some others. But the best part of these comps is discovering all the weird ultra underground grind outfits you'd most likely not hear anywhere else: Red Ran Amber, Ada Max, Extreme Noise Destroyer, Hell And Hell, Easies, Fortitude, Midnight Resurrector, Naqro, Parasite and more!
Obviously, this comp is called Grind Bastards, on a label called Grind Freaks, so odds are if you made it this far you know what you're getting into, fast and furious, blasting, churning, chugging, GRINDing heaviness, frenzied beats, insane riffing, howled and screeched vox, total metallic chaos, blurry punk mayhem, short sharp blasts of super complex, downtuned intricate metallic grind. We're digging Red Ran Amber, who if all was fair would be getting the same love as say Wormrot, Pig Destroyer or any of the other grind outfits on Relapse, Mortalized offer up another minute long epic, further convincing us that they might have the potential to be our favorite grinders if they only had more material out and it was a lot easier to track down, Extreme Noise Destroyer offer up some sort of distortion drenched bit of acoustic guitar weirdness before launching into some serious downtuned devastation, the Easies spit out blasts of super blown out and in-the-red chaos, Brob offer up some seriously old school powerviolence fastcore grind, their sound thick and caustic, Parasite are almost straight up classic eighties metal, complete with super melodic harmonized guitar leads, while Naqro might be a new favorite, their super raw lo-fi sound impossibly dense and heavy, their sound swinging wildly from frantic grind to swinging almost groovy metallic churn, and Midnight Resurrector kick out the straight up hip hop, not sure if they're normally a grind band or they just have some grind cred (they do infuse their sound with some fat fuzzy bass, and some Hawd Gangstah style bellowed rapping). Already can't wait for volume six! Comes in a cool fold out punk rock poster style sleeve.
MPEG Stream: RED RAN AMBER "Demitri"
MPEG Stream: ADA MAX "Untitled"
MPEG Stream: MORTALIZED "Asino Wa Ruia Itu"
MPEG Stream: EXTREME NOISE DESTROYER "Intro"
MPEG Stream: LITTLE BASTARDS "Last Ride"
MPEG Stream: BROB "SGR"

V/A Grind Madness At The BBC (Earache) 3cd 15.98
What really needs to be said about this collection? Vintage Peel Sessions (songs recorded live in the BBC studios to later be broadcast live on John Peel's legendary radio show) by some of the most legendary, and influential grind bands EVER. As well as some not exactly grind bands, and some rad obscure (to many) lesser knowns. C'mon, Napalm Death, Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Godflesh, Extreme Noise Terror, Heresy, Unseen Terror, Intense Degree... the names alone should have most heavy music freeks frothing at the mouth, granted much of this stuff has been available before, but much of it has NOT. And for $16!!??
The first three Napalm tracks here: "The Kill", "Prison Without Walls" and "Dead" are quite literally, the most perfect 57 seconds in extreme music history. We first heard those tracks on a John Zorn radio show, and immediately set out to track them down, and that whole Napalm Peel Session totally trumps (to these ears) anything else they've ever done, to this day, so furious and frantic, the recording so hot and in-the-red, seriously still possibly the most extreme sounding music we've heard. The Napalm tracks here include Peel Sessions from '87, '88 and '90. And if you don't have any or all of 'em, they're worth the price of admission alone. Then there's Extreme Noise Terror, whose sound is way more crusty and punk, bordering on grind, but still totally and fantastically punk rock. The Carcass sessions were definitely available at some point, but these too, if you've yet to hear them, they will SLAY you, crushing and heavily reverbed, fierce and totally sloppy, but so goddamn good. And Bolt Thrower, no one can fuck with Bolt Thrower, and they totally shine on their Peel Session, thrashing and crusty and blown out and totally untouchable. Godflesh pops up for a few songs too, and of course those rule too, especially the Peel version of "Like Rats" which somehow sounds even meaner and heavier.
And then there's the more obscure stuff, 38 tracks of wild, thrashing grinding metallic punk crust from Intense Degree, Unseen Terror, and Heresy, all of which are pretty excellent, ID kick out some fierce skate punk slop, UT are a downtuned grunting blast beat terror, and Heresy start out all goofy and poppy with "Flowers (In Concrete)" before launching into a flurry of off kilter chaotic grind.
Killer slipcovered packaging with tons of vintage photos, liner notes, and a lengthy interview with Mick Harris (Napalm Death / Extreme Noise Terror / Unseen Terror)...
MPEG Stream: NAPALM DEATH "The Kill"
MPEG Stream: NAPALM DEATH "Prison Without Walls"
MPEG Stream: NAPALM DEATH "Dead"
MPEG Stream: GODFLESH "Like Rats"
MPEG Stream: UNSEEN TERROR "Incompatible"
MPEG Stream: UNSEEN TERROR "Burned Beyond Recognition"
MPEG Stream: HERESY "Flowers (In Concrete)"
MPEG Stream: HERESY "Belief"
MPEG Stream: INTENSE DEGREE "Hangin' On"
MPEG Stream: INTENSE DEGREE "Vagrants"

V/A GRLZ, Women Ahead Of Their Time (Crippled Dick) cd 16.98
If there's something you haven't been getting enough of lately, it's angular female-fronted post-punk from the late 70s/early 80s! If you don't already own the Slits b-side track cover of "Heard It Through The Grapevine", get this cd now! It could be the only reason to buy this cd, except there are other tracks on here that are just as fist poundingly angularishly toe tappingly awesome -- if not MORESO!!
Maximum Joy's "Stretch", Dorothy's "Softness", Delta 5's "Mind Your Own Business", Jajaja's Blondie-esque vocals over trainwreckish spazzmatic bass, ahh!! I'm freaking out. The only weak point might be the jazzy Neneh Cherryesque tone of Rip, Rig and Panic.
So note bene: this is by all means NOT "the current trend" in musical consumerism, HOWEVER, it's an incredibly concise and concentrated comp consisting of totally mind-boggling music. And nevermind the politics, dudes. It's fucking great music!!
MPEG Stream: JAJAJA "Katz Rap"
MPEG Stream: SLITS "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"

V/A Groove Club Vol. 1: La Confiserie Magique (Lion Productions / Get On Down) cd 16.98
Any pop lover knows that when it comes to suave and sassy pop perfection, you can't beat France in the '60s and early '70s. With this collection the focus is put on the Parisian pop-psych scene, and what's really refreshing about this compilation is that it's not just filled with the usual suspects. So many names we weren't familiar with giving us such irresistible gems, and enough fuzz and weird elements on lots of the tracks to keep things interesting and not just saccharine sweet. Infusing elements of West Coast pop, the mod scene, and funked out burners, these are sounds that are just pretty impossible not to get swept up by. Filled with decadence and charm from folks like Cristal, Elisa, Les Hamsters (best name ever?!), Les Rover, Pax Quartet, and tons more.
No need to stress about what to throw on the next time you have people over for a little party, as all you will have to do is blast this, and watch as feet start tapping, and drinks start spilling, and everyone starts smiling!
MPEG Stream: LE COEUR "Bye, Bye City"
MPEG Stream: CRISTAL "Les Yeux Fermes (Eyes Closed)"
MPEG Stream: LES PARISIENNES "Un Rayon De Soleil Est Entre Dans Mon Lit (A Ray Of Sun Is Here In My Bed)"

