APHEX TWIN Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 (Warp) 2cd 21.00
The album from which Richard D. James' electronica genius became obvious. Selected Ambient Works 2 is as if James sonically replicated the post-slumber / pre-waking state when sunlight first strikes the dream riddled eye within the memory banks of his rewired samplers. A beautiful, synaesthetic and haunting post-techno ambient that really must be heard!

APPARAT Duplex (Shitkatapult) cd 16.98
The latest from Berlin's Sascha Ring aka Apparat hardly seems appropriate to what the layman might expect from a label called Shitkatapult. Warm, fragile, pretty electronica with many acoustic, human elements? Yes! If T. Raumschmiere (another Shitkatapult-related artist) represents the electronica version of loud rock n' roll, then Apparat is a pensive singer-songwriter. Not that Apparat doesn't bring the beats, this is definitely electronic music, even with guitars and clarinet and other instrumentation from the pre-Powerbook age. It's just that Apparat's glitchy, grainy 'lectronic textures give way to melodic quietude and ...gasp... sensitive, delicate indie-rock boy vocals. Autechre meets the Sea and Cake? An even more electronic Kid A? So nice.
MPEG Stream: "Granular Bastard"
MPEG Stream: "Contradiction"

APPARAT Shapemodes ep (Neo Ouija) cd ep 14.98
Apparat offer up six more skittery tweaked IDM tracks. The best of the half dozen is the final one "Radau". Imagine an argument between synthesized chimey chirps and squidgey blats overseen by a heavy rumbling bass thud presence. Note: although this is called an EP, it is actually over fifty minutes long!
MPEG Stream: "Radau"

APPARAT Silizium (Shitkatapult Strike) cd 16.98

APPARAT Silizium (Shitkatapult Strike) 2lp 17.98

APPARAT Walls (Shitkatapult) cd 16.98
Walls begins on familiar ground for German electronic artist / producer Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) -- chiming music box-y melancholics with strings that slide silkily across the glistening sonic icicles. From there Apparat skitters all over the musical map, only touching down briefly on his well-travelled techno and IDM hotspots. Although this is definitely far heavier and darker in mood than his wispy 2003 album Duplex, it's by no means lacking in emotion and warmth. The unexpected but very welcome soulful vocals of Raz Ohara certainly play a major role in this regard. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Not A Number"
MPEG Stream: "Useless Information"

APPARAT ORGAN QUARTET Romantika (Duophonic) cd single 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Just a 3-track dose of Apparat Organ Quartet, and to be frank, it really doesn't do this group justice. You only get a mere glimpse of this Icelandic organ-synthesizer-keyboard-allsorts foursome's scope. The first percolating track sounds a lot like a slightly more aggressive Postal Service, whereas the second is a little more insistent and rockin' like a slightly less aggressive Add N To (X) or Trans Am, and the third is a revisiting of the first track. Not quite as good as some of their contributions to compilations that we've carried in the past, but pretty fun nonetheless. Their label notes Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, and '70s horror soundtracks as influences, and that very well may be true. However, the most audible influence on this ep is that of Kraftwerk. FYI: AOQ members have worked with the likes of Marc Almond, Hafler Trio, Sigur Ros, Barry Adamson, Stillupsteypa, Mum, Pan Sonic and... Hermann Nitsch!
MPEG Stream: "Romantika"

APPARAT ORGAN QUARTET s/t (Skelt) cd 17.98
Finally, the seemingly impossible to get full length release from this amazing Icelandic organ-synthesizer-keyboard combo gets a proper widespread release! Think Stereolab, Trans Am, Kraftwerk, M83, mix in a little Add N To (X), a little Postal Service and you'll be in the ballpark. From straight-up Stereolab worship, the first track is the best Stereolab song that never was (albeit with a Speak And Spell on lead vocals), to full on synth-rock with buzzy guitars and huge thick burping fuzz organ basslines with cool Kraftwerky computer vocals, to blissy M83 style romantic fuzzscapes, to goofy burbly loungy bleep and bloop, to some distinctly Kraftwerkian krautrock. AOQ's quadruple organ attack is tough to beat. You know how when a band had two guitarists, maybe three, it just made the guitar sound that much thicker and in your face, well, just imagine FOUR ORGANS rocking full on! Whoa! And one of the organs just so happens to be manned by AQ fave Johan Johannsson (who also produced the record). In the past various AOQ members have worked with the likes of Marc Almond, Hafler Trio, Sigur Ros, Barry Adamson, Stillupsteypa, Mum, Pan Sonic and even Hermann Nitsch! But you won't find any blood soaked cacophony here. Nope, this is all warm and warbly, dreamy and bouncy, fun and fuzzy.
Gorgeous cover art featuring oil paintings of the various members of the band as Playmobile figures!!
MPEG Stream: "Romantika"
MPEG Stream: "The Anguish Of Space And Time"

