EARTH Legacy Of Dissolution (Southern Lord) 2lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE ON LP!! Two slabs of gorgeous swirled green opaque vinyl, housed in a nice think gatefold sleeve, with beautiful cover art from Mr. Stephen O'Malley. And as with most things like this VERY VERY LIMITED! Here's what we had to say about the cd version:
It's been an Earth kinda year so far, eh? Once considered a going-beyond-the-Melvins joke, notable mainly for the early involvement of one Kurt Cobain, Earth's status has grown and grown over the years. They've got to be much more popular now than when their first few Sub Pop albums came out in the early '90s. Back then, only a few folks -- that'd probably be me, you, and those guys who later formed SUNNO))) -- were into Earth, and understood the immense genius of their slo-motion, drone-heavy ambient doom riffage. Now, we sell more copies of Earth 2 every week than Aquarius probably sold the year it came out (well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but we do sell a heck of a lot of Earth 2, considering). And SUNNO))), Boris and all the rest of 'em owe a lot to Earth's Dylan Carlson and his various cohorts.
So far, 2004-2005 has seen the release of two new (though, live) Earth albums and a 7". And now this. You know you've made it when the remix album comes out! Handpicked by Carlson himself, the remixers here are an interesting lot: Mogwai, Russell Haswell, Jim O'Rourke, Autechre, Justin Broadrick, and surprise surprise SUNNO)))! Now, on one hand that's an exciting line-up, sure, while on the other, it'd might be even more interesting to hear those blokes remix something like Brittany Spears, right? For subversion's sake anyway. But they're all Earth fans, and Earth is fans of them, and we're pretty sure Earth fans are gonna like what they've done here. And even if you think that the presence of SUNNO))) is a little...redundant, or that Jim O'Rourke, cool as he is, need never trouble himself with yet another remix, overall no complaints! We like how Mogwai has introduced what sound like avant-classical violin into "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine", we found Russell Haswell's Merzbow-ization of the almost Champs-y "Tibetan Quaaludes" enjoyable, and SUNNO)))'s sixteen-minute "Rule The Divine (Mysteria Caelestis Mugivi)" sounds the most Earth-like of all these remixes, which might be to be expected, dontcha think?
Interestingly, no one remixed anything from the first Earth album Extra-Capsular Extraction, while two mixes are from the same Earth 2 track, and three of the remixers (Haswell, O'Rourke, and Broadrick) picked songs from the out of print Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions. Autechre went even further afield and chose a song from Earth's fourth and last (also out of print) studio album, Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Hmmm. While I would have liked to hear something from Extra-Capsular, perhaps the presence of all those Phase 3 derived tracks will convince Sub Pop to reissue that album!
Some of the remixes, like Haswell's, feature obvious fuckery, whereas others, like Broadrick's more trebley, buzzier "Harvey" almost need to be played back-to-back with the original to tell which is the remix and which is the real Earth. Though, that "Harvey" sounds like it could also easily be a track by Broadrick's awesome new Jesu project as well! All in all, SUNNO))) excepted, this is generally a bit less riffy and "doomy" than the Earth originals, concentrating instead on Earth's drone-washed trance elements. Almost makes sense that the cd booklet art looks kinda looks like a Pop Ambient cd! Now, it doesn't usually take much of a recommendation from us to convince AQ customers to buy anything Earth-related, but we did like this, a lot!
MPEG Stream: AUTECHRE "Coda Maestoso In F (flat) Minor"
MPEG Stream: JUSTIN BROADRICK "Harvey"

EARTH / KK NULL split (Important) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Originally released as a super limited colored vinyl 12", for sale only on a 2003 European tour (and limited to, depending on who you ask, either 330, or 660 copies) this amazing and amazingly limited record finally gets a proper release on cd. Which is also great considering the label that released the 12" apparently never paid the bands ANY money and actually ditched said European tour taking lots of the bands' money with them. Hopefully this will help set things right on that front, and at the same time it's a chance for those of you who missed out on the vinyl to finally check this out. KK Null, guitarist for Japanese sludge metal outfit Zeni Geva offers up a lengthy free noise exploration, guitars and electronics, abstract space-y weirdness, that gradually builds and builds into full on squalls of guitarnoise and ultra distorted electronic freakout. The cd also includes a twenty minute bonus track from Null, a sort of part two addendum to his original 12" track, and it's appropriately enough another extensive blooping swooshing analog space-out psych-free-noise epic, equal parts Merzbow and Space Machine (Masonna's space-y analog analog synth project). The Earth tracks is a single twenty minute long track recorded live at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle in 2003 and was one of the first (if not THE first) recordings to introduce the new sound of Earth, owed in no small part to the addition of Adrienne Davies on drums. A lot less sludgey and droney than old Earth, and a lot more hypnotic and melodic that later Earth, a very minimal post rock almost, with slow motion distorted arpeggiated melodies and woozy droned out riffs, all sort of pulsing and throbbing supported by simple shuffling, drumming and lots and lots of space. As hypnotic as ever, but definitely more rocking, and certainly the first hint of Earth's slow directional sonic shift.
MPEG Stream: EARTH "Dexamyl"
MPEG Stream: KK NULL "Andromeda"

EARTH / TRIBES OF NEUROT Split 7" (Southern Lord) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Definitely don't need to say too much about this one. SUPER LIMITED obviously, this split single, Earth on one side, Neurosis offshoot Tribes Of Neurot on the other, was originally released as a give away to all who attended the San Francisco New Years Eve Earth / Neurosis show only. However, we (thankfully, surprisingly) managed to get a bunch, but considering the above, these will be gone in a flash.
The Neurot side is a killer, gorgeous long form drones, thick and serpentine, we hear some Niblock, some Chalk, some Taj Mahal Travellers, gorgeous and thick, dense and dark, one of the best things we've heard from those guys for sure.
Earth counter on their side, with some super stripped down Fahey-doom, sprawling slow motion Appalachia, tuned way down and allowed to spread out like a slow moving black fog. Just guitar mostly as far as we can tell, but pretty dang lovely.
Well worth your $9, especially if you were kicking yourself for missing the show. Pressed on clear yellow vinyl, in a striking, super thick full color sleeve, and as if we needed to tell you again, SUPER LIMITED, so one per customer!!

EARTHLING SOCIETY / HIGH MOUNTAIN TEMPEL Pilgrimage To Thunderbolt Pagoda (Lotus House) cd-r 7.98
Not sure if this is part 4, or just the first in a new multi part epic, hardly matters, what does matter is, this is another glorious expansive collection of meditative psychedelic abstract dronefolk ambience. Every High Mountain Tempel disc we're reviewed thus far has gotten played to death here, and this one doesn't appear to be any different. Well, at least in that respect. In one distinct way it is very different, HMT are not going it alone this time. They've assembled a pretty impressive collection of sonic alchemists and musical conjurers to help with this ritual, Isis Aquarian from the Source Family, Charles Curtis from La Monte Young's Just Alap Raga Ensemble, and two crews from the UK we've never heard of, Earthling Society and Astarism, but even with all those cooks in the kitchen, HMT and friends have managed to weave another dark minimal masterpiece, all hushed barely there guitar shimmer, drifting whispered vocals, delicate crystalline melodies, dense swirls of piano, warm swells of tape hiss, mysterious voices and field recordings, whirring organ, bowed steel strings... so lovely.
If the liner notes are to be believed, two of the tracks feature Earthling Society on their own, and those tracks do sound different, much less free and sprawling, a bit more structured, like seventies UK acid folk, swirling and melodic and quite lovely. The final two tracks find the two groups in full on collaborative mode, and the gears shift to something much more space rocky and Hawkwindy, all blissed out and heart-of-the-sun, until the final track which is a strummy, delicate, moody chill out closer, a sort of dour doom folk drift, that makes a perfect ending.
Super nice packaging, silkscreened oversized 4 panel sleeve, white on black, with the cd-r affixed to the inside. And of course, SUPER LIMITED!
MPEG Stream: HIGH MOUNTAIN TEMPEL "Omega Point"
MPEG Stream: EARTHLING SOCIETY "The House On The Borderland"
MPEG Stream: EARTHLING TEMPEL "Uruk"

EAST FLATBUSH PROJECT Tried by 12 (Chocolate Industries) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Twelve variations on a blunted hip hop theme. Funkstorung has had the golden touch recently for the remix with superb remixes of Bjork and Wu-Tang, their warbling breaks and delicate re-interpretation on the original melody out-Autechres Autechre (whose remix here is somewhat disappointing). Other standouts are the jazz fusion monolith from Squarepusher, the alien downtempo breakbeats from Trapazoid and Freeform, and Herbaliser's tried and true noirish beats.

EAST WEST BLAST TEST Popular Music For Unpopular People (Ipecac) cd 15.98

EAT SKULL / GANGLIANS split (Dulc-I-Tone) 7" 5.98

ELECTRIC WIZARD / REVEREND BIZARRE split (Rise Above) 12" 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Odds are most folks who would be into this record, won't even make it this far in the review, they'll just grab one. For doomlords and ladies, this really needs no description other than the names of the two bands, Finland's dead and deceased Reverend Bizarre, whose post mortum release schedule rivals Tupac's, and UK masters of downtuned sub-Sabbathian stoner sludge, Electric Wizard. Each band offers up a sidelong track of crushing doom drenched heaviness, each coming from their own distinct direction.
The sound of Electric Wizard is something special, in some ways so derivative, so sonically similar to about a million other bands, but the second it comes on, it could be no one else. A testament to their doom mastery for sure, and this is primo doom, a slowly unravelling main riff, lurching and lumbering, melodic vocals settled way down in the mix, languorous stoned leads over the top, thick swirls of psychedelic organ, and endless spaced out drug drenched jams, Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet meets Sabbath, but slowed way down and dirtied up, culminating in a nearly drumless melting riff outro, the guitars slowing down, the riff crumbling, squalls of psychrock leads, thick whirring organs, the song eventually grinding to a halt after droning on and on and on. Awesome.
Reverend Bizarre counter with their own extended slab of plodding doom genius, spaced out riff, pounding drums, vocals slipping from guttural howl to ominous whisper, but this is RB, so it's bound to get bizarre, and it does, with a chanted midsong ritual, soaring clean almost operatic vocals invoking demons over a woozy melodic lope, before slipping into an almost krautrock like groove, before lo and behold, the song flips and the second half of the track is BACKWARDS!!! Hypnotic and creepy, the sounds whooping and shimmering, the vocals a demonic gurgle over the top, very tripped out and dizzying, a weirdly blackly psychedelic outro from these twisted doomic Finns. Who we would say we miss like crazy since they broke up, but they haven't really stopped releasing records quite yet...
Pressed on what appears to be black vinyl with bits of glitter in it, with a garish seventies horror exploitation cover, a saucy lady cutting up another saucy lady on some black altar, candelabras and skulls, long velvet gloves and capes, knee high leather boots and way too much makeup, but fear not sensitive ones, the exposed crotch (right beneath the grinning skull) is covered by a little pentagram, and the sliced nipple by a little black circle. Phew!!

