DNTEL After Parties 2 (Sub Pop) 12" 12.98

DNTEL After Parties 2 (Sub Pop) 12" 12.98

DNTEL Dumb Luck (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
Having three such beloved creative outlets Postal Service, Figurine and Dntel at his disposal, Mr. Jimmy Tamborello's probably had to replace his door a few times with so many potential musical collaborators knocking it down. And he's chosen the absolute cream of today's crop for his highly anticipated, long overdue new Dntel album, the follow-up to 2000's Life Is Full Of Possibilities. Dumb Luck follows a similar recipe as Stephin Merritt's The Sixths project for which Mr. Magnetic Fields writes and performs the music while various pop darlings provide the vocals. It just happens to be a full collaborative effort featuring the hot poop luminaries of Conor Oberst, Grizzly Bear, Jenny Lewis, Fog, Mia Doi Todd, Lali Puna, Arthur & Yu, and Mystic Chords Of Memory.
Wistful, pastoral and lovely, it's a softly faceted poptronica album that doesn't hit you over the head despite its hip, indie A-list cache. No, we think it'll grow on you with each listen as it did with us, glimmering with Tamborello's trademark fleeting pop elements, feathery electronic tickles and fond familiar voices. Mmmmmm.
MPEG Stream: "To A Fault (Ft. Grizzly Bear)"
MPEG Stream: "Rock My Boat (Ft. Mia Doi Todd)"

DNTEL Dumb Luck (Sub Pop) lp 14.98
Having three such beloved creative outlets Postal Service, Figurine and Dntel at his disposal, Mr. Jimmy Tamborello's probably had to replace his door a few times with so many potential musical collaborators knocking it down. And he's chosen the absolute cream of today's crop for his highly anticipated, long overdue new Dntel album, the follow-up to 2000's Life Is Full Of Possibilities. Dumb Luck follows a similar recipe as Stephin Merritt's The Sixths project for which Mr. Magnetic Fields writes and performs the music while various pop darlings provide the vocals. It just happens to be a full collaborative effort featuring the hot poop luminaries of Conor Oberst, Grizzly Bear, Jenny Lewis, Fog, Mia Doi Todd, Lali Puna, Arthur & Yu, and Mystic Chords Of Memory.
Wistful, pastoral and lovely, it's a softly faceted poptronica album that doesn't hit you over the head despite its hip, indie A-list cache. No, we think it'll grow on you with each listen as it did with us, glimmering with Tamborello's trademark fleeting pop elements, feathery electronic tickles and fond familiar voices. Mmmmmm.
MPEG Stream: "To A Fault (Ft. Grizzly Bear)"
MPEG Stream: "Rock My Boat (Ft. Mia Doi Todd)"

DNTEL Early Works For Me If It Works For You (Phthalo) cd-r 13.98
PHTHALO 12. Oh wow. I have no idea what/who this is, nor do I care. Neither do I care that this was pressed as a cd-r. Dntel has made one of the catchiest IDM-based electronica records in the last long while, bringing pop hooks full of tinkling little melodies to the digital swoop and skitter of deconstructed Amen breaks, spasmodic algorithms, and powerbooking electrocrunch. Fans of Lesser, Reload (remember them?), and Aphex Twin shouldn't pass this up. I'm serious.

DNTEL Life Is Full Of Possibilities (Plug Research) cd 16.98
Los Angeles-based Jimmy Tamborello, veteran of the SoCal emo/indie rock scene (remember Strictly Ballroom? Further? The Tyde?) and current member of electro pop outfit Figurine returns after a lengthy absence with another solo record as Dntel. After two previous releases on outsider electronic label Phthalo, our little Jimmy has come full circle with "Life Is Full Of Possibilities". Combining dense, atmospheric electronics, minimal techno and static noise with restructured guitar fragments (courtesy Brian McMahan and Paul Larson, of Slint and Strictly Ballroom, respectively); the real departure from past recordings are found in the bittersweet lyrics and heartfelt vocal stylings from a handful of talented friends: Rachel Haden (daughter of Charlie Haden!, ex-That Dog), Mia Doi Todd, Meredeth Figurine (of Figurine, duh), Chris Gunst (Beachwood Sparks, ex-Strictly Ballroom) and Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie). A beautiful record of wistful, lush, shoegazer-inspired music for the Powerbook inclined. It's like when you go to see a really bleak film, and you know it's gonna end in tears, but you immerse yourself in it and indulge in the sadness. The perfect accompaniment to the melancholic breeze of winter.
RealAudio clip: "(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan"
RealAudio clip: "Suddenly"
RealAudio clip: "Umbrella"

