SEMIAUTOMATIC s/t (5 Rue Christine) cd 11.98
Rop, ex-Peechees member, has moved to New York where he hones his DJ and turntablist skills as DJ Ropstyle. Semiautomatic features the additional talents of Akiko. Fans of Kid Koala's funny style and ICU/IQU's lo-fi d'n'b will enjoy this.

SENKING 20' to 2000: June (Noton/Raster) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Definitely the 'summer album' for the stellar monthly series of minimalist electronica counting down to the year 2000. Bubbling pulses from banks of little black boxes build sounds that move from pretty drones into dense if rather sedate electronic dub. Senking's twenty minutes share a lot of the same tonalities and structures as Aphex Twin's monumental Selected Ambient Works Volume 2.

SENKING Forge (Raster-Noton) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Continuing his reconstructions of electro found on his previous releases from Raster and Karaoke Kalk, Jens Massel (aka Senking) digitally sanitizes what could easily be vinyl surface noise into elegant post-techno pulsations that are not unlike Pan Sonic's pioneering "Vakio" album. These rhythms with their clusters of pinprick glitchiness relentlessly clatter through out the short 26 minute program, whilst Massel builds feedback tones that shift in density, aggressiveness, and volume. As a whole, the shortened 26 minute program screeches up to a tense crescendo, plunges down to static minimalims, and rebounds through submariner ambience, all the while maintaining a continuous mix of variable rhythms. Quite nice.
Released as a part of the new "Raster-Post" series housed in nice silkscreened, fold-out cardstock folder and bound with an elastic band.

RealAudio clip: "Forge 1"
RealAudio clip: "Forge 2"

SENKING Ping Thaw (Karaoke Kalk) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Senking hails from Cologne, yet has developed an unusual electro-dub technique which is quite the detour from the usual Cologne fair of A-Musik's dadaist humor or Kompakt's techno minimalism. Starting off with rolling bass loops and sleek black ambience, Senking's dub goes so deep as to never really have a bottom, just an enveloping stroboscopic pulsation of bass tones. Jens Massel (aka Senking) has claimed his influences to be both the Aphex Twin's early work and 'Laughing Stock' by Talk Talk, and has left his sound with a spartan abstract way of constructing his pieces. This work culls two vinyl only EPs ("Ping" and "Thaw") on one CD, and predates his amazing "Trial" album for Raster-Noton.

SENKING Pong (Raster-Noton) 2cd 23.00
If the archetypal Raster-Noton style of pixel-point rhythms and clinical data-streams represent "Ping", then Senking's far more sensual approach here to the click-n-groove would indeed be "Pong". It's the deeper, weightier side of the equation, but undeniably linked to that equation. The Cologne based sound engineer Jens Massel is more interested in a thickened low-end with rumbling basslines more indebted to a slowmotion techstep cruise or more of a Demdike Stare / Ghost Box electro-haunt than the post-techno shuffle ingrained in most every Raster-Noton artist's DNA. The Raster sounds of sonar blip echo, small rhythmic points, and slashing post-acid squelches do surface as the skeletal grid of rhythm guiding the throbbing bassbin rattle, yet Massel is not averse to coupling these sounds with moody, almost noirish melodic phrases for piano, Rhodes organ, and even some vibraphone. Pong is quite an evocative downtempo record that effectively comes across as something like a Pole / Bohren & Der Club Of Gore collaboration!
The second disc is a CD-ROM with a re-engineered version of the old-school Atari game Pong as a 3-D game, that looks and feels a lot like another old-school Atari video game Tempest. We haven't played around that much with it, but at least it looks really cool!
MPEG Stream: "Luma"
MPEG Stream: "Painbug In My Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Breathing Trouble"

SENKING Tap (Raster-Noton) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another installment in Raster-Noton's similarly sleeved (simple black and silver diecut digipaks, quite nice) and sonically consistent Raster.Post series. Voulme four is the work of Senking and is another beauty (like the Komet elsewhere on this list), helping restore our faith in modern electronica, a genre that has been getting less and less fascinating with every compilation and same-sounding record. Unlike the warm dreaminess of the Komet, this is a much colder beast altogether, more ghostly and spare, chilly and skeletal, with skittery rhythms, glitching and shuffling across an epic expanse of blackness, and rhythmic pulses and ribcage-rattling swells of bass throb supporting almost-melodies that are barely there. Think a more clinical, more abstract, less dub-obsessed Pole, and you start to get the idea. Hard to say why this is so pleasing, but it really is. Quite possibly my favorite electronica record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Stand"
MPEG Stream: "Settle"

SENKING Trial (Raster-Noton) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Raster's conceptualism of electronic, almost utopian purity has some interesting theoretical leanings, but the cold minimalism of Raster/Noton succeeds more often than not through the novelty of subtle melodies and interesting rhythmic patterns. While most of the critical acclaim for Raster / Noton is deserved, they are undoubtably purveyors of The New; and Senking's "Trial" is no different.
With techno and dub each getting the digital deconstruction in the respective work of Thomas Brinkmann and Pole, Senking's work has been emerging as the reductivist reclamation of electro, sounding much like a clinical atomization of Andrea Parker or Depth Charge. Senking's deep grooves of thudding sub-bass plod boldly through the Raster / Noton signature sound of skittering digital errata. Certainly recommended to the already converted... and definitely a good start for any one interested in such things.

SENOR COCONUT Around The World (Nacional Records) cd 13.98
Senor Coconut is back with a new set of party favorites. His endearing covers over the years have included everyone from Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Sade. This time out he's on a trip around the globe with each song being a cover of an artist from somewhere different in the world. But his eye is clearly on catchy and mostly familiar pop music (Eurythmics, Daft Punk, Telex, etc). Still totally fun and playful but not quite at the level of pure joy and innovative reinterpreting that his prior releases demonstrated. It kind of feels a little phoned in, but still filled with enough winners to keep us smiling.
MPEG Stream: "Around the World (Intro)"
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Moscow Discow"

SENOR COCONUT El Baile Aleman (Multicolor) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including this, his awesome Kraftwerk tribute! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat!
Back in 2000, we had this to say about El Baile Aleman: Senor Coconut is actually the guy better known as techno/electronica artist Atom Heart. He's moved to Chile and gone all Latin and groovy on us. However, all the songs on this (high-) concept album are Kraftwerk covers! So this joins a long line of weird and wonderful tributes to Kraftwerk. Soon we'll be able to have a whole bin at Aquarius dedicated to such endeavors: the Balenescu Quartet one, the Terre Thaemlitz one, the one with all the Slovenian acts, the Japanese import one, the Miami Bass one, etc. etc. Anyways, so incredibly executed down to the tiniest detail, this one will sit at the top of the heap! Super duper fun.
MPEG Stream: "The Robots (Cha-Cha-Cha)"
MPEG Stream: "Neon Lights (Cha-Cha-Cha)"

SENOR COCONUT Electrolatino (Emperor Norton) 12" 7.98
It's been awhile since we last heard from Uwe Schmidt's latin playboy alter ego Senor Coconut. Not at all surprising with all of his other personas and projects in the works - Atom Heart, Mambotur, Los Samplers, Geeez'n'Gosh, Roger Tubesound, Disk Orchestra, Midisport and the list goes on! But at long last, here's a small vinyl dose. No Kraftwerk covers here, these are three versions of his effervescent track "Electrolatino" (one of them a DJ Rodriguez remix). Nice.