ELECTRONICAT Re:bird - The Electronicat Remixes (Angelika Kohlermann) cd 16.98
The French shuffletime electro maven known as Electronicat has his admirers here at AQ, and apparently 'round the world as well, as this obligatory remixes disc goes to show. It's got a completely hip and fairly diverse lineup of remixers: Adult., Dat Politics, the ubiqitous Kid606, dDamage, Felix Kubin, The Hacker, Mike Ladd, Original Hamster, and even Zbigniew Karkowski, amongst others. If you like your beats crunchy and catchy, glammed up with gobs of electro-punk guitar distortion, you should be an Electronicat fan -- and if you're an Electronicat fan, you already know if you would be interested in remixes I suppose. We enjoyed 'em.
MPEG Stream: ADULT. "I Wanna Know Now"
MPEG Stream: ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI "Hello - Yes - Hello"
MPEG Stream: MIKE LADD "Mause"

ELEH / NANA APRIL JUN Observations & Momentrum (Touch) lp 19.98

ELLIOTT, MISSY Get Ur Freak On Remixes (Combat Boots) 12" 9.98
These are some crappy two-step "remixes" of Missy Elliott's ever so popular "Get Ur Freak On". Apparently someone wants us to believe that they could shit a Timbaland beat on a 12" and people will buy it. These remixes have got nothing on the spartan "Bounce A Gal" (the Special Remix 7" of Lexxus plopped onto the GUFO rhythm), and the Capleton "Mi Food" single which uses the same rhythm track is also ten times better (we should still have both). This 12" does have something going for it though: it's got a really nice die cut of an assault rifle on the cover.

ELUVIUM / JESU split (Temporary Residence) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More limited vinyl madness, this time in the form of the hotly anticipated vinyl only split between Justin Broadrick's Jesu, and US ambient drifter Eluvium. So the skinny is this, a split release between Temporary Residence Limited and Hydra Head, the copies we got are the TRL version. The TRL version is already out of print, but the folks at TRL let us have a big bunch (only about 50) and even cooler, a handful of them are the mailorder only colored vinyl version. So first 30 or so folks will get colored vinyl, the rest will get black, and please don't ask for colored vinyl, and don't order unless you'll be happy with black, it's first come, first served...
Three new songs from Jesu, and as if we didn't already see Broadrick and Co. heading in this direction, they've almost entirely jettisoned the heaviness, in favor of a blissy new wave-t drift. Really! No massive sludge, no blissed out crunch, in fact, most of this sounds like Jesu doing the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, all drift and croon and no crunch and pummel, but it's really nice, and pretty, and still suitably Jesu-like. Imagine Simple Minds or the Cure but raised on Slowdive and Chapterhouse and Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine, doing the theme song for Sixteen Candles 2007 (which if our calculations are correct would be more like Thirty Nine Candles). The first song would be a massive hit, sort of melancholy and romantic, dark and dreamy, but still sort of catchy and hopeful, like sunbeams barely making it through grey storm clouds. The final track sounds like it could be from that last scene in Sixteen Candles 2007, the one where the boy and the girl finally make it to the dance after all of the crazy mishaps and misunderstandings and are finally sharing that slow dance... lugubrious and fuzzy, and soft focus and so great actually. It's weird, and a bit unexpected, but as much as we love the glacial crush of past Jesu discs, this new-wave-y drift really suits them..
The flip side features a side long three part epic from Eluvium, aka Matthew Cooper, whose usual stately dreamlike ambience, is here rendered even fuzzier and blurrier. The first part could be some long lost Tim Hecker or Basinski jam, all dense washes of keyboards and crumbling shimmer. The second and third parts feature Coopers doleful minor key piano, more recognizable than on the opener, but still takes those notes and smears them into glacial stretches of glistening murmur. The perfect sonic match up for Jesu's new, less heavy, more drift-y sound.

ELYSIUM / MONARCH s/t (Shifty / Amanita / (((Parade))) / 213 / Throne / Amertume-Corruption #2 / Fidelio / Murder / Wee Wee / Solitude) cd 14.98
Back in stock. Might just be your final chance to pick one of these up!!
When we first heard about this record, a split release between some unknown band and ultradoom AQ crushworthy sludgelords Monarch, whose track was an hour long, we wondered how the heck that was fair to the other band. We then discovered that the other band was in fact French grinders Elysium, whose songs average around the one minute mark (one song here clocks in at a whopping 8 seconds) it started to make sense. And what an awesome idea, what a great combo, the two extremes, blazing buzzing hyperspeed grindcore and slow motion sludge. Two great tastes... er, sounds... So here we have 4 tracks from Elysium, total time 5:55, and one track from the mighty Monarch, total time 58:27. Fucking awesome!
So first up Elysium, fast and furious, guitars like squiggles of white hot lightning, the drums like rhythms being fired from a machine gun into your head at point blank range, vocals that screech and gurgle, everything a head spinning blur. Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Nasum, Rotten Sound, you might as well add Elysium to that elite list. 
But they're just the warm up, the appetizer, Monarch's "Amplifire Death March" is why we're here, and they do not disappoint.
So Monarch, for those who don't already know, are one of the slowest, heaviest bands in existence, whose artwork consists of weird Hello Kitty like crosses, skulls and burning churches, as is fronted by a very cute, non-tattooed, non-pierced, spikeless, leatherless, young lady in a sensible skirt and top, who howls like a banshee from the depths of hell and who write in the liner notes "Listen To Judas Priest"? How rad is that? RIDICULOUSLY RAD! And sure we'd be crushed out on Monarch just based on their lugubrious tarpit sonic sludge, we're just like that, but having an adorable frontperson just pushes it over the edge.
So yes, this rules, and is suitably funereal, appropriately slow and somber, so slow in fact it makes Khanate sound like speed metal. Okay, maybe that's stretching  it a bit, but this is some seriously slow motion shit. The riffs stretch out for ages, the drum hits are MILES apart, the vocals a screech / howl / moan, a mouthful of dirt and broken glass, a voice so harsh and hatefilled it seems impossible that it could come from Monarch's diminutive sensibly dressed leader. There are huge stretches of near ambience where it's just the hum of the amplifier, some soft lilting chords, a pounding single drum rhythm, vocals screeched across wide expanses of space, draped across fading riffs like flayed skin before the next chunk of sludge drops. It's almost as if some leather winged demon was flying above, soaring through the black night sky, hurling huge hundred ton chunks of sludge at the ground every few seconds, or few minutes, where they splinter into a million pieces, filling our ears with shards of searing sludge. A pounding ultra-dirge, a tempo well below 16rpm, the sort of creepy crawl that were it to slow down any more would be just a single tone, albeit a crushing pummeling one. So heavy, and so slow it's almost stops being sludge and simply becomes some abstract heaviness. By now you should know what we're getting at. This is doom, ultramegadoom, doom with a page full of 'o's, wallowing in the same murk as Moss, Rigor Sardonicous, Stumm, Catacombs, Esoteric, and all who bow before the power of dooooooooom.
This is a split release between TEN labels (count 'em: Shifty / Amanita / (((Parade))) / 213 / Throne / Amertume-Corruption #2 / Fidelio / Murder / Wee Wee / Solitude) which is kinda cool, but also kinda dumb, as each label only gets a handful of copies and therefore it goes out of print before you know it. We got 50 copies originally and those disappeared in a flash, and only now finally managed to get a handful more from one of the labels' secret stash! Probably the last copies ever.
MPEG Stream: ELYSIUM "Amen Jesus Je T'Aime"
MPEG Stream: ELYSIUM "Menteurs"
MPEG Stream: MONARCH "Amplifire Death March (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: MONARCH "Amplifire Death March (excerpt 2)"

EMIT / VROLOK Musikalisches Opfer / Pestilence 1440 (Goatowarex) cd 14.98
Last year, in our neverending quest for the weirdest black metal ever, we discovered the mysterious and perplexing Emit. And while technically they may in fact be black metal, realistically, they are more of some sort of ambient, ethereal, damaged drone outfit, spewing a deconstructed, abstract whatthefuck crash, clang and creep. Definitely black, but more in mood than sound. Either way, we were totally taken and were super psyched to discover a new record from these freaks, a split with Vrolok, more on them later. On their half of this split, Emit start off the proceedings with all vocals, the first track a soft shimmery swirl of ghostly reverbed vocals, floating and drifting, the second track is more vocals, this time some sort of monkish chant, low and liturgical, over a whirring distant drone. It's only by track three, that any sort of 'metal' becomes evident, but even then, it's metal of the most abstract fucked up kind. A buzzing blasting burst of lo-fi blackness, that starts of blazing but as it forges forward it falls apart more and more, each separate element becoming more distorted and more twisted and tweaked, until it's like listening to Darkthrone on a transistor radio through an endless series of funhouse mirrors. Woah! The rest of the tracks delve deeply into a dark realm of medieval ambient drones, a sort of more damaged Abruptum, with haunting atonal detuned guitars, and creepy tiny monster vocals, occasional bursts of super distorted black buzz and sonic shrapnel, but for the most part, a dizzying onslaught of chaotic creepiness and bizarre blackness.
Vrolok while not nearly as weird as Emit, are definitely a bit more overtly black metal, but are the perfect match for Emit with their furious and fucked up black buzz. From the tumultuous blast of blazing lo-fi blackness of the first track "Hellchoir (Pestilence 1440)", a snarling, squirming riff, tangled up with lightspeed blast beats and buried under all sorts of suffocating sonic sludge, to the weird martial soundscape of "Black Chemical Waltz", a super blown out simple drum beat, amidst swirls of subsonic drones and buzzing weirdness peppered with creepy distorted snatches of found sound and bits of conversation, to the epic blackness of "Inverse Devotion" sounding like a glorious collision between Xasthur and Immortal, albeit recorded on a busted 4-track, to the epic closer "Between The Astral Shades", which starts off as a shimmering creeped out ambient soundscape, turns into what sounds like Bathory recorded in a high school gymnasium, and finally morphs into an ultra distorted seasick black dirge, replete with anguished howls and washed out black drone guitars, the whole thing blurring into a glorious blackened dronedrenched waltz.
More absolutely essential bizarre blackness for sure!
MPEG Stream: EMIT "Death's Black Diadem"
MPEG Stream: EMIT "Infinite Lucidity"
MPEG Stream: VROLOK "Hellchoir (Pestilence 1440)"
MPEG Stream: VROLOK "Black Chemical Waltz"