DNTEL Life Is Full Of Possibilities (Sub Pop) 2cd 14.98
This slab of indie electronica / pop, originally released on Plug Research way back in 2001, now gets the super deluxe reissue treatment via Sub Pop, and features a whole disc of remixes, 12" tracks and unreleased jams. As many of you probably already know this is the record that birthed the Postal Service, with Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello and Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard collaborating here on "(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan" for the first time, setting the template for that band, and still sounding so great a decade layer, fuzzy and gristly and dreamy and washed out and shoegazey, we could listen to that song over and over. Thankfully the rest of the record is nearly as great.
Here's what we had to say about the Life Is Full Of Possibilities way back when (more on the bonus disc in a sec):
Los Angeles-based Jimmy Tamborello, veteran of the SoCal emo/indie rock scene (remember Strictly Ballroom? Further? The Tyde?) and current member (as of 2001) of electro pop outfit Figurine returns after a lengthy absence with another solo record as Dntel. After two previous releases on outsider electronic label Phthalo, our little Jimmy has come full circle with "Life Is Full Of Possibilities". Combining dense, atmospheric electronics, minimal techno and static noise with restructured guitar fragments (courtesy Brian McMahan and Paul Larson, of Slint and Strictly Ballroom, respectively); the real departure from past recordings are found in the bittersweet lyrics and heartfelt vocal stylings from a handful of talented friends: Rachel Haden (daughter of Charlie Haden!, ex-That Dog), Mia Doi Todd, Meredeth Figurine (of Figurine, duh), Chris Gunst (Beachwood Sparks, ex-Strictly Ballroom) and Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie). A beautiful record of wistful, lush, shoegazer-inspired music for the Powerbook inclined. It's like when you go to see a really bleak film, and you know it's gonna end in tears, but you immerse yourself in it and indulge in the sadness. The perfect accompaniment to the melancholic breeze of winter.
That sound may not be so original now, the sort of indie pop / electronica hybrid, but at the time it was pretty groundbreaking, and as we mentioned, still sounds fantastic, better than the legions of bands it inspired for sure.
The bonus disc gathers up a bunch of tracks, a handful from the Evan And Chan remix 12"s, which finds the track reworked by Safety Scissors, Barbara Morgenstern, Lali Puna and Superpitcher, the song getting way more techno and skittery and pop ambientized, while the rest of the tracks, culled from various B sides, as well as a bunch of unreleased songs, is much more abstract and ambient, trippy and dreamy and hazy, when there are beats, they're skeletal and house-y with the surrounding sounds swirly and gauzy, taken on its own, not as simply a remix record, it's a pretty fantastic chunk of abstract electronica, that plays pretty well as a proper record surprisingly, and makes this reissue well worth buying, even if you already have the album proper.
MPEG Stream: "Umbrella"
MPEG Stream: "(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan"
MPEG Stream: "Suddenly Is Sooner Than You Think"
MPEG Stream: "Footprints"
MPEG Stream: "(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan (Lali Puna Remix)"

DNTEL Rock My Boat / Everything's Tricks (7" Edit) - Aim Jukebox Series (Aim) 7" 4.50
This drizzly afternoon we were listening to Cat Power's latest single with her cover of the Everly Brothers' "All I Have To Do Is Dream", then immediately after that we put on the first side of this new Dntel record (Jimmy Tamborello's first 'solo' release in five years -- his time's been occupied with other matters, namely a little duo known as Postal Service). The song "Rock My Boat" sung by guest vocalist Mia Doi Todd segued sooo wonderfully. It's an absolute heartmelter that you wish would linger a bit longer than its fleeting few minutes. Oh, 'tis a pleasure to hear two such amazing voices back to back. We'd highly recommend that you do the same! It totally brought back the warm fuzzy feeling you get while playing your favorite 7" records in your bedroom. The flipside is an instrumental of Tamborello's familiar gentle glitchy fare. Sweet.

DNTEL Something Always Goes Wrong (Phthalo) cd 12.98
Dntel's "Something Always Goes Wrong" had a noble beginning back in 1994 when it was slated to be released on some Japanese boutique techno label as a concept record about "our hero and his arduous journey." (?) The presence of swords, damsels, and an evil king keep this concept album outside of the realm of Sci-Fi -- the genre of choice for techno boffins doing concept albums. This is a blatantly romantic piece of electronic abstraction which nuzzles itself right in between early '90s legends of electronica in Reload, Biosphere, and chill-out king, The Orb. The outsider electronica label Phthalo resurrected this album and added two remixes (from Seq and Languis respectively) and two new tracks. Fans of Boards of Canada who haven't heard much of Reload or Biosphere should certainly check Dntel out. Easily the most accessible record to emerge from the damaged minds of Phthalo!
RealAudio clip: "in which our hero begins his long and arduous quest"