SENOR COCONUT Gran Baile Con Senor Coconut (Rather Interesting) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We finally got some of the first Senor Coconut cd back in stock: mambo-electronica-fuckery from German cum Chilean Atom Heart. Much more skittery and abrasive than his more recent Kraftwerk covers record, really innovative work that has more staying power without that gimmick. Think V/VM meets Stock, Hausen & Walkman, meets Rancho Relaxo All-Stars. Heavily entrenched in the drill & bass laptop / breakbeat damage employed by Aphex Twin and early Squarepusher, but using samples culled from the rich Cuban traditions of Cha Cha and Mambo. Highly recommended, but be forewarned as we're not sure how many of these are still available.

SENOR COCONUT Gran Baile Con Senor Coconut (Multicolor) cd 16.98
Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including his awesome Kraftwerk tribute El Baile Aleman! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat!
Back in 2000, we had this to say about Gran Baile Con Senor Coconut: Mambo-electronica-fuckery from German cum Chilean Atom Heart. Much more skittery and abrasive than his more recent Kraftwerk covers record, really innovative work that has more staying power without that gimmick. Think V/VM meets Stock, Hausen & Walkman, meets Rancho Relaxo All-Stars. Heavily entrenched in the drill & bass laptop / breakbeat damage employed by Aphex Twin and early Squarepusher, but using samples culled from the rich Cuban traditions of Cha Cha and Mambo. Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Chocolatina (Guaguanco Libre)"
MPEG Stream: "Suavito (Jive Eclectico)"

SENOR COCONUT Yellow Fever (Essay Recordings) cd 16.98
A German electronic artist living in Chile doing samba versions of Japanese electro-pop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra. Well it would only sound absurd if it were anyone else but the ever so loveable Senor Coconut. With him, it's a no brainer. After paying homage to Kraftwerk on the now classic and sadly out of print disc El Baile Aleman, and exploring all sorts of covers on his instant party hit "Fiesta Songs". This carries on in the same fun samba-with-a-twist spirit of those recordings while actually featuring all three members of Yellow Magic Orchestra at different points throughout the record. Also making appearances are members of Mouse on Mars, Deee-Lite and Nouvelle Vague. Senor Coconut has proven himself to be some sort of a hipster Les Baxter for his generation. Appropriating other musical cultures, with tongue in cheek and earnest respect living side by side. Most of all he continues to provide some playful fun to a world that is often all too serious for its own good.
MPEG Stream: "Yellow Magic"
MPEG Stream: "The Madmen"

SENOR COCONUT AND HIS ORCHESTRA Fiesta Songs (Emperor Norton) cd 17.98
Uwe Schmidt returns with another Senor Coconut record to tickle our ears. If you're not familiar with the chameleonlike Schmidt, these are just a few of the other aliases he's recorded as: Los Samplers (Perez Prado drill n' bass), XXX (Atom with Chilean rapper Tea Time), Midisport (Brazilian samba gets the midi hatchet), Bund Deutscher Programmierer (refried laptops a la Mille Plateaux), The Roger Tubesound Ensemble ("digital jazz" in Atom's own words). Wow!
Senor Coconut is where Schmidt works out his love for samba, the cha cha cha, merengue, etc, and to make it more fun for him, he likes to cover the most unlikely tracks. Here we've got tracks by Sade, the Doors, Elton John, even Jean Michel Jarre. Unfortunately there's also a Michael Jackson cover ("Beat It") which, of course, instantly calls to mind Weird Al and now I can't seem to listen to this record anymore without picturing the videos for 'Eat It', 'Fat' or 'Another One Rides The Bus'. Very fun, but you might want to start with the Senor's Kraftwerk tribute, El Baile Aleman. That one we can recommend start to finish.
MPEG Stream: "Riders on the Storm"
MPEG Stream: "Oxygene (Part III)"

SENOR COCONUT Y SU CONJUNTO El Baile Aleman (Emperor Norton) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Senor Coconut is actually the guy better known as techno/electronica artist Atom Heart. He's moved to Chile and gone all Latin and groovy on us. However, all the songs on this (high-) concept album are Kraftwerk covers! So this joins a long line of weird and wonderful tributes to Kraftwerk. Soon we'll be able to have a whole bin at Aquarius dedicated to such endeavors: the Balenescu Quartet one, the Terre Thaemlitz one, the one with all the Slovenian acts, the Japanese import one, the Miami Bass one, etc. etc. Anyways, so incredibly executed down to the tiniest detail, this one will sit at the top of the heap! Super duper fun.
RealAudio clip: "Tour de France"

SENSATIONAL & SPECTRE Acid & Bass (WordSound) cd 11.98
We first got a teaser for this long promised full length matchup way back in 2002 on the Spectre record Parts Unknown, which featured super stoned rapper Sensational on 4 tracks, and it was solid gold, Spectre's creepy ominous dubscapes, and Sensational's mushmouthed mumble, twisted, druggy, off kilter and so good.
So who should come by Aquarius just now, but Spectre himself, dropping off this latest disc, a full length showdown / match up / tag team, and it's just as good as those 4 tracks from way back when. Seems like Spectre has dialed back the sinister, instead crafting some very Sensational appropriate tracks, loopy and loping, twisted and stuttery, muted and abstract, clipped and cracking, the perfect bed for Sensational to lay down his drugged out stream of consciousness fffffflow, woozy, warped and warbly, strings sing, horns bleat, a skeletal beat skitters, weaving an almost Hitchcock sounding backdrop for some drawled genius. Slowed down vocals, demonic and growly (remember those from Spectre records?) ooze over some crunchy stabs and some hiccupping beats, lazer fire from some sci-fi movie wraps around a hazy Wu-worthy should sample, looped Led Zep gives way to pizzicatto strings and looped birdsong, Spectre has always been a beat master, and this disc proves he's only gotten better, how come he's not doing beats for the big guys, if we were Kanye or Jay-Z or 50 Cent and heard this shit, we'd get Spectre up to the compound and get him crafting beats PRONTO. And along those same lines, why does everyone want T-Pain and Lil' Wayne to guest on their records? Hell, can you imagine some MTV hip hop jam breaking down into a cough syrup trudge and Sensational strolling out rapping some unintelligable weirdness into a pair of headphones? If only...
MPEG Stream: "The Way I Like"
MPEG Stream: "The Boom"
MPEG Stream: "Rip Like This"
MPEG Stream: "Boom Bash Shit"

SENSATIONAL MEETS KOUHEI s/t (WordSound Recordings) cd 14.98
Dunno why we've taken so long to get around to listing this... not 'cause it's not cool. It is! Our favorite stoned (really stoned) sounding rapper teams up with a Japanese electronic noise dude!!