V/A Groove Club Vol. 1: La Confiserie Magique (Lion Productions / Martyrs Of Pop) 2lp 17.98
Now here on swank vinyl too!
Any pop lover knows that when it comes to suave and sassy pop perfection, you can't beat France in the '60s and early '70s. With this collection the focus is put on the Parisian pop-psych scene, and what's really refreshing about this compilation is that it's not just filled with the usual suspects. So many names we weren't familiar with giving us such irresistible gems, and enough fuzz and weird elements on lots of the tracks to keep things interesting and not just saccharine sweet. Infusing elements of West Coast pop, the mod scene, and funked out burners, these are sounds that are just pretty impossible not to get swept up by. Filled with decadence and charm from folks like Cristal, Elisa, Les Hamsters (best name ever?!), Les Rover, Pax Quartet, and tons more.
No need to stress about what to throw on the next time you have people over for a little party, as all you will have to do is blast this, and watch as feet start tapping, and drinks start spilling, and everyone starts smiling!
MPEG Stream: LE COEUR "Bye, Bye City"
MPEG Stream: CRISTAL "Les Yeux Fermes (Eyes Closed)"
MPEG Stream: LES PARISIENNES "Un Rayon De Soleil Est Entre Dans Mon Lit (A Ray Of Sun Is Here In My Bed)"

V/A Groove Club Vol. 2: Cambodia Rock Spectacular! (Lion Productions / Get On Down) 2lp 17.98
Can there ever really be enough Cambodian Rock?
Don't answer that yet. Because while this double lp compilation does feature the stars of the genre featured on other Cambodian rock comps: Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, and Pan Ron, it also has plenty of others including the heavy psych groove of the Thra Kha Band who have two amazing tracks that are totally worth the price of admission. Plus it's a double vinyl gatefold with copious liner notes about the amazing music and tragic legacy of many of the music's star figures. Rarely does music seem so truly hauntological. Sunny, fun, and grooving on the surface, but layered over tragic notions of the political brutality that would come later. We've covered that history in plenty of previous reviews, so we won't go down that rabbit hole here, but this is a worthy selection of psych rock and garage gems, that didn't immediately sound like the others. So if you're new to Cambodian rock from the sixties and seventies, or would like a really well put together compilation on vinyl, now's your chance!

V/A Group Flex II: Son Of Flex (Castle Face) 6xflexi 7" 29.00
We made the last Group Flex flexi-disc book thing Record Of The Week back in 2011, and for good reason, visually and design wise it was about the coolest thing we'd ever seen, a cool little book, where each page was a fricking record, and you just put the whole book down on the turntable and let it spin! Besides how goddamn cool it was as an object, it also featured exclusive tracks from some of our favorite outfits: Thee Oh Sees, Blasted Canyons, Fresh & Onlys, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin.
So a few months back we got word from Oh Sees mainman / Castleface head honcho John Dwyer that there was another installment of Group Flex brewing, and it was gonna be even better than the first. And true to his word, when it showed up, we were sorta blown away. This time around, the book is entirely transparent, with crazy, surreal, psychedelic artwork on the various pages, so when the book is closed, the multiple pages, and strange shapes and creatures, form a sort of 3D visual, little Strawberry men with guns, weird demons holding maces, a creepy scribbly purple mountain, tree-cats, bloody brick walls, snake headed skull doctors all woven into a dizzying tableau that sort of reflects the warped music within. Once again, plenty of faves: Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, The Mallard, Sic Alps, White Fence, Mikal Cronin, The Fresh & Onlys, Kelly Stoltz, Blasted Canyons, as well as a few surprises: Burnt Ones, Warm Soda, Running. And like the first installment, anyone into ANY of these groups is basically gonna need this. Warm Soda might be the biggest surprise of the bunch, their track "Lost For Words" definitely has us hankering for more, a super catchy lo-fi power pop, that sounds like some strange mix of Guided By Voices and the Shoes. Thee Oh Sees deliver a cool broody, fuzzed out garage pop dirge, spare and swaggery. Ty Segall's "Fucked Up Motherfucker" is a super distorted blast of howl and pound laced with plenty of horns and sax bleat, while Mikal Cronin's "King" is all druggy, droned out organ, and drifting acoustic guitar strum, washed out and gloriously woozy.
The Mallard are all lo-fi jangle and crunch, while Running prove themselves to be another new band to look out for, one that most definitely fits in with the rest of the Castle Face crew, sounding like The Oh Sees' snotty little siblings. The Fresh & Onlys drift through some laid back, softly psychedelic classic pop, Kelly Stoltz's "Double Exposure" sounds like some lost slab of seventies/eighties new wave power pop, and White Fence gets even further out, super spaced out, tripped out, space pop weirdness, lots of FX and crumbling distortion, echo drenched vox, and warped production, and somehow in there, some crazy catchy melodies.
Former Record Of The Weekers Blasted Canyons kick out the jams on a short sharp burst of warm, blown out fuzz drenched jangle pop, before Sic Alps do the same, infusing the same sort of garage-y pound, with some expansive psychedelic classic pop-isms, before Burnt Ones finish things off with a super trippy chunk of processed guitar chug and swirling psych pop, crazy catchy, and like Warm Soda, has us wanting more more more!
As you might imagine, CRAZY LIMITED! The whole thing comes in a thick, screen printed PVC sleeve, also clear, adding to the 3D-ness, includes a download code for all the tracks, as well as instructions for playing and care of your Son Of Flex flexi-disc book. Each one unique, everyone slightly different. So cool. And so absolutely recommended.
MPEG Stream: WARM SODA "Lost For Words"
MPEG Stream: THEE OH SEES "Always Flying"
MPEG Stream: TY SEGALL "Fucked Up Motherfucker"
MPEG Stream: MIKAL CRONIN "King"
MPEG Stream: BURNT ONES "Strawberry Tomb"

V/A Guilt By Association (Engine Room) cd 15.98
It's inevitable! Every few years someone gets a wild'n'craaazy idea for one of these kinds of guilty pleasures compilations. Non-commercial artists covering commercial artists how fun/sick/hilarious is that?! Very. As per the time honored tradition there's some complete song renovations (Banhart's interpretation of Oasis' "Don't Look Back In Anger"), genre switcheroos (Luna gives Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" the lounge croon treatment, Superchunk totally unsouls and unsexes the Destiny's Child hit "Say My Name"), and all-out silliness (Petra Haden's girlish a cappella version of Journey "Don't Stop Believin'") and Mike Watt's strange, loose bowelled and toothless take on Blue Oyster Cult's "Burnin' For You"). A totally mixed bag of coverers and coverees, other artists doing the covering include Will Oldham, Mark Mulcahy, The Concretes, Jim O'Rourke, Money Mark, Mooney Suzuki, and Geoff Farina. Other artists being covered include Shania Twain, Spice Girls, Mariah Carey, Take That, Fall Out Boy, Love Unlimited Orchestra, Cher, Eddie Money, and System Of A Down. Fun stuff.
MPEG Stream: SUPERCHUNK "Say My Name"
MPEG Stream: BANHART, DEVENDRA "Don't Look Back In Anger"
MPEG Stream: WATT, MIKE "Burnin' For You"

V/A Guitar Mood 2 (INST) lp 10.98

V/A Guitar Songs: Tanzania, Zaire, and Zambia (Original Music) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"More enchanting acoustic-guitar recordings by both adults and children. The recordings by children include blind school students playing home made instruments, and a hell-for-leather cut for high pitched vocals and 'tomato-can banjo'" - John Storm Roberts / Original Music.