EMIT / VROLOK Musikalisches Opfer / Pestilence 1440 (Christcrusher) picture disc lp 10.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Managed to get a very few of these in on vinyl (think FIVE), direct from the band HIMself. But fair warning, these records seemed to have a harrowing journey across the sea, so some of them have split seams (since they're picture discs and are packaged in those brittle plastic sleeves), but other than that, perfect. Plus they're picture discs! And come with a printed insert and odds are we probably won't be able to get these back in ever again.
Back in 2005, in our neverending quest for the weirdest black metal ever, we discovered the mysterious and perplexing Emit. And while technically they may in fact be black metal, realistically, they are more of some sort of ambient, ethereal, damaged drone outfit, spewing a deconstructed, abstract whatthefuck crash, clang and creep. Definitely black, but more in mood than sound. Either way, we were totally taken and were super psyched to discover a new record from these freaks, a split with Vrolok, more on them later. On their half of this split, Emit start off the proceedings with all vocals, the first track a soft shimmery swirl of ghostly reverbed vocals, floating and drifting, the second track is more vocals, this time some sort of monkish chant, low and liturgical, over a whirring distant drone. It's only by track three, that any sort of 'metal' becomes evident, but even then, it's metal of the most abstract fucked up kind. A buzzing blasting burst of lo-fi blackness, that starts of blazing but as it forges forward it falls apart more and more, each separate element becoming more distorted and more twisted and tweaked, until it's like listening to Darkthrone on a transistor radio through an endless series of funhouse mirrors. Woah! The rest of the tracks delve deeply into a dark realm of medieval ambient drones, a sort of more damaged Abruptum, with haunting atonal detuned guitars, and creepy tiny monster vocals, occasional bursts of super distorted black buzz and sonic shrapnel, but for the most part, a dizzying onslaught of chaotic creepiness and bizarre blackness.
Vrolok are not nearly as weird as Emit, definitely a bit more overtly black metal, but are the perfect match for Emit with their furious and fucked up black buzz. From the tumultuous blast of blazing lo-fi blackness of the first track "Hellchoir (Pestilence 1440)", a snarling, squirming riff, tangled up with lightspeed blast beats and buried under all sorts of suffocating sonic sludge, to the weird martial soundscape of "Black Chemical Waltz", a super blown out simple drum beat, amidst swirls of subsonic drones and buzzing weirdness peppered with creepy distorted snatches of found sound and bits of conversation, to the epic blackness of "Inverse Devotion" sounding like a glorious collision between Xasthur and Immortal, albeit recorded on a busted 4-track, to the epic closer "Between The Astral Shades", which starts off as a shimmering creeped out ambient soundscape, turns into what sounds like Bathory recorded in a high school gymnasium, and finally morphs into an ultra distorted seasick black dirge, replete with anguished howls and washed out black drone guitars, the whole thing blurring into a glorious blackened dronedrenched waltz.
More absolutely essential bizarre blackness for sure!
MPEG Stream: EMIT "Death's Black Diadem"
MPEG Stream: EMIT "Infinite Lucidity"
MPEG Stream: VROLOK "Hellchoir (Pestilence 1440)"
MPEG Stream: VROLOK "Black Chemical Waltz"

EMPIRE OF HATE / MORTHOND split (Heidros Hart) cassette 4.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another killer tape of weird black metal buzz. This time it's Australia's Empire Of Hate and US black metal horde Morthond (not to be confused with the Cold Meat Industry Morthond).
Empire Of Hate whip up a black storm of relentlessly buzzing guitars, stumbling blasting drums, and some truly tortured vocals. Harsh glass gargling howls that dip into death metal gargles as well as the occasional hysterical shriek. The production is perfectly murky, a depressive suffocating crush, perfectly suited to the hellish buzz and inhuman howls.
Morthond counter with their own brutal black burst, channelling the raw trancelike sound of early Burzum and classic Darkthrone. Some mournful keyboards and whispering winter winds lead us into their wintry world. Mournful melodies give way to murky black buzz, galloping drums, everything drenched in reverb, a furious classic blast of vintage Norwegian style blackness. So good.
Awesome high school binder cover art, with a scary tree and a rabid dog or wolf and a dead body that kind of looks looks like a magic marker version of Munch's The Scream...

ENBILULUGUGAL VS. BLOOD CULT s/t (Rusty Axe) cd 8.98
Oh man, have we been waiting for this. Been ages since we heard from the mighty Enbilulugugal, and who better to share a split with those blacknoize freaks, than redneck black metallers Blood Cult?
So yeah, Blood Cult first, who we've raved about in the past, from Illinois, with a singer who moonlights as a country singer, who are seriously twisted and whose sound is like classic Scandinavian black metal, run through the raw primitive scum of Von, and then peppered with all sorts of weirdness, samples, clean guitars, catchy melodies, strange falsetto vocals, and whatever weird shit they can cram into a song.
Their half of the split starts off with some strange movie samples, than then explodes into what sounds like some furious grindcore before the band inject some strange spidery post rocky guitars, some haunting childlike vocals, and then more samples. But then the next track drops and it's as serious as all get out, dark and buzzy, with an incredible main hook, the riff churning, the drums blasting, but it's Blood Cult, so there's some weird twangy breakdown in the middle, that sounds a bit like the Butthole Surfers! The track after that is all strange keyboards and tribal drumming, mysterious vocals, the sound almost new wave, and a bit surfy. Later on they totally steal a Fleetwood Mac riff and blacken it all up. What the fuck? These guys are so amazing. Anyone who slept on We Who Walk Behind The Rows, the last BC full length needs to get into these guys. So fucked up and bizarre and heavy and genius. In fact, what the heck, we'll relist that record so check elsewhere on this list and if you don't own it already, do the right thing! You won't regret it.
But Blood Cult are only fucked up and demented sounding when they're NOT up against Enbilulugugal, who are indeed, one of the most freaky and damaged sounding black metal bands EVER. Think Faxed Head if they were black metal, and you might be getting close. Most of what they do is only barely black metal, instead it's like noise, and Butthole Surfers, and fucked up punk rock, and blacknoize, and D-beat and grindcore all tangled up into one seriously confusional chunk of blackened noise drenched whatthefuck.
Guitars buzz maniacally, shrieking hysterical vocals draped over everything, tons of sample and film clips, wild chaotic drumming, their sound slipping from punkish ultra raw pound to, chunky eighties style metal, to freaked out grind, to total damaged noise. Lo-fi, and accidentally experimental, the vocals totally remind us of Dr. Rockzo, the rock and roll clown from Metalocalypse, which is a VERY good thing. We always talk about how we're constantly on the search for the most retarded, fucked up, demented and bizarre black metal, but bands like Enbilulugugal (are there bands like Enbilulugugal) pretty much ruin the curve.
As always awesome high school rock binder, seventies van black metal cover art, and as always, we say YOU NEED THIS.
MPEG Stream: ENBILULUGUGAL "The Violent Shriekks Of TuKu"
MPEG Stream: ENBILULUGUGAL "Abhorre The Living"
MPEG Stream: BLOOD CULT "Goat Riders In The Sky"
MPEG Stream: BLOOD CULT "Kill, Kill, Kill"

ENCOMIAST / THE COPPER THIEVES 139 Nevada : Masked Mirror / Slam Your Doors In Golden Silence (Lens) 2cd-r 15.98
Latest from Encomiast, a long time aQ fave, whose expansive mysterious dark drones have never failed to blow us away, but this is not just a new album, it's a sprawling double disc concept record split between two separate groups, and recorded in one of the most haunted buildings in Colorado. The story behind this record revolves around the Belvedere Theater in Central City, Colorado, a group of musicians repeatedly visited with the idea of capturing EVP (aka electromagnetic voice phenomena), where else but an extremely haunted old theater would one be able to capture the voices of the dead, but alas, no such sounds were discovered or captured, BUT, the musicians did manage to record, and those recordings were reworked into the two discs found here. The first is by Encomiast, the second is by a group called The Copper Thieves, which is Encomiast along with members of Mandible Chatter. Both discs conjure up the dark spirit of that theater, each in its own way.
The Encomiast disc is downright frightening, all creaking moaning low end, deep ominous rumbles, all manner of tiny sounds drifting up out of the inky blackness, cold and sinister, abstract and ephemeral, the sounds of the theater's busted up old grand piano, smeared into blurred atonal clouds of clustered notes, the overtones drifting like lost specters, voices moan and bellow, the natural room sound as much an instrument as anything else, these deep dark drones totally evoke the spirit of that haunted space, headphone required, to truly get lost, and submerge yourself in these seemingly bottomless sounds.
The Copper Thieves disc is not nearly as minimal, but just as ominous and haunting, the piano again plays a big part, but the notes are distorted and blurred into a massive warm wall of softly crumbling sound, which gives way to a strange haunted house of thumps and creaks and glitches and disembodied voices, groaning layers of low end thrum, soft filed of overtones overlap chiming bells, pounded notes on the piano drift up from below like monstrous growls, the disc finishing of with long tones, that seem to glow, warm and almost sun dappled, as if capturing shafts of light, drawing delicate lines on the dusty floor, and illuminating the snowflake like motes drifting in the still air.
Both discs are fantastic, darkly evocative, and gorgeously droney, for fans of Lustmord, Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough, Troum, Organum and other droning denizens of the dark...
LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES, a double cd-r housed in a textured cardboard box, hand stamped on the outside with two printed inserts featuring liner notes and photos.
MPEG Stream: ENCOMIAST "Freed From Time Yet Vulnerable To Air"
MPEG Stream: ENCOMIAST "A Nervous Light"
MPEG Stream: THE COPPER THIEVES "Something Shines Through"
MPEG Stream: THE COPPER THIEVES "Slam Your Doors"