DNTEL Something Always Goes Wrong / Early Works For Me If It Works For You / Early Works For Me If It Works For You II (Plug Research) 3cd 27.00
Most folks know Jimmy Tamborello as one half of electro poppers The Postal Service, with Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie, others might remember his electropop outfit Figurine, and a few folks might even recall an emo rock band called Strictly Ballroom, that also featured Mr. Tamborello, but we were first introduced to him via his experimental electronic outfit Dntel, who released a handful of records on the Pthalo label back in the late nineties.
This triple disc collection gathers up two of the long out of print Pthalo releases, as well as a whole other disc of song sketches and unreleased tracks.
Something Always Goes Wrong was originally slated to be released on some Japanese boutique techno label in 1994 as a concept record about "our hero and his arduous journey." (?) The presence of swords, damsels, and an evil king kept this concept album outside of the realm of Sci-Fi - the genre of choice for techno boffins doing concept albums. Something... was a blatantly romantic piece of electronic abstraction which nuzzled itself right in between early '90s legends of electronica in Reload, Biosphere, and chill-out king, The Orb. Lots of processed skitter, stuttering big beats, and warm washes of dreamlike sound. Hard not to also hear plenty of Boards Of Canada and Aphex Twin, as well as hints of what Tamborello would be doing later with the Postal Service, although this stuff is obviously more homebrewed and a bit more low fidelity, which is in no way a bad thing. The original release tacked on two remixes, both present here, as well as two totally unreleased tracks exclusive to this collection.
When it was first released, back in 1998, we described Early Works For Me If It Works For You as "one of the catchiest IDM-based electronica records in the last long while, bringing pop hooks full of tinkling little melodies to the digital swoop and skitter of deconstructed Amen breaks, spasmodic algorithms, and powerbooking electrocrunch." We also recommended it to fans of Lesser, Reload and Aphex Twin and it still pretty much holds true. This stuff still sounds vibrant and crucial, and only a little bit dated, but not at all in a bad way, in fact, we've really missed this era of electronic music, and this is totally hitting the spot.
The bonus disc here, Early Works For Me If It Works For You II, as mentioned above, is a collection of sketches and unfinished works, and is way more raw than the other two discs, but that doesn't mean it's not super cool, skittery and bloopy, woozy melodies, drifty and droney, plenty of glitch and crunch, but also some acoustic guitar (definitely foreshadowing the Postal Service again), processed vox, intense drones, dreamy washed out synth drifts, all of it very warm and muted and sun dappled and dreamy, gorgeous stuff, even in their unfinished state.
Fans of that era, of Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, who somehow missed out on Dntel, will be in for a surprise, and folks who love the Postal Service, might be excited to hear what came before. Us, we're just digging these sounds, this retro, stuttery, swoonsome, electronic dream pop, amazed that it still sounds so goddamn good. Killer packaging too, a massive 8 panel digipak, full color on black, with some fancy reflective spot varnish filigree.
MPEG Stream: "In Which Our Hero Begins His Long And Arduous Quest"
MPEG Stream: "In Which Our Hero Finds A Faithful Sidekick"
MPEG Stream: "In Which Our Hero Is Put Under A Spell"
MPEG Stream: "In Which Our Hero Dodges Bullets And Swords"

DNTEL / STYROFOAM Don't Get Your Hopes Up / This Is All Wrong (Rocket Racer) 7" 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A fancy split 7" picture disc featuring the soft and lovely sounds of these two solo projects from Jimmy Tamborello and Arne Van Petegem respectively. You may also be familiar with their other sonic endeavours: Tamborello in the band Figurine and Van Petegem as Tin Foil Star. The two tracks are nicely matched - airy, glistening, melodic and a wee bit wistful. Aq fave Dntel delivers another lush, bittersweet melding of the softest indie pop and the shuffling laptop. It's graced with some lullaby boy/girl vocals (the female ones come courtesy of his Figurine bandmate Meredith). The Styrofoam track is a more abstract but no less pleasing affair with its chiming broken music box melodies and fragmented, effected vocals surfacing throughout. Short and sweet.

DOCTOR ROCKIT D is for Doctor (Clear) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A full length to satiate those who loved his double 10" from last year. Doctor Rockit makes instrumental electro-influenced songs out of the kinds of sounds (bleeps and pings, cheese-grating, baby-cooing, Fred & Ernie, static) that others would only think to use as embellishment to something more standard. Original, delightful and exciting.

DOCTOR ROCKIT Indoor Fireworks (Lifelike) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Doctor Rockit a.k.a. Matthew Herbert releases his first full length in about 3 years. Like fellow electronic funsters Muziq, Luke Vibert, and the Aphex Twin, Doctor Rockit displays impressive ear for honest-to-gosh melodies, pure lightheartedness and lots of groove. And very much like AQ-faves Matmos, the Doctor makes genius use of simple everyday sounds sampled and looped to great percussive effect. Here we have samples of his dad's old Mini (before crashing it), running water, French cafes, etc. A delightful record. UK import.

DOCTOR ROCKIT Indoor Fireworks (Lifelike) 2lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Doctor Rockit a.k.a. Matthew Herbert releases his first full length in about 3 years. Like fellow electronic funsters Muziq, Luke Vibert, and the Aphex Twin, Doctor Rockit displays impressive ear for honest-to-gosh melodies, pure lightheartedness and lots of groove. And very much like AQ-faves Matmos, the Doctor makes genius use of simple everyday sounds sampled and looped to great percussive effect. Here we have samples of his dad's old Mini (before crashing it), running water, French cafes, etc. A delightful record. UK import.

