V/A Zulu Stomp!! South African Garage Beats!! (Nosmoke) lp 32.00
There was a time when the idea of a record like this would blow our minds. "There was crazy psychedelic garage rock in South Africa in the fifties and sixties?" But by now, we're sort of spoiled, by the hundreds of world music reissue labels, not to mention the thousands of lost gems and rare records of all stripes from all over the world. So yeah, the fact that this record exists is not hugely surprising, but we are pretty thrilled that it's so good. That all these bands in white South Africa, still under Apartheid, emulating groups like The Beatles and Bill Hailey And The Comets, could come up with stuff this buzzy and psychedelic and super rocking. The root of the music on display here is definitely the early rock and roll we're so familiar with, but the bands here are fierce, the guitars buzz, the drums pound, even the simplest songs are transformed into barnstormers, almost uniformly these groups are characterized by super blown out, ultra distorted guitars, fuzzed out organs, and super intense yowled vocals.
Freedom's Children's cover of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" is the perfect example. Covered probably thousands of times, it's barely recognizable here, until the vocals kick in, starting with a super distorted stop start intro, then some fuzzy psych leads over a dense groove, the verses are clipped and strangely arranged, with almost a new melody, played by a jagged guitar, the chorus too is drenched in distorted guitar, so goddamn good we almost forget that we're sick of that song. And the originals hold up just as well, the A-Cads, The Upsetters, John E. Sharpe & The Squires, The Bats, Finders Keepers, killer grooves, wild and rocking, loose and groovy and freaked out and frenzied, catchy as all hell and completely as good as if not better than the bands they were trying to sound like. Very few bands we'd ever heard of, but all of them kicking or asses. Maybe one of our favorite international garage rock reissues yet. Includes extensive liner notes, on the songs, the bands, and the political and social climate in South Africa at the time, and what part rebellious revolutionary music played.
MPEG Stream: A-CADS "Watch Yourself"
MPEG Stream: UPSETTERS "Daddy Rolling Stone"
MPEG Stream: FREEDOM'S CHILDREN "Satisfaction"
MPEG Stream: JOHN E. SHARPE & THE SQUIRES "LSD"
MPEG Stream: RONNIE SINGER "I Want You"

V/A Zum #10 magazine+cd 10.98
George and Yvonne Chen's first issue with a cd! Features interviews with Built to Spill, DEVO, Joan of Arc and Snuff, as well as reviews, comics, video game emulation and Asian cult restaurants. The CD's got exclusive unreleased tracks by Boyracer, Bunnygrunt, Cars Get Crushed, Cole, Danger G20, The Great Brain, June of 44, Kublai Khan, Lullaby for the Working Class, Lustre King, Raymond Brake, Retriever, Strictly Ballroom, Sweep the Leg Johnny, Transitional, Tullycraft and Vehicle Flips.

V/A Zum Audio Volume Three (Zum) cd 11.98
The latest cd release from this stalwart Bay Area indie label and webzine features much more blistering and caustic music than their last compilation did back in 1998. The focus in the first half is squarely on noisy dissonance. Lots of experimental blasts and occasional propulsive no wave-iness from the likes of Channel 3 And 4, Beak Full Of Rubies, Coughs, Child Abuse, John Weise, Silver Daggers and Lakes. Then at the eighth track the sonic storm suddenly eases to a considerably more subdued drizzle with TG's gently plucked "La Nuit Version" and Hut's droney pulse and percussion track "Camp Along Young Oxen". Antifamily brings the energy level back up with their angular "Rome Is Not A City", and from there the comp is mixed (albeit like-minded) bag that includes more familiar faces Deerhoof, KIT, Stefan Udell, Yellow Swans and Axolotl. 23 track total.
MPEG Stream: HUTS "Camp Along Young Oxen"
MPEG Stream: WE QUIT "Bones"
MPEG Stream: AXOLOTL "Legs, Shouts"

V/A [komfort.labor] (WMF) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is the first mix cd from Stefan Betke, the driving force behind Pole and a key figurehead in the neo-dub renaissance alongside Kit Clayton and Vladslav Delay. The album begins just as you'd expect with slick transitions between Process, Farben (aka Jan Jenilek), the afforementioned Delay, and Clayton, with Betke jacking up the bass to huge thundercracks and sprinkling in occassional dubbed-out digital clicks. Fortunately, Betke doesn't let this sink into being the remix version of the "Clicks and Cuts" compilations, as he breaks up the expansive digital tracks with some quirky downtempo electronic jazz moments form Cinematic Orchestra, Flanger, and the Private Lightning Six.

V/A [o]acis box (Raster-Noton) 4cd ep 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The "Oacis" 4cd box should be confused with the "Oacis" book that Raster-Noton released earlier this year, though both featured the usual suspects in Byetone, Komet, Coh, and Alva Noto. Remixing source material from someone named Lumen (no, not the post-rock group that AQ's own Andee plays drums in), Byetone offers a slow slow motion rhythmic pulse from an electro beat surgically stripped of its funk, surrounded by razor sharp sequences of frigid particle streams. Alva Noto's simple manipulation of midrange sine waves punctuated by taut glitches and a subtle bass rhythms begins rather noxiously, but becomes sublimely beautiful as the body becomes accustomed to the tonalities. Coh's contribution isn't terribly exciting, composed out of an interlocking system of bass rhythms. Komet rounds out the compilation with a terse example of perfectly executed microhouse.
Thus, the "Oacis" box is quite solid on the musical front; however, the packaging holds some unfortunate design oversights. First off, the box is housed in the same industrial strength zip-lock bag as the book, which fit the 8.5" x 6" book rather snugly, but overwhelms the 5.5" x 5.5" box. Secondly, the designers had obviously taken great cares in die-cutting all of the innersleeves, but included a lone piece of card stock which inhibits a direct line of sight through the package. Very disappointing design execution from a label that has prided itself on its perfect packaging (like the "20' to 2000" series). Oh well.
RealAudio clip: ALVA NOTO "untitled"
RealAudio clip: BYETONE "untitled"

V/A (ALUK TODOLO / NIGHTBRINGER / NIHIL NOCTURNE / SATURNALIA TEMPLE) On The Powers Of The Sphinx (Ajna) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We'd been hearing about this lp for a while, a very unlikely gathering of four black metal or tangentially black metal outfits, including two of our favorites, alchemical post rockers Aluk Todolo, and spaced out psychedelic black metal outronauts Nightbringer, along with Nihil Nocturne and Saturnalia Temple. And while all four bands explore dramatically different sonic territories, the disparate sounds and philosophies seem to merge into one mysterious and abstract whole.
Saturnalia Temple start things off in a decidedly UN black metal fashion, thick lugubrious riffs, spacey and druggy and woozy and sprawling, laced with soft psychedelic leads, Very early Earth sounding, until the riffs begin to gather momentum and take shape, and then suddenly it sounds like Kyuss at 16 rpm, some sort of sun baked desert rock, slooowed waaaaaay doooooown, lysergic and hazy, a sort of blackened and metalized slow blues, that just crawls and creeps until the drums finally kick in, and then it's some stoner doom, but with the groove dialed way down, a trancelike churn, peppered with bits of minor key melody and deep chanted monklike vocals.
Nightbringer step up, and explode in frenzy of whirling spaced out blackness, soaring frantic riffs, blasting black beats, the sound more astral and celestial than grim and frosty, the track constantly shifting, from lightning speed blast to warped midtempo moodiness, wild leads tangled up everywhere, haunting chanted vox, totally majestic and epic, even at its doomiest, the sound transcends, the guitars stratospheric, the arrangements lush and sprawling, a total heart of the black sun blast of galactic black bliss.
Nihil Nocturne offer up yet another black facet, theirs a midtempo blackness, digey and Burzumy, with just a little groove, giving their track a very Khold like vibe, a sort of modern Moonfog band feel, but with a surprising twist, the track shifting abruptly, into something much more abstract and un-metal, with glimmering clean guitars, electronic rhythms, the stereo super panned, the sounds swooping from ear to ear, speaker to speaker, major key melodies, until a super creepy processed voice begins to intone ominously, and the track begins again, a black metal Godspeed slow build epic, finally finishing off with a frenzied chaotic climax.
And finally the mighty Aluk Todolo, who do their own thing, and manage to evoke as much mood and mystery as any of the other bands, even working with a WAY more stripped down and minimal sound, that sort of post noise dark rock kraut drone they seem to have conjured in some strange ritual, and the sounds is indeed ritualistic, but also utterly hypnotic, and mesmerizing, all motorik rhythms, simple serpentine basslines, clouds of keening feedback, and abstract guitar crunch, swirls of effects, drifting fragmented melodies, but the drums driving everything, holding it all together, loose and tight at the same time, locked in, but drifting occasionally. Can, Faust, This Heat, German Oak, not black metal, not even remotely, maybe it's the vibe, or the mood, or the band pedigree, but it hardly matters, this is blackened and heavy totally enthralling dark and mysterious minimal hypno rock and it RULES.
Gorgeous packaging, super striking artwork and a massive 12 page 12" x 12" booklet, and yeah, SUPER LIMITED.

V/A (BLASTED CANYONS / BARE WIRES / FRESH & ONLYS / THEE OH SEES / TY SEGALL & MIKAL CRONIN) Castle Face Presents Group Flex (Castle Face) 5 x 7" flexidisc book 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
How could we NOT make this a Record Of The Week?! We've already sold nearly 30 of them since we got 'em in last week, and we're only putting it up on the site now. Which makes sense when you consider this is a freaking flexidisc BOOK. And when you look at the lineup: Thee Oh Sees, Bare Wires, The Fresh & Onlys, Blasted Canyons, Ty Segall And Mikal Cronin. Almost entirely unreleased and exclusive tracks. And did we mention the flexidisc book?
Yeah, a big book, it sort of feels like one of those baby books kids can take in the bath, thick heavy pages, still softcover, but hefty, and the design is incredible, full color, super retro, all the band pages some old product reimagined using the name of the band, presented on thick glossy pages, over which lays the band's flexidisc, printed in cool metallic inks, and see through, so you can see the picture in the book through the record. And just an aside for folks who don't actually know what a flexidisc is, it's a sheet of plastic, into which record grooves are cut, and back in the day, that's how magazines gave away songs, by including flexidiscs (Mad Magazine used to include flexidiscs all the time!), but anyway, 5 flexidiscs, all housed in this cool spiral wire bound book, with an extra secret track cut right into the inside of the back cover of the book itself! And if this wasn't already worth it as just a cool musical object, this musical object just so happens to have ten tracks from five of our favorite bands!
Thee Oh Sees get all abstract and post punky on "Burning Spear", channeling Wire through their reverby garage crunch, before slipping into the shimmy shake of "What You Need (The Porch Boogie Thing)" complete with falsetto vox. The Fresh & Onlys offer up two short sharp tracks of vintage retro jangle pop, all reverby and echoey and hooky as hell, laced with girl group backup vox and warm whirring organ. Bare Wires kick out the jams on two total retro classics, sounding more and more like they were actually transported here from the sixties, total Who worshipping jangley mod-pop radness. Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin try their hand at some Bowie covers, transforming "Fame" into an echo drenched dirge, and "Suffragette City" into a supercharged garagepunk blowout. Recent Record Of The Week-ers Blasted Canyons contribute two songs from their Record Of The Week (this was actually meant to come out first), but if you needed a teaser / taster, these two songs should convince you, fuzzy blown out, synth heavy garage pop space punk bliss, dueling boy/girl vocals, thick buzzing synths, wild crashing drums, big riffs, sixties girl group shimmy via modern garage rock crunch, and of course hooks galore. And finally, the special hidden surprise track, on the inside of the book's back cover, a strange chunk of lo-fi Casio-core primitive weirdness from a 'group' called Here Comes The Here Comes, apparently the work of the daughter of one of the Castleface head honchos, goofy lyrics, boy / girl vox, a woozy electro creep that finishes off in a squall of processed vocals and weird electronic squiggles.
So cool! And crazy limited. ONLY 1000 COPIES, but as we mentioned above, they seem to be going fast, and there are rumors of a possible second pressing, but it will definitely be stripped down, and might even be missing some of the music, so grab one of these before they're gone. Comes with a download coupon as well!
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PLAYING YOUR GROUP FLEX: Do not tear out the flexidiscs, just fold the book back, with the record you want to play on top, then set the whole book on your turntable, when it's time to play the next record, simply turn the page, and put the book right back on the turntable. And repeat.
MPEG Stream: THEE OH SEES "What You Need (The Porch Boogie Thing)"
MPEG Stream: BARE WIRES "Wanna Fight"
MPEG Stream: THE FRESH & ONLYS "You're Only Happy When You Know"
MPEG Stream: TY SEGALL AND MIKAL CRONIN "Fame"