SEX WORKER Waving Goodbye (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
The best way we can think of to describe Sex Worker, the solo project of Daniel from Mi Ami, is like a lo-fi, lysergic pop Prince, the music is minimal and electronic, slipping from James Ferraro like warped tropical loopscapes, to super minimal dubbed out house, to eighties disco by way of Ariel Pink, to lo-fi 4-track electro, the perfect back up tracks for Daniel's sexy crooned falsetto vox, but there's more to Sex Worker than faux soul, shit gets pretty fucked up throughout.
Sure, much of the record is spent slithery sexily through dimly lit neon soaked eighties nightclubs, crooning in dark basement underground discos, and speeding along empty roads with tinted windows and the top down, but the sound definitely gets weirder than all that, brooding and ominous and almost sci-fi here and there, super distorted and blown out elsewhere, the vocals an anguished howl over buried beats and warped looped melodies, loopy squelchy playful electronic skitter butted up against, skittery, stuttering almost skipping sounding soundscapes of warped FX drenched buzz and warbly glitched out crunch, before finally settling back down for the final 10 minute workout, "Honeymoon Babylon", haunting and electronic and minimal, the beats crumbling and distorted, laced with ghost like melodies, and all sorts of creepy effects and twisted production, and after a brief bit of falsetto crooning, the song devolves into an awesomely fractured futuristic electro jam, all droney and woozy and seriously druggy and psychedelic.
MPEG Stream: "Tough Love"
MPEG Stream: "Rhythm Of The Night"

SHABOTINSKI (b)ypass (k)ill (Plag Dich Nicht / Charhiszma) cd 16.98
Shabotinski is the oddball Viennese electronica work from Christoph Kurzmann (from Orchestra 33 1/3) and Dafeldecker. Oval like digital skittering produce subtle melodic episodes linking irony laden jazz-electronica-pop medleys ususally found on Cheap Records. The song fragments sound remarkably similar to the electronic facets of Six Finger Satellite, if they had a sultry trumpet player meandering over the post Kraftwerk / Section 25 drum machines.

SHABOTINSKI Stenimals (Plag Dich Nicht) cd 16.98
Working from a similar blueprint as Tortoise, Shabotinski uses the studio as an instrument to warp and mutate the basic rock/jazz structure. Yet, the dissonant grinding tones so familiar to Mego's brand of electronica saves this from sounding like Tortoise, their offshoots or their disciples.

SHACKLETON Deadman (Honest Jon's) 12" 12.98

SHACKLETON Deadman (Honest Jon's) 12" 12.98

SHACKLETON Fabric 55 (Fabric) cd 17.98
We've been dying for this. Shackleton's live set for Fabric, a collection of unreleased tracks, exclusives, and even a handful of older classics (reworked into wholly new and never heard before versions), all woven into a sprawling, claustrophobic avant dubstep soundscape, that manages to be groovy, and creepy, haunting and abstract, rhythmic and skeletal, super minimal and strangely funky, almost like some hauntological take on dubstep. Ritualistic, occultic, with plenty of looped, super minimal rhythms, strange disembodied voices, mysterious samples, reverb drenched soulful croons drifting through fields of hazy shimmer and dubbed out ambience, occasional cinematic strings, lurching lumbering low end, lots of haze and gauze and blurred atmospheres, all looped and layered and stretched out into ethereal streaks of spectral sound, but unlike a lot of dubstep, Shackleton is more about the beats, and the surrounding ambience is super subtle, sometimes so much so, that it sounds like the beats are just skittering through empty space, but it's all a deft arrangement of tension and release, it's precisely how Shackleton weaves this moody, intense, and darkly claustrophobic soundworld.
Oddly enough (or maybe not), much of the sound here reminds us of African Head Charge, the same sort of abstract spiritual dub vibe, but stripped WAY WAY down and spaced WAY WAY out. Druggy and psychedelic, as much as rhythmic and hypnotic. So great. Even though it's a comp / DJ mix, and not a proper album per se, it might just be the best Shackleton release yet!
Like all Fabric mixes, comes in a cool metal box, with a printed inner sleeve, and a heavy printed cardstock slipcover.
MPEG Stream: "Hypno Angel"
MPEG Stream: "Interlude: Blood Rhythm With Wishy Drones"
MPEG Stream: "Deadman"
MPEG Stream: "Man On A String (Part 1)"