ENDLESS BLOCKADE, THE / THE BASTARD NOISE The Red List (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
Killer power violence tag team, in one corner, newbies The Endless Blockade, who more than almost any current band embody the sound and spirit of classic power violence, and in the other, the grandfathers, and direct descendants of the genre's namesake, Bastard Noise, who have returned to the sound of their Man Is The Bastard antecedents, while still incorporating plenty of twisted Bastard noise noise.
We haven't heard Bastard Noise sound this fierce and heavy in years, throbbing low slung bass, pounding caveman drums, howled feral vox, wild screeches, tangled riffs, all woven into tightly wound tarpit grind jams, lurching and stuttering, stop start, freaked out blasts of furious thrash bookended by lumbering doomy crush, all shot through with streaks of electronic skree, clouds of glitched out FX, in fact, if anything this sounds like the perfect mix of classic Man Is The Bastard and another aQ fave MITB offshoot, Geronimo: rhythmic, hypnotic, cyclical. There are some moments of droned out Bastard Noise electronics, but those moments usually end up exploding into shards of hyper rhythmic pound and chug. So awesome. This would be worth it alone for the Bastard Noise side, but we haven't even gotten to the best part of this split...
Which is "Advanced Directive", an Endless Blockade remix by legendary academic electronic pioneer Noah Creshevsky (we had a killer retrospective of his work on Japanese label EM!), that is a total skittery, stuttery, psychedelic plunderphonic freakout. Riffs and vocals chopped and looped and pitch shifted and reassembled into a weirdly hiccupping experimental power violence mash up, reminds us a little bit of the recent Record Of The Week by Whourkr, with its impossibly complex and head spinning heaviness. Wow. The fourteen minute track that precedes it is a killer too, pummeling, pounding doomic heaviness, that slips into a strange electronic flecked trip out breakdown, and then a super in-the-red grinding buzz drenched feedback slathered noise freakout, before lurching back into some riffy crunch to finish things off.
There is one more track, a remix by noisemaker The Rita, but that one is for the TRUE noise lovers only, 15 minutes of crumbling, blown out, earshredding Merzbowian digicrunch.
MPEG Stream: THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE "Advanced Directive (Noah Creshevsky)"
MPEG Stream: THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE "Deuteronomy"
MPEG Stream: THE BASTARD NOISE "Fallen Species"
MPEG Stream: THE BASTARD NOISE "Movement Two"

ENVY / JESU split (Daymare) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've long been fans of Japanese rockers Envy, since they were furious hardcore thrashers, but over the last few records, they have been going through a pretty serious transformation, trading in much of their fury and aggression for deep introspection, their punk rock for post rock, and it definitely suits them. This latest ep, a split with the mighty Jesu, finds the band taking their sound even farther out, almost as if the songs were written specifically for Jesu. The first track is the perfect example, we actually weren't paying attention, and almost assumed it was in fact a Jesu track, the spoken Japanese vocals being the only giveaway. Beginning as a slow drift, the drums programmed, a nervous electronic skitter, before the band explode into some sort of droneblissdirge, distorted guitars, a thick wall of sound, laced with dreamy melancholy strings, Jesu fans who have been hankering for something else similar to get into might have just found their match!
The second song starts out all moody and meandering and post rocky, spidery guitar melodies, simple jangle, a bit maudlin and melancholy, the vocals breathless and buried, all very Slinty, a little Mogwai, well, actually a lot of Mogwai, some Explosions In The Sky, until with about a minute left the band explode in a frenzy of heaviness, a nearly hardcore blow out, but strangely, still cozied up to the drifty dreaminess of the first half of the song, like someone snuck in and added strings to some Converge jam, the results are truly unique and pretty kick ass.
The third song is almost the biggest surprise of the bunch, a big crunchy guitar super catchy indie rock jam. The only thing keeping it from being all over the credits of every teen movie is the growling monstrous barking vocals, but beyond that, the song is glistening and soaring, hooky with a total old school pop punk chorus, albeit dowsed in crunch distorted guitars. A bit schizophrenic perhaps, but has us dying to hear the next Envy full length. Lookout Explosions, these guys are definitely about to steal your post rock thunder, and in the process get it all tangled up with some indie rock and dronemetal to boot!
Jesu fans are a pretty loyal bunch, so most of you don't even need to know what this sounds like, and probably could care less about the band sharing this split, but what the heck, for those of you who are interested or are new to the slowly expanding Jesu universe, these two tracks, are a bit of a departure, but enough like 'classic' Jesu to hit the spot. The first track begins with a skittery lo-fi breakbeat, super old school, takes a few minutes but eventually crumbling distorted guitars tumble into the picture, and soaring fuzzy dirgepop melodies, the vocals breathy and eighties, a lot New Order, and barring the super obtuse song structure, this first track wouldn't sound at all out of place on the most recent M83 record. Very new wave-y, dreamy and melancholy, but with some definitely strange sonic shit going on, soaring high end streaks, the rhythms getting all chopped up and stuttery, some pulsing buzzing synths. It's not until halfway through that the guitars kick in, and they don't soar majestically, instead they're sort of simple and repetitive, and they're soon pushed to the background by the various other sounds, layer after layer of warm fuzzy swirls, until the end, when the drums drop out and the guitar unfurls lazily in a sea of static and crumbling sonic grit, a warm sun baked lo-fi fade out. Cool stuff. Definitely not the same old Jesu which is precisely what keeps it interesting, and makes every record a bit of a surprise.
The second track, and the record closer, begins with deep synthy bass, and glistening sonic twinkles, another slowed down stripped down breakbeat, skittering along beneath drone-y synthesizers, and softly effected vocals, once again channeling classic eighties dream pop. Until once again the track explodes into a murky blow out, the drums now a furious blast, the guitars woozy and super distorted, almost like Jesu speed metal, but never losing it's prismatic dreamlike bliss.
Great stuff from both bands. And while we're dying for more Envy, the more Jesu's sound slips ever closer to the eighties, the more we want the next split to be with sonic brethren M83. Or heck, at the very least Jesu should cover some New Order or Smiths...
MPEG Stream: ENVY "Conclusion Of Existence"
MPEG Stream: JESU "Hard To Reach"

ERASE ERRATA / NUMBERS split (Tigerbeat6) 3" cd ep 6.98
Two songs each from Erase Errata and Numbers on the mildly annoying 3" cd format (maybe I have an unhealthy attatchment to my record player, but these brief tunes would've fit beeyootifully on a 7"...) Numbers are great, and "Goin' Insane" and "Palo Alto" give you all the crunchy moog basslines and shouty, distorted boy/girl vocals you could ask for in a space so tight it's claustrophobic, but Erase Errata... damn, they are SUPER hot!
Strong, continuously inventive basslines & super tight drumming form the backbone, enhanced by guitar that provides jagged texture rather than structure. Then the vocals: commanding, Mark E. Smith style commentary that might, for a brief moment, turn into full, vibratoed song before turning back into a sharp, observatory talk/rant. Kick ass. The brevity, skimpy packaging, and questionable format may work against my ability to recommend that you shell out $6.98 for this release, but let me say that the songs from two of the Bay Area's finest definitely deliver.
RealAudio clip: NUMBERS "Goin' Insane"
RealAudio clip: ERASE ERRATA "Retreat, The Most Familiar, Extensive, I Bet!"

ESTRIBOU, GENE / JEAN-PAUL PICKENS Intensifications (Locust) cd 14.98
Quite the intriguing reissue here. It's a San Francisco '60s artifact that could be just as easily be something brand-new from one of the underground acid-folk artists beloved by all you Ptolemaic Terrascope/Broken Face readers, like Six Organs of Admittance or Jack Rose. Anyone who likes them will want this! Likewise if you're into Fahey and Basho and other Takoma label string-pickers. Gene Estribou and Jean-Paul Pickens each took a side to themselves of the original LP release to ramble down some dusty old roads that lead them to acoustic Delta Blues, Indian raga, and Appalachian country-folk. Both these guys sure are fleet of finger, Estribou playing acoustic guitar and Pickens (is that his real name?) doing his thing on the banjo. Imagine David Rawlings (of Gillian Welch fame) hopped up on moonshine and just ripping... Wow. Intensifications indeed. Another excellent Locust release (they just keep 'em coming!) but we've gotta give them a packaging demerit 'cause of the one-sheet insert they opted for instead of a proper cd booklet. Otherwise, great.
MPEG Stream: GENE ESTRIBOU "Eeee Minor"
MPEG Stream: JEAN-PAUL PICKENS "Shady Grows"

ETERNAL ELYSIUM / BLACK COBRA split (DIW-Phalanx) cd 14.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
When we ordered this Japanese import, we were like, a split release between Japanese psychedelic stoner/doom rockers Eternal Elysium and San Francisco's own metalcore two-piece Black Cobra? Gotta get that! When it showed up, we were surprised to discover that the entire Black Cobra half had exactly the same tracks as those found on their recent full-length Feather And Stone, which we've already reviewed and raved about. Whoops. So... some of you already have that. However, if you want to get it again, you'll also get 23 minutes of Eternal Elysium material that only appears here. More likely, this is a good call for those who haven't yet picked up the Black Cobra album and also like (or think they might like) EE. Or simply for EE fans who don't mind getting the Black Cobra stuff as well (why would you?) as a bonus. Even at the import price, it's still 2 for the price of 2 (or 1.5 more like it) on one handy disc, not too shabby of a deal, really. So, let's say somethin' about the music for those ignorant of EE and/or BC:
Eternal Elysium always has us a little confused. Strange band. Sometimes they're straight up Sabbath-meets-grunge complete with vocals hinting at Alice In Chains or Soundgarden... and then there's the NWOBHM influences... and the groovy retro-sixties stuff... that's all here, plus of course random weirdness like the brief track "Golden Seaweed", with sped-up chipmunk voices. They try hard to make a stoner drug thing you wouldn't understand, but certainly something that fans of Boris, Solar Anus, and Church Of Misery should check into, to rock out to.
As to the BC half, here's what we said about Feathers And Stone before: Two man heavy riff-machine Black Cobra return with another pummeling release... Picking up right where Bestial left off, Feather And Stone shreds from the start. Brutally punishing circular riffs, heavy as all hell doomy moments, throat ripping screams, and incredibly hard hitting and precise drums. The fact that this massive sound comes from two fellas is pretty damn amazing. The album has all kinds of peaks and valleys. Amidst the constant time signature shifting, and brain-burning riff heavitude, there are a couple of beautifully dark intros and outros thrown in, giving the album a very balanced feeling. But it's mostly just crushingly heavy and ripping. If you can imagine a heavier, much more misanthropic Karp, that's kind of what they remind us of. Feather And Stone is a must for anybody needing a little taste of thrashing triumphant, sometimes doomy and dark, sometimes fast and techy, but always heavy and punk as fuck ROCK music... For fans of Cavity, Karp, Floor, Torche, and things that kill shit! (Note though that unlike the domestic edition of the BC album, there's no cd-rom live footage included.)
MPEG Stream: ETERNAL ELYSIUM "Shadowed Flower"
MPEG Stream: BLACK COBRA "Five Daggers"
MPEG Stream: BLACK COBRA "Ascension"