V/A (BOYS NOIZE) I Love Techno 2008 (N.E.W.S.) cd 17.98
Okay, it's time to come clean. After fighting it for years. And beginning every techno review with a disclaimer like "we don't really like techno all that much", it's time to just admit it, we love techno. We do. well, we must, this is the SECOND comp called I Love Techno that we've raved about on the list. And we've been listening to it nonstop since it first came in. Sure we love Pop Ambient, and heroin house, and all the more minimal weirdo shades of techno, but the stuff on this comp falls closer to the French stuff we also love, Daft Punk, Justice, with wild buzzing synths, pounding big beats, crazy melodies, and this comp is overflowing with total dancefloor destroyers. The first I Love Techno comp, was a bit more on the minimal side of things, playing into a sound we already loved, but this 2008 collection is not minimal at all. It's maximal. Big time. Snarling, swirling, buzzing, pounding, wild, sweaty, strobe lit, electro flecked, synth heavy techno, and if we actually were inclined to dance, this comp would keep us moving FOREVER.
Opening with a brief burst of old school electro, the sound quickly shifts to a killer mashup, pounding beats and buzzy spacey synths, and cold clinical spoken female vocals, IN GERMAN. Cold wave via Daft Punk. Or something. And after that's it's on, and it don't stop. Synthesizers buzz and howl, squeal and shriek, beats shuffle, skitter, pulse, throb and pound, this shit is wild and weird and freaked out and actually sort of heavy in its own way.
Two tracks right in the middle, one by Bingo Players, the other by Les Petits Pilous, are completely nuts, jagged chunks of synth buzz, shooting out staccato style, locked in with pounding beats, like the frenzied climax of the ultimate techno jam, stretched out into whole songs. The record closes with the ultimate techno one-two punch. Boys Noize, who assembled this comp, offer up "My Head", which begins a hiccupping chopped up stutter, laced with squiggly synths, and it just gets more sharp and caustic and jagged and blown out and groovy and funky and far out as fuck. Which segues perfectly into Errorsmith's "In A Sweat", which starts out all fuzzy and hiss drenched, muted beats all strangled and stunted, before the beat drops, a super distorted fuzzy groove, that just gets weirder and weirder, the various synths slip from super low end buzz, to super sharp high end skree, constantly shifting tone and timbre, while the beat manages to stutter and skip all over the place, the whole thing culminating in a high end hiss storm.
So yeah, I suppose we do love techno. That is, as long as techno always sounds this funky and freaked out and fucked up and kick ass. Way recommended. Even for technophobes, as this has definitely won over a few of those around here.
MPEG Stream: PROXY / I-ROBOTS "Raven / Frau (Acapella)"
MPEG Stream: JAN DRIVER "Rat Alert"
MPEG Stream: BINGO PLAYERS "Get Up (Diplo Remix)"
MPEG Stream: LES PETITS PILOUS "Wake Up"

V/A (DAFT PUNK) Discovered: A Collection Of Daft Punk Samples (Rapster) cd 14.98
It's no secret that many of us here at AQ are huge fans of Daft Punk. In fact Matt, Irwin and Antaeus all went to their concert in Berkeley this summer and still light up when talking about what an amazing night it was. The fact is Daft Punk have perfected their unique strain of dance music, executed in a way that almost anyone can get into, without losing any of the electricity and spirit that makes their sound so special. So it's always been obvious to us how fun it would be to be able to go through their gigantic record collection. This compilation features tracks that they have sampled on their three albums, so it's no surprise that it's filled with all sorts of rare funk, soul and disco gems.
While this works a just a killer comp, it's especially fun if you're a Daft Punk fan as we've gotten so much pleasure hearing such unmistakably Daft Punk moments in their original incarnations. We also think it's so cool that they made sure to give full props to their source material and the wealth of vintage dance music that they have borrowed so heavily from. Dance gems from folks we know and love like Karen Young, Cerrone and Sister Sledge to more obscure burners from the likes of Little Anthony & The Imperials, Edwin Birdsong and Breakwater this is a collection that's been making us dance and smile so wide.
MPEG Stream: EDWIN BIRDSONG "Cola Bottle Baby"
MPEG Stream: KAREN YOUNG "Hot Shot"
MPEG Stream: LITTLE ANTHONY & THE IMPERIALS "Can You Imagine"

V/A (ESHETE, ALEMAYEHU) Ethiopiques Vol. 22 : More Vintage! (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
When it comes to stunning consistency of excellence it doesn't get much better then the Ethiopiques series. Twenty plus releases and they have yet to release a dud. Last time out they focused their attention not on the vintage era of the grooves of Ethiopian pop but instead it was a brand new recording of tender and solemn solo piano by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, a record which we totally fell in love with. With volume 22 the series flashes back to the past for another big dip into the vaults of Alemayehu Eshete, one of the biggest stars from the golden-age of Ethiopian music who alongside Mahmoud Ahmed, Tlahoun Gessesse and Mulatu Astatke helped define that sound. In fact Eshete was previously the star of the ninth volume of the Ethiopiques series as well. But judging from this release, the man left a very sizable legacy, as this disc is filled with absolute treasures without a throwaway track in sight.
With instrumentation that's so tight, and breaks that would make any lover of psych/kraut/rare groove's jaw drop, this is a collection that we've already been spinning over and over ever since it came in to AQ. Eshete's voice and presence feels so sure and confident, with a unique vocal style that's been compared to an Ethiopian James Brown crossed with Elvis Presley. There are moments in these songs that catch such deep grooves and moments that sound like they could be pulled straight from a Can song. You just can't beat the warmth of these stripped down analog recordings. You want to be in a room filled with smoke and candles when you listen to this. Eshete made such amazing songs that just drip with sweat, while oozing elegance too. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Tenageri"
MPEG Stream: "Yebeqanal"

V/A (FELIX KUBIN) Historische Aufnahmen (Gagarin Records) lp 38.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is one of those records that is either one of THEE most amazing and bizarre collections of random and far out archival sounds and recordings, or it's one of the most meticulously assembled sonic hoaxes EVER. And as it usually is with records like this, it almost doesn't matter. If it IS real, well then WOW. How some of these recordings exist, and have never been heard, hard to fathom. If it's all fake, then WOW again. Gorgeously presented, the liner notes detailed and super informative, complete with archival photos, and all presented in a jacket that looks like one of those classic collections of library music. BUT. This was compiled by weirdo outsider musician Felix Kubin (whose career retrospective compilation cd we raved about recently), which makes us think this is just the kind of thing he would think up, and actually create. Plus, some of these recordings are so impossibly bizarre, and some of the sounds are so weird, and often don't sound at all like what they purport to be.
So let's dig in. A recording of a demonstration record, demonstrating a mechanical automatic speech apparatus, lots of talking in German, then the actual demos, a weird mechanical series of tones, meant to be vowel sounds, the first step in a machine that will emulate human voice. Next is a lost recording of a Finnish telephone exchange from 1938, that sounds more like some strangely musical bit of dronemusic, all reverby and woozy and washed out, haunting and soundscapey. Up next is some music from a Norwegian Whaling Festival, in 1948, a surprisingly high fidelity blast of what could be Avarus, a cacophony of crowd sounds, voices, clanging metal, all nearly drowning out the skronk of various horns. Then there's a recording from a fraudulent attempt to raise money for a new '16 track tape' (twice as good as the 8 track that was so popular at the time, 1967), a recording of what we presume to be the factory where they make the tapes, all industrial whirs, voices, clanks and rumbles, the tape having remained unheard due to the fact that it was an obsolete format.
Up next, a supposedly early piece by David Tudor, possibly his first, a stretch of near silence punctuated by bits of crunch and glitch, weird warped tape sounds, it could be Tudor, hard to say. Then comes a hydrophone recording of a project to record plankton, capturing the plant's electronic impulses and converting them into sound, this recording however is from the cockpit of a submarine, so everything is murky and muddy, voices and underwater warble, quite an awesome recording, genuine or not. The side ends with what might be the most bizarre track of them all, a recording of a man performing with barnyard animals in the UK, a part of variety shows that were apparently quite popular at the time, the man beats a drum, his rumbling voice soon joined in by mooing cows, oinking pigs, meowing cats and clattery horse hooves percussion.
The second side doesn't get any less far out, beginning with what is meant to be a recording of a Pygmy hunting ritual, recorded in 1934 in Africa, and again, it sounds almost like some modern lysergic forest folk weirdness, super distorted, lots of percussion, wailed voices, super dense and chaotic, definitely raw and primitive sounding, but definitely suspect. Then comes another demonstration recording, this one from Oskar Sala, who created the soundscapes for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, here he demonstrates the Volkstrautonium for the infamous Joseph Goebbels of the Third Reich. Then there's an early early 'remix', created in 1965 from wax cylinder recordings of Persian foot soldiers in 1921. Next up, a found reel to reel tape, that came with a player, and was discovered to contain what is purportedly a recording of a Situationist project to construct a non authoritarian kindergarten "aimed to engender a spirit of subversion in children", and is essentially a recording of a man and a child, interrupted by various strange sounds. Then comes an unknown tape recording "presented here as a curiosity", a twisted blast of mysterious voices and garbled analog electronics, a technical experiment perhaps, we'll never know. And finally, an untitled player piano composition by Hans Henny Jahnn, a "playwright, novelist, organ builder, music publisher and polymath", and his masterpiece was apparently about a man who tried to notate the grain of birchwood into musical notation, and it seems Jahnn tried to do the same in real life, using birchwood grain as a blueprint for musical notation. Wow.
Incredible. And incredibly strange. A fantastic, and fantastical listen for sure. Everything here so bizarre and baffling, and in most cases almost TOO bizarre and baffling. But like we said, it hardly matters, regardless of their provenance, this is an amazing document of some truly wondrous sounds, recordings that if not genuine, are at least genuinely freaky and fascinating. And, unfortunately, we have but a handful.