APPLEBLIM & PEVERLIST Over Here (Remixes) (Apple Pips) 12" 13.98

APPLEHEAD Applehead De Applehead (Pre-Cert Home Entertainment) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The strangely named duo Applehead is in fact one part the duo (?) Anworth Kirk (which we're pretty sure is at least one part former Record Of The Weekers Demdike Stare (also a duo, confused yet?)), and Applehead's debut record is the second release on Pre-Cert, a label run by Finders Keepers' Andy Votel and the guys in Demdike Stare, focusing on, according to the label themselves, contemporary musical and nonmusical material, referencing research libraries/VHS video culture/electronic Folkways records/sound poetry/tape manipulation/European fumetti/outsider art/field recording and more. Essentially, the music on Pre-Cert, and specifically this new one by the mysterious Applehead, is in fact, some seriously twisted, far out, faux seventies Italo disco soundtrack music. At least that's what we're getting from all that. A heady collection of heavy fuzzed out grooves, strange voices, creepy ambience, all woven into what sounds like the score to the greatest, and creepiest, seventies giallo you've never seen.
The record begins with some haunting, soundtracky murk, all buried melodies, muted buzz and crunch, over which a reverbed female voice intones some mysterious message in some foreign language, all the while ominous chords ring out, until BAM, in swoops a fat funky Italo disco groove, super distorted and gloriously fuzzy, the synths heavy and in-the-red, wah guitars, but the sound is strangely washed out, the groove surrounded by streaks of ghostly shimmer, clouds of effects, the end result is a killer krautrock / space rock sci-fi funk.
The record is peppered with strange little interludes, more of that voice, like a snippet from a film, woven into creepy swirling ambience, blurred minimal dronemusic, but it's not long before the next groove comes in, and it's another buzz drenched bit of giallo style faux soundtrack funkiness, dubbed out percussion, tinkling melodies, complete with terrified gasps and shrieks of females in peril. The A side wraps up with a heavy slice of organ driven haunted house moodiness, that definitely had us thinking Goblin, Zombi, Umberto and the rest of those sci-fi retro futurists.
The flipside offers up more of the same, some pulsing thrum that gives way to another blast of seventies horror funk, chuggy wah wah guitars, muscly drums, creepy minor key melodies, spectral howls super distorted synth buzz, all woven into a heavy organ kraut-funk groove. Finally the record winds down with what is the perfect Italo horror score, another woozy groove, funky and slinky, low slung and slithery, a little dubby, a little disco-y, wreathed in a spectral haze, and rife with haunting melodies, a serious slab of classic John Carpenter style seventies style suspenseful soundtrackiness.
Awesome stuff, and WAY recommended for anyone into the current crop of sci-fi soundtrackers and retro Goblin worshippers, as well as the various strains of modern hauntological soundscaping (a la Demdike Stare)...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

APPLETON, JON & DON CHERRY Human Music (Water) cd 16.98
We love the out-there improvs of legendary jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, and the idea of him teamed up with an equally out-there electronics maverick (Jon Appleton, natch) was enough to get us excited about this cd reissue of the duo's 1970 recording Human Music. Cherry, then a fixture on the NYC free jazz scene, was invited to be an artist-in-residence by young Dartmouth music professor Appleton -- who just happened to have a Moog-laden electronic music studio at his disposal. The resulting collaboration is an early exercise in "live" electronic-meets-acoustic music -- as the studio techniques of musique concrete, like splicing and editing tapes with razor blades, couldn't be applied to a real-time improv duet, so Appleton had to find ways for Cherry's playing (on both horns and sundry percussion) to immediately "trigger" responses from the studio's arsenal of synths. The results are VERY bleepy-blurpy-whooshy, like something from a freaky sci-fi soundtrack, and Cherry's trumpet is often obscured by the electronic effects. We can't say that Human Music is an absolutely essential Don Cherry album but it's definitely an interesting novelty in his discography and it's cool to get to hear it now!
MPEG Stream: "BOA"
MPEG Stream: "OBA"