SHACKLETON Fireworks (Honest Jon's) 2x12" 22.00

SHACKLETON Fireworks (Honest Jon's) 2x12" 22.00

SHACKLETON Music For The Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ (Woe To The Septic Heart!) 2cd 21.00
This has been out for a while, but we hadn't been able to track down copies until now. It's been a while since we've heard from Shackleton, and we were sort of amazed to realize that this was the first proper album from Shackleton we'd ever reviewed, there was a Fabric mix, there was a collaboration with Pinch, a collection of ep's, a split with Mordant Music and Vindicatrix, and those awesome Skull Disco comps, but this is the first record proper. Even though technically it's not a proper album per se, apparently the whole first disc here was in fact a series of ep's, recorded using, yep you guessed it, some sort of Italian drawbar organ (whatever that is), and this the tracks seemed to all belong together, and they definitely do, the sound seems less dark, and more playful than on past Shackleton recordings we've heard, gone is much of the dubsteppiness, the droniness, the darkness, and in its place, a much more vibrant and multi hued soundworld. A dizzying concoction of stuttery beats, of swirling melodies, strange voices, fragmented samples, blurred collages spinning across the stereo field, slipping easily from synthy, krauty mesmer, to almost Eastern sounding Muslimgauze style beatscapes, from crackle drenched minimal house music, to dubbed out abstract low end minimalism, and from swirly almost soundtracky ambience, to skittery Kompakt style techno. The vibe is super varied, every song constantly mutating and shifting, some serious avant techno ear candy for sure, but it definitely makes it a tough one to describe, however, as far as listening, it's endlessly mesmerizing, every track here deeeeep and lushly layered, multiple beats, weird loops, lots of samples, mysterious voices, all deftly chopped up and reconfigured into some serious hypno-techno mesmer.
The second disc was originally intended to be a bonus 12", but there ended up being too much music to fit on a single 12", and thus became its own record, and as the title suggests, was written to be more spacious and abstract, which it is, but really it's all relative. This is no pop ambience, it's Shackleton's warped take on 'quiet' music, which is really not that quiet at all, full of sputtering rhythms, ping pong beats, buzzing synth thrum, thick swaths of rumble and hum, and spare skeletal rhythms. The opener is seriously dark and sinister, more like the dubsteppier Shackleton of old, but a bit more droned out, but really, that's as dark, and as quiet as it gets. Part two adds female vocals, woozy melodic percussion, bigger beats, warbly samples, sheets of glitchy squelch, fluttery flutes, there's a definite kitchen sink thing going on, but Shackleton can pull it off, and while this is not strictly ambient, or even really quiet, it is pretty abstract, and impressionistic, lots of tranced out loopage, mesmerizing melodies, plenty of texture, the tracks lengthy explorations of some warped sonic otherworld, pairing maddeningly repetitive melodies, with ominous spoken word, African chants, bloopy bleepy effects, all of those elements constantly blurring and looping, drifting in and out of phase, it's like a modern chill out dancefloor plunderphonia, and it's pretty goddamn psychedelic, and seriously, mind meltingly addictive.
MPEG Stream: "(For The) Love Of Weeping"
MPEG Stream: "Touched"
MPEG Stream: "Seven Present Tenses"
MPEG Stream: "Powerplant"
MPEG Stream: "Music For The Quiet Hour Part One"
MPEG Stream: "Music For The Quiet Hour Part Five"

SHACKLETON Three EPs (Perlon) cd 17.98
For the dubstep obsessed among us, especially those of us who aren't scouring DJ shops for white labels and limited 12"s, this collection is a godsend. Gathering up, as the title suggests, 3 eps from one of our favorite dubsteppers, Shackleton, who faithful aQ-ers probably remember from the Skull Disco collections, the Steppas' Delight comps and the recent split with Mordant Music. The music of Shackleton is not just your regular old dubstep, it's super lush and expansive, skittery and groovy, dark and haunting, and these jams are no different.
Spare and skeletal, yet impossibly full and dense, minimal on the melodies as well as the beats, these eps are super stripped down, even by Shackleton standards, these tracks are not as bass heavy as you might imagine, more light and ethereal, not light in spirit, but in sound, the vibe is still dark and mysterious.
The strange vocal snippets in "(No More) Negative Thoughts", the twisted woozy melodies and stuttery hand claps on "It's Time For Love", the cool tabla laced drift of "Mountains Of Ashes", the super dark and noisy droniness of "There's A Slow Train Coming", which is about as sinister as it gets here, the record is jam packed with cool stark beats, and all sorts of moody melody and bleak ambience, culminating in the closer "Something Has Got To Give", with it's chopped up vox, creepy processed laughter, koto style strings, shimmering minor key drones and the brittle barely there beat, it's almost like a dubstep soundtrack for a lost giallo, malevolent and cinematic and seriously sinister!
MPEG Stream: "(No More) Negative Thoughts"
MPEG Stream: "Mountains Of Ashes"
MPEG Stream: "Asha In The Tabernacle"

SHACKLETON / HEADHUNTERS / T++ The Unofficial Mixes Of Moderat Pt #1 (50 Weapons) 12" 14.98

SHADOW, DJ Best Of Mo' Wax 12's: The DJ Shadow Collection (Mo Wax) cd 17.98
A nice reminder of why we love DJ Shadow comes in the form of this best of Mo' Wax Singles compilation that culls together all of his groundbreaking early sides and remixes that put the London-based label on the map. Spanning the years 1993-2000, some of the tracks are alternative versions of material from Endtroducing, and Pre-emptive Strike but also included are the Dark Days Soundtrack single and a handful of remixes, among them Depeche Mode, Folk Implosion, Massive Attack, and Blackalicious. It's cool to have all these tracks compiled together, sort of like a beloved old friend we haven't seen in ages.
MPEG Stream: "High Noon"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Days"
MPEG Stream: "Natural One (Folk Implosion Remix)"

SHADOW, DJ Endtroducing (MoWax) cd 14.98
Amazing.

SHADOW, DJ Endtroducing - Deluxe Edition (Universal) 2cd 30.00
Believe it or not, one of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut, currently only has a one-word review on our website. Certainly it deserves more than that. Although, at least the word we chose is "amazing". The album's original release on MoWax in 1996 (almost ten years ago!!) more or less predated our obsessive reviewing schedule, so like quite a few other classics it never got its multi-paragraph due on our new arrivals list. And chances are, we figured that listing it our our site with the simple "amazing" recommendation was enough, 'cause it's hard to imagine that everyone hadn't heard of/heard/bought a copy by now. But since, after all, we still sell it steadily, clearly there must be those as yet to discover it. Now, with the release of a double disc digipack "deluxe" edition in a plastic slipcase (a treatment afforded by the same label to the likes of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, by the way, making this something of an honor for DJ Shadow!), we have the perfect excuse to basically take a few hundred words to say "amazing" again! Shadow's masterpiece (disc one, "The Album") is a brillant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise.
And even if you scratch (heh) your head when we talk about turntablists and sampling, rest assured that, process aside, this is a great album that transcends genre tags and easy categorization. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the Pugh Rogefeldt bit that helped us sell a ton of reissued cds by that particular Swedish '60s psych-folkster so recently) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it (opinions here were mixed about his many-years-later follow-up The Private Press in 2002) and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either! So if you don't have it already, what the heck are you waiting for? And to further underscore the point that this a great and important album, we're told that there's a book in the 33 1/3 Series coming out about it soon too!
Then there's disc two, what (aside from the packaging, which includes a booket of photos, essays, and track notes from Shadow himself) makes this a "deluxe" reissue. Disc two, entitled "Excessive Ephemera", features a slew of Endtroducing-era cuts -- alternate takes, demos, remixes, and a live radio performance. In addition to a few tracks that made it out on now-out-of-print MoWax singles, a bunch of these are unheard-before, work-in-progress versions of tracks from the album, so as bonus material this is more about providing insight into the creation of Endtroducing and less about any long-lost tracks that shoulda been on the album. It is kind of a way to listen to Endtroducing again with new ears. And it's nice to have the "extended overhaul" of the all-too-brief album track "Organ Donor", a mix that Shadow created expressly for James Lavelle's DJ use. So, a lot of added value for all Shadow fans who want to pick this up again and re-enter the world of Entroducing.
Amazing.
MPEG Stream: "Mutual Slump"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight In A Perfect World"

SHADOW, DJ The Less You Know, The Better (Island) cd 14.98
Not our favorite outing by DJ Shadow. Though we do suspect there's a Magma sample in there somewhere, so that's cool! But also, maybe, Rage Against The Machine??