DOCTOR ROCKIT The Music Of Sound (Clear) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

DOCTOR ROCKIT Unnecessary History (Accidental) cd 17.98
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DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH? You Have No Idea what your Getting Yourself Into (Virgin) cd 13.98
Oh how we wanted to hate this band. The hype. The blogs. The cheeky name. The fact that they were signed to a huge record deal based on two MySpace tracks. We're sure there are more reasons, but for now that's plenty. The glut of total dancey electronic bullshit, overhyped blog-house, it's killing us. Not to sound like old men, but remember when bands played instruments and wrote songs, and spent months, maybe years working on albums, recorded in studios? Yeah, we don't either actually.
But fuck it, we wanted to hate it, but it would be foolish not to just accept the fact that this record rules. We can't stop listening to it. The opener is a dancefloor destroying banger. Huge fuzzy synths, lots of squelch and grind and buzz, tearing a page straight out of Justice's playbook and scribbling all over it with dayglo crayons. But that's the only track on the record that sounds like that. The rest of the disc is all over the map, angular dancepunk, total cotton candy synth pop, and in fact, most of the disc is much more song-y, verses choruses, crunchy guitars pounding drums, wild howled vocals, and HOOKS everywhere. But fear not synthies, there is still plenty of electronic weirdness and synth overload, but that stuff is deftly woven into actual songs.
The second track is a killer as well, super grindy guitars, funky propulsive drumming, howled vocals, super proggy arrangements, swirling synths, dense and heavy, but still funky and groovy. The next track veers back a bit toward the vibe of the opener, but this time it's all vocodered Kraftwerk worship, peppered with sweeping synth buzz and funky cowbell, and a pretty irresistible hook.
Our favorite right now (although it changes every time we listen to it) is probably "Dawn Of The Dead", a total eighties pop jam. Sounding like it came straight out of a John Hughes movie, soaring and bubblegummy, big guitars lush harmonies, it's dangerously close to being too cheesy, but it's just so fucking awesome.
Later there are some surfy carnival organ jams, more eighties technopop, some unabashed total Daft Punk worship, some angular jangle guitar artpunk, flecked with skittery drum machines, and a massive hook filled chorus, the record is almost so scattered that it threatens to be a total mess, but somehow, the songs all sort of fit together, forming some dizzying sugar rush of technicolor techno flecked pop punk synth fuzz bliss.
We're gonna go blog about it. Right now (ummm, not really, just kidding, we SWEAR...). Though maybe this comes close.
MPEG Stream: "Battle Royale"
MPEG Stream: "With A Heavy Heart (I Regret To Inform You)"
MPEG Stream: "Dawn Of The Dead"

DOF if more than twenty people laugh, it wasn't funny (Highpoint Lowlife) cd 11.98
A bedroom electronica record that combines warm, pastoral interweaving guitars with sweet fingerpicking on acoustic guitar mixed with gentle clicks and whirrs, melodic and soothing yet just glitchy and quietly manic enough to add some texture and grit to the organic lushness. Emotional, melancholy chord changes. Like Papa M or Sonna meets Mouse on Mars and Oval. Yep, it's that pretty!
MPEG Stream: "derail in dream"
MPEG Stream: "two times two makes five is such a charming concept"

DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE The Music Of Belief (Release The Bats) cd 11.98

DOM Fackeln Im Sturm (Harvest) cd 9.98
Wolfgang Voigt's continuous output of techno runs the spectrum from body-hammerin' trance loaded with pop hooks to beautifully hypnotic droning laced with dubby spectral decay. Dom is one of his more club friendly monikers, with four pretty catchy acid-trance numbers (three of which are extensive variations on the same track) recalling his earlier Love Inc corkers.

DONNA SUMMER The Irregular (Sonig) 12" 8.98

DONNA SUMMER AKA JASON FORREST This Need To Be Your Style (Irritant) cd 16.98
Finally available again!!!
No. This is not the disco diva Donna Summer. Far from it, this Donna Summer is the moniker for Brooklyn plunderphonician Jason Forrest, who has obliterated a variety of genres into an abrasive collage of jagged samples in much the same way that Wobbly did to hip hop on his epic "Wild Why" album. Prog rock, electroclash, '80s top 40 schlock, free jazz, hip-hop, metal, and much more has been run through a blender of arrhythmic drill 'n' bass breaks and digital disfiguration. With its spasmodic speed of clipped samples, "This Needs To Be Your Style" accelerates the need for attention deficit disorder that Kid 606 requires of his audience, as he is constantly switching up all of the samples just outside of any ability to recognize where the sample comes from. Thus, this album can be very difficult to listen to; however, once you can get through track 4 or so, the tracks become far more listenable. It's unclear whether this is due to Forrest actually making the tracks less irritating, or due to the logic of his constructions finally becoming apparant. Certainly worthwhile mash-ups for the very patient or the very caffeinated.
MPEG Stream: "Prog's Not Dead"
MPEG Stream: "Heels Over Head"

DONNA SUMMER VS. OVE-NAXX s/t (AD ADD AT / Very Friendly) cd 14.98
This is a double shot of splattery, spastic short attention span / ADD drill and bass / mash up mania from two of the noisiest around. Donna Summer (A DJ at WFMU by day) delivers a hard and heavy 6 tracks of junglized plunderphonia, incorporating cock rock, drum and bass and everything in between. Ove Naxx from Japan, ups the ante, setting his Pro Tools to stun, spitting out shards of jagged beats and samples sliced so thin you can see right through them. Brutal and pummeling, funny and not all that funky, these guys will tear you a new one while clearing the dancefloor in seconds flat!
MPEG Stream: DONNA SUMMER "Vibrations"
MPEG Stream: OVE NAXX "Jinginaki Punxxx!!!"