V/A (FM3) HeXieFu (FM3) cd 25.00
Attention Buddha Machine obsessives, here's another sonic artifact / fetishistic release from Buddha Machine masterminds FM3 to collect and obsess over, and yeah, it is still Buddha Machine related. In fact it's another collection of Buddha Machine derived soundscapes, with FM3 removing the loops from the machine, and passing them around to various contemporary Chinese musicians to remix, rework, reinterpret and re-envision, there are a few names we recognize, like Li Jianhong, but so many that we don't, all offering their own interpretations, and the sonic breadth is fairly stunning.
From haunting folky drifts, to groovy Chinese pop, to gorgeous rhythmic percussive workouts, to crackly Philip Jeck like dronescapes, from haunting field recording flecked, reinterpreted traditional Chinese music, to hushed swirling ambience, from actual recordings of a Buddha Machine being played in a remote village, replete with the sounds of insects and wildlife, to minimal abstract dronemusic, from electronic flecked folk pop, to looped rhythmic post industrial electronic skitter, from mysterious spoken word to strange soundtracky sci-fi ambience, and from traditional sounding fluttery flute to super commercial electro pop, and that's just a sampling. It's a pretty amazing listen, varied to be sure, but it all works pretty well together as a whole, and in many cases, especially for the Buddha Machine obsessed, it becomes a game of spot the Buddha Machine loop, not always an easy feat in many cases.
And then there's the packaging. Totally over the top, and in many ways, subtly beholden to the machine that inspired it. First, everything is houses in a printed metallic oversized gold bag, normally used to hold oolong tea, sealed of course, it has to be torn to get inside, but fear not, there's another bag inside, however, that one is sealed too, so to reuse it, you'll have to tear open that one too. Along with the spare bag, there's the disc itself, which is mounted to a heavy textured board, printed front and back with Chinese characters, with a hole punched out of one corner, in which is mounted a metal coin, bearing an imprint of the Buddha Machine, and the coins were apparently cast in metal from the same factory that makes designer buckles, rings and necklaces, the label pointing out that "Your coin could have been a Gucci!", there's a little sticker, featuring more Chinese characters, and then there are a handful of members only "VIP" cards, which look like blank credit cards, and which are apparently ubiquitous in status-conscious modern China, each on a different color, the colors of the original Buddha Machines of course.
LIMITED TO 2000 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: HUANG JIN "Tong Nian Ju Gu"
MPEG Stream: B6 "Yu Qiu Yu"
MPEG Stream: LI JIANHONG "Buddha Machine In Li Village"

V/A (JOE MEEK) Joe Meek Freakbeat - You're Holding Me Down (Castle Music / Sanctuary) cd 24.00

V/A (JOE MEEK) Joe Meek: The EP Collection (Castle Music) 12cd box 61.00
You gotta love Joe Meek! If you don't yet, what's your problem?! If you're unfamiliar, check out the genuinely inspired and advanced I Hear A New World (recorded in 1960, but 'lost' for years!) immediately! This mad genius/mad man artist/producer's fascinating and bizarre life story is too long and detailed to go into here, especially when we've got a brand new twelve disc box set of music he produced! Each cd features a Meek-produced solo artist or band's four-song EP, and is presented in a cardboard sleeve printed with its original cover art. Artists include Mike Berry, Houston Wells, The Flee-rekkers, The Packabeats, Heinz, Don Charles, John Leyton, The Blue Men ("I Hear A New World", perhaps his masterpiece), and The Tornados, but the real star is Meek. Seriously folks, he was a one-of-a-kind recording innovator!

V/A (JOE MEEK) They Were Wrong! Joe's Boys - Volume One (Castle Music / Sanctuary) 2cd 24.00

V/A (KURT VILE, JACK ROSE, MEG BAIRD, US GIRLS) Meet The Philly Elite (Kraak) 7" 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Pretty killer 4 way match up on this super limited 7": Kurt Vile, Jack Rose, Meg Baird and US Girls. But what do all 4 of these acts have in common? They all call Philadelphia home. Released to commemorate a show the folks at Kraak set up earlier this year in Philly, each of these 4 bands offers up a brief little blast of the glorious sounds they make. Blast might be too strong a word to describe the tracks here, as evidenced by garage noise popper Kurt Vile who starts things off on a surprisingly sweet and folky note with his "I Wanted Everything", all minor key guitar and sweetly crooned vox, plenty of reverb, a dark woozy almost traditional sounding ballad, which leads perfectly into Rose's "Mr. Rose Visits Washington D.C.", yet another gorgeous tangle of buzzing steel string modern Appalachia, replete with the usual bleary blur of frenetic melody and warm languid raga like buzz.
On the flipside, Meg Baird (of Espers) offers up a sweetly melancholy folky drift, a cover of a track by obscure sixties Christian folkies Felt, delicate crystalline guitar, her voice ethereal and angelic, the whole thing very dreamy and timeless, but definitely looking back to the classic era of seventies British female folk. And finally US Girls finish things off with the only real 'blast' here, a glorious noisy lo-fi looped chunk of warm swirling garage pop, repetitive and buzzy and totally mesmerizing but WAY too short. Left us dying for more for sure...
Comes in a simple printed black and white cover, adorned with a crazy high school binder drawing of wolves and buildings and melty hands and floating heads and fat people and ghosts and teeth and all kinds of super detailed weirdness. And this is most likely crazy limited, these things most always are.

V/A (MAN IS THE BASTARD NOISE / AMPS FOR CHRIST / BN/K2 / THE HIEROPHANT / UNICORN / ANTENNACLE / SLEESTAK) No Skull Left Unturned (200mg) 3cd / 4 booklets / stickers / patch / bookmark / button 43.00
We often lament the fact that many of our favorite bands predate the list. Bands we love and obsessed on, but whose records, and often entire careers, came well before we began our bi-weekly chronicling of musics weird and heavy, dense and brutal, lovely and catchy. Slint's Spiderland has a one line review ferchrissakes!!!
And then there's Man Is The Bastard. The supreme rulers of West Coast Power Violence. A throbbing, churning, dual bass-ed behemoth. A crushing low end onslaught, double basses, crushing drums, howled vocals, swirls of caveman electronics, amazing graphic design (that ubiquitous MITB skull!), political lyrics, challenging subject matter, intense artwork, they were the ultimate D.I.Y. punk rock dirge metal outfit. If you don't own any MITB records, stop right now, and make it happen, any one into heavy, thoughtful brutality, or into experimental and extreme outsider punk rock, needs to own every bit of Bastard they can get their hands on. It's hard to imagine a punk rock band who hasn't been influenced by MITB. In fact the crustcore back pack crowd that you most often equate with legendary epic metal lords Neurosis, you'll find are almost ALL sporting the MITB skull somewhere on their persons, back patch, button, tattoo, it's probably more ubiquitous in this generation than the Black Flag bars or the Einsturzende Neubauten figure. And for good reason. MITB were not only heavy, they were fucking weird, not metal, not punk rock, not noise, but all of those things. And not only did MITB leave an amazing musical legacy, the various members all continued on, taking various bits and pieces, vestiges of what once was Man Is The Bastard, and incorporating them into a whole new world of noise and sound.
Thus we have No Skull Left Unturned. A triple cd collection of mostly new recordings from all the various Man Is The Bastard offshoots (only the Sleestak tracks are previous

r the packaging alone. Let's start from the outside and work our way inwards.
An oversized grey envelope, sealed with a metallic silver wax seal, bearing the imprint of the MITB skull, affixed to one side of the envelope is a library card pocket, inside, a card with the names of each band typewritten. Flip it over, the MITB skull is printed in black metallic ink, and a clear transparency is affixed over the top. Inside, there are FOUR zines, each with a hand printed silkscreened hard cardstock cover, printed in oranges and blacks. Inside the first, Sounds, are the three cds, a track listing, liner notes, photos and track info for each band on the comp, in the back are two pages of stickers, one with stickers for the comp and all the various bands, one a whole page of MITB skull stickers, along side the cds, are an embroidered patch and a pin, both bearing the same skull image. The set is numbered on the inside of the cover. Limited of course. The second zine, also housed in a silkscreened card stock cover, Discography, is just that, a complete discography of Man Is The Bastard and MITB related bands, including tons of reviews from various zines and magazines, as well as a full color poster featuring the covers of every single MITB and related release. Zine number three, Interviews, is ultra thick, packed with tons of interviews with all the various members of MITB, discussing everything from music to politics, touring, art, reviews, Japanese fans, drugs and loads more. Also included in this zine is a hand screened MITB bookmark, no doubt to use as you work your way through all of this text. And finally, zine 4, Images, is even thicker than the Interviews zine, with tons of images, photos, posters, interviews as well as most, if not all the liner notes and inserts from all the various MITB releases. All 4 zines tied together with a piece of twine and sealed in that envelope.
Phew! And we haven't even gotten to the music yet. Which is just as intense and impressive as the packaging:
Let's start with Amps for Christ who are probably the most well known of the bunch, at least around here. Henry Barnes was the noisemaker for Man Is The Bastard, with his homemade amps (Amps For Christ!), lo-fi duct-tape electronics, screwdrivers and bastardized circuit boards, he added a weird caveman lo-tech sheen to MITB's churning bass heavy power violence, but post-Bastard, Barnes took his Amps and created a strange world of jangle gypsy folk, lilting strum and soaring joyful bagpipe like buzz. A glorious field of fuzzy sonic flowers and sparkling sunshine, all woven into bouncy jigs, doleful drones, simple strum and dreamy childlike melodies, but peppered with strange spoken word, machinelike robotic, murky loping krautrock, and raga like buzz. The tracks here run the gamut, featuring the usual Amps guests contributing dreamlike female vocals, keening violas, and extra strum and pluck, all woven into a constantly confusional world of bent circuits, blown out guitar buzz, summery afternoon folk flutter, and ominous dirgey strums.
Then there's Unicorn, who have been a big favorite around these parts, with their washed out minimal ambience, dark drones and atmospheric drift. The Unicorn tracks here are much more varied, the first a strange electro soundscape of crunchy beats and distorted vocals, feedback squiggles and damaged synths, the second more of the Unicorn we're used to, barely there drift and shimmer, a faraway pulse, then the third a murky midnight forest jam, recorded from beneath the earth, everything muffled and muddy, smeared rhythms, and mysterious insect sounds, like No Neck doing Chain Reaction.
Probably the most prolific and most direct of the MITB offshoots is Bastard Noise, whose output has been nearly impossible to keep up with, and who embraced the noise side of Man Is The Bastard (hence the new monicker) ditching most of the bass and rhythm in favor of a much more static and generally harsh sound. That said, their blend of caveman electronics and black ambience is quite compelling, from huge ambient sprawls of softly shifting black whir, to freaked out walls of pure fierce sound, a thick swirl of soft white noise and manufactured alien soundscapes, harsh and brutal, noisy and intense, but also weirdly inviting and impossibly listenable.
Bastard Noise teamed up with Japanese junk-noise unit K2, for long stretches of chaotic, kitchen sink, electronic noise freakouts: malfunctioning electronics, damaged amplifiers, squalls of loops and stuttering glitch and buzz and grinding crunch.
Antennacle are a new name to us, not sure which Bastard is involved, but they contribution to this collection is one epic 20+ minute soundscape, ominous expanses of insectlike buzz, spare percussive rattle, low end hum, blessed out shimmer, brief stretches of glimmering outer space FX, chunks of feedback, occasionally assembled into strange alien rhythms, a constantly shifting soundworld dipping into territories as far reaching as Dead C murk, Keening Sunroof!-like ur-drone, No Neck style folky clatter and Wolf Eyes-ian electronic landscapes.
Hierophant is another new name to us in the field of post Bastard offshoots, this one another American / Japanese team up, all electronics and field recordings, woven into a jagged field of low end thrum and hissing high end buzz, abstract percussion, and clouds of Merzbowian rrroooar, swirls of spaced out FX, a discordant din, the sound of a noise rock band crashing headfirst into a junkyard gamelan. Long stretches of what sound like field recordings of some alien swamp, all indescribably chirps and croaks, suspended in a muddy viscous black bog, over which thick sheets of coruscating high end feedback drift like storm clouds.
But probably the most exciting stuff here are three previously released tracks from Man Is The Bastard noiserock side project Sleestak. It exciting to hear what a more mellow MITB might have sounded like, an ominous low slung brutality, bass heavy dirges, moody malevolence, more a sort of beautiful brutal post rock. A loping bass line wanders through a field of hiss and hum and buzz, spacious and spare, almost like a meaner more malevolent Low or Bohren. Slowcore peppered with bursts of twisted noise freakouts, and distant bits of shortwave squiggle, a very Slint-like vibe, with the guitar locking into super hypnotic loops, over lurching downtuned bass, drifting detuned melodic fragments, if someone didn't know better, they could definitely mistake this stuff for some super obscure Touch And Go or AmRep noiserock band. Killer stuff. Previously released, but we'd never heard these tracks before, and will absolutely be hunting down everything we can find. In fact, this whole comp will have most of you digging for discs by all these bands. And our waning love of Bastard Noise has most definitely blossomed again after digging into these tracks. Absolutely and totally recommended. And of course the best part of a comp like this is that it got us all excited about Man Is The Bastard again, and that shit sounds as good as ever.
Man Is The Bastard! Crossed Out! Infest! Spazz! No Comment! Capitalist Casualties! All hail WEST COAST POWERVIOLENCE!! And the glorious sounds borne from their legacy...
MPEG Stream: SLEESTAK "Atomic Clock"
MPEG Stream: SLEESTAK "Dumb Luck"
MPEG Stream: UNICORN "Treebeard"
MPEG Stream: HIEROPHANT "A Shadow Behind Your Shadow"
MPEG Stream: AMPS FOR CHRIST "Cock Of The North"
MPEG Stream: ANTENNACLE "We Will Remain"