V/A Guitar Unlimited (Alchemy) cd 21.00
This is the first in Alchemy's "Guitar" compilations and features tracks by Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, ROVO), Jojo Hiroshige (Hijokaidan), Sisho, and Kyoichi Tokuyama (Auschwitz).

V/A Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) Vol. 2 (Sublime Frequencies) 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 complete about face for volume 2 in the Folk And Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) series of discs. Remember that first one? The manic weirdness was unlike anything we'd heard, nor anything we've heard since. So it's striking that volume 2 is a disc we can at least put in terms we know. What's perhaps most ironic is that the recordings on Guitars Of The Golden Triangle come from a territory of Burma that, while roughly the size of New York State, has been almost completely un-explored by outsiders (Burmese or otherwise). The Golden Triangle (its proper name is the Shan State of Burma) is little known outside its own country, but it is the territory of smugglers, seperatist rebels and some extraordinary opium production. Since it is forbidden for foreigners to visit the Shan State, it's no surprise that its flourishing cottage industry of a music scene would be completely unknown to outsiders. How Mr. Bishop got these tracks is anyone's guess, but as we've seen before the Sublime Frequencies folks have their ways with picking up ripe fruit that others walk straight past. The 21 tracks here, recorded during the early seventies, range between heavy fuzzed out psych -- like something much more likely to have come out in the late sixties -- to sugary crooning pop -- much more akin to its decade. Little is known of most of the artists: for instance the most well represented here -- Saing Saing Maw -- is only known to have been a truck driver originally (shades of Elvis anyone?) and after striking his music career apparently returned to truck driving.
MPEG Stream: SAING SAING MAW "Than Shin Ley Ye Khan"
MPEG Stream: LASHIO THEIN AUNG "You Got What You Got"

V/A GUMMO original soundtrack (London) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Soundtrack to Harmony "Kids" Korine's controversial film "Gummo", featuring much in the way of underground black/noise/death/doom metal sounds, some of them previously unreleased. Some names: Spazz, Absu, Bathory, Burzum, Eyehategod, Brujeria, Sleep, Destroy All Monsters, Namanax and more. Oh yeah, AQ-pal and CMJ metal scribe Ian Christe's Dark Noerd (black metal breakbeat band) appears, and Ian's smart musical aesthetic basically sets the tone for the whole collection. Now the question is, will "Gummo" do for any of these bands what "Kids" did for the Folk Implosion?

V/A Hacienda Classics (Virgin) 3cd 36.00
Thanks in part to the movie "24 Hour Party People" there's been quite a revival in the last few years in curisoity about and reflections of the Manchester party/music scene of the late '80s/'90s. The center of all this dancing, drugging, and going on and on till the break of dawn was none other then the Nightculb Hacienda founded by New Order's Peter Hook. It was within the Hacienda's walls that much of the debauchery, indulgence, and fun/wasted times went down. This 3-disc box set put together by Hook himself compiles the sounds that were blaring out the speakers during its heyday. 808 State, Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, Jaydee, Eric B & Rakim, Candi Staton and of course New Order are just some the groups found on this here collection. For those of you who have been craving th sights and sounds and tastes more tastes of that wonderfully wicked Manchester club-scene then this is a party in a box for you. Sorry no purple pills included.
MPEG Stream: NEW ORDER "Ruined In A Day"
MPEG Stream: 808 STATE "Pacific State"
MPEG Stream: ERIC B. & RAKIM "Juice (instrumental)"

V/A Halana #4 magazine+cd 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

V/A Halana v.1,n.3 magazine+cd 7.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Worthwhile reading in a nicely designed format. Amiri Barka, John Fahey, David Grubbs, Bernhard Gunter, Alan Licht, Charlemagne Palestine, Motoharu Yoshizawa. CD includes tracks by all these guys. One of our favorite magazines.

V/A Hall Of Mirrors (Emperor Jones) 2cd 13.98
Anyone, ANYONE, who likes their psych all spaced-out and sludgy, with guitars and (especially) effects in full, uh, effect will definitely want to wash their earholes with this excellent new space-rock comp. Compiler Mason Jones (whom you might know as the ex-guitarist of SubArachnoid Space, currently in project called Numinous) knows his stuff and has pulled together tracks from a stellar international cast of rockers who like to freak-out, drone-on, and/or toke-up. Here's who's here: Kinski, Circle, Gravitar, Overhang Party, Tarantula Hawk, Up-Tight, Vocokesh, DMBQ, Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, Yeti, ST-37, Escapade, Rubble, Abunai!, SubArachnoid Space, Numinous, Farflung, Primordial Undermind, Fuzzhead, Speaker/Cranker, and Transpacific! Whew. As you can see, with Mason in charge, of course the Japanese contingent is well-represented.
The tracks on here are mostly live recordings, and, as far as we can tell, all otherwise unreleased (with the exception of the Tarantula Hawk one, which is an edit from their now-out-of-print Live At KFJC cd-r). Pretty much a killer comp, ranging as it does from the groove of Circle to the grind of Gravitar, with some bands doin' stuff closer to stoner rawk, others more on the bliss-drone side of things. Now, I might have tried to put the more rockin' cuts towards the front end of the discs, to avoid disturbing the slumber of those of us who like to doze off listening to the more blissful stuff (or maybe left off one or two cuts) but that's just me. Overall, Hall Of Mirrors is fully droned, stoned, and ET-phoned. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: KINSKI "Teen Center"
MPEG Stream: OVERHANG PARTY "Le Fantome De La Liberte (edit)"

V/A Halleluwah: Festival Of Enthused Arts - Sept. 1-2, 2006 Disjecta, Portland (Yeti) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Managed to get another handful of these super limited lps, so act fast:
Super limited vinyl document of the Halleluwah Festival Of Enthused Arts that took place in September 1-2 of this year curated by the same folks who do the killer yeti magazine.
Two sides, one quiet, one loud, a bunch of instantly recognizable names, as well as a bunch of unknowns (at least to us) all of it pretty dang amazing, so much so that we were kicking ourselves for missing the festival.
The quiet side features folk legend Michael Hurley, folk legend Vashti Bunyan and Tara Jane O'Neil, as well as White Rainbow, Holysons and Alela Diane. The sound leans mostly toward subtle twang, simple strum, and dreamlike croon, but there are some moments of blissy foggy ambient murmur and some fuzzy murky psychedelic blues.
The loud side features Deerhoof, Sir Richard Bishop and Valet (whose cd-r we raved about a few lists back) as well as three weirdly named ensembles: Nudity, Romancing and Yacht. The loud side veers all over the place, from weird psychrock tribal freakouts to blown out angular indie rock buzz to damaged minimal punk rock bounce to fuzzy psychedelic heavy riffed rock jams.
The packaging is just as impressive, a thick, plain white sleeve through which are visible strange looking inserts, each printed on super thick semi transparent cloudy plastic, the loud side is red on white with an illustration by Kevin Arrow, the quiet side is white on black, and features an amazing illustration by Unica Zurn, the partner of Hans Bellmer! Wow!!