AQUARIUS BUTTONS 2 x 1" buttons 1.00
Hey, we just got another batch of AQ buttons made up...
Spread the word! Show the world your true aQ colors! COOL COOL COOL aQ buttons, now in 6 different vibrant color combinations. 5 new color combos (blue on pink, red on dark grey, dark blue on blue, orange on black, and yellowish green on dark green) and a popular one we had previously (brown on yellow).
TWO FOR $1!!! Colors are random, but buy enough and you'll be guaranteed to get 'em all! And of course all feature our spiffy James Gang style logo!! So stylish!

ARASTOO Warmth In Digital (Dielectric) cd-r 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So let's get the business stuff out of the way first. THIS IS VERY LIMITED. In fact, we have the only 17 copies left. Of the 50 ever produced. We tend to be kind of opposed to ultra limited releases, obviously if a release is good enough to release at all, and then spend loads of time and money on, then it makes sense that you would want as many people as possible to hear it. But sometimes cicumstances make that unrealistic.
Running a label is hard. Especially when you specialize in really strange music, spend a lot of money on packaging, and then don't sell a whole lot of records. Even though the records you release are amazing. This happens way more than you think. Often the result is cool little labels just giving up. Which is always a drag. In the case of Dielectric, another label with a houseful of unsold records, all of which we've raved about here, the solution was to start doing super limited, lovingly assembled cd-r's, limiting the financial risk, and of course the amount of space needed to store the damn things. So here we have the newest release by Arastoo, aka Arastoo Darakhshan, who produces some of the most haunting, gorgeously ethereal ambient music we've ever heard. Drifting and shimmering, these thirteen tracks, embrace nature, but in a totally abstract way, dark soundscapes of distant vibrations and subtle sonic shifts, late night expanses of moonlight and forest flutter, smoothed into warm, rich drones. There seems to be guitars, but the actual notes are muted and spread into dreamy ethereal wisps of sound. Really amazing. Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Chalk and Basinski have nothing on Arastoo. Packaged with six oversized cards, printed with full colour images of industrial landscapes, mostly blown up abstract details, wrapped in a vellum outer sleeve that folds shut like the petals of a flower and is held closed with a wax seal!
Be warned, the wax seal is VERY delicate and will most likely crack or crumble in the mail, or even on the shelf, you'll just have to deal with it since you'll have to break the wax seal anyway to listen to it. So don't expect an intact one.
And again we only have 17 copies. After these are gone, it is gone for good!
MPEG Stream: "October"
MPEG Stream: "Wooded Area"
MPEG Stream: "Moss"

ARBOGA TEENAGE RIOT Ugly Crew Demos (Daft Alliance) cd 7.98
This crazy slab of awesome noisy weirdness back in stock again!!!
Once again, we can just tell when a record is going to be a hit here. Something intangible that tells us that everyone is going to absolutely love (or absolutely hate but still need to own) this record. We felt it about the Conet Project. Hatebeak. Daddy's Curses. The Thai Elephant Orchestra. And now Arboga Teenage Riot.
The story goes like this. Our pal Nathan was on tour in Europe and while traveling through Sweden, two young ladies handed him a tape. The tape sat in the bottom of his bag, unlistened to for months. On his return to the states he remembered the tape, put it in the stereo, pushed play and had his mind promptly blown. And we'll have to admit we feel exactly the same way. Imagine ultra lo-fi, high energy techno / gabber, all four on the floor beats and cheesy synths, whistles and those kinds of melodies usually reserved for cheerleading competitions. "You All Ready For This?!?!" DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK! You know of what we speak. So now imagine two teenage girls, sometimes making up Swedish lyrics and chanting them in cute sing-songy harmonies, but more often, just screaming and growling hysterically in their best approximation of black metal vocals, sounding like they were just dubbed over the music on a boombox (which they probably were). This is the real digital hard core! Or more accurately ANALOG HARD CORE!!! If Alec Empire had any balls Arboga Teenage Riot would be the next DHR superstars. ATR take techno and black metal and riot grrl and DIY recording and turn it into a totally bizarre, fascinating, fun and funny masterpiece! The cover is pretty sharp too, a huge swamp beast thing emerging from the water, beneath a hot pink totally illegible Arboga Teenage Riot black metal style logo! Fuck yeah!
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