SHADOW, DJ The Outsider (Universal) cd 15.98
Not sure if the title of DJ Shadow's new production refers to himself or the listener, but there's no doubt there is something schizophrenically off-kilter here, and the jury is still out on whether this is a successful quality or merely a string of increasingly bad ideas. Chock full of guest appearances (mostly guest rappers-never a good sign!) including
local hyphy hip hop stars, Keak da Sneak and Turf Talk, Christina Carter from Charalambides and Chris James from Stateless doing his most earnest Chris Martin/Bono/Thom Yorke imitations. While the consensus from most of us here is that The Outsider as a whole is better than Shadow's last outing, The Private Press, what's missing here is that killer single track that makes the whole worthwhile. That said, we'll give Josh Davis the benefit of the doubt that The Outsider is definitely a grower with patient listeners reaping the most rewards from his erratic multiple personae.
MPEG Stream: "3 Freaks"
MPEG Stream: "Artifact"
MPEG Stream: "Erase You"

SHADOW, DJ The Private Press (MCA) cd 17.98
DJ Shadow's second full length is finally here, and I do believe I (Windy) am the only AQ-er who likes it. Well, Jim thinks it's ok, but the general consensus 'twixt my colleagues is that the rest of the field has caught up to him, and he hasn't hitched up his britches to keep ahead of the herd. Hmm. I disagree. Certainly The Private Press is no Endtroducing (his acclaimed debut full length), but neither should it be. It's a lot more accessible and crowdpleasing than the debut, the layers aren't as impenetrably mysterious, and yeah, it requires less work to like it (i.e. not as challenging). But there's nuthin' wrong with that. He's keeping it interesting for himself. The Private Press is a likable, listenable (might we even say, at times lighthearted?) trip. It's got everything from the moody arpeggiated piano lines that're DJ Shadow's signature, soul divas, sad minor key laments, funny Cut Chemist / Kid Koala-style spoken bits, super epic percussive climaxes, and an all over hip hop flavor. And the heartbreakingly sincere audio letters that bracket the album are incredibly well chosen, framing the songs as an emotional musical narrative. *Very* well done.
We have to wonder, though, why he used that old "pure energy" sample. Why don't ya just throw in "I got the power!" too? Not to mention the overused tired, sad android voice (y'know just like the one Radiohead used).
Cup sez: We had a DJ Shadow 12" here a little while ago, and I thought one of its tracks sounded as if he'd just plugged in his Playstation 2 system and recorded the sounds of someone playing the game REZ. If you're at all familiar with the game you'll undoubtedly find the Shadow track ringing familiar too. REZ is basically a shooter game, but with an astounding combination of rave-ready sounds and gorgeously trippy visuals - both of which are manipulated by your performance. Oh yeah, and the level bosses are pretty spectacular. Stunningly beautiful and deluxe fun! Really, you could just project the game action on a wall, pump the sounds through a bad-ass sound system, and *POOF!* instant party. Anyways, that track is included here too. And it sticks out like a sore thumb which makes the REZ theory all the more plausible!
RealAudio clip: "Fixed Income"
RealAudio clip: "Monosylabik"
RealAudio clip: "Giving Up The Ghost"
RealAudio clip: "Blood On The Motorway"

SHADOW, DJ The Private Press (MCA) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We finally got some copies of the vinyl version of the new Shadow album. Here's what Windy wrote about the cd a month ago:
DJ Shadow's second full length is finally here, and I do believe I (Windy) am the only AQ-er who likes it. Well, Jim thinks it's ok, but the general consensus 'twixt my colleagues is that the rest of the field has caught up to him, and he hasn't hitched up his britches to keep ahead of the herd. Hmm. I disagree. Certainly The Private Press is no Endtroducing (his acclaimed debut full length), but neither should it be. It's a lot more accessible and crowdpleasing than the debut, the layers aren't as impenetrably mysterious, and yeah, it requires less work to like it (i.e. not as challenging). But there's nuthin' wrong with that. He's keeping it interesting for himself. The Private Press is a likable, listenable (might we even say, at times lighthearted?) trip. It's got everything from the moody arpeggiated piano lines that're DJ Shadow's signature, soul divas, sad minor key laments, funny Cut Chemist / Kid Koala-style spoken bits, super epic percussive climaxes, and an all over hip hop flavor. And the heartbreakingly sincere audio letters that bracket the album are incredibly well chosen, framing the songs as an emotional musical narrative. *Very* well done.
And now for my co-workers to have their say:
We have to wonder, though, why he used that old "pure energy" sample. Why don't ya just throw in "I got the power!" too? Not to mention the overused tired, sad android voice (y'know just like the one Radiohead used).
RealAudio clip: "Fixed Income"
RealAudio clip: "Monosylabik"
RealAudio clip: "Giving Up The Ghost"
RealAudio clip: "Blood On The Motorway"

SHADOWHUNTAZ Valley Of The Shadow (Skam) cd 15.98
It's been so long since we had some crazy crew of brain meelting tongue twisting outer space hip hop visionaries. Disconnected rhymes, sputtering, glitched out beats, total mind melting confusional free funk freakouts. For a while Antipop Consortium were pushing the envelope, Anticon definitely have their own avant angle. But we've been hankering for someone like Kool Keith. Paging Dr. Octagon. We want some damaged stuttery beats, warped warbly synths and fuzzy glitched out grzzzzt. Most importantly, some maddening slurred, drug drenched, space age, conspiracy theory WHATTHEFUCK flows. Maybe that's why we've been leaning toward Grime so much lately. It just feels so much more dangerous and fucked up and unconcerned with hip hop convention. But now we've got the Shadowhuntaz. A rogue band of futuristic hip hop explorers, who mix the perplexing sci fi / high as fuck mush mouthed ramblings of Dr. Octagon with the glitched out hip hopped electronic squelch and thud, skitter and skid, slowed down IDM beatscapes of Antipop (they are on Skam after all) into a fucking killer trip hop skittery groove. The beats, hiccup and slither, bounce and bump, the music is a claustrophobic swirl of haunting loops, weird industrial clatter, moaning drones, and all sorts of production fuckery, effects swirl and shift, vocals are chopped and looped, skipping samples, warm washes of ambient whir, and then there's the vocals, all different and distinct, some laid back and stoned as fuck, some amped up and rapid fire, all dense with incredible tales of this or that, all sort of druggy and tripped out. Plus there's some totally fucked up scratching, little snatches of DJ freakout, but those scratchfests are run through the Shadowhuntaz supercomputer and spit out the other side a careening chaotic crush of chopped up, impossibly complex textural collages of scratch detritus, like they dropped 3 or 4 DJ's, wildly scratching and tearing shit up, into a huge blender, and then sprayed the resulting funk flecked gore funk all over these tracks.
Funky, fucked up, freaked out, cool and creepy and quite possibly contender for hip hop record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "2020"
MPEG Stream: "Massive"