V/A Hallucinations: Psychedelic Pop Nuggets From the WEA Vaults (Rhino) cd 34.00

V/A Hand/Eye (Hand/Eye) 2cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This isn't brand new, but we just managed to get a bunch, and if this isn't just about the perfect compilation for you free-folk, psychedelic, new weird America fans we don't know what is. The track listing should be enough to convince you: Acid Mothers Temple, Kemialliset Ystavat, Amps For Christ, Greg Weeks, Pelt, Martyn Bates, Currituck County, Fursaxa, Dead Raven Choir, Alasdair Roberts, Stone Breath, the Iditarod, Mason Jones, and more!m
MPEG Stream: AMPS FOR CHRIST "False Night On The Road"
MPEG Stream: GREG WEEKS "Night Must Fall"
MPEG Stream: ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE "Le Satyre"

V/A Hanged Man Vol. 1 (Hanged Man) cassette 4.98
This is the debut release from a new Seattle label, specializing in their own murky darkly psychedelic brand of doom / folk / drone / noise, a sampler of various artists on the label as well as likeminded noisemakers from the area, with a few familiar names (Megabats, Demian Johnston and Inh Halentropy), but way more unfamiliar ones (Kristian Garrard, Karnak Temples, Josh Medina, Them,There, Nightjar, Sokai Stiljed, Thunder:Grey:Pilgrim), all of them contributing this sprawling chunk of droning blackness, strange industrial ambience and looped psychedelic mesmer, all the sonically disparate tracks woven into a collection that works almost as well as an album proper. The familiar names first: abstract avant atmospheric (sort of) black metal weirdo Inh Halentropy lays down some John Carpenter style seventies soundtrack wooziness, all muddy and murky, programmed beats and sci-fi swirl over brooding rumbles, and theremin-like high end melodies, a gorgeous creepily atmospheric chunk of lo-fi faux soundtrackery, while Megabats offer up dense swirls of kosmische synth drift, and glimmering ambient dreamdrug haze, all super blissed out and trippy, and noisenik Demian Johnston delivers some blunted blurred soft-noise, all cavernous and industrial, thick swaths of blurred crumble and greyed out crunch, all smeared into slowly undulating blackened dronemusic. The rest of the tape follows suit, super abstract creaking and crumbling mutates into gauzy almost Pop Ambient loopscaping, thick whirring melodies emerge from slow churning sheets of whirring synths and echoe-y shimmer, delicate acoustic guitars drift amidst sitar like buzz, plaintive vocal harmonies and warm lustrous chordal swells, bleak black rumbles roil ominously through clouds of ominous low end thrum, metallic ragas seem to slowly melt into oozing blackened dronefolk, and finally wild tangles of clipped vocals and shards of melody are stretched out, then layered and looped into a druggy dizzy psych-out. Killer stuff for sure, and odds are pretty dang limited as well...

V/A Harafin So - Bollywood Inspired Film Music From Hausa Nigeria (Little Axe / Mississippi) cd 14.98
When we think of Bollywood, our minds instantly go to the golden era of Indian film music from the '60s and '70s, with classical sitars and tampuras set to thriller and noir themes and exotic pop, often forgetting that Bollywood has of course never stopped making films, and the film music has continually changed with the times. Even with the discovery of other flourishing filmmaking centers such as Lollywood in Pakistan and the Tamil-speaking Kollywood of South India bringing in the influences of synthesizers and eighties pop, we still weren't prepared for the amazing modern sounds of another fertile film and soundtrack music scene, this time located a continent away in Kano, the capital city of Nigeria - thus their thriving movie industry is called Kannywood. This compilation, brought to us by the folks at Sahel Sounds and Mississippi Records who have previously brought us those Music From Saharan Cellphone comps, is a great introduction to the sounds of popular film music made by the dominant Hausa culture of Nigeria from the past few years.
Bollywood music became more popular outside of India as the industry moved from films to television and the music began to be heard on the radio. While the Muslim culture of the Hausa people frowned on Hindi cinema, they began to see the advantages of taking the medium of music and film and crafting their own cultural take on the genre, often lifting the music and plotlines wholesale into their own language and cultural tropes. The music, in the beginning was played with traditional instruments, but the invention of the Yamaha PSR keyboard and the switch from video to digital has increased production into thousands of movies and songs of strangely charming and fluorescent dance pop.
For anyone who loved the strange hybrid of new wave dance pop of that Shangaan Shake compilation, or the Saharan Cellphone comps, this compilation carries the same global hybrid of tradition and new technology with most of the music utilizing digital synthesizers and auto-tuned vocals (mostly to imitate the high pitch of Indian Bollywood singers) that emphasizes the exotic side of global pop but yet remains so insanely catchy and infectious.
MPEG Stream: FATI NIGER "Girma Girma"
MPEG Stream: SANI DANJA "Muna Cikin Sanyi"
MPEG Stream: KARAMIN LILISCO "Fashion"

V/A Harafin So - Bollywood Inspired Film Music From Hausa Nigeria (Little Axe / Mississippi) lp 16.98
When we think of Bollywood, our minds instantly go to the golden era of Indian film music from the '60s and '70s, with classical sitars and tampuras set to thriller and noir themes and exotic pop, often forgetting that Bollywood has of course never stopped making films, and the film music has continually changed with the times. Even with the discovery of other flourishing filmmaking centers such as Lollywood in Pakistan and the Tamil-speaking Kollywood of South India bringing in the influences of synthesizers and eighties pop, we still weren't prepared for the amazing modern sounds of another fertile film and soundtrack music scene, this time located a continent away in Kano, the capital city of Nigeria - thus their thriving movie industry is called Kannywood. This compilation, brought to us by the folks at Sahel Sounds and Mississippi Records who have previously brought us those Music From Saharan Cellphone comps, is a great introduction to the sounds of popular film music made by the dominant Hausa culture of Nigeria from the past few years.
Bollywood music became more popular outside of India as the industry moved from films to television and the music began to be heard on the radio. While the Muslim culture of the Hausa people frowned on Hindi cinema, they began to see the advantages of taking the medium of music and film and crafting their own cultural take on the genre, often lifting the music and plotlines wholesale into their own language and cultural tropes. The music, in the beginning was played with traditional instruments, but the invention of the Yamaha PSR keyboard and the switch from video to digital has increased production into thousands of movies and songs of strangely charming and fluorescent dance pop.
For anyone who loved the strange hybrid of new wave dance pop of that Shangaan Shake compilation, or the Saharan Cellphone comps, this compilation carries the same global hybrid of tradition and new technology with most of the music utilizing digital synthesizers and auto-tuned vocals (mostly to imitate the high pitch of Indian Bollywood singers) that emphasizes the exotic side of global pop but yet remains so insanely catchy and infectious.
MPEG Stream: FATI NIGER "Girma Girma"
MPEG Stream: SANI DANJA "Muna Cikin Sanyi"
MPEG Stream: KARAMIN LILISCO "Fashion"