V/A (NARDWUAR THE HUMAN SERVIETTE AND THE EVAPORATORS) Nardwuar The Human Serviette And The Evaporators Present... Busy Doing Nothing (Nardwuar / Mint) lp+calendar 17.98
If you love old school punk, indie pop, garage rawk, fun, AND you need help keeping track of your days/months/years (at least from May 2012 through to December 2014), then this is for you. Huh?! Please stick with us, it'll all make sense soon....
The inimitable Nardwuar The Human Serviette returns to the recorded realm, once more with his buddy Andrew W.K. in tow, along with a crowd of other musical pals. A lifelong championer of music's unsung heroes (mostly those with Canadian roots), a feverish pursuer of interviews with entertainment figures large and small, and a tireless digger-upper of the most obscure trivia morsels about said interview subjects, Nardwuar's latest musical offering is just as obsessive. It's a compilation which featured his own band The Evaporators (whose line-up currently stars bassist Stephen Hamm formerly of the infamous mid-'80s Vancouver punk band Slow and the New Pornographers' John Collins on lead guitar), Mr. W.K., Franz Ferdinand, Kate Nash, Sage Francis, The Cribs, Fuad & The Feztones (aka the latest Montreal outfit by Bobby Beaton and John Davis of the mighty Gruesomes with The Stills' Dave Hamelin and Liam O'Neil), and more. The baker's dozen selection is a split between originals by The Evaporators; the assorted UK, US and Canadian guests covering Canadian indie tunes originally by Pointed Sticks, Cub (Cup's first band!), The Dishrags, and rockabilly truck driver (!) Doug Rutledge; and yes, a brief interview clip (because it just wouldn't be a Nardwuar release without one, would it?). The Evaps sound beefier and better than ever. Although their songwriting still has a true unpolished garage rawk heart, the higher-fi production on this record suit them well. They sound huge compared to past releases, which is particularly appropriate on a couple of their songs here - namely, the title track (which, by the way, is not a cover of the Bing Crosby song of the same name) and the fists-in-the-air-smile-on-your-face anthemics of "I Hate Being Late When I'm Early". By now you might've caught wind of the latter, a wild'n'woolly duet with Andrew W.K. (especially if you attended SXSW last month where they played four shows, one with W.K. guesting on organ). It's a full-blown bombastic power pop song with totally silly lyrics (would you expect anything else from W.K. and Nardwuar?) and Sweet-esque vocals in the chorus that you can't help but sing along to. All in all, Busy Doing Nothing is a frantically paced gleeful collection of tunes sure to get you primed and ready for summertime.
But wait, there's still more fun packed into this release because Nardwuar The Serviette is a generous soul who always loves to dish out bonus gifts even if it isn't Christmas time or your birthday. Included with the vinyl is a 40-page calendar (yup, you heard right, forty, this ain't an ordinary twelve month deal!) filled with vintage black and white punk rock photos (from waaay back in the day circa '70s and early '80s!) by veteran punk rock photographer Bev Davies. She's snapped a plethora of awesome candid rock pics over the years, and she and Nardwuar dug through her enormous archive to select a choice few for this release. There are shots of The Cramps, PiL, The Cure, New Order, The Minutemen, Joan Jett, Girlschool, The Adolescents, Pointed Sticks, Iggy Pop, The Slits, Gun Club, U2, extras on the movie set of "Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains", and James Brown. Wha'?! Yeah, that last one might seem a bit incongruous, but then again, he might've been more punk than any of the others, eh?
A super rad colored vinyl co-release by Nardwuar and Mint Records with handlettering completely designed and drawn by Cup!
MPEG Stream: EVAPORATORS WITH ANDREW W.K. "I Hate Being Late When I'm Early"
MPEG Stream: EVAPORATORS "Hot Dog High"

V/A (ROBERT MILLIS) My Friend Rain (Sublime Frequencies) cd + dvd 21.00
Yet another fantastic collection of fascinating sights and sounds from Sublime Frequencies, this time from Southeast Asia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, etc... filmed by Robert Millis, he of Climax Golden Twins, as well as a frequent Sublime Frequencies contributor / collaborator / curator and an avid collector of world music and lost 78s. And like past SF dvds, My Friend Rain is another fantastical journey through the streets of Southeast Asia, a travelogue of street musicians, town squares, temples, forests, people's homes, markets, food stalls, performances are interspersed with more seemingly mundane occurrences, which somehow still seem magical, a priest sweeping out a rainswept temple floor, food being assembled while a band plays wildly in the background, a glorious vocal and drum cacophony, crashing cymbals, and there's also some serious weirdness, a strange selection of statues, some all bloody with their guts pulled out, meat being chopped on a cart, boats being driven through barely enough water to keep them afloat... Like a series of abstract short films woven together into a fantastically impressionistic musical portrait of places and people. One of the coolest moments a guy who plays this incredible circular drum set, all these tiny drums hanging in a row, totally encircling the performer, and he plays them super fast, with his hands, and the sounds are so divine, somewhere between gamelan and steel drums. Would love to get a whole record of just that.
There's so much to see, definitely worth rewatching.
The dvd is also accompanied by a cd, a soundtrack, featuring all the music featured in the film, popular, traditional, culled from live performances, lp archives and old cassettes, including that amazing circular drum piece (the instrument is called a Hsiang Waing), as well as the blind musician who opens and closes the film, playing a strange guitar with a metal bowl affixed to the neck for percussion, there's also a gorgeous song performed with a small leaf held between the musicians fingers and played like a reed, and of course some Asian pop songs, fuzzy, poppy, funky, groovy, such good stuff. Like all Sublime Frequencies release, so very recommended.
MPEG Stream: ZAW WIN SHEIN (MYANMAR) "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN BLIND STREET MUSICIAN (THAILAND) "Unknown"
MPEG Stream: LASHIO THEIN AUNG (MYANMAR) "Ugly Face With A Kind Heart"
MPEG Stream: MEAS HOKSENG (CAMBODIA) "Jomnes Jis Kor Aung (Khmer Remix Version)"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN ELEPHANT MAHOOT (CAMBODIA) "Improvisation With A Small Leaf"

V/A (SEAWHORES / POWER TAKE OFF / SKOAL KODIAK / GAY WITCH ABORTION) A Butcher's Waltz (Learning Curve) cd 8.98
Killer four way noise rock split which starts out with the churning epic psychedelic crush of Seawhores, whose Forest record was a big fave around here. And like that record, on these three tracks, Seawhores take their classic-rock-meets-noiserock AmRep worship and douses it in all sorts of warped FX and garbled vox, tangles of guitar shred, and soaring melody, the sound slipping from Butthole Surfers like druggy lurch, to synth driven future prog, from stop start math rock crunch to warbly hip hop flecked murk-pop (!!), from Dead Kennedys / Black Flag like punk rock pound to Bastro like angularity. Holy shit these guys are awesome. Not sure why they're not a bigger deal.
Up next is a sprawling 10+ minute track from a group called Power-Take-Off, the first we've heard from these guys, but it's definitely good stuff, sheets of corrosive feedback, loads of hiss and hum, all wrapped around stumbling drum pound, but that's just the intro, when the song kicks in, PTO lay own some seriously acid drenched stoner sludge heaviness, with howled bullhorn vocals, buzzing downtuned riffage, the group locked tight into a serious tranced out chunk of almost raga like noise rock mesmer, a single part hammered away at, over and over and over, with a brief break for what sounds like an auctioneer doing his thing, only to have PTO lurch right back in where they left off.
Skoal Kodiak are up next, we reviewed their recent Kryptonym Bodliak record on Load and described them as knuckle dragging dancefloor deviants, and while that definitely still applies, there's plenty of noisiness going on for sure, here it's a groovy motorik beat, a slithery bassline, all smothered in clouds of malfunctioning electronics and glitched out effects, the vocals a mush mouthed howl, a dizzying chunk of demented dancefloor damage for sure. The second SK track offers up more of the same, but this time getting WAY more dubbed out, way more spaced out, the rhythms propulsive, the groove surprisingly, well, groovy, the sounds panned hard, zooming from speaker to speaker, super fun and funky and the sort of thing that would probably go over surprisingly well in an actual club.
Finally, finishing things off, are the awesomely monikered Gay Witch Abortion, a group we'd been hearing about for ages, but hadn't really actually heard until now. And we have to say, not at all what we expected from this duo, but if anything, it's way weirder and cooler than anything we could have hoped for. A six part eight minute song suite, murky and fuzzy, glitchy and squelchy, heavily rhythmic, sounding a bit like a way more lo-fi Lightning Bolt, but with some spaced out synths and weirdo electronics, sorta trancey, sorta heavy, epic and majestic in places, sludgey and metallic in others, slipping into some weirdly cheesy organ driven calypso style cheesiness at one point, before finishing off with an impossibly poppy drum heavy jam that somehow fuses wild angular flares of guitar skronk, with chaotic drum damage, and some serious hookiness, actual proper singing and indie rock melodies all tangled up with some seriously dense and damaged noise rock pummel. Definitely left us wanting more!
MPEG Stream: SEAWHORES "Our Embassy"
MPEG Stream: POWER TAKE OFF "Plow Share"
MPEG Stream: SKOAL KODIAK "99999"
MPEG Stream: GAY WITCH ABORTION "Oblation - Seeds From Space"