ARCADION s/t (DC Recordings) 12" 13.98

ARCHETTI, LUIGI Cubic Yellow (Captain Trip) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
There are so many offshoots of the prog/psych realm that cross into other genres, whose listeners would probably really enjoy, but don't ever get the chance due to the inherent flaws of niche marketing. Luigi Archetti's "Cubic Yellow" is one of those... Known for his collaborations with Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru) in Tiere Der Nacht, Swiss avant-guitarist Archetti now presents this exceptional downtempo electronica album with Hoovering swells that sound like Dom & Roland played at 33 1/3 rpm instead of 45 along with skittering breakbeats not unlike a stripped down Amon Tobin. Fans of Biosphere or The Orb should definitely take note of this one!!!

ARCHETTI, LUIGI / BO WIGET Low Tide Digitals II (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98

ARCHITECTRONICS Construction Sounds (Sabotage) cd 16.98
This very interesting collaboration between Kwodo Eshun and Franz Pommasl is a poetic if very clinical sonic elaboration of the metaphor that the history of electronica may be seen as having a corporeal body capable of thought, pulse, and breath. Pommasl manifests the nervous system & ventilation capacity of this cybernetic body with piercing shrieks of digital feedback and machines gasping for air, while Eshun's fragmented words are disembodied and made alien through the elaborate processing. Eshun is an African writer living in London who often writes for the Wire. Pommasl has made some of the most brutalist digital/noise/electronica records to date for Sabotage and Mego.

ARCON 2 s/t (Reinforced Records) cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Arcon 2 is the darker pseudonym for Reinforced's Leon Mar. His debut album as A2, moves steadily from jazzed out drum & bass, to fierce darkcore, much in line with No U-Turn and Chrome. Fans of Ed Rush and Panacea take note.

ARCON 2 s/t (Reinforced Records) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Arcon 2 is the darker pseudonym for Reinforced's Leon Mar. His debut album as A2, moves steadily from jazzed out drum & bass, to fierce darkcore, much in line with No U-Turn and Chrome. Fans of Ed Rush and Panacea take note.

ARCTURUS La Masquerade Infernale (Candlelight) cd 15.98
THE weird, Mr. Bungle-ized Norwegian black metal album of the millennium, featuring Garm of Ulver and Hellhammer of Mayhem. "Rewind" from the start of the first song to hear the hidden bonus trip hop track!

ARECIBO Trans Plutonian Transmissions (Soleilmoon) cd 14.98
Sounding something like a hybrid of Lustmord and Dopplereffekt, Trans Plutonian Transmissions is a long lost album from Brian Lustmord's one-album side project Arecibo, released back in 1994 through the Dark Vinyl imprint Atmosphere. This offshoot of its more seminal dark ambient / post-industrial main label was something of a conceit to the blossoming ambient techno scene of the early '90s, spiralling out of labels like Emit, Fax, and Reflective. Lustmord is best known for his quintessential dark ambient work of subterranean drones and deep space isolationism on the timeless and existentially bleak albums Heresy and The Place Where The Black Stars Hang. In fact, Trans Plutonian Transmissions was recorded about the same time as Black Stars, and draws from the same conceptual pool by sourcing the universe itself albeit to different ends. The dark matter and occluded hues of that album resound in Trans Plutonian Transmissions but with the major addition of stalking downtempo rhythms and acidic 303 basslines. Plenty of NASA communications with astronauts and reclaimed data from NASA research into pulsars, quasars, and black holes embue this album with paranoid aesthetic paralleling the X-Files; and those pointilistic squiggles and squelches dropped into minor key chords and judiciously bathed in blackening reverberation further those metaphors. The one Arecibo record had a few contemporaries, including the Patashnik album from Biosphere, the Pete Namlook / Richie Hawtin collaborations as From Within, as well as the early Pan Sonic and Mono Junk recordings of icey post-techno out of Finland, all from the mid '90s. The album is a product of its time, but is certainly no worse for the wear because of it. Lustmord's production touch is impeccable as always, lending that steely gaping quality to every sound, as if it were slowly getting injested by a galaxy crushing black hole. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "3C147 (Beyond The Heart Of Space)"
MPEG Stream: "NGC 5427 (Anomalous Intermittent Radio Source)"
MPEG Stream: "3C295 (Pulse Burst Decryption)"