V/A Hard-Headed Woman: A Celebration Of Wanda Jackson (Bloodshot) cd 13.98
Who kicks ass? The true rockin' country maverick Wanda Jackson, that's who!!! And what could be a more fitting tribute than to assemble 21 covers of her songs performed by a crowd of fiery ladies (and some fellers too) cut from the same cloth? The compilation kicks off with a visit from Canada's country sweetheart Ms Carolyn Mark dishin' out a suitably rousing version of one of Jackson's trademark songs "Hot Dog, That Made Him Mad", and the good times just keep on rollin' from there. Also dropping by to tip their hat are many familiar faces from the past and present Bloodshot Records stable as well as some new faces: Neko Case (delivering a rollicking rendition of "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" with Jon Rauhouse and Joey Burns), Robbie Fulks, Trailer Bride (who completely transform one of Jackson's other musical calling cards "Fujiyama Mama" into a druggy, delirious dirge), Kelly Hogan (aah, as dreamy as ever!), Rosie Flores, Wayne Hancock, Laura Cantrell, Bottle Rockets with Sheri Hurst, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter, Nora O'Connor, Candye Kane, Anna Fermin & The Trigger Gospel, Kristi Rose, The Cornell Hurd Band, Jane Baxter Miller, Kim Lenz, Asylum Street Spankers, Gina Lee & The Brisket Boys, Jesse Dayton, and The Ranch Girls & The Ragtime Wranglers (from the Netherlands). Another fine compilation from the Bloodshot ranch.
MPEG Stream: MARK, CAROLYN "Hot Dog, That Made Him Mad"
MPEG Stream: TRAILER BRIDE "Fujiyama Mama"

V/A Harder Shade Of Black (Pressure Sounds) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: AUGUSTUS PABLO "One Thousand Swords"
MPEG Stream: SANTIC ALL STARS "Hell Boat"
MPEG Stream: HORACE ANDY "Problems"
MPEG Stream: I ROY "Yamaha Ride"

V/A Harder Shade Of Black (Pressure Sounds) lp 14.98

V/A Harmika Yab-Yum: Folk Sounds From Nepal (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now maybe you have (or like some of us, maybe you haven't) had enough of the South East Asian pop, folk, field recordings from Sublime Frequencies. Courtesy of Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins cohort and curator of the Leaf Music Drunks Distant Drums cd) Harmika Yab-Yum takes us on an audio journey through underserved territory. Nestled, nay sandwiched between the geographical and cultural giants of China and India, Nepal's greatest fame lies in its hosting the tallest mountain on our fair planet. It's also the only "official Hindu state in the world" according to the CIA Factbook. On Harmika Yab-Yum Millis elegantly weaves together recordings he made (apparently in 1996) of radio broadcasts, street musicians, religious cermonies, and sermons. About half of the tracks in fact are from radio, though no disc jockey banter is included, which -- whether intentional or not -- gives the recordings an even more of a feel of being totally detached from the influence of the occidental world. By and large the greatest influence on the music here is from India. Tabla percussion, flutes, pump organs, sitars, violins and drones, drones, drones make up the bulk of the instrumentation and to the untrained ear, certainly sound like the dulcet tones of Indian music. The disc starts off with a bang with a track taken from the radio which sounds like feral chanting by some crazed lunatic accompanied by drumming. This is followed by an abrupt segue into a street sermon broadcast over a distant sounding bullhorn, flutes and people talking can be heard over the sermon. For the larger part, such abrupt transitions are not the norm on Harmika Yab-Yum and the grainy, modulating songs recorded off of the airwaves blend nicely with the gritty sounds of daily life on the streets from the clanging bells of a pony train passing by to, chanting monks on Krishna day, to a snake charmer with double reed to the crashing of bands, miscellaneous percussion and other noises for a wedding procession. Very nice.
MPEG Stream: "Radio Nepal 1 / Street Sermon"
MPEG Stream: "Pony Train / Radio Nepal 3"
MPEG Stream: "Radio Nepal 7"

V/A Harmonia Family Album (Harmonia) 2lp 36.00

V/A Harmony of the Spheres (Drunken Fish) 2cd 17.98
From Revolver Distribution's blurb: "Originally released by Drunken Fish in November of 1996 as a specially designed triple-LP boxset produced in an edition of 3,000 (which quickly sold out its one and only pressing and has remained unavailable since). Featured are six exclusive, extended tracks (none of which is less than eighteen minutes in length) from this generation's spacerock elite: Bardo Pond, Flying Saucer Attack, Jessamine, Roy Montgomery, Loren Mazzacane-Connors and the Charalambides. Includes a lovely eight-panel foldout booklet. Standup for spacerock, because artrock is dead."

V/A Harpsichord 2000 (9:PM - Indigo) cd 14.98
Who doesn't get a wee bit wistful at the stringy, tinkly sound of the harpsichord? Well, here's 23 songs graced by the presence of the lovely harpsichord. The music of artists such as StereoTotal and Momus welcomes this instrument warmly into its fold. And yes, ever the fellow to throw in a witty bonus, Momus includes his ode to Jeff Koons. Other artists include The Make-Up, The Secret Goldfish, and Cinerama. Decidedly baroque, lounge-y, playful, and fun.