DONNA SUMMER VS. OVE-NAXX s/t (AD ADD AT / Very Friendly) lp 14.98
This is a double shot of splattery, spastic short attention span / ADD drill and bass / mash up mania from two of the noisiest around. Donna Summer (A DJ at WFMU by day) delivers a hard and heavy 6 tracks of junglized plunderphonia, incorporating cock rock, drum and bass and everything in between. Ove Naxx from Japan, ups the ante, setting his Pro Tools to stun, spitting out shards of jagged beats and samples sliced so thin you can see right through them. Brutal and pummeling, funny and not all that funky, these guys will tear you a new one while clearing the dancefloor in seconds flat!
MPEG Stream: DONNA SUMMER "Vibrations"
MPEG Stream: OVE NAXX "Jinginaki Punxxx!!!"

DONNA SUMMER, DJ Panther Tracks (Cock Rock Disco) cd 15.98

DOORMOUSE Broken (Planet Mu) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Joining the meth-damaged contingent on Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu label alongside Venetian Snares and Hellfish & Producer, Doormouse offers a non-stop assault of digital hardcore mutations of Amen breaks smashed into those enormous 909 blastbeats common in Alec Empire's more punishing recordings. Top off the rhythmic shrapnel with an obliteration of George Michael's "Faith," dialogue from porn audition tapes, slashed-up NuMetal guitar riffs, horror film samples, and crude misogynist joke, and you've got the makings for an album of easy listening for kids with serious cases of attention deficit disorder.
RealAudio clip: "Peter B. Beautiful"

DOORMOUSE Method Volume 1: The Streets of Miami (Violent Turd) 2cd 10.98

DOORMOUSE Stanley Yershonowski Presents Xylophone Jism as the Riducator ( Cock Rock Disco) cd 15.98

DOORMOUSE & VENETIAN SNARES Skelechairs (Addict Records) 12" 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Massive mashup meeting of two of electronica's noisiest motherfuckers. Doormouse gives it to us good and hard, with a sidelong blast of sliced and diced amen breaks, spastic drill and bass, showers of rhthmic shards and goofy samples. On the flip, Venetian Snares offers up a thick noisy blast of 4-on-the-floor gabber, and then gives the Doormouse side a similarly gabber makeover. Good noisy stuff!

DOPPLEREFFEKT Calabi Yau Space (Rephlex) cd 16.98
This past week was the 30th anniversary of the launch of NASA's unmanned explorer Voyager 1, and if you've ever wondered what the soundtrack would be like to floating ever further inexorably into the vastness of uncharted space, well, Dopplereffekt's Calabi Yau Space might be an imaginative approximation of the music of the spheres heard by such a void-travelling spacecraft. With this album of cosmic synth drones and muted electro beats, the mysterious entity known as Dopplereffekt (an artist related to Drexciya and numerous other equally spaced-out and deliberately anonymous projekts) now makes its debut on the Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Featuring quasi-scientific, almost Vovoid-ian track titles like "Hyperelliptic Surfaces" and "Holomorpic n-0 Form", this atmospheric album presents an array of hypnotic, pulsing transmissions, seemingly pinging off the satellite dish looking thing on the cover, filtering down through the vector-graphics Tron-world innards of Dopplereffekt's komputorbrain. Rooted in classic Detroit techno/electro, Dopplereffekt continue to push into another dimension of ambient deep space drift, hoping perhaps for alien contact. Fans of Kraftwerk, Aphex, and John Carpenter soundtracks should make contact as well.
MPEG Stream: "Calabi Yau Space"
MPEG Stream: "Hyperelliptic Surfaces"

DOPPLEREFFEKT Calabi Yau Space (Rephlex) 2lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This past week was the 30th anniversary of the launch of NASA's unmanned explorer Voyager 1, and if you've ever wondered what the soundtrack would be like to floating ever further inexorably into the vastness of uncharted space, well, Dopplereffekt's Calabi Yau Space might be an imaginative approximation of the music of the spheres heard by such a void-travelling spacecraft. With this album of cosmic synth drones and muted electro beats, the mysterious entity known as Dopplereffekt (an artist related to Drexciya and numerous other equally spaced-out and deliberately anonymous projekts) now makes its debut on the Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Featuring quasi-scientific, almost Vovoid-ian track titles like "Hyperelliptic Surfaces" and "Holomorpic n-0 Form", this atmospheric album presents an array of hypnotic, pulsing transmissions, seemingly pinging off the satellite dish looking thing on the cover, filtering down through the vector-graphics Tron-world innards of Dopplereffekt's komputorbrain. Rooted in classic Detroit techno/electro, Dopplereffekt continue to push into another dimension of ambient deep space drift, hoping perhaps for alien contact. Fans of Kraftwerk, Aphex, and John Carpenter soundtracks should make contact as well.
MPEG Stream: "Calabi Yau Space"
MPEG Stream: "Hyperelliptic Surfaces"