EUBANKS, BRIAN / J. P. JENKINS Split (Olde English) lp 15.98
You might not recognize these two names, but you probably recognize the bands they call home, all big time AQ faves. Bryan Eubanks is the man behind GOD, whose last disc on Jyrk we raved about a while back, and J.P. Jenkins is a member of Portland outfit Ghosting (as well as the Portland Bike Ensemble).
Two sidelong tracks, both lovely, and neither are all that far removed from these guys' actual bands. Eubanks side is a never ending (well, almost) wall of grinding low level hum, a relentless buzz, warm and layered and slowly shifting, sounding like a lo-fi Phill Niblock, blissful and meditative, the sort of track that when it stops, your ears almost pop, so suddenly deprived of the drone that was filling them moments earlier. Sometimes the simplest sounds are the most pleasing, and this sort of fuzzy hum is the sort of thing we could listen to forever (and we listened to it with the record reverser, which we also sell, and it sounded even cooler backwards! But then again, what doesn't?!)
Jenkins side sounds like it could have come straight off a Ghosting record, which is not at all a bad thing. A cloudy expanse of simple finger picked guitar nestled amidst soft focus billows of reverberating metallic hum. Eventually the hum dissipates, and what's left is some haunting alien Appalachia, with various notes hurled skyward and stretched into long peals of moaning high end drift. So nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Each one stamped on the lp label, housed in hand assembled and hand screened sleeves with a printed insert, two different color sleeves: gold on black cover or blue on white.

EVAPORATORS, THE / ANDREW W.K. A Wild Pear (Nardwar The Human Serviette / Mint) 7" 6.98
Ba-booom! This a Nardwuar The Human Serviette alert! A short dose is contained on this here record - a split 7" between Nardwuar's band The Evaporators and a certain Andrew W.K.
Yeah, we were sort of braced when this showed up. Can you say "Gung ho!"? Two irrepressible individuals and their respective cohorts go toe to toe, wreaking some good ol' garage rock havoc. Mr. W.K. covers two awesome songs by two awesome Canadian bands, punk rock legends Vancouver's Subhumans and the mighty Toronto duo The Leather Uppers. It's a relatively stripped down W.K. compared to his stadium rock persona of yore, but it's no less bombastic. Nardwuar and co. tackle a tune by obscure Montrealers Les Hou-Lops as well as deliver one of their own, the sillily juvenilely titled "The Bombs In My Pants". If you're seeking a ridiculous fun listen and some extremely obscure pop trivia, this is for you! Bonus "treats": a brief clip of Nardwuar interviewing W.K. as well as a printed insert that verges on old school obsessive zine-ish-ness documenting among other things the coming together of the two. Actually, attempting to read the tiny solidly packed text will probably take longer than listening to these five songs!

EVIL MOISTURE / HANATARASH Fatanarchy On Airtube (Harbinger / Tochnit Aleph) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
If we told Hanatarash fans that this new cd WASN'T chock full of totally insane, random, chaotic noise, they'd be disappointed. So -- don't worry, no disappointment! The first release from Boredoms leader Eye Yamantaka's noise project Hanatarash in many moons (10 years?) is finally here, and it's a collaboration with UK noise artist Evil Moisture, aka Andy Bolus, who's based now in France and has quite a few cassettes and cds of extremely difficult listening under his belt. Together (and you can't tell who's doing what) they've produced 35 brief tracks of ear-hole destroying noise, somewhat in the style of Hanatarash 4: Aids-a-delic from 1994. It's a crazy collage of cut-up sounds, some snippets of recognizable "music" sprinkled amidst a heckuva lot of distorted turntable and microphone abuse, whooshing groaning screaming overload that just keeps on keepin' on, an endless barrage with no discernible structure, noises constantly morphing into some new noises but never making any sense. It's a bit like the sounds you might imagine some truly nightmarish Rube Goldberg device might make. And you've gotta love the "song" titles: "Never Mind The Overdosing", "Fingertip Believer", "Atomichy in the LSD", "Bank Punks / Noise Bank"... Also this includes "covers" of songs by both Survivor and The Exploited, supposedly. Limited edition of 500 copies by the way.
MPEG Stream: "Sleepwalking Guaide Book At Ohio"
MPEG Stream: "track 34"

EX, THE / TORTOISE In The Fishtank (Konkurrent/Touch & Go) cd 9.98
From the liner notes: "Konkurrent invited Tortoise from Chicago to contribute some of their hypnotic, catchy instrumental pieces to our series. They gladly accepted and asked The Ex to join them. Both bands began from very different points when constructing songs. The Ex work with dynamics and tension building while Tortoise work at a more introspective and subdued level, adding layers and texture to their sound. Where they meet is in how they work with repetition and introduce very specific atmospheres into their songs." Recorded in Holland, this collaboration reveals much more of The Ex than of Tortoise. In faact, you may not even be aware of Tortoise's presence except for subtle hints here and there.

EX, THE / TORTOISE In The Fishtank (Konkurrent/Touch & Go) lp 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the liner notes: "Konkurrent invited Tortoise from Chicago to contribute some of their hypnotic, catchy instrumental pieces to our series. They gladly accepted and asked The Ex to join them. Both bands began from very different points when constructing songs. The Ex work with dynamics and tension building while Tortoise work at a more introspective and subdued level, adding layers and texture to their sound. Where they meet is in how they work with repetition and introduce very specific atmospheres into their songs." Recorded in Holland, this collaboration reveals much more of The Ex than of Tortoise. In faact, you may not even be aware of Tortoise's presence except for subtle hints here and there.

EX-COCAINE / YELLOW SWANS split (Not Not Fun) lp 15.98
Is it even necessary to point out that Noise nerds and Free Jazz freaks tend to keep the sort of the same company? Probably not, but if it were, then we would just play you this record and say goodnight. Those of you who don't like jazz, don't get scared off! The sensibility coloring this record with that spirit is really just one of genuinely free improvisation, so don't expect Coltrane or anything like that, this is still largely a Noise affair. Ex-Cocaine starts off with a loose instrumental guitar piece, accompanied by various drum sounds. The second track follows a similar trajectory, with the addition of vocals. If Aztec Camera were a lo-fi art rock band, this is what it might sound like. Side two features none other than the prolific -- and soon to be extinct -- Yellow Swans. Yes, it's true, after 7 years or so of trying to destroy both your ears and your speakers, Gabriel Saloman and Pete Swanson are calling it quits. They're not exactly going to disappear though, just saying goodbye to the Swans and starting some new things. If you saw our last list, then you probably noticed Mr. Saloman's collaborative effort with Aja Rose of In Flux. As for Pete Swanson, he's got a new label called Freedom to Spend -- check our review of it's first release, the album "Light Ships" by Axolotl off-shoot Bulbs. Okay, you're all caught up, now: the second side of the record. From mindfuck analog meltdown to blissful psych incantations, YS have certainly changed over the years, and, perhaps for the best, their final days have drifted into a more melodic, psychedelic direction. This track could not possibly better demonstrate that trend. In fact, if you didn't know who this actually was, it would be pretty dang impressive if you could guess. Meandering guitars, buried vocals, and a final showdown that dissolves into beautiful sheets of noise. Recommended!

EXCEPTER / LEB-LAZE split (Hoss) lp 11.98

EXCEPTER / PANDA BEAR Split (Paw Tracks) 12" 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.No offense to Excepter but man oh man Panda Bear steals the show on this split 12"! Best known as one of the members of the Animal Collective and one half of Jane we got to say we think we are most in love with Noah Lennox in his Panda Bear existence. Acid soaked Beach Boys harmonies tweaked to utter perfection! If his side of this split is any indication of how great his new album is gonna be then wow we are excited! Excepter's side is more of their really good take on murky analog electronics gone no-wave.

EXPERIMENTAL DENTAL SCHOOL / LIMITED EXPRESS (HAS GONE?) Experimental Express Explorer (Memory Lab) cd ep 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Two tracks each from SF's own Experimental Dental School and Limited Express (Has Gone?) from Kyoto, Japan, whose Tzadik release from last year we likened to Melt Banana and Deerhoof. It's like an exchange program for avant-rock zaniness. Limited stock.
MPEG Stream: LIMITED EXPRESS (HAS GONE?) "Mophin' Fellet"
MPEG Stream: EXPERIMENTAL DENTAL SCHOOL "Poison Reverb"

EXPO '70 / BE INVISIBLE NOW! split (Kill Shaman / Boring Machines) cd 8.98
Latest from aQ faves Expo '70, masters of modern krautdrone, every record another chapter in their expanding sonic history of the universe, a tale in sound, of suns and planets, of drifting in space, of galaxies expanding, of stars dying, of black holes, and endless expanses, of timelessness and infinity.
Two tracks, each a slow building epic, the first rife with deep chordal swells, simple strummed acoustic guitars, crumbling distorted leads, mournful melancholy melodies, distant streaks of feedback, abstract whir and deep minimal rumble, a gorgeous slab of outer space drone folk, like a more spaced out kraut version of Kiss The Anus, or like a new weird America Santana fused with Hawkwind at their most acoustic and blissed out. The second track is a much dronier affair, a spaced out soundscape of rumbling, buzzing, shimmering synths, layered and textured, rhythmic and hypnotic. Like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, but much darker and buzzier, but just as blissy and space-y. The sound building and building into a heaving wall of synths and guitars, various whirs and rumbles and tangled up minimal melodies, all wavering textures and timbres, eventually joined by strange outer space FX, and more pronounced funereal melodies. Some truly gorgeous spacey shit for sure.
For this cd-r, Expo '70 have teamed up with Italian drone rockers Be Invisible Now, who have a similar sound, but definitely manages to make it their own. Beginning like some Goblin Argento soundtrack, all creepy synths and swells of black ambience, delicate little spacey melodies and swooshing FX, that swirl and build, the track begins to distort and crumble, the effects becoming more agitated and intense, the whole track thickening, until drums come in, offering up a tribal framework, around which the sea of synths swirls and shimmers, a mysterious rhythmic space rock ritual, which quickly fades out, leaving the various layers of synths to slow down, to slip away, to darken and crumble, leaving just a soft, fading buzz.
The second BIN! track begins all heavy and distorted, almost like some spacier Wolf Eyes, wrapped in swirling effects, anchored by simple pounding percussion, the synths getting more intense and more buzzy, thick and blown out, the programmed rhythms growing skittery and chaotic, everything louder and more dense, more distorted, FX everywhere, the track erupting into some strange noise drenched new wave, like the soundtrack to some French new wave horror film, or some New Order remix rejected for being to noisy and fucked up and scary. Awesome.
A pretty good intercontinental space rock, krautdrone matchup for sure. Packaged in a full color eco-wallet digipak style sleeve, and of course LIMITED.
MPEG Stream: EXPO '70 "Heir Of Serpents"
MPEG Stream: BE INIVISIBLE NOW! "I Fiori Devono Morire"