V/A Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4 (Revenant) 2lp 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Revenant has once again done a swank job of a reissue. Originally only available on double CD, Revenant has now just reissued the collection in a tri-fold double LP set. Smithsonian Folkways' influential "Anthology of American Folk Music" was a massive three volume set compiled by the eccentric artist and archivist Harry Smith. Originally released in 1952 and reissued on CD in 1997, it stands as a pioneering look into the earliest recordings of awe-inspiring folk music of the '20s and '30s. This fourth volume of the series had been collected around the same time, but had never been released until 2000. Like the CD version, this double LP set is lavishly packaged. It includes a 20 page booklet, a poster and the LPs come pressed on clear vinyl. Like the original Folkways Anthology, this smaller collection features the work of some of our country's most important musical figures from the turn of the 20th century including Lead Belly, The Carter Family, Robert Johnson, The Monroe Brothers, Uncle Dave Macon, the Memphis Jug Band, and many more. It also features in depth narratives on Smith and his work from Greil Marcus, Ed Sanders, John Cohen, Dick Spottswood, and Fahey. Simply outstanding.
MPEG Stream: JOE WILLIAMS' WASHBOARD BLUES SINGERS "Baby Please Don't Go"
MPEG Stream: UNCLE DAVE MACON "Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train"

V/A Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4 (Revenant) 2cd + book 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Smithsonian / Folkways' influential "Anthology of American Folk Music" was a massive three volume set compiled by the eccentric artist and archivist Harry Smith. Originally released in 1952 and reissued on CD in 1997, it stands as a pioneering look into the earliest recordings of awe-inspiring folk music of the '20s and '30s. However, a fourth volume of the series had been collected around the same time, but had never been released until John Fahey's Revenant label uncovered this gem. Packaged lavishly in a 96 page hardbound book, this double CD set features the work of Lead Belly, The Carter Family, Robert Johnson, Uncle Dave Macon, the Memphis Jug Band, and many more. It also features in depth narratives on Smith and his work from Greil Marcus, Ed Sanders, John Cohen, Dick Spottswood, and Fahey. Simply outstanding.
RealAudio clip: BUKKA WHITE "Parchman Farm Blues"

V/A Hasabe (Mississippi / Change) lp 15.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT****MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT****MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Ethiopiques alert, too! Have yourself a hot sultry soul dance party this weekend, with some of the best vintage Ethio soul from the Golden era of Ethiopian music! Largely culled from the great Ethiopiques series, this vinyl compilation features crucial '70s tracks by Mahmoud Ahmed, Lemma Demissew, Tlahoun Gessesse, Sefu Yohannes, Bahta Gebre Heywet, Teshome Meteku, and Alemeyahu Eshete, all never reissued on vinyl before. All killer, no filler! What more can we say, other than this rules!
MPEG Stream: METEKU, TESHOME "Hasabe"

V/A Hava Narghile (Dionysus / Bacchus Archives) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK!! Been waiting to see more of this old fave for a long time, here they are again at last. If you don't have it, get it!! It's such a good disc, compiled by Gokhan Aya and AQ customer Jay Dobis (who kindly showed Allan around to every record shop on Istiklal street when Allan visited Istanbul last year, thanks Jay!). Here's what we said about it originally:
Similar to the [now out of print] Turkish Delights compilation is this great collection of vintage psychedelic rock music from Turkey. With 22 tracks, spanning the years 1966-1975, this collection is a great introduction to the fanatastic, long-lost Middle Eastern acid rock scene. These bands raved it up in Istanbul nighclubs, blending the Western garage-psych rock of the era with Turkish folk influences (electic fuzz saz!), bellydancing beats, and all manner of "exotic" flourishes. Of the 17 artists on here, only a few names were already known to us, mainly from that aforementioned Turkish Delights lp or as the Turkish entries on the fab Love Peace & Poetry: Asian Psychedelic Music compilation. Those would be the amazing Mogollar (two tracks), guitar hero Erkin Koray, Mavi Isiklar, and Baris Manco. And none of their tracks are duplicated between this comp and those other two [and there's no overlap with anything on the more recent Turkish Love, Peace & Poetry volume either]. Of the many cuts on here, everyone will have their own favorites, certainly there's many killer ones. Dionysus' Bacchus Archives imprint has done a colorful job with the packaging, illustrated with promo photos and 7" sleeves. And every track gets a good paragraph of information, so by listening and reading you'll become hip to the history of the whole Turkish psych happenin'. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: ERSEN "Sor Kendine"
MPEG Stream: MELIK FARUK SERDAR SAYGUN "Gurbet Acisci"
MPEG Stream: BARIS MANCO & KAYGISIZLAR "Trip (Fairground)"

V/A Havana Cuba, ca. 1957: Rhythms Ands Songs For The Orishas (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 15.98
I gave up on trying to come up with a more succinct description of these two new cds from Smithsonian Folkways of Cuban music when I discovered they have encapsulated the collections better than I ever could: "Recorded in Havana in 1957, the ritual rhythms and songs collected by Lydia Cabrera and Josefina Tarafa feature the bat‡ drums, used by practitioners of Santer’a to salute and summon the gods (orishas). The disc includes a complete cycle of bat‡ salutes to the orishas, called the orś de igbodś, as well as rhythms played during ceremonies to mark the presence of an orisha. With origins in Yoruba religion in West Africa, this disc serves as a hub of Afro-Atlantic music, with ties to related religions in New York, Miami, the Caribbean, and Brazil." As usual with S/F, you get almost as much written information as you do audio. A detailed 24 page booklet of liner notes and track annotations is a valuble accompaniment to this issue.
RealAudio clip: "Obatala / Odudua"
RealAudio clip: "Ibarabo Ago Mo Juba"

V/A He And She (Pet Records) cd 14.98

V/A He's No Good To Me Dead (Game Two) cd 10.98
This disc's compilers have enlisted five suitable bands to make sure this doom-core comp lives up to its subtitle: "74 Minutes Of Extreme Pain." Negative Reaction, Grief, Subsanity, Bongzilla, and Sour Vein all provide some lovely metallic downer dirge.

V/A Health Program (Boy Arm) cd 9.98
This just may be the best compilation ever. How's this for a concept? A bunch of electronic/noise bands make songs out of death metal drums. Just the drums. Brilliant. Maybe. Has the potential to be pretty amazing. So how does it actually fare? Pretty well surprisingly. Most of the bands don't fuck with the beats too much, just sort of do their thing around whatever their chosen blast beat happens to be. So what could have been a stupid mess becomes the weirdest, noisiest, most confounding death metal record ever. Light on the guitars, but heavy on the buzz and glitch and whir and skree and whatever chopped up, processed graaeeerrgggghhhh they could get out of their laptops. Think a death metal V/VM, or Dave Lombardo drumming for Wolf Eyes! AQ pal Lesser is on here, as is Bombadier and Panicsville, but the rest of the participants are new to us. It hardly matters though. The tracks all sort of fit together into a single, epic, demented "death metal" masterpiece.
MPEG Stream: LESSER "The System Of Pathology"
MPEG Stream: SLOPE "The Founding Of Modern Medicine"
MPEG Stream: THE RIB "The Key To Modern Surgery"