DOTS (ATOM HEART) 10th Anniversary Box II (Rather Interesting) cd 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Released back in 1994 around the same time as Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2, Dots is an album that Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, Senor Coconut) composed as a sort of futuristic elevator music. Its rounded, digitally pure tones playfully sparkle along a datastream of placid post-techno structures. In a lot of ways, Dots foreshadowed the much-ballyhooed Pop Ambient series from Kompakt, sharing a pixel-point synthesis pleasant daydreaming music. This marks the second in a reissue series of the earliest recordings from his Rather Interesting back catalogue. In addition to Dots, Schmidt also included a nearly forgotten set of recordings called BGD (shortened from Background Design), which shares more with the ambient works of his contemporaries on the Fax label at that time. Limited to 900 copies and actually signed by Atom Heart himself.
MPEG Stream: "Dots"
MPEG Stream: "Stain"

DR. FLEISCHBRITTEL The 7th Symphonie Of The Seven Swevens (The Tapeworm) cassette 8.98
Another bafflingly brilliant batch of tapes from UK tape label The Tapeworm, and while we often find ourselves at a bit of a loss to describe whatever sonic oddity they've unearthed or discovered or dug up or conjured from the ether, not sure we've ever encountered one like this before. With very little info to go on, what we can surmise from the description we read, is that this might be some sort of home-recorded ritual, perpetrated by a teenager (Andrew Lagowski?), with his parents in the other room, taking leave from whatever rock band he was playing in at the time, to create, well, THIS, a strange bit of sinister collaged ambience, wild squiggles of feedback, what sounds like running water, manipulated tapes, stumbling percussion, what almost sounds like field recordings, owl calls or something like owl calls, detuned guitar melodies, shards and fragments of sound, all blurred and smeared and tangled into a sci-fi lo-fi soundscape, jumbled, textural and weirdly rhythmic, a definite kitchen sink approach, or maybe toolshed approach would be more accurate, a strange selection of noise making devices including various effects and fuzzboxes, a reel to reel tape player not to mention a drill and a space (perhaps wielded by the artist's brother), and while there is a sense of randomness and chaos, much of this is quite listenable, and for sure is beholden to (whether intentional or not) Nurse With Wound, Hafler Trio, and other unconventional sonic experimentalists. Two distinctly different mixes/versions, edited and reworked earlier this year. Pretty excellent stuff.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! With cover art by Savage Pencil.

DRAIN Offspeed & In There (Trance) cd 13.98
King Coffey of the Butthole Surfers does the drone-breakbeat-trance thing pretty well.

DREXCIYA Grava 4 (Clone) cd 14.98

DREXCIYA Neptune's Lair (Tressor) cd 14.98
As you well know, we're really into that special Scandinavian subgenre of electronica known as skweee. In part, 'cause we were already into a lot of the sounds that inspired skweee, such as '80s electro, video game music, and funky old school hiphop. So, we were excited to see this disc recently repressed/reissued, Detroit electro act Drexciya's first full-length compact disc, originally released by German label Tresor in 1999. Also excited, 'cause we completely missed out on listing it back then, somehow! The rather idiosyncratic Drexciya can definitely be considered as precursors to the skweee phenomenon (skweee-cursors?). And indeed also as important, if eccentric, artists in the Detroit techno pantheon.
There's 21 tracks on this basically instrumental disc, most of 'em bearing some bizarre title that relates somehow to Drexciya's strange, sub-aquatic sci-fi concepts (the comic bookish artwork features squid shaped spaceships, and spacemen (spacefish?) that look a lot like Lovecraft's Deep Ones, or the Creature From The Black Lagoon, but in spacesuits. Sonically, these tracks range from the droning chant and mysterious voices heard in the introductory incantation "Temple Of Dos De Agua" to moody 4/4 techno atmospheres to synthesized future funk ("Funk Release Valve") to textural rhythmscapes to body-jerking fusion grooves ("Jazzy Fluids")... there's melodic keyboard soloing over jittery beats... squelching bass and lush synths... And dig the Kraftwerkian echoes on "Polymono Plexusgel" (and elsewhere). Pre-skweee or whatever, it's all awesome. This Drexciya disc is a bit of a classic, as far as catchy cosmic electro with fishy sci-fi fantasy elements, Detroit style, goes. And the connection with fellow Detroit space-travellers Dopplereffekt should be obvious. Check it!
MPEG Stream: "Surface Terrestrial Colonization"
MPEG Stream: "Dripping Into A Time"
MPEG Stream: "Devil Ray Cove"
MPEG Stream: "Oxyplasmic Gyration Beam"

DRIPHOUSE Root 91 (Spectrum Spools) lp 24.00
Now available on vinyl, this mysterious recording which was originally released as a super limited cassette on the Root Strata label, hence the strange catlog number title, a cool, strange collection of sounds all created from piano, harpsichord and synths, and all woven into strangely cosmic sonic experiments, that range from swirling, electronic synthdrones that sounds almost like some crazy soundtrack to an alternate universe's planetarium show, to bizarre robotic electro, cobbled together from short bursts of static, bits of glitch and squelch, all wrapped around plink plonk piano melodies. There's also bleepy Radiophonic Workshop style analog electronic bloopscapes, minimal cinematic synthwave rife with shades of John Carpenter, but deconstructed into something much more abstract, super intense blasts of fuzzy shoegaze new age shimmer, this too peppered with starburst effects and sci-fi squiggles, haunting almost soundtracky sprawls of glitchy synth drones and processed minor key melodies, and some seriously creepy sing songy electro wrapped harpsichord, draped over softly swirling string like shimmer, and sounding a bit like the soundtrack to the unsung Halloween III. Cool, strange stuff for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Slow Sum Part One"
MPEG Stream: "Chompers World"
MPEG Stream: "In Peru"