ARKHONIA Trails/Traces (White Box) cd 15.98
Another fantastic bit of electronic dronescaping, this one from the mysteriously monikered Arkhonia, which is apparently one half of a UK collaborative project called even more mysteriously, jz-arkh. We couldn't discover much else about these guys (or this guy) but it hardly matters, this is some gorgeous and heady deep listening, melding pop ambient shimmer, with Eno like drift, long form LaMonte Young style sonic exploration and hushed modern minimalism. Long stretches of muted buzz and smeared abstract melody, all gauzy and hazy and dreamlike, notes are stretched out and laid atop one another, creating, gently undulating expanses of murmured whir and crystalline hum. Soft squalls of hissing white noise are smoothed out into the dreamy white noise of waves on a beach, all blurred into a slowly shifting cloud of pixelated grey wash, tinkling melodies ring out and sunk beneath warm sonic swells, chopped and looped subtly into something approaching a rhythm, but dissipating before achieving any sort of momentum, instead left to drift and float and hover. Some moments definitely remind us of the gorgeous aquatic sounding digital errata of Oval, all warped and woozy overlapping skippings and skitterings, while others are pure warm sound, peppered with bursts of what sound like strings or chords, suspended in some sort of sonic ether.
The closing song suite creates a swirling dramatic cloud of almost sci-fi sounding tension, with deep swells of processed organs wrapped in a hazy psychedelic halo of smeared soft focus gauze, before finishing off with another sculpted white noise soundscape, the hiss and static creating indistinct shapes and textures, obfuscating a creeping low end whir, which eventually overtakes the white noise, unfurling to the finish with a Raster-Noton like field of minimal click and hum. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "AAOpening"
MPEG Stream: "BCTrails"
MPEG Stream: "CDTraces"

ARLING & CAMERON Music for Imaginary Films (Emperor Norton) cd 14.98
Dutch duo Arling and Cameron provide the soundtrack to your next space age bachelor pad party. Lots of nineties-style smooth beats on top of lounge music, breathy sixties girlpop-style vocals. A crowd pleaser, but I swear, this imaginary film soundtrack business has got to stop....

AROVANE Icol Diston (Din) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Icol Diston is a collection of the first three 12"s from Berlin's Arovane, who in his brief career, has succeeded in recreating the melancholic IDM / electronica of Boards of Canada, Autechre, and Markant. Arovane is at his best when maintaining a repetitive flow of counterpointing minor-key melodies alongside sputtering breakbeats, but tends to lose focus when dropping the structures of his music in favor of floating ambience and fluttering basslines. Mastered entirely from the vinyl editions of these tracks "to preserve the original sound quality."
RealAudio clip: "parf"
RealAudio clip: "yua:e"

AROVANE Lilies (City Centre Offices) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

AROVANE Tides (City Centre Offices) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Arovane's debut is a fitting complement to the rainy day electronics of Boards of Canada. Arovane set up downer IDM rhythms that have slowed down considerably from the mid-tempo algorithmic skitter of his earlier Funkstorung-esque singles. "Tides" is filled with seaside ambient washes and Durutti Column like guitar plucks for an album focusing more on moody timbre than rhythmic exposition.