V/A Heat & Birds: Jewelled Antler Compilation #2 (Jewelled Antler) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Heat & Birds" is the second 'friends and family' compilation to emerge from the Jewelled Antler collective, offering an overview not only of the numerous activities that are constantly evolving within the collective but also of like-minded artists from across the globe. Common to Jewelled Antler sound is a magical wistfulness, which seeps through every sound within the label and draws metaphors to half-dreamt memories, impossible lands that only exist in the imagination, or the simple awe of nature. While the core members (Glenn Donaldson, Loren Chasse, Rob Reger, and Steven R. Smith) are present, they've presented themselves in a variety of unique monikers and projects: such as Hala Strana (an uncredited pseudonym for Steven R. Smith, recreating a manic Hungarian folk instrumental with his trademarked production style of layered sounds building repeated riffs up to bittersweet crescendos), Of (an enigmatic project of evocative etherialism by Loren Chasse), and The Floating Birthday Children (the duo of Donaldson and Kerry McLaughlin offering pensive folk meanderings). Other, better-known Jewelled Antler projects, The Blithe Sons & Daughters, Thuja, and Franciscan Hobbies, also make appearances.
Of the non-JA projects, "Heat & Birds" also features the Finnish avant-improv-rock bands Kemialliset Ystavat, the medieval sounding Markus, and the elusive Avarus. Also, the San Francisco band Golden Hotel have produced another brilliant, drugged-out folk song, but do they remember recording it? And, there's some wonderful field recordings by AQ's own Byram Abbott of the birds in rehabilitation at Fort Cronkite just north of San Francisco. I could go on, but why spoil the mysteries? "Heat & Birds" is a great collection from a great organization. Recommended.
RealAudio clip: FLOATING BIRTHDAY CHILDREN "Swan On A Black Lake"
RealAudio clip: OF "Aerial Cisterns"
RealAudio clip: GOLDEN HOTEL "The Blame"

V/A Heavy Metal Killers (Earache) cd 15.98
Earache, as befits their name, has always been a label known for "extreme" music, whether it be grindcore, death metal, or even gabber. This compilation, though, highlights a different sort of extreme, new bands who are hard and heavy but also melodic, with lo and behold actual singing. These outfits ARE extreme - extremely retro that is. And (as far as we're concerned) extremely cool. Heavy Metal Killers, whose cover art seems to be a nod to that of Iron Maiden's Killers, collects tracks from Castle Donnington worthy youngsters who hark back to the glory days of the NWOBHM in the late '70s, early '80s. And thus it has more in common with classic NWOBHM era comps like Metal For Muthas than it does such previous Earache anthologies like Grindcrusher and Hellspawn. And despite the NWOBHMishness, these bands hail from all over the planet, from Finland to Mexico.
Between Allan and Andee at Aquarius, we possess albums by a goodly portion of this disc's lineup, but the rest are totally new to us too. (Which brings up another subject, perhaps to be addressed in a future AQ-blog post, about all the cool records Allan and Andee order for themselves that we somewhat inexplicably never review for our website or even stock in the store!). We already know and love Cast Iron, Cauldron (who should get an award for their track's title, "Chained Up In Chains"!), Portrait, and Enforcer (whose full-length from which their track here is taken is also reviewed this list, actually), but thanks to this comp are glad to be introduced to a slew of other denim-and-leather clad, true metal torchbearers.
As with all comps, some tracks we like better'n others, but actually these Heavy Metal Killers ARE all pretty killer. We'll just mention a couple highlights, like the opening salvo from Holland's Powervice, boasting perhaps the best dual guitar harmony motif on the whole disc, damn it's catchy. Then there's the Mercyful Fate-ish mastery of Sweden's Portrait, complete with King Diamond style falsetto. And we got a kick out of the unabashed Sunset Strip style pop panache of LA's White Wizzard. Other acts here include Ram, H.O.D., Celtic Legacy, Alltehniko, Voltax, In Solitude, and Crowning Glory. Only a few of the tracks are exclusives, most appearing also on these band's albums (upcoming or otherwise) but it's not like you probably have 'em do you??? Though hopefully we soon will, we know for sure we'll be looking out for more by a bunch of 'em.
Cool that this scene is getting big enough for Earache to jump on the bandwagon. Our only complaints? This comp shoulda had San Francisco's Space Vacation on it too! And Finland's Solitaire. And... well, hopefully there's a volume II in store!
MPEG Stream: POWERVICE "Behold The Hand Of Glory"
MPEG Stream: RAM "Sudden Impact"
MPEG Stream: WHITE WIZZARD "High Speed GTO"

V/A Held Hostage: LCR RSD Compilation (Learning Curve) lp 14.98
Originally intended to be a Record Store Day release, this killer compilation from the Learning Curve label made it to aQ just under the wire, but seems to have maybe not made it anywhere else in time. So for those of you who couldn't make it to aQ on the big day, and love themselves some knuckle dragging, head banging, pig fuck noise rock crush, well then this here comp is for YOU. No doubt, a bunch of the names will be familiar to long time aQ-ers, Hex Machine (whose new record is reviewed on this week's list), Seawhores, Dead (whose new lp we reviewed here recently), Gay Witch Abortion (whose new record can also be found elsewhere on this week's list), but there's a bunch of new to us outfits, most with awesome names: Cars & Trucks, Decoupler, Bang The Favorite Raver and Spilling Fingernails And Blood Sap, and looks like there's even some sort of mega noise rock jam credited to Gay Whores Skoal Power, which we can only assume is a bunch of those bands crammed together.
Pretty much every track here rules, and anyone who dug the golden age of Amphetamine Reptile will be like a pig in musical shit, some highlights include the Seawhores track, which is SO goddamn good. Forgot how great these guys are/were, didn't even realize they were still a band, but hearing their track makes me pray to Satan they still are. A tangled churn of progged out noise rock heaviness, the sounds distorted and doused in FX, rhythmic and trippy, locking into almost looped sounding hypnorock jams, one second, sounding almost new wave the next, the sounds all blown out and in the red. There NEEDS to be a new record by these guys for sure.
Gay Witch Abortion never fail us, and their weird, distorto dirge here manages to fuse some obtuse poppiness to some crumbling dirginess, a weird little sludge pop doom nugget that will have you wanting to pick up their full length for sure. Cars & Trucks were an awesome surprise, total nineties heavy rock radness, REAL singing, hooks galore, melodies, harmonies, but plenty of tripped out weirdness. They're the kind of heavy that could actually be popular. Pushes all our heavy rock buttons, and makes us definitely want to hear more.
Decoupler are cool too, sounding like a super caffeinated, progged out Torche maybe, catchy, but frantic and frenetic. Spilling Fingernails And Blood Sap are the most metal here, channeling some Today Is The Day for sure. And Bang The Favorite Raver is some sort of pisstake, sounding like Missing Persons. And that final megajam, not the heaviness we were maybe expecting, instead some super noisy psychedelic collage, feedback, and grinding buzz, buried vocals, buried melodies, buried drums, warped samples, voices and screams, bits from the radio, all beneath a swirl of hazy druggy noisiness.
So cool. Such a killer collection, the rare compilation that actually leaves you wanting to hunt down more music from pretty much almost all the artists. Includes a download too!
MPEG Stream: SEAWHORES "Be Careful What You Teach Me"
MPEG Stream: CARS & TRUCKS "Bloody Revenge"
MPEG Stream: DECOUPLER "Hammerhead"
MPEG Stream: SPILLING FINGERNAILS AND BLOOD SAP "Nerves"