EXPO '70 / I AM SEAMONSTER split (Short Forest / Small Doses) 7" 6.50
Back in stock!! Probably the last copies we'll see...
Another gorgeous chunk of spacey tripped out downtuned space kraut doom from aQ faves Expo '70. This time they're sharing a 7" with another favorite of ours, the droney, drifty I Am Seamonster.
Expo '70's track begins super minimal and SUNNO))) like, a slow motion riff, the guitar thick and heavy and distorted, riding a single chord, while all around effects whirl and swirl and streak, very mantra like and hypnotic, spaced out and druggy, part way through a second guitar offers some melodic counterpoint, some woozy spidery lysergic minor key leads that sound sun baked even as they drift through the inky blackness, the sound managing to somehow sound both desert and space-y simultaneously.
We hadn't heard anything from I Am Seamonster since their (sadly) now out of print Nebulum cd-r. The track here seems to expand on the IAS sound on Nebulum, crafting a gorgeous landscape of deep guitar swells, each one wreathed in different effects, crumbly and buzzy, blown out and blurred, the sound at its peak is white hot, but occasionally drift back to something cooler and washed out. Layers of high end settle atop the undulating rumbles and whirs, deep percussive guitars chime and ring out, everything bathed in a blurry shoegazey haze, the guitars slipping and shimmering, the result almost orchestral. So so nice.
Beautiful packaging too, silk screened, metallic blue and silver on black, the back side die cut to reveal the record and sleeve.

EXPO '70 / RAHDUNES split (Kill Shaman) lp 14.98
Expo '70 just keep getting heavier and heavier. Beginning as a spaced out drone-heavy krautrock-worshipping band, with swirling synths and drifting FX laden guitars, the band has gradually been altering their sound, guitars getting heavier and more distorted, the spaciness swallowed up by huge slow moving black walls of rumble and buzz, the low end slowly but surely taking over, their music drifting ever closer to some sort of SUNNO)))-baked crawl. This new record, a split with SF based Rahdunes, finds the band moving still further into their own dark sonic galaxy of black heaviness.
Cursory listens will reveal just that, a grinding roiling whirl of distorted guitars and throbbing bass rumble, but this is Expo '70, so even when they're channeling their inner doomsludge demons, they can't seem to help infusing their lugubrious crawl with streaks of outer space shimmer, buried melodies, subtly shifting textures, sure this is intense and heavy and loooooooow, but it's also blissed out, and fuzzy and dreamy and in its own weird way still sort of space-y and krautrocky.
Rahdunes take the high road, literally. It's almost like the two bands decided to split the frequency range right down the middle, with Expo '70 taking the low, and Rahdunes taking the high. Their tracks counter Expo's Earth-y throb, with some glistening druggy folky space drift. A swirling expanse of druggy ambience, guitars wreathed in effects drift by. vocals moan and wail, through thick curtains of fuzz and buzz and delay and reverb, percussion shuffles way off in the background. Imagine the Manson Family, and the Beach Boys, high as fuck, sitting in the grass, by the ocean, their faces lit by flickering firelight, as they chant and jam and conjure up some primal space drone energy, and you'd basically be tapped into whatever lifeforce feeds Rahdunes. The rest of the disc gets a little more rhythmic, reminding us of No Neck and Sunburned Hand, but never losing that bleary eyed druggy wonder, looped guitar, stumbling rhythms, more ethereal chanting, finishing off with a fuzzed out murky dreamscape of muted melodies, soft focus tones, buzzing synths, sputtering percussion, mumbled vocalizing and shimmery feedback, somehow perfectly complimenting Expo '70's doomic crawl on the flipside.
Gorgeous silver and black matte covers. And first time on vinyl for anything Expo '70!!!

EYEHATEGOD / CRIPPLE BASTARDS split (Southern Lord) 7" 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Last ever (again?) recording from New Orleans sludge masters Eyehategod. "I Am The Gestapo" is a typical (i.e. really good!) slab of their hateful, feedback-filled, crushing, churning doomcore. On the flip, this split release is shared by Italian grindcore maniacs Cripple Bastards, whose sludgier-than-usual, deathly track "Self-Zeroing" is well worthy of being teamed to EHG's supposed swansong on the A-side.

FAINT, THE Danse Macabre Remixes (Astralwerks) cd 16.98
Remixes can be pretty darn hit-or-miss. Among other things, they can breathe life into lackluster songs, or obscure the originals way far beyond any recognition, or fuse two sonic worlds into something new, magical and completely faithful to both artists. Not quite sure yet where these Danse Macabre remixes fall. On the first few listens, I was struck with the sense that most of the remix artists here seem to have very little affinity to the band - diluting the punch and catchiness of these Nebraskans' songs into just so-so, slick house and techno tracks. I mean, the original Danse Macabre songs are entirely capable of packing a dancefloor on their own, thank you very much! Participants includes Paul Oakenfold, Junior Sanchez, Ursula 1000, Tommie Sunshine, and Photek.

FAITH / VOID Split (Dischord) lp 12.98

FANTOMAS / MELT BANANA split (Unhip) 3" square shaped cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This most definitely has to be the shortest cd we've ever reviewed. And also the smallest. A tiny little two inches by two inches, square shaped cd, clocking in at a whopping two minutes and forty three seconds. Pretty ideal actually for this particular two band, two song match up. Mike Patton and his Fantomas group give us a 44 second Melt-Banana-ish, burst of cartoonish, buzzy, chaotic, short attention span cinematic grind, a brief flurry of staccato downtuned guitar chug and blasts of bizarre vocalization. Melt-Banana go all out timewise with almost two whole minutes of that squeaky, grind pop madness that is so immediately and recognizably Melt Banana. A confusional swirl of MB's usual mind melting ultra complex brutality, with a more than usual bit of melody and harmony intertwined with MB's impossibly dense and serpentine song structures, all chirped indecipherable vocals and rapid fire punk splatter. Short but sweet! Comes in a cool little cardboard sleeve with a tiny full color card affixed to each side.
SUPER LIMITED!! We got a handful of these, not entirely sure we can get more, so once these are gone there's a god chance we'll never be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Animali In Calore Surriscaldati Con Ipertermia Genitale"
MPEG Stream: "Cat In Red"

FAUST Freispiel (Klangbad) cd 17.98
Legendary krautrock band Faust's 30th anniversary is being celebrated with not free pinball and fireworks, but remixes... The remix cd ep that preceeded this was ok, if unneccessary. Here's the full remix album, with one of that Soft Cell guy's mixes from the ep, plus mixes from other mostly Euro electronica folks (Kreidler, Howie B., Surgeon, Funkstorung among them). Dead Voices On Air and, interestingly, The Residents also appear. All the tracks remixed come from Faust's recent (and quite good) Ravvivando album. Our verdict: still unneccessary, and not ok. But at least the remixers aren't violating classic old '70s Faust tracks, like with Can's "Sacrilege" remix project. And electronica fans will find this to be a fine electronica comp, like so many others. But Faust fans aren't going to see any improvement over the originals (not to be expected anyway) OR any other reason to listen to this...it's just uninteresting and predictable. Too bad, 'cause Faust are such an interesting band. If they HAD to do a remix album for their 30th, they should have picked artists with more of their eccentric artistic spirit. We'd be more keen on Reynols or Boredoms remixes, maybe Philip Jeck or Aphex Twin...oh well.

FAUST / NURSE WITH WOUND Disconnected (Dirter) 2lp 42.00
Now on vinyl! The quintessential Krautrock projects - Faust, Can, Guru Guru, Amon Duul, and all things vaguely associated with Conny Plank - had been huge influences on Nurse With Wound's catalogue. So it goes without saying that when Steven Stapleton got the call that Faust wanted him to produce a record of theirs, he enthusiastically leapt at the chance. What he didn't expect was that Faust only passed on a series of sloppy studio improvisations to Stapleton with the instructions to make a Faust album out of them. We can imagine that Jim O'Rourke had been given a similarly loose framework when he was granted the opportunity to produce Rein back in 1995. Just as O'Rourke took those sounds and sculpted an album which was remarkable in its similarity to classic '70s era Faust (e.g. Faust Tapes, Faust IV, So Far, etc.), Stapleton with his trustworthy cohort Colin Potter at his side has crafted an excellent pastiche of that obtuse Faust sound of mutant psychedelia which guided the more experimental proponents of prog rock, industrial, post-punk, and post-rock. Disconnected is filled with dynamic tumbling percussive riffs, rolling acoustic guitar nestled into clouds of vibrating distortion, unsettled sweeping driftwork, and stoned basslines. In other words, Disconnected sounds like a fucking great Faust album.
MPEG Stream: "Lach Miss"
MPEG Stream: "Disconnected"
MPEG Stream: "Tu M'entends?"