V/A (SEAWHORES / POWER TAKE OFF / SKOAL KODIAK / GAY WITCH ABORTION) A Butcher's Waltz (Learning Curve) lp 14.98
Killer four way noise rock split which starts out with the churning epic psychedelic crush of Seawhores, whose Forest record was a big fave around here. And like that record, on these three tracks, Seawhores take their classic-rock-meets-noiserock AmRep worship and douses it in all sorts of warped FX and garbled vox, tangles of guitar shred, and soaring melody, the sound slipping from Butthole Surfers like druggy lurch, to synth driven future prog, from stop start math rock crunch to warbly hip hop flecked murk-pop (!!), from Dead Kennedys / Black Flag like punk rock pound to Bastro like angularity. Holy shit these guys are awesome. Not sure why they're not a bigger deal.
Up next is a sprawling 10+ minute track from a group called Power-Take-Off, the first we've heard from these guys, but it's definitely good stuff, sheets of corrosive feedback, loads of hiss and hum, all wrapped around stumbling drum pound, but that's just the intro, when the song kicks in, PTO lay own some seriously acid drenched stoner sludge heaviness, with howled bullhorn vocals, buzzing downtuned riffage, the group locked tight into a serious tranced out chunk of almost raga like noise rock mesmer, a single part hammered away at, over and over and over, with a brief break for what sounds like an auctioneer doing his thing, only to have PTO lurch right back in where they left off.
Skoal Kodiak are up next, we reviewed their recent Kryptonym Bodliak record on Load and described them as knuckle dragging dancefloor deviants, and while that definitely still applies, there's plenty of noisiness going on for sure, here it's a groovy motorik beat, a slithery bassline, all smothered in clouds of malfunctioning electronics and glitched out effects, the vocals a mush mouthed howl, a dizzying chunk of demented dancefloor damage for sure. The second SK track offers up more of the same, but this time getting WAY more dubbed out, way more spaced out, the rhythms propulsive, the groove surprisingly, well, groovy, the sounds panned hard, zooming from speaker to speaker, super fun and funky and the sort of thing that would probably go over surprisingly well in an actual club.
Finally, finishing things off, are the awesomely monikered Gay Witch Abortion, a group we'd been hearing about for ages, but hadn't really actually heard until now. And we have to say, not at all what we expected from this duo, but if anything, it's way weirder and cooler than anything we could have hoped for. A six part eight minute song suite, murky and fuzzy, glitchy and squelchy, heavily rhythmic, sounding a bit like a way more lo-fi Lightning Bolt, but with some spaced out synths and weirdo electronics, sorta trancey, sorta heavy, epic and majestic in places, sludgey and metallic in others, slipping into some weirdly cheesy organ driven calypso style cheesiness at one point, before finishing off with an impossibly poppy drum heavy jam that somehow fuses wild angular flares of guitar skronk, with chaotic drum damage, and some serious hookiness, actual proper singing and indie rock melodies all tangled up with some seriously dense and damaged noise rock pummel. Definitely left us wanting more!
MPEG Stream: SEAWHORES "Our Embassy"
MPEG Stream: POWER TAKE OFF "Plow Share"
MPEG Stream: SKOAL KODIAK "99999"
MPEG Stream: GAY WITCH ABORTION "Oblation - Seeds From Space"

V/A (SIGH / MEADS OF ASPHODEL / TAAKE / THUS DEFILED / EVO ALGY) Swine Of Hades (Godreah) cd 13.98
Not sure what exactly the occasion is for this black metal meeting of the minds (the liner notes claim it's bands with long histories in the metal underground), but who can argue with such a stellar line up, and the uber metal cover, a blood splattered naked woman with a severed pig's head between her legs, not to mention the legend underneath the tray: "play loud or don't fucking bother". This Meads Of Asphodel curated black metal 5 way split finds the Meads themselves teamed up with Japanese weirdos Sigh, Norwegian grimlords Taake, UKBM horde Thus Defiled, and the new to us Evo Algy (although those names might sound similar to you, cuz Evol Algy is a duo comprised of Evo, the drummer for punk legends the Angelic Upstarts, and Algy Ward who was in Tank, the Saints AND The Damned!).
Evo Algy start things off with a Status Quo cover, all sitar buzz and fluttery flute, before launching into some punky NWOBHM style metal crunch, heavy and buzzy and swaggery and total old school hard rocking heaviness. Taake offer a brief blast of furious pounding blackened punkiness, which it turns out is actually a GG Allin cover, two minutes of super distorted punkmetal buzz and pound. Next up is Sigh, who do not disappoint and unfurl some twisted cosmic space prog blackness, all thick buzzy bass, ethereal operatic vox, swooshy FX, circusy melodies, synths galore, not to mention a constantly shifting dizzying arrangement, oh and sax too of course, all woven into a fantastically twisted chunk of carnivalesque black prog.
Meads of Asphodel are up next with their awesomely titled "There's A God In My Gruel", the trio's latest blast of Christ mocking weirdness, and like their last record, they continue to craft what essentially sounds like a Satanic version of Godspell, a demonic sort of musical, with growled sinister vox over cheesy keyboards, muted fuzzy guitars, sci-fi effects, epic and majestic and dramatic, and very very weird. Not getting truly metal until the last minute or so, and even then, it's super over the top, a Broadway musical gone haywire, the performers possessed and spewing fantastically vitriolic sonic filth.
Finally UKBM crew Thus Defiled lay down an epic sprawl of melodic blackness, that slips malevolently from midtempo classic metal gallop, to furious frenzied buzz and blast, replete with killer riffing and wild shredding solos.
Fans of any / all of these outfits will most likely want this, and we'd have to concur with the liner notes: PLAY LOUD OR DON'T FUCKING BOTHER!
MPEG Stream: SIGH "Somniphobia"
MPEG Stream: MEADS OF ASPHODEL "There's A God In My Gruel"
MPEG Stream: TAAKE "Die When You Die"

V/A (SORC'HENN / DRUNJUS / BURIAL HEX / TEETH COLLECTION / CRYSTAL DRAGON / BLACK SPARROW / PAN TO SCRATCH / TAIKURI TALI) Bright And Dark Light (Earjerk) 4 x cassette box 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
LAST COPIES!!!
Killer quadruple cassette tape box, featuring a handful of amazing sound and noise makers, some definite aQ faves, as well as a whole bunch of names ne to us, each band was instructed to compose a single sidelong piece, representing either light or darkness, and as the Earjerk website mentions, it's really no surprise that most bands chose darkness (either that or they have a weirdly skewed idea of what constitutes 'light').
Up first, long time aQ fave Sorc'Henn, who in the past has dabbled in buzzy black metal, shimmery deep ambience, here it something else entirely, a thick caustic fog of hiss and buzz and grit and grime, buried melodies swirl beneath a constantly shifting layered soft blackened noise. Grim and haunting for sure.
Teeth Collection are a name we know, but we'd never heard their (his?) music until now. A strangely haunting soundscape of reverbed clatter, truncated melodies, distant hiss, muted rumble, all slowly building to a cathartic swirl of blown out heaviness.
We had a Drunjus cassette ages ago, and had always wanted to hear more. Here, the sound is a crystalline web of haunting synths, of keening long tones, of muted melodies, bowed gongs (courtesy of one of the guys from Pelt), this is some mysterious otherworldly cinematic drift for sure. Like a way more minimal abstract Goblin almost. Then comes Crystal Dragon, awesome name, and even more awesome sound, a super raw and primitive chunk of outer space sci-fi weirdness, grinding synths, wound into whirring dronescapes, thick and undulating, warm and luxuriously textured.
Then we have Burial Hex, aka Clay Ruby, who also does time in Jex Thoth and Wormsblood, but Burial Hex is his ritualistic black ambient project, and that's precisely what you get here, a super raw recording, distorted and effected, the tape seeming to crumble, plenty of low end warble, clang and clatter and crunch, doused in effects, like a madman locked in a dungeon, dragging chains, and assembling some unholy machine, super creepy and pretty hard to describe. Black Sparrow are another group we'd never heard of, but they fit pretty well amongst this esteemed brotherhood of sound, an ethereal ephemeral shimmer, made from crumbling effected guitars and processed synths (we think), woven into a soft almost serene bit of buzzy drift, peppered with bits of glitch and squelch, but smoothed out into a blurred bit of mesmer.
Then some Finnish weirdness from Taikuri Tali, definitely a band we're gonna have to hear more from, some random bits of conversation, before the trio launch into a gorgeously tweaked bit of mad scientists soundscaping, squeaks and rattles and scrapes and whirs that get more and more abstract as the track progresses, eventually transforming into some sort of alien shortwave broadcast.
Finally, Pan To Scratch, another new to us outfit, they finish things off with a super old school bit of layered dronemusic, letting the overtones crate strange and subtle rhythms, intertwined with what sounds like birdsong, tape manipulation, lots of tape hiss, and random bumps and thumps, weird and pretty wonderful.
Which is a pretty good way of describing this whole collection, weird and wonderful, as well as abstract and haunting and dark and buzzy and raw. The usual suspects should freak for this, SUPER LIMITED of course, handsomely packaged as well in one of those oversized molded plastic booklike folders, the kind of case instructional language tapes usually come in. Cool!

V/A (THE HEADS / CARLTON MELTON / MUGSTAR / KOOLAID) I'm So Convoluted (Agitated) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another super limited Record Store Day release, this one seemed so 'made-for-aQ' we got as many as we could, which is a bunch, but we're guessing with a lineup like this, these will be gone in a flash. What's the lineup you ask? Well, we figured a list of the bands would be all it would take to get most of you flipping out. It definitely worked for us. UK space rockers and past aQ Record Of The Week honorees The Heads, UK psychedelic space rockers and also past aQ Record Of The Weekers Mugstar, local space rock faves Carlton Melton, and another band we have never heard called Koolaid, or maybe Koolaid (Alien Ballroom). Sold yet?
The Heads here appear as Rituals Performed The Heads And Big Naturals, not sure if they're taking the piss or if they joined up with some other outfit, but holy shit is their nearly side long track a mindblower. A dense blast of psychedelic noise gives way to a more dreamy drifty spacekraut, before transforming into a chugging churning pound, that quickly flips backwards, and suddenly the whole track is a fantastically hypnotic arrangement of backwards swoops and fffwwwt's, before exploding back into another blast of stomping heaviness, laced with all manner of warped turntable noise, only making everything that much more tripped out.
Mugstar finish off the side with a brief blast of almost poppy heaviness. Still Hawkwindy but more garage-y and Stooges-y, with some seriously unhinged vox and a cool start/stop effects heavy chorus.
And finally, Koolaid finish things off, with the weirdest of the bunch, groovy, and almost funky, thick steel string strum, all wreathed in psychedelic guitar noise, laced with some weird samples, drug related of course, and a riff that is a dead ringer for the Knight Rider theme, in fact, the band seem to borrow themes from other songs and transform them into something spacier, there were a few other bits that sounded familiar, all wound into a sound noisy and weirdly tripped out.
So cool. And SO LIMITED. 350 COPIES WORLDWIDE. We have a bunch, but these are the last copies we'll ever have. No art, just green labeled lps housed in lime green 12" style sleeves.