SHANKAR, ANANDA Thoth to Eros (Bombay Beat) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Subtitled "The Best of Ananda Shankar", this is long overdue (the original LPs command hundreds of dollars) material from Ravi's brother. Completely whacked out psychedelic sitar music, albeit a little cheesier (he covers "Jumpin Jack Flash") but sometimes a lot weirder and more experimental than brother Ravi. Supposedly comes with CD-ROM visuals.

SHANKAR, ANANDA, EXPERIENCE, THE & STATE OF BENGAL Walking On (Real World) cd 16.98
Ananda Shankar (RIP) met up in '99 with British "Asian Underground" DJ State of Bengal for this sitar-funk-electronica session. Indeed an "illustrious cult figure in the secret history of pop culture", Shankar was famed for his East-meets-West psychedelic pop experiments decades ago, and this is a fun and fitting finale to his career. If you were into the "Untouchable Outcaste Beats" comp (which featured an old Shankar track alongside folks from the new Asian/UK DJ scene) and/or are a fan of the likes of Talvin Singh, you should check this out.

SHE-SATELLITES Poison Lips (Geist) cd 21.00
She-Satellites is the pseudonym for Atari Teenage Riot's noise programmer Nic Endo, whose second solo album (the first being Nic Endo's 'White Heat' on Digital Hardcore) reflects a more adventurous approach to noise and beats than her contributions in Atari Teenage Riot. The interplay between the digitized tones has an antiquated feel of the electronic music composers of the 60s (sounding very much like Arne Nordheim or Vladimir Ussachevsky) and accompanies a start-n-stop array of crunchy breakbeats. 'At its frequent best, 'Poison Lips' restores frissons of pleasure to noise zones, where punishment beatings had become the rule.' - Biba Kopf / The Wire

SHE-SATELLITES Poison Lips (Geist) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
She-Satellites is the pseudonym for Atari Teenage Riot's noise programmer Nic Endo, whose second solo album (the first being Nic Endo's 'White Heat' on Digital Hardcore) reflects a more adventurous approach to noise and beats than her contributions in Atari Teenage Riot. The interplay between the digitized tones has an antiquated feel of the electronic music composers of the 60s (sounding very much like Arne Nordheim or Vladimir Ussachevsky) and accompanies a start-n-stop array of crunchy breakbeats. 'At its frequent best, 'Poison Lips' restores frissons of pleasure to noise zones, where punishment beatings had become the rule.' - Biba Kopf / The Wire

SHED The Killer (50 Weapons) cd 16.98
For those of you who have been FIENDING for some murky, gritty, booming and dark dubbed out techno, and seething, narcotic wareHOUSE similar to the dose we administered a couple months ago with the fantastic Porter Ricks reissue, Biokenetics, we got it for you RIGHT HERE! Shed, aka Rene Pawlowitz, offers up his third full length, The Killer, and man, while we're kinda bummed we're late to the party, it's SO great to finally arrive!
Rolling, mesmeric, corroded bursts of metallic klang tangle with dark and HEAVY synthscapes, rattling bass tones, and subtle trance inducing rhythmic shifts. Hazy clouds of filtered fuzz, and buzzing skree smokin out the disco tech!
"I Come By Night" is a nefarious and brooding techno stomper. The sounds of robot chatter and malfunctioning factory equipment crumbled up together and spread tautly over a tectonic rhythm grid, the sounds caustic and mysterious, buzzing and droning and teeming with dark energy. Like a WAY more brutal Actress, other worldly squeaks and blips ricocheting to and fro on top of some seriously gothic synthscapes. "Day After", "Phototype" and "Ride On" are more of a broken, fucked up and moody rendition of dubstep or UKG. The bass drum sound has us thinking of the gnarlier side of Chain Reaction, while the snares and hats swing rigidly on top (an oxymoron, we know, but we don't know how else to describe the confusional yet undeniably groovy sound Shed manages to achieve here). The synth vibes on these tracks are totally haunting. Heavy horror vibrations, and blissy blackened grittiness. Unintelligible vocal snippets looping over and over, creating an infectious syncopation.
There are also moments of dubby drifting ambiance that tie The Killer together quite nicely. The introduction, "STP3 The Killer", is a pulsating, Hecker meets Hallucinator vaporous trance dance, while "Gas Up" (Voigt reference?) is a soporific bliss out dreamscape! Bubbling angelic synth tones flow in and out of focus, obscured by a fog of tape hiss.
"The Praetorian (Album Mix) is an evolving digital landscape, again reminding us of Tim Hecker circa "Harmony In Ultraviolet". Arpeggiated plink plonking glassinine sonic shards and delicately discordant mesmer floating up to the heavens! Beautiful!
The Killer is totally right up our alley, as far as techno goes. Massively heavy at points, dreamy and delicate at others. Blurry and narcotic, trance inducing dubbed out seismic GROOVE! If you dig all those Chain Reaction, Basic Channel and Gas vibes of yore, or are feeling that new experi-techno sound of Actress or that forlorn night music that is Burial, Shed's sound is definitely gonna hit you in the gut (in a pleasurable way)! RECOMMENDED FRESHNESS!
MPEG Stream: "I Come By Night"
MPEG Stream: "Silent Witness"
MPEG Stream: "Ride On"