ARP In Light (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98
In Light is the sublime debut solo effort from local musician/writer Alexis Georgopoulos who has been a stalwart presence in many amazing bands around these parts including A Tension, The Alps and, until recently, Tussle. The tumultuous break from the latter band has worked in Georgopoulos' favor as we're not sure he would have delved as deeply into this project, as it is so far removed from Tussle's infectious party grooves. Instead on In Light, he channels the warmer elements of seventies German electronica (Cluster, Eroc, Popol Vuh), and the more organic qualities of twentieth century composition (Terry Riley, Jon Gibson) to make an album that has the strange effect of moving while standing still. Even Roedelius from Cluster has given his blessing by remixing an Arp track for an upcoming single release. Like the picture of the sunset on the cover, let Arp's warm and effervescent rays of sound wash over and envelop your psyche. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "St. Tropez"
MPEG Stream: "Potentialities"
MPEG Stream: "Premonition Of The Sculptor Steiner"

ARPANET Quantum Transposition (Rephlex) cd 15.98

ART OF NOISE Into Battle With The Art Of Noise / 20th Anniversary Edition (Repertoire) 2cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Classic first album finally reissued on cd with bonus stuff on a second disc!

ASA-CHANG & JUNRAY Tsu Gi Ne Pu (Leaf) cd 12.98

ASCOLTARE VS. KEITH Drugs (Tripel) 3" cd 9.98

ASHRA New Age Of Earth (Virgin) cd 11.98
While this is not new, we felt since we just listed Manuel Gottsching's essential early eighties proto-acid release E2-E4, we should revisit another essential release from the post-Ash Ra Tempel period that we never listed before. 1976's New Age of Earth was the inaugural release from Ashra, the next phase of Ash Ra Tempel which basically was Manuel Gottsching re-focusing his musical efforts from a group ambition to a solo experience, marked by more streamlined compositions involving more synthesizers and sequencers but not losing his signature cosmic guitar leads altogether. Letting go of the acid psych commune jams of Ash Ra Tempel's previous efforts, New Age of Earth enjoys a more meditative kosmiche sensibility with extended warm electronic sojourns with minimalist compositional tendencies. The opener "Sunrain" is a deliriously percolating track that sounds as if Steve Reich created a proto-Balearic slow disco jam for sunrise dancefloors in Ibiza. "Ocean of Tenderness" is a softly lilting and shifting piece marked by gentle waves of sound and floating guitar figures, while "Deep Distance" is a more contemplative and cinematic rumination on landscapes of sound. Which leads to the final piece "Nightdust", which at 21 minutes is the longest track, a gorgeously majestic build-up of cosmic sensations. Whirring pulsar synth effects over a serene new age foundation like the feel of illuminating stars over some alien planetary ocean, culminating in a searing sky-high guitar lead that propels us into the nebulous ether of oceanic space. In fact the whole album has this epic 'sci-fi beach' feel, reminiscent of that mysterious final scene from The Quiet Earth, where the last man on earth is on the beach and sees the giant planet Saturn looming in the distance. A classic cosmic krautrock release from Virgin Record's most exciting and exploratory period, New Age of Earth is essential for all fans of kraut-y space-rock and psychedelic cosmic bliss.
MPEG Stream: "Sunrain"
MPEG Stream: "Deep Distance"
MPEG Stream: "Nightdust"

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION Community Music (Virgin France) cd 16.98
Apparently this is the new Asian Dub Foundation record (as it features the latest single "Real Great Britain"). If not, this is certainly the first time we've seen this record. Imperialism, Marxism, and racial politics are still the driving force behind Asian Dub Foundation whose aggressive ragga drum & bass is fueled with brash Bollywood orchestral samples, big bass grooves, and sincerely impassioned rants.

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION Rafi's Revenge (FFRR UK) cd 19.98
This is the actualization of Edward Said's orientalist theories into a musical context of feverish drum & bass breaks compounded with a stellar use of antiquated 60's fuzz guitar and impassioned political rants. ADF makes Atari Teenage Riot's upper middle class politics seem very weak in comparison.