V/A (THE NECKS / DAVID GRUBBS / MIRA CALIX / MUTE SOCIALITE / O-TYPE) Strade Transparenti (Staubgold) cd 17.98
Yo, people!! One word: NECKS!!! Whoops, we could have easily overlooked this, a soundtrack to some foreign film we'd never heard of, but thankfully we did happen to notice the artists involved (which, to make sure YOU don't miss this, we've noted above). One of our all time faves, Australian drone-jazz trio The Necks, happens to appear here, track one "Transparent Roads" is theirs, the title track, and it's over 28 minutes long! So, right there, your money's worth, the rest of the disc could be considered a bonus. And a very worthy bonus, considering it includes diverse contributions from a bunch of interestin' artists in their own right, namely David Grubbs, Mira Calix, Mute Socialite, and O-Type. Quite a varied, even unlikely group, we're curious how they all happened to be invited to make music for this project, which was an Italian art film apparently about a bus trip through the Brazilian countryside, a "cinevoyage" visiting both the land and people. The film's director, Augusto Contento, certainly avoided using the obvious - Brazilian music - though a few of the tracks here do give a nod to such, Mute Socalite's song for instance titled "Samba Outlaw".
First, though, The Necks. Their track is, as any fan might guess, glorious. It's a quite Alice Coltrane-ish sounding Necks set, glittering cosmic jazz hypnosis. If you've heard The Necks, you won't be surprised - though the instrumental textures of "Transparent Roads" differ somewhat from their most recent album Silverwater. Skittering drums, repeating, brief piano melodies, and what sounds more like an electric guitar than their usual stand-up bass, all locked into impossibly precise yet organic sounding pulsations, surging, cyclic, building building building. With subtle complexities, incredible control, The Necks are truly masters of their art. Hard to imagine that they use the entirety of his piece on the soundtrack, that would be a bus trip through otherworldly realms, leaving Brazil, however beautiful and fascinating, far behind. Whew!!
A tough act to follow. After that, what? David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, Bastro) is up next, his ten and a half minute solo electric guitar track "To Know A Veil" acting as a palate cleanser, sparse with simple clangorous chords ringing out, abstract scrabbling filling the spaces, or not, drones forming in both memory and reality, it's pretty powerful, like a no wave SUNNO))) perhaps. So that plus The Necks, and good grief, this is worth buying twice, already.
Then Warp's Mira Calix contributes "I Carry You In My Heart", a moody pitter patter percussion piece, over twelve minutes long, quite nice (it kinda goes with another release on this particular week's list, the Fairlights Mallets And Bamboo mix of '80s Japanese avant-bliss). That's followed by the Bay Area's own avant-weirdos Mute Socialite, who really begin to echo or suggest some sort of Tropicalia vibe, however abstract. Their rather groovy "Samba Outlaw" (5:23) turns this disc into the sort of dance party to which you'd invite the Sun City Girls... Another good one. And then finally, there's former MX-80'ers O-Type (featuring guitarist Bruce Anderson) offering up an amazing 23 minute finale to the soundtrack, "Shadowgram" giving The Necks a run for their money in fact, in terms of making repetitive, mesmeric music that actually reminds us a lot of Circle (a tropical Circle?), with shuffling rhythms and nervous textures that makes you wonder just where this Brazilian bus ride is going to end up, or if you want to find out.
So, buy this for The Necks for sure, but stay for the rest and you will be extra pleased. Again, we've never seen the movie and are quite curious, just to see how it could live up to its own soundtrack, which rules!!! More Italians should make movies in Brazil and have soundtracks commissioned for release on German label Staubgold, based on how well this turned out...
MPEG Stream: THE NECKS "Transparent Roads"
MPEG Stream: DAVID GRUBBS "To Know A Veil"
MPEG Stream: O-TYPE "Shadowgram"

V/A (TOM THUMP) Let's Listen To Some Music! (self-released) 2cd-r 14.98
Latest mixes from this venerable veteran Bay Area DJ! Always solid and always a great variety of old classics and fresh sounds and grooves!

V/A / ETRAN FINATAWA Rough Guide To Desert Blues / Introducing Etran Finatawa (Rough Guides / World Music) 2cd 14.98
Over the last several years, the access we've had to new sounds coming out of the Saharan desert have been so mind-blowing. Bands like Tinariwen, Tartit, Terakaft, Etran Finatawa, have all become some of our favorite bands, a sound so hypnotic, we're continually mesmerized by their warm grooves and trance inducing guitar playing and percussion. This collection showcases the best of these West African desert blues player, like all the aforementioned groups, as well as tracks by Amadou & Mariam, Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, Samba Toure, Tamikrest, and more. It's also very fitting that there is an Ali Farka Toure track included as it was really his music and influence that spawned the sound that these bands are keeping alive and expanding in such incredible ways. What makes this a must have is the bonus disc which is the first album by Etran Finatawa, whose latest disc we raved about last list. What a smoking debut it was, it shows that even from their beginnings there was something so intense, soulful and beautiful about their music. A total must have for sure, and the compilation disc is the perfect gateway for anyone looking to get turned on to the good stuff coming from the West African desert.
MPEG Stream: TARTIT "Achachore I Chachare Akale"
MPEG Stream: ETRAN FINATAWA "Surbajo"
MPEG Stream: BASSEKOU KOUYATŽ & NGONI BA "Bambugu Blues"
MPEG Stream: MALOUMA "Yarab"
MPEG Stream: ETRAN FINATAWA "Aliss"

V/VM Hate You (Offal) cd 13.98
Right from the get-go, the V/VM compilation "Hate You" is easily the most enjoyable (read: not annoying or irritatingly ironic) and well executed collection from this Stockport collective. The basic premise here is, well, pretty much the same as any other V/VM project: take any "shite" track and slice, dice, shred, add tons of distortion and completely destroy the shit out of it. V/VM busts Carl's Cox. Skkatter disc-rapes Madonna. Devil Chan coats the sugary sweet sounds of Japanese pop stars Judy And Mary with nasty blasts of white noise (quite wonderfully, actually). Jansky Noise proton blasts Ray Parker, Jr.'s theme to Ghostbusters and sends it to a ghost trap. And so on... Also, the cd version sports an additional four tracks not found on the lp, including an excellent (as always) track by Gai/Jin (aka Hrvatski and his Japanese friend, Jiro H) plus an extended version of V/VM's "Hate You". Probably limited, and for good reason. We only have 2. Ever.

VAKTTORNET / BOYZ OF CALIGULA Tower of Murdur / Must 'Amaba (Flogsta Danshall / Harmonia) 7" 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Skweee!

VANISHING, THE / VON IVA The Rebel Sounds Of Frisco Disco DJ Series (Princehouse) 12" 8.98
The batcave meets the blues rock on the dancefloor for this split by two Bay Area hotties!

VANISHING, THE / SIXTEENS split (GSL) 12" 6.98

VARGHKOGHARGASMAL / H4180V21.C split (Deathstrike) cassette 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While we wait patiently for the long overdue reissue of the amazing 'wooden metal' masterpiece Call Of The Raven from German black metal weirdos Varghkoghargasmal, we have this split tape to tide us over, a single track from Varghkoghargasmal, and one from the even more damaged and demented H418ov21.C, who we surmise might just be the same band.
The Varghkoghargasmal is another stumbling chaotic chunk of clean guitar surf licks, bizarre, off kilter drumming, all very spare and skeletal and shuffly, lo-fi, and only black metal in spirit, as the sound is more akin to some early nineties post rock outfit, but so much more confusional and fractured. The melodies are epic and majestic, the arrangements are progressive and complex, the execution is all over the map, the drums and guitars locked tight for a stretch, only for the drums to go careening off course, while the guitar slips from muted crunch, to shimmery jangle, to weird warped off key twang and chime. Like a black metal Shaggs, or an even more loose Hypothermia, Varghkoghargasmal have easily created one of the most unique sounds in modern music. All hail WOODEN METAL.
So what's the story with H418ov21.C, other than they're named after a record by Beherit? And a Beherit record that most metal fans hated, seeing as it was all ritualistic ambient and electronic music. But that makes sense that H418ov21.C would look to those Finns for inspiration, as this is also some kind of sonic ritual. Thick throbbing downtuned bass, rumbling, grinding, droning, all beneath a cacophony of old drum machines, heavily effected, spaced out and splattery, not really playing beats so much as creating rhythmic melodies, the effect is pretty stunning, a weird almost krautrocky bit of superdistorted lowslung crunch, the closest comparison we can think of is French sonic alchemists Aluk Todolo, and odds are if you dig their throbbing stripped down rhythms, you'll dig this too. Weird and wonderful, heavy and distorted and weirdly melodic. Definitely need to hear more from these guys (this guy?). And speaking of hearing more, there's also a split 7" elsewhere on this list, featuring another chunk of fractured blackened kraut crawl...
LIMITED TO 70 COPIES (or thereabout), packaged in a super deluxe, multi panel, elaborately folded sleeve.

VARGHKOGHARGASMAL / OCTOBER FALLS split (Deathstrike) 7" 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Managed to dig up a few more copies of this, probably last copies ever...
One final teaser before the tUMULt release of Varghkoghargasmal's Drowned In Lakes full length. Another glorious slab of "wooden metal" from this German one man band, that as always, is not particularly metal, or wooden. In fact, it's more like some strange off kilter krautrock, warbly organs, stumbling drums, lurching grooves, off kilter tempos, simple downtuned clean guitar strum, haunting keyboard melodies, all tangled up into a gorgeous creepy forest jam. The track begins all doomy and droney, the keyboard wavering over the deliberate drumming and the muted riffing, very spare and space-y, eventually locking into a more propulsive groove, the drums impossibly off, in an amazing way, totally in their own dimension, the guitar a mere mumble, except for the spidery melody that holds the whole thing together, the keyboard louder than anything else. Imagine a cross between Avarus and Benighted Leams and you might get something close to Varghkoghargasmal. Awesome as always.
Splitting the disc with V. is October Falls, another one man band, this one from Finland, who specializes in dark ambient folk, and here, it's just that, all mournful minor key acoustic guitar, lilting and sorrowful, moody and meandering, so darkly pretty.
Super thick sleeves and jackets, a handful are on colored vinyl, so you might get lucky, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

VIKINGS INVASION Vol. 1 (Garden Of Delight) cd 21.00
Heavy bluesy kraut '70s stuff... very underground, but don't let anyone tell you they sound like Black Sabbath.