FEAR FALLS BURNING Frenzy Of The Absolute (Conspiracy) cd 14.98
Drums are maybe the last thing you might expect to hear on a Fear Falls Burning record, which makes the opening of the new FFB, Frenzy Of The Absolute, all the more fascinating, since it opens with JUST drums, a huge crash, a doomy drum plod all spread out, spacious and spare. But eventually guitars enter the mix, and slowly take over.
Fear Falls Burning is the one man guitardrone project of axeman Dirk Serries, and over the last year has released numerous cds and lps, each filled with his unique take on the otherwise played out doomdronedirge sound. Fear Falls Burning is a much more musical take, no less thick or corrosive or caustic or heavy, but Serries makes his walls of downtuned drone, and whirring buzz, glisten and shimmer, shot through with melody and unlikely texture, about as poppy as a music this un-poppy can get. And it's no different here. Well minus the HUGE difference of having a drummer. Or should we say drummerS! Serries is joined by a series of guests on Frenzy, most notable the drummers from Swedish post-metallers Switchblade and Cult Of Luna.
At first we were worried that adding drums would just turn FFB's ethereal doomic drift into something much more generic and run of the mill, but just the opposite is true. Serries and his guests subtly transform the sound of FFB into something wholly different, the opening track says it all. That sprawling simple, spread out drumming, continues on throughout the first three quarters of the track, pounding away, not pummeling, but pounding, almost delicately if that were even possible, while Serries introduces soft shimmery delicate melodies, that drift dreamily in the background, the whole thing underpinned by a thick, gradually building Niblock like static guitar drone. But that little lullaby like melody, keeps the track from becoming pure dirge. There's way too much space. It's almost like a seriously metallicized and doomed up slowcore band. This is Low covering SUNNO))), a dreamy droney soporific downtuned dreamlike creep.
The guitars thicken, the ambience grows ever more woozy and buzzy, the various swells of distorted buzz, wash in and out, various melodies surface and then drift off, the song slowly transforming into something much blackened and sinister. Until with about 5 minutes left, the track switches gears and becomes a roiling blur of washed out industrial buzz, muted picked apart riffage, processed percussion, the drums slowly surfacing from below, creeping into earshot, like some black beast clawing its way up from the abyss, creating a dirgey sort of Godflesh / Jesu jam, but way more muddy and murky blown out, blurred and soft focused, and somehow still weirdly pretty.
The second track is way more in line with past FFB recordings, huge heaving slabs of buzzing low end, a vast expanse of fluttering, reverberating guitar growl, slow motion swells of whir, peppered with clouds of cymbal shimmer, shooting star streaks of high end, all blearily blurred into one fluid, constantly shifting dronescape. This track too grows in intensity, becoming more cacophonous, more ominous and atonal, a deep black hole of swirling black melody and thick textured guitarscapery. Like a dreamier, blissier Wolf Eyes.
The final track begins like some super charged Spacemen 3 jam, a crumbling distorted space rock riff, doused in delay, the last note allowed to pulse and skitter off into the ether, before the riff re-engages. Over the top, in swoop more layers of guitar buzz, synth sounding whir and warble, all very trancelike and mesmerizing, the drums don't even kick in until near the end, and even then, they just offer up a huge pulse like pound, a skeletal framework for the swirling buzzing blissy blackness above, the drums finally exploding into an actual rhythm with about 2 minutes to go, the guitars soaring into a serious frenzy, suddenly it sounds like the climax of an Explosions In The Sky song AND the finale of a Godspeed song all woven together into one explosive blown out finish.
As much as we love pretty much everything Fear Falls Burning, this record has us hoping this drum thing is not just a one off, but even if it is, we'll dig it while we can.
MPEG Stream: "Frenzy Of The Absolute"
MPEG Stream: "He Contemplates The Sign"

FEAR FALLS BURNING Frenzy Of The Absolute (Conspiracy) 2lp 36.00
Finally in on vinyl, and with one extra track, and one hidden track. That's two more than on the cd, described below:
Drums are maybe the last thing you might expect to hear on a Fear Falls Burning record, which makes the opening of the new FFB, Frenzy Of The Absolute all the more fascinating, since it opens with JUST drums, a huge crash, a doomy drum plod all spread out, spacious and spare. But eventually guitars enter the mix, and slowly take over.
Fear Falls Burning is the one man guitardrone project of axeman Dirk Serries, and over the last year has releases numerous cds and lps, each filled with his unique take on the otherwise played out doomdronedirge sound. Fear Falls Burning is a much more musical take, no less thick or corrosive or caustic or heavy, but Serries makes his walls of downtuned drone, and whirring buzz, glisten and shimmer, shot through with melody and unlikely texture, about as poppy as a music this un-poppy can get. And it's no different here. Well minus the HUGE difference of having a drummer. Or should we say drummerS! Serries is joined by a series of guests on Frenzy, most notable the drummers from Switchblade and Cult Of Luna.
At first we were worried that adding drums would just turn FFB's ethereal doomic drift into something much more generic and run of the mill, but just the opposite is true. Serries and his guests subtly transform the sound of FFB into something wholly different, the opening track says it all. That sprawling simple, spread out drumming, continues on throughout the first three quarters of the track, pounding away, not pummeling, but pounding, almost delicately if that were even possible, while Serries introduces soft shimmery delicate melodies, that drift dreamily in the background, the whole thing underpinned by a thick, gradually building Niblock like static guitar drone. But that little lullaby like melody, keeps the track from becoming pure dirge. There's way too much space. It's almost like a seriously metalicized and doomed up slowcore band. This is Low covering Sunn 0))), a dreamy droney soporific downtuned dreamlike creep.
The guitars thicken, the ambience grows ever more woozy and buzzy, the various swells of distorted buzz, wash in and out, various melodies surface and then drift off, the song slowly transforming into something much blackened and sinister. Until with about 5 minutes left, the track switches gears and becomes a roiling blur of washed out industrial buzz, muted picked apart riffage, processed percussion, the drums slowly surfacing from below, creeping into earshot, like some black beast clawing its way up from the abyss, creating a dirgey sort of Godflesh / Jesu jam, but way more muddy and murky blown out, blurred and soft focused, and somehow still weirdly pretty.
The second track is way more in line with past FFB recordings, huge heaving slabs of buzzing low end, a vast expanse of fluttering, reverberating guitar growl, slow motion swells of whir, peppered with clouds of cymbal shimmer, shooting star streaks of high end, all blearily blurred into one fluid, constantly shifting dronescape. This track too grows in intensity, becoming more cacophonous, more ominous and atonal, a deep black hole of swirling black melody and thick textured guitarscapery. Like a dreamier blissier Wolf Eyes.
The final track begins like some super charged Spacemen 3 jam, a crumbling distorted space rock riff, doused in delay, the last note allowed to pulse and skitter off into the ether, before the riff re-engages. Over the top, in swoop more layers of guitar buzz, synth sounding whir and warble, all very trancelike and mesmerizing, the drums don't even kick in until near the end, and even then, they just offer up a huge pulse like pound, a skeletal framework for the swirling buzzing blissy blackness above, the drums finally exploding into an actual rhythm with about 2 minutes to go, the guitars soaring into a serious frenzy, suddenly it sounds like the climax of an Explosions In The Sky song AND the finale of a Godspeed song all woven together into one explosive blown out finish.
As much as we love pretty much everything Fear Falls Burning, this record has us hoping this drum thing is not just a one off, but even if it is, we'll dig it while we can.
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl and again, includes an extra track AND a hidden bonus track!
MPEG Stream: "Frenzy Of The Absolute"
MPEG Stream: "He Contemplates The Sign"

FEAR FALLS BURNING Once We All Walk Through Solid Objects (Tonefloat) 5lp box 88.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This one has been a long time coming. Especially for us. The long rumored, even longer in the works 5lp Fear Falls Burning collaborative remix collection came out a while back, but when our box arrived from overseas, the box was smashed, and while the lps were all in perfect condition, the outer sleeves were not, so we had to wait patiently for them to make more sleeves, specifically for us, and then pray that the box of new sleeves showed up without also being crushed by the Postal Service.
Well, finally, the box arrived and the new sleeves were as close to perfect as we could hope. And thus we can finally list this ambient guitar drone masterpiece. One of our favorite purveyors of blissed out guitar doomdirgedrone, remixed, reworked and reinterpreted by a bunch of bands that couldn't be more kick ass if we had picked them ourselves!!! And gorgeously packaged to boot!
Let's start with the music. Five lps, twenty minutes a side, over three hours, one band to a side, the source material for each side original recordings by Fear Falls Burning, each artist, adding, removing, remixing, or reimagining the sounds given to them by FFB, the results uniformly gorgeous.
The first side is Bass Communion, who turn FFB's droning guitars into chiming choral blissy bell like tones, which eventually build into thick buzzing Spacemen 3 like drones, but which near the end slip back into whirling soft focus ambient drift. The flip side features Final, the solo guitar project of Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, etc.). Broadrick takes his FFB material and stretches it out into a moody meandering soundscape of layered distorted strum and thick crumbling swells, a lovely slowcore guitar drone, peppered with bits of melancholy melody and subtle harmonies.
The second disc starts off with Freiband, aka Frans De Waard, the most minimal of the bunch, a glistening dark ambience, a slow trawl through fields of ephemeral sonic sparkle and soft drones rumbling way off in the distance. The B side of disc 2 is Harvestman, the solo project of Neurosis' Steve Von Till, and his take on FFB is a haunting dark psychedelia, thick slabs of reverbed guitar allowed to drift through the ether, chunks of almost metallic riffing surface throughout, but are suffused with muted shimmer and soft whispered whirring.
The A side of disc 3 is Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel, and his FFB source material is transformed into a glorious keening ur-drone, all upper register buzz over a wash of shifting overtones and blurred chordal resonance, like drifting on some ominous black sonic sea, haunting and subtly ominous. The flipside is Byla, featuring one of the guys from Behold The Arctopus, but don't be expecting any weirdo tech metal, nope, the do Fear Falls Burning proud with a wall of grinding feedback that is smeared into a weirdly soothing high end drone, while downtuned guitars warble and pulse, shimmer and drift, abstract melodies floating atop the rumbling low end, like some disembodied Appalachia.
Disc 4's A side is occupied by perennial AQ fave Aidan Baker (Nadja), one of the only collaborators here who added nothing, no extra instruments, used only the original tracks given to him, but the results are just as unique, a mysterious landscape of ghostly echoes and whispered guitars, long stretches of blisssy drift and dark washes of distorted hiss. The B Side is occupied by Johannes Persson, whose track is a sea of big billowy downtuned riffs, reverberating and fading out above buzzy angular riffs, everything washed out and blurred beneath layers of fuzzy rumble, a strangely active ambience, with a bit of twang ala more modern Earth, eventually building to a gorgeous Godspeed like crescendo.
The A side of the final disc features another long time AQ fave, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma of local space drone alchemists Tarentel, who creates a dark murky dronescape rife with subtle glitches, and grinding distorted guitar smeared into smooth swells, a constant droning buzz running throughout, everything effulgent and haloed in glistening otherworldly glimmers, weirdly enough the darkest and most ominous of the bunch. And finally, finishing things off, is 3/4hadbeeneliminated's Stefano Pilia, who unfurls a warm folky drift, with occasional distorted drones surfacing here and there, all washed out sun dappled and so serene, finally building to an epic and intense soft shimmery crescendo.
Needless to say, if you're a fan of Fear Falls Burning, any of the collaborators, or experimental guitar ambience and dark droning drift, this is totally essential.
The packaging is pretty dang deluxe too. Each lp is pressed on ultra thick 180 gram crystal clear vinyl, the liner notes printed on the lp labels, each lp housed in it's own printed PVC sleeve, blue metallic ink, allowing the clear lp to be visible through the blurry blue images and text, all housed in a library / analogue tape style cardboard outer sleeve, printed in full color. So gorgeous.
A note to vinyl obsessives. These are not sealed in plastic. The design is such that the outer sleeve bends and gets damaged easily, so we removed the outer plastic wrap, and inserted a 12" cardboard flat inside the box alongside the lp sleeves, which protect the lps, and keep the outer sleeve from being damaged. And when shipped these will be extra carefully packaged for their arduous journey to your doorstep.
Already sold out and out of print. We have a bunch, but as always, these probably won't be around for long...