SHED The Killer (50 Weapons) 2lp 23.00
For those of you who have been FIENDING for some murky, gritty, booming and dark dubbed out techno, and seething, narcotic wareHOUSE similar to the dose we administered a couple months ago with the fantastic Porter Ricks reissue, Biokenetics, we got it for you RIGHT HERE! Shed, aka Rene Pawlowitz, offers up his third full length, The Killer, and man, while we're kinda bummed we're late to the party, it's SO great to finally arrive!
Rolling, mesmeric, corroded bursts of metallic klang tangle with dark and HEAVY synthscapes, rattling bass tones, and subtle trance inducing rhythmic shifts. Hazy clouds of filtered fuzz, and buzzing skree smokin out the disco tech!
"I Come By Night" is a nefarious and brooding techno stomper. The sounds of robot chatter and malfunctioning factory equipment crumbled up together and spread tautly over a tectonic rhythm grid, the sounds caustic and mysterious, buzzing and droning and teeming with dark energy. Like a WAY more brutal Actress, other worldly squeaks and blips ricocheting to and fro on top of some seriously gothic synthscapes. "Day After", "Phototype" and "Ride On" are more of a broken, fucked up and moody rendition of dubstep or UKG. The bass drum sound has us thinking of the gnarlier side of Chain Reaction, while the snares and hats swing rigidly on top (an oxymoron, we know, but we don't know how else to describe the confusional yet undeniably groovy sound Shed manages to achieve here). The synth vibes on these tracks are totally haunting. Heavy horror vibrations, and blissy blackened grittiness. Unintelligible vocal snippets looping over and over, creating an infectious syncopation.
There are also moments of dubby drifting ambiance that tie The Killer together quite nicely. The introduction, "STP3 The Killer", is a pulsating, Hecker meets Hallucinator vaporous trance dance, while "Gas Up" (Voigt reference?) is a soporific bliss out dreamscape! Bubbling angelic synth tones flow in and out of focus, obscured by a fog of tape hiss.
"The Praetorian (Album Mix) is an evolving digital landscape, again reminding us of Tim Hecker circa "Harmony In Ultraviolet". Arpeggiated plink plonking glassinine sonic shards and delicately discordant mesmer floating up to the heavens! Beautiful!
The Killer is totally right up our alley, as far as techno goes. Massively heavy at points, dreamy and delicate at others. Blurry and narcotic, trance inducing dubbed out seismic GROOVE! If you dig all those Chain Reaction, Basic Channel and Gas vibes of yore, or are feeling that new experi-techno sound of Actress or that forlorn night music that is Burial, Shed's sound is definitely gonna hit you in the gut (in a pleasurable way)! RECOMMENDED FRESHNESS!
MPEG Stream: "I Come By Night"
MPEG Stream: "Silent Witness"
MPEG Stream: "Ride On"

SHIFLET, MIKE Sufferers (Type) lp 19.98

SHINING Grindstone (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98
The previous Rune Grammofon album from Norwegian electronica/jazz outfit Shining (2005's In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster) we liked quite a bit -- and sold quite a few copies of as well. But we don't remember it being quite as hard and heavy as this new disc! Some of this is almost industrial-metal, seriously. Herky-jerky rhythms one moment, sheer droning heaviness the next, with moody male and female vox amidst the instrumental/electronic onslaught. This has a sinister circusiness that makes you think that Mike Patton (Fantomas/Faith No More/etc.) must somehow be involved, though of course he's not. Doubtless he'd like how spunky, brassy, swirly, and dark this is, and that Shining haven't lost their any of their intense cinematic Morricone-ish sensibility.
MPEG Stream: "In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster"
MPEG Stream: "Psalm"
MPEG Stream: "Fight Dusk With Dawn"

SHINING PATH, THE Chocolate Gasoline (Holy Mountain) 12" 13.98
Latest release from Holy Mountain, a new 12" from The Shining Path, the duo of Ilya Monosov, and Preston Swirnoff. We've dug pretty much everything we've gotten our hands on so far, and this 12" is no different. Well, actually it is, sort of.
And no we don't mean it's different as in we don't dig it, but no, as in it sounds WAY different than other SP releases. Where as other records were overdriven dubbed out druggy psych rock, Chocolate Gasoline has a bit of, well, a sort of calypso vibe mixed into their usual psychedelic stew. It's really strange, sort of sleazy sounding, WAY tripped out, but we still love it.
Stripped down percussion, moaning reverbed guitar, blown out FX drenched leads, strange vocals, that almost sound like Jamaican style toasting, and that calypso vibe. It continues on through most of the record, occasionally interrupted by dubbed out rhythms, clouds of electronic glitch, all dizzy and druggy, it actually sounds a bit like this: imagine the house band in some dark dingy calypso bar, a bar you just stumbled into after being heavily dosed with LSD, everything spinning and twisting into freaky shapes, the band jamming in the corner, begins to lift off the ground, their sounds becoming colors, the bar fading until just you and the band are standing on some other planet, watching the Earth melt in the background while the band jams on, and the little rock you're on drifts closer and closer to the sun.
Packaged in an eye popping 12" style sleeve, all reds and blues and yellows, just begging for some 3-D glasses!

SHINING, THE In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98
Ah Rune Grammofon, what have you for us today? Another enticing digipacked cd of course, this one from a band called Shining, from Norway (but not to be confused with the black metal Shining from Sweden). What be they if not black metal? Hmm, let's listen...good grief, dunno the genre for this even...it's jazz we guess...of sorts. Powerful and freaky and technological. Lead by Jorgen Munkby (ex-Jaga Jazzist, as is the Shining's keyboardist) who plays (on here) everything from sax to accordion to church organ to guitar to mellotron to synths, and does drum programming too. But Shining is a five-piece band so as multi-instrumental as Jorgen is, he's doesn't have to do it all at once. And they leave the tubular bells to a guest musician. So, you get the idea that there's potentially a lot going on. The requiste Kim Hiorthoy cover art, which kinda looks like a blown-to-bits website, implies as much. The ten tracks here veer from booming bombast to melodic moodiness. Energetic ADD explosions of horns and percussion are calmed with weird wordless vocal parts, rhythmic frenzies give way to eerie grooves, and the players' jazz chops are chopped up. There's plenty of tension, and release, let's say! Just imagine some hotshot jazz guys gone on a dark, cinematic bender, unhealthily obsessed with Carl Stalling cartoon scores and arty prog rock and all possibilities of modern electronics. Your ears will feel fully exercised (and dare we say delighted) after a session with Shining. Very cool.
MPEG Stream: "Goretex Weather Report"
MPEG Stream: "Aleister Explains Everything"
MPEG Stream: "The Smoking Dog"