DRIPHOUSE Root 91 (Root Strata) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another list, another batch of mysterious cassette sounds from Root Strata, check out the Father tape elsewhere on this week's list, which arrived alongside this, a clinically titled new release from a group/person called Driphouse, who like Father, we know next to nothing about, other than Root 91 is created from piano, harpsichord and synths, all woven into strangely cosmic sonic experiments, that range from swirling, electronic synthdrones that sounds almost like some crazy soundtrack to an alternate universe's planetarium show, to bizarre robotic electro, cobbled together from short bursts of static, bits of glitch and squelch, all wrapped around plink plonk piano melodies. There's also bleepy Radiophonic Workshop style analog electronic bloopscapes, minimal cinematic synthwave rife with shades of John Carpenter, but deconstructed into something much more abstract, super intense blasts of fuzzy shoegaze new age shimmer, this too peppered with starburst effects and sci-fi squiggles, haunting almost soundtracky sprawls of glitchy synth drones and processed minor key melodies, and some seriously creepy sing songy electro wrapped harpsichord, draped over softly swirling string like shimmer, and sounding a bit like the soundtrack to the unsung Halloween III. Cool, strange stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Housed in a super striking, embossed/debossed J-card, the cassette also strikingly printed white on white.
MPEG Stream: "Slow Sum Part One"
MPEG Stream: "Chompers World"
MPEG Stream: "In Peru"

DROID NYC D'N'B (Shadow) cd 15.98

DROP THE LIME Shot Shot Hearts EP (Tigerbeat6) cd ep 10.98

DRUMCORPS Grist (Cock Rock Disco) cd 14.98
At the risk of quite possibly making our lengthy and floridly descriptive, effusive and over the top reviews totally obsolete, we can pretty much sell this one with one sentence. Grind metal, death metal, spastic drill and bass AND a marching band drum corps. And that's not even really a sentence!
Drumcorps is the work of one Aaron Spectre, who not only shares a first name with the man behind Venetian Snares, he also shares a similar penchant for ultra twisted and impossibly convoluted and mind blowing rhythms. But where Venetian Snares builds elaborate rhythmic tangles out of beats, beats and more beats, Spectre, while a consummate beat maker himself, as Drumcorps, he concerns himself as much with riffs as beats. At its very heart, this is a metal record after all. A snarling, grinding crush of acidic metallic riffs and huge downtuned chunks of chugging death metal grind, with howled throat shredding vocals, buzzing squalls of metallic guitar freakout and pounding blasting drums. But as each track develops, you begin to notice something a little strange about this 'metal.' Every once in a while, here and there, the drums will skitter and splinter into little bursts of ultra complex splatter. Or vocals will get twisted and chopped up into a wildly stuttering rhythm, blast beats will get faster and faster until they're nothing but a buzzy blur. Riffs splinter into jagged digital shards which are then tossed about wildly over a skittering expanse of junglistic beats. This isn't just metal, and it's definitely not electronica. It's like some sort of fucked up avant post metal grind laid over super dense hyper programmed drill and bass. Like Pig Destroyer jamming with Shitmat, or Dillinger Escape Plan with Venetian Snares on drums! In fact a quick listen to track three, the aptly titled "Pig Destroyer Destroyer" lays it all out for you. Beginning with a killer drum corps snare workout, that builds into a mesmerizing chopped and looped vocal guitar grind, eventually building into a full on blast of metallic fury, but all tangled up with sputtering, hiccuping strands of head spinning drill and bass.
The amazing thing is, that Drumcorps doesn't sound like some sort of DJ mash up, where some clever fella with a wicked record collection just assembled and sequenced. No, these are real songs, with melodies, atmosphere, riffs, parts, choruses, it seems impossible that Spectre composed and performed a whole metal record only to electronically fuck it up, but if these are all purloined riffs, which at least some of them must be, then it had all the metalheads around here completely fooled. And LOVING it.
But it's not all just furious jungle metal weirdness (although most of it most definitely is!). A few tracks are droning ambient soundscapes, with huge cavernous rumbles washing over brittle complicated snare drums, others are almost funky jungle jams peppered with crunchy clipped riffs, and still others are moody midtempo jams, assembled from slowed down pitchshifted vocals and crumbling distorted guitars, sheets of feedback, and awesome Maiden-ish dual guitar leads. This is another one of those times we almost wish there were actual bands that sounded like this, as opposed to being the mad idea of a single twisted individual, crafting his dream band from a drum machine and his favorite metal records, an impossible metal / drum and bass hybrid. But who cares really, when it sounds this fucking amazing. Fans of past record of the week Drummachinegun should definitely check this out, as should folks into DHR, Venetian Snares, Shitmat and that sort of sputtering spastic drill and buzz (especially if they've got a soft spot for metal). But c'mon, this is a METAL record, so metalheads should absolutely take a chance, and give this a try, but should be well prepared to have their whole world turned upside down.
MPEG Stream: "Pig Destroyer Destroyer"
MPEG Stream: "Botch Up And Die"
MPEG Stream: "Down"