VILE, KURT / WOODS split (Woodsist) 7" 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
To coincide with their recent summer tour, these two aQ faves offer up this awesome little split single, which really hardly needs a description, as at this point, both bands can seemingly pretty much do no wrong. That said, the first Woods song might be the best thing they've done, total classic sixties pop, which reminds us of the Kinks, and the Bee Gees, but a little bit quirkier and more psychedelic obviously, but it's just so warm and sunshiney and hooky, and the vocals sound better than they ever have, and the harmonies, so divine, cool weird drumming, catchy, but not traditionally so. One of those tracks we find ourselves listening to over and over and over. The second track is more of a trifle, a brief bit of bedroom folk, that sounds skeletal at first, but in its 1:40 manages to get weirdly lush and a little bit tripped out.
Kurt Vile kicks his side off with a brief 39 second opener, jaunty and a little bit silly, before getting into it proper, with some dark brooding moody folk, the first track hushed and intimate, just voice and guitar, some classic sounding folk, while the second track gets a little shoegazey, draping the acoustic guitar with some crumbling washed out haze and warbly organ, the perfect slab cloudy day dreamy folk drift. Awesome.
Probably crazy limited, we have a bunch, but not entirely sure we can get more when we sell out, so if you want one, don't dawdle.
MPEG Stream: WOODS "Skull"
MPEG Stream: KURT VILE "In-Out Blues"

VILE, KURT / WOODS split (Woodsist) 7" 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
To coincide with their recent summer tour, these two aQ faves offer up this awesome little split single, which really hardly needs a description, as at this point, both bands can seemingly pretty much do no wrong. That said, the first Woods song might be the best thing they've done, total classic sixties pop, which reminds us of the Kinks, and the Bee Gees, but a little bit quirkier and more psychedelic obviously, but it's just so warm and sunshiney and hooky, and the vocals sound better than they ever have, and the harmonies, so divine, cool weird drumming, catchy, but not traditionally so. One of those tracks we find ourselves listening to over and over and over. The second track is more of a trifle, a brief bit of bedroom folk, that sounds skeletal at first, but in its 1:40 manages to get weirdly lush and a little bit tripped out.
Kurt Vile kicks his side off with a brief 39 second opener, jaunty and a little bit silly, before getting into it proper, with some dark brooding moody folk, the first track hushed and intimate, just voice and guitar, some classic sounding folk, while the second track gets a little shoegazey, draping the acoustic guitar with some crumbling washed out haze and warbly organ, the perfect slab cloudy day dreamy folk drift. Awesome.
Probably crazy limited, we have a bunch, but not entirely sure we can get more when we sell out, so if you want one, don't dawdle.
MPEG Stream: WOODS "Skull"
MPEG Stream: KURT VILE "In-Out Blues"

VILLA VALLEY / TREETOPS split (Arbor) cassette 5.98

VIOLENCE FOG / JERUSALEM SWF-Sessions Vol. 6 (Long Hair) cd 17.98
First off, Violence Fog is Allan's new favorite band name ever (sorry, Dirty Lust). As soon as he (me, I) saw it listed in one of our supplier's catalogs, I had to order it. Plus, the description said that it had flutes on it, so I knew that Andee would probably want one too. This split release between Violence Fog and Jerusalem brings together two previously unreleased, minor gems of early '70s krautrock prog/psych. Both bands are heavy jammin' outfits, not remotely "metal" (kinda laid-back in fact) but not wimps either (despite the flutes). Yes, that's flutes in the plural -- Violence Fog has *two* of 'em. (No flutes for Jerusalem but they're good anyways.) Both bands are your basic trippy hippies doing what they do (did) best...head music, man.
RealAudio clip: VIOLENCE FOG "New One"
RealAudio clip: JERUSALEM "Moon's New Way"

VIOLENCE FOG / JERUSALEM SWF-Sessions Vol. 6 (Long Hair) cd 17.98
First off, Violence Fog is Allan's new favorite band name ever (sorry, Dirty Lust). As soon as he (me, I) saw it listed in one of our supplier's catalogs, I had to order it. Plus, the description said that it had flutes on it, so I knew that Andee would probably want one too. This split release between Violence Fog and Jerusalem brings together two previously unreleased, minor gems of early '70s krautrock prog/psych. Both bands are heavy jammin' outfits, not remotely "metal" (kinda laid-back in fact) but not wimps either (despite the flutes). Yes, that's flutes in the plural -- Violence Fog has *two* of 'em. (No flutes for Jerusalem but they're good anyways.) Both bands are your basic trippy hippies doing what they do (did) best...head music, man.
RealAudio clip: VIOLENCE FOG "New One"
RealAudio clip: JERUSALEM "Moon's New Way"

VOLTAIC OMEN / FIRE ISLAND, AK Dweller On The Threshold (Condor Breeze) cassette 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ahhhh, yes, more Voltaic Omen, the one man black metal weirdo from the Pacific Northwest, who has been blowing us away with recording after recording of fucked up and fractured lo-fi what-the-fuck blackness. And it just keeps getting better, and weirder!
This time around Mr. VO is teamed up with a noisemaker called Fire Island, AK, who we'll get to in a second, but first, VO begins proceedings with a super creepy stretch of processed ambience, all haunting minor key melodies, backwards cymbals, fractured loops, mumbly speaking in tongues vocals, it may be black metal, but it also sounds a bit like some of the super far out Teenage Filmstars stuff. Then all of a sudden, the track kicks in, and it sounds like it's being broadcast from a speaker atop a pole, down the street, murky and muddy and lo-fi, but with a strange clattery, almost Muslimgauze sounding rhythm laid over the top, before slowing down and tripping out, and transforming into some sort of doomic black ritual, slow pounding percussion, groaned vocals, distant tarpit riffing, haunting minor key melody, super hypnotic.
Fire Island, AK, who we'd never heard before, are way more of an experimental free noise outfit, exploring textures and tempos, patterns and layers, reverbed electronic squiggles wrap around bits of scrape and glitch, looped and repeating, gradually growing more dense and frantic, never quite attaining total Merzbowian overload, which is a good thing, even at its most impenetrable and chaotic, there still lurks some texture and rhythm, giving form and propulsion to could otherwise become pure noise. Cool stuff for sure. Buy this for the Voltaic Omen, stick around for the Fire Island. Definitely recommended.
Cool full color inserts, photocopied insert, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, each one stickered and hand numbered!!

VOM / GUMMY STUMPS split (Winning Sperm Party) lp 12.98
We were pretty into Vom's Primitive Arts record from a while back, which we described as a "depressive, atmospheric, super distorted sort of gothic cold wave", and who we likened to groups like Soror Dolorosa, Sixx, Factums and Cold Cave, but whose particular version of sound was a much more raw and primitive beast, sort of crusty and filthy, from the production to the actual instrument sounds, even the atmosphere, it was as if a metal band or a noise band or somehow both, decided to make a gloom pop record, and failed spectacularly, and came up with something way meaner, weirder and more amazing.
This brand new split teams Vom up with another group of sonically like minded Scots with the awesome name Gummy Stumps, each group taking a whole lp side. Vom offer up more of the same, their sound driving and darkly post punky, the guitars thick and jagged, the bass fuzzed out and super distorted, the drums almost like some weird strain of motorik krautpunk, the vocals an effects drenched bellow, the group locking into long stretches of buzzing, snarling, minor key hypnorock, that sound like a goth rock Circle, pounding away relentlessly, the guitars unfurling slippery slithery melodies, over churning riffage and gloomy gothic bombast. But it's an epic, so the band sort of cobble together a songsuite, equal parts crash and burn, drift and smolder, shimmer and creep, the sound managing to be surprisingly lush while retaining its raw power. At one point haunting soundtracky synths drift in and transform the sound completely, before the band works its way up into another psychedelic cold wave gloom punk blowout. These guys are so fucking good, it's a crime they're not more well known.
With a name like Gummy Stumps, these guys had our hopes pretty high, and while they're not as grim or gloriously noisy, they're definitely a good match, their sound more of a Messthetics sort of post punk, all jagged angular guitar crunch, frenetic rhythms, and dueling call and response vocals. But again, like Vom's side, there's lots of space to fill, so the band stretch way out, slipping from murky psychedelic shimmer, to something that sounds like way more punk Arab Strap, to blown out drum heavy noise rock crunch, to surprisingly catchy punk pop and right back again to the angular post punkiness that started it all off.
Housed in super swank silk screened covers, with printed insert, cool lyrics booklet, and we're guessing it's pretty dang limited too...
MPEG Stream: VOM "B"
MPEG Stream: GUMMY STUMPS "A"

WARMTH / MEDROXY PROGESTERONE ACETATE split (Small Doses) 7" 8.98
Warmth seem to exist only in the realm of split 7"s. We're sure they probably have a handful of cd-r's or cassette tape releases (actually at least one cd too), but this is the third split we've gotten from these guys, and this will probably be the third time we talk about how we want o hear more than one song!
The Warmth track here is indeed warm, beginning as a slow smoldering, barely there shimmer, but over the course of the side, the sound intensifies, getting more abrasive, more caustic and crunchy, eventually building to a sort of Wolf Eyes rumble, which is soon streaked with jagged shards of feedback, and swooping upper register tones, all smeared across the roiling buzzing crunch of the background drone. We can only imagine what might have happened if this were an lp instead of a 7" and the track was allowed to sprawl and spread and mutate for another 15 or 20 minutes.
The flipside comes from a band with the tongue twisting monicker Medroxy Progesterone Acetate, which a quick internet search revealed as a drug to decrease the production of Testosterone and to reduce the sex drive in males, aka "Chemical Castration" sometimes given to convicted rapists and sex offenders. Hmmm...
So what would something like MPA sound like? Maybe like this, a murky, fuzzy, muddy sprawl of rumbles and whirs, haunting melodic swells, squalls of glitch and buzz, teapot whistle melodies, disembodied voices, woozy, stuttering loops, tape hiss and sea sick warble, all beneath a gauzy lo-fi haze. Quite nice actually, if not a bit creepy.
Both tracks, and both bands are quite recommended, this 7"s is definitely a good taster, and yeah, we still want to hear more Warmth, and now we, ummm, want more Medroxy Progesterone Acetate...
Beautiful die cut silkscreened sleeve, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! most likely already out of print, we have a handful...