SHIPP, MATTHEW Nu Bop (Thirsty Ear) cd 16.98
Here's another new one from the prolific, AQ-fave jazz pianist Matthew Shipp, another entry in Thirsty Ear's forward-looking, Shipp-curated "Blue Series".
The futuristic jazz found on "Nu Bop" is quite similar to David S. Ware's recent "Corridors & Parallels", which featured three of the players found here: Shipp, bassist extraordinare William Parker, and drummer Guillermo E. Brown. On "Nu Bop", Daniel Carter handles sax & flute, and someone named FLAM is responsible for synths and programming (leaving Shipp to his customary piano, instead of the keyboards he played on the Ware disc). This group has produced a unique, enjoyable mix of electronic beats and droney synth atmospheres, and up-tempo, uh, "nu-bop" jazziness. The album's sci-fi theme is reflected in the somewhat hokey track titles, like "Space Shipp", "X-Ray", "Rocket Shipp", and "ZX-1". As with other Blue Series offerings (like that great Spring Heel Jack "Masses" disc from last year), these hybrid jazz/electronica experiments are both good places for the jazz-curious modern music listener to begin exploring, and for the avant-jazz-centric to branch out. The future sound of jazz? We'll leave that for others to debate. We just hope that Shipp doesn't take it *too* far (no DJ remix disc please!!).
RealAudio clip: "Rocket Shipp"
RealAudio clip: "Nu Abstract"

SHIT AND SHINE Bass Puppy (Badmaster) 12" 13.98
They pretty much had us at "dubstep Shit And Shine". Yep, UK mysterious masked multi drummer-ed noise rock weirdos, who recently destroyed at SXSW, and did a fair bit of damage in the Bay Area recently as well, return with their own take on dubstep, and it's just as fucked up and freaked out as we might have imagined (or hoped), and we have to say it's pretty much how we wish ALL dubstep sounded, heavy and super distorted, blown out, the beats pounding, the bass fuzzed out and crushing, a lurching hypnotic groove, surrounded on all sides by crumbling FX, distorted howls, a dizzying swirl of demented sounds, it's like the Butthole Surfers remixed by Burial, or Kode9 covering Rusted Shut.
The B-side is the blissier of the two, but only just barely, with deep undulating bass, a locked and looped main groove, weird grunts, and blurred voices, little bits of melody, twisted and tweaked, but weirdly tranquil and hypnotic. Some DJ somewhere is gonna whip this out midset and either utterly destroy the dancefloor, or seriously freak folks the fuck out. Much more likely the latter.
Best dubstep jam of the year? Quite possibly...

SHIT AND SHINE Jream Baby Jream (Riot Season) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Shit And Shine sure have come a long way from the multiple-drummer-ed Neanderthal noise rock rock pummel that was their M.O. for years. Recent recordings and performances have run the gamut from warped noise drenched dubstep to pounding psych rock laced with balloon squeak solos, so every live show and ever new record is a total unknown, and even once you get into a new record, every track ends up being a warped surprise. But really we wouldn't have it any other way. This new lp Jream Baby Jream pretty much continues right where the sprawling Le Grand Larance Prix triple lp left off, a handful of warped jams that end up going in whatever fucked up direction the $&$ guys want them too. Which requires a quick run through of all the songs...
The A side starts off the 10+ minute "Dinner With My Girlfriend" which couples alien vocoder-ed and auto-tuned vox to some dirgey, blown out super distorted beats, the whole track sounds like it's at the wrong speed, the sounds filthy and crumbling, swirling FX and all manner of weirdness going on beneath the surface, a stunted electro-drug groove that should have some dancefloor bumping, just not one where normal folks congregate. "Mermuda Triangle" is a blast of electronic weirdness, pitch shifted buzzes and constantly shifting layered drones, all over stuttery beats and weird ominously spoken vox, the whole thing laced with weird eighties melodies, which makes the track sound like Faxed Head covering some obscure eighties pop song. The A side closes with the title track, which is the weirdest of the bunch, mostly for being the least weird. It's a straight slow jam rock tune, all stripped down guitar and shuffling rhythm, the weirdest part being the mush mouthed vox, but otherwise it sounds like some warped slow jam high school dance ballad, playing in a gym in bumfuck, nowhere.
The B side starts off with "Woodpecker", a short blast of heavy No U-Turn style dubstep / jungle, all stripped down and pounding, but plenty fractured and fucked up, noisy and rife with all manner of glitches and squelches, before leading into the 10 minute "Rodeo Girls", a woozy, psychedelic slab of looped weirdly distorted kraut-funk, the sound shifting constantly, getting blown out, murky and muddy one second, brittle and crunchy the next, strange melodies surfacing throughout, all the while the main loop remains maniacally mesmerizing.
And finally, "Youth Led Worship" is a dark minimal coda, all murky and pulsing, a dirgey droned out drift, with haunting processed vox, and a field of deep moaning buzz, a blurred blackened sprawl of hushed sinister creep. Weird as fuck, of course, but bafflingly brilliant too.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES! On either green or orange vinyl! Already sold out at the label and out of print. These are the last copies we'll be able to get!!!

SHITMAT Full English Breakfest (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
We've said it once, we'll say it again, we CAN NOT get enough jungle. Especially the mutant strain of spastic junglized, hard raga drill and bass practiced by folks like The Bug, Kid 606 and of course Shitmat. And if we had to pick, Shitmat would most likely be our pick of the bunch. Amazing programming, keeping enough of that classic cheesy drum and bass sound to satisfy our nostalgia, but fucking it up just enough to hit the spot for those of us always in need of a head spinning, ear shredding blast of complete jungle mayhem. The first Shitmat record was just multiple versions of the same song albeit all drastically different, but it's still a huge thrill to finally get a new record of all new (well new in their current form, ya know?) songs. And blessed be, it's even weirder, funnier and harder than the first one. Originally released on 5 separate 12"s, this disc collects almost all of the tracks (one from each 12" was left off jsut to piss us off, but that's okay, we still have been spinning this like crazy). Just like the first album, this collection is a massive buzzing electrified briarpatch of ultra complex drum and bass, huge booming low end and sliced and diced hard ragga. Highlights of Full English Breakfast include the track "Day O," where Shitmat takes the "Banana Boat Song" and turns it inside out and shreds it to ribbons adding crashing amen breaks and booming low end, "There's No Business Like Propa' Rungleclotted Mashup Bizznizz," a totally fucked up take on Irving Berlin's classic show tune, and "Dis Dancehall Ting...", a chopped up, and junglized version of Aled Jones' "Walking In The Air", junglizing tunes by The Archers, Trisha and the Blue Peter theme, and loads more rumbling, pummelling raga dancehall gabber jungle dancefloor destroyers. WE FUCKING LOVE THIS STUFF!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "UK Swampcore Sucks"
MPEG Stream: "Night Of The Scorpion Scumland Riders"
MPEG Stream: "Dubplate Murder Sound"