V/A Here's To Old England! (Artpop!) cd 16.98
Or rather, should the title should be "Here's To Old Edward!"? 'Cause this compilation celebrates the many musical faces of one Mr. Edward Ball which first surfaced back in the '70s and have frequently popped up through the past couple decades. Perhaps, you're familiar with his music on his own as a solo artist or in Teenage Filmstars (one of Andee's favorite bands of all time, rivalling My Bloody Valentine for sheer warped glorious guitar overload, there's even a quote on the front of the disc where MBV's Kevin Shields refers to Ball as "a modernist musical alcheemist"!), The Times, O Level, Boo Radleys and Television Personalities -- this comp draws from the first four. Lots of distinctly Brit references such as re-enactments of the intro dialogue to the wonderfully cryptic television series The Prisoner in the song "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape" or a rendition of New Order's "Blue Monday" sung in French ("Lundi Bleu") or nods to different cities such as "Manchester", "Cloud Over Liverpool" and "This Is London". Groovy and trippy and jangly, very Beatles-esque bright and sunny power pop with occasional hazy clouds of shoegazer-ness and trippy psychedelia. But it's the Teenage Filmstars tracks that will kick your ass. Unfortunately we've been unable to get any of ther albums for a while. So for now, this sampler will have to do. It's within the TF tracks that the strummy psychedelic Beatles-esque pop of Ball's other outfits gets cranked up a notch, doused in liquid LSD and set aflame. Backwards drums, funhouse mirror guitars, distorted vocals, all twisted and tangled into massive MBV meets Jesus And Mary Chain mayhemic pileup. Just give a listen to the sound sample for "Physical Graffiti". Woah. And while the rest of the tracks don't pack quite the same wallop, it's all really cool hazy Brit-psych-pop of the highest order.
BTW: Really funny quote on the sticker: Noel Gallagher from Oasis: "Edward Ball is the second best songwriter in Britain today." Ha ha.
MPEG Stream: "Pressure"
MPEG Stream: "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape"
MPEG Stream: "Physical Graffiti"

V/A Hey Punk...Get Riddim! (Victory World) cd 15.98
There's always been some sort of bond between punk rock and reggae: The Clash, Bad Brains, Fugazi, At The Drive In...whether it be in sound or simply in spirit. So Victory (home to some of the most essential NY hardcore of the past 10 years) has put their money where there mouth is by putting out this here compilation of dancehall/reggae/dub specifically as a primer for you young punks, who have yet to discover the joys of Sizzla, Tenor Saw, Sugar Minott, Lee Scatch Perry, Black Uhuru, Yellowman, Beenie Man and the like. Definitely not for those of you who are already immersed in the Trojan sound and the 100%-500% Dynamite collections, but not a bad place to start for the newbies.

V/A High All The Time Vol. 1 (Past & Present) cd 17.98
We've said it before and we'll say it again. It never ceases to amaze us how there can be such an endless supply of killer '60s garage-psych songs to fill up compilation after compilation. Sure, once in a while there's some overlap, but really, it's incredible how many obscure bands managed to release a completely charming 7" single or two and then vanished - but their music lives on, thanks to comps like this one! The appropriately named High All The Time features a whole bunch of turned-on, drugged-out sounds circa 1966-69, all of it fuzzy and freaky and sometimes beautifully melodic.
14 tracks, 11 bands, mostly from the US of A, though two bands are Dutch and one Swedish (The Shakers, doing "Who Will Buy (These Wonderful Evils)", a classic acid-guitar drenched track we know from another comp that took that for its title. But that Shakers song is the only thing here we'd heard before.
Opening the proceedings, Mammoth takes a Kinks "You Really Got Me" type riff and fuzzes it up big time, hinting at Blue Cheer style heaviness. Then, getting even freakier, The Hobbit tosses some musique concrete sound FX into their exotic "Author's Message". Next up, Dragonfly's "Celestial Dream" is indeed pretty dreamy, coming from a band who wore wild dragonfly-wing facepaint.... so, we won't describe all the tracks, but suffice to say they're all quite groovy, and varied, and definitely high all the time, yeah! No bummers here. Bad trips, yes, well, there's The Darelyck's track "Bad Trip", a propulsive sorta-rockabilly garage beat number with the vocalist mainly chanting "It was a bad trip, it was a bad trip" over and over, way cool... From start to finish, this is comp is our idea of a good trip. And the finish is a strong one, tracks 13 and 14 being both sides of The Beautiful Daze's "City Jungle Parts 1 & 2", with Part 2 being a particularly dense, droning, throbbing piece of work.
This compact disc edition (the comp itself is a reissue, apparently originally released on LP back in the late '70s or '80s we'd guess) includes in its booklet what meager information they were able to dig up about each band, with discographical information and sometimes graphics from the original 45's.
MPEG Stream: MAMMOTH "The Mammoth"
MPEG Stream: THE TOWER "Slow Motion Mind"
MPEG Stream: THE BUZZARDS "Burned"

V/A High All The Time Vol. 1 (Past & Present) lp 24.00
Also now reissued on 180 gram vinyl, limited, numbered, with liner notes insert included.
We've said it before and we'll say it again. It never ceases to amaze us how there can be such an endless supply of killer '60s garage-psych songs to fill up compilation after compilation. Sure, once in a while there's some overlap, but really, it's incredible how many obscure bands managed to release a completely charming 7" single or two and then vanished - but their music lives on, thanks to comps like this one! The appropriately named High All The Time features a whole bunch of turned-on, drugged-out sounds circa 1966-69, all of it fuzzy and freaky and sometimes beautifully melodic.
14 tracks, 11 bands, mostly from the US of A, though two bands are Dutch and one Swedish (The Shakers, doing "Who Will Buy (These Wonderful Evils)", a classic acid-guitar drenched track we know from another comp that took that for its title. But that Shakers song is the only thing here we'd heard before.
Opening the proceedings, Mammoth takes a Kinks "You Really Got Me" type riff and fuzzes it up big time, hinting at Blue Cheer style heaviness. Then, getting even freakier, The Hobbit tosses some musique concrete sound FX into their exotic "Author's Message". Next up, Dragonfly's "Celestial Dream" is indeed pretty dreamy, coming from a band who wore wild dragonfly-wing facepaint.... so, we won't describe all the tracks, but suffice to say they're all quite groovy, and varied, and definitely high all the time, yeah! No bummers here. Bad trips, yes, well, there's The Darelyck's track "Bad Trip", a propulsive sorta-rockabilly garage beat number with the vocalist mainly chanting "It was a bad trip, it was a bad trip" over and over, way cool... From start to finish, this is comp is our idea of a good trip. And the finish is a strong one, tracks 13 and 14 being both sides of The Beautiful Daze's "City Jungle Parts 1 & 2", with Part 2 being a particularly dense, droning, throbbing piece of work.
This edition (the comp itself is a reissue, apparently originally released on LP back in the late '70s or '80s we'd guess) includes liner notes providing what meager information they were able to dig up about each band...
MPEG Stream: MAMMOTH "The Mammoth"
MPEG Stream: THE TOWER "Slow Motion Mind"
MPEG Stream: THE BUZZARDS "Burned"