WARMTH / ROBE split (Black Horizons) 7" 7.98
A brand new, super limited head to head meeting between these two sonically similar underground noisemakers, trafficking in the dronier dreamier side of modern abstract 'noise'...
Warmth are up first, and deliver a murky chunk of melodic drone, like some classic pop song, that had been transferred from tape to tape about a thousand times, before being dubbed onto a 20 year old cassette left in the glove compartment of your car for the last decade, then played back at the wrong speed, a gloriously lugubrious glacial crawl, the muted melody pulsing beneath a constantly shifting sonic sea of low end thrum, distant field recordings and washed out hiss and buzz.
Robe counter with a sonically similar chunk of sound, haunting and playful at the same time, muddy melodies, and what sounds like horns, it actually sounds like some Carl Stalling cartoon music played at 16rpm, warbly and off kilter, murky and blurry, a drawled moonlit soundscape of twisted smeared ambience, muffled percussion, and mysteriously fragmented melodies.
Packaged in a super elaborate multi paneled sleeve, printed with metallic silver ink on black, sealed with a black wax seal and including a purple and black on black insert.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

WATA / AI ASO She's So Heavy (DIW Phalanx) 7"+book 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We noticed we still had a handful of these Boris rarities, and saw some popping up on eBay so we figured we would relist them in case anyone was still in the market for a pricey, exquistely designed 7" with lots of glamorous photos of Wata from Boris!!!
Here's our review from when we listed these a while back:
We took pre-orders on this ultra limited Boris rarity, but we managed to get a handful of extra copies, so for those folks who forgot to preorder, or folks who are only hearing about this now, here's your chance (however brief) to nab one of theseÉ
As with all Boris related stuff, this 7" photo book combo looks gorgeous. A 7"x7" softcover book, the cover a thick textured cream colored paper, the title embossed on the front cover, wrapped in a full color vellum obi, the text printed in metallic silver, with color photos of Wata from Boris and the members of the band sharing the split, Ai Aso. The book itself is nothing but glamour shots of the various women, full body shots, close ups of their faces, very fashion magazine looking, the pictures slightly distressed, the women posed in front of washed out colored backdrops. Strange, but heck, the pictures are quite nice, and the women are of course quite lovely, so who can complain.
But here is a 7", and presumably, that's the main reason to pick this up (right?), it features Wata and Ai Aso each doing a cover, Ai Aso cover King Crimson's "Islands" and Wata covers Masashi Kitamura's "Angel" which we had never heard (or heard of) before.
Ai Aso take "Islands" and let it unfurl softly and sweetly, a blissy dreamy drift, with hushed vocals over shimmering guitars, the drums are the focal point, way up in the mix and driving the song, almost martial at times, while at others shuffling along side the glimmering guitars. Very skeletal, but strangely lush at the same time and really quite pretty.
Don't let the fact that the flipside is credited to Wata fool you, as the lineup is essentially all of Boris, AND Michio Kurihara. So it's basically the Rainbow lineup, with the addition of some other guy playing Mellotron! The track is gentle and tranquil, a soft focus psych folk, the guitars are simply strummed, the vocals and sweet and ethereal, the percussion is essentially just a tambourine, that is until the very end, when the band launch into a slow burning psychedelic freakout, not sure if it's Wata or Kurihara, but the guitar soars majestically, howling and screeching, wailing wildly over the dreamy strum underneath. Definitely sounds like it could have come from the same sessions that produced Rainbow, which is most definitely not a bad thing.
LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES.

WAX POETICS Issue #36 magazine 9.99
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's the Brazil Issue! With Gilberto Gil on the cover. Also Joyce, Ceu, Tim Maia, Jards Macale, Arthur Verocai, Airto Moreira and tons more. All the deep interviews and awesome vintage color photography you expect from this fine magazine of funk, soul, hiphop, etc.

WAX POETICS Issue #48 magazine 9.99
All right! Another colorful issue of this great magazine devoted to pretty much anything groovy and generally of a certain vintage. On the cover, the late great Nina Simone, whose significant socio-political-cultural impact is assessed. Also this issue, rapper Shock G of Digital Underground, Brazilian bossa jazz cat Dom Salvador, synth popster Hudson Mohawke, Band of Gypsies bassist Billy Cox, roots reggae's Yabby You, and plenty more. Including, perhaps for the first time in Wax Poetics, some krautrock, with a feature on Neu! Though, they probably have at least written about Kraftwerk or Can before, we'd imagine.

WEED IN THE HEAD / GORILLA MONSOON Suicide Feelings / A Lesson In Darkness (Grimm Grinner) 10" 9.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
This is a downtuned stoner sludge face off between two German outfits, who tackle their Sabbath obsessions in slightly different ways. Weed In The Head start things off with delicate clean guitar figures, which are interrupted by ULTRA distorted blasts of metal riffing, the kind of distortion that is so fuzzed out the sounds are almost crumbling into pieces. Doesn't take long before the clean guitar disappears under an avalanche of groovy sludge, pounding Cromagnon drums and wailing sort of Ozzyish vocals. A weird blend of Sabbathy groove and Kyuss-y desert rock, heavy but most definitely stoney and groovy. Things occasionally slow down into almost Eyehategod territory and eventually bliss out into a druggy trippy Monster Magnet style space jam. Cool!
Gorilla Monsoon (named for the wrestler we presume) counter with their own stoner psych sludge groove, starting out with a gorgeous bit of hazy ambience, all guitar distortion and feedback, before the main riff powers through, kicking up all that ambience into a swirling sonic dust storm. Dark and murky, but a bit more rocking than WITH, and much harsher vocals, that swoop wildly from a King Fowley type growl to a near Khanate like hellish shriek. There are some sludgy Eyehategod moments, lots of loping midtempo fuzz and groove, but like Weed In The Head, Gorilla Monsoon are ultimately channelling the spirit of the mighty Sabbath (heck, the singer's nom du rock is even Jack Sabbath) and there ain't nothing wrong with that.
Packaged in a nice fullcover foldover sleeve and pressed on nice thick vinyl

WERQU, ASNAQETCH Ethiopiques Vol. 16 : The Lady With The Krar (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
Reason #16 for sticking with the Ethiopiques series: 'cuz just when you think you've got the series pegged, along comes something from way out in left field to kick your generalizing ass. And that's exactly what Asnaqetch Werqu did to ours. So no, this is not another funk groove record -- for those of you who may have had enough of that. Like the Harp Of King David (Ethiopiques #11) that was released back in 2001, The Lady With The Krar is more of a "traditional" Ethiopian music disc. Culturally though, the Krar is the polar opposite of the Beguena and considered quite literally to be "the devil's instrument". The performer of this demi-satanic instrument, along with holding the claim to fame of being the first actress to appear on the Ethiopian stage, arose against the odds to acheive super star status as a sort of Woody Guthrie meets The Bard political minstrel performer. This is because Asnaqetch Werqu was not born into a family of performing musicians, a caste known as Azmari. Instead she acquired her fame through sheer lyrical, improvisational and musical prowess. A five (sometimes six) stringed lyre with a gut resonator, the Krar sounds not unlike an old-time five string banjo; though with its creepy tuning it sounds closer melodically to something out of Java than the Appalachians. Werqu accompanies her vocals with the Krar, playing a semi-paralleling melody to her vocal line. The interweaving of Werqu's soft, lilting voice and the percussive twang of the Krar is absolutely hypnotic. Andee almost immediately proclaimed this his new favorite in the series, to give you an indication of the magnitude of this recording. Highly recommended! Comes with a 30 page booklet with biographical liner notes, lyrics and historical photos. The 22 tracks included on this disc were taken from two LPs recorded by Werqu in 1974 and 1976.
MPEG Stream: "Mengedegnaw Lebe"
MPEG Stream: "Shemonmwanayewa"

WET HAIR / PEAKING LIGHTS Bored Fortress Club (Not Not Fun) 7" 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Not Not Fun label's Bored Fortress subscription split 7" series has been going on for a few years now, and is always killer, featuring a who's who of hip underground weirdo rock combos, not to mention some seriously fantastic packaging, and for whatever reason, this year, a handful of the previously subscription only singles have been made available to non subscribers, but not for long, as these babies are crazy limited.
We've yet to review anything by Peaking Lights, but this chunk of murky bass heavy jangle dronepop has us definitely hankering for more. Big thing low end throb, beneath distorted drums, weary woozy vox, and some glimmering jangly guitar melodies, the song constantly drifting into full on psychedelic dub territory, everything wreathed in reverb and echo and delay, totally spaced out and druggy and divine. More more more!
Wet Hair, formerly known as Raccoo-oo-oon, deliver some spacey, minimal almost kraut sounding hypnorock. Beginning all super hushed and skittery, before building to a gorgeously motorik jam, rife with whirling organ melodies, and super dramatic over the top vocals, all very proggy and psychedelic and way way druggy. Seriously good stuff, sounding almost like a way more tripped out lo-fi Circle, which is most definitely not a bad thing.
Also, we have another Bored Fortress title, besides the ones we're listing now, the Infinite Body / No Age split 7", VERY few copies of that one, not enough to list, just ask if you want one and IF we still have some left, it could be yours!
MPEG Stream: WET HAIR "Blessed"
MPEG Stream: PEAKING LIGHTS "Birds Of Paradise"

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS / PANOPTICON II (Pagan Flames) cd 9.98
Two aQ black metal faves join forces for this killer split, Kentucky pagan anarcho vegan one man band Panopticon, and isolationist blackbuzz outfit Wheels Within Wheels (a side project of epic metal outfit Seidr), both offering up some of their best, and strangest material. Up first is Wheels Within Wheels, who unleashes two epic tracks of droned out blissy buzz, the first, "A Burial Of The Mother Of Orion", is downright shoegazey, the riffs so blurry and blown out, they seem to smear into a washed out dronescape of layered buzz, the drums buried in the mix, a murky distant throb, the guitars occasionally coalescing into a monstrous crumbling chug, but then just as quickly blissing back out into total blackbuzzdrone, before peeling back the buzz completely, leaving a long stretch of hushed skeletal guitarscapery, a haunting bit of shimmery drift over a deem ominous low end thrum, which leads directly into "A Splinter Of Hope In The Blackest Of Hearts", which is almost like a continuation of "A Burial", but more melodic, the guitars soaring majestically, but still wreathed in a haze of blurred buzz, growing gradually prettier as the track progresses, it's hard to describe, but it's a weird warm bit of blackbuzz shimmer, and when the vocals finally join in, a mournful croon, the sound is transformed again into a strange buzzy lament. Gorgeous and haunting, and a lot prettier and more washed out than the other WWW record.
And it's as if Panopticon decided to follow suit, opening with "The Road To Bergen", which might be the prettiest thing we've heard from him, a mournful, melancholy dirge, dreamy and washed out and super melodic, hazy and almost sun dappled sounding, it's a bit like listening to M83 at 16rpm, a gorgeous blurry, buzzy, dreamy slow build to a soaring super melodic almost Nadja like chorus. So great. And then there's the next track, "From Bergen To Jotunheim Forest" which retains the same lilting dreamy melody, but sets it amidst a much harsher landscape, all buzzing blackened riffage and blasting beats, but the melody drives everything transforming a grim black buzz into something weirdly emotional and strangely pretty, and when the guitars let loose with some wild melodic leads, and some killer harmonies, all over a background of blackbuzz and frantic beats, it's seriously mindblowing, and even 11 minutes of that is not enough. And the record finishes with another strangely pretty sonic missive, this one all clean guitar jangle, woozy chant like vocals, and glistening glimmering melodies, the sound almost liturgical, hazy and gauzy and washed out and impossibly dreamy, peppered with brief blasts of furious black buzz, bit for the most part, strangely lovely.
This just might be one of the least grim and black, black metal splits ever, but somehow it also just might be one of our favorites.
MPEG Stream: WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS "A Burial Of The Mother Of Orion"
MPEG Stream: PANOPTICON "The Road To Bergen"