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION Time Freeze 1995/2007: Best Of Asian Dub Foundation (Caroline) cd 21.00
Along with being a 'best of' collection, this double disc set also treats Asian Dub Foundation fans to plenty of unreleased material, BBC sessions, remixes, other rare stuff, and three brand new tracks. 32 tracks in all. Gives a fantastically thorough overview of this British group's slick melting pot of hip hop, ragga, dub, breakbeat, worldbeat and more. Sure to please devotees, but might be a bit much if you're new to this group.
MPEG Stream: "Rebel Warrior"
MPEG Stream: "Stop Start"

ASPECTS OF PHYSICS Systems of Social Recalibration (Rocket Racer) lp 13.98
Up from the ashes of San Diego's Physics comes Aspects Of Physics. In the sonic experimentations that form Systems of Social Recalibration, this quintet utilized an array of synths, computers and guitars new and old that might make a gear geek quiver. The result? Seven predominantly electronic tracks that morph from flowingly celestial and crystalline to sputtering and glitchy to tenuous drones. Their combination of occasional warm guitar melodies, layers of viscous synths and considerably icier digital textures works well. Ultimately however, it's questionable if the groups's aural output lives up to their multimedia-ness, theories and creative process (check out the enclosed booklet and their website for the detailed and diagramed skinny). Pressed on almost-pure white vinyl.

ASS COFFEE If Your Face Were On Fire, I'd Put It Out With A Sickle (One Lump Or Two) cd-r 5.98
This questionably monikered combo and their brilliantly titled cd come courtesy of loyal AQ customer Garrett Splain and it's a doozy. Fucked up and off kilter post-free-avant-rock with the some cool production techniques, the occasional bizarrely programmed drum machine and what sounds like vibes or a xylophone supplying far-away melodies. The recording is a bit lo-fi, but it only adds a nice kind of gritty ambience to the proceedings. Adventurous fans of Laddio Bollocko, Trans Am, Don Caballero and the like might really dig this.
RealAudio clip: "It's Lonely Being A Cannibal"
RealAudio clip: "The Dry Land Just Wants Your Affection, Kissy Girl"

ASSAULT, DJ Hot 'n' Horny Taco (Intuit-Solar) 12" 7.98
Strangely referred to as "Hot 'n' Horny Taco", although it doesn't say it anywhere on the sleeve or label, nor is there any reference to tacos in this single's two focus tracks. Features vocal and instrumental versions of "Love The Pussy" on side A, wherin a woman repeatedly asks "Do You Want To Rub The Pussy, Touch The Pussy, Fuck The Pussy", and three versions of "G-String" (from the recent "Jefferson Ave" disc) on the flip. Sleeve art by Mark Dancey (Motorbooty). We at Aquarius prefer hot 'n' horny burritos. From Taqueria Farolito. On Mission St. at 24th.

ASSAULT, DJ Jefferson Ave. (Intuit-Solar) cd 16.98
The king of Detroit ghetto-tech returns with seventeen new tracks of accelerated funk. Much to our disappointment, the spastic intensity which made 'Belle Isle Tech' and 'Off the Chain for the Y2K' so exciting is lost to expanded track lengths, mild and tired rhythms, and boring reiterations of old material ("Ass-N-Titties 2001?" anyone?). However, "Nipples-N-Clits" (a play on the Kibbles & Bits jingle) is good for a laugh first time 'round. Nowhere near as abrasive as we expected, especially not the track about women's panties.

ASTROBRITE Crush (BLVD) lp 15.98
Astrobrite is the candy-colored, shoegaze-pop project fronted by Scott Cortez, who's better known for his snowblinded guitar driftscapes in Lovesliescrushing. At one time, Astrobrite was a trio, but Cortez soon adopted the name for his own use; this album appears to be one of the Cortez-only incarnations of Astrobrite, originally released on cd by Clair Records in 2001. For both Lovesliescrushing and Astrobrite, Cortez' guitarwork follows all the great shoegaze guitar impressionists - My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Swervedriver, Ride, etc. - although both projects are the opposite sides of the same coin. Those Lovesliescrushing albums shed pretty much all of the song-structure from the classic shoegazing sound to amass endless waves of softly crushed smears of distortion and oceanic, narcotizing drones. Like Belong and Christian Fennesz, Lovesliescrushing seemed to be pondering what Kevin Shields might have done as an encore for Loveless, but within Astrobrite, Cortez indulges in pure mimesis of shoegaze bliss-pop at its finest. These blown out four-track recordings could easily be some lost set of MBV recordings circa 1989, complete with androgynous whispered vocal harmonies and whammy-bar tone bending. Given the recent retread of washed out noise-pop by way of Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Beach Fossils, a revisitation into the sugarsmacked sound of Astrobrite makes a hell of a lot of sense. Bright translucent red vinyl and a download coupon complete the package. Nice!