DRUMM, KEVIN & LASSE MARHAUG Frozen By Blizzard Winds (Smalltown Supersound) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
With an album title that sounds like it could be the name of the next Immortal record, this new release from Chicago guitar experimentalist Kevin Drumm takes the inspired-by-black-metal aesthetic of his recent Mego-label cd "Sheer Hellish Miasma" even further (what's he been doing, hanging out with Weasel Walter?). In fact, he teams up here with an actual Norwegian! Lasse Marhaug of noisy electronica act Jazzkammer joins Drumm for this live-in-Oslo session, his laptop computer vs. Drumm's guitar and analog synth. Their collaboration/clash results in some dark and droney sounds that are semi-appropriate to the apparent black metal concept, being generally quiet and creepy rather than massive or mayhemic. The guitar, when you can tell it's a guitar, is more Derek Bailey than Burzum. And the arctic winds evoked on here hiss rather than howl. But, there's no mistaking the simulation of the sinister crackling of burning churches, and perhaps even the twittering of malicious goblins in dark forests, via Drumm and Marhaug's electronics. So, of course, we love this. Leaving aside the black metal business, this is atmospheric ambient glitch drone improv at its best -- and most eeveeiil.
RealAudio clip: "track 2"

DSICO Fool (Spasticated) cd 7.98

DSICO You Fight Like A Girl (Spasticated) cd 7.98

DUAL Caste (CEE) cd 14.98
Spare, hovering, electronic tinkering ranging from the cyclic dissonance of Oval to eerie washes, punctuated by accelerating rhythms.

DUB SYNDICATE The Royal Variety Show (On-U Sound) 2cd 26.00

DUKE, ANDREW Sprung (Bip-Hop) cd 15.98
The French electronica label Bip-Hop should at least be commended for taking the risk of releasing so many albums from relatively unknown artists. Tennis, Bovine Life, and now Andrew Duke are a few of their curatorial selections of experimental techno and have all been interesting counterpoints to high-prolife labels like Mille Plateaux, Scape, and Raster. Andrew Duke is a Canadian artist working mostly with bricolages of static rhythmic structures and fluctuating darkened ambience that's not too far from the aquatic electro sounds of Drexciya and also displays plenty of influence from Coil, Pan Sonic, and Thomas Jirku.
RealAudio clip: "Hell Yeah!"
RealAudio clip: "Chromosome 20"

DUOZERO Esperanto (Small Voices) cd 10.98
We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have just EIGHT of these...
We tried to find out more about this record, but all we could find online was a bunch of crazy super academic babble that talked about the roots of the Esperanto language, the texts of Borges and Calvino, the art of Dubuffet, heavy metalinguistics, and other stuff that really shed no light at all. But yeah, while this is definitely coming to us from the world of academic sound, the actual SOUND is quite pleasing, the opener is a dark droney, softly rhythmic psychedelic landscape of layered tones, and soft sonic pulsations, swirling effects, and muted glitches, over which a voice in French recites the lyrics, the result a sort of abstract minimal Chain Reaction sort of Portishead, that same rainswept moonlit city downtempo moodiness, the second track sounds a bit more like recent outings by Byetone or Alva Noto, that sort of machinelike electro, but a bit more organic, lots of cinematic tension, cold dark grooves that are surprisingly hypnotic. And so it goes, a series of strangely abstract, and slightly academic groovescapes, a few super abstract, a couple sort of noisy, but for the most part, darkly hypnotic, lushly textured, sonically dense and lushly layered, strangely sultry and weirdly mysterious, a fantastic surprise, that just might be the perfect late night avant academic chill out disc we've ever heard.
MPEG Stream: "Prana"
MPEG Stream: "The Moving Box"
MPEG Stream: "Esperanto"

DURAN DURAN DURAN Very Pleasure (Cock Rock Disco) cd 13.98
I'm not sure why I like this so much, but I DO!!... Duran Duran Duran exist in the same plane as Kid606 or Shitmat in some capacity. Taking instantly recognizable songs and ripping them to shreds. Then re-assembling them using super distorted gabber beats and glitched out electronic buzz. This is super crazed digital beat freak break-core constructed from fragments of Yaz and Slayer and various other chunks of popular music detritus. This is the aural version of mainlining coke, or like sticking pop rocks in your ear. Dense and relentless and not at all very dancable, although we all found ourselves at least tapping or bouncing to the imposible beats. Fans of the Kid, Pluxus, Lybithith, Shitmat, and the like will eat this up! Features some truly provocative cover art featuring two nude oil painted men, um...er... frolicking.
MPEG Stream: "I Hate The 80's"
MPEG Stream: "Manrammer"

DUSK & BLACKDOWN Margins Music (Keysound Recordings) cd 15.98