FENNESZ / JECK / MATTHEWS Amoroso (Touch) 7" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Remember that Spire record on Touch a while back? A series of Organ works, by a handful of the usual avant drone suspects: Fennesz, Jeck, Biosphere, Tsunoda, Ambarchi, Watson and othersŠ
Well, this 7" is part of a series of limited eps, based on the Spire recordings. The first we think. And is a tribute to Arvo Part, and to "mystic minimalism". Charles Matthews who was featured on the original Spire recordings, playing the massive pipe organ, is the player here as well, and both Jeck and Fennesz get a side to do what they want with those original sounds.
Fennesz turns the sound of the organ into a minimal whir, gentle washes of grit and whispery buzz, long tones subtly pulsing, deep rich chords, soft swells, gently effected and transformed into haunting alien drones. Those drones infused with melancholic melodies and deep metallic reverberations. Truly mystical and minimal.
Jeck however is much less reverent. Choosing much like he did on the original Spire recording to try something more aggressive, more dark, more noisy, and much less soothing, his side is an almost industrial soundscape or crunch and buzz, the organ's notes transformed into bell like tones, chopped up into jagged melodies, almost like someone is flipping stations, the melody lurching suddenly from note to note, jarring and uneasy, but at the same time hauntingly compelling. The tones are dense and distorted, lots of smeared feedback, thick clouds of pixilated grit and deep droning walls of whir, a super intense and extraordinarily noisy approach from Jeck, something we're definitely interested in hearing much more of in the future.
As always, comes houses in an immediately recognizable Touch style sleeve, with gorgeous Jon Wozencroft photos and design.

FISCHERSPOONER (V/A) The Other Side New York (Time Out) dualdisc 17.98
Here's a novel concept... Why not let Fischerspooner be your tourguide to gettin' around New York City? Those obsessive who-what-where-when mavens at Time Out (makers of those hip city guides that are usually found in magazine and book form) thought it a dandy idea, and have issued a series of three travel guide dualdisc (cd one side, dvd on the other) sets compiled by select taste-makin' startlets from London (Damian Lazarus), Paris (Black Strobe) and New York (Fischerspooner).
The eclectic musical selections are a funfilled romp although they're oddly not limited to New York based artists -- Bloc Party, Fiery Furnaces, Au Pairs, Princess Superstar, Broadcast, David Carretta, Plastique De Reve, Big Boys, Lassigue Bendthaus, Electronicat, Thomas Schumacher, Model 500, Richard Bartz, Martin Rev, Pixeltan and Laurie Anderson. Of course, shrewd businessmen that they are, they also include one of their own in the mix -- a remix of "Emerge".
The dvd side of The Other Side is hosted by Casey Spooner and offers a glimpse of his choice picks around the Big Apple.
MPEG Stream: LASSIGUE BENDTHAUS "Jealous Guy"
MPEG Stream: PLASTIQUE DE REVE "Rodeo Mechanique"

FLAMING LIPS, THE Late Night Tales (Azuli) cd 17.98
For their installment in Azuli Records' Late Night Tales series, Wayne Coyne & Co. have apparently rummaged through their personal record collections and picked out eighteen of their faves. It's somewhat perplexingly and a tiny bit disappointing though 'cause there aren't really any big surprises nor any odd obscurities. The biggest surprise is in just how safe a selection it is -- sorta like one of those old 'As Seen On TV! K-Tel Greatest Hits' compilations. Okay, maybe it's not *that* predictable or mainstream, but see for yourself... Bjork, Radiohead, Nick Drake, Sebadoh, Chemical Brothers, Chris Bell, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Psychedelic Furs, Chameleons, Love And Rockets, Roxy Music, Lush, Miles Davis, Mice Parade, Alfie, Faust and 10CC! While this comp does stir up fond memories of those good ol' songs, we might've expected the Lips' to take this opportunity to share some more off-the-radar listening treats by including a couple of challenging curve balls in the mix. In fact, the only things here that comes remotely close to curve balls are Faust's "It's A Bit Of A Pain" and 10CC's "I'm Not In Love". That said, 'Lips fans will surely welcome the band's own contribution to the lot which appears halfway through the album. It's their cover of The White Stripes' tune "Seven Nation Army" (apparently this is the exclusive release of this song on cd, but you might also be able to find it on an unrelated limited edition 7"). A final added bonus on this volume of the Late Night Tales series is the second of five clips from multi-faceted Scotsman David Shrigley's Bits And Bobs.
MPEG Stream: FLAMING LIPS "Seven Nation Army"
MPEG Stream: FAUST "It's A Bit Of A Pain"

FLASKAVSAE / LIGHT SHALL PREVAIL split (E.E.E. Recordings) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's take a couple years and about a million cd-r's, but here it is, the first proper actual cd (not cd-r) release from both of these groups, two of our favorite UN-black metal bands. And for those out of the loop, un-black is another name for white metal, which is another name for Christian black metal, which does indeed seem like an oxymoron, but avid readers of the list by now are well familiar with the sound, and the groups, Glaciial, Agathothodion, Drommer, Elgibbor, Offerblod, Njiqahdda, and of course Flaskavsae and Light Shall Prevail.
LSP is the work of EEE records head honcho W.S. and prolificacy is so extreme, he fronts or is a member of at least 5 different outfits. LSP seems to be his main one and is definitely one of our favorites. Like on past releases, the sound here is a mix of classic grim black metal, and all sorts of fucked up lo-fi production, the core being a relentless buzzing riff, and furious blasting beats, but the sound is wrapped in strange sheets of hiss, and layers of murk and mire, the drum machine is strangely processed, the cymbals unleashing sprawling clouds of hiss, the guitars always buried in varying degrees of fucked up buzz or fuzz, turning riffs into streaks of blurred sound. The first LSP track here offers up a super strange, arpeggiated melody, very sing songy and major key, right in the middle of a roiling sea of blast and buzz. Ends up sounding quite mysterious and haunting. The big change this time around are the vocals, that are a dead ringer for Wrest from Leviathan's hellish corrosive howl, but within LSP, those vokills are simply another layer in the droning hypnotic buzzscapes, and that weird sing songy melodic element resurfaces throughout the other three tracks as well, culminating in the 15 minute closer, a sprawling, woozy and warped black metal, the guitars super blown out and washed out, the sound more of a blurred drone than black metal, even the drums are so static and relentless that they evoke a sense of mesmer as well.
Flaskavsae (a one man band, whose one man plays in Glaciial with Mr. LSP) are a perfect match, a similarly twisted take on (un-)black metal, but instead of speed and aggression, offer up something more depressive and midtempo, the guitars warbly and the distortion crumbling, the drums buried in the mix, except for the cymbals, that like LSP offer up sizzling streaks of hissy sibilance. Even when the songs launch into more furious tempos, something about the sound still manages to remain lugubrious and druggy, the riffs, less insectoid, and more blackened melting psychedelic. The final Flaskavsae track begins with a creepy almost classical sounding circusy melody, over a lurching almost industrial sounding rhythm, before the blackness and buzz seeps up from below, transforming the track into a weird droned out black buzzscape.
Packaged in a super glossy full color digipak.
MPEG Stream: FLASKAVSAE "Hymns Of Praise"
MPEG Stream: LIGHT SHALL PREVAIL "Epicism"

FLASKET BRINNER The Swedish Radio Recordings 1970-1975 (Mellotronen) 4cd 88.00
Thought we'd list this, 'cause we've had one copy for a while that's been sitting up behind/above the counter, alone and unlooked-at, alongside the our other box sets like that ZZ Top "barbeque shack" thing Allan said he'd buy if we didn't sell it by January 1st 2004 (hmm, it's still here...Allan?).
Flasket Brinner were a psychedelic, proggy, symphonic, very jazzy ensemble that featured key members of the '70s Swedish underground rock/jazz scene, and were known for their live performances (being what today might be called a "jam band" I guess). Thus a four-cd box set like this one, collecting their live radio sessions from the early '70s, is quite an appropriate release, presumably long-awaited by fans of the band. Perhaps of special note to AQ-customers is that you'll find featured on about half of this set, the Hammond organ of Bo Hansson! Indeed, these discs include several medleys of material drawn from Hansson's Lord Of The Rings album, plus other Hansson compositions. But Flasket Brinner's collective mood was wide-ranging, from Hansson's Middle Earth vibes to Ennio Morricone to traditional Turkish music to tongue-in-cheek covers of rock staples like "Wild Thing". Bewarned: you've gotta like extended jamming, and flutes and sax, to get into this. The box includes a big booklet full of photos and text, with notes on each session and song, along with a history of the band and an exhaustive discography of recordings by the various band members that makes it seem likely that Flasket Brinner alumni played on almost every cool record released in Sweden in the '70s, including LPs by such AQ faves as Algarnas Tradgard and Turid.
MPEG Stream: "Gunnars Dilemma"
MPEG Stream: "Lothlorien"

FORESHADOW No. 3 magazine + 2cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Attention doomsters! Doom metal alert! From Poland, one of the doomiest of all doom magazines we've ever seen. Interviews with and articles about Esoteric, Mournful Congregation, Spiritus Mortis, Swallow The Sun, Pantheist, My Shameful, Runemagick, Nadja, Until Death Overtakes Me and loads more! The best thing about this is that there's lots of cd-r and demo reviews of bands even we have never heard of, but now have to try and track down. Thankfully this 'zine also comes with a double cd-r (packaged in a DVD style case) with tracks from Moss, Skepticism, Swallow The Sun, Mournful Congregation, Mirror Of Deception, Unsilence, Dark Embrace, Chamber Of Sorrows, Cambian Dawn, Centurions Ghost, Nadja, Dysperium, Enoch, Forever Autumn, Stone Wings, The Gates Of Slumber, Tefra, Until Death Overtakes Me, Souls Entwined, Solicide, and Troglodyte Dawn (great name!).