ASURE Zone Beyond Reality (DTrash) cd-r 10.98

RealAudio clip: "Fuck That Beat Up"
RealAudio clip: "Evil Sickness"
RealAudio clip: "Kill The Intruders"

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT 60 Second Wipe Out (DHR/Elektra) cd 15.98
For an outfit with such a strong ethos for sticking it to the man, Atari Teenage Riot's deal with Elektra is quite shocking. Upon listening to the first fruits of the deal, I have to wonder if the knowledge of the deal has heightened my criticality of Alec Empire or if his electronic blast beats have gotten tame with age none of the post-Rotterdam 240 bpm insanity...things tend to stay at a reasonable 140 or so, of fractured Amen breaks and straight up 808 techno grooves. The fury of the midrange has certainly been exaggerated by Nic Endo's matriculation into ATR, as her full on noise assaults do stand out. Also of note is the collaboration that Atari Teenage Riot has done with Kathleen Hanna ranting alongside ATR's three-prong vocal attack of Alec, Hanin Elias, and Carl Crack.

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT 60 Second Wipe Out (DHR/Elektra) 2lp 12.98
For an outfit with such a strong ethos for sticking it to the man, Atari Teenage Riot's deal with Elektra is quite shocking. Upon listening to the first fruits of the deal, I have to wonder if the knowledge of the deal has heightened my criticality of Alec Empire or if his electronic blast beats have gotten tame with age none of the post-Rotterdam 240 bpm insanity...things tend to stay at a reasonable 140 or so, of fractured Amen breaks and straight up 808 techno grooves. The fury of the midrange has certainly been exaggerated by Nic Endo's matriculation into ATR, as her full on noise assaults do stand out. Also of note is the collaboration that Atari Teenage Riot has done with Kathleen Hanna ranting alongside ATR's three-prong vocal attack of Alec, Hanin Elias, and Carl Crack.

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT Burn, Berlin, Burn! (Grand Royal) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Collects tracks from their import albums, and makes for a great introduction to the exciting, incendiary world of Digital Hardcore.

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT Burn, Berlin, Burn! (Grand Royal) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Collects tracks from their import albums, and makes for a great introduction to the exciting, incendiary world of Digital Hardcore.

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT Deutschland Has Gotta Die! (Digital Hardcore/Grand Royal) 7" 3.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of 4 singles from Digital Hardcore Recordings, Germany's nastiest, most extreme hardcore techno label, issued here in tasty uninitiated-friendly 7" format by the Beastie's Grand Royal label. A cheap way to learn all about what the hell is going on.

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT Is This Hyperreal? (Dim Mak) cd 15.98

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT Live at Brixton Academy 1999 (Digital Hardcore Recordings) cd 16.98
DHR qualifies this set as the ultimate noise concert ever performed in the history of music. While I wonder what Merzbow, Incapacitants, Boyd Rice, and My Bloody Valentine (the most devastating live performance I ever heard) have to say about this hyperbole, Atari Teenage Riot did manifest an extreme noise assault against themselves and their audience at the Brixton Academy in 1999, when they opened for Nine Inch Nails. Alec Empire's liner notes are laughably megalomaniacal about Atari Teenage Riot, implying that their "political" stance in part incited the WTO riots in Seattle. Umm, yeah.

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT Revolution Action (Digital Hardcore) 12" 9.98
New 4-track ep from Alec Empire & co. Features Nic Endo's first recordings with the band, adding a brutalist barrage of white noise to the already pummelling assault of post-Rotterdam hardcore, hellish drum n' bass breaks, and the three-pronged political vocal rants of Empire, Hanin Elias and Carl Crack.